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This paper describes the process of change from classical metaphysics to

epistemology to hermeneutics, and it shows how hermeneutics turned from

an auxilary science to a foundational philosophical discipline. The thesis here

is that it is not possible to free philosophy from metaphysics, because this

process of change - using the phenomenological-existential method - replaces

epistemological and metaphysical questions with anthropological ones; these

questions, however, are similarly bound to the meaningfulness of language

and contain metaphysical claims about the nature of man.