Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900- 2002) is another major 20th century German philosopher. Even more than Paul Ricoeur, he was the 20th century’s most widely recognized promoter of hermeneutics, going far beyond what had been developed by the romantic Schleiermacher (1768-1834) and the historicist Dilthey (1833-1911). Gadamer greatly emphasizes the importance of Platonic dialogue and Aristotelian practical judgment (phronesis). He takes the ethics of Plato and Aristotle very seriously. He is significantly inspired by Heidegger’s early work on a “hermeneutics of facticity”, but seems to have distanced himself from Heidegger’s dubious historical claims.

“Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics shows him to be a leading voice of historical romanticism…. Schleiermacher defined hermeneutics as the art of avoiding misunderstanding…. But the question also arises as to whether the phenomenon of understanding is defined appropriately when we say that to understand is to avoid misunderstanding…. We say, for instance, that understanding and misunderstanding take place between I and thou. But the formula ‘I and thou’ already betrays an enormous alienation. There is nothing like an ‘I and thou’ at all — there is neither the I nor the thou as isolated, substantial realities” (Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, p. 7).

Here he already makes several important points. First, concerning definition (or better, the constitution of meaning) — even though differences are constitutive for meaning in general, we do not in general get an adequate (i.e., uniquely applicable) definition of what something positively is merely by saying what it is not. Second, he implicitly emphasizes that dialogue occurs in the second person. But finally, like many of the subtler philosophers, Gadamer refines this position by rejecting any sharp separation between I and thou that would resemble a simple subject-object polarity.

“It is not so much our judgments as our prejudices that constitute our being. This is a provocative formulation, for I am using it to restore to its rightful place a concept of prejudice that was driven out of our linguistic usage by the French and the English Enlightenment…. Prejudices are not necessarily unjustified and erroneous” (p. 9).

This is indeed provocative, because it makes Gadamer’s views hard to separate from Counter-Enlightenment views. It is perfectly true that no real-world interpretation reaches a definite conclusion without some kind of assumptions. But the real challenge is to distinguish what assumptions are valid or unproblematic in any particular context. He seems to be working with an unconditionally negative view of the Enlightenment. I have issues with both the unconditionally positive view and the unconditionally negative view.

A bit less controversially, Gadamer makes a similar move to rehabilitate “tradition”. Pro-Enlightenment writers like Habermas and Brandom tend to use a high-level schematization that gives an unconditionally negative connotation to “traditionalism”. Gadamer would reject this.

“In fact, the historicity of our existence entails that prejudices, in the literal sense of the word, constitute the initial directedness of our whole ability to experience…. They are simply conditions whereby we experience something — whereby what we encounter says something to us” (ibid).

No serious philosophical dispute was ever resolved by recourse to a dictionary. But every dictionary definition of prejudice I have seen explicitly treats it as something that is unjustified. Not every unjustified view is harmful or wrong. But when such a matter is contested, I say that the one who claims that a prejudice is benign should have a strong burden of proof.

“The nature of the hermeneutical experience is not that something is outside and desires admission. Rather, we are possessed by something and precisely by means of it we are opened up for the new, the different, the true” (ibid).

This is quite a long way from Robert Pippin’s insistence that discursive thought must be considered as entirely active, and can admit no element of passivity. On this particular issue, I would side with Gadamer.

“Experience” is another term that can be quite ambiguous. Gadamer discusses historical uses of Erlebnis at considerable length in his magnum opus Truth and Method. Apparently the German word in this form was first used by Hegel. The meaning here is rather far from its meaning in British empiricism.

“The concept of prejudice is closely connected to the concept of authority” (ibid).

Gadamer also wants to rehabilitate the notion of authority. Authority does not mean only an irrational force. Like Brandom, he emphasizes that legitimate authority is grounded in shared understanding. At the same time he highlights the importance of questions and questioning.

“No assertion is possible that cannot be understood as the answer to a question, and assertions can only be understood in this way. It does not impair the impressive methodology of modern science in the least” (p. 11).

Questions are more primary than assertions. He has little use for any kind of technical methodology that could be applied by rote.

“[M]ethodology as such does not guarantee in any way the productivity of its application. Any experience of life can confirm the fact” (ibid).

“How could one seriously mean, for example, that the clarification of the taxation practices of fifteenth-century cities or the marital customs of Eskimos somehow first receive their meaning from the consciousness of the present and its anticipations?” (p.12).

“It is imagination [Phantasie] that is the decisive function of the scholar. Imagination naturally has a hermeneutical function and serves the sense for what is questionable” (ibid).

As might also be said of Heidegger, Gadamer seems to be very strongly on the side of the romantics, and not that of the enlighteners.

I like the emphasis on what is questionable. It helps to moderate the conservative implications of his positive treatment of prejudice, tradition, and authority.

“The real power of hermeneutical consciousness is our ability to see what is questionable. Now if what we have before our eyes is not only the artistic tradition of a people, or historical tradition, or the principle of modern science in its hermeneutical preconditions but rather the whole of our experience, then we have succeeded, I think, in joining the experience of science to our own universal and human experience of life. For we have now reached the fundamental level that we can call …the ‘linguistic constitution of the world’. It presents itself as the consciousness that is affected by history [wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein] and that provides an initial schematization for all our possibilities of knowing… What I mean is that precisely within his scientific experience it is not so much the ‘laws of ironclad inference’ … that present fruitful ideas to him, but rather unforeseen constellations that kindle a spark of scientific inspiration (e.g., Newton’s apple…)” (p. 13).

He leaves a place for modern science in the broader context of human life. Romanticism is not necessarily hostile to science. He points to the universality of hermeneutic interpretation.

“[T]he romantics recognized the inner unity of intelligere and explicare. Interpretation is not an
occasional, post facto supplement to understanding; rather, understanding is always interpretation, and hence interpretation is the explicit form of understanding. In accordance with this insight, interpretive language and concepts were recognized as belonging to the inner structure of understanding. This moves the whole problem of language from its peripheral
and incidental position into the center of philosophy” (Truth and Method, p. 306).

“Moral knowledge can never be knowable in advance like knowledge that can be taught” (p. 318).

I would not myself speak of moral “knowledge”, but the use here is highly qualified. He endorses Plato’s sharp critique of opinion, which I can only applaud. He seems to endorse Plato’s sharp contrast between knowledge and opinion.

“Plato shows in an unforgettable way where the difficulty lies in knowing what one does not know. It is the power of opinion against which it is so hard to obtain an admission of ignorance. It is opinion that suppresses questions. Opinion has a curious tendency to propagate itself. It would always like to be the general opinion, just as the word that the Greeks have for opinion, doxa, also means the decision made by the majority in the council assembly. How, then, can ignorance be admitted and questions arise?” (p. 359).

Honest recognition of what we do not know is the beginning of wisdom.

“[Aristotle] is concerned with reason and with knowledge, not detached from a being that is becoming, but determined by it and determinative of it. By circumscribing the intellectualism of Socrates and Plato in his inquiry into the good, Aristotle became the founder of ethics as a discipline independent of metaphysics” (p. 310).