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In „Truth and Method“ and afterwards, Gadamer always maintained that the hermeneutic conception of experience and understanding is universal or „all-inclusive“ (allumfassend).1 It has no limits. Yet, on the other hand, once one begins to attend to the various „objects“ of understanding, one cannot help but notice differences in the processes and goals of understanding.2 Moreover, these differences seem very much to bear on the plausibility of the hermeneutic position. One crucial difference – recognized and stressed by Gadamer himself – is that between art and nonart, but there are others as well. My aim in this essay is to elucidate this tension between universality and heterogeneity and to see if and how it can be resolved. In doing so, I hope to shed light on various arguments on which hermeneutics depends, thereby making it generally more plausible, but also more sensitive to domain-specific demands. In Part I, I work out the meaning of the claim of universality, separating out four kinds of universality. In Parts II and III, I distinguish between a strong and a weak hermeneutic position. Here I contend that, while the grounds for a weak hermeneutics are indeed clearly universal, the grounds for the strong version involve arguments that compel us to examine more closely the different objects we seek to understand. In Part IV, I explore these differences in the objects of understanding – differences that derive from their nature as well as from our interest in them. In Part V, I conclude that a) the universality of hermeneutics is compatible with the heterogeneity of its objects and b) paying close attention to this heterogeneity clarifies the very meaning and grounds of this universality.

I. The Claim for the Universality of Hermeneutics

When Gadamer says that hermeneutics has a claim to universality, just what is it that is supposed to be universal? At its simplest, it is the idea that human understanding is a fusion of horizons. That is, when we understand an object, we do so in light of our own prejudgments and precommitments, and the result is always „part us and part it.“ Moreover, the „part us“ is always different insofar as historical situatedness is specific to person, place and time. This means that we always understand differently, if we understand at all. It also means that a certain version of objectivism, which says that an object is accurately understood only to the extent that the specific historical situatedness of the knower is set aside, is false. According to Gadamer, understanding is conversational or dialogical in that it is a mediation of two horizons, not a reconstruction of a fixed world. This I refer to as the hermeneutic conception of understanding or, more briefly, hermeneutic understanding.

Both followers and critics have taken note of Gadamer’s contention that hermeneutic understanding is universal. But in what sense „universal“? I now want to distinguish four senses in which hermeneutics might be deemed universal. It is primarily the second sense that will concern us in this essay, but it will help to separate out the other three senses.

For the pre-romantics Spinoza and Chladenius, the problem of interpretation is only occasional; it arises only insofar as a text presents obstacles to our gaining understanding of it due to textual obscurities (even obscurities in the author’s intention). According to Gadamer, Schleiermacher’s romantic theory is less concerned with possible lack of understanding and more concerned with possible misunderstanding. And misunderstanding, for Schleiermacher, does not only occur in the face of obscurities; it isa constant threat, possible at any point and with the text as a whole. Thus Gadamer argues that, for Schleiermacher, the problem of understanding has „a different, universal meaning“ (WM 188; TM 184). Gadamer is in complete agreement with Schleiermacher that the problem of understanding is universal insofar as it attaches to all aspects of the text or object at issue. This is the first sense of universality claimed for hermeneutics.

Hermeneutic understanding is universal in the second sense in that it characterizes our understanding of all types of objects, regardless of what one is understanding or trying to understand. Historically, this universalization of hermeneutics begins with the passing of the torch from philologists to historians (Ranke, Droysen, Dilthey), for whom not just texts, but all human activities, are under investigation. It is completed with the extension of hermeneutic understanding beyond human artifacts and activities to nature itself. The source for this move lies in Heidegger’s idea that understanding (more specifically, what he calls the „fore-structure of understanding“) underlies any making sense of anything at all.3 Understanding is operative not just in the Geisteswissenschaften, but in the natural sciences and in life itself. Gadamer stresses this sense of universality in prominent passages of „Truth and Method“. In the opening lines of its introduction, he states that hermeneutics is not a methodology of the human sciences, or even a methodology at all, but „belongs to human experience of the world in general“ (WM 1; TM XXI). In its final section, entitled „The Universal Aspect of Hermeneutics,“ Gadamer, having argued that all understanding is language-bound, concludes that all objects of the understanding consist of the same „universal ontological structure“ which is the „basic nature of everything toward which understanding can be directed“ (WM 478; TM 474).4 In this second sense, hermeneutic understanding is attributed universality because it characterizes our understanding of all things – texts of all types, art, historical actions and events, natural phenomena, oneself, etc. Hermeneutics is, to coin a phrase here, domain-universal.

In the 1960s, Habermas’s critique of Gadamer and the ensuing debate brought out yet another sense of universality. The debate begins with Habermas’s discussion in „Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften“. Habermas tells us that we have much to learn from Gadamer’s account of the linguistic, historical and practical character of understanding, but that hermeneutics should not be regarded as a wholesale replacement of methodbased knowledge.5 Our understanding and, more fundamentally, our very language and communicative resources, may be systematically distorted by social/economic circumstances or psychological barriers. Thus, hermeneutics is said to run up against limits and must be supplemented by (and ultimately grounded in) analytic and empirical analysis as well as Ideologiekritik which dig underneath communication and understanding as construed by hermeneutics. Gadamer essentially replies that there is no getting under or behind hermeneutic understanding because such analyses are just further manifestations of the same understanding.6 At issue in this debate is the universality of hermeneutics, but a different universality. The question here is about whether hermeneutic understanding „goes all the way down.“ While domain universality is about which phenomena belong to hermeneutics (the breadth of hermeneutic application), this third sense of universality is about how far hermeneutics reaches in analyzing the phenomena it takes up (the depth of its analysis). In this third sense, then, the claim for the universality of hermeneutics is the claim that there is no getting behind, under or past hermeneutic understanding.

Finally, a fourth sense of universality: the claim that hermeneutics is not a culturally parochial theory, say, a Eurocentric account of understanding as it occurs in „our“ culture or a modern account of understanding as it occurs in our era.7 Clearly, Gadamer puts forth hermeneutics as an account of understanding that occurs everywhere. In this fourth sense of universality, hermeneutics is an account of understanding applicable to all cultures and eras (insofar as the members of these cultures are at all like ourselves).

Here is not the place to assess each of these universalities in detail. It should suffice to unravel them so as to make clear that the central issue here is the second sense of universality, i.e. the universal breadth of hermeneutics, its domain-universality or application to all kinds of things. Is it really universal in this sense and, if so, on what grounds?

II. Strong and Weak Hermeneutics

One possible response from those sympathetic to Gadamer might be this: Of course hermeneutics is universal in its breadth. It describes our understanding of all types of things in all contexts because human beings always ineluctably bring to the table their own precommitments (Voreingenommenheiten), preunderstandings (Vorverständnisse), and prejudgments (Vorurteile),8 i.e. a historically changing set of practical and theoretical assumptions and interests that is not fully transparent and cannot be suspended or abandoned at will. Because this characterizes all understanding, hermeneutics is domain-universal. We might call this „the inescapability of pre-understanding“ justification for hermeneutics.

Now, I do not think that this is an entirely adequate answer (though it is an appropriate and even necessary starting point). It is not adequate for the following reason: Even if the preunderstandings rooted in our own historical and cultural location cannot be eliminated altogether, this does not yet show that we cannot or should not strive to eliminate them as far as possible. And if we can and should do this, then objectivity qua eradication (Auslöschung as Leopold von Ranke called it) of our historical situatedness is still a worthy goal, even if not perfectly attainable. It could still serve as a regulative ideal and greater or lesser objectivity could still function as a criterion for better or worse understanding and interpretation. If this were all there is to hermeneutics, then we would have what I calla Weak Hermeneutics. Let me now define here what I mean by weak hermeneutics.

Very Weak Hermeneutics (VWH) – All understanding is a fusion of horizons because all understanding is shaped by unshakable preunderstandings, but objectivity is still a coherent and valuable (though unattainable) goal insofar as the knower’s pre-understandings can and should be minimized.

Contrast the above with a position that is slightly less weak (or slightly more robust):

Weak Hermeneutics (WH) – All understanding is a fusion of horizons because all understanding is shaped by unshakable preunderstandings; while objectivity is still a possible goal, it is not (necessarily) a valuable one because it is unattainable and because letting preunderstandings operate is preferable to trying to disable or minimize them.

VWH is very weak but very common, perhaps a favorite among natural and social scientists, philologically-minded literary scholars, courtroom judges and others. Its only concession to hermeneutics is the acknowledgment of the pervasiveness of human prejudice. But it does not regard prejudgments as positive or productive – a point Gadamer insists on.

WH, on the other hand, goes a bit further. Like VWH, it admits that objectivity is still a possible goal because it recognizes that we can, with effort, disable some historically parochial preunderstandings and thus steer toward an ideal of objectivity. Followers of Gadamer might not admit the coherence of objectivity upfront, but if hermeneutics relies solely on the inescapability of preunderstandings, then objectivity is left standing asa possible goal. WH is different from VWH in that it rejects the conclusion that we should aim at objectivity. Yet what is the justification for abandoning the goal of objectivity? First, that objectivity is not absolutely attainable does not show that it is not worth pursuing. Second, to say that bringing preunderstandings to bear is preferable to disarming them needs explanation. Why is it preferable? One might say that it is more enriching to bring one’s own horizon into contact with the object than to leave it out. As Gadamer says, merely reconstructing objects gives us only „dead meaning“ (WM 172; TM 167). But it would be cavalier and unconvincing to say that enrichment is what counts and that objectivity, while a possible ideal, is simply unimportant.9 If objectivism is wrong, then it must be so because there is something philosophically misguided about the very conception of objectivity. So, WH is an argumentatively unstable or incomplete position and we should look for something else, something stronger.

Indeed, Gadamer is after something stronger than VWH or WH, as we see in this passage:

„[The demand that] in understanding history one must leave one’s own concepts aside and think only in the concepts of the epoch one is trying to understand […] is a naive illusion. The naivete of this claim does not consist in the fact that it remains unfulfilled because the interpreter does not sufficiently attain the ideal of leaving himself aside. This would still mean that it was a legitimate ideal that must be approximated as far as possible. […] Historical consciousness misunderstands its own nature if, in order to understand, it seeks to exclude what alone makes understanding possible […] To want to avoid one’s own concepts in interpretation is not only impossible but a manifest contradiction.“ (Widersinn) (WM 400f.; TM 396f.)

As noted above, Gadamer says that preunderstandings are not only inescapable but positive and productive. They are productive in that they produce the object of inquiry. According to Gadamer, the „‘object in itself’ clearly does not exist at all“ (WM 289; TM 285); it is nothing more thana „phantom“ (WM 305; TM 299). What does this mean? Why is the objecta phantom? This move is crucial to a robust hermeneutics. If pre-understandings are not simply tolerated, but productive of understanding, even necessary for having an object in the first place, then for Gadamer this must mean that the object is not (fully) constituted without such preunderstandings. Why this is so will be explored below. For now, let us say that without pre-understandings, the object of understanding is underdetermined. And thus the strong position:

Strong Hermeneutics (SH) – All understanding is a fusion of horizons because all understanding is shaped by unshakable historically situated preunderstandings which partly constitute the object of understanding. Without preunderstandings, the object is underdetermined and so objectivity cannot serve as an overall ideal for understanding.

This is Gadamer’s considered position. Objectivity is not merely unattainable or undesirable but fundamentally at odds with the very nature of understanding. The next questions are these: First, in Part III, why are the objects of the understanding underdetermined? Afterwards, in Part IV, are the various types of objects underdetermined or dependent on the situatedness of the knower in importantly different ways?

III. Arguments for Strong Hermeneutics

As we have seen, the unshakability of preunderstandings alone does not yet overturn objectivism. I turn now to other arguments in Gadamer. We can begin with his contention that understanding is always guided by the logic of question and answer.

In „The Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem,“ Gadamer says that even statistics is an instance of hermeneutic understanding because „[w]hat is ascertained by statistics looks like a language of facts; however, which questions these facts answer and which facts would begin to speak if other questions were asked – this is the hermeneutic question.“10 Applied to the issue here, the argument goes something like this: Understanding cannot be objective because understanding always involves asking these, not those, questions. Thus, an unavoidable selectivity brings in the knower’s situatedness and precludes objectivity even as a meaningful goal. But, as it stands, this is not a convincing argument either. It fails because one could still aim at asking as many questions as possible so as to diminish the selectivity of one’s understanding, thereby getting as full (and as objective) a picture as possible of the object in question. If the logic of question and answer is only a matter of selectivity, then it does not provide grounds for a strong hermeneutics.11

Consider next Gadamer’s insistence that the process of understanding always occurs in the medium of language. Language is, of course, one of the central themes of Gadamer’s work and of 20th century philosophy in general. Gadamer writes of the „linguistic constitution of the world,“ asserting that all understanding is „bound to language“ and that this underwrites the universality of hermeneutics.12 What does this mean? And what implications follow from the all-encompassing character of language? In particular, does it provide support for a strong hermeneutics? One thing it means is that preunderstandings are ubiquitous because language, which always inherits and perpetuates preunderstandings, is ubiquitous. As Gadamer says, „[i]n all our thinking and knowing we are always already precommitted [voreingenommen] through the language-bound interpretation of the world into which we grow.“13 More briefly: „language-view isa worldview“ (WM 446; TM 442). I want to argue here that if the linguisticality of all understanding only means that we inherit a historically situated worldview contained in our language, this point, important as it may be, also fails to establish a strong hermeneutics.14 It does not yet show that preunderstandings are „positive“ or „productive,“ only that they are deeply entrenched, even irrevocably so. It does not undermine the idea that our language, like a veil, colors or distorts the world. It does not dethrone the traditional notion of objectivity.

Up to now, we have seen that several of Gadamer’s claims, while true, do not in themselves substantiate a Strong Hermeneutics. In fact, in each case the deficiency is much the same. It can be best stated in terms of the dualism of the understanding subject (das verstehende Subjekt) and the object of understanding (der Gegenstand des Verstehens). To be sure, Gadamer, like Heidegger, wants to overcome this distinction.15 But doing so requires arguments not just about the subject and its pervasive preunderstandings, selective biases and language-boundedness, but about the object as well. These object-oriented arguments will need to show that the object of understanding is not self-contained, but depends somehow on the subject. There are such arguments in Gadamer and it is to them that I now turn.

The important point is not that language carries with it an inescapable worldview that we project onto the world but that the world is a world only insofar as it „comes into“ or „is brought into“ language. Gadamer repeatedly speaks of „das Zur-Sprache-kommen“ or „das Zur-Sprache-bringen“ of the world or the subject-matter.16 What this means is not thata fixed, determinate world is accessible only through language, but that the world becomes a world at all available to us only through its being brought to language by us: „[…] the world is world only insofar as it comes into language […]“ (WM 447; TM 443). It needs our help – our language, our articulation of it – to be anything intelligible. This is why Gadamer denies the existence of an antecedent, in-itself world.

„[This] makes the use of the expression ‘world in itself’ problematic. What constitutes the standard for the continuing expansion of our own world picture is nota ‘world in itself’ that lies beyond all language. Rather, the infinite perfectibility of the human experience of the world means that, whatever language surrounds us, we never come to anything but an ever more extended aspect or ‘view’ of the world. […] No one doubts that the world can exist without human beings and might do so. This belongs to the very meaning of the human, linguistically grasped worldview in which we live. […] The multiplicity of these worldviews does not entail a relativization of the ‘world.’ Rather what the world itself is is not different from the views in which the world presents itself.“ (WM 451; TM 447)17

So the world in itself falls away. As does the ‘absolute object’ which Gadamer calls a contradiction in terms („Ist nicht schon der Begriff eines ‘absoluten Gegenstandes’ ein hölzernes Eisen?“) (WM 455, 451) this, I believe, is the argument about language crucial for Gadamer’s anti-objectivism and strong hermeneutics. But how are we to make sense of the falling away of the world in itself and the absolute object? What is left?

The world and its objects, Gadamer says, need to be brought to language in order to be what they are. Here I think we can appeal to an illustration suggested by Gadamer, namely, a musical score or a script for theater (WM 403, TM 399). A score must be performed to be music and a script must be acted out to be theater. Similarly, a world must be brought to language to be a world. Furthermore, just as there is no single right way to bring a score to music because the score underdetermines (my word, not Gadamer’s) the music and the script underdetermines its theatrical realization, so the world, analogously, underdetermines how it is to be understood. Gadamer says that the object of understanding is not something fixed (fix), constant (fest), given, or in-itself (WM 478 f.; 474 f.). I want to suggest now that we understand this to mean that the object of understanding is underdetermined and becomes determinate only by being brought to language. The object is underdetermined because in itself, it is mute or unarticulated; it needs to be understood by us for it to speak to us. It cannot do this by itself. And the only way it can be understood is by being illuminated through our historically specific, shifting languages and preunderstandings. Thus the object of understanding is not fixed. We might call this the internal underdeterminedness of the object of understanding insofar as the object itself is mute or unarticulated and becomes determinate only through being understood.

I want to turn now to a second kind of undeterminedness that we find in Gadamer, this time an external or relational underdeterminedness.18 Consider Gadamer’s discussion of temporal distance:

„The tacit presupposition of historical method is that the lasting significance of something is only objectively knowable when it belongs to a closed context – in other words, when it is dead enough to interest us only historically. Only then does it seem possible to exclude the subjective involvement of the observer [… But] temporal distance obviously means something other than the extinction of our interest in the object. It lets the true meaning that is inherent in the subject-matter emerge fully for the first time [… T]he extraction of the true meaning of a text or artwork never reaches an end; it is in truth an infinite process.“ (WM 303; TM 298)

Consider an artwork such as a Cubist painting, a text such as the American Constitution or a historical event such as the Russian Revolution. Our understanding of these objects is different in virtue of the temporal distance that separates us from them. The importance of temporal distance consists in the fact that more recent events have brought out new aspects of or ‘retrodetermined’ the earlier phenomena. In the case of Cubism, there is the subsequent development of abstract painting. In the case of the Constitution, there is the two-hundred year history of new issues and judicial interpretations. In the case of the Russian Revolution, there is the occurrence of Stalinist totalitarianism and eventual collapse of the Soviet model. The point is that these objects not only appear in a very different light, but have come to have different relational properties as a result. This means that the object of understanding is underdetermined or not fully self-contained in that its nature and meaning is partly constituted by the relationships it bears to other things and events, including subsequent things and events. This argument for what we can call external or relational underdeterminedness is also crucial to finding support for a strong hermeneutics. The object is underdetermined because it is not self-contained, it is not self-contained because it is partly constituted by its relational properties, and its relational properties vary according to the temporal (and perhaps cultural) position of the historically situated knower.

I have argued that a strong hermeneutics depends on the view that objectivity is not a coherent ideal. It is not a coherent ideal because there is no object that one might try to reconstruct. And there is no such reconstructible object because the object is underdetermined in virtue of a) its muteness or its need to be brought to language and b) its relationality to other objects dependent on the knower’s historical and cultural location. But now the question is this: are all objects underdetermined or underdetermined in the kind of way that supports a strong hermeneutics? This brings us to the issue of heterogeneity.

IV. Underdeterminedness and the Heterogeneity of Objects

If the arguments in favor of a Weak Hermeneutics – the inescapability of prejudices, selective biases and being trapped in one’s own language – were the decisive arguments for hermeneutics, then there would be no need to worry about the heterogeneity of objects. This is for the simple reason that, whatever the object is, these arguments go through easily for all types of objects. The differences among objects are only incidental toa Weak Hermeneutics. When it comes to a Strong Hermeneutics, matters are more complicated. Because the arguments for a Strong Hermeneutics concern the underdeterminedness of the object, the universality of hermeneutics can only be upheld by considering specifically how (or whether) various types of objects are underdetermined. If types of objects are relevantly different from one another, their underdeterminedness may require different treatment. At least, this is the worry that motivates the following discussion. Of course, there are as many differences among objects as there are objects; here we should attend to only salient differences, i.e. those that make a difference to the claims and plausibility of a Strong Hermeneutics. In what follows I bring out four types of differences between objects: (1) art versus nonart, (2) texts versus nontexts, (3) objects that belong to our Wirkungsgeschichte versus objects that do not and, (4) objects construed differently according to our interest in understanding them. (These distinctions overlap in many cases, but they are and need to be treated as conceptually distinct.)

1. Art versus non-art

In his 1983 essay „Text and Interpretation,“ the question of heterogeneity surfaces quite conspicuously.19 Addressing the question of textual meaning and interpretation, Gadamer considers various types of text, including scientific writings, personal letters, conversational utterances, protocols, business contracts, stenographic transcriptions, military commands and written laws. In his analysis of such texts, he frequently alludes to the purposes of the writer. He regards these texts as instances of message-conveying (Kundgabe) and the interpreter’s job as that of extracting and reaching agreement with the author about the meaning of the message (Kunde) (TuI 345; TaI 35). But then he writes:

„Now the goal of this entire discussion is to show that the connection between text and interpretation fundamentally changes when dealing with so-called ‘literary texts.’ In all cases so far […] the so-called text itself was subordinated to the event of reaching agreement in understanding (Verständigung) […] The interpreter has no other function than to disappear completely into the achievement of reaching agreement in understanding [… or] entering into communication so as to dissolve the tension between the horizon of the text and that of the reader. I have called this a fusion of horizons. […] But then there is literature! […] The literary text exercises a normative function that does not refer back either to an original utterance or to the intention of the speaker but is something that originates in itself, so that in the fortune of its success, a poem surprises and overwhelms even the poet.“ (emphasis added) (TuI 350–52; TaI 40–42)

This passage is remarkable on two counts. First, Gadamer here seems to say something different from „Truth and Method“ about the meaning of nonliterary texts: the author’s purpose is now central to that meaning and the interpreter’s job is to disappear! Second, in „Truth and Method,“ our encounter with art serves as a model for human understanding in general, while here art or literature is set off sharply against other texts as categorically different and untypical of human understanding. The sharp line drawn between literature and nonliterature appears to violate the universality of hermeneutics. Has Gadamer simply abandoned the universality claim? No, because from the outset of this same essay he re-asserts that hermeneutic understanding applies universally to all things.20 Can this formidable divide between literature and nonliterature be bridged withina theory that has universal aspirations?

It seems to me that Gadamer is saying this: In both cases, literature and nonliterature, understanding is a fusion of horizons because the interpreter’s horizon interacts with the object at hand. The fusion is different, however, with respect to the idea of reaching agreement in understanding (Erzielung der Verständigung) (TuI 350; TaI 41). With nonliterary texts, the message-conveying nature of the text means that we have a certain concern, perhaps even a responsibility, for the intention or purpose of the message. Even so, there is fusion – a point to which we will return shortly. But literature is different, Gadamer says, because understanding it is not at all a matter of „referring to an already spoken word“ (TuI 351; TaI 42), but „a new way of letting the text speak“ („[ein] neu[es] Sprechenlassen des Textes“) (TuI 351; TaI 41).

For Gadamer, literature, and more generally art, is different in that it is autonomous and open. It is autonomous because its meaning is not at all dependent on the intention of the writer or artist. The work of art or literature breaks loose from its original creation to stand on its own. It is open in that its meaning is indeterminate. Gadamer says that the poetic artwork possesses as language a characteristic indeterminacy („eine offene Unbestimmtheit“).21 As a result, it invites a plurality of interpretations. Several particularly good illustrations of this autonomy and openness in artworks can be found in Gadamer’s essays on Paul Celan’s poetry. For example, Gadamer notes that Celan’s poem „Flower“ was inspired by Celan’s son, though the poem makes no mention of a child. Gadamer goes on to say that the image of the flower is not tied to that of Celan’s son, but hasa more universal and open-ended meaning:

„[T]he poem does not bring to language a specific, unique occurrence known only to witnesses or those enlightened by the poet directly. This means that every reader can respond to what the language gesture conjures up, as if it were an offer. All readers must supplement what they can perceive in a poem on the basis of their own experience. This alone is what it means to understand a poem.“22

So, we see that given art’s openness, the object of understanding is underdetermined in that it requires supplementation from the interpreter’s own horizon. If this is so, then understanding art is a particularly robust case of hermeneutic understanding strongly conceived.

But now where does this leave nonliterary or nonart works? By implication, it would seem that if art is open and in need of supplementation, nonart is neither of these things. Does this mean that strong hermeneutic arguments do not go through for nonart texts and objects? Let us return to the passage in „Text und Interpretation“ from which I quoted before. In the case of nonliterary or nonart texts, Gadamer says (here I quote the passage more fully):

„[…] interpretation, like the so-called text itself, [is] subordinated to the process of reaching agreement in understanding. This corresponds perfectly to the literal meaning of the term interpres, which refers to someone who speaks in-between and therefore has first of all the original function of a translator […] The interpreter steps in and speaks only when the text (the discourse) is not able to do what it is supposed to do, namely be heard and understood on its own. The interpreter has no other function than to disappear completely into reaching agreement in understanding. The discourse of the interpreter is therefore not itself a text; rather it serves a text.“ (TuI 350; TaI 40f.)

This makes it sound as if the understanding subject is wholly outside of an already fully constituted text. But then Gadamer goes on:

„This does not mean, however, that the contribution of the interpreter, in this way of listening to text, has completely disappeared. […] The interpreter’s help in reaching agreement in understanding is therefore not limited to the purely linguistic level, but reaches into mediating the subject-matter itself […] When the interpreter overcomes what is alien in the text and thereby helps the reader to an understanding of the text, his/her own stepping back is not a disappearance in a negative sense; rather, it is an entering into communication so as to dissolve the tension between the horizon of the text and that of the reader. I have called this a fusion of horizons.“ (TuI 350f.; TaI 41)

Gadamer may be conceding too much here when he speaks of the interpreter’s job as one of eliminating only occasional obscurities, a view that, as we have seen, stands opposed to one of the senses of universality advanced in „Truth and Method.“ He also accords the author’s purpose or intention a more central role here than in earlier works. But he insists, importantly, that the idea of the interpreter’s disappearance is not to be taken as a reality, but only as a surface appearance. The interpreter continues to mediate both linguistically and in terms of content. Gadamer does not say here exactly why this is so, but it follows from much of the argument in Part III above.

Of course, the interpreter of the nonliterary text cannot but help to bring in precommitments stemming from his/her own historical and cultural location. But this would be only a weak hermeneutic argument. The point here is that the strong hermeneutic arguments go through as well. Even if we have a concern for the message that the nonliterary text was intended to convey, the underdeterminedness of such texts is still underwritten by strong hermeneutic arguments. The nonliterary text qua text is internally underdetermined insofar as its meaning requires articulation. As I will argue in the following section, what needs to be articulated and brought to language is the world altogether, nontexts and texts alike. Furthermore, nonliterary texts are no less relationally constituted than are literary texts, their meaning changes as they come to have new relations to subsequent texts and events. So despite literature’s distinctive openness to supplementation by the aesthetic subject, nonliterary texts have their own kind of openness and thus our understanding of them is a fusion of horizons as well.

Consider, for example, what it means to understand a philosophical text. (For Gadamer, it seems clear, philosophy is not literature; the experience and interpretive aims are different because philosophy does not invite readerly creativity in quite the same way as literature.) The author ofa philosophical text hopes to convey a message about some subject-matter. Given what Gadamer has said in „Text and Interpretation,“ the reader aims at reaching agreement in understanding with what the author has said. This does not mean the reader will or should agree with the author’s views, but only that the reader wants to fairly construe the message the author wants to convey. But the hermeneutic point is that the message is not altogether fixed. The words need to be given specific meaning and the intention of the author cannot ultimately decide the specific meaning because it is not available to us and because the author’s state of mind only reaches so far.23 As a result the reader must bring the message to full concretion and does so in light of his/her relation to the subject-matter.

The example of a philosophical text cannot be representative or exhaustive of all the objects of understanding that are not literature. First of all, there are objects that are not texts at all. Second, philosophy and literature each involve rather specific interpretive interests and goals. There are domains or interpretive activities that involve quite different interests and goals. It is to these two issues that I now turn.

2. Texts versus nontexts

Gadamer’s thinking about understanding and interpretation is more often directed at texts in the narrow sense, i.e. composites of written-down words. But there are, of course, other objects that are not „worded“ such as artworks (paintings, music, etc.), historical actions and events, social practices, and even nature.24 Does strong hermeneutics go through as well for nontexts as it does for texts?

Actually, despite the focus on texts central to Gadamer and to the history of hermeneutics (its origins in biblical, legal and philological interpretation), there is at least one important reason for thinking nontexts present an even better case for Strong Hermeneutics. Strong Hermeneutics depends on the underdeterminedness of the object and this, as we have seen, is partlya function of the mute and unarticulated object being „brought to language.“ While texts are already worded, nontexts are not and so their underdeterminedness is especially evident. The ways in which nontexts are brought to language is complex and different stories would need to be told about how this occurs. However, a brief illustration here is in order: Suppose we are doing history and our object of understanding is some segment of the past. There is a multitude of events and actions at any given time and place. Giving them content, form and continuity – bringing them to language, as it were – is something we must do. Not only do we do so when we bring events together under the concepts of „war,“ „revolution,“ „social movement,“ etc., but just as well when we bring individual actions under descriptions such as „surrender“ or „provoke.“ Actions and events are themselves mute and underdetermined in their muteness. They need to be articulated or brought to language. And they can be articulated in any number of correct ways. In bringing them to language, we make them into objects of the understanding. Surprisingly, nontexts would seem to be a paradigm case of the underdeterminedness of the object that underlies a strong hermeneutics.

But what about texts? Since they are already in a language, it might appear that they do not need to be brought to language. This is where a certain feature of language is crucial. Language, especially poetic language, but not only poetic language has, as one philosopher calls it, the character of open-texturedness.25 That is, words do not pinpoint meanings but allow for a wide range of possible meanings. Thus, the phrase „cruel and unusual punishment“ in the American Constitution does not wear its exact meaning on its sleeve. While the text’s author always intends the words to be meant in a certain way, the author’s intention does not determine the meaning of the words. This is because a) the author’s intention is typically (and perhaps even fundamentally) unavailable; b) the author’s intention is typically not sufficiently comprehensive to answer all questions about its meaning and c) language has the character of what Gadamer calls „ideality“ (WM 394ff.; TM 390ff.). This means that linguistic meaning is not tied to the single, contingent psychic act of the writer, but exists apart from it in a „sphere of meaning in which everyone has an equal share“ (WM 396; TM 392). Gadamer writes: „All writing is a kind of alienated speech, and its signs need to be transformed back into speech and meaning“ (WM 397; TM 393). To put this point as I did earlier, texts need to be brought to meaning just as a score needs to be brought to music. The upshot is that while a text and a nontext present distinct hermeneutic tasks, they are both underdetermined objects that each of which, in its own way, needs articulation to be a fully determinate object. And, for this reason, Strong Hermeneutics goes through for both domains.

3. „Wirkungsgeschichte“ versus no „Wirkungsgeschichte“

The notion of Wirkungsgeschichte, so central to Gadamer’s hermeneutics, captures the fact that the object we seek to understand is not self-contained and distinct from us. First, the object has a history of effects, a history of being received in this or that way and, second, this history has made us who we are. This means that the object is not fixed but changes over time and that it is not reconstructible independently of who and what we are, and of what we have become as a result of the object’s influence on us. All of this makes a lot of sense when it comes to understanding the classical works of philosophy and art in our own culture or the historical events that have in fact shaped us. And, truth be told, what preoccupied Gadamer as he developed his thoughts was the high culture of European civilization in the form of a unified, continuous line of canonical works and events extending into the present.

The problem of heterogeneity arises here because not all objects we seek to understand belong to a past culture that is our own and has formed who we are. We can identify two types of objects left out of this picture: a) contemporary works and events from within our own culture that have not yet acquired a history of effects and b) works and events from cultures other than our own which are not linked to us by a history of effects.26 The question is whether Wirkungsgeschichte plays no role in our understanding of such objects and if so whether this undermines the claim that understanding of such objects is hermeneutic in a strong sense. For if they have no Wirkungsgeschichte, the objectivist can argue that a certain objectivity still goes through. Of course, it is only their external underdeterminedness that is at issue here, since internal underdeterminedness is unaffected by their not belonging to our Wirkungsgeschichte. Still, relational constitution is so central to hermeneutics that it is worth examining whether these objects have it or lack it altogether.

a. Contemporary objects

Gadamer insists on the importance of temporal distance as that which „lets the true meaning inherent in a subject-matter emerge“ (WM 303; TM 298). He speaks of the history of effects of a work as that which is operative in all understanding (WM 306; TM 301). Yet when it comes to understanding a contemporary work and event, it has not yet had a chance to have a history of different interpretations and effects and we have no temporal distance to it. Consider, for example, what it was like to try to understand the first Cubist painting at the time it was painted or the Russian Revolution at the time it occurred. Certainly, the painting and the Revolution meant less then than they do now. Could it be said that they had no relational properties, no dimension of external underdeterminedness because they had not yet entered into relations with other things and that as a result they were self-contained and only internally underdetermined? Does Wirkungsgeschichte play absolutely no role here? I would suggest that even in the absence of temporal distance, Wirkungsgeschichte and relational properties are still operative for three reasons. First, while the work may have no history of effects of its own, there is a larger, antecedent history, a tradition as it were, that has affected (and effected) both the work and us knowers. This antecedent history comes to be retrospectively determined in different ways as time goes on. Second, when we understand a contemporary work or event, we do so by seeing it in relation toa time yet to come. In other words, when we understand a new work, we, typically if not always, implicitly anticipate its future history of effects, i.e. how it will come to be understood. Our anticipations of future history that shape our understanding of the contemporary work change as a result of our standpoint in history and so relational properties figure in this way as well. Third, as I will argue below, temporal distance is not the only type of distance, there are synchronic differences such as cultural differences that let works take on new and unexpected relational properties.

b. Objects from cultures outside of our „Wirkungsgeschichte“

We seek to understand other cultures as well as our own. In a globally interactive world such as our own, we have already been exposed to and interpreted, in some sense, most foreign, even non-European, cultures – the dynamics of this type of interpretation is perhaps the central problem of social anthropology and hermeneutics has, I believe, much to contribute here.27 But consider now the problem of understanding a culture that has had no or virtually no history of interpretation in and no history of effects on our own culture. Gadamer himself brings up an example of this problem when he refers to our possible understanding of North American Eskimo tribes:

„Not every historical observation is based on a conscious reflection of the history of effect. The history of North American Eskimo tribes is certainly quite independent of whether and when these tribes have had an effect on the ‘universal history of Europe.’ Yet one cannot seriously deny that reflection on effective history will prove to be important even in relation to this historical task. In 50 or 100 years, anyone who reads the history of these tribes as it is written today will not only find it outdated (for in the meantime we will know more or interpret the sources more correctly); he will also see that in the 1960s people read the sources differently because they were moved by different questions, prejudgments and interests. Ultimately historical writing and research would be reduced to indifference if it were to withdraw from the ability to reflect on effective history.“28

Of course, 50 or 100 years after a current interpretation, there will bea history of interpretation and effects. But our question is about the first time round, the point at which no such history yet exists. Gadamer suggests that even at this point our „questions, prejudgments and interests“ are at work. But is this only for the weak hermeneutic reason that we cannot fully escape them? Or are Wirkungsgeschichte and relational properties operative here in such a way that they make the object at issue what it is?

I would like to suggest two reasons for thinking that objects disconnected from our history are nevertheless relationally constituted through their „effects.“ First, when we seek to understand a foreign culture, even for the first time, we typically do so in the light of a history of the reception of foreign cultures. Thus, even if there is no history of effects and interpretation of Eskimo tribes, there is a history of understanding non-European cultures, a history of „orientalisms,“ into which new interpretations of the foreign are absorbed.29 So while not every object has a Wirkungsgeschichte, every object becomes part of a pre-existing Wirkungsgeschichte and becomes what it is for us through becoming part of that Wirkungsgeschichte. Second, as we have seen, according to Gadamer, the object of understanding changes as a result of temporal distance, i.e. we have a different temporal perspective which allows us to see the object in terms of different relations. But there is aside from temporal distance another sort of distance that allows for new relations, namely, cultural distance. If it is true, say, that an object is a different object for a 20th century reader than for a 17th century reader because of a changed temporal perspective, it is no less true that an object is a different object because of different relational properties that result from different cultural points of view. The code of honor in Eskimo culture, for example, will have different relational properties when understood in relation to a culture with a high sense of honor of its own than in relation to a more utilitarian culture. Or the nature of the American Revolution takes on a different shape (less egalitarian) when brought into relation not with the revolutions of France, China or Russia, but with revolutions in the Caribbean or Latin America.30 So even objects with no Wirkungsgeschichte are absorbed into such a history and come to have new properties through changing relations to things outside of themselves.

4. Objects construed differently according to our varying interests

I believe that the most serious threat to the universality of hermeneutics derives not from the differences between the things we seek to understand, but from the very many different interests that we bring to those things. Gadamer deals with this issue at several points in his work without explicitly recognizing it as an obstacle to universality. Let me divide the many types of interests interpreters might have into two broad categories: on the one hand, presentist, application-oriented interests, and on the other hand, antiquarian, reconstruction-oriented interests. The first category of interests fit in well with a Strong Hermeneutics, while the second category is the troublemaker.

Gadamer says that „the essence of the historical spirit consists not in the restoration of the past but in thoughtful mediation with contemporary life“ (WM 174; TM 168f.) and that „there always occurs in understanding something like the application of the text to be understood to the interpreter’s present situation“ (WM 313; TM 308). Clearly, if understanding of objects springs from an interest in applying that understanding to one’s own current situation, then it is easy to see why understanding must be conceived as a fusion of horizons. And Gadamer persuasively demonstrates the application-oriented interest behind many different kinds of understanding. In the human and historical sciences, we understand the past so as to understand our current predicaments better. In our encounter with literature and art, there is arguably, at bottom, an interest in enriching and gaining insight into our own world. In the area of law, judges understand legal texts in order to apply them to particular present circumstances so as to ensure the continued functioning of a well-ordered society. In understanding religious texts, believers have a stake, Gadamer points out, in their own piety or salvation (Heilswirkung) (WM 314; TM 309). Natural scientists understand nature with an eye to managing or exploiting it. Finally, philosophers understand texts with a decided interest not just in reconstructing philosopher’s thoughts, but in order to find the truth.

Yet sometimes interpreters want to refrain from making connections to the present or to questions of application, sometimes they want to do nothing other than reconstruct. Gadamer recognizes this kind of interest when he refers to the historian of science or the court stenographer’s duty to do „every possible justice to the intended meaning of the speaker“31 and when he contrasts the application-oriented jurist with the antiquarian interest of the legal historian who is „apparently only concerned with the original meaning of the law“ (WM 332; TM 327). In the case of the legal historian, Gadamer argues that there is no direct access to the original meaning because concerns and prejudgments stemming from current circumstances always inform one’s awareness of past law. Now, this may be true but it seems to me be a „weak“ hermeneutic argument that fails to show why objectivity cannot be a coherent ideal.

How should proponents of a Strong Hermeneutics respond to the legitimate antiquarian interests of the historian of law, the historian of science, the historian of art and the historian of philosophy, all of whom want to suspend presentism and the question of application? I think there are two significant directions for response. First, the antiquarian interest of the scholar or the purely reconstructive interest of the stenographer is not typical of our encounters with history, art, law, philosophy, etc. Second, even if the interest in reconstruction means that such interpreters will want to set aside all the new relational properties that derive from Wirkungsgeschichte and a different temporal and cultural location, all objects of the understanding are nevertheless internally underdetermined. In the case of texts, original intention underdetermines meaning for the reasons mentioned previously. In the cases of nontexts, actions and events need to be made sense of, ordered and „brought to language.“ This is where the interpreters horizon comes in. In this way, there are good reasons for thinking that antiquarians also deal with underdetermined objects. All objects, then, texts and nontexts alike, are underdetermined and need to be „brought to language.“

V. Conclusion: Heterogeneity Does not Undermine Universality

My reasoning in this paper has been built on two assumptions. First, if the hermeneutic conception of understanding is to count as a serious challenge to objectivism, it must do more than offer weak arguments about the inescapability of prejudgments; it must, in fact, show that the objects of understanding are not wholly determinate in a way that allows for their reconstruction. Second, in light of the need for „strong“ arguments, hermeneutic theory needs to look more closely at the different types of objects and different interests we have in understanding them. My conclusion is as follows: While the general principle of such „strong“ arguments is that objects are underdetermined or incomplete in themselves, the kinds of underdeterminedness vary from one object-domain to another. Still, in all object-domains there is at least one type of underdeterminedness. Asa result, the universality of the hermeneutic conception of understanding survives.32