Heideggers formulation „the hermeneutics of facticity“ (from his lectures in the summer semester of 1923) explicits a revolutionary approach that has changed the spriritual world of young Gadamer and ...inspired him constantly. Despite a broad historical reconstruction of this influence the new hermeneutical approach did not find a resonance it deserves.The project of “the hermeneutics of facticity” can be summarized in 3 thesis: 1. A distanced look and objective adjustments of different sorts dominate over the hermeneutics as a man’s selfinterpretation. Heidegger’s approach insists explicitly on ‘mine-ness’ (Meinhaftigkeit, as Kurt Schneider puts it) of human’s life-experience.2. The focusing of hermeneutics on texts is a misleading historical development, because it hides the fact that human life has genuinly an interpretative character.3. If we seriously take into account this genuine hermeneuticity then it will have consequences for the whole theory of knowledge. It prepares a fundamental turn that goes to the hermeneutics of situations. It makes Heidegger a pioneer of epistemological explicationism (Hermann Schmitz’ “erkenntnistheoretischen Explikationismus”).His “Hermeneutik der Faktizität”, with its huge enlargement of the research area is a big challenge to the representatives of the classical, text-oriented hermeneutics. His approach seems to be more conciliatory if we are aware that it is accompanied by a enormous increase of value of the hermeneutics itself.
Play O’ Connor, Tony
A Companion to Hermeneutics,
11/2015
Book Chapter
Gadamer's discussion of play occurs as part of his effort to develop a philosophical hermeneutics, or a theory of interpretation, that attempts to reconcile two apparently opposed concepts, namely, ...universality and historicity. Heidegger's “hermeneutic of facticity”, or the existential structure of understanding, as developed in Being and Time, has an important influence on Gadamer's efforts to develop an historical and universal account of interpretation. It leads Gadamer to criticize traditional views of “aesthetic” and “historical” consciousness because of their failure to adequately account for the “unique, originary experiences” of human beings, such as play, which are basic both to our inherence in the world and our self‐experience. Gadamer holds that the universality of the hermeneutical experience can be approached from any starting point. Play, human action in general, speech and writing, language use, etc., are intentional phenomena and have intentional properties.
