An exposition of understanding in Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics and its application to African philosophy

Abstract

This work is in the main, an exposition of understanding in Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics and its application to African philosophy. The goal is to expose the nature of understanding in Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics focusing on Gadamer’s critique of epistemological conception of understanding and his reevaluation of this concept in terms of ontology. The problem, therefore, this work set out to address is to investigate and determine the nature of understanding in Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics and how it is applicable to African philosophy. The general objective of this work, as already been mentioned, was to develop an exposition of understanding in Gadamerean approach to philosophical hermeneutics and how it’s applicable to African philosophy. I posit, as the finding of this research, that Gadamer’s theory of understanding rests on the fundamental distinction of hermeneutics and philosophical hermeneutics. The study in following Gadamer, pointed out that hermeneutics as a classical discipline focused on rules and methods of interpretation of biblical, legal or philological texts in order to facilitate understanding. Gadamer’s interests in hermeneutics were no longer on texts but were phenomenological description of understanding. In essence, Gadamer’s theory of philosophical hermeneutics which deals with understanding is an event which is universal, ontological and philosophical. Philosophical hermeneutics, therefore is a theory which deals with understanding. According to him, philosophical hermeneutics deals with understanding as embedded in art, history and language as its models as demonstrated in this thesis. The thesis dealt with the exposition and discussion of the contemporary approaches to African philosophy. This work was able to demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. This was necessary for the application of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics which deals with understanding to African philosophy. It opened up new horizons and so in our study, it was argued that philosophical hermeneutics as a theory of understanding is applicable to African philosophy especially as illustrated in art, history and language. This work recommends further research of Gadamer’s theory of understanding and its application to African philosophy