How the Past Becomes Tradition: Gadamer and Foucault on The Hermeneutics of Hİstory

Authors : Ali Özgür Gürsoy

Pages : 1-14

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Publication Date : 2024-10-25

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :Our contemporary situation of intense and multi-dimensional crises motivates us to problematize how the past becomes a tradition. Two thinkers are particularly helpful in grappling with this predicament, namely Gadamer and Foucault. The argument of the present study is that it is possible to establish a fruitful encounter between the works of Gadamer and Foucault on the question of how the past becomes tradition and how best to understand our relationship to the figures of the past in the present. What becomes visible in this encounter between two visions of our relatedness to the past is that tradition is always already contested in the present and that a method of investigation that presupposes the ‘fusion of horizons’ understates the fundamental nature of such contestation.
Keywords : Gadamer, Foucault, Yorumbilim, Gelenek, Tarih