Self-understanding and getting on with oneself: The overlooked importance of solitude for Gadamer’s Hermeneutics

Keane, Niall

Abstract

The following offers a critical appraisal of the themes of self-directedness and self-relatedness in Gadamer’s hermeneutics. It does so through an examination of solitude as a moment of what I call self-solicitude which, while emerging from and responding to various forms of otherness and encounter, has an ineliminable singularity to it that Gadamer misses. The case is made that Gadamer’s critique of subjectivity causes him to neglect the singularity of such self-directedness and self-relatedness and, by extension, to undervalue the importance of solitude when outlining a hermeneutics of the self. The aim is to offer a course correction to Gadamer’s own course correction, both endorsing many of his readings, while also pressing him on where he fails to examine more thoroughly the experience of returning to oneself and getting on with oneself in self-understanding and solitude.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 16, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Dec 17, 2024
• Publication Date: Dec 18, 2024
• Deposit Date: Feb 24, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 18, 2025
• Journal: Phänomenologische Forschungen
• Print ISSN: 0342-8117
• Electronic ISSN: 2567-5494
• Publisher: Felix Meiner Verlag GmbH
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 2024
• Pages: 63-88
• ISBN: 9783787347261
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/13787324
• Publisher URL: https://meiner.de/phanomenologische-forschungen-2024-1.html