Hans-Georg Gadamer, one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century, transformed the art of hermeneutics by making it philosophical and, in doing so, he showed that philosophy is essentially hermeneutics. He was born on 11 February 1900 in Marburg an der Lahn, Germany, and died in Heidelberg on 13 March 2002, at the age of 102. Gadamer's life spanned a century of German philosophy: from classical philology, through neo-Kantianism, to a moderate German nationalism and, after the Second World War, from socialism to a critique of the globalizing tendencies inherent in technology.

Hermeneutics is the study of the principles of interpretation, and Gadamer’s achievement was to show that all interpretations are derived from

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First published 21 December 2003

Citation: Wood, Kelsey. "Hans-Georg Gadamer". The Literary Encyclopedia. 21 December 2003.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1663, accessed 9 February 2010.]