Late in his life, Hans-Georg Gadamer was asked to explain what the universal aspect of hermeneutics consisted in, and he replied, enigmatically, “in theverbum interius.” Gadamer devoted a pivotal section of his magnum opus,Truth and Method, to this Augustinian concept, and subsequently pointed to it as a kind of passkey to his thought. It remains, however, both in its origins and its interpretations, a mysterious concept. From out of its layered history, it remains a provocation to thought, expressing something about the relation of language and understanding that has yet to be fully worked out.
The scholastic idea of a word that is fully formed in the mind but not articulated served Augustine as an analogy for the procession of the Trinity, and served Thomas Aquinas as an analogy for the procession between divine ideas and human thought. Gadamer turned the analogy on its head by using the verbum interius to explain the obscure relation between language and human understanding. His learned interpretation of the idea of the inner word through Neoplatonism, Lutheranism, idealism, and historicism may seem nearly as complex as the medieval source texts he consulted and construed in his exegesis, but the profoundity of his insights are unquestioned.
In unpacking Gadamer's interpretive feat, John Arthos provides an overview of the philosophy of the logos out of which theverbum interiusemerged. He summarizes the development of theverbumin ancient and medieval doctrine, traces its path through German thought, and explains its relevance to modern hermeneutic theory. His work unfolds in two parts, as an expansive intellectual history and as a close analysis and commentary on source texts on the inner word, from Augustine to Gadamer. As such, this book serves as an indispensable guide and reference for hermeneutics and the intellectual traditions out of which it arose, as well as an originlC(
![The Inner Word in Gadamer's Hermeneutics [Hardcover]](/itemImage/2/3/8/9/2_1492996.jpg "The Inner Word in Gadamer's Hermeneutics [Hardcover] xxx")