Abstract:

German hermeneutic philosopher Gadamer had a famous statement of “hermeneutics as practical philosophy”. Around this statement, China’s hermeneutic academia has been debating for more than a decade on “practical philosophical turning” in Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics and such issues as “In what sense is Hermeneutics a practical philosophy? ” Through a thorough examination, we can find out that Gadamer had completed “the turn of practical philosophy” in the whole Western hermeneutics with the first draft （in 1955-1956）, related public lectures （in 1957） and the publication （in 1960） of Truth and Method as three landmarks. His later-years’ philosophy was only a further continuation of this turn. Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics became a practical philosophy not because it focuses on practical issues in the field of “ethics” or “political science”, but because it philosophically considers “understanding” itself as a particular “practice”. Gadamer was to restore the practical philosophical tradition in hermeneutics, rather than to transform hermeneutics into ethics. In the theoretical construction of contemporary Chinese classic hermeneutics, we must pay attention to “the practical philosophy orientation”, especially the methodology concerning the great theme of “the concretization of the universal”.

Key words: Gadamer, hermeneutics, practical philosophy, Statement of Turning, Statement of Going, Chinese classic hermeneutics