Philosophical Hermeneutics

by Hans-Georg Gadamer, David E. Linge (Editor)

This excellent collection contains 13 essays from Gadamer's Kleine Schriften, dealing with hermeneutical reflection, phenomenology, existential philosophy, and philosophical hermeneutics. Gadamer applies hermeneutical analysis to Heidegger and Husserl's phenomenology, an approach that proves critical and instructive.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, Essays, Academic, 20th Century, German Literature

302 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Hans-Georg Gadamer was born February 11, 1900 in Marburg, Germany.
(Arabic: هانز جورج غادامير)

Gadamer showed an early aptitude for studies in philosophy and after receiving his doctoral degree in 1922 he went on to work directly under Martin Heidegger for a period of five years. This had a profound and lasting effect on Gadamer's philosophical progression.

Gadamer was a teacher for most of his life, and published several important works: Truth and Method is considered his magnum opus. In this work Heidegger's notion of hermeneutics is seen clearly: hermeneutics is not something abstract that one can pick up and leave at will, but rather is something that one does at all times. To both Heidegger and to Gadamer, hermeneutics is not restricted to texts but to everything encountered in one's life.

Gadamer is most well-known for the notion of a horizon of interpretation, which states that one does not simply interpret something, but that in the act of interpretation one becomes changed as well. In this way, he takes some of the notions from Heidegger's Being and Time, notably that which Heidegger had to say about prejudgements and their role in interpreting and he turns them into a more positive notion: Gadamer sees every act and experience (which is a hermeneutical experience to a Gadamerian) as a chance to call into question and to change those prejudgements, for in the horizon of interpretation those prejudgements are not forever fixed.

Gadamer is considered the most important writer on the nature and task of hermeneutics of the 20th century, which was still widely considered a niche within Biblical studies until Truth and Method was widely read and discussed.

He died at the age of 102 in Heidelberg (March, 2002).

Reviews

[Justin Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gadamer gets at least three stars for everything, just because he manages to be a serious student of German philosophy, but his sentences are comprehensible on first reading 80 to 90 percent of the time. That makes... one serious student of German philosophy, who is also an original thinker in his/her own right, about whom this can be said.

As to the content of this book, it's probably better for dipping into rather than reading straight through. The essays in the first half are mainly about the relation between Gadamerian hermeneutics and other disciplines. In the order of the book, they are: the hard sciences, the social sciences, biblical hermeneutics (kind of), classical metaphysics, semantics, and aesthetics. So if you're interested in any of these disciplines, you'll find the corresponding essay interesting (save for that which is ostensibly about Bultmannian biblical scholarship, but actually has nothing to say about said scholarship at all, in any way). Sadly, Gadamer's approach is the same to all of these disciplines: they are partial and not fundamental, whereas his own hermeneutical approach is universal and fundamental. I have some sympathy for the idea that human knowledge is at base interpretive, and if Gadamer just meant that, I'd be fine with it.

But he doesn't. He also means that the act of interpretation is at base passive (that is, it happens behind our backs); that this is an ontological rather than a social fact (so it is simply impossible to make our interpretations conscious or rational); and that the warrant for this is a range of outrageous assumptions about language (that it is identical with human thought and activity in general). A lot of this comes out in the second half of the book, a half dozen essays on philosophical history. They do a pretty good job of explaining how German philosophy managed to get from Kant, through Hegel and Fichte, to Husserl, Heidegger and, ultimately, Gadamer himself. They're reasonably sympathetic to all of these figures, but also reveal the obvious flaw in Gadamer's thought: he claims that, like Hegel, his theory aims to unify 'objective spirit' (basically non-private, social or structural stuff) with 'subjective spirit,' (individualist, subjective stuff). But he doesn't do this at all. Gadamer is a great corrective to the more Kantian strands of German thought, but he swings too far to the other side. Despite his claims to the contrary, he eliminates subjective spirit and leaves himself with a philosophy of objective spirit (for his, that objective spirit is language; like Heidegger he's too comfortable with the idea that 'language speaks us'). Because he sets up this all-devouring structure, he's unable to explain the possibility of rational thought. This is ironic and sad, since he also seems to be deeply committed to rationality in a way that Derrida, for instance, is not.

That aside, he's a great model for philosophers everywhere: clear (except for occasional obfuscatory Heideggerian mysticism), willing to deal with history as an important part of his thought, willing to accept criticism (witness just how far he's willing to go towards ideology critique when thinking about Habermas, for instance), willing to accept the importance of tradition. Every now and then he makes Heidegger and, even more remarkably, Husserl, comprehensible.

I especially recommend 'The Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem,' 'Aesthetics and Hermeneutics,' 'The Philosophical Foundations of the Twentieth Century,' and 'The Science of the Life-World.'

[Chronolith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dear Gadamar,

I love you so much you don't even know, but wirkungsgeschichtlichesBewußtsein is not a word. It is four (5?)words that you have smooshed together. Every time you do this you make the translator weep and pull at their hair. Please stop it.

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came across this book in the used bookstore, Haunted Books, in Iowa City, Iowa. I never would have discovered this book through searching through Amazon or on my own. I hate essay books and seldom buy them. That would have been a mistake with this book. It is a series of essays, but reads like a book with a common theme and an overriding narrative (actually, it has two narratives, the first set of essays dwells on hermeneutics and the second set is devoted to phenomenology).

I liked the fact that when a difficult concept or school of thought popped up in one essay, it would pop up in a different form in another essay allowing me to grasped what was meant in the original essay.

I thought the explanations of what Heidegger meant that popped up in the various essays was better than books dedicated to Heidegger. I’d even say overall the essays where more edifying on ‘Being and Time’ than Dreyfus’ Division I book, but not as good as Dreyfus’ freely available off the internet course on ‘Being and Time’ (that course illustrates how we are so fortunate to be alive today when things like that are easily available for those who really what to learn).

I would say that on my short list of my favorite books would include 1) ‘Being and Time’ 2) Husserl’s ‘Ideas’ 3) Hegel’s ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’ 4) Gaddamer’s ‘Truth and Method’ and 5) Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ when accompanied by the Bernstein course available off the internet (nobody, likes the way Kant writes, but what he has to say makes the suffering of his writing worthwhile when it is explained by Bernstein. BTW, The Bernstein Tapes also has a course on Hegel’s Phenomenology but that is not necessary to listen to in order to appreciate the book).

I mentioned my favorite books, because these essays dwell on each of them in a detailed fashion. It is not necessary to have read each of those books in order to appreciate this book and the essays will act as a great introduction for those who have not. I know from the essays I need to read Heidegger’s on Humanism, and Husserl’s first major book ‘Logical Investigations’ in order fill in some holes that I still have.

There’s a reason I love Gaddamer’s ‘Truth and Method’, but that’s for others to read it for themselves and figure out why it is such a great book. I once heard a Great Course Lecturer say that ‘Truth and Method’ marked the end of the Phenomenologist project and Gaddamer was its last great advocate. All of these essays in this book in some way are Gaddamer’s effort to defend his book and explain what he was trying to say.

[Mason MB · Rating 4 out of 5]

basically a lot of big words to say that I Am Alive and I Know Things Because Of This. would give the last star if i knew jack about heidegger or some of the biggest words (mostly german)

[Paul Cockeram · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gadamer understands the shortcomings of science, and he respects other philosophers like Husserl for pointing them out. Husserl was the father of phenomenology, and Heidegger advanced its cause into questions about what it means to be, and then here comes Gadamer to pull together the loose strands in highly readable, though very dense prose. If you managed to read this far into my review, then you’ll be able to finish this book, even if you’re not a philosophy major. But let’s be clear: a book with the two-word title “Philosophical Hermeneutics” is showing its readers what to expect; the title is a pop quiz with one question, “Do these words scare you?” I admit they made me anxious. I have an English degree, which means I’m trained to read well but lack the broader understanding of philosophical movements generally, or specific thinkers particularly, that a philosophy student would have acquired. Nonetheless, I got a whole lot out of this book. The key was slow, patient reading.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Gadamer shares my views on science. We both have a cautious disdain for its world view, which insists that the only legitimate notions about ourselves or the world we live in be measurable, predictable, and based entirely on constructions of the human mind. I see a poverty of thought there that Gadamer sees, too. Gadamer pays attention to the “life-world,” a place more like the one William James was talking about in his book “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” the emotional landscape and the world of human relationships where we actually reside day by day. Gadamer pays attention to language, especially the comfortable, unconscious ways we use language with friends and lovers. He is an insightful reader and interpreter of the famously inscrutable philosopher Martin Heidegger. Most of all, Gadamer understands that the best way to live in our world is to interpret our living, ongoing experience of the world in a careful, thoughtful manner that includes, without being limited to, scientific investigation and deliberate reflection. When a glass falls off the table in front of us and our hand reaches out to grasp it reflexively, before we have fully realized that the glass is falling, that movement occurred in the world Gadamer is talking about. It’s a place that science ignores, and therefore it’s a place that philosophers up to and including Husserl ignored, too. Heidegger and Gadamer want to bring it into the conversation. They succeed surprisingly well, given the enormous difficulty and complexity of the task, with Gadamer providing a helpful assist to Heidegger in this book.

But Gadamer is also a trained philosopher, which means he’s in on a lot of conversations that I just don’t understand. Some chapters dive so deep into the work of specific philosophers and their arguments with one another throughout the development of philosophy from Hegel to Kant to the mid-twentieth century that I was completely lost. The worst, in this respect, is the essay titled “The Phenomenological Movement.” It’s a history of how phenomenology developed from critiques of Kant through Husserl to Heidegger, mentioning a lot of other thinkers I’ve never heard of, recounting their bickering about issues I don’t understand. This essay was a slog, and I got embarrassingly little from reading it.

But so what? The essay “Man and Language” alone was worth the price of admission. All my fellow language nerds and English majors are bound to agree. Gadamer is one of the greatest philosophers of language I’ve ever read for several reasons. First, he understands how language is a game for at least two players: “To speak means to speak to someone . . . . Speaking does not participate in the sphere of the ‘I’ but in the sphere of the ‘we.’” Second, he understands how any given utterance of language is incomplete by itself and must be situated into the context of the fuller conversation in order to be understood completely: “Nothing that is said has its truth simply in itself, but refers instead backward and forward to what is unsaid.” (My incomprehension of “The Phenomenological Movement” is completely a consequence of my being outside the conversation the essay is participating in and contributing to. I don’t understand the words on the page because I don’t understand what is behind and forward of them.) Third, he understands that language is most authentic when it flows most freely between us, when we are not analyzing or worrying about the words we’re using, when we listen to the flow of language and respond without prejudice: “‘Choosing’ one’s words is an appearance or effect created in communication when speaking is inhibited. ‘Free’ speaking flows forward in forgetfulness of oneself and in self-surrender to the subject matter made present in the medium of language.”

The other essays had at least one thought worth writing down and mulling over. I walked away with five pages of annotations and quotations, so I could go on and on here. I won’t. Just let me conclude by celebrating Gadamer’s thoughtful approach to embodied reality, to the way in which we have bodies that interact with a world of matter and objects. This is revolutionary given the heritage of Descartes and rationalism’s preference for disembodied brains, what it calls “objectivity,” over actual life. Gadamer teases out the consequences of embodied life better than most thinkers I’ve read, paying special attention to how our consciousness interacts with objects. I’ll leave you with a taste: “consciousness is by no means a self-enclosed sphere with its representations locked up in their own inner world. On the contrary, consciousness is, according to its own essential structure, already with objects. . . . Knowledge is intuition, and in the case of direct perception, that means the direct givenness of what is known is perception. It has its own certainty in itself.” Thumbing his nose at the supposed unreliability of our sense, Gadamer sees how we all live by intuition first and foremost, navigating bodily through a world of bodies, trying and sometimes failing to get along with one another and respect one another’s bodies, and thereby developing morality. None of it is “objective.”

[آلاء بن سلمان]

الكتاب ليس لمستوى مبتدئ ويعتمد على وجود خلفية بفلسفة فلاسفة تكلموا عن الهرمنيوطيقا لذا لم أفهم الكثير حقيقة ، ولكن الأجزاء التي أظن أني فهمتها مدعاة للتفكير ، سأُعيد قراءة الكتاب مجددًا في وقت لاحق وأقيمه حينها .

[هدى إبراهيم · Rating 5 out of 5]

مقدمة ممتاز ة لفلسفة التأويل لمن أراد أن يخطو الخطوة الأولى في هذا البحر الهائج والممتلئ بالمفاجأت ..

[Stewart James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gripping and lucidly written. A testament to Gadamer’s grandfatherly wisdom.

[Matthew Martens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whatever that means.

[Zachary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hans-Georg Gadamer is the foremost exponent of hermeneutics in the twentieth century. Heavily influenced by Martin Heidegger and his method of hermeneutic phenomenology, Gadamer articulated a theory of hermeneutics that stressed the primordial and fundamental character of the hermeneutical situation as basic to human life and experience. His most famous and comprehensive presentation of this theory is in Truth and Method; Philosophical Hermeneutics is a collection of essays published after Truth and Method that offer a helpful introduction to Gadamer and the basic contours of his philosophical project.

To the extent that the hermeneutical situation is, as Gadamer maintains, universal, it has always been an essential aspect of human life and experience. As a discipline, however, hermeneutics dates back to problems associated with biblical exegesis and the articulation of an interpretive framework to understand the Bible. Friedrich Schleiermacher helped develop hermeneutics into a broader theory of textual interpretation, and Wilhelm Dilthey further expanded its scope and importance in relation to what he called the human sciences, especially the study of history. For these and other early hermeneutical thinkers, the problem of hermeneutics arose whenever one encountered a text whose meaning appeared alien; the task of hermeneutics was then to overcome this alienation, render the unfamiliar world of the text familiar, and assimilate its meaning into the horizons of the interpreter’s world. Early hermeneutical thinkers like Schleiermacher and Dilthey identified the meaning of a text or action entirely with the subjective intention of its author. Consequently, to understand the meaning of a text or action, one needed to recover and reconstruct the life-world of the author and understand her (her motivations, her intentions, etc.) as she understood herself. Hermeneutics therefore provided a method to close the temporal distance between the world of the interpreter and the world of the text, and only via such a controlled and disciplined method could one avoid “misunderstanding” the meaning of the text. What these hermeneutical trailblazers overlooked, however, is how the horizons of the interpreter’s own world, i.e. her historically conditioned situatedness, provide the condition for understanding; it is not that the interpreter’s present historical situation can only impede a correct understanding of the text, as thinkers like Schleiermacher and Dilthey maintained, but that understanding presupposes such historical situatedness and would be impossible without it. In other words, the historicity of the interpreter is not a circumstantial obstacle to be overcome, but an ontological condition of any process of understanding.

It was not until Heidegger that hermeneutics developed the reflexive capacity to disclose the structure of understanding that makes understanding possible in the first place. Heidegger demonstrated that all understanding directed toward entities within the world presupposes some prior ontological understanding of those entities (this includes the being of Dasein). So, for example, to understand a particular film, one must already have some prior understanding of it (even, simply, as a film, i.e. as a continuous sequence of images and sound, or a form of entertainment), without which the film could never appear as an entity to be understood. With this in mind, hermeneutic phenomenology, as Heidegger understood it, “lays bare” this prior structure of hermeneutical situatedness; it renders explicit that with which we are already familiar, which accompanies every event of understanding, yet which remains hidden in our everyday being-in-the-world. This Heideggerian sense of hermeneutics is what Gadamer develops into his own hermeneutical theory.

For Gadamer, the hermeneutical situation and the interpretive problem it poses are universal. By this, Gadamer does not just mean that understanding is a familiar aspect of human experience, but that it constitutes our most basic being-in-the-world. There is simply no way to transcend the hermeneutical situation, to stand outside of the historically conditioned horizons of our world so as to understand a text, action, or entity without the prejudices or interests that characterize our situatedness. The hermeneutical situation is thus “the mode of the whole human experience of the world,” Gadamer insists. “There is always a world already interpreted, already organized in its basic relations, into which experience steps as something new, upsetting what has led our expectations and undergoing reorganization itself in the upheaval” (15). For Gadamer, then, the norms, presuppositions, and expectations constitutive of the horizons of the interpreter’s world are not wholly determinative; they do not dictate the way in which one understands. Rather, such norms are always open to revision in view of experience and, indeed, they are the conditions for an interpretation that fundamentally alters the horizons within which understanding takes place. As Gadamer explains, “only the support of familiar and common understanding makes possible the venture into the alien, the lifting up of something out of the alien, and thus the broadening and enrichment of our own experience of the world” (ibid.).

Central to Gadamer’s theory of hermeneutics is the concept of prejudice, a term that broadly encompasses the norms, presuppositions, and expectations I alluded to earlier as constitutive of the horizons within which understanding takes place. For Gadamer, prejudice does not have solely pejorative connotations; in fact, he seeks to retrieve a more positive conception of prejudice that has its roots in the Latin prae-iudicium, literally a “pre-judgment.” As Gadamer understands prejudice, it does not so much refer to biases that one must bracket or work to eliminate to reach a correct understanding as to the productive basis for all understanding. Our prejudices do not conceal the truth of what we seek to interpret, but rather open it up for us; they “are biases of our openness to the world.” As Gadamer explains, “prejudices are not necessarily unjustified and erroneous, so that they inevitably distort the truth. 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.” In this sense, prejudices provide the conditions for the possibility of any experience whatsoever; Gadamer even states that “it is our prejudices that constitute our being” (9). This does not mean, for Gadamer, that we are inevitably trapped within a wall of prejudices that forecloses any understanding that could possibly undermine the prejudices we already have. When, in hermeneutical reflection, our prejudices become apparent to us, we can subject them to criticism. Indeed, hermeneutics as a mode of philosophical inquiry seeks to make salient the prejudices that color our understanding. It is, as Gadamer describes it, both critical of what it interprets—Gadamer cites ideology critique as one powerful form of hermeneutical reflection—and self-critical in its reflection “about its own critical endeavors, that is, about its own limitations and the relativity of its own position” (93). Still, it should be noted that Gadamer’s more positive conception of prejudice inclines him toward a somewhat more positive assessment of authority: “I cannot accept the assertion that reason and authority are abstract antitheses,” he writes. “Rather, I assert that they stand in a basically ambivalent relation, a relation I think should be explored rather than casually accepting the antithesis as a ‘fundamental conviction’” (33).

Where do our prejudices come from? For Gadamer, we inherit our prejudices from the movement of tradition, a central concept bound up with the historicity of human being-in-the-world. As Gadamer explains, with a cue from Heidegger, “if it is the fundamental constitution of the historicity of human Dasein to mediate itself to itself understandingly—which necessarily means to the whole of its own experience of the world—then all tradition belongs to it. Tradition encompasses institutions and life-forms as well as texts” (96). In this context, tradition refers to far more than the particular traditions in which we claim to participate—for example, the Jewish tradition, or the humanist tradition, or the western philosophical tradition, or whatever. In the simplest sense, it refers to how the temporally extended communities of which we are a part provide us with the fore-structures of understanding that constitute the particular horizon within which our understanding takes place. Gadamer claims that “the broadest concept of tradition” is “one that includes what is not itself linguistic, but is capable of linguistic interpretation. It extends from the ‘use’ of tools, techniques, and so on through traditions of craftsmanship in the making of such things as various types of implements and ornamental forms through the cultivation of practices and customs to the establishment of patterns and so on” (99). Tradition, then, is expansive in its referential scope and, indeed, Gadamer stresses that one cannot entirely step outside one’s traditions in the same way that one cannot transcend one’s prejudices: both are necessary conditions for understanding. As he succinctly puts this point, “it is not really we ourselves who understand: it is always a past that allows us to say, ‘I have understood’” (58). Yet simply because one always already inhabits a tradition (or more accurately, a set of traditions), does not mean that one must uncritically endorse that tradition. It simply means that understanding can never start from a tradition-less place—even the rejection of a tradition presupposes that one has understood it in some way, that it has provided one with a set of interests, questions, and problems. Hence, contrary to what several critics maintain (most especially Habermas), tradition is not (necessarily) a conservative force in Gadamer’s hermeneutics.

Closely related to the concepts of prejudice and tradition in Gadamer is the notion of language, which plays a central role in his characterization of the hermeneutical situation. For Gadamer, we cannot think outside of language. It “is not one of the means by which consciousness is mediated with the world,” nor is it “simply an instrument, a tool.” Rather, “in all our knowledge of ourselves and in all knowledge of the world, we are always already encompassed by the language that is our own” (62). For Gadamer, we cannot experience a reality outside of or prior to language; reality “does not happen ‘behind the back’ of language,” as it were, but rather “happens precisely within language” (35). This means that language conditions our experience of the world insofar as we are always already situated in a world by virtue of our possession of language (or, as Heidegger would put it, our possession by language). Language, in short, is the ontological condition for understanding; it relates us in a primordial way to being, such that Gadamer even claims in Truth and Method that “being that can be understood is language” (474). This does not mean that being is reducible to language, but it does mean that language is the sole medium within which being is disclosed to us. Importantly, Gadamer’s stress on the centrality of language to understanding leads him to view the conversation as the basic model of understanding. If understanding is necessarily linguistically mediated, and language is by nature social (like Wittgenstein, Gadamer rejects the possibility of a ‘private language’), then understanding is fundamentally dialogical.

In Philosophical Hermeneutics, Gadamer also posits translation as a model of hermeneutical reflection, particularly insofar as translation attempts to render familiar what at first appears alien. The translator, Gadamer observes, must translate a text into his own language and is obviously bound by what is actually present in the text, but he cannot simply reproduce the same words and sentences in his own language. This would result in a flat translation that, paradoxically, would not successfully convey the text’s meaning; it would fail to capture the depth and complexity of the text, what is “between the lines” and not explicitly expressed yet nevertheless central to its meaning. “The task of the translator, therefore, must never be to copy what is said, but to place himself in the direction of what is said (i.e. in its meaning) in order to carry over what is to be said into the direction of his own saying.” Put differently, the translator must reproduce “not what is said in exact terms, but rather what the other person wanted to say and said in that he left much unsaid” (68). For Gadamer, the task of the hermeneutical thinker is effectively the same as the translator. She strives to render familiar what at first appears alien, and this requires that she not only attend to what is said (by the text, action, or conversational partner), but also what remains unsaid, i.e. the “meaning behind the meaning and that in fact could be said to lose its meaning when raised to the level of what is actually expressed” (88). Yet not only this, for the hermeneutical thinker also strives to uncover what is concealed in the said, since “one of the fundamental structures of all speaking is that we are guided by preconceptions and anticipations in our talking in such a way that these continually remain hidden” (92). With this second yet no less important task, we see once more the critical function of hermeneutical reflection in that it makes salient the prejudices latent in linguistic communication. For Gadamer, this critical function similarly presupposes the act of translation: “translation allows what is foreign and what is one’s own to merge in a new form by defending the point of the other even if it be opposed to one’s own view.” Hence translation, even when ultimately oriented toward critique, draws the other’s language “into a new linguistic explication of the world,” and in this dialectical, dialogical process, “the power of reason is demonstrated” (94).

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A SERIES OF ESSAYS DEVELOPING THE GERMAN PHILOSOPHER’S CONCEPT OF HERMENEUTICS

Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) was a German philosopher. This 1976 book is a translation of essays from Gadamer’s Kleine Schriften (Small Writings), as well as the essay, “Heidegger’s Later Philosophy.” The Editor’s Introduction explains, “The essays contained in this volume continue to develop the philosophical perspective that Gadamer originally set forth in his systematic work, ‘Truth and Method,’ a perspective he has called philosophical hermeneutics. Like the larger work, these essays are not primarily concerned with the methodological questions pertaining to scientific understanding that have been the preoccupation of hermeneutical theory… The task of philosophical hermeneutics, therefore, is ontological rather than methodological… ‘the question is not what we do or what we should do, but what happens beyond our willing and doing.’” (Pg. xi)

In the first essay [1966], he states, “Why has the problem of language come to occupy the same central position in current philosophical discussions that the concept of thought… held in philosophy a century and a half ago? By answering this question, I shall try to give an answer indirectly to the central question of the modern age… It is the question of how our natural view of the world… is related to the unassailable and anonymous authority that confronts us in the pronouncements of science… I want to elucidate several phenomena in which the universality of this question becomes evident. I have called the point of view involved in this theme ‘hermeneutical,’ a term developed by Heidegger. Heidegger was continuing a perspective stemming originally from Protestant theology and transmitted into our own century by Wilhelm Dilthey.” (Pg. 3-4)

He adds, “The hermeneutical question… is not restricted to the areas from which I began in my own investigations. My only concern there was to secure a theoretical basis that would enable us to deal with the basic factor of contemporary culture, namely, science and its industrial, technological utilization.” (Pg. 10-11)

He continues, “What I am describing is the mode of the whole human experience of the world. I call this experience hermeneutical, for the process we are describing is repeated continually throughout our familiar experience. There is always a world already interpreted, already organized in its basic relations, into which experience steps as something new, upsetting what has led our expectations and undergoing reorganization itself in the upheaval. Misunderstanding and strangeness are not the first factors, so that avoiding misunderstanding can be regarded as the specific tasks of hermeneutics.” (Pg. 15)

In the next essay [1967], “The universal phenomenon of human linguisticality also unfolds in other dimensions than those which would appear to be directly concerned with the hermeneutical problem, for hermeneutics reaches into all contexts that determine and condition the linguisticality of the human experience of the world. Some of those have been touched upon in my ‘Truth and Method’; for instance, the … consciousness of effective history, of the consciousness in which history is ever at work… was presented in a conscious effort to shed light on the idea of language in some phases of its history. And of course linguistically extends into many different dimensions not mentioned in ‘Truth and Method.’” (Pg. 19-20)

He continues, “It seems… to be generally characteristic of the emergence of the ‘hermeneutical’ problem that something DISTANT has to be brought close, a certain strangeness overcome, a bridge built between the once and the now. Thus hermeneutics, as a general attitude over against the world, came into its own in modern times, which had become aware of the temporal distance separating us from antiquity and of the relativity of the life-worlds of different cultural traditions. Something of this awareness was contained in the theological claim of Reformation biblical exegesis …. but its true unfolding only came about when a ‘historical consciousness’ arise in the Enlightenment… and matured in the romantic period to establish a relationship (however broken) to our entire inheritance from the past.” (Pg. 22-23)

He adds, “My thesis is… that the thing which hermeneutics teaches us is to see through the dogmatism of asserting an opposition and separation between the ongoing, natural ‘tradition’ and the reflective appropriation of it. For behind this assertion stands a dogmatic objectivism that distorts the very concept of hermeneutical reflection itself. In this objectivism the understander is seen… not in relationship to the hermeneutical situation and the constant operativeness of history in his own consciousness, but in such a way as to imply that his own understanding does not enter into the event.” (Pg. 28)

In a 1962 essay, he suggests, “Now it seems to me that these observations also hold for dealing with written texts and thus for understanding the Christian proclamation that is preserved in Scripture…. To understand a text is to come to understand oneself in a kind of dialogue. This contention is confirmed by the fact that the concrete dealing with a text yields understanding only when what is said in the text begins to find expression in the interpreter’s own language. Interpretation belongs to the essential unity of understanding… This observation holds true in every respect for the text of the Christian proclamation, which one cannot really understand if it does not seem to speak directly to him. It is in the sermon, therefore, that the understanding and interpretation of the text first receives its full reality. It is the sermon rather than the explanatory commentary of the theologian’s exegetical work that stands in the immediate service of proclamation, for it not only communicates to the community the understanding of what Scripture says, but also bears witness itself… Such self-understanding certainly does not constitute a criterion for the theological interpretation of the New Testament…” (Pg. 57-58)

In a 1960 essay, he observes, “To be sure, classical metaphysics’ concept of truth---the conformity of knowledge with the object---rests on a theological correspondence. For it is in their creatureliness that the soul and the object are united… Now philosophy certainly can no longer avail itself of such a theological grounding and will also not want to repeat the secularized versions of it… But for its part, philosophy may also not close its eyes to the truth of this correspondence… Is there a grounding of this correspondence that does not venture to affirm the infinity of the divine mind and yet is able to do justice to the infinite correspondence of soul and being? I contend that there is…. the way of language.” (Pg. 74-75)

In a 1972 essay, he says, “Ideological criticism represents only a particular form of hermeneutical reflection, one that seeks to dispel a certain class of prejudices through critique. Hermeneutical reflection, however, is universal in its possible application. As opposed to the sciences, it must also fight for recognition in those cases where it is a matter… of self-enlightenment with regard to the methodology of science as such. Any science is based upon the special nature of that which it has made its object through its methods of objectifying. The method of modern science is characterized from the start by a refusal: namely, to exclude all that which actually eludes its own methodology and procedures. Precisely in this way it would prove to itself that is without limits and never wanting for self-justification.” (Pg. 93)

He continues, “The work of art says something to the historian: it says something to each person as if it were said especially to him, as something present and contemporaneous. Thus our task is to understand the meaning of what it says and to make it clear to ourselves and others. Even the nonlinguistic work of art, therefore, falls within the province of the proper task of hermeneutics. It must be integrated into the self-understanding of each person. In this comprehensive sense, hermeneutics includes aesthetics. Hermeneutics bridges the distance between minds and reveals the forgiveness of the other mind. But revealing what is unfamiliar … also means apprehending what is said to us, which is always more than the declared and comprehended meaning. Whatever says something to us is like a person who says something. It is alien in the sense that it transcends us.” (Pg. 100-101)

The next essays are historical studies and analyses of Phenomenology, Heidegger, etc.

This book is very helpful for understanding Gadamer’s ‘Truth and Method,’ and will be of interest to students of contemporary philosophy.

[Johnny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good philosophy is, contrary to popular opinion, useful for multiple disciplines. This is why Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics is helpful for many disciplines. This book, a compilation of translations of 13 essays translated from the German and a thorough introduction from the editor that is incredibly valuable itself. Before writing about the content, I do have to admit being shocked that one of the finest essays in the book, “The Philosophical Foundations of the Twentieth Century” (originally published in 1962) was beset with horrendous typographical errors. This is not something one expects of books from the prestigious University of California Press, yet one essay contained “responsiquility” rather than “responsibility” (p. 109), “home so modern science” rather than “to modern science” (p. 116), “believeing” not “believing” (p. 117), “descritipion” instead of “description” (p. 127), and “seond” as opposed to “second” (p. 128). Maybe the proof reader(s) were tired at that point because the rest of the book is not as poorly edited. The next essay only sported “fasion” (p. 147) and “indiffernace” (p. 138) as the typographical errors lessened.

For me, of course, the appeal of Gadamer’s philosophy applies to the second word in the collection’s title. While I am interested in biblical hermeneutics, Gadamer is interested in the interpretation of anything. Interestingly, Gadamer credits Heidegger with borrowing the term directly from biblical hermeneutics (p. 4) and explains via negativa how the hermeneutical experience of “translating” what we recognize into what we express (pp. 14-15) avoids the alienation of the aesthetic consciousness on the one side and the alienation of the historical consciousness on the other (p.4).On the positive side, Gadamer sees hermeneutics as bringing the distant near, the strange into the familiar, such that it builds a bridge (pp. 22, 94). Again, he insists that language mediates finite and infinite (p. 80). “Hermeneutics operates wherever what is said is not immediately intelligible.” (p. 98) Indeed, for me, what Gadamer says about Philosophy on p. 201 is exponentially true of biblical interpretation: “For what else is interpretation in philosophy but coming to terms with the truth of the text and risking oneself by exposure to it?”

But Gadamer doesn’t see language as a means to an end. Rather, he states that language is not merely a mirror, but a living out of what is within us (pp. 32, 35). Later, he indicates that: “All our ways of thinking are dependent upon the universality of language.” (p. 172) Nonetheless, by that “universality” he does not mean the flattening out of meaning so that individual concepts and expressions are limited to static meanings. So, much like the later Wittgenstein, Gadamer approaches language as a game (pp. 56-57, 174).

Gadamer is skeptical of both “idealized reflection” and materialistic reductionism. Of the former, he suggests that both Husserl’s “anonymous intentionalities” and Heidegger’s demonstration of “ontological abridgment” demonstrate that idealized reflection leads to a false objectification (p. 35). Of the latter, he is horrified at the tendency within scientific method to define cultural signs as “mere myth.” (pp. 52, 93) Personally, I appreciated his concern for three aspects of language which are sometimes overlooked or minimized: 1) self-forgetfulness defined as the lack of conscious awareness of syntax and grammar when speaking (p. 64); 2) “I-lessness” or the inability to communicate beyond oneself as the antithesis of language (p. 65); and 3) language has a universal/infinite quality that necessitates translation into the stream of dialogue, not to recover precisely the exact original idea but to discover what the other person wanted to say and left (because of language limitations) unsaid (pp. 67-68).

As a result, “Hermeneutics operates whenever what is said is not immediately intelligible.” (p. 98) Hence, Gadamer defines language as a “work of art” (p. 100) rather than a science because art transforms (p. 104) and science doesn’t answer all questions (p. 109). Language could also be designated as play since language always leads behind itself (p. 88).

Gadamer is suspicious, for example, of what Hegel called the “objective spirit” because he observed that it, ironically tends to lead toward cultural relativism (p. 113). He objects to idealism because of: 1) naivete of assertion (expecting the apophansis to be able to capture all the variables of a consideration) (pp. 119-120); 2) naivete of reflection (expecting perception to give one an objective unity) (pp. 122-123; and 3) naivete of the concept (assuming that a concept can be expressed without ambiguity (pp. 125-126). Later, Gadamer asserts: “…the experience of art presents indisputable evidence for the fact that self-understand does not yield an adequate horizon of interpretation.” (p. 208) So, even the artist’s/author’s self-interpretation does not have a “canonical status.” In a similar way, a purely subjective interpretation of the gospel cannot be sufficient (p. 209). So, Gadamer posits a via media which includes both personal interpretation and investigation of meaning by historical science. After all, he writes: “Does not the intended meaning of the New Testament authors—even what they may concretely have in mind—move in the direction of the meaning of salvation for which one reads the Bible?” (p. 210) Understanding is more than what the author or artist means, but it does not preclude an investigation of such.

Gadamer is well-known as an interpreter of Heidegger so it is no surprise that much of the book is given to discussion of the positions of Heidegger and his professor, Edmund Husserl. Although I have read Being and Time (in translation), I still benefitted from Gadamer’s explanation of the Heideggerian understanding of “fundamental ontology.” This could be understood as not being concerned with Dasein or “Being” in terms of the presence-at-hand, but in terms of awareness of the dynamic between said presence and concern about one’s future interacting with one’s sense of being (p. 215). Hence, I would suggest that Heideggerian “being” should be understood as subjective awareness (at risk of oversimplification). Such an understanding would definitely be rooted “within the horizon of time.” He explained: “The present-at-hand, which science knows through its observations and calculations, and the eternal, which is beyond everything human, must both be understood in terms of the central ontological certainty of human temporality.” (p. 216)

I was particularly taken with an observation late in the book which seems to leave open a pathway for, at least, metaphysical speculation and, perhaps, theological speculation. It reads: “This coming forth of beings into the ‘there’ of their Dasein obviously presupposes a realm of openness in which such a ‘there’ can occur. And yet it is just as obvious that this realm does not exist without beings manifesting themselves in it, that is, without there being a place of openness that openness occupies.” (p. 225) This leads to a concept I consider most important: “Truth is always such an opposition of revealment and concealment.” (p. 226)

Another intriguing theological implication builds off Heidegger’s early statement: “One cannot lose God as one loses his pocketknife.” (p. 234) Yet, Gadamer observes that when one loses something such as a pocket knife, “It demonstrates its existence by the fact that one continually misses it.” (p. 235) That comment has to rest in my rhetorical quiver along with Pascal’s God-shaped hole.
For me, Philosophical Hermeneutics is an extremely valuable addition to my library. It will be pulled off the shelf often and many concepts will live in my active memory. Better yet, it gives me a different perspective with which to return to Heidegger and Husserl, as well as an incentive to read more from Gadamer.

[Nihlah Assegaf · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW. Excellent stuff… this will be a sloppy review because I’m still in the process of consolidating what I gained from this book (and I will continue to be in this process for a while)

The first part was fantastic and right up my alley, focusing on language and how it is a defining feature of humans, how understanding is ontological, and hermeneutics in the context of aesthetics. Through this, I got an introduction to Wittgenstein’s thought; it was interesting to hear about his concept of “language games” and how he eventually affirmed that language cannot necessarily be broken down logically and that it is dependent on its context in social intercourse.
- “The meaning of a word is precisely its use. When we are asked the precise definitions for common words we cannot give them, simply because they have no precise meaning. Ordinary words have "blurred edges." In order to clarify these edges, we do not have recourse to an ideal logic but rather look to the specific context of their use in order to discover the "grammar" actually assigned to them in social intercourse. "Don't think," says Wittgenstein, "but look!””

I love that hermeneutics is being applied not just to texts (which is why this field intrigued me in the first place) but as a function relevant to everyday life, in fact part of our being human…
- "Hermeneutical inquiry is based on the fact that language always leads behind itself and behind the façade of overt verbal expression that it first presents. Linguistic expressions always fall short of what they evoke and communicate. For in speaking there is always implied a meaning that is imposed on the vehicle of the expression, that only functions as a meaning behind the meaning and that in fact could be said to lose its meaning when raised to the level of what is actually expressed."
- "Goethe's statement "Everything is a symbol" is the most comprehensive formulation of the hermeneutical idea. It means that everything points to another thing. This "everything" is not an assertion about each being, indicating what it is, but an assertion as to how it encounters man's understanding. There is nothing that cannot mean something to it. But the statement implies something else as well: nothing comes forth in the one meaning that is simply offered to us."

Also, I used to be against the theory of “The Death of the Author,” and I wrote my IB TOK essay in defense of autobiographical literary criticism… but Gadamer may have convinced me otherwise! ( “The meaning of a text surpasses its author not occasionally, but always. Thus understanding is not a reproductive procedure, but rather always also a productive one.” )

When looking through the Goodreads reviews of this book, there was one from 10 years ago by someone with an English degree (Paul Cockeram), who wrote: “But Gadamer is also a trained philosopher, which means he’s in on a lot of conversations that I just don’t understand. Some chapters dive so deep into the work of specific philosophers and their arguments with one another throughout the development of philosophy from Hegel to Kant to the mid-twentieth century that I was completely lost.” I’m in exactly the same boat. The second part was very difficult for me… the result is a lot of skimming whenever intimidating Husserlian terminology appeared. I surprisingly enjoyed the discussions on Heidegger though, especially since I never knew how much his work centers around language. I also found Heidegger’s view of prejudices—shared by Gadamer—very compelling; it put into words what I pretty much had already grasped:
- “Heidegger shows that every interpretation - even scientific interpretation - is governed by the concrete situation of the interpreter. There is no presuppositionless, "prejudiceless" interpretation, for while the interpreter may free himself from this or that situation, he cannot free himself from his own facticity.”
- “Prejudices are not necessarily unjustified and erroneous, so that they inevitably distort the truth. 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. Prejudices are biases of our openness to the world. They are simply conditions whereby we experience something - whereby what we encounter says something to us.”

[Travis Timmons · Rating 4 out of 5]

Indispensable for my interests in Gadamer and hermeneutics. The most helpful thing about this book is the repetition of Gadamerian themes and issues (e.g. the broadening hermeneutics, the role of tradition in hermeneutics, etc.). My favorite moments were when Gadamer actually did some hermeneutical writing, for example in letting questions guide his dialogue with another author/text.

The only drawbacks are the haphazard-feeling selection principle behind the essays included. This book is a collection, and one intended to deepen our understanding Gadamer (especially after, say, reading Truth and Method); however, too many times I had to distinguish when to skim through the equivalent of "insider baseball"-like talk when Gadamer waded into academic debates around various concepts versus the "pay dirt" of his ideas.

[Selma Slocum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Philosophical Hermeneutics is a book edited and translated by David E. Linge, which was first published in 1976. The book is comprised of two sections. Part I. includes a total of seven essays while Part II. includes a total of six essays - all written by Gadamer at different periods in his life. While the essays in Part I. mainly revolve around Gadamer’s own views, the essays in Part II. focus on Gadamer’s views as regards other hermeneutic philosophers. So, while Part I. offers an overview of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, Part II. offers an overview of the history of hermeneutics, with a special focus on the thought of Heidegger, as understood by Gadamer.

[Jibran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gadamer holds one in every sentence. If you feel reading Aristotle or Nietzsche is like drinking wine where the message slowly gets to you, Gadamer is like shots of absinthe.

[нєνєℓ ¢ανα · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good for hermeneutics and philosophy of language

[Lis · Rating 4 out of 5]

*Disclaimer: these are largely meant to be personal notes, taken as I plod through essays in order to help me remember.

The Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem:
Decent first read for me, because it outlines what seem to me to be some of Gadamer's fundamental problematics while making clear enough statements on the 'hermeneutical experience'. Much of this, however, in the context of just this essay I wouldn't have understood at all. It was only because of the book's very adequate introduction that I grasped much of significance. Still, the essay's final paragraph was lovely in and of itself. The way I read it, thinking about philosophy/friendship and relating to others, it made hermeneutics sound very nice. Here it is in part:

...Yet in spite of (the levelling tendencies of the industrial age) the simultaneous building up of our own world in language still persists whenever we want to say something to each other. The result is the actual relationship of people to each other. Each one is at first a kind of linguistic circle, and these linguistic circles come into contact with each other, merging more and more. Language occurs once again, in vocabulary and grammar as always, and never without the inner infinity of the dialogue that is in progress between every speaker and her partner. That is the fundamental dimension of hermeneutics. Genuine speaking, which has something to say and hence does not give prearranged signals, but rather seeks words through which one reaches the other person, is the universal human task...

On the Scope and Function of Hermeneutical Reflection:
Interesting second read. Described hermeneutic's relation to rhetoric and to the social sciences. Most of it addressed aspects of Gadamer's ongoing debate with Habermas: the essay addressed hermeneutic's relation to an emancipatory thought, and to a transcendental one. The more I read about Habermas, the crazier he seems... but I think that it is interesting and important for me to keep in mind some of his critiques of Gadamer that Gadamer himself just hints at - that his philosophy has the tendency to accept authority (whether this is synonymous with tradition in this essay is not entirely clear, but seems to be the case) uncritically.

Man and Language:

The Nature of Things and the Language of Things:
Beautiful. In this essay, Gadamer considers two apparently common German expressions (translated into English they are awkward but eventually understandable): "it is the nature of things" and "things speak for themselves." Part of what strikes me as beautiful is Gadamer's consideration of these expressions as specific instances of the language that he here and otherwise theorizes, language-as-the-medium-of-human-being. As he says, "common expressions are not simply the dead remains of a linguistic usage that has become figurative. They are at the same time the heritage of a common spirit, and if we only understand them rightly and penetrate their covert richness of meaning, they can make this common spirit perceivable again." Though I'm not sure how much "the arbitration of this tension (in the subtle undertones of both expressions)... distinguishes the matrix of problems common to us all", it certainly was meaningful for me, if anything at least as a lovely way of talking about the ever confounding tension between the subjective and the objective.

Gadamer argues that one ought try to transcend "the dualism of subjectivity and will, on the one hand, and object and being-in-itself, on the other," and talks instead of a "preexistent correspondence." (here and elsewhere, Gadamer holds classical metaphysics in particular high esteem for its transcendence of this dualism "from the outset"... I guess I remain uninterested) He proposes that there ought be only finite possibilities of doing justice to the correspondence of soul and object, soul and being, and finds this possibility of course in language.

Then he says some by now familiar stuff about language, gets into some metaphors of rythym that I had trouble fully appreciating, and veers off into poetry and the religious experience. I'm afraid I'll have to go back and re-read these last few pages someday, but for now I don't think that they hold any more importance in way of serving a conclusion than did the proposal about language as (elucidating of) that preexistent correspondence, which I will try to keep in mind as one of the more interesting short reads on these questions.

Semantics and Hermeneutics:

The Philosophical Foundations of the Twentieth Century:

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gadamer's semantics and hermeneutics is an attempt to analyse words as a part of a larger context. It seems to be related to linguistics. Language for Gadamer is a central concept of human thought. A student of Heidegger, Gadamer takes an etymological approach to philosophy with a focus on the nature of being or existence. He raises the question of the status of interpretation and whether there is a systematic method for doing this. In doing all of this he seems to be confusing understanding with communication. Are meanings merely a matter of communication or do they involve some more fundamental understanding without which communication is impossible?

[Zack Brazina · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are in the pursuit of epiphanies, Gadamer holds one in every sentence. If you feel reading Aristotle or Nietzsche is like drinking wine where the message slowly gets to you, Gadamer is like shots of absinthe. You know it's there and he hands it to you without warning, without foreplay. This is the hardcore side of philosophy. Forget Kant, forget Wittgenstein, read them sure, but only in preparation for Gadamer. Every person, no matter how much of a genius, has something to learn from this.

[Patrick Alix · Rating 5 out of 5]

We tackled this book in my class. I came to appreciate what Gadamer was trying to push with finding out what an author is trying to say to his/her audience. The ideas meeting of minds and horizons finally gave me an understanding to what I've been trying to do with people I've been arguing with. Strongly recommend this book for people who are interested in finding out the truth of anything, on how to do it and what to do with it when the parties come to a conclusion.

[Corbin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of essays was my introduction to Gadamer, and it was a delightful survey of hermeneutic issues and methods, as well as hermeneutics' inheritance from phenomenology (especially Husserl and Heidegger). The essays were very accessible even though the claims robustly challenged common views about language, history, the world, and art found in both Continental and Anglo-American traditions.

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really love this book, but it covers a lot of things in general, not necessarily specifically. Gadamer talks a lot in the beginning about the context of Hermeneutics and the history of the movement and ends the book talking a lot about Heidegger. It is a collection of essays to clarify.

[Rodger Broome · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed Gadamer's historical sketch of phenomenology and its role in he development in hermeneutics as an approach to human science.

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read "The Universality of the Hermeneutic Problem," "On the Nature and Scope of Hermeneutic Reflection," and "Man and Language."

[Oketch Lubanga]

insightful

[Luna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read. Though the translation in French isn't really good. I'd rather read Gadamer in English.

[nunz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read.