Gadamer's Turn to Language and Chung-ying Cheng's onto-generative hermeneutics

What is it about?

This article is about liberating Gadamer's ontology from the influence of Heidegger's ontological analysis of Dasein. The basis for this "liberation" is their reading of Plato. Whereas for Heidegger, Plato is the "father of Western metaphysics," for Gadamer he is a metaphysician in a sense that integrates Heidegger's view into a Platonic dialectic of the One and the Many. When that difference is made clear, namely, then Gadamer's Plato, which is really Gadamer himself, i.e., the Platonist, shifts from Heidegger into the orbit of Chung-ying Cheng's ontology and cosmology. Gadamer's metaphysics is re-interpreted accordingly.

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Photo by Matt Popovich on Unsplash

Photo by Matt Popovich on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Comparative philosophy in the sense of onto-generative hermeneutics has inexhaustible applications and hence, always generates something new, above all, from points of view that seem diametrically opposed. This is not only Chung-ying Cheng's position, but that of Gadamer as well. The similarity attests to the sense of order in reality that allows for change, creativity, and harmony prefigured in Gadamer's Plato and the doctrine of the One and many.

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