ABSTRACT
German philosopher, Hans-Georg Gadamer (b. 1900) was a pupil of Martin Heidegger, and his work can be seen as an elaboration of Heidegger’s thought. Central to Gadamer’s contribution to the world of hermeneutics is the distinction which he draws between ‘understanding’ and ‘explanation’. Against the short-comings of earlier attempts to address such problems methodologically, Gadamer emphasizes how understanding is culturally conditioned and dependent upon an effective historical consciousness. We view texts according to our own cultural horizon. Thus the interpretation of the past becomes a ‘fusion of horizons’.
