Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit the Shop.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Obituary

Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002)

by Anja Steinbauer

Gadamer, the man who lived history – the whole twentieth century and into the early years of the new millennium – accorded great importance to the study of it. Learning from history is important for all of us but entering into a critical dialogue with the thinkers of the past is crucial for doing philosophy. To him, the history of philosophy was not just an academic pursuit next to the activity of philosophising but constituted an important part of philosophy itself: the way we relate to our tradition matters.

Gadamer was born on 11 February 1900 in Marburg. His father was a professor of pharmaceutical chemistry in Breslau, where Gadamer grew up.

…