Philosophical Hermeneutics, Art and the Art of Language

10.29431/AP.201012.0001

Nicholas Davey

address ； art ； cognitive content ； experience ； hermeneutics ； language ； measure ； relations ； speculative ； truth

Aesthetic Pathways

1卷1期（2010 / 12 / 01）

3 - 29

英文

What does Gadamer mean by the claim that ”art addresses” us? It is a claim central to his dialogical conception of art but what type of language does art speak? An answer depends on expanding the conventional meaning of language which is tied to the spoken and written. Gadamer's conception of linguisticality extends the notion of language to include any set of communicative relations whether bodily or musical. We suggest that such arguments parallel a hermeneutic conception of the artwork as a body or ”measure” of relations. The broader conception of linguisticality allows art to be considered as language insofar as like all sets of communicative relations, the communicative relations that constitute art also have the speculative capacity to refer beyond themselves. This capacity is central to what Gadamer means by ”art addressing us.” The speculative dimensions central to the experience of that address clarifies the core of how to fathom the ”truth” of the cognitive content of art's address. In other words, a consideration of the relationship between art and language allows Gadamer's aesthetics to revitalize a hermeneutical conception of truth based upon plausibility rather than demonstration.