Assaying Vandevelde’s Approach to Gadamer

The purpose of this paper is to look at four important aspects of Vandevelde’s criticisms of Gadamer. First is his position on Gadamer’s claim that his hermeneutics is a philosophical hermeneutics and not amethodology. Second is Vandevelde’s view of interpretation as necessarily going back to the author’s intention, and the status of the mental state of the author. Is it relevant to interpretation? Is it really accessible? Gadamer,because of his roots in Heidegger, offers a hermeneutics altogether free ofintentionality. Third, while Vandevelde sees interpretation as an act of man, Gadamer sees understanding as an event that happens to the interpreter in which he or she participates. Finally, we shall consider thefundamentally different views of language in the two thinkers and the effect of this on their two views of interpretation. In this we find the basisfor the many contrasts between the approaches of Vandevelde and Gadamer to interpretation.

Keywords:

Gadamer , Vandevelde , Author’s intention , Understanding as an act or event , Language