The Political Outcome of Hermeneutics

Abstract

Fifty years after the publication of the Truth and Method, hermeneutics wonders about its roots and the reasons behind its own topicality. Origins of hermeneutics had been identified by Gadamer with the biblical and juridical hermeneutics, although in his works he was mainly focussed on the aesthetic experience. Nowadays, hermeneutics has the role to defend, on a religious and political level, the concrete historical experience against the demand of a truth, which claims to be the only one able to assure a peaceful coexistence. For hermeneutics, to adopt its own historicity means first and foremost to feel committed in contributing to the determination of the history where it is laid.