In the case of Heidegger's Parmenides, which presses a philosophical argument, it will be meanings to come, rather than events proper, that will be implicitly promised, predicted, hinted at, -- meanings rather than events in that the emergence, revelation, fulfillment of meaning is the philosophical "event" par excellence.
From Heideggers point of view, the hermeneutical circle is not a method, rather, it is the existential character of human understanding, so, he describes the circle in terms of an existential grounding. The hermeneutical circle is the existential condition of human understanding and is an essential attribute of Daseins knowledge. Thus the circle of understanding is not a methodological circle, making it unnecessary for us at the end of the process of interpretation, but it describes an element of the ontological structure of understanding.
ABSTRACT: Heidegger, the founder of the hermeneutic paradigm, rejected the traditional account of cultural activity as a search for universally valid foundations for human action and knowledge. His main work, Sein und Zeit (1927), develops a holistic epistemology according to which all meaning is context-dependent and permanently anticipated from a particular horizon, perspective or background of intelligibility. The result is a powerful critique directed against the ideal of objectivity. Gadamer shares with Heidegger the hermeneutic reflections developed in Sein und Zeit and the critique of objectivity, describing the cultural activity as an endless process of "fusions of horizons." On the one hand, this is an echo of the Heideggerian holism, namely, of the thesis that all meaning depends on a particular interpretative context. On the other hand, however, this concept is an attempt to cope with the relativity of human existence and to avoid the dangers of a radical relativism. In fact, through an endless, free and unpredictable process of fusions of horizons, our personal horizon is gradually expanded and deprived of its distorting prejudices in such a way that the educative process (Bildung) consists in this multiplication of hermeneutic experiences. Gadamer succeeds therefore in presenting a non-foundationalist and non-teleological theory of culture.
ABSTRACT: Two fundamental criticisms made by traditional hermeneutics against philosophical hermeneutics are that the latter deny the possibility of objectively true interpretation, as well as assert that all interpretations are possible on the basis that they cannot be measured. In my paper, I argue that the first criticism is well-founded, while the second is not. I contend that interpretations can be decided according to two relational criteria: (i) which interpretation has a more comprehensive horizon; and (ii) which one is derivable from the other.