Truth and Method/II.1.2A From the epistemological problem of history to the hermeneutic foundation of the human sciences

Fusion of Horizons

The concept of horizon fusion or the fusion of horizons is one of the most well-known concepts attributed to Gadamer. Horizon is a metaphor which makes a difficult work a little more relatable. However, is it reducible to the way that understanding something or each other is available to me through conversation? Since others have different perspectives of the same phenomena, it is useful to glean those perspectives to gain a more complete version of the phenomena. This is compellingly intuitive. However, a search for the fusion of horizons concept, or either of these words, 'horizon' or 'fusion', in Truth and Method will struggle to equate it with Nelms' summary (page 2):

For Gadamer, the basic mode of understanding for humans was conversation, whereby a “fusion of horizons” occurred for the conversational partners.

Homely explanation of this understanding of the fusion of horizons can be seen on YouTube. Although the index to the book indicates several pages (317, 350, 382, 406, 415, 600-1), the concept of horizon fusion is treated earlier in the work, for example, page 225.

For the structure of the historical world is not based on facts taken from experience which then acquire a value relation, but rather on the inner historicity that belongs to experience itself. What we call experience (Erfahrung) and acquire through experience is a living historical process; and its paradigm is not the discovery of facts but the peculiar fusion of memory and expectation into a whole. Thus what preshapes the special mode of knowing in the historical sciences is the suffering and instruction that the person who is growing in insight receives from the painful experience of reality. The historical sciences only advance and broaden the thought already implicit in the experience of life.

We see that the concept is more to do with the part that historical consciousness has to play in an individuals' understanding than anything concerning dialogue with others.

Nelms, T. P. (2014). Phenomenological philosophy and research. In M. De Chesnay (Ed.), Nursing research using phenomenology: Qualitative designs and methods in nursing (pp. 1–23). Springer Publishing Company, LLC.