The ‘eminent’ text and its truth In H.-G. Gadamer, Hermeneutics and poetics. Selected works (Trans. from German by Vitalyi Babich). Kyiv: Yunivers [Universe], 2001, pp. 153-163.

Gadamer's goal is to define the concept of an eminent text. To do this, he first defines what is meant by fiction, since the eminence of a text is revealed within its limits. For Gadamer, literature is first and foremost fiction. To classify a work as literature means to recognize certain qualities, including the ability to appeal to values that go beyond purely communicative needs.

It is important to note that a change in the communicative situation does not devalue the truth of the eminent text. Its truth is not based on situationality but on intrinsic value. 

In addition, the eminent text needs to be read, because it is through reading that it acquires its being. Reading is the form of its existence, because it is hermeneutics, and hermeneutics, in turn, is the act of reading. Thus, whenever an eminent text is read, it reveals its highest value, and the reader becomes a hermeneutic of this value. In order to take place as such a hermeneutic, the reader must mobilize appropriate hermeneutic resources.

Oleksandr Lukovyna