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5 THE CONSTELLATION OF UNDERSTANDING
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84 The Constellation of understanding It is enough to say that we understand in a different way, if we understand at all. (TM 297/GW1 302) In fact history does not belong to us; we belong to it. (TM 276/GW1 281) 1. Understanding between Circles and Spirals Gadamer emphasizes the breaks more than the continuities in his reconstruction of hermeneutics. The decisive break occurs with “heidegger’s disclosure of the forestructure of understanding” (TM 265/GW1 270). heidegger conceives of understanding as the movement of Dasein itself, and he uncovers circularity as its basic character. Gadamer begins with heidegger’s view, but reinterprets both the circle and understanding . he broadens the hermeneutic circle so fundamentally that it becomes the guiding thread of the entire middle section of Truth and Method. What does “the fore-structure of understanding,” or “fore-understanding,” mean? Why does this amount to a new way of comprehending understanding? romantic hermeneutics starts from the assumption of misunderstanding and nonunderstanding . understanding, for Schleiermacher, defines itself negatively; it is based “on the fact of nonunderstanding.”1 understanding becomes for him the overcoming of misunderstanding and nonunderstanding—a kind of overcoming that, however, is condemned to fail unless a chimerical way out is found, such as empathic identification. Beyond such illusory moments of happiness, romantic hermeneutics appears to stagnate in nonunderstanding. What distinguishes philosophical hermeneutics, by contrast, is the reversal of these premises. in Being and Time understanding is the assumption from which heidegger starts. Far from a private condition, understanding emerges as the originary phenomenon from which misunderstanding and nonunderstanding derive (BT 143/ SZ 153). understanding is always already there, whereas misunderstanding and nonunderstanding occur only within the context of understanding. only insofar as i understand , according to heidegger, can i not understand or misunderstand. From this basis, hermeneutics is reformulated, and it takes up the task of reflecting on understanding in a new and more radical way. Gadamer recalls that the depiction of understanding with the figure of the circle “stems from ancient rhetoric” (TM 291/GW1 296). The figure then made the transition 5 The Constellation of Understanding | 85 from rhetoric to hermeneutics. The circle describes the movement from the parts to the whole and from the whole to the parts. The parts and the whole necessarily presuppose each other and influence each other reciprocally. Their circular relation is explained by the context, which ties the sentences to the entirety of a text: the understanding of an individual sentence presupposes the understanding of the text, but on the other hand, the understanding of the text can arise only from understanding the sentences. The principle of all understanding concentrates in this circularity, which was formulated for the first time by G. a. Friedrich ast (1778–1841) during the romantic period.2 Circularity excludes linearity. Circular interwovenness cannot be untied and leveled down. This insight causes Schleiermacher to reconsider the legitimacy of understanding , since the understanding, as the figure of the circle clearly shows, is compromised by the lack of a ground.3 even if it proceeds through its parts, and is both motivated and justified by them, the understanding of the whole is groundless from the beginning. Seen in this way, the circle appears to be a methodological obstacle. as a result Schleiermacher wanted to replace the circle with the figure of the spiral—a figure that has recently been taken up again by some interpreters.4 With the spiral, circularity could resolve itself in linearity. For this, however, one would have to presuppose that the understanding of the whole is adjusted and integrated by the parts in an asymptotic process of approximation. Yet this model of understanding does not acknowledge that groundlessness remains in every turn of the spiral: it is inherent in the structure and thus impossible to overcome. What undoubtedly also contributed to Schleiermacher’s negative view of the circle was his way of comprehending nonunderstanding and understanding in dichotomous opposition to each other. only when this opposition is relinquished can the circle, along with its groundlessness, acquire another meaning. This is exactly what happens with heidegger. he describes circularity as the way in which existence, which he calls Dasein—understands itself and exists understanding itself. Thrown into the world, Dasein projects itself in each case according to the anticipation of its understanding. in this way it cares for its own future, opening up to its own possibilities (BT 138/SZ 147). “We shall call the development of understanding interpretation,” heidegger writes (BT 139...