Abstract

Some critics charge that Gadamer’s approach to our experience of art remains mired in conservatism because he believes our experience of artworks depends on tradition. In this essay, I argue that this charge fails to address the full scope of Gadamer’s considerations of our experience of art. This becomes clear with an emendation that Gadamer appears to make to his Truth and Method account of artistic imitation, or, mimesis, in his later essay “Art and Imitation.” Whereas Gadamer’s approach to mimesis in Truth and Method provides testimony to the significance of tradition for our experience of artworks, his account in “Art and Imitation” make the supplementary proposal that our experience of artworks testify to a more fundamental and encompassing experience of what he shall simply refer to as ‘order.’ Gadamer thereby suggests that our experience of artworks concerns not only foremost or exclusively our belonging to a tradition but, more originally, our possibilities for belonging as such.