I appreciate the contribution Gadamer makes to our understanding of hermeneutics and interpretation, but what do I know? I only bothered to read his work.
Seriously though, Gadamer has a more "conservative" group of interpreters and a more "radical" group of interpreters. I have been more influenced by the former than the latter, people like Thiselton and Vanhoozer.
It is true that Gadamer doesn't take meaning to be simply what the author says, but that is because he takes meaning as a total interpretive event between the horizon of the author (text) and the horizon of the reader.
Gadamer challenged the elitist notion of the Enlightenment that we could lord over texts, reading them without any kind of presupposition or prejudice. He called this a "prejudice against prejudice."
Gadamer pushes readers to recognize no all presuppositions/prejudices are bad.
Gadamer pushes readers to recognize no all presuppositions/prejudices are bad.
Gadamer uses the metaphor of "horizon" coined by the tradition of phenomenology to describe the readers encounter texts.
My horizon (or worldview) is colored by my time and place in history. I am a historically-effected consciousness (wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewußtsein). Gadamer means this in two senses: I am shaped by history and I must become aware of history's effects on my mind.
I always read a text from a worldview, from a frame of reference or meaning. The "fusion of horizons" (Horizontverschmelzung) occurs when my worldview tries to make sense of the worldview of the text.
By analogy: I normally read the Bible from the horizon of the English language. When I attempt to translate it from Greek or Hebrew, I am still thinking in English--trying to get the meaning back from the original languages into my own language.
Applied to hermeneutics, I am always reading the Bible as a early twenty-first-century Western believer seeking to apply it to my situation as a professor, pastor, and follower of Jesus. I am trying to extract is meaning from an ancient setting and apply it to my own.
This is the fusion of horizons. I come into a biblical text PRELOADED WITH QUESTIONS AND ASSUMPTIONS. I have certain things I am trying to understand, which shape my reading of the text.
If I bring a contemporary question about ethics, like "Is a contemporary defense of slavery still an appropriate thing to do in post-slavery America?" I have questions from my horizon I am taking to the text which the human authors of Scripture do not directly address.
My goal is to UNDERSTAND THE AUTHORS' HORIZON or worldview as much as possible so that it reshapes my own horizon. Many of the questions I seek to answer in a contemporary setting are "How would Paul see this?" This requires some interp. imagination and is a fallible process.
Anyways, do I agree with Gadamer about everything hermeneutics related?
Nope.
Have I learned true things from reading his works on hermeneutics?
Yep.
Should you actually read his major works ("Truth and Method") before accusing anyone who reads him of heresy?
Definitely.
Nope.
Have I learned true things from reading his works on hermeneutics?
Yep.
Should you actually read his major works ("Truth and Method") before accusing anyone who reads him of heresy?
Definitely.
