Gadamer

Gadamer talks about how a “fundamental conversation is never one that we want to conduct.”(345) But why does he use the word “want” and not “can”? So is he saying that a conversation that “is” being conducted could be bring about the type of conversation where it could lead one to something unfamiliar? I just found it interesting he didn’t say “can”. When a conversation is underway, the type of conversation Gadamer is concerned with, one does not need to understand the person from the inside, trying to undergo the same experience they underwent. Rather, they come to agree upon the object of discussion.

When translation is used, there will always be the gap between the original word and the new context it has taken up. It seems that the gap between the translation of the word, from language to language and the understanding of a word, from person to person, would be somewhat of the same. Because the original language holds something it can only contain and the person with the experience of something, trying to describe it in words to another (in the same language) would seem to lose a part of the whole that was present in its original use. The talk about the common language, seems to go with what we were talking about last week, a common language is established in the conversation and cannot be pre-established. And by finding this common language, it is used as a tool for attaining an understanding between two people in a ‘real’ conversation.