08/11/2021 – Summer Philosophy Series Part 3: Gadamer

Do you need your horizons fused? Actually, they’re already fused. You just don’t realize it yet. Want to find out why? Check this out. This is TenOnReligion.

Hey peeps, it’s Dr. B. with TenOnReligion. This video is closed-captioned here on YouTube and the transcript is available at TenOnReligion.com. This is the third of a three-part summer philosophy series on three German thinkers: Heidegger, Tillich and Gadamer. Heidegger set the stage with establishing Dasein as the ground of being. Tillich applied it to religion, and Gadamer applied it to hermeneutics. Let’s do this.

Okay so here’s the big picture. One of the big preconditions that Gadamer emphasizes is that interest is required for hermeneutics. If one is not interested, understanding will fail before it even begins. It is also quite evident that application is a concern. One cannot fully understand by being a non-participating observer. Gadamer relies upon Aristotle for this point. Gadamer’s overall main idea is that hermeneutics is a dialectical process of expanding one’s horizon through a fusion with other horizons in a diachronical fashion. It is about seeking truth by maintaining an open perspective. Understanding involves both risk and reciprocity where a mutual joining together can create something new. There’s a lot going on in what I just said so let’s try to unpack it a little further.

Gadamer’s main work is Truth and Method and if one has some knowledge about the history of philosophy in Germany over the past two hundred years, this book makes a lot more sense. In developing his philosophical hermeneutics, the main contenders Gadamer fought against were Romanticism and historicism in Germany. In Romanticism, the issue was driven by a psychological interpretation, most notably by a German thinker named Schleiermacher who held that one must understand the author better than he understood himself. The method detached itself from the content which resulted in the main thrust of hermeneutics to focus on recreating an original context, both grammatically and psychologically. In historicism, the text only became a source for the larger project of understanding universal history. This culminated in Dilthey where the subject and object coalesced, thus causing failure for any way to generate a method for hermeneutics. In his attempt to remedy this situation, Gadamer focuses not on creating another method of hermeneutics which might ultimately fail, but on a whole philosophy of hermeneutics to describe how understanding occurs in the process of interpretation or recovery of historical texts. His main German sources for this endeavor were Husserl and Heidegger while his main Greek sources were Plato and Aristotle.

Hermeneutics, for Gadamer, is a philosophy of interpretation and understanding which resolves the tension between familiarity and strangeness. The philosophy of hermeneutics has a necessary condition of difference. In religion, familiarity means belonging to a tradition of some kind. Other ideas or objects beyond this familiarity exhibit the quality of strangeness. Hermeneutics clarifies the conditions from which the strange becomes the familiar, since in Gadamer’s view, meaning derives from the familiar. This is the only way the tension resolved. [This is the way… (graphic of the Mandalorian)]. One must find a way to make what is alien one’s own. Gadamer rejects the Romantic view that avoiding misunderstanding should be the focus. He advances the opposite; the alien is only understood when couched within that which is familiar. The familiar is the tradition to which one belongs such as a culture, a religion, a language group, a nation, and so on.

In Gadamer’s writings, one of the main entities which he identifies as alien is history, or more specifically, historical texts. After the end of the medieval world when European groups began to form the precursors to contemporary political states, a newly emerging view of history appeared where the past had become alien. Historical knowledge of the past was no longer a given but was subject to interpretation. A gap appeared between the familiar – the contemporary world – and the alien – the past. This gap is one of temporal distance which concentrates Gadamer’s hermeneutics on the diachronical process.

Gadamer assigns temporal distance a positive value because it makes knowledge of history possible. This distance is not so much of a gap to be bridged as it is a condition of the possibility of understanding history at all. It is no coincidence that Gadamer follows Heidegger in this respect. When Heidegger interpreted Dasein’s mode of being in terms of time, understanding became existential giving primacy to a lived existence. It is often difficult to evaluate the present because no patterns are evident. Patterns are established temporally and only present themselves over the course of time making judgments from historical distance easier. Temporal distance provides the custom and tradition with which to make such judgments. We do not really have a choice as to which tradition to use in order to understand because Gadamer agrees with Heidegger that human existence is not a self-projection, as Hegel described, but a thrown-projection. We are “thrown” into existence with obviously no choice regarding what time, geographical location, or cultural context we are born into. If you could have chosen what time and culture you could have been born into, what would it have been? Hmmm… Basically, views are passed down through time, one is born into a tradition, and then becomes productive in its continuity.

Though temporal distance poses less of a difficulty for Heidegger than Gadamer, his usage of temporal distance in textual hermeneutics does create the difficulty of silence caused by political conquest. When the winners write the history what happens to the stories of the losers? Might temporal distance also make the situation worse? In discussing this very issue in Truth and Method Gadamer admits that the historical significance of something can best be known when it belongs to a closed context, yet this is not the end of the historical problem. Understanding begins only when it becomes of interest and addresses us in some way. In the case of political conquest, interest obviously not only ceases, but is proactively suppressed. In this case, historical texts are lost, and understanding is subdued. Should a future generation become interested, the textual sources are limited at best or nonexistent at worst. We could think of a lot of examples here. But even in such a case, Gadamer contends that new possibilities with new prejudices create resurgent understandings, implying that the meaning or interpretation of an oppressed people can speak once again.

Now you just heard me use the word “prejudice,” but Gadamer uses this word in a positive way which is different than our contemporary culture. For Gadamer, prejudices are hidden or unconscious presuppositions of which one can never become fully aware. The work performed by Gadamer’s usage of the term prejudice is very important since one’s prejudices essentially create one’s horizon. It allows for the possibility of interest. But at the same time the task is not simply illuminating interest but directing and limiting hermeneutic interest.

The idea of interest represents a condition for hermeneutics because when something does become of interest and has something to say, one is then open to enlarging one’s horizon. This term “horizon” is Gadamer’s repackaging of an earlier concept of a lifeworld. The lifeworld concept comes from the German philosopher Husserl and his research on intersubjective experiences, which I wish we had more time to talk about because it’s really fascinating from a philosophical perspective, but back to Gadamer. One must search for the right horizon to address the question evoked by any given tradition. Since the original historical and cultural context of the text has ceased to exist, where is one to look? Gadamer’s answer is that one must look to the present because an anticipation of meaning guides the effort to grasp the meaning. The tension between the text of a historical tradition and the present inquirer did not originate in the past, but rather its kinetic power exists only in the present inquiry itself. Since horizons are not static but dynamic, they are not isolated in and of themselves. They are formed from, and incorporate, the past. Gadamer asserts that there is neither an isolated present horizon nor an isolated past horizon because understanding is always a fusion of both horizons. The “fusion of horizons” is probably Gadamer’s most well-known concept. At this juncture, Gadamer is clearly dependent upon the circle of understanding in Heideggerian thought to accomplish his own philosophy of hermeneutics. The historical horizon does not exist but is a projection from the present horizon. Hermeneutics is a production of the fusion of horizons between the present and the projection of a historical horizon towards the past. This reciprocity occurs at both the level of the individual and the level of a tradition.

Originally, my interest in Gadamer’s model of textual hermeneutics was to learn how it could be adapted for interreligious hermeneutics by metaphorically treating religious traditions as texts. But Gadamer’s model could be used for any number of things such as historical texts, legal texts like the U. S. Constitution for example, or cultural movements. In the interreligious case, the alien, rather than being a text separated by the gap of historical distance, is a foreign religious tradition, separated by a religio-cultural gap. A fore-understanding (Heidegger) or set of prejudices (Gadamer’s horizon) is comprised of two concerns. The first question is how has one’s own religious tradition historically framed another tradition? Or to put it another way, how has the home tradition characterized the foreign tradition throughout the course of its historical existence within the home tradition? The second concern is to what extent has the individual been influenced by what Gadamer terms historically-effected consciousness? This means there exists an entire history of how A views B which keeps growing and expanding. Essentially, the view of another religious tradition carries on a life of its own with its own history. Presumably, as more contact with other traditions continues, so the future will be shaped, but this also expresses human finitude. One is seldom aware of how much the home tradition shapes the view of the foreign tradition.

Now, people do not really ask questions unless they know that they do not know. For example, religious adherents do not wonder if their perception of a foreign religious tradition is misguided unless they suspect they have somehow been misled by their religious tradition’s collective or individual religious understanding of that foreign tradition. Disequilibrium (an important word), at some level, creates interest. When a person is satisfied with their own religious tradition’s interpretation or understanding of any given foreign tradition, they do not have reason to question it. In Gadamer’s terms, the question will not even arise unless it becomes a subject of interest.

If the question does arise, the dialectical process begins. Gadamer fuses together the form of the Platonic dialogue and the form of Heidegger’s circle of understanding to create his innovative form of hermeneutic dialogue. He argues that one does not always have to follow their tradition when faced with a choice. There are choices, but the choices are limited in the hermeneutical fashion of Heidegger by working out the possibilities from a projection of Dasein (or, Being-In-The-World). It starts with what is already there in one’s present horizon. The pattern goes from understanding to interpretation and back to understanding, repeating itself again and again disclosing meaning which fills in Dasein.

Gadamer uses the notion of dialogue in settling the problem of the confrontation of the alien. Gadamer appeals to a dialectical process, by using Plato’s example to describe the role of dialogue in the hermeneutical process. The initiation of understanding begins with interest. This is how a horizon begins its expansion. The Platonic dialogue of question and answer describes the process. When one becomes truly interested, one seeks answers via questions. Statements are answers responding to questions. In this model the goal is to ask the right questions so that the right answers can be sought. In Gadamer’s textual hermeneutics, dialectics means one must have a dialogue with the text. But though there is an inherent indeterminacy and openness in the question prior to the answer, the openness of the question is limited by the horizon of the question. The question is grounded in one’s horizon.

In such a dialogue, one must be able to see possibilities and opposites. It allows for openness from the other side. Actually, let me say that again: it allows for openness from the other side. (Something that we’ve been missing a lot of in the past few years). You don’t have all the answers. In a conversation it is not one partner or the other which is the focus, but the subject matter. Dialogue is about seeking truth, not winning every argument. It is not about either who talks the loudest or the most, or in some other way gains attention. It is about maintaining an open perspective with the goal of understanding. The dialectic of dialogue, when applied to interreligious hermeneutics, is a continual process which guides the goal of understanding. It is not about suppressing questions but preventing questions from being suppressed. People are partners in dialogue waiting together to see what emerges in the confrontation. A person skilled in dialogue knows how to keep the conversation going. When someone gains knowledge, it can be tested through rhetoric to a degree, but the final test could only be one of application which Gadamer gets from Aristotle.

Gadamer holds the position that theory and practice are reciprocally intertwined. Practice as an application of theory should not be opposed to theory. He provides examples in jurisprudence and linguistics. In jurisprudence, the ultimate objective is fulfilled when the law is applied in each specific case. The true force of the law is seen only in its final practical application and then such judgments can then be cited as an authority by way of precedent in a future case. In linguistics, Gadamer cites both humanism and the relationship between the philologist and the historian. Here’s an example, in the humanism of the 1400’s which developed in Europe, the goal was to go back to Latin and Greek sources to learn about their cultures and to apply the cultural character perceived to be implanted there. The philologist is concerned with the actual language of the historical text itself, but the historian is more concerned about what is not in the text. Gadamer claims there is an inner unity between the two that is different only in degree. The true outcome of understanding occurs only in the final application. Gadamer argues that one cannot fully understand as a nonparticipating observer. It is all part of a total, circular package. This is why Gadamer believes that advances in science affect cultures and societies (sometimes in ways which are not anticipated) and questions that arise in culture then direct the interest and research of science. Application is part of the hermeneutical process which tests the understanding.

And that ends our three-part summer philosophy series with Heidegger’s Dasein, Tillich’s ultimate concern, and Gadamer’s hermeneutics and the fusion of horizons. Soon we’re going to get back to some topics which are more specifically religion focused. Just wait for it! Until next time, stay curious. If you enjoyed this, please like and share this video and subscribe to this channel. This is TenOnReligion.