149 - Gadamer's Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method

Gadamer's Hermeneutics:
A Reading of Truth and Method
By Joel C. Weinsheimer
New Haven, Yale University Press, 1985. 278 pp. $20.00.

Gadamer's influence-though great-is smaller than deserved. This is due not only to the difficulty of translating his complex thought, but also to the hermeneutic fusing of Gadamer's thought with his exposition of earlier thought and a deliberate failure to formulate unequivocal meanings in logical sequence. Weinsheimer's section- by-section commentary on Gadamer's major work is designed, appropriately, to make Gadamer's hermeneutics accessible to readers in fields outside of philosophy (the author is professor of English at the University of Minnesota).

The introductory essay on "Hermeneutics and the Natural Sciences" provides a focus for the commentary by showing that the natural sciences are more humanistic than conceived of by Gadamer. The essay could lead the reader to conclude that Gadamer

150 - Gadamer's Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method

essentially contrasted the social and the natural sciences instead of contrasting hermeneutic experience and the wissenschaftlich approach possible for all disciplines. Nevertheless, the initial discussion serves effectively as an introduction to contemporary hermeneutics and to the commentary.

Edgar V. McKnight
Furman University
Greenville, S.C.