ABSTRACT
Friedrich Nietzsche establishes himself as an equally consummate contextualist, claiming that psychoanalysts interpretive perspective is always embedded in the corner of the world—the context—from which their seeing and understanding are constituted. Thus, Nietzsche's phenomenological contextualism of necessity gives rise to an attitude of epistemic humility. When faced with complexity, in which one is oneself implicated, an epistemic humility that recognizes and respects the finitude of knowing is essential. The claim is quite plausible with regard to at least one aspect of Heidegger's thought—namely, his phenomenological-contextualist perspective—for which Nietzsche's perspectivism was a forerunner and which Gadamer developed even further. In Gadamer's phenomenological-contextualist vision, truth and understanding are dialogic, constituted in the interplay of differently organized worlds of experience. Interpretation, in turn, can only be from a perspective embedded in the historical matrix of the interpreter's own traditions. The "hermeneutic attitude," which, according to Gadamer, maximizes the possibility of expanded understanding within a conversation, consists in some components.
