Gadamer's Path to Plato: A Response to Heidegger and a Rejoinder by Stanley Rosen

This book investigates the formative years of Hans-Georg Gadamers Plato studies while studying with Martin Heidegger at Marburg University. It outlines the evolution of Heideggers understanding of Plato explains why his hermeneutical phenomenology inspired Gadamer and why his argument that Plato was responsible for Western civilizations forgetting the meaning of existence was a provocation. Heideggers argument that Plato is an ontological dualist was crucial to the development of Gadamers understanding of Plato. The book thus puts forward an argument for Gadamers having indirectly refuted Heideggers Plato. This involves re-examination of the relationship between Plato and Aristotle in matters of ethics physics and truth. Above all however it is Gadamers concept of Platonic dialectic that questions Heideggers belief that Plato is a metaphysician. This challenge to Heideggers Plato was commensurate with the origination of Gadamers positive hermeneutical philosophy. In order to testthe alleged openness of that philosophy to the other as other Gadamers reading of the Republic is scrutinized by using the brilliant scholarship of Stanley Rosen. An examination of their interpretation of the Republic includes an inquiry into their intellectual influences. For Gadamer these include Hegel the Tèubingen school and Jacob Klein: for Rosen the poetic genius of Leo Strauss. Rosens mathematical and poetic orientation is then compared to Gadamers dialectical approach to interpreting Plato. The mathematical approach dovetails with a theory of human nature and procedural rationalism in Gadamers hermeneutical philosophy that explains why he in contrast to Rosen bypasses important dimensions of the Republic such as the significance of speakers and settings to understanding the text. This methodological shortcoming in turn calls into question the truth of Gadamers method and with it the foundations of a truly open and pluralist society--Publisher info.