Paragraph 14

April 7, 2007

For the Hermeneuts language plays a much greater role in the constitution of meaning. Gadamer, for instance, maintains an emphasis on praxis in his account of games and dialogue. Indeed, his account of the sort of play in which the players lose themselves and any consciousness of that with which they play is akin both to the early Heidegger’s account of transparent coping and to Lance and O’Leary-Hawthorne’s take on the praxis of basketball. The subject matter of a dialogue controls the unfolding of the verbal exchange for Gademer much as the game of basketball indicates its own emendation for Lance and O’Leary-Hawthorne. However, in spite of this general praxis-orientation, Gadamer explicitly ties meaning entirely to language, as when he states that “Being which can be understood is language.” This claim goes beyond the Brandomian view that language can make explicit meanings already implicit in practice, as the latter for Brandom appear to be already understandable while yet only implicit.