Study On The Thought Of Play In Gadamer’s Hermeneutics

The concept of “play” has existed since ancient times.Kant and Schiller were the first thinkers who introduced the play into the aesthetical field.The play in the context of Gadamer’s hermeneutics is also rooted in aesthetic insights.This paper will take this as the starting point,and focus on sorting out the basic content of Gadamer’s thoughts on play,expounding the significance of his ontological and theory of truth,and conducts in-depth analysis of the contemporary value and philosophical significance of his game thought,and puts forward his own thoughts and insights.Thus,this paper could be divided into four chapters.The first chapter’s mainly focus on sorting out the thought of Play in the history of philosophy.The idea of plays runs through the entire history of philosophy.By tracing the history of the play from a vertical historical perspective,we can grasp the differences and advancements of Gadamer’s ideas better when compared with those of his predecessors.The second chapter discusses the basic meaning of the play concept in the context of Gadamer.The first is the artistic plays which serve as the main line of the existential interpretation.Gadamer opposed to the method of subject-object dichotomy to explore the play,but re-established the play’s own subjective status.The second is the understanding play in the hermeneutical experience theory,Gadamer believed that understanding plays and artistic plays have a common structure,understanding itself is a play,when people understand,just like entering a playing event.Through this event,the understanding one expresses the content of understanding.Finally,it discusses the language game in the ontological turn of hermeneutics.Gadamer believes that understanding itself was always made up of language and always treated things as language,and it was in language games,so as to achieve understanding of the world.The third chapter turns to the applying play in practical philosophy of Gadamer’s later thoughts.Gadamer’s hermeneutics eventually emerged as a practical philosophy,with dialogue and applying problems playing a key role.The practical significance of hermeneutics is that it is a philosophy related to human behavior and goodness.The hermeneutic “play” in this sense is a dialogic structure based on the activity of understanding,Practical ration’s pursuit is“goodness”,which is an applying play of human tolerance,friendship,solidarity,and other qualities.The fourth chapter mainly deals with the philosophical significance of Gadamer’s thought of play.This is manifested in three aspects: first,the breakthrough and transformation of the Western philosophical idea of truth;second,the revival of practical philosophy instigated by hermeneutics;third,Gadamer and Wittgenstein’s similar exploration of the problem of language games opens up a possibility that converges continental philosophy and analytic philosophy.