Consequences of Hermeneutics: Fifty Years After Gadamer's Truth and Method
428
Consequences of Hermeneutics: Fifty Years After Gadamer's Truth and Method
428Hardcover
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Overview
These essays examine the achievements of hermeneutics as well as its current status and prospects for the future. Gadamer’s text provides an important focus, but the ambition of these critical reappraisals extends to hermeneutics more broadly and to a range of other thinkers, such as Heidegger, Ricoeur, Derrida, and Rorty. Forcefully demonstrating the continuing relevance and power of hermeneutics, Consequences of Hermeneutics is a fitting tribute to Gadamer and the legacy of his thought.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780810126862 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Northwestern University Press |
| Publication date: | 05/30/2010 |
| Pages: | 428 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d) |
About the Author
SANTIAGO ZABALA is a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of The Remains of Being (2009) and The Hermeneutic Nature of Analytic Philosophy (2004) and editor of Weakening Philosophy (2007) and Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo’s The Future of Religion (2005). His forthcoming book, coauthored with Gianni Vattimo, is Hermeneutic Communism.
Read an Excerpt
CONSEQUENCES OF HERMENEUTICS
Fifty Years After Gadamer's Truth and MethodNorthwestern University Press
Copyright © 2010 Northwestern University PressAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8101-2686-2
Chapter One
Gadamer's Hidden Doctrine: The Simplicity and Humility of PhilosophyJames Risser
In a conversation with Riccardo Dottori conducted around the time of his hundredth year, Hans-Georg Gadamer speaks about many of the issues that over time have shaped his project of a philosophical hermeneutics. Surprisingly, there is little discussion of the specific issues developed in Truth and Method, the book published forty years earlier that established Gadamer once and for all as a philosopher for the twentieth century. Instead, we see once again how Gadamer relies on Greek sources to clarify issues such as the character of hermeneutic finitude, the ethical and the rhetorical dimensions of philosophical hermeneutics, and the nature of philosophy itself as it is practiced through hermeneutics. Of course, the content and the direction of the conversation was dictated by the initial framework for discussion, which was for Gadamer to consider "what remains valid within the philosophical and cultural tradition, or what is still to be salvaged from its highest invention—metaphysics—after the two attempts at dismantling it emanating from Heidegger and analytic philosophy." In this context the opportunity to directly reflect upon the importance of Truth and Method did not present itself, but the ensuing conversation is telling nonetheless. From it we have added confirmation of what we read in other published interviews and in Gadamer's own self- critique published in his collected works: hermeneutics and Greek philosophy always remained the two foci of his work, and, regarding hermeneutics, the problem of understanding in the historical human sciences—a problem that appears to be the overriding concern of Truth and Method—was not in fact his only goal. He always considered the hermeneutical problem of understanding to incorporate broader considerations, most notably the fundamental linguisticality of human beings in which those same Greek sources come to play a significant role in the conceptual formation of this notion.
It is not surprising, then, to read in the self-critique, which was written more than three decades after the appearance of Truth and Method, that Gadamer considered "the dialogues of Plato, even more than the works of the great thinkers of German Idealism," to have a lasting significance in his thinking. Gadamer actually raises the question here of whether his emphasis on the historical human sciences in Truth and Method, which directly connects with the great thinkers of German idealism, is outdated. In response to his own question, he confesses that he was well "aware of the way in which the points of departure in the formation of my thinking were captive to the times," and for this reason he supplements Truth and Method, which appears as volume 1 in his collected works, with a second volume of essays on hermeneutics that carries the same title as volume 1, "Hermeneutics." In a lifetime that spanned more than a century, it should not at all be surprising that the expression of his basic position should not be limited to what was said in his most important book.
But what then are we to say about his philosophical project in a year that marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Truth and Method? In order to not force a separation between his overall project and his magnum opus, as if to make a case for an early and a later Gadamer, let us proceed here with a more directed question. Looking back at this text, what is it that this text attempts to accomplish? The answer to this question would appear to be simple enough: following the work of Heidegger, Gadamer was concerned with continuing to turn hermeneutics into the form of philosophy. This answer is not only simple but (it should be) obvious to any careful reader of Truth and Method. However, as we see from the preface to the second edition of Truth and Method, Gadamer had to insist in response to criticism that he was not attempting to propose a new method for the human sciences, nor was he attempting to provide a theoretical foundation for work in the human sciences. Rather, by following Heidegger he was attempting to embrace "the whole of Dasein's experience of the world." The specific way in which Gadamer captures this experience of the world, and thus to continue to turn hermeneutics into the form of philosophy, is to look within the human sciences to the experiences of philosophy, art, and history as experiences of truth that extend beyond methodological considerations. Ultimately for Gadamer, the issue of a philosophical hermeneutics is to identify at a fundamental level the operation that unites these experiences of truth as experiences of understanding. Expressed from the point of view of the self- critique, this is the issue, not of history as such but of the game of language, which is to say at once the issue of dialogue as the expression of the movement of living language.
In light of specific criticisms of Truth and Method over the years, including the criticism that has come from some of the most thoughtful interpreters of hermeneutics, neither the obviousness of the intention for a philosophical hermeneutics nor, more importantly, the character of the form of philosophy that a philosophical hermeneutics takes can be assumed. Part of the problem here is Gadamer's own doing. One can readily maintain from a reading of Truth and Method that Gadamer wanted to present hermeneutics simply as an issue of the historical human sciences because he inserts his "elements of a theory of hermeneutic experience" in direct relation to this issue. In effect, this placement makes it possible for an interpreter to draw conclusions too soon, that is, without regard for taking into consideration the full import of the analysis of language in part 3 of Truth and Method. Even if an interpreter seriously attends to part 3 of Truth and Method, the interpreter can come away with the impression that Gadamer remains something of a Hegelian, and thus as someone who wants to present a dialectical version of hermeneutics. If one adds to this Gadamer's use of certain terms to describe the operation of understanding, such as the hermeneutic circle, the fusion of horizons, and even dialogue as the form for agreement in understanding, one can readily misunderstand the character of hermeneutics as philosophy that Gadamer presents there.
As a way of engaging with some of the criticisms (including Gadamer's self-critique) and misunderstandings that still surround Gada mer's position in Truth and Method, I want to set his position within three progressive claims.
First Claim
The first claim is that the reformulated version of the hermeneutic circle in Truth and Method, along with its related notions, is not an operation of assimilation and unification but of dialogue. Quite intentionally, this first claim has a very broad sweep in order to capture all at once the entire line of development within the "Elements of a Theory of Hermeneutic Experience" in part 2 of Truth and Method. It is the line of development that is encased in the problem of the historical human sciences and is the focus of much of the criticism and misunderstanding of Gadamer's position. Not surprisingly, this claim is formulated with a view to the general character of the criticism and misunderstanding, and a defense of this claim, for the purposes of this essay, which has a broader question in view, requires only that we sketch the line of development to highlight the appropriate considerations.
Starting from the problem of understanding in the historical human sciences, Gadamer points out that Dilthey inappropriately narrowed the horizon to which the phenomenon of understanding belongs. As a certain form of the relation between life and its intelligibility, it is not, Gadamer argues, structured as a relation between knower and known, as if the object of understanding is something present at hand. Following Heidegger's earlier advance, Gadamer claims that both the knower and the known have the mode of being of historicity as the mode of being of being-in-historical-life. This means in relation to the study of history that it will always be studied "under the condition of expectancy and its forgetting." This condition is at once a relatedness in which we belong to history such that belonging is the condition for an original interest and for a logic of anticipation: an initial meaning of a (historical) text emerges because the (historical) text is read with a particular expectation in view. The initial meaning then undergoes a testing, since it stands in relation to an alterity that is to stand on its own. From such testing a revising of the expectation occurs, and as the process continues new projections of meaning arise. This process of ongoing new projections, this logic of anticipation, is the non- methodological movement of understanding and interpretation.
Gadamer then explicitly thematizes the belonging to history as being in a tradition (Uberlieferung), which is to be understood as just that and nothing more. That is to say, tradition names the way in which we are the bearers of history in the reading of history, and the interpretation of a (historical) text as a traditionary "object" amounts to a coming into appearance of a having-been. Tradition is not the accumulated past which has the character of the present-at-hand, but is simply a carrying over as the transmission of meaning. Accordingly, understanding tradition is not grasping again what we already know, as if the knower simply repeats forward the past as explicitly determined in advance, but is simply the actualizing of historical occurrence. To quote a frequently cited passage in Truth and Method: "Understanding is to be thought of less as a subjective act than as participating in an event of tradition, a process of transmission in which past and present are constantly mediated." In this context, Gadamer is now prepared to reformulate the hermeneutic circle as one that is neither subjective nor objective but one in which there is "an interplay of the movement of tradition and the movement of the interpreter."
The whole enterprise of hermeneutic understanding in Truth and Method and beyond rests on the character of this mediation. Already in the reformulation of the hermeneutic circle we have a first formulation of this mediation. The hermeneutic mediation is a matter not of a Schleiermachean relation between part and whole—a misleading notion that one can easily read from the text—but of the interplay between tradition and its interpretation. Gadamer then proceeds to describe this interplay with respect to historical life in greater detail, so that as a second determination the mediation is the "efficacy of history within understanding itself," that is, the mediation is at once a historically effected event. This means, to say the least, that the situation of understanding is always conditioned by the effects of history such that what is understood is never unveiled as a being-in-itself, but remains in its otherness. Understanding as a historically effected event is the medial knowing which prescribes and limits "every possibility for understanding any tradition whatsoever in its historical alterity." In this context, it is not so surprising to read in a later essay of Gadamer's that he considered the notion of historically effected event to be somewhat analogous to Derrida's notion of différance insofar as it attempts to emphasize the temporality of being in which there is a condition of impossibility.
But the radicality of Gadamer's position in which the actualization of historical meaning always appears as a different meaning is often lost in the further elaboration of this notion in the idea of the fusion of horizons. It is really here that the character of hermeneutic mediation, and with it the form of philosophy that hermeneutics takes, is most often misunderstood. Part of the difficulty of properly understanding this notion is caused by the word "fusion" (Verschmelzung). It suggests a simple joining, as if joining the old with the present, such that what is two becomes one. And in relation to such a suggestion, Gadamer has been interpreted as saying that it "establishes tradition itself as an excessively homogeneous whole, which is capable of dissolving all differences and preserving itself as such through every kind of alterity." But Gadamer himself would insist, as we have just indicated with respect to the principle of effective history, that tradition is not a homogeneous whole and does not dissolve all differences. Here one needs to carefully distinguish between the actualizing of historical occurrence as an actualizing of difference—tradition is always understood in a new and different way—and the act of understanding itself in which there is an element of self-understanding—what is other is taken hold of in terms of the situation in which the interpreter stands. But even with respect to the latter, the stand of the interpreter cannot be understood as a self-identical stand that effaces all difference. Here one must be careful not to presume that what Gadamer presents as the fusion of horizons is structurally identical to the Hegelian monological self-unfolding of spirit, where in the encounter with otherness there is an overcoming of such otherness in the return to itself, a point I will return to in the next section.
So while it is undoubtedly the case that there is a configuration of unity in play in the fusion of horizons, it is not entirely clear, certainly when considered from the perspective of the entire line of development, that such a unity must necessarily dissolve all difference. In what way, though, the unity is to be properly understood remains to be seen. Presumably, in following the line of development into the notion of application, we move a step closer to the proper character of the con- figuration of unity. Gadamer now claims that the fusion of horizons is carried out in applying the text to the interpreter's present situation, and any such application will produce an understanding of the text in a new and different way. But Gadamer's support for this claim using Aristotle's concept of phronesis as a model is not yet sufficient to give us the intended result. The concept of phronesis, he tells us, addresses the heart of the hermeneutical problem "that one and the same tradition must time and again be understood in a different way, [and this] problem, logically speaking, concerns the relation between the general and the particular." One could interpret Gadamer to be saying here that what is self- same (tradition) can have a plurality of expressions (the difference that a particular makes), but this interpretation ignores the interplay between the general and the particular. More to the point, at least in its intention, the model of phronesis is to express the way in which the traditionary text, as the general, is understood as a performed effect (Wirkung) in relation to a mediation that in this context involves the general and the particular. What remains undoubtedly the case at this point in the line of development is that the configuration of unity is to be determined by the precise character of the mediation.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Consequences of Hermeneutics Jeff Malpas Santiago Zabala xi
Part I Origins, Elements, and Traditions
1 Gadamer's Hidden Doctrine: The Simplicity and Humility of Philosophy James Risser 5
2 Truth, Method, and Transcendence Nicholas Davey 25
3 Gadamer's Platonism: His Recovery of Mimesis and Anamnesis Robert J. Dostal 45
4 The Tradition of Tradition in Philosophical Hermeneutics Robert T. Valgenti 66
5 Inside and Outside Hermeneutics: Contributions Toward a Reconstructive Reason Alberto Martinengo 81
6 The Hermeneutics of Everydayness: On the Legacy and Radicality of Heidegger's Phenomenology William McNeill 98
7 Two Contrasting Heideggerian Elements in Gadamer's Philosophical Hermeneutics Richard E. Palmer 121
8 In the Nets of Tradition: A Hermeneutic Analysis Concerning the Historicity of Human Cognition Hans-Helmuth Gander 132
Part II Conversation, Understanding, and Language
9 Gadamer and Rorty: From Interpretation to Conversation C. G. Prado 147
10 Being Is Conversation: Remains, Weak Thought, and Hermeneutics Santiago Zabala 161
11 "Being Able to Love and Having to Die" Gadamer Rilke Christoph Jamme 177
12 Nihilistic or Metaphysical Consequences of Hermeneutics? Jean Grondin 190
13 Critique: The Heart of Philosophical Hermeneutics Lawrence K. Schmidt 202
14 "Thus Spoke Zarathustra," or Nietzsche and Hermeneutics in Gadamer, Lyotard, and Vattimo Babette Babich 218
15 The Condition of Hermeneutics: The Implicative Structure of Understanding Gaetano Chiurazzi 244
Part III Practice, Politics, and Ethics
16 The Origin of Understanding: Event, Place, Truth Jeff Malpas 261
17 The Political Outcome of Hermeneutics: To Politics Through Art and Religion Gianni Vattimo 281
18 What Is the Ethics of Interpretation? Pol Vandevelde 288
19 Political Hermeneutics, or Why Schmitt Is Not the Enemy of Gadamer Michael Marder 306
20 Sex, Gender, and Hermeneutics Georgia Warnke 324
21 Being as Dialogue, or The Ethical Consequences of Interpretation Hans-Herbert Kögler 343
Bibliography 369
Index 391
Contributors 407