11 - Gadamer’s Relation to Heidegger and Phenomenology

Summary

Gadamer's life and work is closely connected with and indebted to the life and work of Martin Heidegger. Gadamer's autobiography makes clear that the encounter with Heidegger in the early 1920s was quite literally fateful. Theirs was a lifelong personal and intellectual relationship. Throughout his published work and in his lectures and private conversation, Gadamer everywhere modestly acknowledges his deep debt to Heidegger. He tells us, for example, that Truth and Method, his magnum opus, was, among other things, an attempt to open the way for readers to the work of the later Heidegger. In honor of Gadamer's 100th birthday in February 2000, Hermann Heidegger, Martin Heidegger's son, dedicated the 16th volume of Heidegger's Collected Works to Gadamer, “the oldest loyal pupil of my father.” Yet in many significant and fundamental respects, Gadamer's thought, life, and work did not follow the path of Heidegger. As we shall see below, Gadamer learned and borrowed much from Heidegger, but Gadamer's own characterization of the relationship between himself and Heidegger as one of constant challenge and provocation is perhaps the best short characterization of this complex relationship. Stylistically and substantively, the difference between their two modes of thought is the difference between a meditative thinker (Heidegger) and a dialogical one (Gadamer). Not unrelated to this difference is Gadamer's refusal to take Heidegger's lead to a kind of thought that is postphilosophical. This refusal has many ramifications.