Friendship, otherness, and Gadamer's politics of solidarity

Political Theory

Volumn 34, Issue 5, 2006, Pages 569-593

  Walhof, Darren R ^a  

^a GRAND VALLEY STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Arendt; Friendship; Gadamer; Political theory; Recognition; Rorty; Solidarity

Indexed keywords

EID: 33748498223     PISSN: 00905917     EISSN: 15527476     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0090591706290515     Document Type: Review

References (97)

1. Richard Bernstein, "What Is the Difference That Makes a Difference? Gadamer, Habermas, and Rorty," PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 2 (1982). 335-335.
2. For the political dimension of Gadamer's early writings on Plato, see Robert Sullivan, Political Hermeneutics: The Early Thinking of Hans-Georg Gadamer ( University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989 ).
3. Hans-Georg Gadamer, "Interview: The 1920s, 1930s, and the Present" (1986), in On Education, Poetry and History, ed. Dieter Misgeld and Graeme Nicholson (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992). 150-150.
4. Gadamer, "Interview," 150.
5. Jürgen Habermas, On the Logic of the Social Sciences (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988). 170-170.
6. Jürgen Habermas, "On Hermeneutics' Claim to Universality" (1970), in The Hermeneutics Reader, ed. Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (New York: Continuum, 1985). 302-302.
7. Habermas, "On Hermeneutics' Claim," 302-303.
8. Habermas, On the Logic, 170-170.
9. Jean Grondin, Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. Joel Weinsheimer (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994). 132-133.
10. Bernstein, "What Is the Difference," 336-336.
11. There are exceptions to this, Bernstein among them. See Richard J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983).
12. Although James Risser is less focused on politics per se, he, too, has probed Gadamer's later works, like Bernstein helping to complicate the original, conservative image of his thought. See James Risser, Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other: Re-reading Gadamer's Hermeneutics ( Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997 ).
13. John D. Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic Project (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987). 5-6, 111-111.
14. See also Jacques Derrida, "Three Questions to Hans-Georg Gadamer," in Dialogue & Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter, ed. D. P. Michelfelder and R. E. Palmer (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989). 53-53.
15. Although Caputo still regards Gadamer as too metaphysical, he has recently acknowledged that he perhaps overstated the case originally: "Gadamer and Derrida are closer to each other than they themselves realized in 1981, or than I realized"; see John D. Caputo, "Good Will and the Hermeneutics of Friendship: Gadamer and Derrida," Philosophy & Social Criticism 28, no. 5 (2002). 516-516.
16. Hans-Georg Gadamer, "The Limitations of the Expert" (1967). in Misgeld and Nicholson, On Education, 192-192.
17. Gadamer, "Limitations of the Expert," 192-192.
18. Hans-Georg Gadamer, "The Idea of the University" (1986). in Misgeld and Nicholson, On Education, 59-59.
19. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Gadamer in Conversation, ed. and trans. Richard E. Palmer (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001). 80-80.
20. Hans-Georg Gadamer, "Freundschaft und Solidarität" (1999), in his Hermeneutische Entwürf: Vorträge und Aufsätze (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Sieveck, 2000), 57. Selections from this piece are translated by Chris Blauwkamp and David Vessey, whose translation of the essay will be published in Philosophy and Social Criticism. I am grateful to David for providing a manuscript version while I was working on this article.
21. Gadamer, Gadamer in Conversation, 80-80.
22. See Brice Wachterhauser, Beyond Being: Gadamer's Post-Platonic Hermeneutical Ontology (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1999). 42-47.
23. Gadamer, Gadamer in Conversation, 80-80.
24. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 189-191.
25. Rorty, Contingency, 191-191.
26. Rorty, Contingency, 192-192.
27. Richard Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 30-30.
28. Rorty, Contingency, 192-192.
29. Rorty, Contingency, 196-196.
30. Hans-Georg Gadamer, "What Is Practice? The Conditions of Social Reason" (1976), in Reason in the Age of Science, trans. Frederick G. Lawrence (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981). 87-87.
31. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd rev. ed., ed. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1995). 20-22.
32. Hans-Georg Gadamer, "Praise of Theory" (1980), in Praise of Theory: Speeches and Essays, trans. Chris Dawson (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998). 28ff - 28ff. This is also a prominent theme, of course, in Truth and Method.
33. Hans-Georg Gadamer, "Friendship and Self-Knowledge: Reflections on the Role of Friendship in Greek Ethics" (1985), in his Hermeneutics, Religion, and Ethics, trans. Joel Weinsheimer (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999). As Gadamer notes, this essay had its origins in his inaugural lecture in Marburg in 1929. He returns to the subject of friendship many years later because he realized that his original address insufficiently addressed how friendship cannot be reduced to subjectivity and functions as a critique of it (131).
34. Gadamer, "Freundschaft und Solidarität." As with many of Gadamer's essays, there is a fair amount of overlap between this one and "Friendship and Self-Knowledge.
35. Hans-Georg Gadamer, "Citizens of Two Worlds" (1983). in Misgeld and Nicholson, On Education, 219-219.
36. Hans-Georg Gadamer, "The Ethics of Value and Practical Philosophy" (1982). in Weinsheimer, Hermeneutics, 117-117.
37. Gadamer, "The Ethics of Value," 117-117.
38. Gadamer, "Friendship and Self-Knowledge," 131-131.
39. Gadamer, "The Ethics of Value," 117-117.
40. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Martin Ostwald (New York: Macmillan/Library of Liberal Arts, 1962). 255ff - 255ff. (1166b30ff.).
41. As David Vessey points out, however, Gadamer's general reading of Aristotle on friendship tends to be selective and sometimes at odds with dominant readings; see David Vessey, "Gadamer's Theory of Friendship as an Alternative to Intersubjectivity," Philosophy Today (forthcoming). My concern here is Gadamer's own account of friendship, not his reading of Aristotle per se.
42. Gadamer, "Friendship and Self-Knowledge," 134-134.
43. Gadamer, "Freundschaft und Solidarität," 57.
44. Gadamer, "Friendship and Self-Knowledge," 134-134.
45. Gadamer, "Freundschaft und Solidarität," 58, 60.
46. Gadamer, "Freundschaft und Solidarität," 59.
47. Gadamer, "Freundschaft und Solidarität," 61.
48. Gadamer, "Friendship and Self-Knowledge," 134-134.
49. Gadamer, "Friendship and Self-Knowledge," 139-139.
50. Gadamer, "Friendship and Self-Knowledge," 134-134.
51. Gadamer, "Freundschaft und Solidarität," 62.
52. Gadamer, "Friendship and Self-Knowledge," 137-137 -38.
53. Gadamer, "Freundschaft und Solidarität," 60.
54. See also Gadamer, "Friendship and Self-Knowledge," 139-139.
55. Gadamer, "Friendship and Self-Knowledge," 136-136.
56. Robert Dostal, "Friendship and Politics: Heidegger's Failing," Political Theory 20, no. 3 (1992). 410-410.
57. Derrida, "Three Questions," 53-53.
58. See also, among others, Josef Simon, "Good Will to Understand the Will to Power," in Michelfelder and Palmer, Dialogue & Deconstruction, 162-175;
59. and John D. Caputo, "Gadamer's Closet Essentialism," in Michelfelder and Palmer, Dialogue & Deconstruction, 258-264.
60. Robert Bernasconi raises this problem in a more nuanced fashion, alleging that Gadamer's theory of understanding tends to reduce alterity, but that his theory does not fully capture the hermeneutic experience itself, in which we sometimes experience the other as a radical challenge. In other words, Bernasconi defends Gadamer's broadly hermeneutical approach while criticizing some of the particulars of his account of understanding; see Robert Bernasconi "'You Don't Know What I'm Talking About': Alterity and the Hermeneutic Ideal," in The Specter of Relativism, ed. Lawrence K. Schmidt (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1995). 178-194.
61. Lawrence Schmidt makes a compelling case that Gadamer's concern for the other is not merely a recent phenomenon but can be found in his earlier writings as well; Lawrence Schmidt, "Respecting Others: The Hermeneutic Virtue," Continental Philosophy Review 33, no. 3 (2000). 359-379. Risser's book, Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other, examines the full range of Gadamer's writings, and is the most extensive and compelling defense of the importance of the other in Gadamer's account of understanding. My discussion of understanding and the other depends heavily on the work of Schmidt and especially Risser.
62. For a recent example, see Marie Fleming, "Gadamer's Conversation: Does the Other Have a Say?" in Feminist Interpretations of Gadamer, ed. Lorraine Code (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003). Fleming looks primarily at Truth and Method and the Gadamer-Derrida exchange. Unfortunately, she does not take up the work of Schmidt, Risser, or Bernasconi.
63. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 462-462.
64. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 378-378.
65. I have examined the productive nature of understanding at greater length in Darren R. Walhof, "Bringing the Deliberative Back In: Gadamer on Conversation and Understanding," Contemporary Political Theory 4, no. 2 (May 2005). 154-174.
66. Hans-Georg Gadamer, "The Diversity of Europe" (1985). in Misgeld and Nicholson, On Education, 233-233.
67. Gerald Bruns nicely casts this experience in terms of failure. He claims that for Gadamer understanding is not the product of interpretation, but "the product of the failure of interpretation to hold its ground" ; Gerald Bruns, Hermeneutics Ancient and Modern (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992). 205-205.
68. Hans-Georg Gadamer, "Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity, Subject and Person" (1975), trans. Peter Adamson and David Vessey, Continental Philosophy Review 33 (2000). 285-285.
69. Gadamer, "Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity," 284-284.
70. Gadamer, "Interview," 152-152.
71. Risser, Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other, 16-17.
72. Gadamer, "Friendship and Self-Knowledge," 139-139.
73. Gadamer, "Freundschaft und Solidarität," 58.
74. Sibyl A. Schwarzenbach, "On Civic Friendship," Ethics 107 (1996). 97-128.
75. Jason A. Scorza, "Liberal Citizenship and Civic Friendship," Political Theory 32, no. 1 (2004). 85-108.
76. For a different approach, see David Kahane, "Symposium: Diversity and Civic Solidarity," Journal of Political Philosophy 7, no. 3 (1999). 267-286. Kahane proposes what he calls a "relationship-centered" account of friendship, in which the bond between friends is constructed through "the process of telling and retelling the friendship" (279). Similarly, a bond between citizens "will derive primarily from their valuing the civic relationship itself" (284-85).
77. Gadamer, "Citizens of Two Worlds," 219-219.
78. Gadamer, "Freundschaft und Solidarität," 57.
79. See Gadamer, "The Ethics of Value," 117-117.
80. Gadamer, Gadamer in Conversation, 80-80.
81. According to polls conducted by John Green of the Ray C. Bliss Institute at Akron University, support for strict environmental restrictions among evangelicals has jumped from 45 percent in 2000 to 52 percent in 2004. Just over a year ago, the National Association for Evangelicals issued a statement that for the first time declared that "government has an obligation to protect its citizens from the effects of environmental degradation"; see "The Greening of Evangelicals," Washington Post, February 6, 2005, A01 - A01.
82. Gadamer's example of the solidarity in the face of bombing during the war also reflects this realization of a shared life together in the face of need; Gadamer, "Freundschaft und Solidarität," 63.
83. This account, then, supports Bernstein's relatively early recognition that there is a "latent radical strain" in Gadamer's thought that he himself failed to realize; Bernstein, "What Is the Difference," 336.
84. Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism and "The Politics of Recognition" (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992).
85. Nancy Fraser, Justice Interruptus (New York: Routledge, 1997).
86. and Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, trans. Joel Anderson (Cambridge: Polity, 1995).
87. The literature on recognition is large and growing, and of course there are important differences among these works that are beyond the scope of this article. For a helpful overview of some of this literature, see the first chapter of Patchen Markell's book, Bound by Recognition ( Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003 ).
88. Markell argues for what he calls "acknowledgement" rather than recognition, in part because he finds the latter concept too static, with the demand of recognition based on who a group already is - on its identity as a fait accompli. Relying on Arendt, he argues that this neglects "our basic condition of intersubjective vulnerability" and belies the complex ways that identities are constructed and reconstructed through politics; Markell, Bound by Recognition, 14-14. I would agree, although my concern here is with how identity aids or hinders the emergence of solidarities, whereas his concern is primarily with the construction of these identities themselves.
89. Richard J. Bernstein, "The Varieties of Pluralism," American Journal of Education 95, no. 4 (August 1987). 518-518.
90. In his earlier book, Bernstein discusses the similarities and differences between Arendt and Gadamer at length on a range of issues, including freedom, authority, and their interpretations of Aristotle and Kant; see Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 207-220.
91. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958). 179-180.
92. Arendt, Human Condition, 181-188;
93. and Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Penguin, 1963). 106-108.
94. See Norma Moruzzi, Speaking through the Mask: Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Social Identity ( Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001 ).
95. I have discussed the nature of this openness at more length in Walhof, "Bringing the Deliberative Back In," 161-64.
96. Gadamer, "Interview," 152-152.
97. Hans-Georg Gadamer, "The Diversity of Europe: Inheritance and Future" (1985). in Misgeld and Nicholson, On Education, 233-233.