ABSTRACT
Contemporary philosophical hermeneutics and neo-Marxist critical theory both trace their origins to the Germany of the 1920s. The school of critical theory saw itself as bringing to the German intellectual world a rebellious and democratic element, a long overdue thrust of the Enlightenment. With the greatest literary skill, Hans-George Gadamer weaves answers to critical theory into the context of a much more general address to all his readers, and thus expresses his own settling of the account. It is vital to Gadamer to combat the illusion of a philosopher whose rationality would permit him to fly high above the linguistic particularities of his own time and other times. Jurgen Habermas scrutinizes Gadamer's vindication of authority and prejudice as categories of the practical roots of Gadamer's hermeneutics. Gadamer concludes by returning to the theme of rhetoric, and the mixed form of rationality it shares with politics and hermeneutics.
