If you have a pressing desire to acquaint yourself with Gadamer’s hermeneutics (and who doesn’t?), then this collection of essays may be your cup of tea. Gadamer addresses the centrality of language in contemporary philosophy, the historical development of philosophical hermeneutics, and the relationships between hermeneutics and semantics, aesthetics, and self-understanding.
In what sense (if any) does a work of fictional literature have truth? How much is the idea of truth dependent on things you learn to believe in from an early age?
Imagine growing up on a deserted island, where you have plenty of coconuts but zero human contact and therefore no language at all. Your first encounter with other human beings comes when you witness a theft—one person robbing another. Only you don’t understand what you see as a theft because you have no concept of private property, ownership, and so forth. How would you interpret this event?