Abstract

This paper examines the nature of freedom in Hang-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics. It focuses on the last section of Wahrheit und Methode advancing the hypothesis that Gadamer’s model of understanding is derived from his particular appropriation of the Platonic notion of the beautiful which poses a passive interpretative posture toward the object of understanding and deprives the activity of interpretation the essential creative quality of freedom. I argue that to the extent that the object of understanding presents itself as immediate revelation of truth, the interpreting subject is reduced to a mere acknowledger of truth as opposed to a creative producer.