From Nietzsche’s Despair Through Husserl’s Inner-Time Consciousness to Gadamer’s Open, Fluid Horizon

By Cynthia R. Nielsen

As Walter Lammi explains, Gadamer altered his predecessors’ notion of “horizon” in significant ways.[1] Working in the tradition of phenomenology, Gadamer was of course influenced by Husserl, as well as Heidegger.  Regarding the term “horizon,” Gadamer mentions explicitly his debt to Husserl.  The concept of “horizon,” however, did not originate with Husserl but can be traced back to Nietzsche.  We should stress up front that in each of these philosophers, the term “horizon” means something different.  For example, according to Gadamer’s interpretation of Nietzsche, horizon is a “limiting concept in that human beings cannot see beyond their historical or cultural horizons” (493).  For Nietzsche, it is crucial that we embrace the fact of our limited horizons; yet, in doing so, we ultimately land in despair, as we can no longer hope to find any ultimate meaning in an absolute sense.  “Historicism for Nietzsche is a great but life-destroying truth because it takes away our ability to believe absolutely in anything” (494).  (N.b., Lammi states in footnote 48 that Gadamer’s interpretation of Nietzsche is problematic; nonetheless, Gadamer’s dynamic concept of horizon is on target.  The contents of this footnote appear in my post as note 2).

Husserl also utilizes the concept of “horizon”; however, his focus is not on horizon as a limiting concept, locking us into our diverse cultural-historical frameworks.  Instead, Husserl’s understanding of horizon is much more fluid, and his focus is on the inner experience of time-consciousness, where “the horizons of one experience flow into those of another so that in the continuum of experiences there is a constant flux of horizons” (494).   Gadamer comes along, takes the insights of Nietzsche and Husserl, and formulates his own notion of horizon for the purposes of his  hermeneutical project.  Rejecting what he understands as Nietzsche’s closed-horizon view and accepting Husserl’s less-staticized conception, Gadamer, in essence, offers a fundamental critique of Nietzsche (or what he understands as Nietzsche’s position), while de-subjectivizing Husserl.  As Lammi explains,

On the one hand Gadamer, like Nietzsche, understands “horizon” to denote the finite limitations of any particular perspective at any particular time [TM, 269].  However, he interprets Nietzsche as believing that a horizon can be simply “closed,” which in Gadamer’s judgment constitutes a “romantic reflection, a kind of Robinson Crusoe dream,” [Ibid., 271] because just as no individual exists without others, no cultural or historical horizon exists in static and total isolation from others.[2] Horizons, most particularly the horizon of the past that we call “tradition,” are always in motion just as human life is always in motion [Ibid., 217].  There is no historical consciousness in the sense of Nietzsche’s “historicist insight” that sets the horizons into motion; all historical consciousness does is make that motion aware of itself [Ibid., 271].  The awareness that our horizons are fluid, rather than teaching that nothing is true, makes it possible to find new truths-to “expand our horizons,” as the saying has it. Thus the self-awareness of historical consciousness, far from being a “deadly truth” about the relativity of all values, is for Gadamer the key for reaching beyond or behind a given horizon to confront the possibility that there is truth to be learned from the past. “I am convinced of the fact that, quite simply, we can learn from the classics,” Gadamer concludes [Ibid.,490] (494-95).

Gadamer wholeheartedly agrees with the aspect of Nietzsche’s historicist claim which emphasizes our finitude and the fact that our knowledge of our world and ourselves always remains partial and limited.  Yet, Gadamer believes that Nietzsche’s historicism “fails to understand temporal distance as a positive aid to discovering which is the way Gadamer understands the interpreter’s hermeneutical situation once it is brought to self-consciousness”  (495).

Notes

[2] Gadamer’s interpretation of Nietzsche is problematic on this point. Whether or not his critique is on target, however, Gadamer’s positive argument for the dynamic concept of “horizon” remains cogent.

Gadamer on the Self-Cancellation of the Heremeneutical Exchange

By Cynthia R. Nielsen

According to Gadamer, we all come to the text with different horizons.  As we engage the text, our horizons, as well as our foremeanings are confirmed, altered, or perhaps a combination of both occurs.  Gadamer understands textual hermeneutics as analogous to a live conversation in which, when fruitful, we have attentive listening, respect for the alterity of the other, and an interplay of give and take.  Consider, for example, a conversation you’ve had in which you already anticipated ahead of time what a certain person was going to say.  You need an extension on your paper, but your professor has made it clear in the past that she rarely grants such extensions.  Here you approach the conversation with a fairly fixed idea of how the conversation will enfold.  After class you begin to make your case for an extension, explaining that your daughter has been ill quite a bit this month, and you’ve had to keep her at home.  Consequently, you were not able to complete your paper on time.  At first, the likelihood of an extension without penalty seems less than hopeful.  However, as the dialogue continues, your professor seems more open and in the end grants you an extension.  The banality of the example aside, it does provide a window into Gadamer’s understanding of the back and forth movement of our hermeneutical experience.  For example, as Gadamer explains,

A person who is trying to understand a text has to keep something at a distance-namely everything that suggests itself, on the basis of his own prejudices, as the meaning expected-as soon as it is rejected by the sense of the text itself.  Even the experience of reversal (which happens unceasingly in talking, and which is the real experience of dialectic) has its equivalent here.  Explicating the whole of meaning towards which understanding is directed forces us to make interpretative conjectures and to take them back again.  The self-cancellation of the interpretation is dialectical not primarily because the one-sidedness of every statement can be balanced by another side-this is, as we shall see, a secondary phenomenon in interpretation-but because the word that interpretatively fits the meaning of the text expresses the whole of this meaning-i.e., allows an infinity of meaning to be represented within it in a finite way (Truth and Method, p. 465).

The latter part of the passage introduces the idea of a “self-cancellation” involved in a hermeneutical exchange.  As Gadamer explains, the dialectic involved here is not simply an attempt to present the opposing viewpoint to balance out the perspective given.  Rather, (I think) he means something analogous to the following.  In a symphony, one has a meaningful whole, which consists of various particular parts organized in a very complex way.  Each instrument group (brass, strings, woodwinds etc.) plays a different melodic line (melodic lines are analogous to sentences).  These horizontal melodic lines, when considered vertically, constitute the various harmonies of the symphony (analogous to words).  If we zero in on one particular harmonic moment in say the third movement of the symphony, we might find, for example, a C major triad.  That C major triad can be abstracted and identified as a C major triad consisting of the notes C, E, G.  However, within the larger meaning of the symphony, that C major triad, because of its function at that particular place within the whole, cannot be understand as merely a C major triad (though technically it is that); rather, it must be seen as integrally connected with all the notes that precede it, as well as all the notes that follow it.  In a sense, the C major triad is both a one and a many-it is a C major triad and thus has an integral unity of meaning; yet, it is a many because of its intimate connection to and function within the symphony itself-that place where it lives and moves and has its being.  The dialectical self-cancelling movement occurs due to the fact that as the C major triad emerges from the background of the whole, it must “cancel” part of itself (the whole) in order to do so.  (This sounds very Heideggerian, which is no surprise given the latter’s influence on Gadamer).  Yet, to avoid mis-interpretation, it must not become completely severed from the whole, lest in a very real sense it die.  If this is a correct understanding of Gadamer on this point, there are some interesting Christian connections to be made.

Heythrop Journal Article

By Cynthia R. Nielsen

For those interested, my recent article published in the Heythrop Journal (Vol 50, issue 1, Jan. 2009) is currently available online at the following website.  I believe the essay will be posted until the end of this month.

Here’s a brief synopsis:

The first section of my essay highlights a number of significant encounters with texts and persons at different phases of Augustine’s life. In the final section, I bring Augustine into conversation with Hans-Georg Gadamer in an attempt to draw attention to certain hermeneutical continuities shared by premoderns, Gadamarians and postmoderns.   After briefly comparing premodern and modern hermeneutical orientations, I conclude that Augustine’s approach to Scripture contrasts sharply with a (strict) modern grammatico-historical methodology (as instituted by Spinoza), whereas premodern hermeneutics share a number of continuities with Gadamarian and postmodern emphases.  Lastly, in light of Gadamer’s famous statement, “all of life is hermeneutics,” perhaps one could read Augustine’s life as affirming this claim.  In other words, a close look at Augustine’s life reveals the decisive ways in which pre-judgments, interpretative traditions, and a dynamic rather than a static understanding of text (and reality) affected Augustine’s spiritual and intellectual vision.

Part I: A Gadamarian Critique of Hirsch’s Meaning/Significance Distinction

By Cynthia R. Nielsen

Is interpretation primarily about a relation between the reader and the subjective intentions of the author?  Might it be the case that the hermeneutical method that E.D. Hirsch espouses in his book, Validity in Interpretation, lands us right back into the egocentric predicament, as the sole goal of interpretation becomes re-producing the original subjective meaning of the author?  According to Hans-George Gadamer, Hirsch’s method misses the essential dialogical character of interpretation.  (The very fact that Hirsch proffers a “method” seems to harmonize more with modern rather than premodern or postmodern hermeneutical practices). For Hirsch, the text becomes an object of scientific investigation rather than an occasion for the interpreter to be changed by the subject matter of the text through locating its question and then being himself/herself questioned by the subject matter of the text.  Gadamer, by contrast, has a more dynamic view of understanding.  According to Gadamer, 

the real event of understanding…goes continually beyond what can be brought to the understanding of the other person’s words by methodological effort and critical self-control.  It is true of every conversation that through it something different has come to be (”Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem,” p. 58).  

In addition to his focus on the dialogical character of a text (emphasizing the text’s flexibility or dynamism, yet still affirming the text’s identity), Gadamer develops what he calls a “phenomenology of the game” to highlight the inadequacy of a theory of understanding that focuses solely and exclusively on the subjectivity of the author or the interpreter.[1]  In his editorial introduction to Gadamer’s Philosophical Heremeneutics, David Linge describes how, in the phenomenon of play, the player, so to speak, “loses himself” in the game-he or she is “absorbed into the back-and-forth movement of the game, that is, into the definable procedure and rules of the game.”[2] The game is not understood as an “action of subjectivity,” but rather as a “release from subjectivity.”  As Linge explains, “what is essential to the phenomenon of play is not so much the particular goal it involves but the dynamic back-and-forth movement in which the players are caught up-the movement that itself specifies how the goal will be reached.  Thus the game has its own place or space (its Spielraum), and its movement and aims are cut off from the direct involvement in the world stretching beyond it.”[3]

The structures that Gadamer finds in the phenomenology of play are then put in service of Gadamer’s attempt to develop an alternative theory of understanding–one that neither confines the meaning of the text solely to the subjective intention of the author, nor construes the project of understanding as merely an attempt to re-produce the original intention of the author.  As Linge observes, the customary authorial intention hermeneutical approach is fashioned in the image of the methodology of modern science. “Just as scientific experiments can be repeated exactly any number of times under the same conditions and mathematical problems have but one answer, so the author’s intention constitutes a kind of fact, a ‘meaning-in-itself,’ which is repeated by the correct interpretation.”[4]

Notes

 [2] Philosophical Hermeneutics, p. xxiii.

[3] Philosophical Hermeneutics, p. xxiii[4] Philosophical Hermeneutics, p. xxiv.

Zuckert on Gadamer on Strauss

By Cynthia R. Nielsen

I came across this delightful little passage in Catherine H. Zuckert’s article, “Hermeneutics in Practice:  Gadamer on Ancient Philosophy.”  Anyone who has done graduate work at UD (and who is not a Straussian) will appreciate this.

Gadamer made the difference between what he means by reading a text in its own terms and Leo Strauss’s insistence that we “understand an author as he understood himself” clear in TM [Truth and Method] 535 when he objected:  “[Strauss] seems to consider it possible to understand what one does not understand oneself but what someone else understands, and to understand only in the way that the other person himself understood.  And he also seems to think that if a person says something, he has necessarily and fully understood ‘himself’ in the process.”  Gadamer argues, on the contrary, that “[w]hen we try to understand a text, we do not try to transpose ourselves into the author’s mind but …into the perspective within which he has formed his views” [TM 292].  That is, we first have to try to understand the author in his own historical context.  However, “[j]ust as the events of history do not in general manifest any agreement with the subjective ideas of the person who stands and acts within history, so the sense of a text in general reaches far beyond what its author originally intended” [TM 372].  According to Gadamer, we need to engage in a dialogue with the text and that means we must ask it or its authors questions.  Those questions change, however, with the changing circumstances of the reader.  So do the answers, therefore, and the meaning of the text” (Zuckert, “Hermeneutics in Practice,” pp. 221-22, n. 4)

Gadamer’s Position: A Modern Appropriation of the analogia entis?

By Cynthia R. Nielsen

In a section discussing the ways in which Gadamer relativizes Heidegger’s ontological difference, Wachterhauser states the following:

If [according to Gadamer] we cannot raise issues of Being apart from other related issues like Being’s relationship to the other transcendentals-including the Good-and these issues in turn involve us in questions about the relationships between transcendentals and Ideas, as well as Ideas and things, then we can no longer insist on a strict and unequivocal ontological difference.  This is perhaps the most profound implication of Gadamer’s ontological insights.  Gadamer’s position implies a modern appropriation of the analogia entis and as such it emphasizes the analogical connections between all realities.  Such ontological analogies or connections imply a challenge to any unbridgeable gap or difference between Being and beings.  If Heidegger’s thought suffers from an increasing tendency to insist on this unbridgeable difference, Gadamer’s thought relatizives the difference between Being and beings and draws them closer to each other without forgetting that there is also a difference to be preserved.  The most important implication of this relativizing of the ontological difference is that questions about the Good can once again be seen as central to ontology” (Beyond Being:  Gadamer’s Post-Platonic Hermeneutical Ontology. Evanston:  Northwestern Univ. Press, 1999, pp. 193-194).

Although a Christian might want to probe further, asking whether Gadamer’s position (on Christian presuppositions) is not guilty of a possible blurring of the Creator/creature distinction, the idea that Gadamer’s project is a kind of “modern appropriation of the analogia entis” harmonizes well with Gadamer’s hermeneutical claims regarding the multivalent nature of meaning.   In other words, his hermeneutic maps nicely onto his ontology. 

Part IV: Gadamer’s Ontological Perspectivism: A Way Around Relativism and Dogmatism

By Cynthia R. Nielsen

Given Gadamer’s rejection of a foundationalist paradigm of knowledge, he does not attempt to provide indubitable justification for his ontological views.   According to Gadamer, all forms of foundationalism fail to demonstrate that their own claims are indubitable; hence, he “rejects the possibility of a reflexive self-grounding of any philosophical position.”  Rather, as we have seen, Gadamer speaks of our grasping truth in the context of our various dialogical interactions.  In addition, Gadamer claims that “there is kind of self-validating truth that is available to those who are willing to participate in the dialogue of question and answer which we find in the philosophical tradition” (p. 12).  These self-validating truths do not purport to present us with certainty, yet they can be known and are (as the name suggests) true.  Many truths, such as those found in the human sciences, are simply part of our experience and are either taken as valid on their own terms or are rejected (p. 12). Rather than attempt to find a place outside of our experience upon which to stand so as to justify our experience of these truths, Gadamer endeavors to

offer a holistic explanation of that experience that attempts to understand it by thinking through the question of how mind and reality must be related to each other in order to make this experience possible.  This is an explicitly circular procedure that avowedly accepts its circularity but does not concede that such circularity is logically vicious.  Even logic itself rests on experiences of self-evidence that it cannot deduce (p. 13). 

Here Gadamer is operating against the grain of much of modern epistemology in that he assumes that our experiences are true “until their limitations are dialogically demonstrated.”  In other words, Gadamer offers a hermeneutics of trust rather than a hermeneutics of suspicion, and his position is not ignorant of the problems of modern epistemology.  Incarnating his own understanding of hermeneutics, Gadamer is in dialogue with the present (modern epistemology) and he also pulls from ancient philosophy, particularly Plato’s reflections on the connection between beauty and truth.  For example, in his book, The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, Gadamer writes,

Plato describes the beautiful as that which shines forth most clearly and draws us to itself, as the very visibility of the ideal.  In the beautiful presented in nature and art, we experience the convincing illumination of truth and harmony, which compels the admission:  “This is true.” [...] The beautiful [...] gives us an assurance that the truth does not lie far off and inaccessible to us, but can be encountered in the disorder of reality with all its imperfections, evils, errors, extremes and fateful confusions.  The ontological function of the beautiful is to bridge the chasm between the ideal and the real (pp. 14-15; as quoted in Wachterhauser, p. 13).

Here we have the self-validation of the beautiful whose connection with truth is not to be equated with certainty, as no truth-claim is beyond doubt.  Yet, according to Gadamer, the true manifests itself in the beautiful in that the true possesses a kind of luminosity or radiance.  With this claim, we see Gadamer drawing from the “metaphysics of light” tradition that Plato assimilated via Parmenides.  “In fact, Gadamer argues that ‘the close relationship that exists between the shining forth [Vorscheinen] of the beautiful and the evidentness [das Einleuchtende] of the understandable is based on the metaphysics of light.  This was precisely the relation that guided our hermeneutical inquiry’ (Truth and Method, 483).” Moreover,  Gadamer believes that  a critical  reworking of this tradition “can point the way beyond the impasses of skepticism and foundationalism by giving us the resources to rethink the concept of a self-validating or self-illuminating truth that does not make the fateful mistake of equating such ‘light’ with certainty” (pp. 13-14). 

In short, Gadamer’s neo-ancient view of truth, wherein truth presents itself as beauty and evinces a luminosity or radiance that is self-validating, does not deny the possibility of encountering truth, yet it does perhaps encourage us to embrace a more humble view of truth and in so doing to acknowledge our finitude in a non-despairing way. 

*Unless otherwise noted, all citations are taken from Brice R. Wachterhauser, Beyond Being:  Gadamer’s Post-Platonic Hermeneutical Ontololgy.  Evanston:  Northwestern Univ. Press, 1999. 

Part III: Gadamer’s Ontological Perspectivism: A Way Around Relativism and Dogmatism

By Cynthia R. Nielsen

As mentioned in Part II, Gadamer’s conception of identity is dynamic rather than static and is based on Gadamer’s critical reworking of Plato’s reflections on unity and multiplicity.  As Wachterhauser explains, Gadamer’s “general strategy is to argue that all Being is such that it is always at one and the same time both ‘one and many.’  Thus it is no surprise that interpretation constantly confronts us with the reality of ‘identity in difference.’  In fact, wherever we turn, ‘identity and difference’ or ‘one and many’ is the mark of Being itself” (p. 7).  [Here, it seems that a Christian could make a number of Trinitarian connections].  

In order to further support his ontology, Gadamer turns to the later Plato’s account of the nature of number.  Wachterhauser summarizes this better than I can, so I shall quote him at length:

Just as any number in the number series can be described only by its logical or intelligible relationships to other numbers, so any reality is what it is only by being situated in its logical or intelligible relationships to other realities.  With regard to number, the ‘hermeneutical’ implication of this relational ontology is that any number is always both ‘one and many,’ i.e., it is what it is in its distinct logical contours but those contours can be described from an infinite number of perspectives generated by the fact that it can be defined only in its relationship to all the other numbers in the infinite series, including its relations of negation (p. 7). 

In addition, Gadamer believes that non-numerical realities exhibit the same ontological features.  That is, “[a]ll things are what they are only in their infinite relationships to other things, including both positive and negative relationships.  Thus all things are always both ‘one and many’” (p. 8).  Such a situation suggests that a diversity of interpretations is to be expected.  However, this diversity is not “ontologically vicious, i.e., it does not necessarily threaten the identity of things, nor does it preclude a critical rejection of some interpretations in favor of others” (p. 8). 

Wachterhauser next attempts to unpack Gadamer’s oft misunderstood claim that language is a necessary medium of all thought.  As Wachterhauser explains, Gadamer is neither a “linguistic constructivist” nor does his position move in the direction of “alinguistic essentialism.”  Rather, Gadamer understands language as a necessary medium to thought in the sense that “language is an indispensable place where the intelligibility of the real makes itself manifest for us” (p. 9).  Here Gadamer is not claiming that without language, reality has no intelligibility, nor is he saying that language “represents in conventional signs an otherwise alinguistic reality” (p. 9).  Here Gadamer’s engagement with Plato plays a crucial role.  Drawing on Plato’s insights, Gadamer claims that language and reality have a participatory relationship and that both participate in intelligibility.  Wachterhauser describes this relationship as follows:

Intelligibility participates in both things and words such that words potentially clarify and enhance the inherent intelligibility of things. Moreover, things themselves are inherently intelligible such that we must always look to them as the beginning and end of all inquiry.  The intelligibility of language is not to supplant the intelligibility of things but to complement and complete that intelligibility in such way that the things themselves become more manifest and provide the final warrant for any justifiable articulation (p. 9). 

In short, we might say that Gadamer claims that reality is manifest through language, and yet reality is simultaneously concealed.  Here Gadamer shows continuity with both Heidegger and with the ancient tradition in that he affirms a dialectic of the unconcealment and concealment of reality.  However, Gadamer bases this dialectic “in the tendency of language to reveal reality in a limited set of semantic and logical relationships, which simultaneously covers over other possible sets of relationships from which the same reality could be disclosed.  Thus language can reveal, but it also simultaneously conceals, how any one thing stands to the whole of all things in which it is what it is” (p. 10). 

By employing the Platonic model of participation Gadamer of course is not simply repeating ancient ontology, but he does believe that it has something to say to us.  For example, Gadamer takes up the subject/object relation and instead of a mere repetitio Graeci regarding this relationship or promoting a modernist position that makes the subject the source of all meaning, he speaks of a belonging together between the subject and object that “takes place in our linguistically mediated experience of the world.”  Here we neither look solely to the object nor to the subject to serve as the source of meaning.  But instead, “we are driven back by ‘an internal necessity of the thing itself’ to discover a participation of thing and word in a common intelligibility.”  Thus, for Gadamer, words neither create meaning nor do they simply reflect it.  “Rather, words have the capacity to ‘enhance’ and in a sense ‘complete’ an already given meaning.  In this sense, language is the medium where thought and reality discover their prior accord.  Language is the place where intelligibility can manifest itself in a way that was not completely manifest before” (p. 10).  With these claims, we see that Gadamer is not merely repeating Plato’s views on language, but is taking Plato’s insights and extending them further so as to engage contemporary issues that are particularly relevant to our hermeneutical landscape. Gadamer does, however, see Plato as grappling in his dialogues with the idea of linguistically mediated truth.  According to Gadamer,

the Platonic dialogues are nothing less than Plato’s artful accounts of [these] limited, linguistically mediated insights into what is genuinely real and rational. For Gadamer, Socrates’s ‘flight into the logoi‘ is Plato’s testimony to the indispensability of linguistically mediated inquiry to the Platonic project.  According to Gadamer, Plato’s reliance on the Ideas is not an attempt to escape from the various logoi or discourses but a way to illuminate the fact that although our thought is always “in language,” or in some discourse with its own way of presenting issues and insights, such discourses inevitably point beyond themselves in their confrontation with other discourses to a truth which transcends them both (p. 11).   

This last statement needs further explication, lest one think that Gadamer is sneaking the traditional (dualistic) Plato in the backdoor.  For Gadamer, this “truth which transcends them both” is not grasped “outside of language, but is itself another linguistically mediated truth whose meaning and limits can only begin to show themselves in dialogue with other logoi.  For Gadamer, the claim that “all truth is relative to a language of inquiry or a dialectic of question and answer” does imply that the truths grasped through our dialogic engagements are “limited to the linguistically mediated questions we ask” (p. 11).  However, this limitation does not close us off from obtaining new truths through new dialogue partners who ask different questions.  Thus, a “finite truth” for Gadamer,

is neither a linguistic construct nor is it an alinguistic intuition; it is a truth that develops in time in conversation between historically situated conversation partners. Moreover it is a truth whose genuine possibility we can understand on the assumption that language participates in the intelligibility of reality such that finding the “right words” enhances and complements intelligible insight without brining it to final historical closure.  In sum, one might say that for Gadamer reason finds its voice through language but it is a voice with many valences that register themselves through the many discourses we engage with each other (p. 11). 

*All citations are taken from Brice R. Wachterhauser, Beyond Being:  Gadamer’s Post-Platonic Hermeneutical Ontololgy.  Evanston:  Northwestern Univ. Press, 1999. 

Part II: Gadamer’s Ontological Perspectivism: A Way Around Relativism and Dogmatism

By Cynthia R. Nielsen

As Wachterhauser stresses, Gadamer’s path avoids the pitfalls of both the relativist and the ahistorical dogmatist, not by eschewing all things metaphysical, but rather by gleaning ontological insights from ancient philosophy (particularly the later Plato).   Here we encounter a significant divergence between Gadamer and Heidegger in that the former rejects important aspects of Heidegger’s critique of the Western philosophical tradition’s so-called Seinsvergessenheit (”the forgetfulness of Being”).  That is, though appreciative of Heidegger’s contribution to philosophy, Gadamer thinks Heidegger’s narrative of Western metaphysics as necessarily culminating in nihilism is based on a univocal understanding of metaphysics.  Moreover, Gadamer discerns nihilistic tendencies in Heidegger’s own position, viz., a failure to consider the ways in which questions about the human good are fundamentally related to questions about Being (Beyond Being, p. 15).   For Gadamer, “Plato is not clearly the author of the so-called metaphysics of presence,” nor is metaphysics a “univocal phenomenon destined for the nihilism that dominates many parts of our culture” (p. 15).  Instead of seeing metaphysics as a dead end in need of overcoming, Gadamer “leaves the door open to the possibility that ‘metaphysics’ contains possibilities or resources for development that have not been adequately explored” (p. 15).  Interestingly, Gadamer’s project, in light of his openness to the ancient tradition and his appreciation for Heidegger’s work, attempts to synthesize the best of both worlds.  As Wachterhauser explains,

Not only does Gadamer’s hermeneutics rely on Heidegger’s insights into ‘self-manifesting Being, the Being of aletheia‘ but it attempts to expand these insights into a more fundamental ontological inquiry by reintroducing the fundamentally Platonic concern with the transcendentals (p. 15). 

So just what is Gadamer’s ontologico-hermeneutical strategy-a strategy that Wachterhauser claims carves out a path that bypasses the problems of relativism and ahistorical dogmatism?  First, Gadamer directs our attention to ontological questions, viz., what kind of being do works of art or texts possess that allows an identity in difference?  Here Wachterhauser introduces what he calls Gadamer’s “ontological perspectivism,” which claims that

things like texts are such that they contain within themselves different ‘faces’ or ‘looks’ that present themselves in different historically mediated contexts in such a way that we can say that it is possible for one and the same reality to show itself in many ways (p. 7). 

With his understanding of a non-univocal, non-staticized view of identity, Gadamer can, on the one hand, allow for the possibility of ever new (legitimate) interpretations, and on the other hand, because some kind of identity obtains, he can also regard other interpretations as illegitimate.  Here I propose a few of my own musical examples to further elucidate how Gadamer’s ontological perspectivism does not fall prey to relativism.  Jazz musicians often use what is called a “lead sheet” when learning a new piece of music.  A jazz lead sheet is similar to a notated score for a classical piece; however, only the melody is written out in standard musical notation.  Both the lead sheet and the classical score are “texts” that the musicians must engage and interpret in order for the music to, so to speak, appear.  In contrast, however, to the classical score in which the bass line, the chords, and more or less every note that will be played is written out in full notation, a lead sheet allows for much more flexibility.[1]   For example, above the melody one simply finds chord symbols, as opposed to chords displayed in standard notation with specific voicings.  Writing the chord symbols in this manner affords the pianist or guitarist, as well as the bassist, a significant amount of creative freedom in performing the piece.  However, we should be clear that this freedom does not swallow up the form or structure nor does it fundamentally alter the piece itself, as one must choose harmonies and bass lines that fall within a certain trajectory of the specified chord symbol that supports the melody and marks out the general harmonic structure of the piece.  Thus, with a jazz lead sheet, one is in a sense tied to the score, i.e., one must agree to submit to the givens that make the piece to be what it is and respond accordingly.   Yet, in other sense, one’s own personality, skill level, and creative sensibilities also come through making each performance something unique. (In Gadamer universe of discourse, a “fusion of horizons” occurs). One might even say that the flexibility that lead sheets afford, coupled with the distinctly human traits and personal idiosyncrasies that manifest in improvisation, in a sense engenders greater intelligibility and appeal to the piece itself.  That is, the built-in flexibility of lead sheets aids in preserving the piece through the passage of time while simultaneously allowing and even expecting various re-articulations because it has room for the creative expansions that inevitably come with temporal/historical progression and human interpretative endeavors.   

Just as in no way is it the case that when a jazz piece is performed and interpreted by various musicians from different time periods, a kind of free-for-all takes place in which the original melody is somehow destroyed, neither would it be the case according to Gadamer’s hermeneutical thesis that our interpretations have no strictures whatsoever and no relation to the to the text and even the author’s intentions.  (However, Gadamer would quickly add that our interpretations are not confined solely to the author’s intentions).  Though it is the case, that each jazz performance is distinctive, there is a common, yet dynamic range that unites each performance such that the melody is recognizable when played in a wide range of styles (from traditional to more avant-guard styles).  If one simply ignored the melody (text) and harmonic structure or distorted either such that they became completely unrecognizable, then clearly one has gone astray.  However, this is neither what I nor Gadamer have in mind.

In part III, I shall discuss in more detail Gadamer’s non-repetitious use of Platonic insights. 

Notes

Part I: Gadamer’s Ontological Perspectivism: A Way Around Relativism and Dogmatism

By Cynthia R. Nielsen

Brice R. Wachterhauser, in his book, Beyond Being:  Gadamer’s Post-Platonic Hermeneutical Ontololgy, argues that Gadamer’s hermeneutical studies must be read in dialogue with his work on Plato in order to properly understand a number of Gadamer’s significant hermeneutical insights, as well as to avoid common misreadings of Gadamer.     In other words, Wachterhauser’s claim is that crucial Gadamerian hermeneutical claims presuppose his interpretation of Plato, particularly the later Plato and a Plato whom Aristotle would find more palatable.  As Wachterhauser explains,

unlike some commentators who think the Parmenides represents a definitive rejection of the Ideas, Gadamer thinks it reveals a common, mistaken interpretation of the Ideas, an interpretation that Plato himself may have inadvertently contributed to, but one which he never intended when he introduced the theme of the Ideas.  According to Gadamer, the Parmenides teaches us that we should not think about Ideas as discrete transcendental realities.  Instead we should think of the Ideas as internally related to each other and the things they inform.  Thus they cannot be defined without various kinds of logically complex relationships to each other and to the things which instantiate them.  And instead of thinking of them as occupying a transcendental realm of their own-a kind of repository of discrete ideal types-we should think of them as immanent to the things they inform, without being identical to them” (p. 5). 

In sum, according to Gadamer, Plato’s later dialogues show a greater depth in his thinking concerning the nature of methexis (participation), and consequently, they are not to be taken as Plato’s self-critical razing of his previous work. 

Among the most important findings in Plato’s later dialogues are insights concerning what later thinkers call “transcendentals” (being, unity, truth, beauty etc.).  On Gadamer’s read, Plato, in his later dialogues, was attempting to work out the problems of his comprehensive ontological vision via deeper a understanding of the transcendentals in order to correct a false understanding of the Ideas, viz., the interpretation that the “Ideas represent a second, transcendent reality wholly detached from the realm of ordinary things and logically distinct from each other” (p. 5). 

Wachterhauser then attempts to support his thesis regarding the importance of Gadamer’s interpretation of the later Plato for his hermeneutical writings by discussing one of the central concerns of Gadamer’s magnum opus, Truth and Method, viz., identity and difference as it relates to interpretation. With regard to identity, we have the claim that a text or a work of art exhibits unity or oneness and thus has only one meaning (or one finite set of meanings).  Yet, it seems impossible to deny that many valid interpretations exist for the very same text or work of art.  Likewise, in order to gain access to the identity of the text or work, we cannot bypass the interpretative process.  But admitting these claims seems to land us in an uncomfortable position, as the “diversity of interpretations threatens to dissolve the identity of the work” (p. 6).  And after all, if we lose the identity of the work, then how are we to discern a legitimate interpretation from an illegitimate one?  According to Wachterhauser, Gadamer provides a way out of this hermeneutical despair. 

Gadamer is neither a relativist or subjectivist who would say that interpreters may legitimately impute any meaning to the work, nor is he oblivious to the reality of genuinely legitimate but diverse interpretations.  Instead, Gadamer always has his eye on clarifying the unique type of identity that characterizes the objects of interpretation.  In this vein, he writes, ‘we ask what this identity is that presents itself so differently in the changing course of ages and circumstances.  It does not disintegrate into the changing aspects of itself so that it would lose all identity, but it is there in them all.  They all belong to it’ (TM, 121). His intent is to describe this identity in a plausible way that leaves room for multiple interpretations, without falling into the morass of relativism or the iron cage of dogmatism.  This issue is at the very heart of Truth and Method.  Key to his hermeneutics is the thesis that works like texts always present themselves differently in different historical circumstances, but they do so in such a way that they neither lose their identity nor safeguard it by unduly restricting its possible meaning (p. 6). 

Stay tuned for more…

Gadamer on Appropriating One’s Own Fore-meanings

By Cynthia R. Nielsen

According to Gadamer, we all have “fore-meanings” that we bring to the text-meanings that we each employ as a kind of standard in our attempts to understand the text.  If this is the case and my fore-meanings do not exactly match your fore-meanings, are we in a hopeless hermeneutical situation?  Gadamer answers with an emphatic “no.” Upon closer examination, explains Gadamer,

we find that meanings cannot be understood in an arbitrary way.  Just as we cannot continually misunderstand the use of a word without its affecting the meaning of the whole, so we cannot stick blindly to our own fore-meaning about the thing if we want to understand the meaning of another (Truth and Method, p. 268). 

This is not to suggest that in our attempts to understanding another person’s meaning we must somehow eradicate ourselves of our own fore-meanings-how could one perform such an impossible feat anyway?  Rather, according to Gadamer,

we must remain open to the meaning of the other person or text.  But this openness always includes our situating the other meaning in relation to the whole of our own meanings or ourselves in relation to it (Ibid., p. 268).

Gadamer seems to have a rather dynamic view of meanings, or perhaps one might say, he speaks more in favor of an analogical rather than a univocal concept of meaning.  This dynamic understanding of meaning, however, does not result in a kind of hermeneutical anarchy. 

[M]eanings represent a fluid multiplicity of possibilities (in comparison to the agreement presented by a language and a vocabulary), but within this multiplicity of what can be thought-i.e., of what a reader can find meaningful and hence expect to find-not everything is possible; and if a person fails to hear what the other person is really saying, he will not be able to fit what he has misunderstood into the range of his own various expectations of meaning.  Thus there is a criterion here also.  The hermeneutical task becomes of itself a questioning of things and is always in part so defined (Ibid., p. 269).

Gadamer goes on to explain that a person who truly desires to understand the text will not simply rely on her own fore-meanings, but instead will allow the text to speak to her.  In fact, this is in part what it means to exercise a “hermeneutically trained consciousness,” viz., to be “from the start, sensitive to the text’s alterity” (Ibid., p. 269).  Yet, as we mentioned above, this hermeneutical sensitivity,

involves neither “neutrality” with respect to content nor the extinction of one’s own fore-meanings and prejudices.  The important thing is to be aware of one’s own bias, so that the text can present itself in all its otherness and thus assert its own truth against one’s own fore-meanings (Ibid., p. 269). 

Gadamer on Romanticism’s Mirror Image of the Enlightenment

By Cynthia R. Nielsen

According to Gadamer, romanticism shares a certain schema of the philosophy of history with the Enlightenment. In its reaction to the Enlightenment, romanticism takes this schema as a premise, viz., “the schema of the conquest of mythos by logos.”  Gadamer goes on to say, “[w]hat gives this schema its validity is the presupposition of the progressive retreat of magic in the world. It is supposed to represent progress in the history of the mind, and precisely because romanticism disparages this development, it takes over the schema itself as a self-evident truth.  It shares the presupposition of the Enlightenment and only reverses its values, seeking to establish the validity of what is old simply on the fact that it is old [...] the romantic reversal of the Enlightenment’s criteria of value actually perpetuates the abstract contrast between myth and reason.  All criticism of the Enlightenment now proceeds via this romantic mirror image of the Enlightenment.  Belief in the perfectibility of reason suddenly changes into the perfection of the ‘mythical’ consciousness and finds itself reflected in a paradisiacal state before the ‘fall’ of thought” (Truth and Method, pp. 274-275).

Premoderns and Postmoderns on the Positive Place of Prejudices

By Cynthia R. Nielsen

In preparing for the Patristic, Medieval, and Renaissance Conference this fall at Villanova, I have been reviewing texts by Augustine and Gadamer, as one of the goals of my paper (see abstract) is to bring the two into fruitful conversation. 

According to Gadamer, though it is the case that our prejudices and presuppositions can and do set limits on our interpretative endeavors, it is not the case that our prejudices are unalterable nor are they always active in a negative, confining way.  Rather, they can and do often have a positive or productive function (contra Enlightenment assertions) and actually help to promote understanding.  For example, Gadamer writes,

Prejudices are not necessarily unjustified and erroneous, so that they inevitably distort the truth. In fact, the historicity of our existence entails that prejudices, in the literal sense of the word [pre-judgment], constitute the initial directedness of our whole ability to experience.  Prejudices are biases of our openness to the world.  They are simply the conditions whereby we experience something-whereby what we encounter says something to us.  This formulation certainly does not mean that we are enclosed within a wall of prejudices and only let through the narrow portals those things that can produce a pass saying, ‘Nothing new will be said here’ (emphasis added).[1]

Here we should highlight several pertinent aspects from the passage above.  First, biases and pre-judgments can actually be true and reasonable.  Second, paradoxically our prejudices in a sense both make possible our openness to reality and change and simultaneously delimit our openness to other options once a decision is made either for or against whatever is being considered.  Third, through our dialogic encounter with a text or an individual, the possibility arises for us to become aware of our prejudices and to have them altered or perhaps done away with completely.  Perhaps here it is helpful to recall Augustine’s description of his encounter with Ambrose’s teaching and how his increasing openness to Ambrose’s teaching was due in part to Ambrose’s oratory skills.  The fact that Augustine possessed a positive predisposition toward those skilled in rhetoric was a significant factor in Augustine’s willingness to listen to Ambrose in the first place.  Such openness of course does not guarantee that one will embrace that which is presented (whether in a verbal or textual dialogue)-here Faustus is a case in point.  With Faustus, additional factors hindered Augustine’s acceptance of his teachings, viz., through Augustine’s study of certain philosophers, he had come to see their views on natural science as more convincing than the Manichean doctrines.  The deficiency of the Manichee position on these points was evident in Faustus’ speech; hence, Augustine found the content wanting.  In contrast, Augustine describes his experience with Ambrose as follows:  “[A]s his words, which I enjoyed, penetrated my mind, the substance, which I overlooked, seeped in with them, for I could not separate the two.  As I opened my heart to appreciate how skillfully he spoke, the recognition that he was speaking the truth crept in at the same time, though only by slow degrees.”[2]  Of course Augustine the narrator would want to point out the mysterious workings of God’s grace in his encounter with Ambrose (a claim with which I tend to agree); however, I don’t think that one’s affirmation of this claim negates Gadamer’s observations about the positive role of prejudices-observations which in my opinion give us valuable insight into Augustine’s two experiences from a kind of hermeneutico-existential perspective. 

Bibliography

Augustine.  Confessions. Trans., Maria Boulding.  Hyde Park: New City Press, 1997. 

Gadamer, Hans-Georg.  Philosophical Hermeneutics.  Trans. and ed., David E. Linge. 
     Berkeley:  Univ. of California Press, 1977. 

Notes

Part VI: St. Augustine’s Encounter with Words and the Word

By Cynthia R. Nielsen

In agreement with Gadamer, Augustine did not conceive of biblical hermeneutics as akin to solving a math problem—a model which assumes a univocal, “flat” understanding of meaning (and reality) and denies an analogical, “symbolic” approach to meaning (and reality). In contrast with, e.g., a strict grammatico-historical hermeneutic (as instituted by B. Spinoza), the Church Fathers and medievals understood both Scripture and reality not “flatly” but multi-layered because both correspond to and reveal an Infinite Creator. As Henri De Lubac explains, the doctrine of the fourfold sense of Scripture—the historical, allegorical, moral or tropological and anagogical—“provided a framework of thought for numerous generations of Christians.” Interestingly, those who adopt a strict grammatico-historical “method” of interpretation tend to embrace only the literal or historical sense of Scripture. Likewise, those following this tradition claim to interpret Scripture in an “unbiased” manner, free from all prejudices and traditions. Postmoderns, of course, are very suspicious of such a claim. In contrast, as de Lubac indicates and Augustine seems to agree, the Church Fathers and medievals openly acknowledged their dependence on tradition and the interpretations handed down to the Church by the apostles and their successors. “Right from the beginning, in the first century of the Church’s existence, at the time of the very first generation of Christians, it was a matter of Scripture being read or the word of God being heard in the Church and interpreted by Tradition.” So we see that the Church from its very inception openly acknowledged her dependence on the interpretative authority of her leaders—Christ being the chief interpreter, who in turn instructed the apostles, and they in turn faithfully taught others. Moreover, neither the Church Fathers nor the medievals approached Scripture as just another human book or piece of literature to be studied or examined scientifically, much less as something to be dissected and treated atomistically. Rather, Holy Scripture was first and foremost understood as the very word of God, which having many parts is nonetheless, one story, written ultimately by One Author, and culminating in One Person, the Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, instead of approaching Scripture as a collection of divergent and contradicting accounts, the Christian comes to Scripture as a unified whole—whose unfolding drama is permeated with Christ.

Does this mean that the apostles, as well as the Church Fathers and medievals were biased and came to the Scriptures with their interpretative goal (i.e., Christ) already in mind? Here again, perhaps Gadamer has something to add to the “conversation.” In stark contrast to a modern aversion to prejudice or bias as a hindrance to “objectivity,” Gadamer presents a positive view of prejudices in his understanding of hermeneutics. According to Gadamer, all of us come to the text with our own prejudices or “horizons” and these biases are not be understood as solely negative or as necessarily closing off understanding. Though it is the case that our prejudices or presuppositions can and do set limits on our interpretative endeavors, it is not the case that our prejudices are unalterable nor are they always active in a negative, limiting way. Rather, they can and do often have a positive or productive function and actually help to promote understanding. Addressing this positive aspect of our prejudices, Gadamer writes,

“Prejudices are not necessarily unjustified and erroneous, so that they inevitably distort the truth. In fact, the historicity of our existence entails that prejudices, in the literal sense of the word [pre-judgment], constitute the initial directedness of our whole ability to experience. Prejudices are our biases of our openness to the world. They are simply the conditions whereby we experience something—whereby what we encounter says something to us. This formulation certainly does not mean that we are enclosed within a wall of prejudices and only let through the narrow portals those things that can produce a pass saying, ‘Nothing new will be said here.’”

Until we engage a text (with an openness to being changed by that text) we are often unaware of our biases. Thus, it is through our dialogic encounter with the text that are prejudices are made evident to us—i.e., we must be open or “made open” to having our presuppositions laid bare, as well as to having our presuppositions altered or done away with completely.

Although it is the case as de Lubac observes that “Christian exegesis is an exegesis in faith,” unbelieving “systems” of thought likewise involve prejudices and (unproven) presuppositions. Yet, differing worldviews can be compared, analyzed, and tested so as to see which claims conform to reality and experience. Faith and reason for Augustine (and many postmoderns) are mutually influencing harmonies, not dichotomous dissonances. Certainly, it is the case that “an exegesis in faith” presupposes faith—faith that is a gift of God (and Augustine of course would wholeheartedly agree). Those who have been given this faith will find Christ in the Scriptures; those devoid of such faith will not. As we have seen, this was in fact Augustine’s experience. That is, prior to the gift of faith and a totus homo conversion, he was neither able to “see” Scripture aright nor to appreciate its depths. Yet, after receiving the gift of faith, his attitude toward Scripture changed dramatically. Indeed for the Church Fathers, as well as the Augustine and the medievals (and for those who see with the eyes of faith today), “Jesus Christ brings about the unity of Scripture, because He is the endpoint and fullness of Scripture. Everything in it is related to him. In the end, He is its sole object. Consequently, He is, so to speak, its whole exegesis.”

In sum, Augustine’s approach to Scripture contrasts sharply with a (strict) modern grammatico-historical biblical methodology, whereas premodern “hermeneutics” share a number of continuities with postmodern emphases. Given our current post-modern context, Christians of the 21st century should appropriate this “Egyptian gold” and continue the Augustinian tradition of “plundering.” Lastly, if Gadamer is right and “all of life is hermeneutics,” then perhaps what I have presented as a whole is not as fragmented as at first it might appear. That is, pre-judgments, interpretative traditions and a dynamic/analogical rather than a static/univocal understanding of the text (and reality) have all played decisive roles in Augustine’s various encounters with texts and individuals. Moreover, as we have seen from Augustine’s story, in his unconverted, dis-ordered state, his life was an enigma, full of instability and unrest. Even the best education—which included reading the classical authors and philosophers—was ultimately ineffective, as it lacked the power to transform Augustine’s whole person. Yet, when Augustine’s will is brought into alignment with Christ through the gift of grace, his restless heart is at last brought to a “place” of repose. Hence, for Augustine that which brings unity and purpose to all texts (sacred and profane), all relationships, and to reality itself is Christ—Caritas and Veritas Incarnate.

Bibliography

Augustine. Confessions. Trans., Maria Boulding. Hyde Park: New City Press, 1997.

De Lubac, Henri. Medieval Exegesis (Vol. 1): The Four Senses of Scripture. Translated by Mark Sebanc. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Philosophical Hermeneutics. Trans. and ed., David E.
Linge. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1977.

__________________. Truth and Method. Trans. and revised, Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. New York: Continuum, 2004.

Martin, Thomas F. “Book Twelve: Exegesis and Confessio.” As found in A Reader’s Companion to Augustine’s Confessions. Eds., Kim Paffenroth and Robert P. Kennedy. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), pp. 185-206.

Part V: St. Augustine’s Encounter with Words and the Word

By Cynthia R. Nielsen

The Word In-Excess

Now that we have traced Augustine’s journey to his conversion, I want to spend some time discussing Augustine’s more humble orientation toward Scripture and the ways in which his hermeneutical practices have much in common with certain postmodern sympathies, and conversely, the ways in which Augustine’s approach to Scripture contrasts with modern biblical hermeneutics. As we have examined the various texts and persons to which Augustine had been providentially directed, we have seen how each experience (however circuitous it may have been) enabled Augustine to move toward his destiny. Not only lust, but perhaps more significantly, pride in its diverse manifestations, proved to be a hindrance in Augustine’s ability to ascertain truth. However, now as a mature Christian—in fact a leader of the Church—Augustine the Bishop perceives a profound depth in Scripture, which allows for multiple levels of meanings and even multiple true interpretations. For example, in book XII, Augustine, after reviewing a number of possible true interpretations for Gen 1:1 and emphasizing that charity must be keep in view in regard to our hermeneutical endeavors, writes,

“[w]hat does it matter to me that various interpretations of those words are proffered, as long as they are true? I repeat, what does it matter to me if what I think the author thought is different from what someone else thinks he thought? All of us, his readers, are doing our utmost to search out and understand the writer’s intention, and since we believe him to be truthful, we do not presume to interpret him as making any statement that we either know or suppose to be false. Provided, therefore, that each person tries to ascertain in the holy scriptures the meaning the author intended, what harm is there if a reader holds an opinion which you, the light of all truthful minds, show to be true, even though it is not what was intended by the author, who himself meant something true, but not exactly that?”

Interestingly, though Augustine states that he and others strive after the author’s intention, yet he also claims that it is not only possible but quite acceptable that true meanings be revealed (by God himself) that go beyond the mens auctoris. Here we might bring Augustine “into conversation” with Hans-Georg Gadamer. As David Linge explains, for Gadamer, the meaning of a text is not simply restricted to the intention of the author, nor is interpretation solely construed as an attempt to replicate the author’s original intention. This reflects in part Gadamer’s understanding of the text itself as something living and dynamic. Moreover, the text cannot be approached as if it were a math problem in which one and only one answer is correct. Nor should one attempt to come up with a method or formula that when applied produces the same result each time—such a model has more in common with scientific experiments than with a living, breathing textual dialogue. In addition, a hermeneutical theory that restricts the meaning of the text to the intention of the author is riddled with seemingly insoluble difficulties. Highlighting the tensions of such a theory, Linge writes,

“The basic difficulty with this theory is that it subjectifies both meaning and understanding, thus rendering unintelligible the development of tradition that transmits the text or art work to us and influences our reception of it in the present. When meaning is located exclusively in the mens auctoris, understanding becomes a transaction between the creative consciousness of the author and the purely reproductive consciousness of the interpreter. The inadequacy of this theory to deal positively with history is perhaps best seen in its inability to explain the host of competing interpretations of texts with which history is replete, and that in fact constitute the substance of tradition.”

Some try to explain away the multiplicity of interpretations by claiming that there is a kind “meaning-in-itself” which is univocal, yet its significance for interpreters varies over time. This, however, is unsatisfactory as it is clear that interpreters within the same tradition in different historical epochs have disagreed not merely in the significance or application of the supposed univocal meaning of a text but in what they thought they saw in the very same text. Rather, than limit the meaning of a text solely to the author’s intention, Gadamer understands the text as having an “excess of meaning” upon which tradition builds.

Elucidating his position, Gadamer writes,

“Every time will have to understand a text handed down to it in its own way, for it is subject to the whole of the tradition in which it has a material interest and in which it seeks to understand itself. The real meaning of a text as it addresses the interpreter does not just depend on the occasional factors which characterize the author and his original public. For it is also always co-determined by the historical situation of the interpreter and thus by the whole of the objective course of history … The meaning of a text surpasses its author not occasionally, but always. Thus understanding is not a reproductive procedure, but rather always also a productive one… It suffices to say that one understands differently when one understands at all.”

At this point, some might object that such a view opens itself up to charges of relativism or a kind of hermeneutical anarchy. However, these conclusions do not necessarily follow—in fact, in no way did they follow for Augustine (and the premodern interpretative tradition) who, as we have seen, accepts the idea of a surplus of meaning beyond the intention of the author. For Augustine, the fact that we have a multitude of true interpretations and levels of meaning in Scripture indicates the infinity and incomprehensibility of the Referent to which these signs point—not that truth is relative or that there is no truth.

In the next post, we shall compare and contrast various aspects of premodern and postmodern biblical hermeneutics with those of modern practices.

Part II: Is Gadamer a Relativist?

By Cynthia R. Nielsen

In the last section of his essay, “Gadamer’s Hermeneutics and the Question of Relativism,” Echeverria argues that Gadamer is a kind of realist about truth and reality. This is not to say that Gadamer explicitly develops his position as a realist in his writings; however, it is to point to certain aspects of Gadamer’s hermeneutics that can plausibly be interpreted in the direction of realism. These aspects are as follows: “(1) the realism of the truth-seeker; (2) an epistemological fallibilism, not to be equated with relativism; (3) an anti-Cartesian and anti-Kantian orientation against a subject-object dualism; (4) the Fregian and Husserlian ontology of the sense of the text; (5) the thesis that relativism is self-refuting” (“Gadamer’s Hermeneutics,” p. 53). Though each of these aspects is important, I shall focus on one, viz., (3).

As Echeverria observes, Gadamer rejects modernity’s “turn to the subject” and its concomitant problem—the egocentric predicament. In other words, given the representational view of the mind, one does not directly encounter the world; rather, the direct “objects” of perception are one’s own ideas. Thus, the egocentric predication consists in the inability to know whether my ideas have any connection with extramental reality. Gadamer, however, affirms that the world and history are directly given to us (“Gadamer’s Hermeneutics,” p. 66). Though acknowledging the superiority of classical metaphysics in regard to overcoming the many dualisms inherent in modern epistemology, Gadamer seeks an alternative to the theological underpinnings of classical metaphysics’ understanding of a kind of correspondence truth theory, viz., the appeal to an infinite intellect to solve the subject/object problem. Yet, the insight of classical metaphysics in which we have a belonging together of subject and object over against a dualistic conception is appealing to Gadamer. In light of the fact that he believes that we can no longer ground the correspondence between the soul and being in an infinite intellect, Gadamer suggests that perhaps our belonging to traditions might provide an adequate grounding. As Echeverria explains, “according to Gadamer, we are always and already historical beings who are, originally and essentially, rooted in traditions. This rootedness in historical life is a given rather than a matter of choice, because even before we engage in critical reflection we belong to tradition” (“Gadamer’s Hermeneutics,” p. 67). Speaking against the Enlightenment’s ahistorical bent, aversion to tradition, and claims to “objectivity,” Gadamer writes,

“[r]esearch in the human sciences cannot regard itself as in an absolute antithesis to the way in which we, as historical beings, relate to the past. At any rate, our usual relationship to the past is not characterized by distancing and freeing ourselves from tradition. Rather we are always situated within traditions, and this is no objectifying process—i.e., we do not conceive of what tradition says as something other, something alien. It is always part of us, a model or exemplar, a kind of cognizance that our later historical judgment would hardly regard as a kind of knowledge but as the most ingenuous affinity with tradition (Truth and Method, p. 282).

Not only does an Enlightenment (rationalistic) mentality fail to see its own situatedness in tradition, it also fails to see that it exhibits a “prejudice against prejudice itself, which denies tradition its power” (Truth and Method, p. 270). The Enlightenment claim that reason and authority are antithetical is itself an uncritiqued presupposition. Moreover, human reason is not the ultimate arbiter and guarantor of truth. “Reason exists for us only in concrete, historical terms—i.e., it is not its own master but remains constantly dependent on the given circumstances in which it operates” (Truth and Method, p. 276). Gadamer is not, however, suggesting that critical reason has no role in evaluating the various authority claims inherent in tradition, and is in no way promoting a kind of slavish or blind embrace of authority and tradition. Rather, Gadamer seeks to make us aware that even the reflections of critical reason are particular and situated. We all belong to traditions and this “belonging to a tradition is a condition of hermeneutics (Truth and Method, p. 291). Our own presuppositions that play into our interpretation of a text are intimately bound to our tradition. As Gadamer states, “the meaning of ‘belonging’—i.e., the element of tradition in our historical-hermeneutical activity is fulfilled in the commonality of fundamental, enabling prejudices” (Truth and Method, p. 295). Gadamer, of course, acknowledges that traditions can and do possess false presuppositions which lead to misguided interpretations. Thus, the crucial question of hermeneutics becomes, “how to distinguish the true prejudices, by which we understand, from the false ones, by which we misunderstand (Truth and Method, p. 299).

According to Echeverria, Gadamer’s answer to this question is not satisfying. Gadamer appeals to “temporal distance,” as that which enables us to discern between “blind prejudices” and “those which illumine.” In other words, Gadamer seems to imply (as Echeverria presents him) that temporal/historical distance is a necessary condition for distinguishing between true and false prejudices as such apply to our textual interpretations. Surely there are some instances where temporal distance helps us to decide between true and false prejudices; however, Echeverria asks whether such a condition is also a sufficient condition (or even a necessary one). Moreover, how are we then to understand current texts, contemporary works of art, philosophy etc.? We can, after all, have instances in which various traditions transmit to generation after generation systematic misreads of texts or historical events (e.g., religious cults). Given that I have not read enough Gadamer to be able to detect whether or not Echeverria has oversimplified matters or not on this issue, I cannot comment further. I do tend to disagree with a number of Echeverria’s claims at the end of the essay—e.g., his sharp distinction between objective meaning and significance/relevance of a text for me.

Bibliography

1. Echeverria, Eduardo J. “Gadamer’s Hermeneutics and the Question of Relativism,” as found in Hermeneutics at the Crossroads, eds. Kevin J. Vanhoozer, James K.A. Smith, and Bruce Ellis Benson, (Indianapolis: Indiana Univ. Press, 2006), pp. 51-81.
2. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method 2nd rev. ed.,, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1994).

Part I: Is Gadamer a Relativist?

By Cynthia R. Nielsen

Eduardo J. Echeverria, in his essay, “Gadamer’s Hermeneutics and the Question of Relativism,” begins by citing a passage from Truth and Method in which Gadamer claims that human reason is both situated in and limited to historical circumstances. Though Gadamer rejects what Echeverria calls “absolute reason”—a kind of universal, objective human reason transcending history—Echeverria argues (as does Robert Sokolowski) that Gadamer is not a relativist when it comes to truth. Here Echeverria makes an important distinction between justification and truth and what he calls “simple relativism” and “sophisticated relativism.” Simple relativism is “the idea that the same belief can be true for one person but not true for everyone” (p. 52). In simple relativism, belief and truth is person relative. Sophisticated relativism, on the other hand, is a “view in which epistemic justification and truth receive different treatment: justification is relative to historical context, but truth is not” (p. 52). Echeverria notes that both Michael Polanyi and Jeffrey Stout have defended variations of sophisticated relativism, arguing that “truth as reality is distinguishable from what one is justified in holding to be true. That is, whether we are justified in believing something to be true is a relative matter, but truth itself is not” (p. 52). Given this distinction, Echeverria contends that Gadamer is not a relativist when it comes to truth and hence, should be understood as a kind of “sophisticated relativist.” As Echeverria explains, “Gadamer’s hermeneutics is an attempt to hold together a concept of truth with our historicity, with the former being irreducible to the latter, which is the epistemic context of justification and its embedded historical standards or warrants” (p. 53).

Echeverria then enters into a discussion of relativism as over against realism. As mentioned above, (simple) relativism may be understood as the “view that beliefs are true for those who hold them, which implies that there is no such thing as objectively or absolutely true beliefs. All truth is then relative to the person who believes it” (p. 53). As is well-known, those who take issue with relativism, point out that it is self-refuting and hence, necessarily false. Moreover, they also argue that relativism does away with the distinction between the way things are and what one believes to be the case about the way things are. This ultimately leads to a rejection of the distinction between true and false beliefs because the latter are parasitic on the former. Here Echeverria highlights the need to distinguish between justification and truth. “That a proposition (p) being true (or false) in no way depends upon someone’s being justified, or rational, in believing that p, nor upon someone’s having reasons for believing that p; indeed, it does not depend upon someone’s believing that p, because if p is true, it would be true even if no one believed it. Thus, according to the realist, objective truth exists. That is, a belief is true if and only if objective reality is the way the belief says it is; otherwise, the belief is false. This view Echeverria calls “objectivism” (as well as “realism”). “Epistemological absolutism,” a view in which “human reason is understood as to aspiring to some kind of universal validity, of reaching absolute truth,” is generally considered the extreme opposite of relativism, as well as a “corollary of objectivism” (p. 54). In addition, the epistemological absolutist believes that there are some propositions that cannot be rejected without entering into irrationalism. The epistemological relativist who is likewise a fallibilist, on the other hand, demurs the notion of objective rationality, as well as the idea that human reason can obtain the “absolute truth,” yet s/he does not have to reject the distinction between truth or error (p. 54). “Truth, as a ‘transcendent,’ ‘regulative,’ ‘normative’ ideal, and epistemological relativism are apparently compatible because an epistemological relativist is a relativist about rationality, not about truth itself. Unlike the epistemological absolutist, he holds instead to a permissive notion rationality where one is justified in believing or warranted in asserting a belief according to one’s intellectual standards, available reasons and evidence, in short, one’s present epistemic circumstances. In these circumstances, we can, and generally do, make situation-and person-specific truth claims. But because of the fallible nature of those claims we can never attain a ‘wholly unconditioned truth’” (pp. 54-55; Thomas McCarthy, “Contra Relativism: A Thought-Experiment,” in Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation, ed. Michael Krausz (Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1989), p. 260).

Bibliography

Echeverria, Eduardo J. “Gadamer’s Hermeneutics and the Question of Relativism,” as found in Hermeneutics at the Crossroads, eds. Kevin J. Vanhoozer, James K.A. Smith, and Bruce Ellis Benson, (Indianapolis: Indiana Univ. Press, 2006), pp. 51-81.

Human Life as Biography, not Substance

By Cynthia R. Nielsen

A nice passage to contemplate by Hans-Helmuth Gander on Gadamer’s historically-friendly description of a human being as “biography”:

“Reflection on history means as well, therefore, that the one reflecting is himself always already involved in history. No one simply ‘takes up’ history, and no one begins it; for this reason a single reflection on history is never able to conceive it neutrally and ab ovo. The individual is implicated in history through his biography, which takes shape respectively under the influence of historical events and developments. These latter are, in turn, reflected in one’s biography; they are inscribed in it in such a way that they engrave, as it were, one’s life. In this engraving, the forces of history produce a biography in its individual profile, which therefore can never be removed from the experience of reality, since experience is already history for the individual. Seen in this way, history is the medium in which we carry out our lives. Accordingly, human life is nothing like a substance or an essential core to which one simply attaches, in its factical course and in all of its historical details, a biography. By implication, one’s historical life is not placed before one, as the possession of an autonomous subject. It can be said, with Georg Picht, to modify a famous Gadamerian pronouncement: ‘In truth, we do not possess our biography, but rather, it possesses us. [That is to say:] We are produced by our biography; one could even say: we are nothing other than our biography” (Geschichte und Gegenwart [Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1993], 6). Along with the familial genealogy that is stored within our biography, there lie at the same time those aspects of historical influences and events that allow each person to become for himself the person who he is. Conversely, the ‘course of world history’ only emerges in the form of a concrete course of lives, such that in this constitutive reciprocity between existence and world history, not only can neither be conceived without the other, but it is only in this reciprocal relation that each receives its respective profile” (p. 122).

Bibliography

Gander, Hans-Helmuth, “Between Strangeness and Familiarity: Towards Gadamer’s Conception of Effective History,” Research in Phenomenology 34 (2004): 121-306.

Gadamer’s Positive View of “Prejudices”

By Cynthia R. Nielsen

In stark contrast to a modern aversion to prejudice or bias as a hindrance to “objectivity,” Gadamer presents a positive view of prejudices in his view of hermeneutics. According to Gadamer, all of us come to the text with our own prejudices or “horizons” and these biases are not be understood as solely negative or as necessarily closing off understanding. Though it is the case that our prejudices or presuppositions can and do set limits on our interpretative endeavors, it is not the case that our prejudices are unalterable nor are they always active in a negative limiting way. Rather, they have a positive or productive function as well and actually promote understanding. Addressing this positive aspect of our prejudices, Gadamer writes,

“Prejudices are not necessarily unjustified and erroneous, so that they inevitably distort the truth. In fact, the historicity of our existence entails that prejudices, in the literal sense of the word [pre-judgment], constitute the initial directedness of our whole ability to experience. Prejudices are our biases of our openness to the world. They are simply the conditions whereby we experience something—whereby what we encounter says something to us. This formulation certainly does not mean that we are enclosed within a wall of prejudices and only let through the narrow portals those things that can produce a pass saying, ‘Nothing new will be said here.’” (Truth and Method, p. 9).

Until we engage a text (with an openness to being changed by that text) we are often unaware of our biases. Thus, it is through our dialogic encounter with the text that are prejudices are made evident to us—i.e., we must be open or “made open” to having our presuppositions laid bare. Two analogous examples that spring to mind that might help us to better grasp Gadamer’s idea come from my own experience. The first goes back to my music (jazz) school days when I played in various jazz groups. I had become pretty familiar with a style of jazz called “swing” and in addition to playing in one of the top large ensembles at my school, I also played in a small group on the side. One semester I met a friend who was well versed in Latin jazz and asked me if I would be interested in playing a few Latin jazz gigs. I took him up on the offer and met his group that evening for a rehearsal. To my surprise, I had an extremely difficult time “getting” the nuanced and extremely complex accents of Latin rhythms (which are very different than the accents in swing for which I had a somewhat “natural” feel). Because I assumed that Latin jazz, being a species of jazz, used the same harmonic progressions, scales, and even much of the same standard tunes, I thought that simply adjusting my rhythmic feel to Latin would be no problem. However, once I was actually playing as part of group of well-seasoned Latin jazz players, I immediately sensed the inadequacy of my assumptions and realized that there was much more involved in Latin jazz than I had previously thought. A second example is my experience of living in Moscow, Russia for three years. In preparation for my new cultural experience, I studied Russian and had attained a decent conversational level of speaking, read a few Russian novels and short stories, attempted to read a bit on the Russian Orthodox Church and so on. I thought that surely such efforts on my part would allow for a smoother transition into my new culture. To an extent these things certainly helped, however, I had no idea how my own American culture had so deeply shaped my thinking and behavior. Had I not had this experience of being an “other” in a foreign environment, I would not have been made aware of my own prejudices. My experience of living in Russia among the Russian people—interacting with Russian Orthodox believers, shopping in Russian grocery stores, learning Russian jokes, and traveling on Russian trains—transformed me by making manifest my own prejudices (of which I was unaware—things like a certain American sensitivity to time and getting things done according to a schedule and a certain way that we as Americans tend to view “customer service,” and so on) and provided a way for me to see outside of my own culturally limited perspective by living as an other with a people whose life orientation often clashed with what I had come to think was “normal.” Though these are only analogous examples and are not speaking directly of “texts” per se, I do think that they illumine important aspects of Gadamer’s broad understanding of hermeneutics and the role of prejudices as the conditions that make possible our (on-going) understanding.

Bibliography
1. Hans-Georg Gadamer. Truth and Method. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1977.

“I-We” Sociality and Gadamer’s “Fusion of Horizons”

By Cynthia R. Nielsen

In Kathleen Wright’s article, “On What We Have in Common: The Universality of Philosophical Hermeneutics,” she writes the following regarding Gadamer’s understanding of the universality of hermeneutics:

“the universal aspect of hermeneutics has to do with the community we join and the communion we feel in and through the fusion of horizons.”

What Wright wants to highlight is that according to Gadamer a “successful conversation” involves the interlocutors forming a community and being changed or transformed by the subject matter of the conversation. We can easily see what Wright calls the “I-we sociality” involved in a conversation between two living, breathing individuals, but how are we to understand this sociality when the conversation partner happens to be a text? “With whom or with what does the interpreter actually share an understanding? Gadamer seems to be responding to this kind of question when he states that, ‘It is more than a metaphor; it is a memory of what originally was the case to describe the task of hermeneutics as entering into a conversation with the text (Truth and Method 368). Gadamer maintains, therefore, that the shared understanding, the ‘fusion of horizons,’ that comes about through the interpretation of a text is social in the same I-we sense as the shared understanding, the ‘fusion of horizons,’ that we achieve through a conversation” (p. 237). Here I think that a musical analogy (or two) might help in shedding light on Gadamer’s claim. Consider a solo piano piece written by Beethoven (the score being analogous to a “text”) and its performance (interpretation) by a 21st century pianist. The pianist does not simply approach the score in a monologue fashion, but rather attempts to enter the lifeworld of the piece—a lifeworld that goes beyond Beethoven, as Beethoven himself stood in a tradition of musicians and his composing reflects the various influences of his musical predecessors (Haydn, Mozart, etc.). Likewise, the pianist herself represents a musical tradition—a tradition which perhaps has been shaped by French impressionism and a genealogy of Russian composers. Consequently, when the pianist performs Beethoven’s piano concerto, she, as well as, the piece itself are transformed and a ‘fusion of horizons’ takes place. In a sense, the “conversation,” has been going on for some time (several hundred years); the 21st century pianist (the “I”) is simply joining in (and participating in the “we” and vice versa).