This intellectual history and textual analysis of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s famous and obscure theme of the verbum interius, or “inner word,” serves as an indispensable guide to and reference for hermeneutic theory. John Arthos here gives a full exposition and interpretation of the medieval doctrine of the inner word, long one of the most challenging ideas in Gadamer’s Truth and Method. The scholastic idea of a word that is thought but not yet spoken served Augustine as an analogy for the procession of the Trinity, served Aquinas as the medium between divine ideas and human expression, and serves Gadamer as an expression of the embodied nature of human language. Arthos offers a history of the idea of the inner word in ancient and medieval thought, its place in German philosophy, and its significance for probing the deepest implications of hermeneutic understanding. Arthos also provides a close reading of Gadamer’s exegesis of the source texts of the doctrine of the inner word. He cross-references Gadamer’s analyses with the original texts and draws out their Heideggerian and Hegelian overtones. Through this close reading, Arthos deepens our understanding of the radical nature of Gadamer’s thought, which not only calls upon the authority of tradition but also develops some of the profoundest insights of classical and Judaeo-Christian teaching about language

The Inner Word in Gadamer’s Hermeneutics

Politics & Social Sciences

Arthos, John

Philosophy

University of Notre Dame Press

The purpose of this study is to show how the differing philosophical commitments of these three artists help explain differences in the character of their greatness.

Dante, Michelangelo, and Milton.

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Praeger

The Language of Natural Description in Eighteenth-Century Poetry (Routledge Library Editions: 18th Century Literature)

Routledge

Milton and the Italian Cities

Bowes and Bowes

Shakespeare's use of dream and vision

Bowes

Dante, Michelangelo and Milton

Routledge & K.Paul

Rowman and Littlefield

On the Poetry of Spenser and the Form of Romances (Routledge Revivals)

British & Irish

Originally published in 1963, this is a study of the greatness of Dante, Michelangelo and Milton, and of the differences in the power and effect of their work. This book shows how differing philosophical commitments help explain differences in the character of their greatness. The ancient treatise On the Sublime provides the starting point for these studies and in an introductory essay the author examines Longinus' obligations to Platonic and Stoic philosophy. In the essays which relate the critical doctrines of Dante, Michelangelo and Milton to philosophy, he shows how far their thought accords with Longinus' and to what degree they depend upon the same philosophic traditions. The final emphasis, however, is upon the relation of their ideas to the distinctive elements of their greatness.

Dante, Michelangelo and Milton (Routledge Revivals)

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