Abstract

In one of the last chapters of his book Truth and Method, Gadamer writes a “coining of the concept of language throughout the history of Western thought,” and when reaching the study of the Middle Ages, he surprises his readers by considering the theological issue of the “incarnation of the Verb” to explain the relationship between thought and language. However, this resource allows him to develop an argument in support of his ontological-hermeneutical theory of language. The analogy between theological theme and mode of being of language was already thought by Saint Augustine and recorded in his book On the Trinity. There he elaborates on the substantial nature of the inside or internal verb, and the particular way in which it undergoes the process that leads to its incarnation into vox, neither getting lost nor becoming a mere conventional sign. By ways of the connection between the interior verb with notitias, with the ideas in the Verb, and with the essence of physical things in this world, an interesting and coherent ontologization of language it achieved, which would later inspire Gadamer.