Conversation as an Incarnation of the Word: on the Way Toward an (Im)possible Understanding
Abstract
In the center of Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics is the experience of aconversation. Its decisive element is opening and listening to the Other. A conversation focused on what needs to be understood is happening in the dialectics of question and answer, and is transformed along with the partners of the conversation. A hermeneutic conversation can be understood as perichoresis. It makes us realize that conversation is the art of living and hermeneutic hospitality is its essential element. We find numerous valuable intuitions concerning the hermeneutic conversation in Plato's works and in Schleiermacher's “Christmas Eve: Dialogue on the Incarnation”. Searching for a proper word that could reach our interlocutor, we experience the inevitability of death. It remains a brutal dividing line that, at the same time, breaks the conversation. The horizon of death is the horizon of the hermeneutic conversation.
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