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115 From Hermeneutics to Praxis understand the conjunction "und." ("Wahrheit und Methode" was not Gadamer's original choice for the title.) At times it seems as if Gadamer is emphasizing not the conjunction but the disjunction between Truth and Method, so that a more apt title might have been "Truth versus Method." Gadamer has denied that it was his intention to playoff Truth against Method, although when we examine what Gadamer means by "play," we will see that there is indeed, throughout the work, a "play" of Truth and Method. A more appropriate title or subtitle of the book, and indeed of Gadamer's entire philosophic project, might have been "Beyond Objectivism and Relativism ." Gadamer's primary philosophic aim is to expose what is wrong with the type of thinking that moves between these antithetical poles and to open us to a new way of thinking about understanding that reveals that our being-in-the-world is distorted when we impose the concepts of objectivism and relativism. To appreciate what is distinctive about philosophic hermeneutics , we need to discuss the Cartesian legacy that serves as the backdrop for the drama that Gadamer unfolds. Gadamer builds upon the work of Heidegger, who himself engaged in a thoroughgoing critique of modern subjectivism that stems from Descartes (and can even be traced back to earlier motifs in Platonism). In speaking of the Cartesian legacy, one must be careful to distinguish the historical Descartes from Cartesianism. Recent historical scholarship, which itself has been partially influenced by a hermeneutical sensibility, has revealed how much disparity there is between what Descartes' texts say and the interpretation of his work by later thinkers. We can nevertheless discriminate the main features of Cartesianism that did enter the mainstream of philosophy. By listing these salient characteristics and relating them to Gadamer's thinking, we can gain a proper orientation for appreciating the nature of philosophic hermeneutics. THE CARTESIAN LEGACY First, Descartes introduces a rigorous distinction between res cogitans and res extensa. This distinction is the basis for the sharp separation of two types of quasi substance, mind and body. I speak of mind and body as "quasi substances" because they lack one essential characteristic that was traditionally associated with the doctrine of substance: independence or self-sufficiency. As Descartes makes clear in the Meditations, both mind and body are ultimately dependent for their sustained existence on God. Consequently, one might 116 Beyond Objectivism and Relativism say that implicit in Descartes' "dualism" is the suggestion that there is only one completely self-sufficient substance-God himself. Although Descartes does not employ the expressions "subject" and "object" in the ways in which they have come to be used by postCartesian philosophers (he still draws on the scholastic tradition), nevertheless his metaphysical and epistemological dichotomies provide the basis for this systematic distinction. Even those post-Cartesian philosophers who have challenged metaphysical dualism have generally accepted some version of the subject-object dichotomy as being basic for understanding our knowledge of the world. Second, if one is to achieve clear and distinct knowledge, the "I" (the subject) must engage in the activity of intellectual self-purification . By the procedure of methodical doubt, I must bracket or suspend judgment in everything that can be doubted in order to discover the Archimedean point that can serve as a proper foundation for the sciences. I must suspend judgment in all my former opinions and prejudices. This is essentially a solitary, monological activity (although it is likened to an internal dialogue), in the sense that I, in the solitude of my study, can by self-reflection discover the groundlessness of former opinions and prejudices. Descartes never really doubts that one can achieve this self-transparency and self-understanding by proper meditative reflection. Third, Descartes understands human finitude in a distinctive way. For although we are finite, we are not imperfect. In the fourth Meditation, when Descartes seeks to explain his errors, he tells us that they depend on a combination of two causes, to wit, on the faculty of knowledge that rests in me, and on the power of choice or free will-that is to say, of the understanding and at the same time of the will. For by the understanding alone I [neither assert nor deny anything, but] apprehend the ideas of things as to which I can form a judgment.9 It is by virtue of this "ample" and "unconstrained" free will that I have the capacity to assert or to deny-that is...

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