Truth and Method

Truth and Method (Wahrheit und Methode), published in 1960 when Gadamer was sixty years old, is the most sustained philosophical account of understanding produced in the twentieth century. The book's deceptive title suggested an opposition — truth versus method — that captured Gadamer's central argument: the methodological ideal derived from natural science cannot be extended to the human sciences without distorting what understanding in the humanities actually is. The book proceeds in three parts. Part One examines the question of truth in art, arguing that the experience of art discloses truth in ways method cannot capture. Part Two extends the analysis to the human sciences, developing the concepts of prejudice, tradition, horizon, and the hermeneutic circle. Part Three grounds hermeneutics in language itself, arguing that language is not a tool consciousness uses but the medium in which understanding lives. The book was slow to be received in English — a full translation did not appear until 1975 — but has become a foundational text for philosophy, literary theory,