Davidson’s hermeneutics: language, place, world

This article examines Donald Davidson’s philosophy from a hermeneutic perspective and analyzes its convergences with the thought of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Martin Heidegger. The study takes as its point of departure A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs and Davidson’s controversial claim that there is no such thing as a language, interpreting it not as an isolated thesis concerning linguistic competence, but as the expression of a broader conception of meaning, understanding, and our relation to the world. Through a philosophical, qualitative, hermeneutic, and argumentative approach, the study analyzes Davidson’s writings on language, interpretation, conceptual schemes, objectivity, and triangulation, relating them to central elements of Gadamer’s and Heidegger’s philosophies. The analysis reveals a continuity between Davidson’s rejection of languages understood as determinate systems of rules, his critique of conceptual schemes, and his conception of triangulation. The latter articulates the subjective, intersubjective, and objective dimensions within a relational, dynamic, and situated structure that cannot be reduced to an exclusively epistemological function. It is argued that understanding arises from the interaction among subjects, others, and the world, and that the situated character of thought constitutes a condition for the possibility of knowledge rather than a limitation to be overcome. From this perspective, the proximity between Davidson, Gadamer, and Heidegger makes it possible to reconsider the traditional boundaries between analytic philosophy and hermeneutics. The study concludes that philosophical activity itself can be understood as a form of triangulation through which different perspectives enter into relation and mutually enrich one another.