Abstract
Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics is developed as a dialogical form of thought. He is a philosophical ventriloquist, one who articulates his thoughts through the prominent figures of the tradition rather than attempting to develop a system of his own. In the decades after the publication of Truth and Method, Gadamer also engaged in intense dialogue with prominent, contemporary philosophical figures in order to defend and develop his hermeneutics. The debates with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida are perhaps the most memorable examples of such encounters (Grondin lists the most important papers from these debates. Cf. Grondin, J. 2000. Einführung zu Gadamer. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck)).
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Notes
- 1.
Grondin lists the most important papers from these debates. Cf. Grondin, J. 2000. Einführung zu Gadamer. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).
- 2.
Cf. Gadamer, H.-G. 1999. Die phänomenologische Bewegung [1963]. Gesammelte Werke 3, 105–146. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).
- 3.
McDowell makes passing references to Gadamer in Mind and World concerning the concept of the fusion of horizons (Horizontverschmelzung), the distinction between world (Welt) and environment (Umwelt), and the notion of tradition (McDowell, J. 1996. Mind and World, 35f., 115ff., 125. Cambridge: Harvard University Press). In ‘Gadamer and Davidson on Understanding and Relativism’, he defends Gadamer against the charge of relativism and employs the hermeneutic concept of tradition in a critique of Davidson (McDowell, J. 2009. Having the World in View: Essays on Kant, Hegel, and Sellars, 134–151. Cambridge: Harvard University Press). However, he does not explore the relation between his minimal empiricism and philosophical hermeneutics as such. Indeed at the end of the mentioned paper, he writes that he has ‘barely scratched the surface of Gadamer’s thinking about language’ (ibid.: 151).
- 4.
To my knowledge, the relation between Gadamer and McDowell’s philosophy has so far not been examined in detail, although several commentators have pointed to this relation as a fruitful avenue of research (e.g. Wachterhauser, B. 2002. Getting it Right: Relativism, Realism, and Truth. In The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer, ed. Robert, J. Dostal, 52–78. New York: Cambridge University Press; Ramberg, B. and Gjesdal, K. 2009. Hermeneutics. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2009/entries/hermeneutics. Accessed September 5, 2014).
- 5.
Cf. the title of one of the important chapters of Gadamer, H.-G. 2004. Truth and Method, 268–306. London and New York: Continuum; Gadamer, H.-G. 1990. Wahrheit und Methode, 270–312. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).
- 6.
This is also Figal’s diagnosis in Gegenständlichkeit (Figal, G. 2006. Gegenständlichkeit. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck)). From this point of departure, Figal develops a conception of hermeneutics that decisively and programmatically leaves behind Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics.
- 7.
McDowell, J. 1996. Mind and World, 165. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.
- 8.
Gadamer, H.-G. 2004. Truth and Method, 405. London and New York: Continuum; Gadamer, H.-G.1990. Wahrheit und Methode, 408. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).
- 9.
Rorty, R. 2001. Sein, das verstanden werden kann, ist Sprache. In Sein, das verstanden werden kann, ist Sprache. Hommage an Hans-Georg Gadamer, 30–49. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.
- 10.
Cf. McDowell’s critique of Rorty’s rejection of the concept of objectivity. McDowell, J. 2000. Towards Rehabilitating Objectivity. In: Rorty and his Critics, ed. by R. Brandom, 109–21. Massachusetts: Blackwell Press.
- 11.
Gadamer, H.-G. 2004. Truth and Method, 470. London and New York: Continuum; ‘Sein, das verstanden werden kann, ist Sprache’ (Gadamer, H.-G.1990. Wahrheit und Methode, 478. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck)).
- 12.
Grondin, J. 2001. Von Heidegger zu Gadamer – Unterwegs zur Hermeneutik. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
- 13.
Grondin discusses a reading on these lines (ibid.: 103).
- 14.
Theunissen argues for such an anti-ontological reading. He claims that we should interpret Gadamer’s thesis (partly against himself) in line with E. Husserl’s phenomenology, which rejects all ontological implications of its analyses (Theunissen, M. 2001. Philosophische Hermeneutik als Phänomenologie der Traditionsaneignung. In Sein, das verstanden werden kann, ist Sprache. Hommage an Hans-Georg Gadamer, 62. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag). Theunissen admits that his interpretation is in conflict with several programmatic passages in the text, but he claims that it is consistent with Gadamer’s explicit acknowledgement that his book stands on ‘phenomenological ground’ (Gadamer, H.-G. 1999. Vorvort zur 2. Auflage [1965]. In Gesammelte Werke 2, 446. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck); cf. Theunissen, M. 2001. Philosophische Hermeneutik als Phänomenologie der Traditionsaneignung. In Sein, das verstanden werden kann, ist Sprache. Hommage an Hans-Georg Gadamer, 81. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag). Thus, his presupposition for diagnosing a conflict between phenomenology and ontology in Gadamer’s work is that Husserlian phenomenology has no ontological implications. As has been shown, however, this view confuses Husserl’s early position that he developed primarily in Logische Untersuchungen, namely descriptive phenomenology, with his later position, transcendental phenomenology. Indeed, in one of his later works, Erste Philosophie II, Husserl describes his approach in terms that seem incompatible with Theunissen: by stressing that ‘the theme of a universal transcendental inquiry also includes the world itself, with all its true being’ (quoted from Zahavi, D. 2003. Phenomenology and Metaphysics. In Metaphysics, Facticity, Interpretation: Phenomenology in the Nordic Countries, ed. D. Zahavi, S. Heinämaa and H. Ruin, 13. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers).
- 15.
Gadamer, H.-G. 1999. Rhetorik, Hermeneutik, Ideologiekritik. Metakritische Erörterungen zu Wahrheit und Methode [1967]. In Gesammelte Werke 2, 242. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).
- 16.
In a later piece Grondin entertains an ontological interpretation of Gadamer’s sentence. He says that we should read Gadamer as going beyond modern nominalism and putting the emphasis on being, not on language (Grondin, J. 2007. Vattimo’s Latinization of Hermeneutics: Why Did Gadamer Resist Postmodernism? In Weakening Philosophy. Essays in Honour of Gianni Vattimo, ed. S. Zabala, 211. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press). He ends this article by affirming that Gadamer in fact attempts to develop a hermeneutical ontology (ibid.: 214).
- 17.
Gadamer, H.-G. 2004. Truth and Method, 470. London and New York: Continuum; Gadamer, H.-G. 1990. Wahrheit und Methode, 478. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). In the same vicinity he writes: ‘To come into language does not mean that a second being is acquired. Rather, what something presents itself as belongs to its own being. Thus everything that is language has a speculative unity: it contains a distinction, between its being and its presentations of itself, but this is a distinction that is really not a distinction at all.’ (Gadamer, H.-G. 2004. Truth and Method, 470. London and New York: Continuum); ‘Zur-Sprache-kommen heißt nicht, ein zweites Dasein bekommen. Als was sich etwas darstellt, gehört vielmehr zu seinem eigenen Sein. Es handelt sich bei all solchem, das Sprache ist, um eine spekulative Einheit, eine Unterscheidung in sich, zu sein und sich darstellen, eine Unterscheidung, die doch auch gerade keine Unterscheidung sein soll’ (Gadamer, H.-G. 1990. Wahrheit und Methode, 479. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck)). This is clearly not the language of a cautious ‘Kantian’ who seeks to avoid ontological claims about the structure of being, but rather the daring rhetoric of a post-Linguistic Turn Hegelian. In other words, Gadamer’s methodological ‘idealism of language’ does not merely isolate a universal aspect of understanding, but of reality or being.
- 18.
It should also not be overlooked that Gadamer endorses Hegel’s critique of Kant’s ‘thing in-itself’ and thereby his rejection of transcendental idealism. Gadamer claims that Hegel’s dialectical argument attempts to show that by making such a distinction (separating the appearance from the thing in-itself), reason was in fact proving this distinction to be its own, meaning that it by no means comes up against its own limits. Rather, reason has itself set this limit, which means that it has already gone beyond this limit. According to this argument, a limit is a limit only because it always includes some sort of understanding of what is on both sides of it. In other words, it is the dialectic of the limit to exist only by being superseded (Gadamer, H.-G. 2004. Truth and Method, 338. London and New York: Continuum; Gadamer, H.-G. 1990. Wahrheit und Methode, 348. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck)). Gadamer can therefore conclude: ‘Thus the quality of being-in-itself that distinguishes the thing-in-itself from its appearance is in-itself only for us’ (Gadamer, H.-G. 2004. Truth and Method, 338. London and New York: Continuum); ‘So ist auch das Ansichsein, das das Ding an sich im Unterschied zu seiner Erscheinung Charakterisiert, nur für uns an sich’ (Gadamer, H.-G. 1990. Wahrheit und Methode, 348. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck)). We put ourselves at the mercy of this dialectical argument if we claim, as the anti-ontological interpretation does, that Gadamer’s thesis does not make any ontological claims but instead separates being in-itself from being as it is understood by us.
- 19.
Gadamer, H.-G. 2004. Truth and Method, 469. London and New York: Continuum; Gadamer, H.-G. 1990. Wahrheit und Methode, 478. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).
- 20.
Truth and Method: 439–441; Wahrheit und Methode: 446–447.
- 21.
Cf. Gadamer, H.-G. 1999. Text und Interpretation [1983]. In Gesammelte Werke 2, 339. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).
- 22.
Rorty, R. 2001. Sein, das verstanden werden kann, ist Sprache. In Sein, das verstanden werden kann, ist Sprache. Hommage an Hans-Georg Gadamer. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.
- 23.
Gadamer, H.-G. 2004. Truth and Method, 471. London and New York: Continuum; Gadamer, H.-G. 1990. Wahrheit und Methode, 479. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).
- 24.
Figal’s position, as developed in Gegenständlichkeit and explicitly directed against Gadamer, seeks to rehabilitate interpretation rather than self-presentation as the most fundamental concept of hermeneutics. In Beyond Interpretation, Vattimo attempts to go beyond the category of interpretation, but I shall argue below that he fails in this attempt because he cannot account for the objectivity of understanding (cf. Sects. 2, 3, and 4 in Chap. 2 below).
- 25.
Brandom, R.B. 2001. Modality, Normativity and Intentionality. In Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63: 587. Brandom attributes this image to F. Dretske.
- 26.
Cf. McDowell, J. 2009. Gadamer and Davidson on Understanding and Relativism. In The Engaged Intellect: Philosophical essays, 150f. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
- 27.
Brandom and McDowell are sometimes labelled as ‘The Pittsburgh Neo-Hegelians’. Cf. Barber, M.D. 2011. The Intentional Spectrum and Intersubjectivity: Phenomenology and the Pittsburgh Neo-Hegelians. Athens (OH): Ohio University Press, for a recent example. In my view, the differences between the two philosophers are quite substantial. In the context of a dialogue with Gadamer, it seems important to point to the fact that McDowell, as opposed to Brandom, regards the first-person perspective to be of irreducible importance. Wanderer suggests that Brandom should reject McDowell’s idea that the first-person perspective must play a constitutive role in our understanding of intentionality, but he also implies that the difference between the two Sellars-inspired philosophers concerning the status of the first-person perspective is more important than Brandom has so far been ready to acknowledge (Wanderer, J. 2008. Robert Brandom, 192–199. Stocksfield: Acumen). Cf. also Sect. 5 in Chap. 5.
- 28.
This can also shed light on the discussion of McDowell’s position. Thus, several commentators with a phenomenological background are not sufficiently attentive to the importance of the model of practical wisdom for McDowell’s argument, e.g. Dreyfus, H.L. 2005. Overcoming the Myth of the Mental. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 79, 2: 47–65; Dreyfus, H.L. 2007. The Return of the Myth of the Mental. Inquiry 50: 352–365; Dreyfus, H.L. 2007. Response to McDowell. Inquiry 50: 371–377; Christensen, C.B. 2008. Self and World – From Analytic Philosophy to Phenomenology. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter; cf. Thaning, M. S. 2010. Carleton B. Christensen, Self and World. Husserl Studies, Vol. 26: 233–243.
- 29.
Cf. McDowell, J. 2008. Avoiding the Myth of the Given. In Experience, Norm and Nature, ed. J. Lindgaard, 1–14. London: Blackwell Publishing (reprinted in McDowell, J. 2009. Having the World in View: Essays on Kant, Hegel, and Sellars, 256–272. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press).
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Thaning, M.S. (2015). Introduction: Reconstructing Philosophical Hermeneutics. In: The Problem of Objectivity in Gadamer's Hermeneutics in Light of McDowell's Empiricism. Contributions to Hermeneutics, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18648-1_1
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