Abstract

One of the aims of Gadamer’s hermeneutic ontology is the definition of the specific character of the human sciences. Gadamer maintains that their method is based upon the acknowledgement of the authority of tradition. Hence the main problem that faces his theory is the question of what makes the investigation in the humanities scientific and innovative. In my paper I try to reconstruct Gadamer’s solution of this problem. I consider his notion of tradition and its role in the definition of understanding as a cognition of truth. For Gadamer tradition is a precondition both of all possibility of understanding and of the historicity of the hermeneutic happening. This conception permits to define how the human sciences grasp the reality and what is studied by them