Kantian Journal

2014 Issue №1(47)

Language as mimesis (lyric poetry in H.-G. Gadamer’s herm¬e¬neutics)

Abstract

This article deals with the essence of art in Gadamer’s philosophy, including his critical approach to Kantian aesthetical consciousness and subjectification of aesthetical experience in Kant’s philosophy. According to Gadamer, art deals with the notion of truth and should be associated not with aesthetics, but rather with ontology. Thus, art is the experience of truth. In Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, the basis of art is the notion of mimesis, which is not the Platonic copy of idea, but an increase in being. Gadamer uses lyrical poetry to show that mimesis should be regarded as transformation into structure (Verwandlung ins Gebilde) and addresses the world as a significant whole. He explains mimesis in poetry by analogy with the “inner word” doctrine and comes to the conclusion that the finite human language is rooted in the infinite whole of the world’s experience, which makes a lyrical poem a hermeneutical process and an event of truth.

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