Respecting others: The hermeneutic virtue

Continental Philosophy Review

Volumn 33, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 359-379

  Schmidt, Lawrence K ^a  

^a HENDRIX COLLEGE   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33748499096     PISSN: 13872842     EISSN: 15731103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1010002504835     Document Type: Article

References (34)

1. Hans-Georg Gadamer, "Vom Wort zum Begriff" (WB 109). "If we do not learn hermeneutic virtue, i.e. if we do not come to see that we must first just understand the other in order to see whether in the end perhaps something like a solidarity of all humanity is possible in relation to living together and surviving, then we will not be able to accomplish the essential human tasks, the small ones and the large ones." This paper has profited from the presentation and discussion of its ideas during several international colloquia concerning Gadamer's thought held in the Philosophisches Seminar at Heidelberg University, most recently in Vom Wort zum Begriff, 10-12 July 1998. I would also like to thank the Fulbright Commission and Hendrix College for financial support.
2. The following abbreviations will be used in the text. Translations of Gadamer are the author's unless noted: GW- Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Gesammelte Werke (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1985ff.)
3. Bd. 1: Hermeneutik I: Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik, 1986.
4. Bd. 2: Hermeneutik II. Wahrheit und Methode. Ergänzungen, Register, 1986.
5. Bd. 5: Griechische Philosophie I, 1985.
6. Bd. 8: Ästhetik und Poetik I: Kunst als Aussage, 1993.
7. Bd. 10: Hermeneutik im Rückblick, 1995.
8. PE- Hans-Georg Gadamer, Plato 's Dialectical Ethics: Phenomenological Interpreta tions Relating to the Philebus, trans. Robert M. Wallace (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991).
9. TM- Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd revised ed. Trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald Marshall (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1989).
10. SR- Lawrence K. Schmidt ed. The Specter of Relativism: Truth, Dialogue, and Phronesis in Philosophical Hermeneutics (Evanston, IL.: Northwestern University Press, 1995).
11. SZ- Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Niemeyer, (1927) 14th ed. 1977).
12. Being and Time, Translated by Macquarrie and Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962).
13. WB- Hans-Georg Gadamer, "Von Wort zum Begriff: Die Aufgabe der Hermeneutik als Philosophie" in Jean Grondin ed, Gadamer Lesebuch (Tübingen: Mohr 1997), 100-110.
14. Robert Bernasconi, "'You Don't Know What I'm Talking About': Alterity and the Hermeneutic Ideal," in SR 194.
15. John D. Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic Project (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987), 115.
16. John D. Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic Project Ibid, 113.
17. Michelfelder, D. and R. E. Palmer, eds., Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 55.
18. The German text, "Und dennoch: Macht des Guten Willens," appears in Text und Interpretation, ed. Philippe Forget, Munich: W. Fink Verlag, 1984. The translation here is by D. Michelfelder and R. Palmer.
19. Robert M. Wallace, the translator of PE, p. xxii, remarks that "Gadamer's emphasis . . . on the role of 'the other person' and thus of dialogue" for understanding in this text are continued throughout his thinking and continue to be relevant to the contemporary discussion. Robert Sullivan's Political Hermeneutics: The Early Thinking of Hans-Georg Gadamer (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989) contains an analysis of this section of Gadamer's habilitation. However he pays little attention to the role of the other. The other is only seen as an ideal conversation partner in order to develop thinking. He writes, "The brief and playful discussion of the Other's characteristics as a conversation partner is a prelude to discussing the most basic corruption of the Mitwelt, the ideal philosophical community"(p. 99). The necessary critical role of the other is hardly mentioned.
20. Gadamer may be thinking of Heidegger's statement: "In discourse (Rede) Being-with becomes 'explicitly' shared that is to say, it is already, but it is unshared as something that has not been taken hold of and appropriated" (SZ 162).
21. "Sofern er das vorgängige Verständnis der Sache mit einem teilt und diese Bereitschaft zur sachlichen Prüfung besitzt, ist seine sachliche Zustimmung der allein zureichende Maßstab für die Sachangemessenheit des Logos, und nicht das Vorurteil einer herrschenden Meinung."
22. Gadamer quotes Heidegger's passage (SZ 153) to begin his analysis of the structures of hermeneutic experience (GW1, 270-271; TM 266). For a detailed analysis of hermeneutic understanding from the perspective of prejudices see my The Epistemology of Hans-Georg Gadamer. An Analysis of the Legitimization of 'Vorurteile' (Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 1987).
23. For a fuller statement of this thesis see my "When the Text Speaks the Truth: the Preconception of Completion," The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XXV, no. 3, 1978, 395-405.
24. This is a simplification for the present presentation; clearly the other may well speak another language. It is well beyond our scope here to deal with the problem of establishing a language to converse in. However, Gadamer argues that part of the sense of horizon is that it can be expanded to include any other horizon and this is possible due to the liguisticality that is part of human being. See, for example, GW1, 311; TM 306; GW2,143; GW10, 273.
25. Of course we use language for many things beside speaking about something. Gadamer is well aware of this, but is worried here about understanding in a conversation concerning some subject matter. See, for example, GW8,407ff.; WB 107.
26. For the general context of doubt, one must accept not only other people, but also texts, nature, or even the gods as speaking others.
27. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 73.
28. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity ibid. 75.
29. In relation to the poetic word and the work of art, Gadamer says "'es kommt heraus'" ['something comes forth']; see for example GW8, 392. For a discussion emphasizing the speaking of the poetic word see James Risser's Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other (Albany: SUNY Press, 1997)
30. Gadamer's remark in The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer, ed. Lewis Hahn (Chicago: Open Court, 1997), 403f.
31. See Gadamer's remarks in a conversation with Grondin: "Dialogischer Rückblick auf das Gesammelte Werk und dessen Wirkungsgeschichte" in Jean Grondin ed, Gadamer Lesebuch (Tübingen: Mohr 1997), 285.
32. Adi Ophir, "Beyond Good-Evil: A Plea for a Hermeneutic Ethics," The Philosophical Forum 21: 1-2 (Fall-Winter 1989-90), 114.
33. See Gadamers discussion in "Die Unfähigkeit zum Gespräch," (GW2, 207-215).
34. See WB 104 and GW8, 382.