After reading the Gadamer essays, the one thing that really jumped out at me was how central the idea of movement was to his essays. It seems to affect almost everything from basic understanding of oneself and extends all the way to the most complex issues of understanding and describing the world around us, and rides a fine line between the chance for understanding.

I really like how he describes the understanding of self as a reflexive action of defining yourself against an Other (though he doesn't use that term himself) and his idea of movement fits perfectly within this context. We can only know something about ourselves in relation to something else and as our understanding of ourselves changes so does our understanding of the Other against which we're comparing ourselves. It forms almost a perfect little spiral that can account for and accomodate lots of changes in both sides. His example of two workers using a saw was excellent here.

One thing that was a little disturbing to me, though, and I have difficulty figuring out where he stands, is whether or not there's some kind of end point. One line in particular kind of creeped me out, and I'm probably just being a little too sensitive in the context of the 60's (German guy writing not long after WWII), but "It is senseless, for instance, to hinder a genetic researcher because such research threatens to breed a superman." (10) This is taken out of context, of course, and the line refers to putting limits on scientific inquiry. Even setting it aside from his other mentions of National Socialism in the essay, it hints at a sort of cold reason that sits quite apart from the humanism that seems present in most of the essay.

Much of it has to do with the inexorable, inevitable pursuit of scientific knowledge, something I completely understand, but Gadamer here implies things as a sort of Pandora's Box where we can have little or no control over our knowledge and its applications, so we should simply let it go. I completely agree with Ann in this respect, that Gadamer seems to rule out, by his lack of discussion, the possibility of intervention along the way. to knowledge.