ABSTRACT
Hans-Georg Gadamer identifies Heidegger's recognition of the "fore-structure" of all interpretation as the breakthrough that made it possible to realize that the own historicity as interpreters is not an obstacle to understanding what gets handed down in the works of the predecessors. This fore-structure is a tripartite structure of "fore-having", "fore-sight", and "fore-conception" that is rooted in the existential structure of Dasein. Of all forms of transmission from one age to another, Gadamer identifies writing as the one that "presents the hermeneutical problem in all its purity". "The sign language of writing refers back to the actual language of speech". Speech "actual language" is contrasted with the sign language of writing. The divergence or differing of written signifiers from themselves and from other written signifiers that diverge or differ from themselves a dynamic that is sublated by philosophical hermeneutics as understood by Gadamer is not acknowledged in philosophical hermeneutics.
