The Dialectic of Familiarity and Strangeness in Event of Understanding

The dialectic of familiarity and strangeness was introduced by Romantic hermeneuticians who aimed to depict the process of understanding by elaborating components of it. Schleiermacher referenced familiarity and strangeness to language and its functions in grammatical interpretation. However, in technical or psychological interpretation his approaches are a kind of metaphysics of individuality and he mentions it as the base of strangeness. He believes this strangeness can be overcome by approaching the author’s mind, then the text can be understood from his point of view, an approach that takes place based on intuition. Therefore divination is the element of familiarity. But Gadamer, who on one hand is not satisfied with his psychological account and considers understanding necessity to require familiarity and strangeness, on the other hand, regards temporal distance and hermeneutic horizon as the elements of strangeness and tradition as the element of familiarity. He considers that understanding is realized only thorough dialectical process in the base of the dialectics of familiarity and strangeness.