ABSTRACT
Hermeneutics, according to Gadamer, is the confluence point of three important traditions in the cultural sciences; namely the phenomenology of Husserl, the historicism of Dilthey and the hermeneutic-existential philosophy of Heidegger. The critical analysis of, first, the aesthetic consciousness, and then the nature of the cultural–historical sciences in general, in revealing the limits of the scientific consciousness offers a new theory/method which, based on the hermeneutic-existential philosophy of life and being itself, unites the cultural sciences with the whole of our world-experience. The importance of language does not only lie in the linguistic nature of the hermeneutic dialogue, however, but derives from an even more fundamental aspect of human existence; namely, the inescapable linguistic element in the primary experience. Gadamer here fully endorses the Humboldtian theory of linguistic relativity. The possibility of moving between language-worlds, which proved so problematic for other subscribers to the theory of relativity, is easily dealt with by Gadamer.
