TRUTH
OVER METHOD : ART MATTERS
Thèse présentée
à la Faculté des études supérieures de l'Université Laval dans le cadre du programme de doctorat en philosophie pour l'obtention du grade de Philosophiae Doctor (Ph.D.)
FACULTÉ DE PHILOSOPHIE UNIVERSITÉ LAVAL
QUÉBEC
2007
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract 2 Résumé 3 Acknowledgements 4
Introduction 5 Chapter I: The Problem of "Forgetfulness of Being" and Striving for Truth 14
Chapter II: On the Way to Gadamer's Method 25 Chapter III: Is Understanding Possible? 36
a) Scientific Objectivity 36
b) History 53 c) The Notion of Becoming in Hermeneutical Enquiry 64
Chapter IV: Résonance Beyond Historicality 70 Chapter V: The Préjudice of the Enlightenment 81
Chapter VI: Bildung 94 Chapter VII: Unity in the Multifaceted Dialectic of Reason 113
a) Bildung as an Attitude of Mind 113
b) Between Individuals 123 c) Gadamer and the Absence of System 126
d) Légal Hermeneutics in Gadamer 146 e) Gadamer's Methodology: An Antithesis 148
Chapter VIII: Considering Metaphysical Définitions 154
Chapter IX: The Nature of Being/Knowledge 175 Chapter X: Gadamer and the Idea of the University 180 Chapter XI: Aesthetics and Hermeneutics in the Context oîBildung 187
Conclusion 221 Bibliography 270
Abstract
Gadamer takes the expérience of art as his epistemological clue to uncover the ontological ground of the human sciences, so they need not ininiic the natural sciences. Art is for him exemplary in going beyond the methodical application of gênerai laws and taking seriously the particular case at hand, unafraid of exploring the play of truth and the truth of play. Gadamer's hermeneutic project entails active listening in a dialogue where understanding is an event, and thus cannot be forced by fitting the other, the text or the artwork into a pre-established framework. Such an attempt, perhaps implicit in Greek metaphysics, is évident in the Western pattern of technological domination through objectification of phenomena. This is what Gadamer seeks to counter by recovering humanist Bildung as a cultivated consciousness encompassing ail directions at once in a praxis of empathy, thereby unseating the methodological privilège of theory to allow for a lived expérience of the event of truth.
Résumé
Gadamer prend l'expérience de l'art comme indice épistémologique pour l'élucidation du fondement ontologique propre des sciences humaines, en vertu duquel celles-ci n'ont pas à imiter les sciences naturelles. L'art lui en fournit le modèle, en ce qu'il ne s'arrête pas à l'application méthodique de lois générales et prend au sérieux chaque cas particulier, ne craignant pas d'explorer le jeu de la vérité et la vérité du jeu. Son projet herméneutique fait appel à une écoute active, en un dialogue où la compréhension est un événement qui survient librement, et non en faisant entrer de force dans un cadre pré-établi l'autre, le texte ou l'oeuvre d'art. Une telle tentative, en germe dans la métaphysique grecque, a livré ses fruits amers dans la posture occidentale de domination technologique par objectivation des phénomènes. Gadamer cherche à la contrer en ayant recours aux ressources de la
Bildung humaniste comme conscience cultivée s'etendant dans toutes les directions à
la fois en une praxis à base d'empathie, détrônant par là le privilège méthodologique de la théorie pour lui substituer l'expérience de la vérité comme événement de vie.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Rev. Dr. Raymond Macken, médiéval scholar and specialist of Henry of Ghent, my dearest friend and patron of my art and
philosophical enterprise throughout my graduate studies at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Université de Sherbrooke and Université Laval. Without his patronage, this thesis could not hâve seen the light of day.
No less do I feel grateful to my friend Dr. Christian Roy, intellectual historian, for steadily lending a hand with technical and practical matters I encountered in writing this thesis.
I cannot fail to mention what I gained through my dialogue with Dean Luc Langlois during the oral examination and at other moments, nor how Professor Marie-Andrée Ricard helped me refine my discussion of the important matter of art in Gadamer and Plato. Even more important of course is the incalculable support and inspiration I drew from my thesis director, Professor Thomas De Koninck.
I should also mention my parents, who hâve always encouraged me to pursue my educational goals and hâve made sacrifices at ail times to see that I attain
satisfaction in my pursuit of social work, art and philosophy.
Last but not least, this thesis is the product of an on-going dialogue of two décades with the author of Truth and Method, including in person over the last half-dozen years of his long life. Hans-Georg Gadamer has richly and generously
mentored my work as a friend and as an excellent educator, who cherished my input in art and philosophy. My greatest gratitude to Professor Gadamer will remain for the rest of my philosophical career, and indeed for my entire life.
Introduction
In an ever-evolving global consciousness where there is de facto cultural levelling and scant assurance through dogma, ideas and représentations concern us less than what is helpful for jurisprudence or case work in social work practice. Hermeneutics is just that: case work. It takes the particular case seriously as such and not as an instance of a gênerai rule to be methodically applied. The phenomenon of understanding is not a matter of method. In fact, we see in the practice of social work or in art that method prevents disclosure of truth. Method suppresses truth. The fact is that truth is prelinguistic, and yet it has to be given language on one hand, while on the other hand, to locate the primordial, one has to strive to speak. There is a curious relation between language and thought. Hermeneutics concerns itself with total human expérience and in this striving to give language to the minute détails and inescapable contingency of human existence. Everyone across cultures seeks to be understood. Even Derrida wants to be understood ,Gadamer says. Yet by and large philosophy does not address the most important problem, i.e. to understand this particular individual or this text or this philosopher. Scientific models resist paying attention to uniqueness or différence. Human sciences attempt to go beyond method to understand truths that are not verifiable by any method. Thèse are truths that are felt and understood in an empathetic relation with the other without treating the other as an object. Relationship between subject and object is not ail that clear. Domination can alter perception and understanding. Only a profound investigation can legitimise thèse complex truths that are not given due legitimacy in the scientific model. Gadamer's
hermeneutics is a hermeneutics of human compassion and he never falls short of thorough exploration into the whole problem of understanding in Western philosophy noting that the West has already enriched itself by learning from India wisdom —philosophical and religious. This for him rules out therefore the whole talk about the ethnocentric other. He sees western metaphysics as a good place to start his investigations. In order to prevent misunderstandings between cultures he strongly proposes we look at artworks. Art expérience for him is the mentor which clearly shows us there is more to truth than our scientific method of seeing allows. We engage with Gadamer's magnum opus Truth and Method while tracing his thought in relation to Greek and German thought. Gadamer as he himself says he stands outside Greek idealism as well as German Idealism. Our study in hermeneutics makes artworks central to render visibility to the problem of understanding. It is not a study of ideas and représentations. On the contrary, we engage with artworks in their singularity and historically, with images and relevant texts and in turn, with problems of interprétation to the fullest extent. Our thesis is not confined to any method. Rather it is itself a method of philosophising. We hope this will facilitate professionals from various other disciplines and even non académies to engage with this thesis to be informed of the insights it discloses when one truly sees how this thesis connects with total human expérience.
Fred Lawrence writes in The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer an insightful essay which gives us a good handle on Heidegger's and Gadamer's work. He informs us that Heidegger and Gadamer hâve theological roots: "The twentieth century's hermeneutic révolution marks the third great turning point in the development of hermeneutics in Western culture. Its founders were the theologian
Karl Barth and the philosopher Martin Heidegger. In his fundamental book Truth
and Method, Gadamer acknowledges that Martin Heidegger is the fons et origo of
this turning point in hermeneutics." Heidegger's Being and Time (1927) was devoted to fundamental ontology. Heidegger disregards Kant's notion that critical philosophy is to be preferred over the "precritical science of being." Heidegger was concerned with ontology due to his early Catholic provenance.
According to Lawrence, Heidegger had studied Brentano, with whom he had gone into the subject of being according to Aristotle. We draw from Heidegger and Gadamer mainly in our work, as we are also concerned with thèse issues of attempting to establish a way of life with Bildung, apart from Catholicism and on human grounds independent of any dogmatic framework or empty generality. Like Heidegger we are concerned with the burden of Being beyond beings and how this ontological understanding could be sought to find some middle ground between excess and defect. Where does one go apart from relationships, one's interprétation of Scriptura (Word of God) to find a window to hâve a sensé of the whole and a feeling that one has a grasp of truth about being and our rightful place and to perform one's duty towards oneself and the other in the "praxis of love." Prior to the Enlightenment, hermeneutics was rooted1 in liturgical practice and in the Christian "praxis of love." It was a hermeneutics of consent. This turning point had come after Augustine of Hippo's De Doctrina Christiana had been established along with the dogmatic creeds of the ecumenical councils. The second turning point brought Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise, which, as Lawrence writes, yielded
1 See Robert J. Dostal, éd., The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 167.
way in the nineteenth century to a hermeneutics of suspicion in Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. "From the nineteenth century onwards it is this that has dominated historical method and the critical retrieval of historical texts, church history, and the history of dogma independently of the auspices of ecclesiastical authority."2
Gadamer's attempt is to heal the subject-object split and the problem of bridging that was brought about with the presuppositions of Enlightenment epistemology. According to Lawrence, Kant tried to locate the limits of reason in order to make room for faith or to dispose of faith without reason. He also provided the underpinnings for classical Protestant doctrines such as the relation of church to state. This leads us to the Kulturprotestantismus against which Karl Barth protested on the eve of World War I.
Both Martin Heidegger and Karl Barth attempted to compile hermeneutics of consent and of dissent (suspicion). Husserl took ail this to the subject matter -the things -themselves (die Sachen selbst). Husserl felt dissatisfied with beginning with the 'roof instead of with the reality at hand. He moved away from académie psychologism and Kantian théories of abstraction. Hère then we are closer to home. Heidegger picks up on this concern for showing things through experiencing them. Barth and Heidegger believed that "our concrète solution to the problem of living is intégral to our interprétation of any classical text," engaging with the text personally and as a community (which is Gadamer's point, as we shall see later regarding forming a scholarly solidarity in seeking questions and living thèse questions), asking practical and political questions about how we should live so that
we can focus on what we care about most, and not on wasting time on gossip about "them" et cetera, as Heidegger writes later in Being and Time.
Gadamer's Truth and Method is a scholarly debate with questions of understanding and ways to reach truth through art. It is not too différent from what Heidegger discovers as art's being the vehicle for truth and the strife of this earth with the world. To return to one's origin, to find one's bearings in the hère and now is to be called to look at artworks, both by Heidegger and by Gadamer. For Heidegger, the origin of the artwork is the artist, her way of life, her way of being; and for Gadamer, the artist is the messiah. The artist is not into knowing over understanding. The artist lives away from the community to bring back to the community insights that show to the viewer signs through which he or she can locate the unrepresented représentations. "I am That." The idea is that invoked in Truth
and Method as the basis for presenting one main point, namely, that truth lies ever before us. It is invoked the moment we pay attention to it, which is always there.
Method involves simply paying attention. Experiencing the truth in art is an event of truth. It requires listening and speaking with an intention to explain and understand what is being said or shown. One can only start from where one is. This might mean whatever one is already familiar with. This, Gadamer would say, involves one's préjudice, whether legitimate or illegitimate. It involves one's own historical background and one's own way of applying one's historical background.
Gadamer's understanding of tradition is not simplistic, rosy, and positive. On the contrary, "it is the memory of deceptive expériences stored by our humanity."3
3 Grondin in Sources of Hermeneutics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 120-121. Grondin encapsulâtes Gadamer's insight beautifully in this paragraph.
As Grondin says, this aspect of Gadamer's humanism needs to be stressed against those who accuse Gadamer of nursing a continuous, harmonious and rosy understanding of tradition. Tradition is not a golden chain that bears witness to the rationahty of history. Rather, as Hegel's Phenomenology taught, it is the memory of the deceptive expériences stored by our humanity. As a matter of fact, we do not learn something through positive expériences because they only confirai what we already know. Hermeneutic insight only sinks in when we hâve been contradicted by events which force us to change or adjust our perspectives.4
Gadamer is genuinely interested in a dialogue between mortals. A dialogue that opens us to a plurahty of opinions, not so we can construct foundations for thinking or dismantle those that already exist; but so that, as in the case of art, we can engage in a fair play in language where philology and philosophy confront and intersect and allow truth to émerge. This is rather Heraclitean wisdom, as I see it: "To seek that which is wise ... the real itself."5 Heraclitus also said that we must not act and speak like children of (our) parents. The phrase "children of our parents" in Ionic Greek is very likely drawn from Heraclitus himself. If Marcus Aurelius is right, Heraclitus, according to Robinson, may hâve been attacking what he saw as a gênerai tendency to take things on the say of "various authorities," such as parents,
Grondin nui kes an important distinction between Heidegger's approach and that of Gadamer to give us a clearer picture on this issue. For Heidegger there has to be "résistance" against humanism. He wants to start from the ultimate foundations, destroy Western metaphysics and bring mortals doser to Being so they may be able to converse with the gods, if they wish to grasp the things themselves. Gadamer on the other hand wishes to rehabilitate the humanistic tradition by replacing scientific modelling by Bildung. In this spirit of a metaphysics of finitude, we corne to accept the "plurahty of views that live within us and inevitability of imperfect understanding which leaves us in a dialogical hémisphère with each other. It is curious that we hâve hère an either/or opposition of the dialogue between mortals and gods and that between mortals and mortals. Let us ponder this point while we read this work till the end.
5 See Heraclites, Fragments. A Text and Translation with a Commentary by T. M. Robinson. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 74, and Commentary on page 129.
rather than on the say-so (logos) of the only authority that counts, i.e. of "that which is wise, the real itself." However, this is a spéculation on our part to link Gadamer's stance on understanding a tradition to Heraclitus. Robinson warns us that it should remain spéculative what Heraclitus meant, as we are unaware of the original context in which Heraclitus said it. We are at ieast aware in which context Grondin spéculâtes. Our contention is that Gadamer's unspoken concern is that the human person, that which makes each person distinctly différent and interesting, like each art work, should not be written off in an epistemologicai drive which seeks to control, regulate and eventually theorize to the extent that the wonder of discovery of the particular event of understanding disappears and we are left with concepts in place of the aconceptual real. No wonder Gadamer seeks method in art and not in hermeneutics.
Art has no universalizing method that overwrites its uniqueness and discovery. This, for Gadamer, is true knowing, not aestheticizing, not conceptualizing, but moving courageously towards discovering the unknown. The unknown émerges as we listen with and beyond tradition. There is more being in consciousness than we realize.
More Truth = More Being
Shifting the centre from the epistemologicai " I " of Descartes to the hermeneutic " I " of Gadamer gives us the paradigm shift we are looking for to include the "other" in the " I " as opposed to excluding the "you". It is a moral act to include the "you" in the "I". Language is public. It is not a solipsistic sign. Every
word, like the artwork, is public and is subject to a dialogical event. The "You" is the space of the unknown that émerges in the dialogical event. It discourages egotism and invites intelligence that leads to social bonding. Knowledge can never be possessed by any one person. It has to be lived and shared with an openness and sweet amicability. It is in the act of transcription we discover its hidden meaning. Language binds one to the other through understanding shared words one way or another. This seems to escape us at times when we engage in an intellectual spéculative exercise in philosophy. It cornes out very clearly in the last words of Gadamer's magnum opus Truth and Method. For Gadamer, the discussion or defence of one's writings is not an adversarial exercise. The given assumption is that no one understands everything at any moment. The whole is not frozen solid; it is fluid. Disagreements are not to be taken as a hostile event; rather, they occur when something contains something unknown to the reader or listener, and they promote understanding when clarified. That is the whole reason for the exercise of writing and the event known as "defence" in universities. We may note the last sentence of Gadamer's magnum opus Truth and Method:
Language is the single word whose virtuality opens up to infinity of discourse, of discourse with others, and of the freedom of 'speaking oneself and of 'allowing oneself to be spoken'. Language is not its elaborate conventionalism, nor the burden of preschematisation with which it loads us, but the generative and créative power unceasingly to make this whole fluid.6
6 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Garret Barden and John Cumming (New York: Crossroad, 1975), 498.
We shall see later how Gadamer indeed is conscious of this fact about the fluidity of language on one hand and on the other hand is worried that this point is missed by those who do not look at language sufficiently to see that without understanding how language relates to thought and understanding, one is speaking nonsense. We are applying words after ail. As he says, we hâve to realise that language is a single word that then is followed by other words. It is not a pack that is locked and has to be unlocked before we begin to express ourselves. What he means is that philosophers very often are frigid with their vocabulary and are caught in jargon and they treat language as another concept. The idea underpinning this is that we ought to move in trust and love and speak spontaneously with one another; then understanding will happen. Hiding behind frameworks and procédures will not facilitate dialogue, it will only lead to closures. He therefore challenges himself to meet the fluidity of art in his hermeneutics. His rhetorical way of speaking makes inroads into insights that are rather aconceptual. He brings concept to word. This requires the will to strive for truth and hospitality to communicate one's inner thoughts to another. Language is not a ready made formula to follow. We hâve to strive to get behind grammar to state what is going on in ordinary language. We hâve avoided académie jargon as much as possible and tried to say things simply in ordinary language, following this sound principle which both Wittgenstein and Gadamer knew well. One can only say things simply, in a way which every one understands, if one has understood first what one is speaking about. It is much easier to repeat jargon and prétend one has understood what one is talking about. Obviously then an openness to a gestalt event of truthful speaking is to be preferred If we are gathered together to hâve to genuine understanding. Commitment to truth
would demand that one focuses on the subject one is without descending to how popular one's findings will be with others. Gadamer often told his students this fact.
Chapter I: The Problem of "Forgetfulness of Being" and Striving for Truth
Heidegger's Being and Time (1927) was ail about fundamental ontology. Heidegger went against the neo-Kantian methods of subject-object split, which, although critical, laid far too much emphasis on cognition. Heidegger had written his doctoral dissertation on psychologism's doctrine of judgement in 1914. He was influenced by the neo-Kantians. Herman Lotze's notion of logical validity as separate from the problem of existence had been his overriding argument in this work. "The transcendental catégories [the true, the good and the one] constitute the meaning of objectivity," Lawrence reminds us in The Cambridge Companion. Thèse are, of course, the traditional catégories reviewed in Kantian philosophy of consciousness. Scotist metaphysics and neo-Kantian epistemologies leave a gap for the phenomenology of a judging subject, as Fred Lawrence clarifies. With the help of Emil Lask, Heidegger discovered a link between validity of judgement, the Being of beings, and the meaning of being. This is where Heidegger finds his way to go beyond the transcendental logic to the validity of the judging subject through Husserl's notion of intentionality. Having gotten hère, Heidegger struggled to break free from Roman Catholic scholastic philosophy in 1919. He wrote to Fr. Krebs on September 1919: "Epistemological insights encroaching upon the theory of historical knowledge hâve made the System of Catholicism problematic and unacceptable to me ...but not Christianity and metaphysics (though the latter in a
new sensé)." Heidegger withdrew from Husserl's propaedeutic to philosophy, i.e. what he came to see as a scientistic delusion, and from the neo-Kantian epistemological stance. He proceeded to establish his work in philosophy facing the anxiety of everydayness and a concern for oneself. Hère came the clear turn towards the facticity of life (factisches Leben): "the full, concrète, historical, factical
\factische] self, accessible to one's own historically concrète expérience." The
'hidden king' of philosophy was hailed throughout Germany for redetermining the foundation of philosophy. It is precisely this "radical existential grasp and the précipitation in time of questionability; to cal! oneself and one's life and one's décisive performances into question is the basic concept of every and even of the most radical illumination."8 In his maturity Heidegger claimed that after he had recovered primitive Christianity ... he found a deepened sensé of the unmanipulable momentousness of grâce that "arrives like a thief in the night" (1 Thessalonians 5:2). Heidegger declared later that he was driven by the word of Holy Scripture and theological spéculative thought in his own thinking.9
Gadamer has answered this call to see how life could corne to supersede the condition that Heidegger has described as "forgetfulness of Being". Having been engaged with Dilthey's life philosophy as it pertained to historical understanding, he then sought his own way to the latter. For Dilthey, "life is neither wholly subject nor wholly object, but encompasses both. Because it must be sought in the interaction between self and milieu, it is revealed to us in mouds." Gadamer would
7 See Lawrence, "Gadamer, the Hermeneutical Révolution, and Theology," in Robert J. Dostal, éd.,
The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 171.
8Id. 9Id.
add that, in order to understand ourselves, we need a language that would invoke not an epistemic process with abstract propositions, but a dialogue of questions and answers that hâve meaning for us right hère and now. Be it to engage in pedagogy or simply to live, we need to understand how this process works better through dialogue than through subject-object relations in abstract propositions. Speaking to someone and letting someone speak to you is not as simple as it might seem in this "âge of reason". Gadamer answers to this call and condition in his key text Truth
and Method. Although he has written directly on éducation, his Truth and Method
remains a fundamental text to read in order to appreciate his concern with method as it relates to truth. Following Heidegger, Gadamer opts to carry the burden of Being, to understand with due sensitivity the other and himself not by suppressing truth but with phrônesis and a hermeneutical stance.
That is to say, there is a prelinguistic arche that strives to find a word. The exercise of this inner striving, looking for the inner word and placing it in order to communicate to the other its contextual meaning, is part of the project of understanding. To understand a text we hâve to hold a zealous inner dialogue with it and let it speak to us. It is with Augustine that we are led back to the fundamental différence between the actus signatus, the predicative statement, and its complet ion after the fact, in the actus exercitus. Gadamer calls the latter an incantation, following Heidegger's account, which he learned at Freiburg and Marburg.
Having understood to my présent satisfaction Truth and Method with the help of secondary sources, repeated readings of the text after intervais of digesting it, and discussing thèse with several thinkers, I hope to convey directly what Gadamer intends in his work. Gadamer does not speak explicitly about what is truth for him
or what his 'method' is. Consequently, I hâve applied an intuitive 'Gadamerian' methodology, consisting in preparing my soûl as it were for the philosophical question that I share with Gadamer with equal zeal, i.e. what is understanding? Is it possible to reach understanding? I hâve simplified Gadamer's text in a manner that speaks to me directly, into a form that I hope to be revelatory.
Gadamer's text is most misunderstood in relation to what he means by Truth
and Method. Gadamer does not believe that truth is anything solid, nor does he
think that there is any spécifie method to arrive at truth. Truth is something that appears and disappears on horizons which in turn fuse with other horizons, historical, social, past, and présent. How historical consciousness is affected by the présent horizon; how the application of this understanding is the problematic that concerns ail understanding, whether in philosophy or the human sciences, is the central problem of hermeneutics. For Gadamer then it is impossible for us to be neutral, devoid of hope and fear when reading a text or when reading our past unless we take time to assimilate the data. Regurgitating the text or refusing to see the past in a new light is missing the mark. Gadamer suggests that we focus more on Bildung (self-formation) and phronësis1 (application of the uni versai to a
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 11. Bildung is intimately associated with the idea of culture and désignâtes the properly human way of developing one's natural talents and capacities. Gadamer daims that Kant does not use the word iBildung, when speaking about Bildung: "He speaks of the
'culture of a capacity which as such is an act of human freedom by the acting subject.'" Hegel speaks of Schleiermacher and Bildung when he takes up the same Kantian idea of duties toward oneself. Humboldt distinguishes Kultur and Bildung: "By Bildung we mean something both higher and more inward, namely the attitude of mind which, from the knowledge and the feeling of total intellectual and moral endeavor flows harmoniously into sensibility and character." Bildung hère, Gadamer explains, cornes from ancient mystical traditions according to which man carries in himself the soûl of God, while knowing that the inner state is always becoming, not simply in Being.
Gadamer writes, "Bildung is not achieved in the manner of technical construction, but grows out of the inner process of formation and cultivation and therefore remains in a constant state of further continued Bildung [...] Bildung as such cannot be a goal [...] except in the reflective thematic of the educator."
particular; practical knowledge directed towards the concrète situation), and take into account our moral intuitions. Thèse concepts hâve been described by Gadamer in Truth and Method in great détail. I shall of course discuss thèse at considérable length in this thesis since they are of central concern both to him and to us as the singular major paradigm for éducation. "The heart of the hermeneutic problem is that the same tradition must always be understood in a différent way, the problem, logically speaking, is that of the relationship of something universal to a particular situation." Understanding is, then, a particular case of the application of something universal to a particular situation. This makes Aristotelian ethics to be of spécial importance to us. "It is true that Aristotle is not concerned with the hermeneutical problem and certainly not with its historical dimension, but with the right estimation of the rôle that reason has to play in moral action. But precisely what is of interest to us hère is that he is concerned with reason and with knowledge not detached from a being which is in the process of becoming, but determined by and determinative of this being. Criticising the Platonic idea of the Good as an empty generality, he asks instead the question of the human good; what is good in terms of human action."1
We see then how Gadamer shows us the relevance of Aristotle as opposed to Plato and Socrates, who go wrong, according to Aristotle, in equating virtue with knowledge (idea of the universal good). As far as Gadamer is concerned Aristotle
11 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 21. Gadamer's second préoccupation, phronësis, which he says Vico dérives from Plato's rhetorical tradition, is what défends the sciences' new concept of truth -defending the right of the probable -but this also goes beyond the rhetorical tradition. "The old Aristotelian distinction between practical and theoretical knowledge is operative hère - a distinction that cannot be reduced to what is true and probable. Practical knowledge,phronësis, is [...] directed towards the concrète situation."
has the foundation for realistic understanding by seeing that there is a struggle or 'striving' for moral knowledge. Therefore, to give an absolute or monological account on an impulse, taking universal understanding for granted, would be a mis direction. Dialectic reasoning with the give and take of language, and allowing ourselves to be open to the 'other', is what promûtes understanding in the human sciences, philosophy, and life. The theory of Bildung applies to the human sciences as it applies to philosophy. This, however, the human sciences are oblivious to. Another important insight to take note of as it is related to the activity of the understanding of the foundations of knowledge is that there is no absolute truth or method for Gadamer. Gadamer is concerned with being, not the first Being, which is a subject for theology wherein perhaps a différent kind of knowing is involved. There the dialectic might not apply, whereas in human understanding there is dialogue with oneself and with the other and a striving to locate the mean. This is good phenomenology. I take this eue from Gadamer and strive for such a hermeneutic translation of his text and other texts to flesh out the human good by locating truth in life, in art and in relationships with texts. This is what I will be showing in this thesis in the dialogue I will hold with the primary text. We will see
then that having an idea of a certain situation is not enough to find the right solution to a problem. To do this, personal expérience of the moral good and a dialogue with oneself which seeks to find the right act to suit the situation is the struggle we need to engage in.
If we can grasp this Une of thought, we hâve begun to enter into this text, which is a detailed exposition of the preceding point, and which should give us the
appropriate mindset required to be able to reach for a golden mean
(reasonableness and fairness - the highest good in the concrète situation) in resolving
our problems. This is my hope in writing this thesis. Thèse insights of Gadamer are extremely important for éducation today. I hâve therefore chosen Gadamer's Truth
and Method to be the supporting text of my thesis. This thesis is an exercise in the
philosophy of éducation. I assume therefore that there is already an awareness of the concepts of Bildung and phronësis and of moral values in our discipline. I will be directing my focus on éducation rather than bringing in controversial thèses to sustain philosophical arguments. I think relating Gadamer's text to éducation will be a contribution, as this has regretfully not been done hitherto. This text can help résolve some of the problems we are encountering in our universities today. One of the ways in which Gadamer helps us to understand the purpose and the possibilities of éducation is through his discussion of the expérience of understanding located in the understanding of the work of art.
Gadamer found that the insight from Heidegger's "Origin of the Work of Art" is the strife between earth and world.14 As this question of the nature of the work of art is connected with the basic problems of philosophy, Gadamer tries to articulate the préjudices that are there in the concept of philosophical aesthetics. Gadamer also tries to overcome the concept of aesthetics itself. The main point he makes in Philosophical Hermeneutics is that when we base aesthetics on the
I had the opportunity to présent Martha Nussbaum with a work of art on this thème when she visited K.U. Leuven, in the late 1990s.
subjectivity of the mind's powers, we are heading absolutely in the wrong direction.15
The work of art succeeds at ail to the extent that the work of art succeeds at ail in adjusting and reconciling the finite and the infinité - it is the tangible indication of an ultimate truth that philosophy iriust finally grasp in its conceptual form. [...] Art is not the perfected concept of spirit but rather its manifestation on the level of the sense-intuition of the world
(Weltanschauung).
The basic thrust of Gadamer's argument is that we cannot just stay one-sided in seeking Being, in a linear and intentional way, without any tension of the world that aliénâtes us. If that is what Heidegger meant when he said that art opens up this insight clearly between the (possible) world created by the artist and the earth (finitude, finite understanding, préjudice due to complacency), then the only way we can make sensé of Heidegger's notion of the world is by borrowing the notion of the possible world.
Grieder: AH understanding contains an irreducible, temporal, historical condition: facticity, the situation. It prescribes certain limits, and ultimately one moves in a circle, determined by the historical horizon.
Hère is Gadamer's retort to Grieder, which helps us to see how Gadamer brings Heidegger and Plato together synoptically.
1S Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, 11 ans. David E. Linge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 219.
Gadamer: Heidegger took up the issue of the hermeneutic circle which was already addressed in Plato's Phaedo. If I want to understand, then I must project something, and one must return to the project again and again. This is the first élément which you described. [...] Hence my notion of play. One participâtes in play as a partner. Some people speak of it as 'the hermeneutic method,' but a method it is precisely what it is not.
The best of Gadamer is on display in the following exchange between him and Grieder.
Grieder: According to your view, it is rather the Being of history one is dealing with. In the end, it cornes down to a fusion of horizons.
Gadamer: Which happens to us, of course, and is not at ail of our own making.17
Consistently then, in Philosophical Hermeneutics, Gadamer argues, "what Heidegger intends, for example, when he speaks of Being in the verbal sensé of the word, of the event of Being, the clearing of Being, the revealment of Being, and the forgetfulness of Being, cannot be fulfilled by an intentional act of our subjectivity."18
16 Ibid., 220.
17 Hans-Georg Gadamer, with Carsten Dutt et al., Gadamer in Conversation: Reflections and
Commentary, éd. and trans., Richard E. Palmer (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2001),
112-113.
Like Michael Kelly in his "Critique of Gadamer's Aesthetics" (which will be discussed at length toward the end of this thesis), we deduce once again that for Gadamer, the artwork is autonomous rather than true. Kelly argues that for Gadamer and Heidegger the appeal to truth in this sensé is that we remain open to what addresses us in the work of art, and that in a sensé, in Kelly's mind, Gadamer reduces the autonomy part to the aesthetic. Gadamer also daims that art has a non-aesthetic content and the question arises: What is addressing us in art? And what does truth hâve to do with it? This is a very sound philosophical question, raised by Kelly. Quite honestly, this question cannot be answered methodically or with any linear reasoning, and Gadamer would not want to answer this question in any définitive sensé. So this question remains in Gadamer's mind as well, and art precisely serves this function for him, but only when he is truly confronted, and this sort of confrontation very few other thinkers hâve brought to him. If we want to live with philosophy we must cease to try and force an answer to this question. Good philosophy is not about answers, but questions. We hâve to be aware of the fact that truth is in a sensé an opening. For Greeks, it was aletheia, an opening of horizons, which Gadamer takes from Heidegger, an opening up of possible worlds by the artist. The following conversation between Grieder and Gadamer gives us a proof of our own conception of Gadamer's phenomenological approach (a non-method) to arrive at the whole of meaning (Sinnganzen). Therefore it is useful to work very closely with this text from Gadamer in Conversation, which is written by Gadamer himself, in dialogue with a few other thinkers. Having said that, let us see
19 Michael Kelly, "A Critique of Gadamer's Aesthetics," in B. Krajewski, éd., Gadamer's
that in fact what we hâve said earlier about in intuitively grasping the meaning, one is indeed doing good phenomenological work in this way. As we read in the dialogue, Gadamer says exactly this:
One does not always hâve to insist that what one is doing is phenomenology, but one ought to work phenomenologically, that is descriptively, creatively-intuitively and in a concretizing manner. Instead of simply applying concepts to ail sorts of things, concepts ought to corne forward in movements of thought, spring from the spirit of language and the power of intuition.20
Gadamer crédits Husserl, Scheler, Heidegger, Reinach, and even Hans Lipps for having practised phenomenology, who by virtue of phenomenology brought us ail this new knowledge. When Grieder shows some scepticism on this point, Gadamer puts him at rest saying that he was "not satisfied with the phenomenological movement where it présents il self as a technical conceptual System, and thus turns into scholasticism. And this is what happened to phenomenology."21 Hère we really corne home with Gadamer when he discloses that by studying poetry, visual arts, architecture and music, he came to understand what Heidegger meant by "Nearness to Being."
Further disclosure on the part of Gadamer justifies Heidegger's concept of temporality - showing Being as a verb, as time. Gadamer says that he can demonstrate this in the work of art. The work of art speaks to us because we are in the 'process' of listening to it. He asks this question as to what is involved in
Press, 2004), 103-120.
listening to the work of art. He says he is involved as a Hstener in a circular movement whereby one projects some hypothesis and then tries to confirm or réfute it, to get at the whole of meaning (Sinnganze). In a sensé he confirms that this is where he is with Heidegger, that Being is Time, and this is what the artwork clarifies precisely, according to Gadamer. How can we disagree with Gadamer when he is that clear about how we get near to Being via art and how we indeed engage in a circular movement with time - we pace to see if what we hâve projected onto it is true or not. Grieder also indeed confirms in his answer to Gadamer that he found such a discussion of the phenomenological project from the "inside" and from "such a rich personal expérience" of Gadamer "very illuminating."22
Chapter II: On the Way to Gadamer's Method
Susan Hekman claims that Gadamer defines hermeneutics as the philosophical exploration of the character and fundamental conditions of ail understanding and rejects the contention that the task of hermeneutics is methodological investigations into the social sciences. The counter to Gadamer's approach has been labelled 'objective' hermeneutics and claims that the goal of hermeneutics is to identify gênerai methodological principles of interprétation. Its principal thinker is Enrico Betti, whose Teoria Générale délia Interpretazione of 1955 is the définitive statement of this approach.23 Gadamer calls into question this notion of method. For he argues that the theory of ail human sciences is philosophy
itself ; thus, there can be no gap between the problem of understanding in the social sciences and understanding in philosophy. In this way, Gadamer actually revolutionizes the relationship between truth and method. Gadamer does not get entangled in methodological and definitional quibbles. His hermeneutics never loses sight of the question of understanding. It is as open-minded, as understanding nécessitâtes its being.
The hermeneutical expérience is concerned with what has been transmitted in tradition. This is what is to be experienced. But tradition is not simply a process that we learn to know and be in command of through expérience; it is language, i.e. it expresses itself like a 'Thou\ A 'Thou' is not an object, but stands in a relationship with us.24
"Relationship" is the keyword hère. Gadamer does not men that tradition or text or the other person is the authority we must obey. It is not an object and it is not the only subject either. "It is a genuine partner in communication", with which we hâve a fellow feeling as it is between ' I ' and 'Thou'.25 Gadamer opposes the "Thou" to the unrelated déduction of human nature. This he thought was deduced from Hume . It is the method of social sciences. This method is naïve in his estimation since it rules out the engagement human beings hâve in relationship where domination is possible of one over the other and ail the problems of conflict arise. Yet it is what happens and is real as opposed to an objectifying account which "merely seeks to calculate how the other person will behave. It is an illusion to see
Cf. Truth and Method, 525n205. Ibid., 321.
another person as a tool that can be absolutely known and used." Gadamer, following Heidegger, wants to look at the temporal analytics of human existence so that we get this point very clearly, that understanding cannot be understood as a potentiai behaviour but as a mode of Being, there-Being itself. This is the sensé in which Gadamer uses the term hermeneutics. He says that hermeneutics "is going with the mode of Being of there-Being itself, its mode of Being as springing from
Dasein itself."27 The nature of Being, as Gadamer sees it, is bound up with Dasein, i.e., there-Being itself. Only when we elaborate on this complète movement, going beyond any method hitherto known if necessary, can we unravel its mysterious movement and reach any comprehensive understanding that could be universally acceptable." It seeks in the otherness of the past not the instantiation of a gênerai law, but something historically unique. "A person who imagines that he is free of préjudices basing his knowledge on the objectivity of his procédures and denying that he is himself influenced by historical circumstances expériences the power of the préjudices that unconsciously dominate him, as a vis a tergo."
The way we view the world after 9/11, with its own effect on historical consciousness, will not détermine our process of understanding totally, but it will hâve some bearing. Certainly Gadamer's Truth and Method and his other works will hâve to hâve some influence on our way of dialoguing in the universities; and, hopefully, we will not be capricious but be mindful of Gadamer's leanings in that we should not simply opt for professionalism. This nécessitâtes it is évident then to
26 Ibid., 323. 27 Ibid., xviii. 28Ibid., 324.
communicate and share Knowledge with one another, participate in mutual respect, and reciprocal understanding. Richard E. Palmer writes:
The title of Gadamer's text [Truth and Method] contains an irony; method is not the way to the truth. On the contrary truth éludes the methodical man. Understanding is not conceived as a subjective process of man over and against an object but the way of being of man himself. Hermeneutics is not defined as a gênerai help discipline for the humanities but as a philosophical effort to account for understanding as an ontological - the ontological process in man.29
Palmer agrées with HeKman in giving the above interprétation of Truth and
Method. Gadamer sees a close relation between historicity and existence. Everything
that exists is historical. Rather the mode of being of what is eternal or timeless -God or numbers, for instance - can only be determined correctly by 'fondamental ontology', which discovers the ontological significance of There-being."30 One therefore has to strive to reach an understanding of the being as it is becoming in each situation to attain appropriate understanding. He does not want to niaKe any absolute claims about Truth and Method, as he wishes to Keep his propaedeutic open to life and to Knowledge and so the way he argues is crucial to understanding what he says. He is acutely self-conscious and critical of himself, as he is of the philosophers he argues with. It would be doing Gadamer injustice to say he meanders over the issues of Truth and Method, and yet to speaK about it in any
29 Richard E. Palmer, Hermeneutics: Interprétation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and
definite way would miss his intention, embedded in his magnum opus. He says in his foreword to the second édition: "What man needs is not only a persistent asking of ultimate questions, but the sensé of what is feasible, what is possible, what is correct hère and now. The philosopher, of ail people, must, I think, be aware of the tension between what he claims to achieve and the reality in which he finds himself."31
Gadamer is a philosopher's philosopher. He gives a contemporaneous rendering to western metaphysics. He confronts the modem crisis of the forgetfulness of Being. He remains cautious and weary of being one-sided. To a conventional scientific mindset it may appear as though he meanders. He does meander indeed but it is for a good reason. Truth can only be seen better by this striving to nuance sentences and try to bring concepts to words and to bring theory closer to praxis with constant vigilance. Understanding is a process -an ontological one which has to engage the inner word which struggles to write itself, to express itself in a continuum. Besides, the external orders change constantly. There is this other dimension to reality which is not in any one's control. As Gadamer says:
We see however that moral knowledge is always this kind of self-deliberation. ...It can never be knowable in advance in the manner of knowledge that can be taught.32
Gadamer says in his foreword to the second édition that the question he has asked is not of that of method but what the objectives of knowledge are? Behind his question is the notion that it would be "vain to hâve the knowledge which conceals
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 537n50. Ibid., 15.
'the social and natural orders of the world.'" He contends that the focus on method and methodological disputes 'neglect this issue.' Instead, by following a close reading of his text and drawing on his insights that could speak to the crisis in éducation, to my mind, would be more advisable, if our objective is to know how understanding is possible, how through the ontological process man might gain philosophical insight into changes in the world and in éducation Systems which are to take thèse changes into account. Average person is becoming rapidly cosmopolitan whereas only the élite enjoyed such a privileged state of affairs earlier. For Gadamer it is necessary for us to obtain éducation in Bildung and phronesis, not merely learn about efficiency and performativity in trade or the professions. He reminds us of the Kantian question: "What are the conditions of knowledge?" with his own philosophical question: "How is understanding possible?" Thèse questions are contextual to the post-modern moment in éducation. This thesis is written primarily with a view to drawing insights from Gadamer's text Truth and Method that would help us to steer away from the groundlessness we are experiencing in our universities at présent. Scientism, overspecialisation, communication gap between disciplines, objectivism and methodologism are well-known problems in our éducation today. But precisely because this crisis is felt and shared ail across our campuses we do hâve in proximity a chance to eradicate them through with a hermeneutic dialogue. Gadamer makes it clear in his foreword to the second édition that he did not wish to prescribe a method of interprétation nor did he hâve any objective other than to make transparent the historicity of concepts that guide
Ibid., 286 Ibid., 17.
unconsciously our investigations in ail sciences, philosophy, and life. It is to render consciousness more critical, so as to hâve insight into the assumptions at work. He is not opposing "scientific integrity in acknowledging the commitment involved in ail understanding."34 Instead, he is concerned with bringing to the surface age-old ambiguities and some conceptual interprétations.
For instance, in an insightful dialectic with Giinther Rohr's book Platons
Stellung zur Geschichte (Berlin, 1932), Gadamer revolutionizes the concept of
history and clarifies its contingency on the conditions of the state. The paradigm of history has been that of growth and death. Gadamer formulâtes that if the state had the right paideia, there would not be what we call "history." History would hâve been a denotation for the condition of stability rather than the ebb and flow we know it to be. This is derived from his footnote 55 in Truth and Method where he further suggests that this was Plato's propaedeutic to history. I am particularly interested in selecting this footnote hère as it stands in juxtaposition to his intention not to be prescriptive of any methodology for philosophy. This makes it clearer what his concerns are, how they are intrinsically much more complex. In essence what he says in this footnote is - If the state functioned according to the right
paideia, as he suggests in his discussion with Rohr, we could see the nature of
history fulfilled in preserving stability and we would be more respectful of Being and cultures instead of turning this task over to science. In speaking on planning for the future Gadamer suggests we ought to become more sensitive to cultural différence and try to comprehend it, if we wish to plan properly for our global
Ibid., 26. Ibid., 537n55.
family. I understood this from a discussion with him which I did tape. However, the following quote captures some of the discourse between him and me at his résidence in Heidelberg.
Différences between cultures and traditions now also become important for our compréhension of an ever more integrated world. Consequently, the task of developing our awareness of extant différences between peoples and nations assumes a priority in a world where planning and progress seem to guarantee the attainment of everything. Such an awakening of consciousness, however, is now hardly ever brought about by science.
Now, from Gadamer's text Truth and Method we hâve his propaedeutic to another practical concern precisely - thesis writing. He writes, as Antonio T. de Nicolas puts it, "Is it academically honest to force graduate students to write their doctoral dissertations only by the method of critical theory, particularly if their thèses are on Plato's contemporaries?"37 For Gadamer, philosophy influences culture as culture influences philosophy. It is not simply a scholarly activity. Therefore it is important to be interested in a meaningful research towards the identification of problems in our éducation as it has implications for our way of relating to one another and interpreting texts and understanding. Our solutions lie in understanding the problems first. With académie honesty or accountability one does not simply use methods that may inadvertently impinge on our ability to think
36 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hans-Georg Gadamer On Education, Poetry And History. Dieter Misgeld and Graeme Nicholson, eds., tr. Lawrence Schmidt and Monica Reuss (Albany: State University of New York Press 1992), 165.
37 Antonio T. de Nicolas, éd., Habits ofMind: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education (New York: Paragon House, 1989), 7.
clearly and be intellectually honest with ourselves and with others. In order to hâve cultural harmony and well-being without sacrificing intellectual rigour and excellence, we require a way of educating from the beginning children, adolescents, students into proper habits of mind so as to free them from excessive conceptualizing. For Gadamer overemphasis on conceptual thought can prevent grasping the whole —specifically the nuances of reality that are too créative to be capped by conceptual thought. Gadamer works with concepts in Truth and Method which clearly demonstrates that philosophy is a work in progress. Classical Philosophy has to be modified. Plato and Aristotle are taken seriously but their concepts and catégories could be revised and improved upon. No concept is written on stone. To be able to make décisions that take into account what is at stake in the présent and leave room for clarity to émerge with the passage of time is not only required for stateswomen and -men but is the quintessence of being human.
Gadamer discusses at great length in Truth and Method that history of higher éducation has a certain relationship to habits of mind. According to Antonio T. de Nicolas, wrong narratives hâve been imposed on the Western mind. Western culture has been reduced to a world that opérâtes largely in relation to theoretical reasoning. This tendency prevails especially in institutions of higher learning. The early Protestant founders of American universities are responsible for this mindset, which is more or less the influence of the médiéval Roman legacy. We are mistaken in thinking we hâve inherited thèse ways of thinking from the Greeks. This is not to say that in the future we will not adopt the dialogical methodology as opposed to the medievalist Roman. The médiéval were of the idea that they were establishing the will of God, but instead they hâve emulated the legalistic and rationalistic mode
of the ancient Romans. Nor is this to forget our bureaucratie and eonformist tendencies whereby, like them, we overlook or even fear "the différent, the féminine, the original and the source." Such conservatism is nothing but a covering up of "the fear of losing the power of controlling and exploiting society."
Psychological, social, and political factors combine to put us in a state of disarray. In the technological âge, aliénation has become the order of the day. Gadamer has answered to this predicament -this call to see how life could corne to supersede this condition that Heidegger has described as "forgetfulness of Being". Having been engaged with Dilthey's life philosophy as it pertained to historical understanding, he then sought his own way to the latter. For Dilthey, "life is neither wholly subject nor wholly object, but encompasses both. Because it must be sought in the interaction between self and milieu, it is revealed to us in moods."39 Gadamer would add that we need to pay closer attention to language; in order to understand ourselves, we need a language that would invoke not an epistemic process with abstract propositions, but a dialogue of questions and answers that hâve meaning for us right hère and now. Be it to engage in pedagogy or simply to live, we need to understand how this process works better through dialogue than through subject-object relations in abstract propositions. Speaking to someone and letting someone speak to you is not as simple as it might seem in this "âge of reason." Gadamer answers to this call and condition in his key text Truth and Method.
x Ibid.,36.
Théodore Plantinga, Historical Understanding in the Thought of Wilhelm Dilthey. (Toronto:
Although Gadamer has written directly on ail thèse problems in éducation, not only in Truth and Method, Truth and Method remains a fundamental text to read in order to appreciate his concern with method as it relates to truth. Gadamer opts to carry the burden of Being, a concern Heidegger had, but Gadamer wishes to give it another twist - to show how we could eut through our préjudices whilst accepting préjudices around us to bring about a reform of our institutions. It is a curious and paradoxical position. One cannot reject tradition outright, but should try to understand it differently and with more insight. He holds out a promise for the philosophy of éducation, as he brings to the methodology of the humanities a sensitivity to what is involved in the search for a language of understanding. In Gadamer's own words, "What is explicitly said is not everything. What is unsaid first makes what is said into a word that can reach us.41
The relationship of the said and the unsaid is complex. The prelinguistic
arche is there to iimit an epistemological or literal reading of the text. Hidden
assumptions hâve to be unearthed to gain a comprehensive view of what an author is saying and what he fails to say. Understanding a text rather than parroting it is what concerns Gadamer. You understand a text if you hâve something intelligent to say about a text. Being able to repeat it in exams is not understanding. To understand a text one has to hold a zealous inner dialogue with it and let it speak to one. We shall see how with Kleist Gadamer fleshes this issue out perspicuously as we conclude our thesis. For now let us consider what Grondin says, citing Gadamer:
40 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hans-Georg Gadamer on Education, Poetry, and History: Applied
Hermeneutics (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992).
41 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Gesammelte Werke II, 504, cited in Jean Grondin, "Gadamer and Àugustine," in Brice R. Wachterhauser, éd., Hermeneutics and Truth (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1994), 146.
It is with Augustine that we are led back to the fundamental différence between the actus signatus, the predicative statement, and its completion, after the fact, in the actus exercitus, an incantation, according to Gadamer's account, with which Heidegger charmed his audience back then in Freiburg and Marburg, even Gadamer himself.42
Gadamer does not speak explicitly about what truth is for him or what his method is. Instead, he asks the philosophical question: What is understanding? Is it possible to reach understanding? In this thesis, I hâve to some extent simplified Gadamer's text in a manner that speaks to me directly, into a form that I hope to be revelatory.
Chapter III: Is Understanding Possible?
a) Scientific Objectivity
Gadamer pays tribute to Husserl who according to his interprétation releases consciousness from objectification and renders it a status of an essential coordination -the point that was illuminating for Dilthey. He writes:
The intention and fulfilment of meaning belong essentially to the unity of meaning, and like the meanings of words that we use, every existing thing that
Jean Grondin, "Gadamer and Augustine," in Hermeneutics and Truth, éd. Brice R.
Wachterhauser. (Evanston, 111.: Northwestern University Press, 1994), 138-139, citing Gadamer, "Erinnerungen an Heideggers Anfange," in Dilthey-Jahrbuch 4 (1986-87), 21.
has validity for me possesses correlatively and by virtue of its nature an idéal universality of actual and potential experiencing modes of givenness.43
This illumination gave birth to phenomenology. Gadamer explains how human subjectivity also has being value. It has a highly differentiated thème of reflection. For our présent purposes we will give an outline of what Gadamer says on this subject. What about that 'something' that cornes prior to modéra science?
The background of Gadamer's enquiry in Truth and Method
Gadamer says in the Introduction to his magnum opus that interprétation and understanding of texts cannot be limited to science. It engages "total human expérience of the world."44 In fact he does not see hermeneutics as a matter of method. It concerns itself with truth and knowledge. It is not simply a concern of science but is human expérience itself.
The question we ask is what kind of truth and what kind of insight are we looking for? Understanding is valid to be within science yet it cannot be limited to only the scientific method. Within modem science the universal claim of scientific method is questioned. Expérience of truth cannot be located within scientific research or within its methodologism. The expérience of philosophy, art and history has to be considered with it and thèse cannot be tested only within scientific méthodologies. We see then when we read classical philosophy its daims can
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 216. Ibid., xi.
neither be accepted ail together nor can we reject them altogether. Gadamer maintains that the question he seeks to answer and bring into consciousness has crucially to do with a certain 'something' that précèdes modem science and makes it possible. This 'something' seems to be nothing Iess than a foundation for Truth. How we philosophise and what we philosophise about cannot be separated . One has to be conscious of the very mode of philosophising. The very mode is also a phenomenon to be understood. The methodological self consciousness of human sciences has to be understood not simply as a methodology but it has to be seen along with human expérience. A text is something that is not lying there to be investigated It engages us in ways we cannot separate it from ourselves in the manner we cannot separate ourselves from an expérience of art or history. Understanding a text is an event. It is within tradition an expérience takes place. We are not therefore standing outside tradition as it were looking at understanding. Something is already there in the "There-being" which cannot be isolated from the understanding that is taking place which is an event. It happens we therefore should not assume superiority because of this activity. He says his work is not prescriptive but revisionary. He wants to correct a false view that we can make judgements in a vacuum. "Hence it must, for its own method of working endeavour to acquire as much historical self transparency as possible." [xiv] Hidden constants hâve to be seen.
Historical consciousness has given us a distance to the concept of understanding. Before we entered into the historical consciousness ancients felt supported by traditional concepts. Gadamer pays a tribute to Husserl, Dilthey and Heidegger for curing this naiveté. We are to be aware of descriptions of the
phenomenon, our analyses. Husserl has made us aware of the whole process of intentionality, historical horizon in which we operate and Heidegger has shown us how we hâve to be aware of our being which is ever présent. Gadamer wants to be seen in terms of thèse influences in his work.
Gadamer says we might feel inferior to Plato, Aristotle, Kant or Hegel when we proceed to understand something but to ignore this inferiority complex is even worse. We hâve to be conscious of this that texts of thèse thinkers cannot be attained any other way even if scientific research goes against it. Similarly we hâve to realise that truth we expérience through art cannot be attained in any other way than through art expérience which very often goes against our normal way of reasoning. It is for this reason expérience of philosophy and of art poses a great challenge to scientific consciousness. The latter has to acknowledge its limits therein. Aesthetic consciousness when investigated reveals that aesthetic theory is too limited due to the scientific restrictions bearing on its concept. Similarly when Gadamer sees truth that stems from art expérience he sees it goes beyond any theoretical framework. It cannot be objectified. It lies outside scientific consciousness and its methodologism. It increases being. In the wake of this human sciences can also not be restricted to any scientific methodologism. Truth goes beyond it. It cornes to speech. Expérience of truth is not the mode of philosophising, it itself guides the philosophising. Gadamer would say that his text is not an object to be read but it in turn will engage us in a way that while we grapple with it we in turn are transformed but not necessarily be in control of this phenomenon.
This constant process of new projection is the movement of understanding and interprétation. A person who is trying to understand is exposed to
distraction from foremeanings that are not borne out by the things themselves.45
Plato then might be wrong in assuming he had the right understanding of reality for ail cultures. We would not hâve the problem we hâve of xenophobia if we had assumed hospitality as the most important good in human relations. / see the
notions of flexibility and hospitality as more crucial and primary than the notions of true, beautiful and good.
Reality is what it is. The only good worth pursuing is to accept the real and learn to be tolérant and hospitable and kind to the other while having the same attitude toward oneself. It is a matter of negotiating with words and actions just relations with others. Only then life could yield perhaps considérable beauty. A hospitable dialogue rather than an argumentative one would be the idéal to pursue. Gadamer of course confirais my assumptions to be not wrong and nor does Grondin. It may be futile to argue in favour of Platonism or against Platonism, since Plato spoke to his time, he had concerns for Greece, which was not on secure ground vis-à-vis the Persians. Persia happened to be the first multic iillwi al empire based on ethical ideals, i.e. Zoroastrianism as an early form of universalist monotheism. Greek society was not prepared for the cosmopolitanism and antiracialism which is the good we pursue largely today. Plato answered to his own désire for 'unencumbered soûl' for enthusiasm for perfection and he créâtes dialogues some of which are as they occurred and some are representational of what Socrates might hâve said. However I am not a specialist of Plato. Thèse assumptions were therefore
