The Concept "Play" Of Gadamer

Gadamer is one of the greatest philosophers in the 20th century, which book "Truth and Method" set up the status of the philosophical hermeneutics in the last century. He had a very rich and wide horizon and made a series of amazing theories. In the "Truth and Method" and "The Relevance of the Beautiful", he used the phenomenological method and put forward the 'play' theory. According to the work of Truth and Method by Gadamer, "the play theory is the existence of art works."Using the "play" to describe the art began with Plato and Aristotle. Kant explain the creation and appreciation of art in "Critique of Judgement" with the free play between "Intellectuality" and "imagination". Schiller had inherited and developed his theory and pointed out the conflict between the "perceptual impulse" and "rational impulse", which making the division of human nature. According to the "Letters of Aesthetics Education":Beauty is the object of "game impulse".The " game impulse " is considered as reconcile the "perceptual impulse" and "rational impulse" and make up the division of human nature and ultimately integrity humanity. Therefore, the aesthetic education was as a mean of achieving human nature harmony.Gadamer against their theory with the anthropological point of view, and with the phenomenological method to describe the structure of the play and believe that the play itself and art works have the same structure Therefore, he used the play theory to explain art works and then maintain the play theory as the existing way of art works.