Wahrheit und Methode

In 'Wahrheit und Methode', Gadamer argues against the quasi-scientific approaches to establishing cultural meaning prevalent after World War II. He examines the relationship between truth and method, suggesting that truth is not reducible to scientific criteria but is an event or experience.

The book rejects objectivity and instead posits that meaning is created through intersubjective communication and is grounded in the linguistically mediated happening of tradition.

Gadamer draws on the ideas of Romantic hermeneuticists like Friedrich Schleiermacher and Wilhelm Dilthey, and he is heavily influenced by Martin Heidegger's hermeneutic phenomenology.

The work is divided into sections that explore the hermeneutic phenomenon, the historicity of understanding, and the hermeneutic significance of temporal distance and tradition.