ABSTRACT
Despite its long history and numerous shifts in meaning, today the term ‘hermeneutics’ is often associated with Hans-Georg Gadamer and his seminal work Truth and Method. Indeed, outside specialist circles, there is little awareness of those who preceded him in the history of hermeneutics or those who came after him. 1 Nonetheless, for the history of hermeneutics, Gadamer’s contributions proved to be a double-edged sword for, as important as Gadamer’s work has been in keeping hermeneutics alive as a discipline in the twentieth century and beyond, his powerful (albeit at times undue) criticism of the hermeneutic tradition left the latter in disarray in the eyes of many, and his counterproject of an ontology of understanding broadened the scope of hermeneutics so considerably that its traditional focus on textual interpretation faded into the background.
