On Gadamer's Prejudices Theory

Hans Georg Gadamer, the most authoritative, person in western philosophical hermeneutics, was one of the greatest philosophers in contemporary German. In his masterpiece Truth and Method, which has become classics on contemporary hermeneutics, Gadamer put forward a series of ideas, which was different from the original thoughts of this school. He changed the principal attitude towards prejudices, which was full of critics, and spoke publicly in defence of it. He gave out his own explanation to the concept of prejudices, which made people find everything fresh and new. Since Gadamer's prejudices theory has enormous characteristics and very important positions in philosophy history, this thesis will attempt to represent ideological origins, the basic meaning, the maincharacteristic and comprehensive comments to it.In the first part of this thesis, writer combed the ideological origins of the form of Gadamer's prejudices theory. We can say that prejudices has different historical stages, most philosophers including Bacon, one of the English empirics, regarded it as a negative factor which hinders people from obtaining truly knowledge. However, Kant pointed out it's positive function in the form of priori. Heidegger made brand-new definition though disclosure of the Fore-structure of understanding On the base of inheriting and critically the former achievements in this field, Gadamer's finally formed his prejudices theory.In the second part of this thesis, the basic content and main characteristic of Gadamer's prejudices theory has been presented and explained in detail. He regarded prejudice as the opposite of reason and free and the understanding obstacle of hindering the subjects close to it and master the truth, no more. On the contrary, based on people's historic and limit property, he proved that prejudice was the most primary prerequisite in all of the hermeneutics prerequisites and it was being in fact that couldn't be removed. After making the basic rules of prejudices, Gadamer also explained the positive constructive function of prejudice in learning and understanding. And he pointed out that prejudice was productive and positive factor which history gave understanders and it couldprovide special vision for understanders. At the same time, Gadamer divided prejudices into legal prejudices and illegal prejudices and pointed out that not all of them have legal position. At last, he revealed the essence of prejudice lay in reestablishing and affirming people's historic significance and limit.After fully revealing the main contents of Gadamer's prejudices theory, the writer made comprehensive comments to it in the last past of this thesis. Firstly, the writer pointed out the high value of Gadmer's prejudices theory, which were: 1,Gadamer corrected people's view on tradition and authority, which are close to prejudices, by explorating the connotation of prejudices, so that tradition and authority were put quite different perspectives, and they were not viewed against reason and liberity but could be a source of truth. 2, According to Gadamer's theory, revealing the original intention of the text was no longer the aim of understanding, but people may give multiple explanations of a text or classics, and these explanations were developing. 3, Gadamer's prejudices theory shook the pury objective standard for people's cognition. He pointed out that all the understanding is history of effect, in which course, prejudices is unavoidable, setting the people free from the trammels of objectivism. However, we have to acknowledge that there are some defects in Gadamer's prejudices theory. For one thing, the standard to distinguish his two knids of prejudices which is lack of amply proof is not completely reasonable; For another thing, he overestimated the prejudices theory's function in the understanding course, which resulted in the neglect of the significance of objective and degenerated in subjectivism and relativism in some degree.