Dialectic and dialogue in the hermeneutics of Paul Ricœur and H.G. Gadamer

Continental Philosophy Review

Volumn 39, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 313-345

  Gonzalez, Francisco J ^a  

^a SKIDMORE COLLEGE   (United States)

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EID: 33846354861     PISSN: 13872842     EISSN: 15731103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s11007-006-9031-4     Document Type: Article

References (43)

1. Grondin describes "das Gespräch zwischen Gadamer und Ricœur" as "schwierig, ja inexistent" (Vom Heidegger zu Gadamer: Unterwegs zur Hermeneutik [Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2001], 139).
2. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1986. Many of the essays in this collection have been translated in Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, ed. and trans. John B. Thompson (Cambridge University Press, 1981). Where possible I will use the translations from this edition, citing the page numbers along with those of the French edition. Where translations are my own, this will be indicated.
3. Soi-même comme un autre (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1990), 28. What is at issue in this text is of course a hermeneutics of the self; what demands that the science of the self be a hermeneutics is precisely the fact that our access to the self is always indirect and fragmentary (33), that the self is never directly present in such a way as to offer a solid and certain foundation for knowledge. As John van den Hengel has observed in commenting on this text, "The self is only available in mediations. That is why the appropriation of the self demands the effort of working through the analytical explanations of the self (86); "The ontology of the self has explanation as its first dialectical opposite" ("Can there be a Science of Action?" in Ricœur as Another: The Ethics of Subjectivity, eds. Richard A Cohen and James L. Marsh [Albany: SUNY Press, 2002], 87).
4. "Das Entscheidende ist nicht, aus dem Zirkel heraus-, sondern in ihn nach der rechten Weise hineinzukommen.... Der Zirkel darf nicht zu einem vitiosum und sei es auch nur zu einem geduldeten herabgezogen werden. In ihm verbirgt sich eine positive Möglichkeit ursprünglichsten Erkennens, die freilich in echter Weise nur dann ergriffen ist, wenn die Auslegung verstanden hat, daß ihre erste, ständige und letzte Aufgabe bleibt, sich jeweils Vorhabe, Vorsicht und Vorgriff nicht durch Einfälle und Volksbegriffe vorgeben zu lassen, sondern in deren Ausarbeitung aus den Sachen selbst her das wissenschaftliche Thema zu sichern" (Sein und Zeit, 15th ed. [Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1984], 153).
5. As van den Hengel nicely states the point, "For Ricœur, Heidegger's direct ontology, that is, an ontology without an epistemological mediation, is not acceptable. Ricœur's hermeneuetics of the self is less afraid than is Heidegger of the possible alienating influence of explanatory procedures in ontology" (73).
6. For an argument to this effect, see my "Heidegger's 1933 Misappropriation of Plato's Republic," [Problêmata]: quaderni di filosofia 3 (2003): 39-80.
7. For a critique of the interpretation of the descent as a "deduction" and the defense of an interpretation like the one that Ricœur appears to have in mind, i.e., the descent as a movement from understanding to explanation, see my Dialectic and Dialogue: Plato's Practice of Philosophical Inquiry (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1988), ch. 8.
8. In his discussion of this passage in the recent La mémoire, l'histoire, l'oubli (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2000), 175-180, Ricœur appears more aware than before, in part thanks to Derrida, of the ambiguity of the critique of writing in the Phaedrus.
9. Appealing to the model of the written text, Ricœur insists that "la distanciation" is not some sort of "déchéance ontologique," is not the opposite of interpretation, but its condition (404).
10. This is why Ricœur on p. 406 claims that the fundamental category is not "writing" but "work" (l'œuvre), discourse that is produced. Similarly, on p. 114 he distinguishes between texte and écriture, offering this explanation among others: "il m'a semblé que l'objectivation du langage dans les œuvres de discours constitue la condition la plus proche de l'inscription du discours dans l'écriture; la littérature est constituée d'œuvres écrites, donc d'abord d'œuvres" (114-115). Thus the crucial model for Ricœur is the objectification of language in a work, where such objectification precedes writing. Homer's Iliad was a work and a text even before it was written down, if indeed it was composed before being written. But even if it was composed and written at the same time, it is not writing per se that objectified language as a work, but rather the objectification of language as a work is what made it transcribable in writing.
11. Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik, Gesammelte Werke 1 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1990), 374; hereafter GW1. Unless otherwise indicated, translations of passages from this text will be taken from Truth and Method, second revised ed., trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1989), with references to both the original and the translation provided.
12. Wahrheit und Methode: Ergänzungen, Register, Gesammelte Werke 2 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1993), 6-7; hereafter GW2. Translations are my own.
13. See also GW1, 383.
14. And Ricœur in turn recognizes his agreement here with Gadamer. In an essay entitled "Discours et communication," he draws attention to the "curious paradox" that "c'est la fixation, c'est-à-dire le recueil dans des empreintes matérielles, qui assure ce que Gadamer appelle la spiritualité du discours affranchi du corps du parleur" (in L'Herne Ricœur [Paris: Éditions de l'Herne, 2004], 60).
15. "L'hermémeutique philosophique ne connaît donc pas de principe plus élevé que celui du dialogue" (L'universalité de l'herméneutique [Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1993], 194).
16. Elsewhere Ricœur does find to some extent the dialectic of participation and distance in the title Wahrheit [participation] und Methode [distance] (113; see also 180), as well as in the notion of Horizonverschmelzung.
17. On the contrast between Heidegger and Gadamer one should consult Taminiaux's helpful and perceptive discussion in Sillages Phénoménologiques [Bruxelles: Editions OUSIA, 2002], 155-202.
18. See also the following two articles by Robert J. Dostal: "Gadamer's Relation to Heidegger and Phenomenology," in The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer, ed. Robert J. Dostal (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 247-266;
19. "The Experience of Truth for Gadamer and Heidegger: Taking Time and Sudden Lightening," in Brice Wachterhauser, ed., Hermeneutics and Truth (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1994), 47-67, where one finds the argument that "Gadamer's hermeneutics is conversational and dialectical in a way that Heidegger's early hermeneutic phenomenology, as well as later thought, is not" (58);
20. and Brice R. Wachterhauser's excellent account of the difference between Gadamer and Heidegger on the question of dialogue: Beyond Being: Gadamer's Post-Platonic Hermeneutical Ontology (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1999), 181-183.
21. The need for such a "descent" is clearly recognized by Gadamer in the following passage: "Wessen es für den Menschen bedarf, ist nicht allein das unbeirrte Stellen der letzten Fragen, sondern ebenso der Sinn für das Tunliche, das Mögliche, das Richtige hier und jetzt" (GW 2, 448). Grondin rightly sees here an implicit critique of Heidegger (Vom Heidegger zu Gadamer, 9).
22. A point made many times by Heidegger, but expressed with wonderful succinctness in the course Grundfragen der Philosophie (WS1937-8): "Das Gewöhnliche des nunmehr Gewohnten wird Herr über das stets Ungewöhnliche des Anfangs" (Gesamtausgabe 45, 2d ed. [Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1992], 40). Heidegger therefore argues here that the only genuine relation to the Anfang is revolution (37).
23. "L'herméneutique ne vise pas l'objectivation, mais l'écoute mutuelle, savoir prêter l'oreille, par example, à quelqu'un qui sait raconter quelque chose" (vi-vii).
24. "Im Gespräch, das wir immerfort mit und um uns führen, lernen wir, Abstand von unseren Meinungen zu gewinnen, und bleiben dennoch bei den Fragen, die uns als Selbstgespräch angehen" (130).
25. H. G. Gadamer and R. Kosellek, Hermeneutik und Historik (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Verlag, 1987), 30; my trans.
26. "Of course, Gadamer recognizes that there is a difference between blinding prejudices and enabling prejudices, but this is a distinction that emerges only through our dialogical encounters, and not by monological self-reflection" (Richard J. Bernstein, "Hermeneutics, Critical Theory and Deconstruction," in The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer, 272.
27. Speaking of experiences such as the experience of art in which "es überhaupt nicht um Methode und Wissenschaft geht," Gadamer writes: "Die hermeneutische Erfahrung ist in ihnen allen in gleicher Weise wirksam, und insofern ist sie nicht selbst Gegenstand methodischer Verfremdung, sondern liegt dieser voraus, indem sie der Wissenschaft ihre Fragen aufgibt und dadurch erst den Einsatz ihrer Methoden ermöglicht" (GW2, 238).
28. Gadamer at one point argues, in response to his critics, that hermeneutical experience "läßt sich nicht so weit unter das idealistische Schema der Selbsterkenntnis im Anderssein bringen, daß Sinn je voll erfaßt und tradiert würde. Solch idealistischer Begriff von Sinn-Verstehen beirrt meines Erachtens nicht nur Apel, sondern die meisten meiner Kritiker. Daß eine derart auf Idealismus reduzierte philosophische Hermeneutik der kritischen Ergänzung bedürfte, würde auch ich zugeben ..." (GW2, 264). Could Ricœur be included among the critics being criticized here?
29. Robert R. Sullivan sees in this view the reason for what privileging there is in the early Gadamer of spoken over written discourse: "Philosophy in a writing culture will tend to privilege the answer rather than the question. ... Philosophy in a speaking culture, in contrast, privileges the question rather than the answer" (Political Hermeneutics: The Early Thinking of Hans-Georg Gadamer [University Park: Penn State University Press, 1980], 59).
30. This conviction is apparently rooted in Ricœur's argument in an earlier essay that affirmation can be seen to precede negation once we move from a conception of being as static form to a conception of being as act and power: "Négativité et Affirmation Originaire," in Aspects de la Dialectique (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1956), 101-124. But even if affirmation has this ontological priority, our experience of being can still be fundamentally negative.
31. This is also something on which Derrida has insisted against Ricœur. In a dialogue between them I attended at La Maison de L'Amerique Latine, in Paris, Dec. 4, 2002, Derrida, to Ricœur's question of what he meant by "penser," responded: "1'experience irrecusable de l'autre." When then asked what he meant by "experience," Derrida responded, "blessure, souffrance" because "l'autre c'est quelqu'un qui dérange."
32. It is very much in line with this concept of experience that Gadamer at one point suggests that we "am meisten 'verstehen'" when "wir Vorurteile durchschauen oder Vorwände entlarven, die die Wircklichkeit verstellen" (GW2, 243).
33. See Grondin's response to the same criticism of Gadamer as made by Habermas: L'universalité de l'herméneutique, 208-9. Gadamer himself asserts, in a 1967 essay entitled "Rhetorik, Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik," that '"Wahrheit und Methode' hat den Gegensatz, den der Titel impliziert, nie als einen ausschließenden gemeint" (GW2, 238).
34. The contrast is nicely expressed in the following passage: "Vollendete Erfahrung ist nicht Vollendung des Wissens, sondern vollendete Offenheit für neue Erfahrung. Das ist die Wahrheit, welche die hermeneutische Reflexion gegen den Begriff des absoluten Wissens geltend macht" (GW2, 271).
35. One should note in this context the very different attitudes towards "analytical philosophy" exhibited by Ricœur and Gadamer. The recourse to analysis which Ricœur regards as a detour essential to hermeneutics invites a dialogue with analytical philosophy, so that in Soi-même comme un autre Ricœur invites the reader to participate in "une confrontation constructive entre philosophie analytique et herméneutique" (29) and throughout the book he draws extensively on the work of analytical philosophers while at the same time noting the limitations of their approach. The same is evident in "Discours et communication," where he remarks on "la convergence entre la philosophie analytique et la phenomenology" (65). Gadamer's hermeneutics, in contrast, appears much more opposed to the method and results of analytical philosophy; the "confrontation" is for him, in other words, much more negative than constructive. Just one example, though a revealing one, is Gadamer's "dialogue" with an analytical interpreter of Plato, Nicholas P. White, in which he rejects the very approach of White, accusing him of subjecting Plato's texts to "epistemological alienation" (259) and of imposing on Plato a modern conception of science (for which the paradigm is mathematical natural science, 265) and a modern separation of science from the one who 'has' it (263), with the result of creating pseudo-problems that Plato would not have recognized as problems ("Reply to Nicholas P. White," in Platonic Writings, Platonic Readings, ed. Charles L. Griswold [University Park: Penn State Press, 2002], 258-266). When Gadamer observes here that "I really do not feel very much at home with the Anglo-Saxon manner of thinking" (264), this seems an understatement. Ricœur in contrast seems quite at home with this manner of thinking.
36. See also in this context Gadamer's remarks on the essential openness of our wordview (trans. 447-448).
37. See Gadamer's insistence that it is in the hermeneutical praxis, and only in this praxis, that the essential critical reflection, the essential distance from our presuppositions, occurs: "Indem es [the hermeneutical universe] sich in seiner ganzen Spielweite ins Spiel bringt, zwingt es auch den Verstehenden, seine Vorurteile aufs Spiel zu setzen. Das alles sind Reflexionsgewinne, die aus Praxis und allein aus Praxis zuwachsen" (GW2, 273). It is therefore precisely this practice that undermines ideology: "Hier vermag hermeneutische Reflexion im Gegenteil 'praktisch' zu werden: sie macht jede Ideologie verdächtig, indem sie Vorurteile bewußt macht" (GW2, 261).
38. This is a difference emphasized by Gary E. Aylesworth in a helpful and rare attempt to articulate the differences between the hermeneutics of Ricœur and Gadamer: "This distanciation of meaning from event is precisely what Gadamer denies" (69); "On Gadamer's model, there is no distanciation of meaning from event. Rather, meaning itself is temporal and processive" (73); "For [Ricœur], ideality pertains to an atemporal objectification of meaning that is accomplished when discourse is fixed in writing. Following Hölderlin, Gadamer characterizes ideality as an event . . ." ("Dialogue, Text, Narrative: Confronting Gadamer and Ricœur," in Gadamer and Hermeneutics, ed. Hugh J. Silverman [New York: Routledge, 1991], 75).
39. The following assertion Gadamer makes against his critics, and Habermas in particular, could presumably, therefore, be directed against Ricœur: "Meine These ist nun, und ich meine, daß sie die notwendige Folge der Anerkennung unserer wirkungsgeschichtlichen Bedingtheit und Endlichkeit ist, daß die Hermeneutik uns lehrt, den Gegensatz zwischen fortlebender, 'naturwüchsiger' Tradition und reflektierter Aneignung derselben als dogmatisch zu durchschauen. Dahinter steckt ein dogmatischer Objektivismus, der auch noch den Begriff der Reflexion deformiert" (GW2, 240).
40. Though the present paper attempts to show that there are resources for critique in Gadamer's hermeneutics not recognized by Ricœur, this still leaves open the possibility of making the case that if Gadamer does not fully clarify and exploit these resources, this is because he makes too stark an opposition between the logic of question and answer and the logic of the proposition or statement. This is essentially the argument that has been made by R. Nicholas Davey ("A Response to P. Christopher Smith," in Gadamer and Hermeneutics, 1991], 50-59) who argues that "the methodological polarity which Gadamer insists upon between conversational language and prepositional statement appears unsustainable" (55).
41. Towards the very end of Wahrheit und Methode, Gadamer attempts to distance his hermeneutics from the dialectic of both Plato and Hegel (GW1, 469ff). That he should criticize Hegel for subordinating language to the assertion (Aussage) is understandable, but when he without explanation throws Plato into this criticism one must be puzzled (472); has Gadamer forgotten his debt to Plato's "logic of question and answer"? Gadamer's Auseinandersetzung with Plato here appears to go back to his interpretation and critique of the Cratylus. Plato's intention in the Cratylus is for Gadamer "ganz klar": to show that in language there is no "sachliche Wahrheit" and that beings must be known purely from themselves and without words (411). In this case Plato completely fails to see what Gadamer is at pains to demonstrate in this part of Wahrheit und Methode, i.e., the close and indissoluble relation between being and language expressed in Gadamer's famous claim: "Sein, das verstanden werden kann, ist Sprache" (478). Thus Gadamer's critique of Plato's dialectic appears to be that it "sich von der Macht der Sprache ganz zu befreien beansprucht" (469). Grondin follows Gadamer in this critique (see Hermeneutische Wahrheit? Zum Wahrheitsbegriff Hans-Georg Gadamer [Weinheim: Beltz Athenäum Verlag, 1994], 21-22),
42. as does P. Christopher Smith, "Plato as Impulse and Obstacle in Gadamer's Development of a Hermeneutical Theory," in Gadamer and Hermeneutics, 23-41.
43. However, the interpretation of the Cratylus which Gadamer takes to be "ganz klar" is one I challenge in Dialectic and Dialogue, ch. 3. My reading shows to be mistaken Gadamer's view that Plato's account of language is stuck in the metaphysical model of original and image (412): it is precisely one of the dialogues' aims to make clear the deficiency of this model. In short, Gadamer is much closer to Plato than he himself recognizes. For a similar view, see Günter Figal's argument that "Gadamer's conception of the philosophy of language stands much closer to the philosophy of language of the Cratylus than his critique might lead us to think" ("The Doing of the Thing Itself: Gadamer's Hermeneutic Ontology of Language," in The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer, ed. Robert J. Dostal [Cambridge University Press, 2002], 117).