Abstract

If one can already speak of the classics of philosophical hermeneutics, Luigi Pareyson belongs obviously together with Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur to these classics. Hence the necessity of confronting his Verita e interpretazione both to Gadamer’s Verstehenshermeneutik and to Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of symbols and texts, putting forward the notion of interpretation. A good starting point for this confrontation consists in considering his early dissertation dedicated to Karl Jaspers and putting his hermeneutics in relation with Jaspers’ monumental logic of philosophy, entitled: Von der Wahrheit. Nietzsche’s metaphor of “encountering the Truth” highlights Pareyson’s attempt of rendering the notions of interpretation and of truth inseparable from each other. What is at stake in this attempt is nothing less than the self-understanding of philosophy itself. Contrary to what suggest some critics of Pareyson, it is not helpful to accuse him of remaining tributary to a metaphysical understanding of truth, for the time has not yet come to proclaim “Addio alla verita” and to claim that “conversation must go on”, regardless of truth.