iversality of Hermeneutics and Eloquence: Its Sources from Plato to Augustine According to Gadamer’s Truth and Method

Abstract

Hans-Georg Gadamer did not associate the universality of hermeneutics with the universality of rhetoric until after publishing Truth and Method. This article proposes an understanding of the beginnings of this conception through the decisive transition that took place in Truth and Method from Plato to St. Augustine; that is, from a conception of language as having a logical tendency, to an embodiment of meaning that remains rhetorical.