Émanation et métaphysique de la lumière dans Vérité et méthode de Gadamer
My thesis shows the presence and role of metaphysics in Truth and Method. It attempts to show that Gadamer builds upon Neoplatonism to overcome the subjectivism of modernity and offers a metaphysics in this regard. It explains how Gadamer reclaims the legacy of Greek thought to criticize modernity, placing his interpretation of Plato compared to that of Heidegger, I argue that Gadamer appropriates Plotinus’ concept of being in such a way that it may lean to think of self-presentation of being in the hermeneutic experience of truth. In that sense, art is going to be a source of truth under the leadership of Neoplatonism. Gadamer gives an ontological dignity to art through the concept of emanation, a concept which suggests that there is a real presence of the represented in its representation, the latter derived from the represented without weakening it, providing it instead with more being. The concept of emanation then gives Gadamer an opportunity to affirm the indissoluble bond that unites words and things. Thomas Aquinas’ doctrine of the inner word indeed implies the link that Plato had covered up by making language, like logic, a mere domination instrument of the real. The use of the Neoplatonic concept of emanation makes it possible to overcome the logos of Greek philosophy and to better account for the being of language. I then show how Gadamer radicalized his thinking as he says that the being that can be understood is language, which means that being, as in Plotinus, is self-presentation. To this end, Gadamer links the being of language to Neoplatonic metaphysics of light. The last pages of Truth and Method recall indeed that the splendor of beauty is an expression for the truth of being. The concept of hermeneutic truth is then connected to its metaphysical origins. Truth is a display for the being in which we can partake only if one gets overwhelmed by its light. Far from being a matter of methodical control, the experience of truth requires to be possessed by what must be understood. In this way, I demonstrate that Gadamer found in Neoplatonism elements to challenge the dictatorship of the modern subject, which must be reversed because it hides the real relationship of man with truth by ignoring the finitude of its concrete existence. The criticism of modern subjectivism led by Neoplatonism opens the way to a metaphysics of finitude.
Gadamer Heidegger Plotin Hermeneutics Metaphysics Neoplatonism Plotinus Thomas Aquinas