From the Horizon in Nietzsche's Notion to the Horizon in Gadamer's Notion to Thinking in Tales of Masnavi

Abstract

Gadamer evaluates Nietzsche's perception of the horizon as it is not possible to go beyond that. In the Masnavi, tales such as “Discrepancies in the Shape of the Cell”, and the story of “Johee, and that Child who Sang a Monody before his Father's Corpse”, are examples of the realization of the horizon in Nietzsche's notion of it. Because in these anecdotes, characters are subdued by their own limited horizons. Gadamer, in contrast to Nietzsche, considers the historical movement of human life to be the fact that human horizons are fluid and open and vary according to different situations and circumstances. Accordingly, Gadamer, in his philosophical hermeneutics, knows the foundation of understanding as the interpreter's horizons and the horizons of the text. The realization of such a concept is objectively observable as an example in the story of Mosa and the Shepherd in Masnavi. At the beginning of the story, Mosa (the symbol of the Tanzieh) and the shepherd (the symbol of the Tashbih) are each on their horizon. But in continue, and with the dialogue between these two horizons, the horizon of the shepherd and the horizon of Mosa, we faced with open horizons and a new hermeneutical situation, which is the fusion of horizons of Tanziah and Tashbih in the Shepherd and Moses.

Keywords

• nietzsche
• gadamer
• closed horizon
• fusion of horizon
• masnavi