In the Light of Two Suns: Heidegger, Gadamer, Language, and Truth

Abstract

Language both shapes and limits our perception of reality. It shapes our perception in the sense that we grow up in language in the same way that we grow up in communities that instill in us the universal concepts by which we live our lives. It limits us because we can’t know more than the universal concepts that we acquire through experience, memory, and language. This paper will focus on how language both shapes and limits our perception of reality. I will suggest how Hans-Georg Gadamer uses language to fix the alleged problem of Martin Heidegger’s closed system, and further develop my point about language and perception. I will assume and briefly argue that this is a problem with Heidegger’s system and that it requires Gadamer’s theory of language to fix. Finally, I will discuss and evaluate the epistemological implications of Heidegger and Gadamer’s systems, and how through language we can get closer to absolute truths by looking for common threads and blending everyone’s unique perspectives in a greater context.

Keywords: Language, Truth, Perception, Heidegger, Gadamer, Nietzsche, phenomenology, epistemology, metaphysics, Continental philosophy, western philosophy, European philosophy, German philosophy, consciousness, existentialism, Dasein, being and time, beyond good and evil