Editing Hans-Georg Gadamer (section)

==Life==

===Family and early life===
Gadamer was born in [[Marburg]], [[German Empire|Germany]],{{sfn|Grondin|2003|p=12}} the son of Johannes Gadamer (1867–1928),{{sfn|Grondin|2003|pp=26, 33}} a pharmaceutical [[chemistry]] professor who later also served as the [[Rector (academia)|rector]] of the [[University of Marburg]]. He was raised a Protestant Christian.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Gadamer|first1=Hans-Georg|title=The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays|date=1986|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=9780521339537|page=35|url=http://timothyquigley.net/ipa/gadamer-rb.pdf|access-date=16 January 2018|quote=As a Protestant, I have always found especially significant the controversy over the Last Supper, which raged in the Protestant Church, particularly between Luther and Zwingli.}}</ref> Gadamer resisted his father's urging to take up the [[natural sciences]] and became more and more interested in the [[humanities]]. His mother, Emma Karoline Johanna Gewiese (1869–1904) died of [[diabetes]] while Hans-Georg was four years old, and he later noted that this may have had an effect on his decision not to pursue scientific studies. [[Jean Grondin]] describes Gadamer as finding in his mother "a poetic and almost religious counterpart to the iron fist of his father".{{sfn|Grondin|2003|p=21}} Gadamer did not serve during [[World War I]] for reasons of ill health{{sfn|Grondin|2003|p=45}} and similarly was exempted from serving during [[World War II]] due to [[polio]].{{sfn|Grondin|2003|p=46}}

===Education===
He later studied classics and [[philosophy]] in the [[University of Breslau]]{{sfn|Grondin|2003|p=37}} under [[Richard Hönigswald]], but soon moved back to the University of Marburg to study with the [[Neo-Kantian]] philosophers [[Paul Natorp]] (his [[doctoral thesis]] advisor) and [[Nicolai Hartmann]]. He defended his [[dissertation]] ''The Essence of Pleasure in Plato's Dialogues'' ({{lang|de|Das Wesen der Lust nach den Platonischen Dialogen}}) in 1922.{{sfn|Cesare|2007|p=5–7}}

Shortly thereafter, Gadamer moved to [[University of Freiburg|Freiburg University]] and began studying with [[Martin Heidegger]], who was then a promising young scholar who had not yet received a professorship. He became close to Heidegger, and when Heidegger received a position at [[University of Marburg|Marburg]], Gadamer followed him there, where he became one of a group of students such as [[Leo Strauss]], [[Karl Löwith]], and [[Hannah Arendt]]. It was Heidegger's influence that gave Gadamer's thought its distinctive cast and led him away from the earlier neo-Kantian influences of Natorp and Hartmann. Gadamer studied Aristotle both under [[Edmund Husserl]] and under Heidegger.{{sfn|Cesare|2007|p=7–8}}

===Early career===
Gadamer [[habilitation|habilitated]] in 1929 and spent most of the early 1930s lecturing in Marburg. Unlike Heidegger, who joined the [[Nazi Party]] in May 1933 and continued as a member until the party was dissolved following World War II, Gadamer was silent on [[Nazism]], and he was not politically active during [[Nazi Germany|Nazi rule]]. Gadamer did not join the Nazis, and he did not serve in the army because of the polio he had contracted in 1922. He joined the [[National Socialist Teachers League]] in August 1933.<ref>Ideologische Mächte im deutschen Faschismus Band 5: Heidegger im Kontext: Gesamtüberblick zum NS-Engagement der Universitätsphilosophen, George Leaman, Rainer Alisch, Thomas Laugstien, Verlag: Argument Hamburg, 1993, p. 105, {{ISBN|3886192059}}</ref>

In 1933 Gadamer signed the ''[[Vow of allegiance of the Professors of the German Universities and High-Schools to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialistic State]]''.

In April 1937 he became a temporary professor at Marburg,{{sfn|Cesare|2007|p=17}} then in 1938 he received a professorship at [[Leipzig University]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Dostal|first=Robert|title=The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9Byz-nfrKQkC&pg=PA21|year=2002|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=0521000416|page=20}}</ref> From an ''[[Schutzstaffel|SS]]''-point of view Gadamer was classified as neither supportive nor disapproving in the "''SD-Dossiers über Philosophie-Professoren"'' (i.e. SD-files concerning philosophy professors) that were set up by the [[Sicherheitsdienst|''SS''-Security-Service (SD)]].<ref>Leaman, Georg / Simon, Gerd: Deutsche Philosophen aus der Sicht des Sicherheitsdienstes des Reichsführers SS. Jahrbuch für Soziologie-Geschichte 1992, pages 261–292</ref> In 1946, he was found by the American occupation forces to be untainted by Nazism and named rector of the university.<!-- Please add this bit of the German Wikipedia properly into the article. Thanks. (But cf. German Wikipedia article, which notes [citing Ernst Klee: ''Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945'', Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Zweite aktualisierte Auflage, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p.&nbsp;172] that on Nov. 11th, 1933 he signed the "declaration of loyalty to Adolf Hitler;" in 1937 he received a professorship in Marburg; in 1939 he became a full professor and director of an institute in Leipzig; and during the war he was involved in the "Humanities' contribution to the war effort" project:  http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Georg_Gadamer.) -->

The level of Gadamer's involvement with the Nazis has been disputed in the works of [[Richard Wolin]]<ref>Richard Wolin, ‚Nazism and the complicities of Hans-Georg Gadamer. Untruth and Method', ''The New Republic'', 15 May 2000, pp. 36–45</ref> and Teresa Orozco.{{sfn|Orozco|1995}} Orozco alleges, with reference to Gadamer's published works, that Gadamer had supported the Nazis more than scholars had supposed. Gadamer scholars have rejected these assertions: [[Jean Grondin]] has said that Orozco is engaged in a "witch-hunt"{{sfn|Grondin|2003|p=165}} while [[Donatella Di Cesare]] said that "the archival material on which Orozco bases her argument is actually quite negligible".{{sfn|Cesare|2007|p=30}} Cesare and Grondin have argued that there is no trace of [[antisemitism]] in Gadamer's work, and that Gadamer maintained friendships with Jews and provided shelter for nearly two years for the philosopher [[Jacob Klein (philosopher)|Jacob Klein]] in 1933 and 1934.{{sfn|Grondin|2003|pp=153–154}} Gadamer also reduced his contact with Heidegger during the Nazi era.{{sfn|Cesare|2007|pp=14–15}}

===At Heidelberg===
After the war Gadamer left for West Germany, accepting first a position in [[Goethe University Frankfurt]] and then the succession of [[Karl Jaspers]] as the philosophy chair in the [[University of Heidelberg]] in 1949, retiring in 1968.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Lavietes |first=Stuart |date=2002-03-25 |title=Hans-Georg Gadamer, 102, Who Questioned Fixed Truths |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/25/world/hans-georg-gadamer-102-who-questioned-fixed-truths.html |access-date=2025-01-11 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> He remained in this position, as emeritus, until his death in 2002 at the age of 102.<ref name="washingtonpost_obit">{{cite news |date=16 March 2002 |title=Hans-Georg Gadamer Dies; Noted German Philosopher |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/2002/03/16/hans-georg-gadamer-dies/2e97acf4-16f2-4a24-9ca0-c2d730918700/ |access-date=25 March 2011 |newspaper=Washington Post}}</ref><ref name="guardian_obit">{{cite news | url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/mar/18/guardianobituaries.obituaries | title=Hans-Georg Gadamer | access-date=25 March 2011 | author=Roberts, Julian | date=18 March 2002 | work=The Guardian}}</ref><ref name="independent_obit">{{cite news | url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/hansgeorg-gadamer-729860.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111012053133/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/hansgeorg-gadamer-729860.html | url-status=dead | archive-date=12 October 2011 | title=Hans-Georg Gadamer | access-date=25 March 2011 | date=26 March 2002 | work=The Independent}}</ref> He was also an Editorial Advisor of the journal ''[[Dionysius (journal)|Dionysius]]''.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://classics.dal.ca/Journals/Dionysius/Editorial_Board.php|title=Department of Classics|website=Dalhousie University}}</ref> It was during this time that he completed his ''[[magnum opus]]'', ''Truth and Method'' (1960), and engaged in his famous debate with [[Jürgen Habermas]] over the possibility of transcending history and culture in order to find a truly objective position from which to critique society. The debate was inconclusive, but marked the beginning of warm relations between the two men. It was Gadamer who secured Habermas's first professorship in the University of Heidelberg.

In 1968, Gadamer invited [[Tomonobu Imamichi]] for lectures at Heidelberg, but their relationship became very cool after Imamichi alleged that Heidegger had taken his concept of ''[[Dasein]]'' out of [[Okakura Kakuzo]]'s concept of ''das in-der-Welt-sein'' (to be in the [[being in the world]]) expressed in ''[[The Book of Tea]]'', which Imamichi's teacher had offered to Heidegger in 1919, after having followed lessons with him the year before.<ref name="Imamichi">{{cite web |first1=Tomonobu |last1=Imamichi |title=In Search of Wisdom. One Philosopher's Journey |location=Tokyo, International House of Japan |year=2004 |first2=Anne |last2=Fagot-Largeault |url=http://www.college-de-france.fr/media/bio_med/UPL8933_AFL_res_0607.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101228124437/http://www.college-de-france.fr/media/bio_med/UPL8933_AFL_res_0607.pdf |archive-date=28 December 2010 |work=Le Devenir Impensable |publisher=[[Collège de France]] |access-date=7 December 2006 }}</ref> Imamichi and Gadamer renewed contact four years later during an international congress.<ref name="Imamichi" />

In 1981, Gadamer attempted to engage with [[Jacques Derrida]] at a conference in Paris but it proved less enlightening because the two thinkers had little in common. A last meeting between Gadamer and Derrida was held at the Stift of Heidelberg in July 2001, coordinated by Derrida's students Joseph Cohen and Raphael Zagury-Orly.{{citation needed|date=August 2013}} This meeting marked, in many ways, a turn in their philosophical encounter. After Gadamer's death, Derrida called their failure to find common ground one of the worst debacles of his life and expressed, in the main obituary for Gadamer, his great personal and philosophical respect. [[Richard J. Bernstein]] said that "[a] genuine dialogue between Gadamer and Derrida has never taken place. This is a shame because there are crucial and consequential issues that arise between hermeneutics and deconstruction".<ref>{{Cite book|author=Richard J. Bernstein|chapter=Hermeneutics, Critical Theory and Deconstruction|title=The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2002|isbn=0521801931}}</ref>

===Honorary doctorates===
Gadamer received honorary doctorates from the [[University of Bamberg]], the [[University of Wrocław]], [[Boston College]], [[Charles University in Prague]], [[Hamilton College]], the [[University of Leipzig]], the [[University of Marburg]] (1999) the [[University of Ottawa]], [[Saint Petersburg State University]] (2001), the [[University of Tübingen]] and [[University of Washington]].{{sfn|Cesare|2007|p=27}}

===Death===
On 11 February 2000, the [[University of Heidelberg]] celebrated Gadamer's 100th birthday with a ceremony and conference. Gadamer's last academic engagement was in the summer of 2001, at the age of 101, at an annual symposium on hermeneutics organized by two of his American students. On 13 March 2002, Gadamer died at Heidelberg's University Clinic at the age of 102.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://geocities.com/fdomauricio/Gadamer.htm |title=Hans-Georg Gadamer, 1900–2002 |last=Marucio |first=Fernando |access-date=21 May 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091018215428/http://geocities.com/fdomauricio/Gadamer.htm |archive-date=18 October 2009 |language=es |work=Geocities}}</ref> He is buried in the Köpfel cemetery in [[Ziegelhausen]].{{sfn|Cesare|2007|pp=27–28}}