This paper posits a reading of "Truth and Method" based on the analysis of the faculty of judgment. This analysis, which could be traced back to Kant, establishes the logical inadequacy of judgment as a proper capaciy to handle rules and criteria, and points, instead, towards capacities of a different kind: “experience”, “mimetic faculty”, or “language-creating capacity”, implied in the handling of concepts –capacities which would explain the formation of concepts themselves. The choice of this perspective clarifies the function of the hermeneutic concept of application in ordinary language, clarifying at the same time several aspects of the gadamerian conception of language. Some problems of this conception, with special regard to its appeal to some basic capacity (experience, mimesis), are pointed out with reference to Wittgenstein’s analysis of rules.