 Contemporary hermeneutics is largely shaped by Hans-Georg Gadamer’s ‘philosophical hermeneutics.’ Gadamer’s approach is guided by the insight that the success of understanding involves a distinctive experience of truth. Consider, once more, the example of coming to understand something through an interpretation of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, namely, that in politics, prudent reasoning is not always persuasive enough to stem the tide of war. When I come to understand this, so goes Gadamer’s insight, I experience what I understand not simply as a novel or enriching idea. Rather, I experience what I have understood as something that makes a claim to be true. Thus, to understand something means to understand something as true. The chief issue of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics is to clarify that such a hermeneutical experience of truth is not only valid in its own right, but that it is distinct from, and even more original than, the sense of truth at issue in knowledge secured through the norms and methods of modern science. Indeed, it is precisely this concern that Gadamer’s title of his magnum opus is meant to evoke: his philosophical hermeneutics focuses on a hermeneutical experience of truth that cannot be derived from scientific method.