Study On Gadamer's Poetic Thinking

The theme of the dissertation is the"poetic thinking"of Gadamer. The standpoint of the dissertation is:"poesy"is the main line throughout the lifelong thinking of Gadamer, and it is an integrated core harmonizing Gadamer's concepts of arts, language and history; the"poetic thinking"is a"poetic thinking of Being", which is the supreme summary of the whole academic thinking of Gadamer, and Gadamer's"poetic thinking"is not only of poetry as literature, but also of the art and language theories based on poetic language, and rather of a primitive realm combining inner spiritual conditions with outer living patterns. The dissertation is composed of the parts of the preface, the body and the epilogue. The body is formed of four chapters, namely, Chapter 1"Source Tracing of Gadamer's Poetic Thinking", Chapter 2"'Body'of Gadamer's Poetic Thinking—Theoretical Analyses of the Poetic Thinking", Chapter 3"'Function'of Gadamer's Poetic Thinking—Poetic Thinking in Poetry Criticisms", and Chapter 4"Enlightenments of Gadamer's Poetic Thinking". They provide multi-dimension and all-round analyses for Gadamer's poetic thinking from angles of conceptual sources, theoretical structures, critical practices and enlightenments.PrefaceThe life experience of Gadamer is the starting point of the preface, leading to a finding of the personal, temporal and circumstantial factors including the impacts of wars and technology, the encounter with Heidegger, the study of classical philology, and the literature and art accomplishments. These factors are closely related to the emergence and development of Gadamer's poetic thinking. On this basis, the dissertation briefly describes the fundamental natures and characteristics of Gadamer's"poetic thinking", and puts forward that poetic thinking is a kind of"poetic thought based on Being", which is an overall generalization of quintessence of Gadamer's lifelong academic thinking. For Gadamer,"poesy"has four-layer meanings: poetry in narrow sense, arts, language ontology, and the real and essential realm of Being."Poesy"is not only the dimension of arts in the theoretical frame of Philosophical Hermeneutics, nor just a practical domain of hermeneutical principles; the realm of poesy extends from arts through human spirit to the whole universe. It is an alive organic integrity where human beings ever lived, and it is the supreme living realm in dual theoretical and practical senses pursued by Gadamer. Accordingly, Gadamer's poetic thinking manifests a structural feature of"Body-Function"dual dimensions. The"body"dimension is composed of art theory, language theory and existential theory, and the"function"dimension is contained in Gadamer's concrete poetry criticisms. The two dimensions are unified as one, and echo each other, producing a solid poetic thinking system. Then the study background of the dissertation is analyzed, and it is pointed out that current Gadamer researches mainly focus on Philosophical Hermeneutics. Although some researchers noticed Gadamer's poetic thinking recently, relevant studies lag behind with no treatise books on the topic yet. Given the study vacancy, the dissertation obeys the principle of text-orientation, getting close to the original texts. The line of thought is: taking poetic thinking as the thread, concentrating on the main points, drawing up overall features of the issue, to find out the relations between different layers of Gadamer's academic thought and its general developing orientation through the analyses of Gadamer's poetic thinking. In the clarification of the natures and characteristics of the poetic thinking, the dissertation provides a genuine integrated reflection and reconsideration of Gadamer's aesthetic and philosophical thinking.Chapter 1 Source Tracing of Gadamer's HermeneuticsThis chapter traces the sources and background of Gadamer's poetic thinking. Firstly, the dissertation goes backward into the ancient Greek thinking, and finds out the influences of mythological consciousness, Plato's idea of the beauty, and ancient Greek metaphysical language existential thought, and thus shows the deep theoretical relations between Gadamer's poetic thinking and ancient Greek thinking. Secondly, the dissertation analyzes the German romantic remains in Gadamer's poetic thinking. Arts as the basic thinking position, blending poesy with life, trying to go back to Greek poetic world in worry of human's alienation—all these typical characteristics of German romantic tradition are contained in Gadamer's poetic thinking, deep into his soul. Next, the dissertation studies the great impacts of Husserl and Heidegger upon Gadamer's poetic thinking, and proposes that the ontology of Gadamer's poetic thinking is set up on the base of Heidegger's linguistic existentialism, while the methodology and epistemology mainly come from Husserl's phenomenology. So the tutors exactly laid the foundation for Gadamer's poetic thinking system. Finally, the dissertation places Gadamer's poetic thinking in the flow of the poesy-thinking relation in the western history, and considers that Gadamer's poetic thinking highlights the tendency that through arts and poetry the western thought has been transcending the metaphysical opposition between subjectivity and objectivity in face of modern crisis since the end of the 19th'century. Chapter 2"Body"of Gadamer's Poetic Thinking—Theoretical Analyses of the Poetic ThinkingThis chapter concretely analyzes the theoretical structure of Gadamer's poetic thinking. Gadamer's poetic thinking is woven with three aspects, say, art theory, language theory, and existential theory. In the aspect of art theory, Gadamer reveals the existential truth in art experiences from angles of theory of art truth and theory of art understanding, that is, from angles of art ontology and epistemology. Gadamer thinks that art work is an independent Being with ontological meanings, which displays itself to the spectators. And the work, spectators and circumstances together compose an independent, complete and open world, where the art work eventually expresses the truth of Being through constant expressions of itself. Toward such an art work, Gadamer's understanding theory is totally different from the western traditional"object-oriented"examination, but actually an"experiencing"participation in the sense of Being. In the aspect of language theory, poetic language is established by Gadamer the base of his academic thinking as the"primitive language". The poetic language has the purest characteristic of self-expression, and in self-expression it directs an open realm of Being. In this sense, poetic language is closest to the clarifying of truth, and it becomes the utmost core of Gadamer's poetic thinking as the coagulation of"language","art"and"Being". In the aspect of existentialism, the root of Gadamer's poetic thinking is explicit: from art to language,"Being"is the starting and ending point of Gadamer's thinking. In his later years, Gadamer considered Being with poesy as the main idea, and so his thinking of Being gradually matured."Poesy"surpasses the general meaning of literary poems; besides the"poetic flavor"in the aesthetic sense,"poesy"has the meaning of"natural and original Being"in a higher level, which is the free status and supreme realm of Being. In all, by theoretical construction on the three layers of art, language and Being, Gadamer tries to reunite the long divided subjective and objective Beings, to integrate tradition and reality, and so to return into a Being-rooted poetic thinking with object-subject fusion and ancient-modern breakthrough.Chapter 3"Function"of Gadamer's Poetic Thinking—Poetic Thinking in Poetry CriticismsThis chapter analyzes the"function"dimension of Gadamer's poetic criticisms. Gadamer's criticisms have distinct pertinence, with the focus on the German domestic poets and poems, especially Goethe, H?lderlin and German neo-Romantic poets Rilke, Georg, Celan and their poems. From his poetic critical practices, it can be seen that Gadamer is rooted in the relationship between poetry and Being, and so those poems expressing significant theme of Being through musical words always drew Gadamer's extra attention. Generally, there are two main features of Gadamer's poetic criticisms: the focus of criticisms is on the poetic language itself; Being is the eternal theme in Gadamer's poetic criticisms. In other words, Gadamer's poetic criticisms still manifest obvious philosophical purport, and his poetic criticisms are essentially the dialogue between a philosopher and poems. However, from the extra attention to the theme of Being in poetry, to the sensitivity to the expression of truth through poetic words, Gadamer's poetic criticisms closely coordinate with his poetic theories in all respects. Gadamer's critical practice and poetic theory correspond with each other soundly: criticism gains sufficient theoretical supports, and poetic theory is well examined and flexibly applied in criticism, and thus the two aspects are combined into a lively, complete while open system of poetic thinking.Chapter 4 Enlightenments of Gadamer's Poetic ThinkingThis chapter explains the enlightenments of Gadamer's poetic thinking from the angles of reality, aesthetics and the communicability with Chinese"Xiang Thinking". Gadamer reveals that poesy and thinking have the same origin and so they are an union in nature, and meanwhile he finds that this original united status is just that of the open-up and clarifying of Being. Therefore, Gadamer is on a way of return, instead of a way of innovation. His poetic thinking continues to carve out a way of poetic philosophy with"poesy and thinking fusion"since Nietzsche, Dilthey, and Heidegger. Gadamer shows a rarely seen manner of balancing. it can be said that, Gadamer's poetic thinking significantly enlightens future studies of the origin and movement of western thinking, and that of the changes of the relationship between Chinese and western thinking.EpilogueAt last, the dissertation summarizes the essential temperament and characteristics as well as the theoretical and practical meanings of Gadamer's poetic thinking, and looks forward to the prospects of this issue.