Hermeneutics and philology: "Understanding the matter," "Understanding the text"

Continental Philosophy Review

Volumn 34, Issue 3, 2001, Pages 321-338

  Feher I M ^a,b   Palmer, R E ^c  

^a EÖTVÖS LORÁND UNIVERSITY   (Hungary)

^b MACMURRAY COLLEGE   (United States)

^c NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 52549097287     PISSN: 13872842     EISSN: 15731103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/a:1012202909531     Document Type: Article

References (82)

1. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik, Vol. l of his Gesammelte Werke (Tübingen: Mohr, 1986), 3467 TM 340. Hereafter citation of the Gesammelte Werke will be abbreviated as GW and the publisher and place of publication omitted, since they remain the same as listed above. The year of publication (1985-1995) will be given only in the first citation. English translations, when available, will be cited. The English translation cited above as TM will, in these endnotes,
2. be: Truth and Method, 2nd revised edition, revisions by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Crossroad, 1989).
3. GW 1: 345/TM 339.
4. Gadamer, Hermeneutik II: Wahrheit und Methode: Ergänzung und Register (Tübingen: Mohr, 1986).
5. NAE: Not available in English (to the best of the translator's knowledge, and according to Etsuro Makita, Gadamer-Bibliographie 1922-1994 [Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1994]).
6. "Philosophie und Philologie: Über Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff ' in GW 6, Griechische Philosophie II (1985): 271-277, citation here from p. 277. NAE.
7. GW 6: 272. NAE.
8. Ibid.
9. See, for example, Ernst Tugendhat's review, "The Fusion of Horizons," reprinted in his Philosophische Aufsätze (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1992): 428.
10. See also Richard E. Palmer, Hermeneutics. Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969), 163: ". . . the title of Gadamer's book contains an irony: method is not the way to truth . . .";
11. as well as Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 360: ". . . it would be reasonable to call Gadamer's book a tract against the very idea of method . . ."
12. For evidence of this, see, for example, GW 1: 13, 29, 463, 467ff, and GW2: 37ff, 186ff/ TM7, 23, 459, 463ff, and NAE. For a detailed discussion of the fact that Gadamer's understanding (or, more hermeneutically speaking, pre-understanding) of method is typically modern, or even positivistic, see Joel C. Weinsheimer, Gadamer 's Hermeneutics. A Reading of Truth and Method (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985), 2ff. Weinsheimer rightly makes the point that Gadamer "challenges the dominion of method through a history of the humanistic tradition" (ibid., 2), and we may perhaps add that Gadamer reconstructs the history of the humanistic tradition precisely by tracing the history of certain concepts characteristic of that tradition (Bildung, sensus communis, etc.). In a sense, in virtue of its presence not only in the reconstruction of the humanistic tradition, but in the whole work, Begriffsgeschichte can even be claimed to be Gadamer's "method."
13. "Die Begriffsgeschichte und die Sprache der Philosophie" in Neuere Philosophie II, GW 4 (1987): 78-94, here p. 91/
14. "The History of Concepts and the Language of Philosophy," translated by Jeff Mitscherling and Jakob Amstutz in International Studies in Philosophy 18/3 (1986): 1-16, here ca. 13.
15. Jeff Mitscherling and Jakob Amstutz in International Studies in Philosophy, Ibid., 92/
16. Jeff Mitscherling and Jakob Amstutz in International Studies in Philosophy, English ibid., ca. 14. This understanding of the history of concepts has similarities to the way Heidegger distanced himself in the early twenties from an understanding of phenomenology as merely a propedeutic for science: In the famous report to Natorp of 1922, he stated, "One has not grasped phenomenology in its most central motives if one finds in it . . . only a philosophical pre-science dedicated to the preparing of clear concepts, with the help of which alone some authentic philosophy is then supposed to be set in motion. As if one could clarify basic philosophical concepts descriptively without the central and constantly adjusted basic orientation to the object of the philosophical problematic itself."
17. Heidegger, "Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles: Anzeige der hermeneutischen Situation," edited by H.-U. Lessing for the Dilthey Jahrbuch für Philosophie und Geschichte der Geisteswissenschaften 6 (1989): 247, article 237-268;
18. English translation "Phenomenological Interpretation with Respect to Aristotle," by Michael Baur, Man and World 25 (1992): 355-393; see here 369.
19. GW 1: 5/ TM xxv (emphasis added). Compare GW 2: 113/ NAE, where he says, "All philosophical work with concepts is based on a hermeneutical dimension, which today one designates with the somewhat inexact word, 'history of concepts.' This is not some secondary effort and does not mean that instead of dealing with the matter under discussion one speaks of the means we use for understanding it; rather, it forms the critically necessary element in our use of the concepts themselves" (emphasis added).
20. In somewhat the same way, for Hegel, "the pure self-knowledge in the absolute being of the other" is the "ether" or "the ground and basis for science." When Hegel continues, "The beginning of philosophy has the presupposition or makes the demand, that consciousness find itself in this element," one must also, similarly, in order rightly to bring Gadamer to a later consummation, find in the history of concepts the element of his thinking (G.W.F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes. Werke in zwanzig Bänden. Theorie Werkausgabe. A new edition on the basis of the works published from 1832-1845, newly edited by L. Moldenhauer and K.M. Michel. Vol. 3 [Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970]: 29).
21. Gadamer, GW 2: 492, see also 493f., "Reflections on My Philosophical Journey," in The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer, ed. Lewis E. Hahn (LaSalle, IL: Open Court Press, 1997), p. 16; see also p. 17: "What I taught was above all hermeneutical praxis. Hermeneutics is above all a praxis, the art of understanding and of making intelligible." If Gadamer says, continuing, "What one must exercise above all is the ear, the sensibility for the pre-determinations, pre-conceptions, pre-coinages, that reside in concepts," this confirms what we said above about hearing as a key hermeneutical matter.
22. GW 2:488.
23. "Der aristotelische Protreptikos und die entwicklungsgeschichtliche Betrachtung der aristotelischen Ethik" in Hermes: Zeitschrift für klassische Philologie 63 (1928): 138-164, reprinted in GW 5: 164-186. NAE.
24. Hans-Georg Gadamer: Eine Biographie (Tübingen: Mohr, 1999), 146. NAE.
25. GW 1: 195f, 301/TM 191-192, 296.
26. See GW 1: 169ff/TM 164ff.
27. GW l : 174/ TM 169. Italics in the original.
28. GW 1: 302, see also 314/TM 297; see also 308-309.
29. GW 1: 196/TM 192.
30. Ibid. Emphasis added.
31. GW 1: 302/TM 297.
32. GW 1:299/ TM 294.
33. GW 1: 340/TM 334-335.
34. GW 6: 2767 NAE. See also "Hermeneutik auf der Spur" (1994) in Hermeneutik im Rückblick, GW 10 (1995): 148-174, esp. 173. NAE.
35. GW 6: 2777 NAE. Emphasis added. The expression "Anstrengung des Begriffs" is most plausibly a reference to Hegel. "Worauf es [. . .] bei dem Studium der Wissenschaft ankommt, ist, die Anstrengung des Begriffs auf sich zu nehmen." (G.W.F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes. Werke in zwanzig Bänden. Theorie Werkausgabe, Vol. 3: 56).
36. On the connection between "Strenge" [rigor] and "Anstrengung" [effort], see M. Heidegger, Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie (1919-20), Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 58, ed. H.-H. Gander (Franfurt/Main: Klostermann, 1993): 137: " 'streng': 'angestrengt' - rein hingegeben den echten Lebenssituationen":
37. see also "Nachwort zu »Was ist Metaphysik«," in Wegmarken, Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 9, ed. F.-W. von Herrmann (Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 1976): 308: "Niemals ist das exakte Denken das strengste Denken, wenn anders die Strenge ihr Wesen aus der Art der Anstrengung empfängt [. . .]."
38. Gadamer, "Philosophie und Literatur," in GW8 (1993): 240-257, citation 2567 "Philosophy and Literature,"
39. translated by Anthony J. Steinbock in Man and World 18 (1985): 241-255.
40. See also "Schreiben und Reden," GW 10: 354-3557 NAE, citation from 355.
41. "Zur Phänomenologie von Ritual und Sprache" (1992), GW 8: 400-440, citation on 430. NAE.
42. GW 8: 430/ NAE.
43. See also in "Philosophie und Literatur," GW 8 (1993): 237/ "The presupposition common to all philosophizing is that philosophy as such has not special language appropriate to its own task. The form of the proposition, the logical structure of predication . . . is unavoidable. . . . But this makes the misleading presupposition that the object of philosophy is given and known in the same way as observable things and events in the world. Philosophy moves, however, exclusively in the medium of concepts.
44. "Zur Phänomenologie von Ritual und Sprache," GW 8: 430. NAE.
45. "Philosophie und Literatur," GW 8: 257. English translation listed in note 28 above.
46. "Hermeneutik auf der Spur," GW 10: 173. NAE.
47. "Philosophie und Literatur," GW 8: 256. See note 28.
48. I have discussed the topic of the linguisticality in philosophy and literature as it is presented in Gadamer's hermeneutics in a detailed way in a recent essay. See István M. Fehér, "Kunst, Ästhetik und Literatur in der philosophischen Hermeneutik Hans-Georg Gadamers," in Epoche - Test -Modalität: Diskurs der Moderne in der ungarischen Literaturwissenschaft, edited by E. Kulcsár-Szabó and M. Szegedy-Maszák (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1999): 1-49.
49. [Translator note: A good example of this would be the debate between Heidegger and Emil Staiger over the word "scheint" in the last line of Mörike's poem, "Auf die Lampe." Gadamer finds Heidegger to be in the right on this issue.]
50. The interpretive blindness of the philologist, that is, the assumption that in the text and its wording he has something solid, something unambiguously fixed and no longer requiring interpretation, or which simply cannot be further interpreted, corresponds in the humanities and social sciences to the natural scientist's attitude, who finds in "the given," in the measurable facts of his experience of nature a reality he can grasp with his hands. In fact, there are parallels between the positivistic attitude of the natural scientist and that of the philologists throughout the history and development of these disciplines in the modern era. Gadamer himself has referred to these parallels. He notes that "a close parallel exists between philology and natural science in their earlier self-reflection. This has a double sense. First, the 'naturalness' of the procedures in the natural sciences should also apply to the Biblical heritage, and for this the historical methods are useful. Second, moving in the opposite direction, the 'naturalness' of the art practiced by the philologist in biblical exegesis is taken as an example for deciphering the 'book of nature.' To this extent philology provides a model for methods in the natural sciences." (GW 1: 185/ TM 182). This characterization possibly goes back to Heidegger. For example, in his 1925 lecture series, Heidegger says that the watchword given out in the mid-19th century for the scientific spirit is "we want facts from experience, not speculation and empty concepts." The sciences were concentrated on the sphere of experience and from the traditional philosophy at the time there remained "only an odious and crude materialism," perused in the name of keeping the so-called "scientific worldview." The historical sciences, too, renounced philosophical reflection and dedicated their attention in the spirit of Goethe and Lessing to facts. With impressive speed, research into sources and philological criticism unfolded. Behind this spirit of the time, which one could label positivism in the broad sense, stands a certain interpretation of reality: for it only facts that "can be determined in an experiment" come into view, "things that are countable, weighable, measurable - or in history only those processes and events that are accessible in the sources." (Heidegger, Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs, GA 20, ed. P. Jaeger (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1979), 1. 14,
51. 16/ History of the Concept of Time, translated by Theodore Kisiel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 13ff.
52. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes. Werke in zwanzig Bänden. Theorie Werkausgabe (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1988) Vol. 3: p. 11.
53. Translation used here: Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller, foreword by J.N. Findlay (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 1.
54. A.V. Miller, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit Ibid., p. 13/
55. English A.V. Miller, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit ibid., p. 3.
56. GW 1:2027 TM 199.
57. GW 1:205/TM201.
58. GW 1: 312/TM 307.
59. See Joannes Jacobus Rambachius, Institutiones hermeneuticae sacrae variis observationibus copiossimisque exemplis biblicis illustratae. Ienae: Sumptibus loan. Wilh. Hartungii 1752, pp. 804-822. NAE.
60. Seminar: Philosophische Hermeneutik, edited by H.-G. Gadamer and G. Boehm (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976). NAE.
61. "Einführung," in ibid., pp. 7-40, citation from p. 21. NAE.
62. See Seminar: Philosophische Hermeneutik, ibid., p. 25. NAE.
63. See Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften 14: 618. See also p. 620: "Rambach made a noteworthy effort to link this pietistic theory with the orthodoxy and learnedness of the older hermeneutics, and his system prepared by its closed order that of Jacob Baumgarten." For a further reference to Rambach see also p. 735.
64. GW 2: 463/TM 565. See also GW 1: 186/TM 182, footnote.
65. J. Wach, Das Verstehen: Grundzüge einer Geschichte der hermeneutischen Theorie im 19. Jahrhundert, 3 vols. (Tübingen: Mohr, 1926, 1929, 1933, 2nd photomechanical reprint: Hildesheim: Olms, 1984). For instance, see Vol. l, p. 15: "the most rigorous, systematic, and magnificent presentation of this doctrine of understanding was presented by Rambach in his famous Institutiones hermeneuticae sacrae (1723), an extraordinary book that falls into four large parts."
66. See also Wach l: 69, 92; 2: 75ff, 110, 121, 156, 184. Especially in connection with the application-appropriation, see Wach 2: 19f, 196. In Heidegger's short presentation of the history of hermeneutics, with which he introduced his 1923 lecture on the hermeneutics of facticity (indeed, the first Heidegger course Gadamer attended), Rambach's work is discussed in a relatively extensive way, during which applicatio is mentioned.
67. See Heidegger, Ontologie (Hermeneutik der Faktizität), ed. K. Bröcker-Oltmanns, GA 63(1988): 13/
68. Ontology - The Hermeneutics of Facticity, trans. John van Buren (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), p. 10.
69. GW 2: 4627 TM 564.
70. GW 1:275, 2847 TM 270, 279.
71. GW 1: 346. Trans. TM 341.
72. GW 1: 313/ TM 308. Emphasis added. See also p. 314: "Understanding here is always already application." See also Gadamer's later retrospective remark: "One cannot picture the matter as if the explicating concepts subsequently enter into understanding, as if one goes into a pantry to select explicating concepts and applies them as needed to the thing to be understood. Not only understanding and explication but also application, the understanding of oneself, is part of the one hermeneutic process." At this point of summarizing retrospect there comes an important self-critical remark: "I admit that the accidental concept of application, offering itself historically, is artificial and misleading."
73. Hermeneutik-Ästhetik- Praktische Philosophie: Hans-Georg Gadamer im Gespräch, edited by Carsten Dutt (Heidelberg: Winter, 1993), p. 10,
74. and also see pp. 24-25. Translation of this work, titled Gadamer in Conversation is forthcoming from Yale University Press in 2001.
75. Application is apparently Gadamer's somewhat transformed and moderated variant on the Heideggerian concept of Destruktion. For Gadamer's application presents us with an understanding and explication that is always already related to one's own situation, whereby the accent is in accordance with the circumstances of what is each person's own, what is the today belonging to each case. The question is whether the equating of understanding with an application that is grasped in this way is not already an appropriation of the Other, that is to say, tantamount to failing to recognize his/her claims? This question arises above all against the backdrop of the Gadamer-Derrida debate and was raised from the side of Deconstruction against hermeneutics (see Jean Grondin, "La définition derridienne de la deconstruction. Contribution au rapprochement de l'hermeneutique et la déconstruction," Archives de Philosophie 62/1 [January-March 1999], 5-16, esp. 14-15). The fact that hermeneutical understanding claimed to respect the Other, and was also uniquely able to do so, can scarcely be doubted. Numerous documentations of this can be found not only in the late works but in his masterwork. In a certain sense, it is a characteristic of Gadamer's hermeneutic to have brought to acceptance once again the aspect of being-with, or human solidarity. For a careful and comprehensive discussion of this question one would need to go in depth into the complex connections among Heideggerian Destruktion, Gadamerian application, and Derridian deconstruction in each's relationship to Mitsein.
76. GW 1: 188/ TM 185, see footnote.
77. F.D.E. Schleiermacher, Hermeneutik und Kritik, edited by Manfred Frank (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977), 99
78. / F.D.E. Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics and Criticism, translated by Andrew Bowie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p.n.a.
79. GW 2: 485/ "Reflections . . .," op. cit. (note 13 above), p. 9.
80. GW l: 312/ TM 307.
81. In this regard, see also Jans Robert Jauß, Wege des Verstehens (Munich: Fink, 1994), p. 13: "The connection between sensory and intellectual intuition is preserved in the Latin synonym sapere and the corresponding expression schmackhaft verstehen [tasteful understanding]. An example from poetry: 'For then you would rightly taste and understand [schmecken und verstehen]/what a comfort love is.' (Lohenstein)." NAE.
82. The philological objections made to Gadamer in the Hungarian debate have in any case failed to consider a state of affairs which is itself very much of philological nature namely, the fact of what the wording of Gadamer's text itself looked like in the course of the several editions of his work. A closer investigation of this philological matter could have shown that the wording of the text in question had not remained the same from the first up to the fourth edition, that the wording had undergone some considerable changes precisely in the important footnotes. The fact that certain anomalies may have been left behind should not be altogether dismissed in principle. A comparative analysis shows that in the first edition Rambach's name was followed by a footnote which made reference to a Heidelberg dissertation. This footnote was cancelled from all subsequent editions. The next footnote, which was to be found at the end of the paragraph and was preserved in subsequent editions, in the first edition contained only the Morus quote. As the previous footnote was cancelled, this footnote began by a new sentence: "Rambachs Institutiones . . . sind mir durch die Zusammenfassung von Morus bekannt, dort heißt es. . . ." Thereby the impression could arise that the Morus quote ought to contain a summary (or a citation) of Rambach - while this impression could, on the basis of the first edition, not arise. If this philological state of affairs had been taken into consideration the assumption could not have been formulated according to which the Morus quote had the task of confirming or proving the claim made with regard to Rambach.