Hermeneutics and Dialectics: (Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger and) Hans-Georg Gadamer

The purpose of this paper is to explore briefly the role that a more phenomenological conception of dialectical development of consciousness plays in Hans-Georg Gadamer's work on hermeneutics. This is done with both an implicit understanding of the dialectical development of consciousness and self-consciousness in Gadamer and some explicit references to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and his Science of Logic in connection with Gadamer's work. However, the twentieth century departures from Hegelian logic by the phenomenological and existential philosophers are given crucial importance for the work of Gadamer which builds on both Heidegger's essays on art in particular and the much earlier Husserlian explorations of consciousness and intentionality. Special emphasis is given to Gadamer's concept of Spiel(play)* along with his ideas of Erfahrung( "lived experience" as opposed to Erlebnis or abstract experience),Geschehen (event) and Wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein ( Effectively historicized consciousness).