Abstract

The German thinker Hans-Georg Gadamer has made extensive use of themes from the philosophy of Hegel. My purpose is to examine the influence of Hegel upon Gadamer's thought. In the first chapter I present an account of Hegel's case for absolute idealism. In the second and third chapters I explicate the hermeneutics of Gadamer and his express use of Hegelian themes. In my final chapter and conclusion I consider the following question: given Gadamer's rejection of Hegelian absolutism, what are the consequences for his thought? I claim certain logical and ontological difficulties result from Gadamer's position. Finally, I propose that philosophy may still benefit from the idealism rejected by Gadamer, but only in a form indebted to both Hegel and the Existenzphilosophie of Karl Jaspers. Throughout the dissertation I relate Gadamer's criticism of Hegel to the old quarrel that religious thinkers and vitalistic philosophers have always had with philosophical rationalism.