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202 13 Critique: The Heart of Philosophical Hermeneutics Lawrence K. Schmidt Philosophical hermeneutics has been charged with not providing for the possibility of critique, most famously by Jürgen Habermas. However, we must first ask, “What is critique?” What type of critique is demanded? Is it self-critique, critique of an other, critique of tradition, ideology critique, or philosophical critique? What does the possibility of critique presuppose in a theory, in a hermeneutics, in a philosophy? Does justified critique demand a decision procedure—a strict deductive algorithm? Many claim that justifiable critique must be modeled on natural scientific reasoning . Following Carnap’s initial position, does this mean that critique is only possible if one begins with unquestioned protocol sentences and a principle of induction? Popper argued against induction and for deduction and falsifiability, although one had to corroborate the falsifying hypothesis. Habermas argues that justified critique requires rational reconstructions weakly supported by intersubjectively testable arguments based finally on empirical evidence. I will argue that justified critique can occur in philosophical hermeneutics and must be based on good arguments and intersubjectively testable evidence, but that this evidence need not be only empirical facts. Many, such as Habermas, Manfred Frank, E. D. Hirsch Jr., and Paul Ricoeur, to name just a few, argue that Gadamer’s hermeneutics lacks something required to justify at least some types of critique. What is lacking ? What types of critique are not permitted? On the other hand, Richard Rorty, Jacques Derrida, and Jack Caputo, again to name just a few, claim that philosophical hermeneutics has not traveled the road of postmodern thought far enough, still believing there is an answer, a key, a Sache selbst. Do they claim that critique is still incorrectly advocated by Gadamer ? Philosophical hermeneutics is again “caught” in between. I will argue that justified critique is possible in philosophical hermeneutics and that it lies at the heart of philosophical hermeneutics. 203 C R I T I Q U E : T H E H E A R T O F P H I L O S O P H I C A L H E R M E N E U T I C S Self-Critique Gadamer, in agreement with Heidegger’s analysis of understanding, claims that all understanding is interpretation, that one cannot escape the hermeneutic circle to an objective position where truth is immediately given and interpretation is not required. So, any type of critique that requires something immediately given, whether sense data or an intuition, is not possible. In the philosophy of science, that facts are theory-laden means that they are not immediately given. Any claim to such an immediate truth is simply the naive application of one’s preunderstanding . More specifically and in Gadamer’s terminology, the horizon of meaning that one has is determined by effective history through the prejudgments that one has inherited by means of acculturation.1 Most of the prejudgments are held unconsciously, and only some may be called into question. So the aim of Truth and Method is to explicate the process whereby prejudgments can be legitimated. If they can be legitimated , does this mean critique is possible? Gadamer’s important advance in the discussion of the hermeneutic circle is what he terms the preconception of completion. It states that the interpreter must initially assume that the text is both coherent and truthful. Gadamer claims that the preconception of completion is “an axiom of all hermeneutics.”2 The preconception of completion permits the interpreter to project a meaning for the text that is different than the one he would have projected just using his own prejudgments. In other words, the preconception permits the interpreter to call one or more of his own prejudgments into question. The confrontation with difference through the preconception of completion is what first permits one to question one’s inherited prejudgments. What is to be interpreted does not have to be a text; any other must be granted this preconception. It could be another person, but also otherness as presented through one’s experience of nature or society. In the first edition of Truth and Method, Gadamer wrote that it is only temporal distance that can solve the critical question of how to distinguish true prejudgments from those false ones that lead to misunderstanding . In the Gesammelte Werke edition of 1986 he changes “only” to “often” and remarks in the footnote that it is “distance” that can solve this hermeneutic task. Distance means otherness.3 Therefore, essential to the...

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