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Article: Gadamer & the light of the word.(Hans-Georg Gadamer: A Biography)(Book Review)
- Article from:
- First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life
- Article date:
- January 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Institute on Religion and Public Life. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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HANS-GEORG GADAMER: A BIOGRAPHY. By Jean Grondin. Translated by Joel Weinsheimer. Yale University Press. 512 pp. $35.
It is reasonable to be dubious about biographies of philosophers, even when they are good. For what, after all, is the life of a philosopher? How much a novelist lived the events he or she wrote about (did Dostoevsky know a Zosima?) seems a natural point of curiosity, irrelevant though it may be to the novels. But could you wonder that about a philosopher? Philosophy concerns ideas, and do ideas have an obscure connection to everyday life? What, for example, can the life of the fellow with the wool ties and Teutonic humor tell us about what was ...