Per Caritatem

Walter Lammi, Kathleen Wright, Brice Wachterhauser and others have highlighted Heidegger’s influence on Gadamer.  Gadamer readily acknowledges his indebtedness to Heidegger, after all he was a student of Heidegger’s for many years.  In Truth and Method, Gadamer mentions his use of Heidegger’s “hermeneutical circle” (an on-going movement between whole and part and part and whole in our interpretative endeavors) and embraces Heidegger’s understanding of truth as aletheia (a dialectic of concealment and unconcealment), yet Gadamer is also critical of Heidegger.  For example, Gadamer rejects Heidegger’s Seinsvergessenheit thesis (the “forgetfulness of being”) and denies that the Western metaphysical tradition necessarily culminates in nihilism.  In fact, Gadamer detects nihilistic tendencies in Heidegger’s views in the latter’s separation of questions of Being from questions of the human good.  According to Gadamer, Heidegger’s critique of the Western metaphysical tradition fails because he employs a univocal understanding of metaphysics.   Here Gadamer’s study of Plato, particularly the later dialogues causes him to reject Heidegger’s read of Plato as a “metaphysics of presence” advocate.  Gadamer sees the later Plato as endeavoring to work out an ontological vision that overcomes a certain misread of his theory of Ideas, viz. the interpretation that the Ideas constitute a separate realm (i.e. a view of the Ideas that suggests a strong dualism in Plato).   Instead, Gadamer interprets the later Plato as sharing similarities with Aristotle (non-dualistic) and developing what subsequent thinkers have called the “transcendentals” (good, true, unity, beauty etc.).   Gadamer argues that the center of Plato’s thought is not the theory of the Forms but rather the relationship of the One and the Many.  On Gadamer’s read, there is a kind of “movement” in the Forms in that when they reveal themselves they simultaneously conceal themselves (i.e., in their relation to the whole, that is, the other Forms and of course the ever-elusive Form of the Good).  Thus, for Gadamer, Plato does not promote a “metaphysics of presence” philosophy.  Rather, he acknowledges our finitude and our incomplete (yet real) grasp of the Forms.

Reappropriation of Platonic Insights:  “Metaphysics of Light”

At the end of Truth and Method, Gadamer turns explicitly to Plato’s view of beauty and self-validating truth.  Beauty is that which draws us to itself; it shines forth and presents itself as tangible in its visibility.   Truth likewise exhibits radiance and manifests itself in the beautiful, thus functioning as a “mediator” between the ideal and the real.  Given his rejection of the modern foundationalist project and its attempt to make knowledge completely transparent along with its search for a “method” to justify its every move, Gadamer suggests that an appropriation of this ancient version of self-validating truth, in which knowledge is not identified with certainty, is a possible way beyond the impasse of skepticism and the ruins of (modern) foundationalism.

In keeping with the overall vision of his dialogical, hermeneutical project, Gadamer continues his “fusion of horizons,” interacting with both ancient and modern thinkers and philosophical traditions and suggesting a way forward through an appropriation of the past and present so that the tradition can continue to speak, flourish and “surprise” us and generations to come.

Another key aspect to Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics is his emphasis on human finitude.  Here Gadamer’s understanding of history and language comes into play, as these function as two conditions of our all our knowledge endeavors.  We cannot fully comprehend these conditions, as their origins stretch back into a past that escapes our complete grasp.  Yet, Gadamer believes firmly that we do in fact have some, though limited and partial, knowledge of these conditions even if we cannot make either fully transparent to ourselves.  In this vein, Gadamer speaks of Wirkungsgeschichte (“effective history”).  For example, we are not fully aware of the extent to which language shapes and “makes” us.  As Gadamer puts it, “Language is always out in front of us.”  The same is true of culture, tradition and customs.  (If you have ever spent any significant time outside of your own culture, this cultural “shaping” becomes readily evident).  Likewise, we see “effective history” in the various ways in which different communities of inquiry employ certain analogies, as well as choose (and reject) certain metaphors etc.  Language, in other words, is pregnant with tradition, culture and in fact opens up a world to us (Heidegger)—a world unlike the mere “environment” of non-rational animals who lack the kind of freedom we as linguistic, rational beings have.

Here I should discuss Gadamer’s well-known but often misunderstood statement, “Being that can be understood is language.”  First, Gadamer does not mean that words create reality.  As Charles Taylor, B. Wachterhauser, Joel Weinsheimer and Robert Sokolowski argue, Gadamer is not a linguistic constructivist.  On Gadamer’s account, both language and reality “participate” in intelligibility.  The function of language (at least one function) is to enhance the intelligibility of the already intelligible world.  There is no re-doubling of the interpreter in the otherwise uninitelligible world in Gadamer’s account.  Rather, language functions as a lens that makes reality come into sharper focus than would be the case if language were absent.  Thus, language does not stand between us and reality, as a kind of shroud or hindrance.  Language functions instead as a “medium” through which we gain access to the world—it has a kind of “iconic” function.  I emphasize the world to highlight the fact that Gadamer is a realist (cf. Wachterhauser, Beyond Being:  Gadamer’s Post Platonic Ontology, and Robert Sokolowski, An Introduction to Phenomenology).  Though we no doubt have our horizons, are conditioned by culture, history and language, we are not trapped in our horizons or imprisoned by our prejudices and thus cut off from the things themselves.  Gadamer is adamant that as rational, linguistic beings, we are free to step back, reflect and allow the world (and texts) to disconfirm our “projections”.

In addition to the intelligibility of both language and reality, Gadamer emphasizes the Zugehorigkeit (“belongingness”) of language and thought.  What may come to as a surprise to many is Gadamer’s interaction and largely positive, though not uncritical, appropriation of both the ancient and medieval traditions.  In Truth and Method, Gadamer devotes significant space to a discussion of the “theology of the verbum,” interacting with Greek theories, as well as, the teachings of Augustine, Aquinas and Nicholas of Cusa.  Gadamer rejects the medieval view of a pure, mental language, as in his account we always think in a particular (natural) languages.  Yet, Gadamer employs the medieval, Christian teaching of the unity of the Father and the (pre-incarnate) Son, as well as St. Thomas’ discussion of the “processual” nature of this relationship in order to explicate his own theory of the “belongingness” of thought and language.  Just as the Father and the Son/Word share exhibit both a unity (in substance) and diversity (they are different Persons), thought and language share a similar unity or prior accord prior but are not reducible to each other.  As the Word “proceeds” from the Father (non-temporally), so thought unfolds “within” the mind (think of the way deductive reasoning unfolds) which is an image of the discursive nature of our thinking.  Yet, as noted above (and here the dis-anaologies enter), Gadamer rejects Augustine and Aquinas’ view of a pure, mental language, focusing instead of the various “incarnations” of natural languages (even prior to their utterances “outside” the mind).  Here Gadamer appeals to the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation in which Christ’s taking to Himself of human flesh (and one might add à la J. Kameron Carter, Christ’s particular Jewish flesh) in no way de-values his divinity.   Similarly, the incarnation of thought by particular natural languages does not hinder intelligibility; yet, given our finitude, each language opens up partial yet true views of the world.  (In this section and with regard to our finitude, Gadamer highlights the difference between the discursive nature of our knowledge and God’s knowing in one intuition).

Wachterhauser provides another way to understand Gadamer’s notion of the “belongingness” of thought and language and the “productive” function of language in connection with reality.  Gadamer speaks of language as symbol, that is, as a symbolon in the Greek sense.  In ancient Greece, a member of one family would break a piece of pottery into two halves, keeping one half and giving the second to the member of the other family.  The pieces were then handed down through the various generations of each respective family.  If a member of one family (born at a later date) presented his half of the broken piece of pottery to a member of the other family, the pieces would be re-united, showing the prior accord of their families.  The pottery functioned not as a mere empty sign but actually effected what it symbolized.  Similarly, language and thought exhibit a unity prior to the various (extramental) utterances and dialogical encounters with others in which language gives us access to and enhances (already intelligible) reality.

Wachterhauser then turns to Plato’s Symposium and Aristophanes’ myth of how humans have to come in their present state to further elucidate the unity of thought and language, as well as the “achievement” of language—here emphasizing its creative function as employed by free, rational beings.  As Aristophones explains, originally humans were spherical and needed no “other” to complete them sexually or otherwise.  However, due to their arrogance they upset the gods who then divided them and turned their sexual organs outward (as we find humans in their present form).  Given this “fall” and division, humans now seek an “other” for completion, and here the emphasis is on sexual completion.   Just as the two halves of the lovers share a prior unity, so too do thought and language.  Yet, the new completion for which the lovers seek is not predetermined or predestined.  That is, a kind of achievement or work of sorts must occur.   Here the analogy turns to the work required for true hermeneutical engagement and transformation.  In order for the interpreter to be transformed by the alterity of the text, s/he cannot exhibit the characteristics of a false lover.  A false lover is not interested in what the other has to say; rather, s/he simply re-creates her/himself in the other.  By contrast, a true lover allows the other to speak, to call her/him into question and thus is open to the “event” of understanding which exhibits a “surprise” character.

As mentioned in my opening post, Gadamer’s overall project in Truth and Method is plausibly understood as an attempt to work out the notion of identity-and-difference as manifest in hermeneutical experience.   That is, on Gadamer’s view the “being” of texts (and works of art and music) exhibit a flexibility which allows for multiple, true interpretations, as different communities of inquiry approach the text with new questions.  Yet, these multiple, true and very diverse (yet non-contradictory) interpretations are of the very same text or work or art/music and thus exhibit an identity through time.  In this view, interpretation is not mere re-production but involves a productive aspect given the new questions and new “horizon fusings” that take place as various communities of inquiry engage the texts of the tradition over time.  Here Gadamer speaks in phenomenological language, using terms like “aspects” (=the multiple, true interpretations) and “things themselves” (=the subject matter of the text).

As I’ve suggested on numerous occasions, a helpful way to understand what Gadamer has in mind with his view of the expansive “being” of texts is to consider  a musical analogy .  In jazz, the performer works with a “lead sheet” (something akin to a text) which contains a given melody and harmonic progression.  Thus, there certain givens/structures to which the performer must submit.  However, various performers interpret the (very same) piece differently and bring out new aspects not seen—or rather heard—up to that point.  This is not to suggest a kind of hermeneutical anarchy, as the interpretation/performance must be recognizable by particular musical community/tradition as a valid instance of that particular piece.  Likewise, the performer cannot simply impose onto the piece whatever harmony s/he chooses.  To do so would be to produce an illegitimate interpretation, just as imputing any meaning onto a text would likewise not count as a valid interpretation.  Because the “being” of musical works (like texts and works of art) contain this built-in-flexibility, multiple, true interpretations are not only possible but to be expected. However, in order to count as valid, legitimate, true interpretations, they must exhibit continuity with the tradition in that each (to use Gadamer’s term) “aspect” manifests the thing itself in its presentation, though no two aspects are exactly the same.  This flexibility allows the tradition to grow and continue its influence through time, as the “being” of texts and works of art show themselves differently in different historical epochs, yet they retain continuity with the tradition. (Though some scholars have begun to explore the ways in which Gadamer’s work might be brought into conversion with the development of religious traditions, including Christianity, there is certainly room for additional work in this area.  Those working in biblical hermeneutics have, of course, already enjoyed the fruits of his labors).

In his magnum opus, Truth and Method, Gadamer displays his knowledge not only of the modern tradition (Kant, Heidegger, Hegel, Schleiermacher) but likewise his knowledge of and interest in the ancient and medieval traditions (Plato, Aristotle, Neoplatonism, Augustine, Aquinas, Nicholas of Cusa).  Gadamer, unlike many moderns and postmoderns, believes that the ancient and medieval tradition still has something to teach us.  Yet, he also sees value in thinkers like Heidegger and Hegel.  Gadamer’s entire project might be understood as a “fusion of horizons” (to be explained later) between the ancient (and medieval) and the modern (and postmodern) traditions.  One might also rightly characterize his efforts in Truth and Method as the working out of the notion of identity-in-difference as manifest in hermeneutical experience.

Rejection of the Enlightenment Prejudice Against Prejudice

Gadamer finds the Enlightenment’s rejection of authority and tradition an impossible and pointless path to trod.  According to Gadamer, though many key Enlightenment thinkers reject tradition, claiming it an impediment to the progress of true Enlightenment (e.g., Kant’s essay, “What is Enlightenment?”) and riddled with unjustified prejudices, Gadamer turns their critique back on them and shows that they in fact hold rather dogmatically to a “prejudice against prejudice.”  As Gadamer explains, the Enlightenment has so stressed the negative aspect of the word, “prejudice”, that its positive meaning, “pre-judgment” (Vor-urteil) has been lost.  One can in fact (and here Gadamer appropriates insights from Aristotle) by way of proper upbringing, customs and embracing one’s tradition, hold true “prejudices” and biases.  Thus, for Gadamer, just because one cannot justify (or as Aristotle might say, give the “why”) of one’s beliefs, it does not follow necessarily that these beliefs are wrong, false or misguided.   Because of his positive view of tradition, many contemporary thinkers (Derrida, Caputo) have labeled Gadamer a “dogmatist.” On this point, it seems that some postmoderns have not thrown off the prejudices of modernity either.

On a more positive note, Charles Taylor in his essay, “Gadamer and the Human Sciences,” highlights Gadamer’s rejection of key Enlightenment notions, particularly the desire to make knowledge conform to the image of science or what Taylor calls, “scientific knowledge of the object.”  In contrast to this model, Gadamer argues for “coming to an understanding” through a dialogic encounter where the modus operandi is question and answer (here Gadamer draws explicitly from Plato).  Gadamer’s model is characterized by the following three features:  (1) bilater-ality, (2) party-dependence, and (3) an openness to goal-revision.  Regarding (1) and (2) the text or Other is not a silent “object” to be mastered; rather, it “talks” back and can put the interpreter into question, thus challenging her “prejudices” and horizon and allowing for potential self-transformation.  Regarding (3), because one’s prejudices and biases can be altered (i.e., if one is open) by a dialogic encounter with the text (Gadamer views texts as a kind of dialogue partner), one must be willing to revision his or her objectives.

Fusion of Horizons

By “horizon” Gadamer does not mean that we are sealed off from others due to our cultural, historical and linguistic conditioning; rather, taking his cue from Husserl, upon whose concept of “horizon” he builds (see Walter Lammi, “Gadamer’s Notion of Horizon”), Gadamer understands horizons as fluid and ever open to new expansions.  Consequently, a dialogical encounter with a text, work of art, or an Other involves a “fusing of horizons,” as the text or Other is also constituted by a horizon.  Given the fluidity of horizons, Gadamer rejects the notion of radical incommensurabilty between communities of inquiry.   According to Gadamer, though “translation” between communities is often difficult, there is enough common ground to allow for a fusion to occur.  Thus, it is a mistake to label Gadamer a “strong” relativist and to group him with contemporary philosophers like Richard Rorty.

As we’ve seen, openness to goal-revision is part of a true hermeneutic experience, as horizons are characterized by fluidity.  On this point, as Joel Weinsheimer in his commentary on Truth and Method observes, we see Hegel’s influence on Gadamer.  That is, Gadamer follows Hegel’s understanding of experience as essentially negative.  As Gadamer puts it, “the experience of negation has a curiously productive function.”  By “negative” Gadamer draws our attention beyond the confirmation aspect of true experiences, which include hermeneutical experiences, and to the disconfirming aspect in which our expectations are often disappointed or shattered.  For example, we approach a text (or an Other) with a certain expectation of what the text means; yet, in the process of attempting to understand the text, we run into problems as our “projections” (as Heidegger would say) do not seem to match the text.   If we allow the text to speak to us and respect its alterity, we must revise our projected expectations.  This process of expectation, negation, and newly revised expectation characterizes our hermeneutic experience unless we grow “static” and become closed to new experiences.  The truly “experienced” person, according to Gadamer, is not a dogmatist who is unwilling to listen and be changed by the Other (which includes texts), but one who is open to the “event” of interpretation where surprise plays an essential but sometimes painful role.  (Perhaps one could appeal to the experience of the freed prisoner in Plato’s allegory of the cave as appropriate analogy here).

Gadamer understands language as having an ability to enhance the intelligibility of reality and thus make the truth of things more evident. Wachterhauser offers a way into Gadamer’s claim by turning to the latter’s claim that language and reality belong together, as language has a symbolic function.  Here Gadamer has in view the Greek understanding of a symbol (symbolon) in which a simple object, such as a piece of pottery, was broken and one half was given to the host and the other kept by the guest.  As Wachterhauser explains, this symbol

was originally given as a gesture of friendship and hospitality between households that were able to visit each other only rarely.  […]  If on some date, far in the future, a descendant of the original recipient presented this token of friendship, it was acknowledged as a symbol of the accord and bond of hospitality linking both families over generations.  The key idea is that such a ‘symbol’ represents a prior accord and the presentation of the symbol functions not only as a sign of that accord but it actually functions to make that accord palpable and real.  In this sense, the symbol is not a mere symbol or a sign that has no essential effect on the reality it stands for.  In this case, the ‘symbol’ completes the pledge; it plays an integral role in fulfilling the promise once given.  What was not manifest—the bond of hospitality between households—becomes manifest with the presentation of the symbolon.  The ‘symbol’ actually has an effect on making the bond between households real (Beyond Being, 100).

Similarly, language has a symbolic function (in the sense indicated above) in that it makes manifest both the prior accord or unity of thought and language, and it affects reality by making reality more intelligible.  In short, language affects reality by bringing it into sharper focus and enhancing the already-existing intelligibility of the thing itself.  Watcherhauser builds upon Gadamer’s notion of symbolon via a discussion of Plato’s Symposium.  In Plato’s dialogue, Aristophanes gives a mythological account of how humans how come to be in their present “incomplete” form.  Originally, humans were spherical and whole in themselves, needing no other to complete them sexually or otherwise.  However, their self-sufficiency soon turned into pride that led to their downfall.  As punishment for their arrogance and autonomy-gone-astray, the gods cut them in half and turned their sexual organs outward (in their present form) so that they would seek their completion in an other.  Connecting this myth to Gadamer’s understanding of the belongingness of language, thought and reality, Wachterhauser writes,

The relevance of this myth for language is that in Gadamer’s terms language stands to reality like these two lovers stand to each other.  Language belongs so closely to intelligible reality that although it is never synonymous with intelligible reality it is capable of ‘completing’ it in a sense by enhancing its intelligibility.  Understanding is never merely a receptive act in which the intelligible form is, as it were, poured into us from without, but also always an achievement of language.  Reality and language ‘belong together,’ like two lovers each of whom is essential to the other.  This ‘belonging together’ that lovers experience is never simply experienced as ‘fate,’ as if it were preordained that they find each other and ‘complete’ each other.  Such a ‘belonging together’ of lovers is also an achievement and a work of the lovers themselves.  I say “also an achievement” because it is never solely their achievement.  Love between two people cannot be forced; it depends on a prior disposition of each person, which allows them to ‘fit together.’  But love also does not succeed automatically; such ‘elective affinities’ require work and always remain, in part, a genuine achievement of the persons involved with each other (Beyond Being, 101).

Just as the two lovers must have a prior compatibility, so too must language and reality have this prior unity so that they might contribute to the other’s good rather than do violence to the other.  In other words, just as a false lover by re-creating himself in the other is not really interested in what he can learn from the other, and how he might be transformed by the truth of the other, so too linguist theories that deny the intelligibility of reality in itself simply re-double the interpreter and leave no room for genuine reciprocity.  Yet, as mentioned previously, on Gadamer’s view, language does not merely reflect reality, it also has a productive role which allows new insights to emerge.  For example, when Richie Beirach (an amazing jazz pianist) plays Chopin’s Prelude Op. 28, No. 20 in C Minor, his performance is not identical to Chopin’s—it’s not a re-production or a mere repetition (as if such were possible).  Beirach’s version adds something new to Chopin’s piece; yet, this something new in no way destroys the identity of the work, as anyone listening and familiar with the piece immediately recognizes it as Chopin’s Prelude Op. 28, No. 20 in C Minor.

“In coming to see the other correctly, we inescapably alter our understanding of ourselves.  Really taking in the other will involve an identity shift in us.  That is why it is so often resisted and rejected.  We have a deep identity investment in the distorted images we cherish of others … If understanding the other is to be construed as fusion of horizons and not as possessing a science of the object, then the slogan might be:  no understanding the other without a changed understanding of self.  The kind of understanding that ruling groups have of the ruled, that conquerors have of the conquered—most notably in recent centuries in the far-flung European empires—has usually been based on a quiet confidence that the terms they need are already in their vocabulary.  Much of the ‘social science’ of the last century is in this sense just another avatar of an ancient human failing.  And indeed, the satisfactions of ruling, beyond the booty, the unequal exchange, the exploitation of labor, very much includes the reaffirmation of one’s identity that comes from being able to live this fiction without meeting brutal refutation.  Real understanding always has an identity cost—something the ruled have often painfully experienced.  It is a feature of tomorrow’s world that this cost will now be less unequally distributed” (“Gadamer on the Human Sciences,” 141).

Gadamer’s claim, “being that can be understood is language,” (Truth and Method, 474) has been widely misunderstood, earning him the label of linguistic constructivist and placing him in the ranks of worthy anti-metaphysics of presence philosophers.  However, as Brice Wachterhauser, Joel Weinsheimer, Robert Sokolowski and Charles Taylor have argued, Gadamer is neither a linguistic constructivist who repudiates the metaphysical tradtion in toto nor a tradition-loving dogmatist (contra Habermas).  According to Gadamer, language does not create the intelligibility of reality.  Reality is itself intelligible; however, language functions as a kind of lens that makes reality more intelligible to us.  That is, just as the lenses of my glasses bring things into sharper focus, allowing me to see details to which I otherwise would have limited or no access, so too language brings reality into sharper focus but in no way is it the sole source of reality’s intelligibility.  On the one hand, in a “behind the scenes” kind of way, thought is mediated by language—particular languages such as Russian, German, French, etc.—all of which are both disclosing and limiting.  On the other hand, reality is mediated by language which enhances the intelligibility of the former.  Language opens up a world to us–a distinctively human world.  That is, as humans we have a world (in Heideggerian-inspired sense) because we have language, which is not to claim that language creates ex nihilo the intelligibility of reality.  Since, according to Gadamer, extramental reality has its own intelligibility which is compatible with language and in which language “participates,”  his view falls within the realist camp.  Yet, his realism has passed through both Hegel and Heidegger and having plundered their riches, he turns back to mine the Greek and Christian metaphysical traditions (yes, I said, “metaphysical,” but metaphysical in a non-repetition, history-friendly kind of way).

Language, for Gadamer is neither a tool to be used and discarded nor a stumbling block between us and reality, rather it is the medium through which reality comes into focus.  As Wachterhauser explains, “[f]ar from separating the intelligibility of the world from us, or substituting its own intelligibility, the thesis that ‘Being that can be understood is language’ roots language in the world and points instead to its integral connection with the things themselves” (Beyond Being:  Gadamer’s Post-Platonic Hermeneutical Ontology, 98).  One could even say that on Gadamer’s account language functions iconic-ly.  Language, when functioning properly, has, to use Watchterhauser’s words, a “self-effacing” quality. That is, it disappears and makes itself nothing in order to point to the subject matter or meaning itself; it allows the things themselves to become present while not drawing attention to itself.

By claiming that language enhances or brings reality into sharper focus, Gadamer is both embracing the idea of language as a mirror of reality (and he explicitly turns to the medieval, Christian thinkers here) and yet he goes beyond and adds to this metaphor.  That is, language does not simply reflect the intelligibility of reality but actually contributes to it.  Of course, such contributions can be negative and distorting; yet, they can also be positive and expansive, opening up new insights and ways of seeing the (very same) realities or texts we happen to be studying.  Here one can think of the many insights that have come to light through various interpretations of Holy Scripture, Plato’s dialogues, Augustine’s Confessions and any other text or work of art that has had lasting value.  As each interpreter, who is of course always already situated in an interpretative tradition, comes to the text, she comes with questions and concerns that relate to her own cultural context.  These questions in addition to her own preconceptions or prejudices (Vorurteilen) make up her horizon, which then fuses with the horizon of the text in the ongoing act of interpretation.  Though, as I mentioned, distortions of the text can and do occur, it is clear that this negative result is not the inevitable outcome of horizon-fusing over time.  Rather, as each age/interpreter comes to the text with different questions and concerns, the fusion of the two horizons allow the text to take on new life and to continue to speak as a true dialogue partner—a dialogue partner who can question me and my horizon, thus functioning as a potential catalyst for my own transformation.

As is well-known, Plato in the Republic describes the Good Itself or the Idea of the Good as “beyond all being” (epekeina tés ousias; 509b).  Hans-Georg Gadamer, who has published widely on Plato, offers a reading of Plato that brings him much closer to Aristotle than is commonly presented in the literature.  For example, Gadamer argues that Plato’s Idea of the Good and Aristotle’s theos are different ways of talking about the same reality.  Wachterhauser unpacks Gadamer’s claim as follows,

When Plato refers to the Good as what is common in all things, he suggests that the Good is the principle of Being of all things, although it itself is not a being.  Similarly, Aristotle’s God, as the highest being, becomes the one principle uniting all beings as the one principle to which Being must be referred if we are ultimately to understand how all beings ‘move’ for the sake of a telos which is not synonymous with their mere existence.  Thus we can only speak of their being in light of this telos, which in turn can only be comprehended in light of the highest being, of the unmoved mover.  Thus all Being is spoken of analogously in that Being is predicated of things ‘to one end’ or what Aristotle called ‘pros hen’ predication.  All beings have this one being in common in that what they are can only be comprehended in analogy with the highest being.  The relative perfection of each thing is a matter of degree of approximation to the highest being (Beyond Being:  Gadamer’s Post-Platonic Hermeneutical Ontology, 89-90).

The common ground that Gadamer believes obtains between Plato and Aristotle allows him to “stress the importance of motion and change for comprehending reality” (Beyond Being, 90).  As Wachterhauser explains, Gadamer interprets Plato as presenting in mythical form what Aristotle articulated in his act/potency distinction in which things unfold teleologically over time.

In sharp contrast with a number of postmodern thinkers engaged in philosophical hermeneutics, Gadamer believes that we still have something to learn not only from Hegel and Heidegger but from Plato, Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas as well.  In fact, in his magnum opus, Truth and Method, Gadamer spends several pages discussing the Christian doctrine of the verbum, seeking to mine certain truths from the tradition in order to formulate his own position on the intimate relationship between language and thought.  Though at this point in my study of Gadamer, I in no way understand the intricacies and implications of Gadamer’s analysis and appropriation of this aspect of Trinitarian theology, I do find the possibilities intriguing.  In one of his claims, for example, he compares the relation between the inner mental and thought as akin to the consubstantial relation between the Father and the Son (Truth and Method, 421).^[1] Here, as well as in several other passages in this section, Gadamer wants to stress the unity of (human) thought and language.  Just as the Father and the Son are of the same substance (hence, the unity part of the unity-in-diversity of the Trinity), so too language and human thought are essentially one; nonetheless, they can be distinguished.  Gadamer rejects any account that gives priority to thought and then conceives language as something “added later” and used as a mere “tool.” Rather, thought and language have a kind of originary unity.  This in no way means that all thought is thought in the same language.  Clearly, that isn’t the case.  But language is, as it were, thought’s voice, which is a polyphonic—that is, language comes in many varieties, but in all its varieties it works harmoniously with thought to make reality, which is intelligible in itself,  more intelligible for us (Gadamer, contra Habermas, is expressly not a linguistic constructivist!)

Though appreciative of Augustine’s contributions to the theory of the verbum, Gadamer seems to reject certain aspects of his account, particularly as applied to human thought and language.  For example, Gadamer says,

[t]he ‘language of reason’ is not a special language.  So, given that the bond to language cannot be superseded, what sense does it make to talk about an ‘inner word’ that is spoken, as it were, in the pure language of reason?  How does the word of reason (if we can translate ‘intellectus’ here by ‘reason’) prove itself a real ‘word,’ if it is not a word with a sound nor even the image of one, but that which is signified by a sign—i.e., what is meant and thought itself? (Truth and Method, 421).

Gadamer explicitly states that the “inner word” is not the Greek logos, “the dialogue that the soul conducts with itself.  On the contrary, the mere fact that logos is translated both by ratio and verbum indicates that the phenomenon of language is becoming more important in the Scholastic elaboration of Greek metaphysics than was the case with the Greeks themselves” (Truth and Method, 421-22).

Next, Gadamer turns to St. Thomas’s contribution to the theory of the verbum.  Thomas took the Christian doctrine based on the Prologue to St. John’s Gospel, combined it with Aristotelianism,^[2] and more or less drops any talk of the variety of languages.  As Gadamer explains (and here I take him to be referring to St. Thomas’ doctrine of the verbum as applied analogously to humans):

For him the doctrine of the ‘inner word’ is the self-evident premise for investigating the connection between forma and verbum.  Nevertheless, even for Thomas logos and verbum do not completely coincide.  Certainly the word is not the event of utterance, this irrevocable handing over of one’s own thinking to another, but the word still has the ontological character of an event.  The inner word remains related to its possible utterance.  While it is being conceived by the intellect, the subject matter is at the same time ordered toward being uttered (similitude rei concepta in intellectu et ordinata ad manifestationem vel ad se vel ad alterum).  Thus the inner word is certainly not related to a particular language, nor does it have the character of vaguely imagined words that proceed from the memory; rather, it is the subject matter through to the end (forma excogitata).  Since a process of thinking through to the end is involved, we have to acknowledge a processual element in it.  It proceeds per modum egredientis.  It is not utterance but thought; however, what is achieved in this speaking to oneself is the perfection of thought.  So the inner word, by expressing thought, images the finiteness of our discursive understanding.  Because our understanding does not comprehend what it knows in one single inclusive glance, it must always draw what it thinks out of itself, and present it to itself as if in an inner dialogue with itself.  In this sense all thought is speaking to oneself (Truth and Method, 422).

What does he mean by the word still having the “ontological character of an event”?  I’m not exactly sure, but I take his point here to be that the inner word (whatever that is) has an ordering toward manifestation—as he says toward “utterance.”  The inner word in some sense has to be completed or formed, which is what (I think) he means by the processual character or the discursive nature of our thought.  If so, the natural question is, what then is the common ground of the analogy, since no temporality enters into the intertrinitarian relations?  To this Gadamer responds,

the successiveness characteristic of the discursiveness of human thought is not basically temporal in nature either.  When human thought passes from one thing to another—i.e., thinks first this thing and then that—it is still not just a series of one thought after another.  It does not think in a simple succession, first one thing and then another, which would mean that it would itself constantly change in the process.  If it thinks first of one thing and then of another, that means it knows what it is doing, and knows how to connect the one thing with the next.  Hence what is involved is not a temporal relation but a mental process, an emanation intellectualis” (Truth and Method, 423).

As Gadamer explains, Thomas, having grasped this processual character of human thought, employs a Neoplatonic concept to articulate both the “processual character of the inner word and the process of the Trinity” (Truth and Method, 423).  By drawing from Neoplatonic resources, Thomas is able to convey via emanation the idea of flowing out that does not involve a depletion of its source.  That is, just as the One is not lessened or deprived when it issues forth emanations, neither is the Father deprived when he generates the Son.    Gadamer then concludes his discussion of Thomas’ contribution to the verbum theory with a few final remarks about how the analogy (for Thomas) applies to human thought.  Similar to the way in which the Father is not depleted in the generation of the Word, the Second Person of the Trinity,

this is likewise true of the mental emergence that takes place in the process of [human] thought, speaking to oneself.  This kind of production is at the same time a total remaining within oneself.  If it can be said of the divine relationship between word [Son] and intellect [Father] that the word originates not partially but wholly (totaliter) in the intellect, then it is true also that one [human] word originates totaliter from another—i.e., has its origin in the mind—like the deduction of a conclusion from the premises (ut conclusion ex principiis).  Thus the process and emergence of thought is not a process of change (motus), not a transition from potentiality into action, but an emergence ut actus ex actu.  The word is not formed only after the act of knowledge itself.  Thus the word is simultaneous with this forming (formatio) of the intellect (Truth and Method, 423-24).

Thomas seems to capture the relation of logical dependence that obtains between the Word (Second Person of the Trinity prior to His incarnation) and the Father.  That is, the Son depends upon the Father in a way analogous to how a necessary conclusion depends on the necessary axioms from which it is logically deduced.  In both cases, the processual character or what follows logically is not a temporal “movement.”

However, Thomas’ account doesn’t seem to explain what is most relevant to Gadamer’s inquiry into human understanding and the relations between (diverse natural) language and thought. For example, the relation between any human concept and the multiple discursive and interpretive practices in which the concept is applied is not purely logical.  Just because Ivan grasps the concept “tree,” nothing logically follows as to how he will apply it or what natural language he will use in his discourse about trees in a given context.  In short, once we turn to actual dialogue and application of concepts as expressed in natural languages, we encounter a great deal of plurality and variability that comes into play.  In contrast, the procession of the Word is unitary, eternal and necessary.   Toward the end of Truth and Method, Gadamer returns to some of the themes discussed in this section and further articulates his understanding of the relation between language and thought and language and reality, thus, addressing certain areas where Thomas’ account either falls short or is simply silent. Hopefully, I’ll have time to post more on that and other related items in the near future.

Notes

^[2] Cf.  Commentarium in Johannem, ch. 1, titled De differentia verbi divini et humani, and the difficult and important opusculum, compiled from genuine texts by Thomas, called De natura verbi intellectus.  [Gadamer draws on the latter work in this section of Truth and Method].

For those interested, my post, “Gadamer on Hermeneutical Experience,” is “live” on the church and postmodern culture blog.  Below is an excerpt to pique your curiosity.

According to Gadamer, experience, including hermeneutic experience, is a process which is essentially negative. By “negative,” he means that our expectations of what something is or means are regularly disappointed and disconfirmed. But if we begin with an expectation, a hope, then hope is always prior to experience and is its condition. As we move through our disappointments and struggle to understand—in light of our shattered expectations or dislodged assumptions and biases—the person or subject at hand, new expectations/hopes arise. Thus, hope both precedes and follows disappointment and disconfirmation. Experience, as Gadamer understands it, is characterized by alternating cycles of hope and disappointment… click here to read more.

Over the past few months, I have become increasingly interested in Charles Taylor’s work.  In an essay entitled, “Gadamer on the Human Sciences,”[1] Taylor discusses some of the contributions Gadamer has made to philosophy by providing us an alternative way of understanding texts and events.  That is, rather than patten hermeneutics or even our knowledge of the other on the “scientific” model of grasping on object, we approach the text or other as a dialogue partner who can potentially change us as we expand our horizons to understand it or him/her.  As the essay unfolds, Taylor contrasts these two models of knowing or understanding: (1) knowing an object, and (2) coming to an understanding with a dialogue partner.  The first approach is unilaterial.  That is, in knowing the tree as object, I don’t have to consider its view of me.  I dictate the rules of the knowing activity, and there is little to challenge me by way of a genuine other as to whether or not my understanding is distortive of the other. Likewise, the two approaches have very different goals.  In knowing an object or the scientific approach, “I conceive the goal of knowledge as attaining some finally adequate explanatory language, which can make sense of the object, and will exclude all future surprises” (127).  In other words, the goal is to “attain full intellectual control over the object, such that it can no longer ‘talk back’ and surprise me” (127).  In contrast, when I come to an understanding of something or someone, this kind of (supposed) finality is not possible.  For example, when I understand something about text X or culture Y, these understandings are achieved through specific dialogue partners (texts are a kind of dialogue partner for Gadamer).  However, when I discuss text X or culture Y with another dialogue partner, new understandings come about.  In addition, the understandings of my various dialogue partners themselves are also in motion, ever-changing and expanding (as are my understandings).  They too are in dialogue with others and through their dialogic encounters are constantly making revisions to their understanding.  Given his claim that understandings are party-relative, some scholars have charged Gadamer with relativism and lumped him in with philosophers like Richard Rorty.  Taylor, however, disagrees and addresses this issue in a subsequent section (more on this shortly).

Lastly, given that the goal of scientific knowing is to achieve intellectual control over the object, my objectives are never challenged.  I may make certain revisions to my conceptual scheme and even substantial ones; however, the goal remains the same:  to attain full intellectual control over the object (127).  The goal of coming to an understanding is decidedly not control.  Rather, “[t]he end is being able in some way to function together with the partner, and this means listening as well as talking, and hence may require that I redefine what I am aiming at” (128).

Gadamer clearly stands within the tradition of coming to an understanding via dialogic encounter, and the three features of his approach (as set forth by Taylor)-understanding as bilaterial, party-dependent, and open to revising one’s goal-have been challenged by many philosophers.  The objectors claim that these features cannot be aspects of real “science” or knowledge.  If party-dependence and revised goals characterize understandings, then they represent something distinct from knowledge (128).

So how does Gadamer respond to these criticisms?  First, he rejects the claim that knowledge of things human can be attained on the scientific model where the goal is full intellectual control over the object.  As Taylor explains, Gadamer expresses this in his discussion of experience in Truth and Method.

Following Hegel, he sees experience, in the full sense of the term, as the ‘experience of negation’ (Nichtigkeit, TM 354).  Experience is that wherein our previous sense of reality is undone, refuted, and shows itself as needed to be reconstituted.  It occurs precisely in those moments where the object ‘talks back.’  The aim of science, following the model above, is thus to take us beyond experience.  This latter is merely the path to science, whose successful completion would take it beyond this vulnerability to further such refutation (128-29; cf. TM 355).

For Gadamer, given his embrace of human finitude (which is, by the way, not a despairing embrace), the attempt to transcend human experience based on this scientific model of knowledge is simply not possible.  Gadamer takes seriously the role of culture in shaping and influencing human life and thought.  “Whatever we might identify as a fundamental common human nature, the possible object of an ultimate experience-transcending science, is always and everywhere mediated in human life through culture, self-understanding, and language.  These not only show an extraordinary variety in human history, but they are clearly fields of potentially endless innovation” (129).  In other words, whatever universal human nature we might arrive at is always mediated by our own cultural biases as well as the metaphors and languages we agree upon to express this human nature.  For example, consider the way in which race was understood in the West in the 18^th and 19^th centuries.  Certain races were considered inherently inferior to others and even sub-human, whereas the superior race always happened to be the white, European race (which, of course, happened to be the race of most of the advocates of the idea-Kant, Hegel, etc.).  Most today would have no reservations saying that surely cultural biases and self-understanding played a significant role in the conclusions of these philosophers on race.

As Taylor notes, here we come to a huge “watershed in our intellectual world.” That is, on the one side are those who want to secure an account of human nature “below the level of culture,” such that any significant cultural variation can be explicated by means of this more fundamental account (129).  Examples of this view include certain expressions of sociobiology and accounts of human motivation.  These types of accounts relegate cultural variation to a mere epiphenomenal status.  On the other side are those who find the first account unsatisfying because it doesn’t take serious enough the function, status and influence of cultural difference.  Gadamer, of course, falls within the second group and rejects the model of science as the model for understanding human life.

As we have said, Gadamer chooses a different model, the model of interpersonal understanding, which exhibits three central features:  it is bilateral, party-dependent, and involves revising-goals.  So how does he answer some of the major objections to his alternative model?  For example, how does party-dependence and goal-revising not turn into relativism?   According to Taylor,

The first [party-dependence] can be explained partly from the fact of irreducible cultural variation.  From this, we can see how the language we might devise to understand the people of one society and time would fail to carry over to another.  Human science could never consist exclusively of species-wide laws.  In that sense, it would always be at least in part, “idiographic,” as against “nomothetic” (129-130).

However, Gadamer conceives of party-dependence in more far-reaching way.  That is, not only does one’s account differ with respect to the persons or culture studied, but it also varies with respect to the one engaged in the studying.  Here Taylor gives the example of how an explanation of the decline of the Roman Empire by scholars in the eighteenth century will differ from an explanation offered by scholars in twenty-fifth century China and twenty-first century Brazil.  If this is the case, again, how is it not some version of relativism?

Before giving his answer, Taylor sets forth an additional way in which Gadamer departs from the general understanding of “science” (130).  According to Gadamer, it is not the case that scientific explanation (and scientific language), as we have been led to believe, is without presuppositions-a kind of neutral, clear, humanly untainted language.  One of the achievements, though in Gadamer’s view (and mine) not a good one, of the “seventeenth century scientific revolution was to develop a language for nature that was purged of human meanings” (130).  In contrast the “languages of ’social science’” have not gone the route of purgation and “seem incapable of achieving the kind of universality we find with the natural sciences” (130).  Why is this the case?  Taylor offers the following explanation:

[L]anguages of human science always draw for their intelligibility on our ordinary understanding of what it is to be a human agent, live in society, have moral conviction, aspire to happiness, and so forth.  No matter how much our ordinary everyday views on these issues may be questioned by a theory, we cannot but draw on certain very basic features of our understanding of human life, those that seem so obvious and fundamental as not to need formulation.  But it is precisely these that may make it difficult to understand people of another time or place (131).

What Taylor has in view is Gadamer’s notion of prejudgments or more provocatively put, prejudices, which we all have and which we cannot completely shed.  When I attempt to understand, for example, the Russian culture on topic X, I bring with me a network of background understandings that influence every aspect of my attempt to grasp topic X.  In other words, I have a horizon that has been shaped by my own culture, education, upbringing and so, and I cannot completely suspend my assumptions, as natural science and some philosophers claim to do.  For Gadamer, however, we are not imprisoned by our horizons; horizons can and constantly do change and expand as we encounter the other in the other’s alterity.  “The road to understanding others passes through the patient identification and undoing of those facets of our implicit understanding that distort the reality of the other” (132).  In order for this to happen, I have to be open to allowing the other to genuinely challenge me, to be, as Taylor puts it, “interpellated by what is different in their lives” (132).  When this challenging is fruitful, two related changes take place:  (1) I recognize that a facet of my former way of thinking is particular to me, my culture or group and is not a universalizable feature of the human condition as such; (2) I perceive the equivalent feature of the other culture without forcing it to fit my preconceived grid of what topic X should consist in (132).  Does this mean that I have arrived a flawless, bias-free interpretation?  No.  However, my understand has been improved, and my horizon has been expanded, or better “fused,” with the horizon of the other.  “We may still have a long way to go.  But we will have made a step toward a true understanding, and further progress along this road will consist of such painfully achieved particular steps.  There is no leap to a disengaged standpoint which can spare us this long march” (132).

Notes

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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. 

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. 

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. 

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