Truth and Method
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Hans-Georg Gadamer’s central work, published in German as Wahrheit und Methode and later translated into English, argues that understanding is not a method to be applied but a historical event we are always already inside. Every act of interpretation carries the prejudices of a tradition, and reaching truth in a text, a work of art, or another person’s meaning happens through a “fusion of horizons” — a dialogue between what we bring and what confronts us, not the neutral application of a technique.
The book bears on AI because it questions whether understanding can be reduced to a procedure at all. A system without a tradition to stand in, or a stake in the conversation, may only be able to simulate the outcome of understanding, not undergo it.
