ABSTRACT
Hans-Georg Gadamer famously holds that each person will understand the world differently owing to the different situation in which that understanding takes place. In every situation one thereby comes to understand a different ‘aspect’ of the world. At the same time, Gadamer also affirms that what understanding discloses is reality itself, not a mere reality-for-us. In this respect, Gadamer may be called an ‘aspectival realist.’ This chapter aims to articulate what this aspectival realism consists in. After raising criticisms of the schematistic interpretation offered by Charles Taylor and the holist interpretation offered by Brice Wachterhauser, the chapter defends a ‘presentational’ reading according to which an ‘aspect’ of a thing just is that thing as it comes to appearance in a particular event of meaning. The key to seeing how understanding can be both aspectival and realist at the same time, it is argued, lies in understanding Gadamer’s notion of the ‘finitude of being’—the idea that there are determinate ways for things to be only where there are concrete situations that provide reasons for articulating them in one way rather than another.
