Introduction

Abstract

Gadamer often asserts that his account of the “the human sciences” (die Geisteswissenschaften) in general and the historical sciences in particular is descriptive and not prescriptive. One cannot, Gadamer thus holds, prescribe a method to these sciences which would permit their historically situated and context-dependent character to be overcome. But Gadamer also argues that the claims of the past are regrettably dismissed in historical study if they are seen as merely historical phenomena and as expressions of their respective contexts, instead of being seen as claims made to us. And this argument has prescriptive overtones.