Abstract

Gadamer's concept of fusion of horizon(s) accounts for the dialogical process of coming to shared understandings of the world. It also relates him explicitly to the phenomenological tradition. The paper explores this dialogical process through the concrete case of translations between the Inuktitut and English languages, in relation to sea ice and snow related vocabularies, gathered in the SIKU publication. This approach illuminates the inseparability of language and ontology for Gadamer, since SIKU’s gathering of ice and snow vocabularies and stories of translation shows how the translation process is anchored in horizonal relations to things. This provides concrete empirical material for developing the philosophical thesis that translation is always possible. It also supports an argument against Rorty's and Vattimo's readings of Gadamer's hermeneutics, which brush aside the ontological role of things in their respective pursuits of a pragmatist or historicist ethics of inclusivity. The paper holds that an ethics of linguistic inclusivity is not exclusive of an ontological role of things in language and translation.