Experience and Reality of Time According to Hans-Georg Gadamer: Bases for Reflection on the Epochal Experience

Abstract

In this work, some results are remembered of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s interpretation on certain texts of Western thought that touch on the speculative question of time. On pointing out the contribution of a hermeneutic work that, enlarging the perspectives opened by M. Heidegger, continued the task that latter had begun in order to clear up the being of time along with its experience and reality. The author has especially taken interest in the way in which Gadamer defines the character of epoch as such by the transition between one epoch and another and, in particular, by the determination of the peculiar character of the transition where Gadamer, inspired by the teaching of Hörderlin, sees the very being of time. These results provide conceptual perspectives that can offer a philosophical for the reflection of the epochal experience.