ABSTRACT
This chapter follows the painstaking unfolding of the universality claim of hermeneutics in the third and last part of Truth and Method: signifying an enlargement of what hermeneutics has meant before, this claim first takes the form of a universal thesis on the linguistical aspect of human understanding, which equals the universality of language to that of reason and suggests, in no uncertain terms, that there are no limits of principle to our understanding. This universality then takes on an ontological dimension when Gadamer grounds it on Being itself. He relies strongly on the metaphysical tradition to defend this thesis, yet finally recoils from the metaphysics that underpins his own thesis.
