Beyond the "fusion of horizons": Gadamer's notion of understanding as "play"

Philosophy Today

Volumn 53, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 359-364

  Vilhauer, Monica ^a  

^a ROANOKE COLLEGE   (United States)

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EID: 77649205141     PISSN: 00318256     EISSN: 00318256     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/philtoday20095343     Document Type: Review

References (12)

1. See Emilio Betti, "Hermeneutics as the General Methodology of the Geisteswissenschaften," in Contemporary Hermeneutics, ed. Josef Bleicher (London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), 51-94
2. and E. D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967). These early critics of Gadamer voice the similar worry that the "fusion of horizons" that occurs in understanding, as Gadamer sees it, inevitably comes down to our own projection of meaning onto that of the other, the past meaning of the text, or tradition. In this case our interpretation becomes too subjective, and lacking in objectivity.1
3. See Jürgen Habermas, "Review of Truth and Method," in The Hermeneutic Tradition, ed. Gayle L. Ormiston and Alan D. Schrift (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990), 213-44. Habermas' worry about understanding as a fusion of horizons is that it involves our submission to the meaning of the other or past tradition, and allows the oppressive power of tradition to be perpetuated without resistance and critique
4. See Robert Bernasconi, "'You Don't Know What I'm Talking About': Alterity and the Hermeneutic Ideal," in The Specter of Relativism: Truth, Dialogue, and Phronesis in Philosophical Hermeneutics, ed. Lawrence Schmidt (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1995), 178-94. Bernasconi's claim is that understanding for Gadamer is a force that always attempts to assimilate otherness, difference, or alterity, in the quest for the "agreement" inherent in a fusion of horizons
5. See John Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), where he claims that Gadamer's hermeneutics attempts to smooth over (and thus ignore) all the ruptures, gaps, breaks in experience in pursuit of "metaphysical comfort." It tries to resolve all questions and discontinuities, rather than face the difficulties of recognizing those that cannot be answered or reconciled into some harmonious whole
6. For instance, one of the most influential introductions to hermeneutics - Richard Palmer's Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969) - which has been credited for bringing Gadamer to the consciousness of the English speaking world, discusses the notion of play or game only in the context of art and Gadamer's critique of aesthetic consciousness (171-76). This is really the model for most commentaries on the concept. To be fair, Palmer does, in one sentence, allude to play's larger significance when he suggests that with the notion of the game, "Gadamer has found a model . . . which can serve as a basis for substantiating the dialectical and ontological character of his own hermeneutics" (174). How exactly this is the case still needs to be developed
7. This is, for example, how Georgia Warnke characterizes play in her book Gadamer: Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), 48
8. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. 2nd. revised edition (New York: Continuum, 2000), 101-10. Hereafter cited in text as TM
9. In his 1977 article "The Relevance of the Beautiful," in The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, ed. Robert Bernasconi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), Gadamer even says that "the specifically human quality in our play is the self-discipline and order that we impose on our movements when playing, as if particular purposes were involved - just like a child, for example, who counts how often he can bounce the ball on the ground before losing control of it. . . . In this fashion we actually intend something with effort, ambition, and profound commitment" (23)
10. It is true that Gadamer locates "play" in the backand-forth movement that occurs in-between the players, and not in the intentional consciousness of any one of them. And yet, such a genuine movement cannot occur unless the players actively comport themselves in such a way that they become fully involved or immersed in the game. Drew Hyland, in his book The Question of Play (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984), argues that Gadamer denies the intentional character of play, and that for him "play simply 'happens' to the player independently of his or her intentions" (88) and further that "the attitude of the player has nothing to do with whether or not there is play" (89). I think this depiction misses a crucial aspect of play. Though the players' intentions and attitudes are not the locale of play, no play can take place without (what we might call) seriously playful attitudes and intentions. The players' shared comportment toward each other and toward the game is a crucial condition for the possibility of any genuine play at all. Though it cannot be fully developed here, I would venture to say that Hyland's own articulation of play as involving the "stance of responsive openness" actually shares much more in common with Gadamer's notion of play than he recognizes
11. WM refers to the German text of Truth and Method: Hans-Georg Gadamer, Warheit und Methode: Grüdzuge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1990)
12. Gadamer states: "Understanding is possible only if one keeps oneself out of play. This is the demand of science" (Truth and Method, 335). The task of understanding as he sees it demands the opposite. Play, here again, reveals itself as the key to grasping the real alternative to the modern scientific conception of understanding that Gadamer is trying so hard to articulate. If we are to understand the meaning offered to us by the voice of the other, we must engage it wholly, actively participate with it in play, and open ourselves to its strangeness