Unquiet Understanding: Gadamer's Philosophical Hermeneutics

CHAPTER ONE: Philosophical Hermeneutics: Navigating the Approaches

1 CHAPTER ONE Philosophical Hermeneutics Navigating the Approaches INTRODUCTION Philosophical hermeneutics is not a traditional theory of interpretation. It does not seek to establish a generally acceptable method for the reading of obscure and difficult texts. Philosophical hermeneutics is, much rather, an interpretation of interpretation, a prolonged meditation upon what “happens ” to us within “hermeneutic experience” when we are challenged by texts and artworks, ancient and modern. Though it eschews formal methodologies of reading, it does not privilege subjective responses to a text. Philosophical hermeneutics is philosophical in that it strives to discern objectivities within the subjective voice. It reflects on the historical and cultural preconditions of individual hermeneutic experience and seeks to discern in it something of the predicament, character, and mode of being of those who “undergo” such experience. And yet the philosophical within philosophical hermeneutics remains hermeneutical for it is not concerned with the abstract nature of such objectivities but with how they manifest themselves and are encountered within the particularities of experience and their ramifications. Nietzsche observed that one is never finished with profound experience .1 Similarly, good conversations have no end. Their insights open unexpected avenues of experience and can initiate a review of what has been previously understood. Their sense is slow to unfold. Not everything said may be meant and not everything meant need be said. With patient reflection and comparison, their insights alter and accrue an unexpected critical efficacy. Over time, a telling conversation reveals more of itself. Its specific manner of handling a subject matter is gradually disclosed, its guiding presuppositions emerge and the applicability of its insights to other areas of concern becomes clearer. It is in the nature of conversation that its self-understanding changes. Conversation shows how an experience of change is part of understanding and demonstrates that, like itself, understanding has no end. The achievement of understanding is and will always remain difficult. It is a task, the object of a practice. Philosophical hermeneutics is not just about conversation. In its operation it exhibits something of the disclosive, summative, and anticipatory dynamics of conversation. These dynamics are clearly displayed in Gadamer’s approach to the nature of interpretation. Reflection upon what Gadamer explicitly states about interpretation and its preconditions discloses that his implicit and understated ambition is to find a response to the challenge nihilism makes to the possibility of meaning. This disclosure prompts, in turn, a summative reappraisal of philosophical hermeneutics as a subtle and sanguine reply to Nietzsche’s Interpretationsphilosophie . The reply, in its turn, duly anticipates a critical response to poststructuralist critiques of hermeneutics inspired by Nietzsche. Furthermore , that response proceeds to intimate how hermeneutics might transcend Gadamer’s own conception of the discipline. From the perspective of the dynamics of conversation, philosophical hermeneutics is true to itself as a philosophical disposition. Its dialogical stance exposes it to processes of change in self-understanding which are characteristic of conversation itself. For philosophical hermeneutics it is more important to remain loyal to an experience of language as opposed to the formal claims of philosophical method. This gently re-poses an ancient question that we shall reflect on in this essay. Is the proper stress of philosophical reflection to fall upon matters academic or upon finding an appropriate response to the complexities of human experience? Philosophical hermeneutics has been the subject of much misunderstanding . For some readers Gadamer’s interest in ancient philosophy, historiography, and intellectual tradition lends a conservative profile to his thought. His attempt to rethink tradition and Bildung (cultural and educative formation) has brought the inevitable accusation of reactionary purpose .2 In the opinion of some critics, his preoccupation with the nature of interpretation points to a fixation with meaning, with its sameness, and with its decoding.3 His critique of objectivist methodologies suggests to other commentators that his thought is a scant apology for both relativism and romantic irrationalism. Such accusations are misleading misunderstandings and they detract from the radical character of philosophical 2 UNQUIET UNDERSTANDING hermeneutics.4 Our strategic purpose is to reevaluate these cardinal elements of Gadamer’s thought and to uncover the poignancy of an underrated and undervalued philosophical disposition. The integrity of any hermeneutical essay would be compromised were it to claim to be the interpretation of Gadamer’s thought. For this essay, it is more a question of where the proper stress of interpretation should fall. We shall contend that just as Gadamer’s thinking...