A Lecture Delivered at the
Department of Philosophy
Southern
Illinois University at Carbondale
April 1,
1999
The Relevance of
Gadamer's Philosophical Hermeneutics
to Thirty-Six Topics
or Fields of Human
Activity*
by
Richard E.
Palmer
My paper will address
five key questions. If you are already familiar with hermeneutics, you may wish
to skip the first two or three sections:
I. What is
hermeneutics?
II. What is philosophical
hermeneutics?
III. What are some key concepts in Gadamer's
hermeneutics?
IV. What is generally meant by the term
"relevance"?
V. How is philosophical
hermeneutics relevant to the disciplines?
I. What is hermeneutics?
(outline)
A. Hermes - Notes from my essay
on the liminality of Hermes.
B. Aristotle's Peri hermeneias, On interpretation, narrowly
defined
C. The theory of interpretation
broadly defined, especially of texts, and especially of biblical texts, laws,
literary works, and dream texts
D. A Hermeneutics
Compendium in 6 volumes
The term
"hermeneutics" seems to be related etymologically to the Greek god Hermes.
Hermes, you will recall from the Iliad and the Odyssey, was the
messenger of the gods. He carried messages from Zeus to everybody else,
especially from the divine realm and level down to the human level. In doing so,
he had to bridge an ontological gap, a gap between the thinking of the gods and
that of humans. According to legend, he had (1) a mysterious helmet which could
make him invisible and then suddenly reappear, (2) magical wings on his sandals
to carry him swiftly over long distances, and (3) a magical wand that could put
you to sleep or wake you up. So he not only bridged physical distances and the
ontological gap between divine and human being, he bridged the difference
between the visible and the invisible, and between dreams and waking, between
the unconscious and the conscious. He is the quicksilver god ["Mercury" in
Latin] of sudden insights, ideas, inspirations. And he is also the trickster god
of thefts, highway robbery, and of sudden windfalls of good luck. Norman O.
Brown wrote a book about him titled Hermes
the Thief.
Hermes is the god
of crossroads and boundaries, where piles of rocks (Herms) were placed to honor
him. As psychopomp, Hermes led the dead into the underworld, so he "crossed the
line" between the living and the dead, between the living human world and the
underworld of Hades. Hermes is truly the "god of the gaps," of the margins, the
boundaries, the limins of many things. He is a "liminal" phenomenon. In
the late 1970s I was invited by the Philosophy Department to give a talk at
Michigan State University at Kalamazoo; I titled the talk "The Liminality of Hermes
and the Meaning of Hermeneutics." They later published it in
their departmental philosophy journal [full text reprinted here , click title,
with permission of the Kalamazoo Philosophy Department].
Although Aristotle's treatise Peri hermêneias defined hermeneutics
very narrowly in terms of determining the truth and falsity of assertions, the
words hermêneuein, hermêneia, and their cognates were widely used in
ancient Greek to mean interpretation in several senses: first, the oral
interpretation of Homer and other classic texts-the interpreters of Homer
were called "hermeneuts"-second, translation from one language into
another was a hermeneutical process, and third, the exegesis of texts.
This exegesis brought out the meaning, sometimes a hidden meaning. Hermeneutics
as the exegesis of texts of course related in antiquity to rhetoric,
which had a much broader scope in ancient times than it generally does today,
but also it applied to explicating dreams, oracles, and other difficult texts,
plus legal texts and precedents, and literary and religious
texts. Traditions of interpretation of rules for how to interpret literary,
legal, and religious texts have come down from antiquity, and these furnish the
subject matter of hermeneutics broadly defined as related to the interpretation
of texts.
In 1978 I received a summer research grant from NEH to compile a
"Hermeneutics Compendium" that would collect the most important of these texts.
I came up with six volumes and submitted a proposal to Yale University Press.
They respectfully declined the honor on the grounds that a project of that
magnitude would tie up their editorial staff and presses for years. Today, with
computer and information technology, the whole Compendium could easily be
put on the internet. For starters I offer here the table of contents for
the Compendium,
which was
originally published in an article that distinguished three major streams of
interpretation theory: "Allegorical, Philological, and Philosophical
Hermeneutics: Three Streams in a Complex Heritage" (see Articles, 1980) the philological or
literal, and the philosophical. For me, hermeneutics is both an endlessly
suggestive liminal discipline taking its character from Hermes and a discipline
of the rules for interpreting various kinds of texts stretching back to
antiquity. My article on the liminality of
Hermes
(click on title
for full text)explains this first dimension of hermeneutics; the table of
contents for the compendium (click on title for table of
contents) spells out the second.
This brings us to our second question: What is "philosophical
hermeneutics"? We know, for instance, that there is a legal hermeneutics,
a literary hermeneutics, and a hermeneutics of religious texts,
even a hermeneutics of dreams, but what about "philosophical
hermeneutics"?
II. What is "philosophical
hermeneutics"?
(outline)
A. Schleiermacher's "Allgemeine
Hermeneutik"
B. Dilthey's Hermeneutik als "Methodik der
Geisteswissenschaften"
C. Heidegger's "hermeneutics of Dasein," existential interpretive horizon
of Being: Historicality, Authenticity, Response to the Call of Being
D. Gadamer's Wahrheit
und Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik(1960)
Hermeneutics in its various historical forms from antiquity to modern
times in general offered methodological help in solving interpretive problems
that arise with certain kinds of texts: dreams, laws, poetry, religious texts.
But in the early 19th century (1805ff.), Friedrich Schleiermacher wondered
whether there could be a hermeneutics that was not a collection of pieces of ad
hoc advice for the solution of specific problems with text interpretation but
rather an allgemeine
Hermeneutik, a
"general hermeneutics," which dealt with "art of understanding" as such, which
pertained to the structure and function of understanding wherever it
occurs. In 1805, he made an aphoristic note, "What every child does in
construing a new word it does not know-is hermeneutics." (See the posthumous
translation of his hermeneutics
fragments.)
Following the universalism of Kant, one might say, he looked for "the universal
conditions" of all understanding in language. Allgemeine can be
translated as "general," but also as "common" to all, or "universal," so
Schleiermacher, although he was a theologian concerned with the biblical text,
was interested in a "universal hermeneutics." His project and lectures on it did
not attract a great following, but posthumously in 1840 a volume of his writings
on hermeneutics and criticism was published: Hermeneutik
und Kritik. For
theologians, however, the procedures of classical philology and what were called
the "historical-critical method" remained adequate to their task.
Schleiermacher's biographer, Wilhelm
Dilthey, a
half-century later, began to see real possibilities for continuing
Schleiermacher's general hermeneutics project as a "general methodology of the
humanities and social sciences"—an "allgemeine Methodik der
Geisteswissenschaften." As part of a much larger outline of Schleiermacher's
system as philosophy and theology, he undertook a history of hermeneutics as it
developed since the Reformation, basically a theological hermeneutics, which can
be found in the posthumously published volume 2 of Dilthey's Leben
Schleiermachers
(pp. 595-677). This has not been translated into English, but it is a very
helpful history of modern hermeneutics (although not without debatable
interpretations). Hermeneutics was for Dilthey still a methodology, but now a
general methodology he hoped would become the theoretical foundation for all the
humanities and social sciences. It didn't, but still it represented an
interesting, even noble ideal, an unrealized dream later taken up in 1955 by
Emilio Betti in his three-volume Teoria della interpretazione (also
untranslated into English, but translated by Betti into German in his 750 page
Allgemeine
Auslegungslehre,
a 1967 publication by J. C. B. Mohr now out of print, but his
pamphlet attacking Gadamer is still available). (See also the Betti inspired
critique by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., in an appendix to his book, Validity
in Interpretation, 1967.) One can assume that
the liberal and generous Gadamer had a hand in allowing Betti, his academic
opponent, a place at his own publisher. He figured he had nothing to lose in the
comparison, which I think is correct. The Betti volume, so far as I know, was
not even reviewed in German, at least in the philosophical journals, did not
provoke wide interest, and in due course passed out of print. Maybe the topic of
understanding and interpretation is too universal? At least Betti did go
systematically from discipline to discipline to show the application of his own
general theory of interpretation. The problem was that from a philosophical
point of view, Betti's standpoint was a relic of the past. Interpretation was
for Betti the reproduction of the original text, a point Gadamer argued
was impossible. Every interpretation, according to Gadamer, was a combination of
the present horizon and the past, so that the dream of a meaning coming
objective and unchanged out of the past is impossible.
The next stage in the development of a philosophical hermeneutics was the
articulation of a radical hermeneutics of existential understanding. Heidegger
was influenced by the historically based life-philosophy of Dilthey, but he was in disagreement with
making consciousness or the life-force the basis of his thought about
interpretation. Instead, he chose "being" as his universal component. Being, as
it occurs in the everyday existence of human beings, he said, is understanding.
Understanding is the basic way for a human being to exist in the world. To "be"
is to understand, it is to interpret the world in terms of one's own
possibilities for being. In his Being
and Time, Heidegger worked out the
conditions for the possibility of human being in the world, and in this sense he
offered a Kantian universalistic analysis. Every human being finds
himself/herself to be a "geworfene Entwurf"‚ a "thrown project." That is
to say, one finds oneself already thrown into a world at a certain time and
place, and one finds oneself always already with a past that cannot simply be
forgotten, since it provides the basis for one's project into the future. We
cannot go here into the authentic call of Being as it constitutes the conscience
of the human being, or the relation of language to understanding and
interpretation. We can only say that hermeneutics took a major step forward in
being once again articulated as a general, universal description of what
understanding is and does, but this time in terms of the being of the being that
is always "there"—somewhere—the Dasein.
I would like to pause here to point out the significance of Heidegger's
contribution to hermeneutics: Human understanding become the
universal door, process, filter, through which all thought of whatever kind must
pass. The being of the world, the being of Truth, the being of one's own
existence are understood. They are "always already" understood before
they are linguistically articulated, i.e., before they are interpreted.
There is a prior having, a prior grasp, and then a seeing of
something as something—the "hermeneutical as" is the universal element
found in every act of understanding in every discipline in every mundane act
whatsoever. Understanding is not a transparent medium; it is complexly
structured, and one ignores this structure at one's peril. This is a little like
Einstein discovering the atom-the universal structure making up everything else
in the physical universe. In the mental universe, or better, in the structure of
being, understanding is the process present everywhere, the process by which
everything is apprehended, placed, understood as something. Hermeneutics
seeks to define this process.
Then a German philosopher, Hans-Georg Gadamer, who had been Heidegger's
assistant for five years in Marburg, from 1923-1928, while Heidegger was
writing Being
and Time, came
to see in Heidegger's thought-both in Being and Time and in the
1935 essay, "Der
Ursprung des Kunstwerkes"("The Origin of the Work of
Art," pp.
139-212 in Heidegger, Basic
Writings) the
basis for a "philosophical hermeneutics." It was Gadamer who first used the
term "philosophical hermeneutics" in reference to his philosophy, and indeed
this appears in the German subtitle of Truth
and Method, which was dropped in the
English translation! This subtitle reads: Elements of a Philosophical
Hermeneutics—Grundzüge
einer philosophischen Hermeneutik! I am not sure why ssthey did
this.
Due to the exigencies of war and his non-membership in the Party, Gadamer
did not get a permanent full-time position until 1937, when he was 37 years old,
finally at Marburg, and the next year he was called to Leipzig, where he spent
the years of the war as a Professor of Ancient Philosophy and chairman of the
department. Due to the war and the extremely hard conditions after the war,
Gadamer did not have an opportunity to develop his project of a philosophical
hermeneutics until his Heidelberg period (1948-1968, but continuing after
retirement), working on it piece by piece in lectures during the 1950s and
publishing it in 1960, when he himself was 60 years old. It brought him instant
fame—and controversy. Essentially, his life since that date has been a series of
articulations, explanations, further developments, even changes, in this
masterwork, Truth
and Method.
It would be a daunting task to give an account of the philosophical
position put forward in Gadamer's 500-page masterwork, and yet at least
something of the specifics involved are necessary here if we are to argue
persuasively for the "relevance" of philosophical hermeneutics. I have chosen
just to suggest twenty key terms in Gadamer's hermeneutics, and to define them
each in a phrase, so far as possible. This list is basically a checklist, and
clearly incomplete.
III. Twenty key terms in
Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics
1. understanding -
Verstehen and Selbstverstehen - understanding as the
univeral link in all interpretation of any kind, thus what Gadamer calls "the
universal claim of hermeneutics."
2. play -
Spiel as a distinguishing characteristic of the ontology of
underst.
3. ontology -
takes it from Heidegger as a method of overcoming the S-O
schema
4. Wahrheitsgeschehen
- the eventing of truth in art.
5.
Horizontverschmelzung - fusion of horizons -
6.
Wirkungsgeschichte - effective history -
7. phronesis
- practical wisdom
8. event -
Ereignis and Geschehen - something happens
to you
9. Gleichzeitigkeit
- simultaneity or contemporaneity -
10. die Sprache
spricht! - language: the speaking of language -
11. immanent text:
poetry as paradigmatic of language at its most powerful
12. reading as a
paradigm of interpretation - cf. End of TM
13. application as
a moment in all understanding - to understand is to apply
14. experience as
essentially negative, shattering, transforming
15. tragedy as
paradigmatic - the shattering of expectations
16. legal
interpretation as a paradigm
17. conversation
and dialogue
18. eumeneis elenchoi
- the hermeneutical attitude of openness; the other could be
right!
19.
wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewußtsein - consciousness in which
history is at work, our language is shaping our understanding
20.
Vorurteil/Vorverständnis - the fruitfulness of prejudgment, of
preunderstanding
IV. What is meant by the
term "relevance" in relation to hermeneutics?
The term
"relevance" can have a number of meanings. First, there is the relevance of a
new tool, a new method that accomplishes a purpose you want accomplished. This
is the relevance of a tool that is suitable for a given task. The term is often
used with regard to information—"relevant information." Webster's
Unabridged Dictionary emphasizes this dimension: "bearing upon or
relating to the matter at hand; to the point; pertinent, applicable, as 'the
testimony is relevant to the case.' " I am sure lawyers have even more
stringent rules for determining relevance of testimony, the "rules of evidence."
I would like to suggest three further dimensions of the word relevance as
it pertains to hermeneutics. First, the German word, Aktualität,
which appears in the title of Gadamer's important essay and little book on
art, Die
Aktualität des Schönen, is translated into English as
"relevance" in the title, The
Relevance of the Beautiful (1986). This German word,
Aktualität, which is translated as relevance, suggests the first of these
three dimensions: Aktualität refers to today, something that is
currently meaningful, here and now. The translation of
Aktualität into English is difficult because there really is no
single word in English that captures the multiple overtones of the German word.
Our translator chose "relevance," but I think one misses in the English word, as
I hear it, the dimension of time, of meaningfulness here and now,
that is so important in hermeneutics. But certainly, once one brings it up, the
meaning for today, for people living now, may be considered a dimension of the
word relevance. Let's call our first additional explicit dimension of
relevance-the temporal dimension.
The second of the further dimensions I would add as associated
with a stronger sense of relevance is that of critique. A critique is
especially "relevant" when it calls one's worldview into question, one's
approach, one's presuppositions, so that after it one cannot see the same topic
in the same light.
The third dimension of relevance is that of transformation. A
thing or text we encounter may be relevant if it redefines what we are
doing, such that we understand it and ourselves in a new light, a new way.
We begin to place different requirements on what we do. We do things
differently. We see the value and goals of our work differently. It may smash
our present horizon and force us to form a new one, to become more aware of
ourselves. In this case, relevance is not just the relevance of critique. It
offers an alternative possibility for seeing and doing. It may change our
self-understanding, and the self-understanding we have as interpreters. This is
the transformative dimension.
These last three--current meaningfulness, critique, and
transformation--are dimensions that I have in mind in relation to defining the
meaning of "relevance" in my title,"The Relevance of Hermeneutics," for to study
hermeneutics, I believe, is ;look for what is meaningful now, not yesterday; it
is not antiquarian. It puts our present approaches in question by its critique
of our present horizon. And it transforms the basic way we see things. It
is not just something that supports a given point of view-not that kind of
relevance at all-but that changes it. One could call this the therapeutic
dimension. It does not just criticize, it offers an alternative to the
present perspective. I call this the transformative dimension of the
relevance of hermeneutics.
Of course, these are "claims" that have to be made good. In a sense, the
last two already support the claim of relevance here and now, for the claim that
hermeneutics is relevant in its temporal dimension is supported or implied by
the critique of the horizon that I have now, and the transformation of my
present horizon. Contemporaneity, critique, and transformation—these are three
important dimensions of the "relevance of hermeneutics" in Gadamer. It could
easily be shown that they figure importantly in several of the twenty Gadamerian
themes we have just discussed.
But let's turn now to the final section, a list of three dozen topics for
which I find some dimension of philosophical hermeneutics may be "relevant."
Because of the large number of topics, I will offer only a few provocative
sentences for each.
To be even more
provocative, I will end by listing twelve philosophers who are relevant to
philosophical hermeneutics without specifying in what way. No time, sorry!
V. How is Philosophical
Hermeneutics
"Relevant" to the following 36
topics?
1. The Humanities
- Gadamer's
hermeneutics is a systematic philosophical defense of the relevance of the
humanities. It shows why the study of art, literature, and poetry, are
important. Here I would like to the structure a short summary of Gadamer's
hermeneutics according to the logic of the "Four Noble Truths" in Buddhism. The
first Noble Truth, as you recall, describes the nature of the problem, the
second the cause of the problem, the third the solution to the problem, and the
fourth, the path of right belief and living.
A. In
Buddhism
1. Dukha: Life is suffering
-the description of the problem
2. Trishna: Suffering is
caused by neurotic attachment-the cause of the problem
3. Nirvana: Liberation,
extinction of desires, is possible-the cure for the problem
4. The 8-Fold Path: The way
to proceed.
B. In Gadamer's
hermeneutics:
1. Description of the
problem: The fine arts, literature, religion, philosophy, poetry are no
longer valued.
2. The cause of the problem:
They no longer are viewed as "true" because the Scientific Perspective,
furthered by Kantian aesthetics, has pre-empted the definition of truth as what
is scientifically verifiable.
3. The cure for the
problem: A transformation of our understanding of truth by looking as the
occurrence of truth in our experience of works of art.
4. Buddha's 8-Fold Path
starts with "complete view" and "complete understanding." What we need a
complete change in thought, in perspective and understanding about the truth of
art. The next two steps in the Buddha's 8-fold path are "complete speech" and
"complete
action." Here, Gadamer would point to the need for a more adequate view
of language and art and truth in action and of their embeddedness in the
pragmatic context of our lives. The next steps, of right vocation and right
application suggest the importance of Gadamer of listening and a right view of
application. The 7th step on the path, smriti, complete recollectedness
may with a great deal of stretching suggest the right understanding of the role
of the past in all understanding. And the final 8th step, samadhi or
"right contemplation" is state of mind which eliminates subject and object,
because both come together. It is an important point of Gadamer's hermeneutics
that it claims to be
neither "subjective" nor "objective." I hasten to say this playful set of
parallels is my own invention and not Gadamer's. Especially questionable are the
parallels to the 8-fold path, but I think the first three Noble Truths do help
me to suggest the direction of his approach.
2. Art and
aesthetics
- Hermeneutics
offers a new way to understand the experience of art as a way that truth
emerges. It also offers a carefully argued critique of "aesthetic consciousness"
since Kant. See Truth
and Method,
part I.
3.
Reading
- Gadamer sees
the scanning and construing processes of reading as paradigmatic of the
understanding-process in general. I would direct readers to the discussion of
this at the end of Truth
and Method.
In spite of his
later emphasis on the spoken word, Gadamer still holds that the processes of
reading remain important. Here, the relevance runs the other way: reading is
relevant to hermeneutics.
4.
Poetry
- Gadamer follows
Heidegger in Ursprung
des Kunstwerkes ("The Origin of the Work of Art"
pp. 139-212 in his Basic
Writings) in
seeing poetry as an "eventing" of truth. Aletheia, the Greek word for
truth invoked by Heidegger refers to disclosure.
5.
Theology -
Gadamer finds in the structure of encountering sacred texts important dimensions
for all interpretation of texts. Here he is indebted to dialectical theology
(Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann) for their emphasis on the address of the text
to the reader and the claim of the text on the reader instead of the other way
round. In Gadamer's hermeneutics the priority of subjectivized, subject-centered
interpretation is overcome (even "objective" interpretation is based on the
subject's standards of objectivity and thus is subjectivity-centered).
6. Music -
Because hermeneutics
traditionally involves reading a text and in effect vocalizing it as one reads,
there is basically a performative element in the hermeneutical process. One
brings a text to life in the same way a conductor or pianist brings a score to
life. I even ventured to present some ideas on performance and hermeneutics at a
conference on postmodernity and the arts some two decades ago. (See my articles, 1978.) A colleague, Melanie
Jacobson, is exploring the relevance of hermeneutics to choral performance for
her doctoral dissertation at the University of Iowa. There are many connections
between musical theory and hermeneutics.
7.
Antiquity -
Gadamer's
hermeneutics points to the relevance of classical Greek antiquity-their
philosophy, literature, and language-as food for thought. See his concept of
Gleichzeitigkeit (contemporaneity, simultaneity), where the text from
antiquity speaks as if it were speaking here and now. This is also theologically
important (see Kierkegaard).
8. The Enlightenment - Gadamer criticizes the
Enlightenment presupposition that the beliefs of the past are dogma and reason
must be used to eliminate them. He calls this an Enlightenment prejudice that
restricts the scope of our thinking.
9. Technology
- Gadamer goes back
to the Greek interpretation of technê, which refers to using
reason to produce things. But there are limits to such a use of reason, as
Aristotle's discussions of phronesis show us.
10.
Modernity - As
I have indicated in my boundary 2 essay on
Postmodernity and Hermeneutics , hermeneutics itself
represents a postmodern standpoint.(See also my 1976 Article, "The Postmodernity of
Heidegger.")2 In offering a critique of the limits of technological
reason and Enlightenment arrogance, philosophical hermeneutics goes beyond the
presuppositions and illusions of Enlightenment modernity.
11. Sociology
- Interpretation
theory in sociology and the social sciences should find hermeneutics instructive
as a critique of objectivizing modes of interpretation. There is an affinity
here with participant
observation,
which makes use
of non-objective criteria in understanding. More recently (1987), see Paul
Rabinow and William Sullivan, Interpretive
Social Science: A Second Look.
12. Nursing and health sciences
- Patricia Benner, a
professor of nursing in San Francisco, has applied hermeneutics and
phenomenology to her phenomenology of nursing in her book. The
Primacy of Caring, and more recently, with
Hooper-Kriakides and Stannard, Clinical
Wisdom and Interventions in Critical Care. Gadamer's hermeneutics has clear
ties to holistic medicine in its critique of objectivizing modes of
interpretation stemming from Cartesian views of the body as a machine. But even
I was astonished when, in 1993, Gadamer published a book of his essays on the
subject of health: Die
Verborgenheit der Gesundheit-or in English, The
Enigma of Health
(1996).
13. Law - A young graduate student from
Norway wrote me by e-mail just this week to ask about programs in the U.S. where
he could get a master's degree that would relate Gadamer's philosophical
hermeneutics and law. I had to tell him I did not know of any. He was concerned
about the climate of positivism in Norwegian legal interpretation. He reads
English, French, and German. Although Gadamer takes the process of application
in legal interpretation as something that really applies in all understanding,
there are many concepts in Gadamer that could de-positivize legal
interpretation. In the first place, there is no privileged access to the
original understanding of a text, and if there were, it would be most relevant
to the time of the original writing of the text. A Connecticut Yankee, if he
time-travelled back to the medieval court of King Arthur, would understand
things by the standards of a Connecticut Yankee and not the people of that time.
Literary critic Hans-Robert
Jauß
invokes the
concept of an Urpublikum, but while this can function as an ideal, the
claim of the text is ultimately on our understanding, not that of someone dead
long ago.
14. Psychology -
Again, the relevance
of hermeneutics to psychology lies first of all in its critique of scientism,
but the existential analysis of Dasein in Heidegger has been applied in
psychoanalysis. Dilthey and Schleiermacher viewed hermeneutics in psychological
terms, even referring to psychological understanding. Heidegger and Gadamer,
however, tried to avoid subjectivism and the terminology of consciousness,
although Gadamer did use it when he could find no other term adequate to his
meaning, such as in his famous term wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein.
One of my students here in the audience, Robert Zellmann, started his graduate work in a
Seattle University program for Existential and Phenomenological
Psychology, which unfortunately has now been phased out for lack of students
being drawn to the program. Apparently there were not enough supporters of it
other than myself, i.e., supporters within traditional psychology.
15.
Psychiatry -
Gadamer has an essay, "Hermeneutics and Psychiatry" in The
Enigma of Health, but unfortunately I have
not read it. Gadamer does make a remark on psychiatric interpretation in his
debate with Habermas, as not the model for interpretation in general because the
doctor holds a superior power position and is not treating his partner in
conversation as an equal. (See his "Hermeneutics, Rhetoric and
Ideology-Critique," pp. 313-334 in Rhetoric
and Hermeneutics in our Time)
16. Lesbianism - In her book Lesbians
and Lesbianism: A Post-Jungian Perspective New York: Routledge, 1997, 237
pp.), Claudette Kulkarni attempts to combine a Gadamerian interpretive
methodology with a Jungian practice. Her interest in Gadamer is in his emphasis
on dialogue and not making the analyst the supreme arbiter of a pregiven
meaning. "The methodology I have chosen, hermeneutics, is an interpretive
methodology, that is, a methodology which expects knowledge to emerge from
dialogue and in the form of 'an unpredictable discovery rather thanb a
controlled outcome.' " (149) For Kulkarni, and for many persons in the social
sciences, hermeneutics definitely has methdological consequences, even when as
philosophical hermeneutics it is not itself a methodology.
17. Languages &
Translation -
The process of
translation is paradigmatic for hermeneutics, and the process of understanding
as described philosophically would be relevant to the teaching of modern
languages and to the nature of translation. Dennis Schmidt has two very insightful articles
on translations; they are informed by Gadamer's
hermeneutics.1
18. Rhetoric - Rhetoric is a very important
factor in Gadamer's thinking. He is especially interested in the broader scope
of rhetoric in antiquity. His essay, "Rhetoric and Hermeneutics," appears in
Rhetoric
and Hermeneutics in Our Time: A Reader, pp. 45-59. Also see my
contribution to that volume, "What Hermeneutics can Offer Rhetoric," pp.
108-131. In that essay, I found twenty points where hermeneutics could offer
something to rhetoric, but Gadamer after reading it, advised me to reduce it to
ten by combining some points. Unfortunately if was already at the publishers and
really not practical to change. But I agreed with him that it would have been
more effective with ten or twelve points rather than twenty.
19. Theater -
Hermeneutics is
typically interpretation from a script. It comes to life in oral interpretation.
In a later writing Gadamer also reinterprets the Greek term mimesis to
mean something quite other than merely copying. It produces the meaning in sound
and gesture. In principle the act of reading is a performance of the text even
when the reading is internal, and this reading supplies emphases and meanings
not necessarily evident in the text merely as written.
20. Postmodernity -
Gadamer's
hermeneutics contains a critique of the thought-forms of modernity. As such it
marks a turn to postmodernity, as I have pointed out in my article
"Postmodernity and Hermeneutics" in boundary 2 (see Articles, 1977) and elsewhere. A recent
conference arranged by Eugene Gendlin at the University of Chicago on the topic,
"After Postmodernity" (see the report at www.focusing.org/conferencereport.html) reflected many of the themes of
hermeneutics.
21.Phenomenology -
The question of
phenomenology is inseparable from the development of hermeneutics. Gadamer was
Heidegger's assistant from 1923 to 1928, during precisely Heidegger was making a
double move of using phenomenology to free himself of life-philosophy and
neo-Kantianism and at the same time adding jibes in class about Husserl. Here,
his logic lectures of 1925, recently translated, are relevant. For the view of
their split from Husserl's perspective, see the recently published volume 6 of
Edmund Husserl's collected writings in English from the period 1927-1931,
Psychology
and Transcendental Phenomenology: Husserl's Britannica Article, Amsterdam
Lectures, and Marginal comments in Being and Time and Kant and the
Problem of Metaphysics. (1997). Also, see G. B. Madison's
view that a phenomenological hermeneutics is the solution to the problems of
postmodernism (see his Web page). It is significant that Dermot Moran's
Introduction
to Phenomenology
includes a 48-page chapter on Gadamer. Gadamer's thought is phenomenological and
inextricably intertwined with the development of 20th century phenomenology.
(See his conversation on phenomenology with Alfons Grieder in JBSP (published May, 1995), which will
be included in my forthcoming Gadamer in
Conversation
(Yale, 2001).
22. Ontology - Gadamer's hermeneutics in
Truth
and Method
follows the lead
of Heidegger in making hermeneutics an ontology of understanding. This avoids
both the subjectivizing involved in making interpretation a psychological
process, and an objectivizing which omits/denies the interpretive moment in the
reader.
23. Existential
self-understanding - Gadamer also follows Heidegger
in defining understanding as self-understanding. While Gadamer avoids the
terminology of existentialism, he continues to take the view that understanding
is not just of an external object or subject but rather involves a moment of
self-understanding as one understands. To understand in a way that transforms
one's view of the world and oneself, as often happens in encountering a great
work of art, also results in an enhanced self-understanding.
24.
History - The
ongoing discussion in hermeneutics from a methodological point of view is
regarding the claimed objectivity of historical understanding. Along with
Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Habermas, Gadamer in his philosophical hermeneutics
argues that there can be no disinterested understanding or even
presuppositionless understanding of anything. Nietzsche even seeks for the
interest-guiding factors in interpretation, as Habermas has noted in his
collection of Nietzsche's Erkenntnistheoretische Schriften (o.p.,
Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,1968) and carried over into his own theory in his Knowledge
and Human Interests (see especially the appendix on
three major types of knowledge-guiding interest). What separates Heidegger and
Gadamer is Gadamer's concept of wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewußtsein, a
consciousness in which history is always at work. For Gadamer there is no escape
from history or from prejudices, although one must continually become aware of
them. But they are the basis of our understanding at all, so "prejudgments" are
always already there. Habermas and Gadamer are not so antithetical as some
Habermas followers assume. Habermas used Gadamer's hermeneutics in critiquing
the logic of research in the social sciences. See my article published in 2000, "Habermas
versus Gadamer? Some Remarks."
25. Literary Criticism - The process of literary criticism
presupposes the understanding of the text, which is the arena of
hermeneutics, yet American literary critics frequently assume what
philosophically must be described as an Aristotelian realism, as Neal
Oxenhandler points out in an article from the 1950s. In the concluding manifesto
in my book, Hermeneutics, I mention some 25 dimensions of
relevance in an effort to trace out the significance of hermeneutics for
literary interpretation. My original hope in studying hermeneutics was to
develop an existential/ontological literary criticism that would sense the way
of being-in-the-world that comes to expression in the text. While I did not find
in Gadamer's hermeneutics a method of textual analysis, it did unfold the
ontological being-for-me of the text. Also, the "hermeneutical quartet at Yale"
(as I called Geoffrey Hartmann, Paul deMan, Harold Bloom, and J. Hillis Miller
in an unpublished lecture I presented in Tennessee in the seventies) all have an
interest in hermeneutics, though not always of the Gadamerian kind! While
hermeneutics focusses on the problem of understanding what is
being said in the literary text, literary criticism goes beyond this to
compare it with other texts and to apply standards of literary value, literary
history, etc. Yet in all this, literary criticism must presuppose the
understanding of the text, thus both literary criticism and literary theory
cannot escape hermeneutics, and theorists sometimes refer to the philosophical
hermeneutics of Gadamer (especially Geoffrey Hartman [see his collection,
A
Critic's Journey: Literary Reflections, 1958-1998 and many earlier books, but also
Stanley Fish's Is
there a text in this class? and Doing
What Comes Naturally). George
Karnezis
explored the
debate between Hirsch and Gadamer in his dissertation.
26. Understanding - As I have noted above,
understanding, like Being, is ubiquitous. The process of understanding is a
prerequisite process in all disciplines. It may seem that understanding takes
many different forms, each determined by a particular discipline. But the fact
is that the philosophical analysis of understanding should have priority over
all disciplinary hermeneutics. To ask what understanding is in general and
universally is to ask a qustion that affects all questioning in every
discipline. Like philosophy itself, hermeneutics is truly universal. Thus
Gadamer controversial essay, "The Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem."
(included in Continental
Philosophy: An Anthology (1998), pp.
186-193.)
27. Method - It is a mistake to see Gadamer as
the arch-enemy of method. Method is basic and indispensible to every area of
human investigation. He recognizes this. The problem arises when method is
viewed as the best and only avenue for obtaining knowledge. Here, hermeneutics
attempts to show through philosophical analysis the limits and liabilities of method, its
non-universality.
It is hermeneutics
which is universal, according to Gadamer, not method. Methodically generated
truth closes the investigator to other forms of truth, and thus Gadamer's title,
Truth
and Method. And
even the universality of hermeneutics is a major point of contention in the
debate with Jürgen Habermas. [See Hermeneutik und Ideologie-Kritik,
Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1971, o.p.]
28. Reception aesthetics
- One of the
consequences of phenomenology, and also hermeneutics, is the aesthetics of
reception. This focuses not so much on the text as rather how that text is
perceived/received. In America we have the "reader response" criticism of
Norman Holland (Dynamics
of Literary Response and 5
Readers ReadingJane Tompkins (Reader
Response Criticism: From Structuralism to Formalism, and Stanley Fish (cited
in #25 above) among others. Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics sees in
reception-aesthetics a step beyond the Aristotelian realism of the New Criticism
(although Aristotle's analysis of tragedy in the Poetics is an early example of
reception-aesthetics) in that the aesthetics of reception realizes that the
happening of the work occurs in the reader and thus it is pointless to exclude
what the perceiver brings to the act of encountering a work of art. But
hermeneutics articulates this happening ontologically as an event of disclosure
of truth. What hermeneutics can offer reception-aesthetics, then, is a
philosophical basis that goes beyond subjectivism. Philosophically speaking,
reader response criticism does not solve the problem that hermeneutics tried to
solve, namely the perception that art is an untruth, the tendency to view art in
a utilitarian way as a pleasurable "experience." But many experiences can be
pleasurable, such as eating ice cream. Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics,
with its claim that works of art and poetry bring truth to stand, can
enrich reception aesthetics without contradicting their point that the happening
of art in in the perceiver.
29.
Deconstruction - There is no denying the power of
deconstructive literary interpretation. It has an entirely different
philosophical basis than reader response literary criticism. Poststructuralism
puts forward a theory of language and a hermeneutics of suspicion that reads
between the lines for where the action going on contradicts the words. We see
this illustrated with particular brilliance in Barbara
Johnson's great essay on Melville's "Billy
Budd." In my article
comparing four texts of Gadamer and four of Derrida (see Articles, 1994), I conclude that the two
approaches to the phenomenon of reading and of interpretation are supplementary,
not mutually exclusive. Both offer light on the event of understanding that we
would not otherwise have.
There are some who regard deconstruction as a passing fad, but the
tremendous fruitfulness of Derrida's writings witnesses to its philosophical
insights into the logocentrism of structural linguistics, the structure of
writing as having what Rudolf Gasché calls an "infrastructure" of presence and
absence, and a link with Heidegger's critique of Platonic metaphysics. Nor, on
the other hand, do I see hermeneutics as a fad that has been superseded by
poststructuralism. It is a hermeneutical principle of Gadamer that one's
interlocutor could be right, and should be treated with appreciation and
respect. Like Socrates, one seeks the truth that resides in the arguments of
one's critics. But as Gadamer's efforts at dialogue with Derrida, another
follower of Heidegger, have shown, Derrida regards the structure of dialogue
itself as presupposing a common ground that does not exist. (See Dialogue
and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter 1989.) But as those seeking to
evaluate the contributions of both, I would say that hermeneutics has been
misunderstood by most American deconstructionists. In this respect, the book
that best deals with these contrasts is James Risser's The
Voice of the Other: Re-reading Gadamer's Philosophical
Hermeneutics
(1997).
There are some literary critics who argue that hermeneutics is
irrelevant, because deconstruction and French literary theory, especially
Foucault, have gone far beyond it (see Michel
Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics). After all, Truth
and Method
dates from 1960.
Or, one can disregard hermeneutics as basically a German phenomenon, anyway, so
don't import it. We have done perfectly well without it so far, so why bother
us? We have all the methods we need, so why waste time on methodology? In reply
to this, I would say, first, that you can't know what you're missing till you've
tried it, and most of them have not. Hermeneutics is not a fad; it is not going
to fade away. It is the composite of theorizing and rules about interpreting
texts dating back thousands of years, plus valuable philosophical insights into
understanding as a process and event that have been offered by Heidegger and
Gadamer. As for hermeneutics being some sort of methodology, this is a
misunderstanding. It may be hermeneutics as defined by Emilio
Betti, but it is not
methodology in Heidegger's analysis of existential understanding; and in Gadamer
hermeneutics is a critique of methodology. That is why Betti is so upset with
Gadamer. Gadamer has redefined hermeneutics as philosophy of understanding and
interpretation, not as an interdisciplinary methodology of interpretation.
Unfortunately Betti's compendious Allgemeine Auslegungslehre of 1967 is
long out of print, but see Verena
Essmann's book on
it.
30. The "Hermeneutik und Poetik
Arbeitsgruppe" - The German "Hermeneutics and
Poetics Workgroup" has been in existence since about 1960. Its biennial volumes
are an interesting collection of speculation by literary researchers from
universities all over Germany. One would expect them to take Gadamer as their
mentor, but they have seemingly chosen Hans Blumenberg, who is more of a social
theorist than a philosopher. They could learn a great deal from Gadamer, but
they have chosen not to do so. I mention them here only because you may have the
impression that Gadamer's hermeneutics is being carried forward by in Germany by
this group. In his conversation on "aesthetics" with Carsten Dutt in his little
book, Hans
Georg Gadamer im Gespräch Gadamer reproaches members of this
group with having misunderstood his concepts even when they tried to apply them.
His hermeneutics is being carried forward by individual critics outside that
group, such as slavist Horst-Jürgen
Gerigk at the
University of Heidelberg, especially his Unterwegs zur Interpretation: Hinweise
zu einer Theorie der Literatur in Auseinandersetzung mit Gadamers Wahrheit
und Methode (1989) and Die
Bruder Karamazov
(1997) but not so much by the Hermeneutics and Poetics group, who define
hermeneutics in its more general sense as the interpretation of texts, in this
case, literary texts.
31. Yale Hermeneutics
Series -
The interest in
hermeneutics is not something new at Yale University. Geoffrey Hartmann, Paul
DeMan, Harold Bloom, and others have found things they could use, but the
fascination with Derrida has eclipsed for the time being the influence of
Gadamer. Still, Yale University Press is now offering a series of books in
hermeneutics, such as Gerald Bruns' Hermeneutics
Ancient and Modern and Rhetoric
and Hermeneutics in our Time: A Reader (1997), and various books by
Hans-Georg Gadamer, which promise to continue making the hermeneutical tradition
more widely known. And this includes the forthcoming book on Gadamer in
Conversation: Hermeneutics, Aesthetics, Practical Philosophy, the Greeks,
Phenomenology, and the Nazis (2001).
32. Postcolonial
literature - The
task of understanding other cultures is a "hermeneutical problem" and
hermeneutical reflection sheds light on this task. A major factor in this is the
invisibility of one's own cultural presuppositions. Here, encountering other
cultures helps to shed light on one's own prejudices-if one is hermeneutically
open to this. Again, we need to be more aware of how our prejudices condition
our judgments, and hermeneutical reflection makes us aware of this need. Gadamer
has drawn a great deal of criticism in arguing for the fruitfulness of
prejudice, or I would prefer the term "prejudgments," but his point has been
misunderstood. We cannot approach any problem totally free of prejudice or prior
judgments on a subject, for this is where our questions come from, this is the
reason we may have an interest in asking questions at all. We cannot understand
anything new except on the basis of what we already know, and this causes us to
have certain expectations which may be contradicted by what we encounter.
Gadamer by no means is arguing we must make our prejudices the measure of
everything we perceive-that is the precisely the problem with method! Method
usually already has its questions and standpoint constructed, and the inquirer
only to substantiates or refutes a theory given in advance. Gadamer's approach
is one of dialogical openness, trying like Socrates, to learn the truth, even if
it contradicts his own expectations.
33. Asia - It is probably no accident that
the author of the definitive bibliography of Gadamer's writings
(Gadamer-Bibliographie, 1994) is Japanese—Etsuro
Makita—and a great deal of Gadamer's and Heidegger's writings have been
translated into Japanese. Nor is it without significance that Gadamer has been
invited to speak in Japan several times, and accepted the invitations. Gadamer
is not arrogant about Western philosophy. He acknowledges that Asian
philosophies, especially Chinese and Japanese, but also Indian, perhaps have a
great deal to teach us.
34. Education - As a teacher, Gadamer is himself
in the business of education, so it is not surprising that he has commented
occasionally on the task of education. But there is more to it than that.
Hermeneutics deals with encounters that shatter horizons, and educational
experiences, when meaningful, leave one's understanding transformed. That's what
hermeneutics is all about and that is what education is all about, too: growth
and transformation. Here, I would refer you to the collection, Hans-Georg
Gadamer on Education, Poetry, and History translated by Lawrence Schmidt
and Monica Reuss, and more especially the 400-page book by Shaun Gallagher,
Hermeneutics
and Education
(Albany: SUNY Press, 1992).
The role of
interpretation in education is one of Gallagher's topics, and of course an
educated person senses the interpreted character of all he or she is
learning.
35. Communication
Theory - I would
like to enter into dialogue with communication theory people. It may be that
such things as Gadamer's emphasis on dialogue or his criticisms of the ideal
speech situation in Habermas, or his emphasis on living language, might be of
interest. I should also say that Gadamer did not stop developing his theory with
Truth
and Method. On the contrary, he entered into
dialogue with all kinds of fields. His 1981 encounter with Derrida might be of
interest, where he continues to defend the claims of living language against
Derrida's assertion of the priority of written language as showing us how
language works. I need to do more reading to pick up possible
connections.
36. Historic
Sites - Although
books interpreting historic sites in America and abroad generally do not
specifically make a connection to hermeneutics, Gadamer's philosophical
hermeneutics is very relevant to their task. To interpret a site is not just to
explain objectively what happened there, who was involved, etc. It is also to
sense why we should find it significant today. Hermeneutics definitely relates
to the problem of understanding monuments and historic sites. It is not just
about texts, although the problem of understanding a legal, literary, or sacred
text can be relevant to understanding an historic site. And as Ricoeur notes, it
can interpret events and actions as well as texts and works of art.
- - -
P.S.: Twelve Philosophers and the
Relevance of Hermeneutics
Another topic of interest would be what different philosophers
have contributed to contemporary reflection on the interpretive problem, and
how hermeneutics would be related interpreting their thinking. I will defer this
discussion to another time, but I will list twelve philosophers I immediately
think of in relation to this topic:
1. Plato
2.
Aristotle
3.
Hegel
4.
Husserl
5.
Heidegger
6.
Wittgenstein
7.
Adorno
8.
Habermas
9.
Derrida
10.
Foucault
11.
Rorty
12.
Davidson
*Just as I was putting this on the web, Jon Awbrey called my attention to a senior honors project in applied hermeneutics directed by Shaun Gallagher at Canisius College. This project looks at the potential practical applications of hermeneutics. The web page for seeing the results of this project is http://www.canisius.edu/~gallaghr/ahnf.html.
1. Dennis Schmidt, "The Hermeneutic Dimension of Translation" in Translation Perspectives IV, edited by M. G. Rose (Albany: SUNY Press, 1988): 5-17, and "Some Reflections on Translating Philosophy" in Perspectives: Selected Translation Papers II (1984): 28-34.
2. See also my "Towards a Postmodern
Hermeneutics of Performance" in Performance
in Postmodern Culture,
ed. Michel Benamou and Charles
Caramelo (Madison, WI: Coda Press, 1978), 19-33, and "Postmodern Hermeneutics
and the Act of Reading," Notre Dame English Journal [now
Religion and
Literature ] 15 (Summer 1983):
55-84; both are in Articles, 1978 and 1983