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Notes
ОглавлениеHans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, Gesammelte Werke (= GW) 1, Tübingen 1986. English Translation: Truth and Method, 2nd rev. ed. Translated by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, New York 1989. I have occasionally emended the translation to improve accuracy or readability. Further references to this work are indicated by „WM“ for the German original and „TM“ for the English translation.
I use „object“ broadly to refer to whatever we try to understand, whethera text, an artwork, an event, a person, etc.
Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, Tübingen 1979, 150f.
Gadamer also stresses this point in the „Vorwort zur 2. Auflage“ of Truth and Method: Although the central part of this work is devoted to understanding in the Geisteswissenschaften, Gadamer explains that „it does not ask it only of the so-called human sciences […] Neither does it ask it of science and its mode of experience, but of all human experience of the world and life-practices.“ See GW 2, 439; TM XXIXf.
Jürgen Habermas, Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften, Frankfurt a. M. 1970, 281.
See Gadamer’s „Rhetorik, Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik,“ GW 2, 245; translated in English as „On the Scope and Function of Hermeneutical Reflection“ in: Philosophical Hermeneutics, translated and edited by David E. Linge, Berkeley 1976, 35.
See G. B. Madison, „Hermeneutics’ Claim to Universality“ in: The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer, edited by Lewis Edwin Hahn, Chicago 1997, 349–365.
Gadamer uses all three terms.
To say simply that objectivity is less valuable than the enrichment provided by the fusion of horizons is akin to saying that „meaning“ is less valuable than „significance“ in the sense given to them by E. D. Hirsch in „Validity in Interpretation“ (New Haven 1967). But Gadamer’s argument should be construed not as privileging significance over meaning, but as taking issue with the distinction itself.
„Die Universalität des hermeneutischen Problems,“ GW 2, 226; translated in English as „The Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem“ in: Philosophical Hermeneutics, Linge, 11.
The logic of question and answer involves more than a point about selectivity. We ask different questions because we stand at different locations in history, a point dealt with below in the context of relational properties. The logic of question and answer also requires, according to Gadamer, a certain openness, but I will not take that up here.
„Die Universalität des hermeneutischen Problems,“ GW 2, 228, 230; „The Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem,“ 13, 15.
„Mensch und Sprache,“ GW 2, 150; translated in English as „Man and Language“ in: Philosophical Hermeneutics, Linge, 64.
The idea that we are absolutely locked into our language or worldview is one that Gadamer, of course, rejects: „How can we possibly understand anything written in a foreign language if we are thus imprisoned (gebannt) in our own? It is necessary to see the speciousness of this argument. In fact the sensitivity of our historical consciousness tells us […that] thinking reason escapes the prison of language“ (WM 406; TM 402).
See, for example, WM 309; TM 304.
See WM 384, 391, 401, 447, 449, 478; TM 378, 388, 397, 443, 445, 474.
Gadamer’s distinction between a linguistically constituted world and a world in itself beyond language and thus beyond our reach looks like the Kantian distinction between appearance and the unknowable thing in itself. Yet Gadamer (following Heidegger) rejects that distinction, insisting that the world presented in language is not different from the world in itself. The problem is that many Kant scholars now think that for Kant the appearance and thing in itself are not two different things, but that the appearance is just the thing in itself grasped under the epistemic conditions of the knower. See, for example, Henry Allison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, New Haven 1983. So it is not clear that Gadamer has successfully carved out a different position from Kant’s on this particular point. What separates the two is that for Kant epistemic conditions are invariant, while for Gadamer language and preunderstandings are historically specific and shifting.
I have explored and defended this idea much more fully in the following articles of mine: „The Nonfixity of the Historical Past,“ in: Review of Metaphysics 50 (1997) 749–768; „Cambridge Changes Revisited: Why Certain Relational Changes are Indispensable,“ in: Dialectica 53 (1999) 139–149 and „A New Defense of Gadamer’s Hermeneutics,“ in: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LX (2000) 45–65.
„Text und Interpretation,“ GW 2, 330–360; translated as „Text and Interpretation“ in: Dialogue and Deconstruction, edited by Diane P. Michelfelder and Richard E. Palmer, Albany 1989, 21–51. Further references to this text will be given in parentheses as „TuI“ with the German page numbers first, and „TaI“ with the English page numbers second.
See the following passage: „[…] understanding and interpretation not only come into play in what Dilthey called ‘expressions of life fixed in writing,’ but they apply to the general relationship of human beings to each other and to the world […] In this respect the universal claim of hermeneutics is beyond all doubt.“ (TuI 330; TaI 21)
„Dichten und Deuten,“ GW 8, 21; translated as „Composition and Interpretation“ in: Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful and other Essays, Cambridge 1986, 70. Although Gadamer says that this indeterminacy is characteristic of poetry because of its language, it seems that other forms of art are indeterminate in their own ways, even if to a lesser degree. A novel may be less indeterminate than a poem due to its more clearly referential language. A nonlinguistic artwork such as a painting would seem to be indeterminate its own way.
„Wer bin Ich und wer bist Du,“ GW 9, 433; translated as „Epilogue to Who Am I and Who Are You?“ in: Gadamer on Celan, edited by Richard Heinemann and Bruce Krajewski, Albany 1997, 134.
See my „Gadamer’s Hermeneutics and the Question of Authorial Intention,“ in: The Death and Resurrection of the Author, edited by William Irwin, Westport/ Conn. 2002, 45–64, especially 48ff.
This leaves out texts that are spoken, i.e. conversational utterances. For an account of how they fit into hermeneutic theory, see my „Reconciling Gadamer’s Non-Intentionalism with Standard Conversational Goals,“ in: The Philosophical Forum 30 (1999) 317–328. I argue there that understanding conversational utterances, like understanding narrowly message-conveying texts, involves a concern for the intended message and for reaching agreement in understanding, but still amounts to a fusion of horizons.
See H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law, 2nd ed. Oxford 1997, 123.
I will not discuss past objects from our culture that have had little or no influence on subsequent history on us. It seems clear that such „forgotten“ objects are embedded in a history of effects and so present no special problem for Gadamer’s theory.
Charles Taylor argues that Gadamer’s hermeneutics is particularly well-suited to crosscultural understanding. See „Understanding the Other: A Gadamerian View on Conceptual Schemes“ in: Gadamer’s Century, edited by Jeff Malpas, Ulrich Arnswald and Jens Kertscher, Cambridge/Mass. 2002, 279–298.
See „Vorwort zur 2. Auflage“, GW 2, 442; TM XXXII. He briefly mentions our understanding of Eskimo tribes a second time, see „Die Universalität des hermeneutischen Problems,“ GW 2, 227; „The Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem,“ 12.
See Edward Said, Orientalism, New York 1979. I am grateful to Allaine Cerwonka for making me see this point.
See Lester D. Langley, The Americas in the Age of Revolution, New Haven 1996.
TuI 343, 346; TaI 33, 36.
Thanks to Jared Welsh for research and editing assistance.
