Gadamer on the history of concepts and the linguistic character of philosophical thought
What the Work Is
Die Begriffsgeschichte und Die Sprache der Philosophie is a work by the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, first published in 1971. Gadamer, who lived from 1900 to 2002, is internationally known above all for Wahrheit und Methode (1960), the foundational work of philosophical hermeneutics. The 1971 text belongs to the later phase of his career, written after his formal retirement from the University of Heidelberg in 1968, when he continued to teach and publish actively.
What the Book Is About
The work addresses two closely connected subjects: the history of concepts (Begriffsgeschichte) and the language of philosophy. Its central concern is the relationship between philosophical thought and the language in which that thought is expressed — specifically, how the meanings of philosophical concepts shift across time and how those shifts bear on the practice of philosophy itself. The title signals that the history of concepts is not a merely antiquarian pursuit but something bound up with how philosophy speaks and thinks.
Key Ideas and Themes
The work engages with the idea that philosophical concepts carry their histories within them. A concept such as “being,” “substance,” or “consciousness” is not a fixed tool that philosophers pick up and use identically across centuries; its meaning has been shaped by the debates, contexts, and usages through which it has passed. To think philosophically with such a concept is therefore also to reckon with its past. This is the domain of Begriffsgeschichte — the historical investigation of conceptual change.
Gadamer’s treatment of this theme connects to the broader hermeneutic position he developed across his career. For Gadamer, all understanding — whether of texts, works of art, or speech in conversation — is bound to the linguistic character of being and unfolds against the horizon of time. Understanding is not one mode of knowledge among others but is universal. This means that when we interpret a philosophical text or concept, we do so from within a tradition that has already shaped our expectations and pre-judgments. The interpreter cannot stand outside history; the concepts they think with are themselves historical.
This has direct consequences for how philosophy understands its own language. If philosophical concepts are historically conditioned, then the language of philosophy cannot be treated as a transparent medium that simply mirrors reality. Philosophical language is itself part of the tradition it seeks to examine. The work thus raises the question of whether philosophy can ever fully step outside the linguistic and historical conditions of its own discourse — a question that lies at the heart of Gadamer’s hermeneutics.
The hermeneutic imperative that Gadamer articulates elsewhere applies here as well: whoever wants to understand a text must be willing to let it say something to them. Neither factual neutrality nor self-effacement is required, but rather an awareness of one’s own pre-conceptions and prejudices. The task is to control one’s own anticipations so as to be receptive to the otherness of the text. In the context of the history of concepts, this means approaching past philosophical language not as a set of errors to be corrected by present wisdom, but as a genuine interlocutor whose claims must be heard.
Structure and Approach
The work is a treatise or extended essay rather than a systematic textbook. It proceeds through philosophical reflection and argument rather than through a survey or catalogue of concepts. Gadamer’s approach is characteristic of his later style: essayistic, historically informed, and concerned with drawing out the implications of hermeneutic insight for a specific domain — here, the intersection of conceptual history and philosophical language.
Significance and Influence
The work belongs to Gadamer’s ongoing elaboration of hermeneutic philosophy after Wahrheit und Methode. It reflects his sustained engagement with questions of language, tradition, and historical understanding that occupied him throughout his career. The 1971 publication date places it in the period of his active intellectual output following his retirement, a time when he continued to lecture and write on hermeneutic themes. The text contributes to the broader conversation about Begriffsgeschichte as a method and about the linguistic turn in philosophy, though its specific arguments and reception are best understood within the context of Gadamer’s own hermeneutic project.
Hans-Georg Gadamer was born on 11 February 1900 in Marburg and died on 13 March 2002 in Heidelberg. His grandfather Oskar Gadamer was an entrepreneur in Dittersbach near Waldenburg in Lower Silesia, and his father Johannes Gadamer was a pharmacist and chemist. In 1902 Johannes Gadamer followed a call as full professor of pharmaceutical chemistry to the University of Breslau, where he remained until 1919. He was married in his first marriage (1897–1904) to Johanna Gadamer, née Gewiese, daughter of the master mason and carpenter Hugo Gewiese and his wife Adele Becker. Johanna Gadamer, Hans-Georg Gadamer’s mother, died in 1904. From 1905 Johannes Gadamer was married in his second marriage to Hedwig Gadamer, née Hellich, daughter of the mining director Erich Hellich and his wife Ida Ehlert. Hans-Georg Gadamer’s uncle was the district administrator Georg Gewiese.
Gadamer grew up in Breslau and there obtained his higher education entrance qualification in 1918. He then took up studies in German studies, history, art history, philosophy, and pedagogy at the universities of Breslau, Marburg, and Munich, studying among others under Richard Hönigswald. In 1919 he continued his studies at the University of Marburg. There he was awarded his doctorate in philosophy in 1922 under Paul Natorp and Nicolai Hartmann with a dissertation on Das Wesen der Lust nach den platonischen Dialogen.
From 1923 Gadamer attended lectures by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg and during the summer at Heidegger’s “hut” in Todtnauberg. The encounter with Heidegger became for Gadamer “a complete shattering of all too early self-assurance.” A year later, in 1924, Gadamer took up the study of classical philology under Paul Friedländer, because he “had the feeling of simply being crushed by the superiority of this thinker [Heidegger], if I did not gain a ground of my own on which I might perhaps stand more firmly than this mighty thinker himself.” In 1927 Gadamer completed his state examination for the higher teaching profession.
In 1929 Gadamer habilitated under Heidegger and Friedländer in Marburg for philosophy and became a Privatdozent at the University of Marburg. The title of his habilitation thesis is Platos dialektische Ethik. Interpretationen zum „Philebos”. Two years later his work Platos dialektische Ethik was published, the printing financed by the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft. After a stay in Paris in 1933, he published in 1934 his work Plato und die Dichter, with which he achieved a breakthrough in the interpretation of Plato’s Politeia. The work shows first, very clear approaches of Gadamerian hermeneutics and documents his uncritical, rather apolitical attitude toward National Socialism.
Career During and After the National Socialist Period
In August 1933 Gadamer became a member of the National Socialist Teachers’ League. On 11 November 1933 he signed the Confession of the Professors at the German Universities and Colleges to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist State. In 1934/35 Gadamer represented at the University of Kiel the vacant chair of Richard Kroner, who had been suspended from his teaching authorization because of his Jewish descent. In October 1935 Gadamer voluntarily took part in the lecturers’ camp of the NS Lecturers’ League (NSDDB) in Weichselmünde near Danzig. Thereupon in 1937 he was granted in Marburg the title of a non-tenured extraordinary professor, which had previously been denied him although he had already completed the usual six years of a Privatdozentur. Gadamer further received the representation of the vacant chair of Erich Frank at the University of Marburg, who likewise had been deprived of his teaching authorization because of his Jewish descent. Two years later Gadamer received a call to the University of Leipzig, where after chair representations in 1938/39 he was appointed in 1939 as successor to Arnold Gehlen to the full professorship and directorship of the Philosophical Institute of the University of Leipzig. By the Security Service of the Reichsführer SS, Gadamer was classified in the ideological assessment within the “SD dossiers on philosophy professors” from the SS perspective in his attitude toward National Socialism as “indifferent.” During the time of the Second World War, Gadamer was a collaborator on the NS project “Kriegseinsatz der Geisteswissenschaften.” Gadamer was indeed entangled in National Socialism, but avoided exposing himself too strongly during the NS period.
After the war, Hans-Georg Gadamer became dean of the Philosophical Faculty in 1945 and later, until 1947, rector of the University of Leipzig. After the hopes for a democratic development in the Soviet occupation zone had been dashed, Gadamer actively sought a position in one of the Western zones. On 14 August 1947 he declared his resignation from the rectorate effective 1 October and on that day received an appointment at the University of Frankfurt am Main, initially as a substitute, and from 1 July 1948 as a full professor. On his return to Leipzig for the handover of office, he was arrested on the basis of a denunciation and interrogated by a Soviet officer, but released again. In 1949 he followed a call to the University of Heidelberg as successor to Karl Jaspers.
Later Career and Activities
Gadamer founded the Philosophische Rundschau in 1953 together with Helmut Kuhn. In the same year Karl Löwith, who had emigrated from Germany in 1934 because of his Jewish origin, returned through Gadamer’s mediation and followed a call to the University of Heidelberg. In 1951 Gadamer became a member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences. In 1960 the publication of Wahrheit und Methode took place; in 1962 Gadamer became president of the Allgemeine Gesellschaft für Philosophie in Deutschland. An application for the rectorate of the University of Heidelberg, by contrast, failed. There followed the founding of the International Association for the Promotion of Hegel Studies, whose president he became. In 1966, as president of the Allgemeine Gesellschaft für Philosophie, he organized a congress in Heidelberg on language.
From 1967 to 1971 Gadamer and Habermas debated; until 1977 he wrote Kleine Schriften in four volumes. In 1968 he was emerited in Heidelberg, but continued to teach. From 1969 to 1972 he was president of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences. In 1971 he was awarded the Order Pour le Mérite, received the Reuchlin Prize of the City of Pforzheim, and the Great Federal Cross of Merit. In the 1980s and 1990s he taught regularly at the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici in Naples.
Hans-Georg Gadamer lived until his death in his 103rd year in the Heidelberg district of Ziegelhausen and found his final resting place in the local cemetery Köpfel, situated on a height above the Neckar valley. Hans-Georg Gadamer is an honorary citizen of the City of Heidelberg as well as of the City of Naples. His estate lies in the German Literature Archive Marbach.
Students of Gadamer include among others Wolfgang Bartuschat, Gottfried Boehm, Rüdiger Bubner, Donatella Di Cesare, Günter Figal, Manfred Frank, Hans Friedrich Fulda, Dieter Henrich, Robert Kirchhoff, and Wolfgang Wieland.
Gadamer’s Philosophical Approach: Founder of Universal Hermeneutics
Hans-Georg Gadamer was one of the most prominent German philosophers of the 20th century. He is regarded as the founder of a universal hermeneutics that developed in the succession of Heidegger out of the critique of the methodologism of the traditional hermeneutics of Friedrich Schleiermacher and Wilhelm Dilthey.
For Gadamer, all understanding — regardless of whether it concerns texts, works of art and architecture, or understanding in a conversation — is bound to the linguistic character of being before the horizon of time. This presupposes in the interpretation of works openness, the becoming-conscious of one’s own prejudice structure, as well as the readiness for conversation or for reflexive engagement. He was less concerned with elaborating a method of hermeneutics than with describing how understanding “always happens” (WM II 394). Understanding is for Gadamer not one kind of knowledge among others, but universal. Here he connects to Heidegger, who writes about the subject (“Dasein”) that it is in the world solely in the manner “that it has always understood or not understood” (SZ 144). The being of the human being is thus to understand itself orientingly in the world. Gadamer explicitly ties in with this and attempts to set out the consequences arising from it for the humanities (WM I, 269). His critique of the self-understanding of the humanities consequently lies in the fact that all methodology is always already preceded by an understanding that cannot be caught up with. Trust in method merely covers over the uncatchable prejudice structure to which the human being remains bound in his historicity.
Gadamer’s Circularity of Human Understanding
According to Gadamer, the interpreter of a text always carries out a projecting. The meaning of the whole is projected in advance as soon as a first meaning shows itself in the text. Only because one reads a text with expectations toward a certain meaning does such a meaning show itself. The understanding process of the one interpreting consists in the pre-theoretical interpretation, which can constantly be revised when one penetrates further into the meaning. Texts are part of the human experiential world and can be grasped as objectivations. Texts are objectivations of historical life. With the circularity of the understanding process, Gadamer describes a procedure in which the pre-understanding becomes the starting point of every interpretation, which decides over the validity of every pre-opinion brought to the text qua meaning expectation. The deeper one penetrates into the text, the more highly the interplay of pre- and post-understanding develops on an upwardly oscillating spiral, which again and again begins anew on a higher level.
By validity is meant that form of objectivity that is to be grasped as the proving of the pre-opinion. The understanding achievement depends on the criterion of proving. A pre-opinion counts as proven when it has been examined for its legitimacy. Now it is a matter of working out what is structurally involved in these pre-opinions. That is the hermeneutic task. That means that the pre-understanding of the interpreter must be reflected upon in order to determine the hermeneutic distance between text and interpreter in such a way that on both sides the respective pre-opinions become visible as constitutive structural elements for a meaning-adequate understanding.
The Hermeneutic Imperative
The hermeneutic imperative according to Gadamer states that whoever wants to understand a text must be ready to let it say something to him. Neither factual neutrality nor self-erasure is called for, but rather the becoming-conscious of one’s own pre-opinions and pre-judgments. The one understanding can never turn to a text neutrally. At the same time Gadamer relativizes the concept of absolute neutrality to the effect that it is a fiction, since it is impossible for a subject to distance itself absolutely from itself. Rather, with this imperative Gadamer suggests that readers should become conscious of their bias in order to be receptive to the otherness of the text. The hermeneutic task consists, according to Gadamer, ultimately in controlling one’s own anticipations.
Classification Within the Intellectual Currents of the Humanities
Initially Gadamer belonged to the circle of Marburg Neo-Kantianism of the late 19th century, which was predominantly oriented toward the mathematical sciences and their methods and placed its emphasis on the “kind of knowledge” of objects. The works of Paul Natorp and Nicolai Hartmann were also initially committed to this approach. The critique of their methodological basic position — of “problem-historical” historicism — was the starting point of Gadamer’s detachment from Neo-Kantianism. Thereafter he turned to the phenomenology of Husserl (1859–1938), which also shaped his habilitation thesis. At this time he encountered Heidegger, from whose existential philosophy he adopted many elements. In it he found, by his own account, the sought counterforce to Plato.
He formulated his positions in his main work Wahrheit und Methode of 1960. Gadamer understands hermeneutics not merely as a doctrine of art, but holds understanding to be one of the foundations of human life. In the debate with Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel, a re-accentuation of his stance occurs. The main representative of philosophical deconstruction, Jacques Derrida, also criticized his hermeneutics. Various traits in Gadamer’s thinking earned him the reputation of a liberal conservative. His work is pervaded by a technology skepticism modeled on Heidegger. In his work Wahrheit und Methode, which arose against the background of the collapse of Neo-Kantianism after the First World War, he attempts to answer the question of what constitutes philosophy in the face of the dominance of the natural sciences.
The Gadamer Foundation Professorship
The “Gadamer Foundation Professorship” is a foundation professorship named after Hans-Georg Gadamer at the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg. It was established in 2001 at the Philosophical Seminar of the University of Heidelberg with the goal of promoting the engagement of significant international humanities scholars with hermeneutics. The Gadamer Professorship was supported by the Stiftungsfonds Deutsche Bank, the Ministry for Science, Research and Art of Baden-Württemberg, the University of Heidelberg, as well as the Fund of the Honorary Citizens of the University of Heidelberg. Previous prize holders were Karl Heinz Bohrer, Peter Burke, Jan Assmann, Horst Bredekamp, Wolfram Hogrebe, and Eberhard Jüngel. Since 2007 the funds of the foundation have been exhausted; further professorships were not awarded.
The Gadamer Prize
The Gadamer Prize was established in 2021 by the Hans-Georg Gadamer Society for Hermeneutic Philosophy in Heidelberg. Since 2022 it has been awarded every three years for outstanding achievements in the fields of philosophical or humanities hermeneutics.
Honors, Prizes, and Awards
Hans-Georg Gadamer received numerous honors and awards in the course of his life. Among them were among others:
1971 Order Pour le Mérite and Reuchlin Prize 1972 Great Cross of Merit with Star of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany 1973 Foreign Member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei 1975 Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1979 Sigmund Freud Prize for Scientific Prose and Hegel Prize 1979 Member of the Académie royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique 1980 Foreign Member of the Accademia delle Scienze di Torino 1984 Corresponding Member of the British Academy 1986 Karl Jaspers Prize 1987 Hanns Martin Schleyer Prize 1990 Great Cross of Merit with Star and Shoulder Ribbon of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany 1993 Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany 1993 Citizen Medal of the City of Heidelberg 1995 International Antonio Feltrinelli Prize 1995 Honorary Doctorate of the University of Wrocław 1996 Honorary Doctorate of the University of Leipzig (as well as on 12 January 1996 honorary member of the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig) 1997 Honorary Doctorate of Charles University Prague 1999 Honorary Doctorate of the Philipps University of Marburg 2014 Naming of the Gadamerplatz in the Heidelberg district of Bahnstadt
Films
Geboren 1900. Germany/Great Britain/USA, 1999/2000, 75 min. — In the film, the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, the British author Barbara Cartland, and the American theater director Martin Magner look back on one hundred years of life. German-French first broadcast: August 2000 on ARTE — book and direction: Christoph Weinert.
Editions, Autobiographical Writings, Selected Writings
Editions
Kleine Schriften. Mohr, Tübingen 1967 ff. with Paul Vogler (ed.): Neue Anthropologie. Thieme, Stuttgart and dtv, Munich 1972–1975 (7 volumes) Volumes 1 and 2: Biologische Anthropologie. Volume 3: Sozialanthropologie. Volume 4: Kulturanthropologie. Volume 5: Psychologische Anthropologie. Volumes 6 and 7: Philosophische Anthropologie. Gesammelte Werke. Mohr, Tübingen 1985–1995 (10 volumes). Volume 1. Hermeneutics 1: Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge e. philos. Hermeneutik Volume 2. Hermeneutics 2: Wahrheit und Methode: Ergänzungen u. Register Volume 3. Modern Philosophy 1: Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger Volume 4. Modern Philosophy 2: Problems, Figures Volume 5. Greek Philosophy 1 Volume 6. Greek Philosophy 2 Volume 7. Greek Philosophy 3: Plato in Dialogue Volume 8. Aesthetics and Poetics 1: Art as Statement Volume 9. Aesthetics and Poetics 2: Hermeneutics in Execution Volume 10. Hermeneutics in Retrospect
Autobiographical
Philosophische Lehrjahre. Eine Rückschau. Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 1977, 3rd edition, 2012, ISBN 978-3-465-04165-8. Selbstdarstellung. In: Ludwig J. Pongratz (ed.): Philosophie in Selbstdarstellungen. Volume III, Meiner, Hamburg 1977. Also in: Gesammelte Werke. Volume 2. Sebastian Kleinschmidt: Gespräch mit Hans-Georg Gadamer. In: Sinn und Form. 3/1991, pp. 487–500. Im Gespräch, with Silvio Vietta. Munich 2002. Jean Grondin and Mark Michalski (eds.): Briefwechsel mit Martin Heidegger 1922 bis 1976. Klostermann, Frankfurt 2024, ISBN 978-3-465-00261-1.
Selected Writings
Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik. Tübingen 1960, Unchanged reprint of the 3rd, expanded edition Tübingen 1975, ISBN 3-16-833912-1. Das Vaterbild im griechischen Denken. In: Hubertus Tellenbach (ed.): Das Vaterbild in Mythos und Geschichte: Ägypten, Griechenland, Altes Testament, Neues Testament. Kohlhammer Verlag, Mainz 1976, ISBN 3-17-002645-3, pp. 102–115. Lob der Theorie. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1983. Das Erbe Europas. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1989. Über die Verborgenheit der Gesundheit. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1993. Der Anfang der Philosophie. Philipp Reclam, Stuttgart 1996. Erziehung ist sich erziehen. Heidelberg 2000. Hermeneutische Entwürfe. Vorträge und Aufsätze. Tübingen 2000. Platos dialektische Ethik. Phänomenologische Interpretationen zum Philebos. Hamburg 2000.
Published Image and Sound Material
Hans Georg Gadamer erzählt die Geschichte der Philosophie. Rome/Hamburg 2000/2006 (VHS / DVD). Von der Lust am Dialog. Ein Interview und ein Gespräch über den Begriff des Kairos, Berlin 2000 (2 CDs). Gadamer Hörbuch: Drei Rundfunkvorträge. Berlin 1999 (MC). Autobiographie und Geschichten. Zwei Vorträge und ein Gespräch. Heidelberg 1998 (MC). Postmoderne und das Ende der Neuzeit? Vortrag 1992. Heidelberg 1996 (MC). Wahrheit und Bewusstsein. Heidelberg 1996 (MC). Philosophie heute: Die Kunst des Verstehens. Hans-Georg Gadamer. Hamburg 1996 (VHS). Die Unhintergehbarkeit der Kunst. Freiburg 1996 (MC). Vorträge. Heidelberg 1996 (MC).
