Studia Phaenomenologica

Volume 8, 2008

Phenomenology and Literature

Von der phänomenologischen Verstehenstheorie zur Phänomenologie der Lesepraxis

The phenomena of reading and hearing were among the fundamental themes of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics during the final decades of his life and scientific work. This assertion seems to be strange, especially if we pay attention to the fact that about the same time he worked on transforming his initial project of philosophical hermeneutics into the more ambi­tious hermeneutical philosophy. However, the universality of the phenomena of reading and hearing, which Gadamer defends in his last works, not only confirms but also concretizes the universality of the language dimension of all human experience. This concretization becomes apparent by explaining the structural correlation between hearing, understanding, and seeing. In view of these circumstances emerges the necessity of looking at the history of the “phenomenological movement” through the prism of the phenomenon of reading, which from the very outset was the implicit aim of phenomenological explanations.