The Life of Understanding: A Contemporary Hermeneutics

Introduction: Platonic Gestures

1 Introduction: Platonic Gestures My aim in this book is to develop and enlarge the hermeneutic insight that understanding is inseparably tied to the life situation. This is the insight that characterizes the scope of hermeneutics drawn from the principal sources for this book, namely, the hermeneutics of Martin­ Heidegger and, more particularly, Hans-Georg Gadamer. This is the hermeneutics that begins with Heidegger’s early formulation of hermeneutics under the heading of a hermeneutics of facticity, in which philosophical research has as its basic concern the interpretive movement occurring within factical life. Factical life, as the original evidence situation of philosophy, is simply the existing historical situation in which an individual always finds oneself and which requires interpretation as a way of continually gaining access to it. This hermeneutics, which effectively recasts the character of the theoretical as it was conceived in the early project of phenomenology and neo-Kantian philosophy, is furthered by Gadamer, who broadens it into a more overt cultural and social context where the perspective of interpretation is indeed inseparable from its basic relation not just to the historical aspect of historical life but to human living in general. While it is true that Gadamer’s hermeneutics devotes considerable attention to the character of textual interpretation , it is not, at bottom, a theory of textual interpretation in its classical sense. In his philosophical hermeneutics the interpretation of texts is to be woven into the broader concern of making one’s way in life such that the interpretation of texts is part of the communicative experience in which the world in which we live opens up. 2 · The Life of Understanding It is easy to see here that any amplification of the hermeneutic insight of the juxtaposition of life and understanding must involve itself in a thoroughgoing way in the hermeneutics of Heidegger and Gadamer, but my intent is not to present a critical exposition of their positions. Both positions have already been extensively treated in the secondary literature. Rather, my intent is to move beyond their stated positions, in effect to present something like a hermeneutics after Gadamer, by an amplification that ties hermeneutics back to the basic experience of philosophy as defined by Plato. The incorporation of Plato into the project of hermeneutics, by way of indications for its thematic development, has the effect of broadening the scope of hermeneutics as philosophy and identifies more properly what is at issue in this book. In moving back to Plato one can find resources for directions in hermeneutics and for opening up new possibilities for the life of understanding. With the introduction of Plato as a third figure for the further development of hermeneutics, the thematic presentation is effectively entangled in and constantly moving between two sets of relations, with Gadamer as the pivotal figure: Heidegger–Gadamer, and Gadamer– Plato. The first relation, as noted, constitutes the scope of contemporary hermeneutics with respect to the life situation; but more than this, this relation is the relation that is absolutely essential to consider for anyone interpreting Gadamer’s hermeneutics. Gadamer does not just borrow from Heidegger the basic principles of a hermeneutic phenomenology which he then applies in his own way to craft what he calls a philosophical hermeneutics. Rather, his thought is fully informed by his lifelong association with Heidegger’s work, so much so that the key to understanding the extent to which Gadamer extends the range of hermeneutic philosophy in an original way lies in a careful appreciation of this association. While clearly acknowledging in Truth and Method that he is taking over from Heidegger the notion of interpretation and understanding that originates in a hermeneutics of facticity and is famously presented in Being and Time, he also states in his autobiographical writings how important the later Heidegger’s work on language and art was for his own expanded sense of hermeneutics.1 In a sense, Gadamer’s hermeneutics provides the link between the early and late Heidegger’s work, a link that Heidegger himself acknowledges but fails to fully articulate. Platonic Gestures · 3 IfthereisanaturalaffinitybetweenGadamerandHeidegger,thesame canalsobesaidtoexist,fordifferentreasons,betweenGadamerandPlato. Certainly the importance of Plato for Gadamer is well known and the subject of many commentaries.2 In Gadamer’s writings the reader is constantly directed to Plato, not to provide examples for the point under discussion , but to inform the hermeneutical dimension of this point. Plato, more so than Aristotle or Hegel, is the second principal source for­ Gadamer’s hermeneutics, shaping its essential...