In this paper, I attempt to interpret Gadamer’s critical approach to
Heidegger’s conception of tradition and language of metaphysics. This
interpretation is based on finding the ground of this critique in their different
understandings concerning the problem of the finitude of truth. That problem
signifies the unavailability of the ground of the phenomenality of
phenomena and the impossibility of founding of the ontological truth on the
absolute presence in its immediacy or total mediation. According to a brief
interpretation of the finitude of the event of truth in Heidegger’s later
thought with reference to the basic concept of “facticity”, I attempt to reveal
how Gadamer essentially modifies the Heideggerian central idea of abyss,
i.e. the concealment of event of truth, and its unavailability for metaphysical
concepts, and how he negates the transcending origin of Heidegger’s later
thinking concerning the metaphysics and thereby leads the finitude of truth
back to traditionally metaphysical concepts. It will be illuminated firstly
through Gadamer’s interpretation of facticity as belonging to tradition in his
theory of history of influence with reference to Hegel, i.e. the identification
of truth with “the whole” and understanding of this whole as history;
secondly through the interpretation of the finitude of truth as a permanent
unfinished process of total unification in the dialogue between our
understanding and the historical tradition with reference to the concepts of
“perspective” and “horizon” in Husserl’s phenomenology of perception
