Hermeneutic truth as dialogic disclosure: a Gadamerian response to the Tugendhat critique

What is the Gadamerian truth conception? Notwithstanding its prominence in the title of his major work, the concept of truth remains implicit, underspecified, and correspondingly enigmatic in Gadamer’s writings.1 In response, the present paper undertakes to defend a conception of hermeneutic truth as dialogical disclosure and to affirm its capacity to warrant, or justify, truth claims through highlighting its differences from, as well as similarities to, the better-known Heideggerian truth conception. In so doing, it challenges a prevalent assumption that the Gadamerian truth concept simply mirrors the Heideggerian. In particular, given the prominence accorded the experience of aesthetic truth and the model of play (Spiel) in the first part of Truth and Method,2 it is often assumed that, for Gadamer, as for Heidegger, the emergence of truth is best characterised as a sudden disclosive event, as epitomised by metaphors of “lighting” and “lightening.” Gadamer’s emphasis on the “enlightening” (Einleuchtende) toward the end of Truth and Method further reinforces this impression.