## 1. Interpretive Experience



The topic of this article, then, is hermeneutics insofar as it is
grasped as the philosophy of interpretation and as the historical
movement associated with this area. In this, hermeneutics is
concerned, first of all, to clarify and, in turn, to establish the
scope and validity of interpretive experience.


### 1.1 Understanding as Educative



In hermeneutics, interpretive experience is typically clarified in
reference to understanding. In this context, when we say that we
understand, what we mean is that we have really gotten at something
through an attempt at interpretation; and, when we say we do not
understand, we mean that we have not really gotten anywhere at all
with our interpretation. For this reason, understanding can be
described as a 'success' of interpretation (even if, since
Heidegger, understanding is more commonly described as a fulfillment,
realization, or enactment). In hermeneutics, such success of
understanding is not measured by norms and methods typical of the
modern natural sciences and quantitative social sciences, such as
whether our understanding derives from a repeatable experiment, nor by
norms typical of much of modern philosophy, such as whether our
understanding has indubitable epistemic foundations.



Now, philosophers associated with hermeneutics describe the success of
understanding in a number of manners. However else the success of
understanding is described, though, it is typically also described as
edifying or *educative*. Indeed, Hans-Georg Gadamer, the
philosopher perhaps most closely associated with hermeneutics in our
times, closely connects interpretive experience with education. By
education, he has in mind the concept of formation (*Bildung*)
that had been developed in Weimar classicism and that continued to
influence nineteenth-century romanticism and historicism in Germany
(*Truth and Method*, Part
 I.1).[1]
 Education, as formation, involves more than the acquisition of
expertise, knowledge, or information; it concerns the enlargement of
our person through formal instruction, especially in the arts and
humanities, as well as through extensive and variegated experience.
Accordingly, the success of understanding is educative in that we
learn from our interpretive experience, perhaps not only about a
matter, but thereby also about ourselves, the world, and others.



That the success of understanding is educative in this manner can be
clarified by an example, say, in reading a text such as
Thucydides' *History of the Peloponnesian War*. When we
say that we understand this text, we mean that our attempts to
interpret it (whether rigorously, as in scholarship, or more casually,
as in evening reading) have gotten at something, perhaps: that in
politics, prudent reasoning is not always persuasive enough to stem
the tide of war. Certainly, we have not arrived at this understanding
in result of repeatable scientific experiment or based on an
indubitable epistemic foundation. But it is not for this reason any
less educative. In this understanding, we have come to something that
we can agree or disagree with, something that in any case expands or
changes our views about the role of reason in politics (and no doubt
then also of public discourse and the causes of war), and, finally,
something that can also teach us something about ourselves and the
world in which we find ourselves.


### 1.2 Against Foundationalism



Hermeneutics may be said to involve a positive attitude--at once
epistemic, existential, and even ethical and political--toward
the finitude of human understanding, that is, the fact that our
understanding is time and again bested by the things we wish to grasp,
that what we understand remains ineluctably incomplete, even partial,
and open to further consideration. In hermeneutics, the concern is
therefore not primarily to establish norms or methods which would
purport to help us overcome or eradicate aspects of such finitude,
but, instead, to recognize the consequences of our limits.
Accordingly, hermeneutics affirms that we must remain ever vigilant
about how common wisdom and prejudices inform--and can
distort--our perception and judgment, that even the most
established knowledge may be in need of reconsideration, and that this
finitude of understanding is not simply a regrettable fact of the
human condition but, more importantly, that this finitude is itself an
important opening for the pursuit of new and different meaning. In
view of this positive attitude toward the finitude of human
understanding, it is no surprise that hermeneutics opposes
foundationalism.



Hermeneutics opposes what can be described as the
'vertical' picture of knowledge at issue in
epistemological foundationalism, focusing, instead, on the
'circularity' at issue in understanding. In
epistemological foundationalism, our body of beliefs (or at least our
justified beliefs) are sometimes said to have the structure of an
edifice. Some beliefs are distinguished as foundations, ultimately,
because they depend on no further beliefs for their justification;
other beliefs are distinguished as founded, in that their
justification depends on the foundational beliefs (Steup and Neta
2015, Section 4.1). This is a 'vertical' picture of human
knowledge in that new beliefs build on established beliefs; new
beliefs are justified on the basis of already justified beliefs, and
these beliefs, in turn, are justified by still other beliefs, all the
way down to the foundational beliefs. Inquiry, then, is an
'upward' pursuit, one that adds new 'floors'
to the edifice of what we already know.


### 1.3 The Hermeneutical Circle



In hermeneutics, by contrast, the emphasis is on the
'circularity' of understanding. This emphasis is familiar
from the concept of the hermeneutical circle. Central to hermeneutics,
this concept is not only highly disputed but has also been developed
in a number of distinct manners. Broadly, however, the concept of the
hermeneutical circle signifies that, in interpretive experience, a new
understanding is achieved not on the basis of already securely founded
beliefs. Instead, a new understanding is achieved through renewed
interpretive attention to further possible meanings of those
presuppositions which, sometimes tacitly, inform the understanding
that we already
 have.[2]
 Philosophers have described such hermeneutically circular
presuppositions in different ways and, since Heidegger, especially in
terms of presuppositions of the existential and historical contexts in
which we find ourselves. This contemporary significance of
hermeneutically circular presuppositions has origins in an older (and
perhaps more commonly known) formulation, namely, that interpretive
experience--classically, that of text
interpretation--involves us in a circular relation of whole and
parts. This formulation derives from antiquity and has a place in the
approaches of nineteenth-century figures such as Schleiermacher and
Dilthey. On the one hand, it is necessary to understand a text as a
whole in order properly to understand any of its parts. On the other
hand, however, it is necessary to understand the text in each of its
parts in order to understand it as a whole.



In contemporary hermeneutics, the concept of the hermeneutical circle
is rarely restricted to the context of text interpretation, and, too,
the circularity of interpretive experience is not necessarily cast in
terms of the relation of whole and parts. Nevertheless, as Grondin
suggests, this older formulation can help to illustrate the circular
character of interpretive experience (2016, 299). In text
interpretation so conceived, our efforts to understand a text have no
firm foundation from which to begin. Rather, these efforts unfold
always *in media res*, through an interpretation of the whole
of a text that proceeds from presuppositions about the parts; and, no
less, through an interpretation of the parts that proceeds from
presuppositions about the whole. Understanding, then, is not pursued
'vertically' by layering beliefs on top of foundations,
but rather 'circularly,' in an interpretive movement back
and forth through possible meanings of our presuppositions that by
turns allow a matter to come into view. In this, the pursuit of
understanding does not build 'higher and higher;' it goes
'deeper and deeper,' gets 'fuller and fuller,'
or, perhaps 'richer and richer.'


## 2. Hermeneutics as Historical Movement



Hermeneutics, taken as a historical movement, is informed by a longer
history that dates back to antiquity. The modern history of
hermeneutics originates with figures in nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century German thought, especially Friedrich Schleiermacher
and Wilhelm Dilthey. Contemporary hermeneutics is shaped, in turn,
especially by Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer, as well as by
Paul Ricoeur and others (see Palmer 1969, Grondin 1994, L. Schmidt
2006, Zimmerman 2015).


### 2.1 The Art of Interpretation



In accord with a common account of the modern historical origins of
hermeneutics, recognizably philosophical contributions to hermeneutics
originate with Friedrich
 Schleiermacher.[3]
 Closely associated with German romanticism, Schleiermacher developed
his hermeneutics in the first decades of the nineteenth century. He
proposes a universal hermeneutics that pertains to all linguistic
experience, and not just to the interpretative concerns of specific
disciplines (Scholtz 2015, 68). Schleiermacher characterizes
hermeneutics as the art of interpretation, maintaining that this art
is called for not simply to avoid misunderstandings in regard to
otherwise readily intelligible discourses. Rather, the art of
interpretation is necessary for discourses, paradigmatically written
texts, in regard to which our interpretive experience begins in
misunderstanding (Schleiermacher, "Outline," SSSS
15-16). Schleiermacher's hermeneutics is multifaceted but
keyed to the idea that the success of understanding depends on the
successful interpretation of two sides of a discourse, the
'grammatical' and 'psychological'
(Schleiermacher, "Outline," SSSS 5-6). By
the 'grammatical' side, he means the contributions to the
meaning of the discourse dependent on the general structure of the
language it uses. By the 'psychological' side, he has in
view the contributions to the meaning of the discourse dependent on
the individual author's or creator's mind. Whereas the
'grammatical' side of a discourse is a matter of general
linguistic structures, the 'psychological' side finds
expression in linguistic forms that would traditionally be associated
with style.



Schleiermacher indicates that discourses can be differentiated by
whether they are predominated by the 'grammatical' or
'psychological' and he develops methodological
considerations appropriate to these sides. At the same time, though,
he recognizes that the interpretation of each side is reciprocally
informed by the other (see Schleiermacher, "Outline,"
SS 11, SS 12). Interpretation aims at the
"reconstruction" of the meaning of a discourse, but, in
this, the task is "to understand the discourse just as well or
even better than its creator," a task which, accordingly, is
"infinite" (Schleiermacher, "Outline," SS
18).


### 2.2 Justification of the Human Sciences



The history of the modern origins of hermeneutics includes distinctive
contributions by Wilhelm Dilthey. Whereas Schleiermacher's
hermeneutics is closely associated with German romanticism,
Dilthey's considerations may be grasped in connection with
historicism. 'Historicism' refers to a nineteenth- and
early twentieth-century intellectual movement that no longer treated
"human nature, morality, and reason as absolute, eternal, and
universal," but sought, instead, to grasp these as
"relative, changing and particular," shaped by historical
context (Beiser 2011, 1). Dilthey's overall (though never
completed) project was to establish a critique of historical reason
that would secure independent epistemological foundations of research
in the human sciences, that is, the sciences distinguished by their
focus on historical experience (Grondin 1994, 84-90; Bambach
1995, 127-185; Makkreel 2015). In this, Dilthey's concern
is to defend the legitimacy of the human sciences against charges
either that their legitimacy remains dependent on norms and methods of
the natural sciences or, to his mind worse, that they lack the kind of
legitimacy found in the natural sciences altogether.



Dilthey associates the purpose of the human sciences not with the
explanation of 'outer' experience, but, instead, with the
understanding of 'lived experience' (*Erlebnis*).
In an important essay, "The Rise of Hermeneutics," Dilthey
affirms that the understanding achieved in the human sciences involves
interpretation. But this means that hermeneutics, grasped as the
theory of the universal validity of interpretation, does more than lay
out the rules of successful interpretive practice. Hermeneutics
clarifies the validity of the research conducted in the human
sciences. Indeed, he ventures that the "main purpose" of
hermeneutics is "to preserve the general validity of
interpretation against the inroads of romantic caprice and skeptical
subjectivity, and to give a theoretical justification of such
validity, upon which all the certainty of historical knowledge is
founded" (Dilthey, "The Rise of Hermeneutics,"
Section V).



While Schleiermacher and Dilthey are central for the modern historical
origins of hermeneutics, hermeneutics has also been shaped by
contributions from other figures, such as Friedrich Ast. And
hermeneutics has also been influenced by ideas about meaning, history,
and language developed in the period by figures such as Johann
Gottfried Herder, Wilhelm von Humboldt, and Friedrich Schlegel (see
Grondin 1994; Rush 2020).


### 2.3 Contemporary Hermeneutics



Contemporary hermeneutics is demarcated from the modern historical
origins of hermeneutics by the influence of a new use Heidegger makes
of hermeneutics in his early phenomenological inquiries into human
existence. In turn, contemporary hermeneutics remains largely shaped
by Hans-Georg Gadamer's 'philosophical
hermeneutics,' which he describes as an attempt further to develop
and expand on Heidegger's influential breakthrough. Contemporary
hermeneutics also receives contour from Paul Ricoeur's
contributions to hermeneutics, from philosophical controversies with
critical theory and deconstruction, and from the emergence of
postmodern hermeneutics. Further developments include innovations in
hermeneutics made by some philosophers in the Anglo-American tradition
and the development of hermeneutics in ethical and political
philosophy. Most recently, further developments include a renewal of
interest in normative dimensions of interpretive experience, and
responses in hermeneutics to a recent rise of interest in realism.


## 3. Hermeneutics and Existence



The principal impetus for contemporary hermeneutics, then, is a new
use Heidegger makes of hermeneutics in his early phenomenological
inquiries into what, in *Being and Time*, he calls the
'being' or also, the 'existentiality,' of
human 'existence' (Heidegger, *Being and Time*,
SS 7, section C). Heidegger's philosophy is oriented by the
question of the meaning, or, sense of being (*die Frage nach dem
Sinn des Seins*), but as he argues in *Being and Time*,
inquiry into this question itself begins with inquiry into the sense
in which human beings can be said to be or exist (Heidegger, *Being
and Time*, SSSS 1-4). Heidegger defines inquiry into
the sense of the being of human existence as hermeneutical, that is,
as a matter of self-interpretation. Within this context, Heidegger
leaves behind the idea that hermeneutics is primarily concerned with
the methods or foundations of research in the arts and humanities.
Rather, as he argues, such hermeneutical research is itself only
possible because human beings are, in their very being, interpretive.
For Heidegger, understanding is a mode or possibility of human
existence, and, indeed, one that is projective, oriented toward the
interpretive possibilities available to us in the situations in which
we find ourselves (see especially Heidegger, *Being and Time*,
SSSS 31-32). Accordingly, inquiry into the sense of the
being of human existence is enacted in our own attempts to understand
our own being, as we may interpret our being through the course of our
affairs.



Heidegger's use of hermeneutics in the context of his early
phenomenological inquiries into human existence can be described as a
breakthrough in the historical movement of hermeneutics (Gadamer,
*Truth and Method*, Part II.3). But Heidegger's
considerations also continue to be a subject of considerable
discussion, and his insights remain at issue, to a greater or lesser
degree, in a range of current philosophers and debates.
Heidegger's later works are important for hermeneutical
considerations of history, language, art, poetry, and translation, as
well. As Heidegger develops, however, he comes to claim that his paths
of thinking can no longer be served by hermeneutics, and his thought
comes to be characterized by new and different orientations.


### 3.1 The Hermeneutics of Facticity



Heidegger clarifies the role played by hermeneutics in his early
phenomenological inquiries into human existence through a critical
reconsideration of Husserl's classical phenomenology, or more
specifically, a critical reconsideration of the aspects of
Husserl's phenomenology that rely on his transcendental and
eidetic
 methods.[4]
 In this, Heidegger opposes his own 'hermeneutical'
phenomenology against Husserl's 'transcendental'
approach.



Husserl's phenomenology is guided by epistemological
considerations, and his principal concern is to find *a priori*
foundations for research in the sciences. Husserl believes that modern
science, despite all methodological and technological sophistication,
has failed to account for the basic epistemic foundation on which it
relies. He maintains that this foundation may be discerned in
consciousness--not, however, in any factual consciousness or ego,
but rather in the transcendental ego and its *a priori* eidetic
structures. He argues that phenomenological inquiry into these
structures proceeds methodologically on the basis of what he refers to
as the '*epoche*.' The
*epoche* is a universal suspension of the 'natural
attitude,' that is, belief in the existence of objects. The *epoche* thereby allows us to redirect our awareness to objects in their
appearance as such. In contrast with Cartesian methodological doubt,
the *epoche* is not a doubt about the existence of
mind-independent reality, but, instead, a 'bracketing' of
our belief in existence that frees us to focus on *a priori*
eidetic structures of appearance (see, for example, Husserl,
*Ideas* I, SSSS 27-32).



Heidegger's critical reconsideration of Husserl's
phenomenology is guided not by epistemological concerns, but, instead,
fundamental ontological ones. Heidegger agrees with Husserl that
modern science has failed to account for the grounds on which it
relies, and he also turns to phenomenology in order to bring these
grounds into focus. Yet, Heidegger believes that phenomenology
concerns an origin much deeper than consciousness, the transcendental
ego, and its eidetic structures. For him, phenomenology contributes to
ontology, first of all, by bringing into focus the being, or,
ontological structures, that comprise human existence itself. For the
early Heidegger, these structures involve what he calls
'facticity.' By this, he does not mean that human
existence is a fact. Rather, he means that the ontological structures
that comprise human existence are found not in consciousness, but,
instead, in our being in the world--or, as he determines this
terminologically, being-in-the-world (*in-der-Welt-sein*)
(Heidegger, *Being and Time*, SS 12 ff.). Thus, our
attempts to understand ourselves (or, for that matter, to understand
anything else) remain bound by structures of being in the world.
Specifically, our attempts to understand ourselves (or anything else)
remain conditioned by pre-structures that determine in advance which
possibilities of a situation we find significant, and by moods that
determine in advance our attunement to a situation we are
"thrown" into, that is, a situation that affects us even
though we have not chosen to be in it (Heidegger, *Being and
Time*, SSSS 28-34).



Heidegger, on the basis of his consideration of the facticity of human
existence, concludes that it would be a fool's errand for
phenomenological inquiry to proceed on the basis of Husserl's
*epoche*. After all, the *epoche* merely
allows us to reflect on *a priori* eidetic structures of
consciousness, when what we should be after are structures of our
being in the world. Heidegger argues that phenomenological inquiry
should begin instead with consideration of these structures of being
in the world as they come into view through our own individual
involvement in the world. Heidegger's phenomenology proves to be
self-interpretation, as it seeks to clarify the structure of being in
the world on the basis of nothing else than our own individual
experience of being in the world. Thus, phenomenology unfolds as the
explication of the structures of being in the world that, initially at
least, we experience more or less vaguely, more or less tacitly, in
our own everyday involvements with things and others. In
Heidegger's critical reconsideration of Husserl's
phenomenology, hermeneutics is a possibility of human existence itself
and, indeed, a possibility that aims at our explication of ourselves
in our very existence.


### 3.2 Difficulties of Self-Interpretation



Heidegger maintains that such self-interpretation of existence is
fraught with difficulties. One reason, he believes, is that structures
of being in the world are made inconspicuous by the very involvement
in the world that they enable. He famously makes this case in the
course of his phenomenological considerations of the way we find human
existence "initially and for the most part," namely, in
the undifferentiated "averageness" of everyday existence
(Heidegger, *Being and Time*, 43; SS 20). In this
averageness of everyday existence, Heidegger argues, the structure of
the world is given through the purposes we have, the referential
relations that comprise the situations in which we attempt to realize
these ends, and the things we employ in the service of these ends. In
the averageness of everyday existence, our access to this structure is
granted not through reflection on it but, instead, through our
ordinary affairs, as we cognize the structure indirectly through the
things (*Zeuge*, useful things or tools) that we employ to
carry out our projects (Heidegger, *Being and Time*,
SSSS 14-18; see also Heidegger, *Ontology*,
SS 20). Yet, as he argues, in this form of cognizance,
"circumspection" (*Umsicht*), the structure of the
world itself recedes from view precisely by our absorption in those
projects (Heidegger, *Being and Time*, 69).



Heidegger maintains that the self-interpretation of existence is made
difficult, moreover, because being in the world always also entails
being with others. In this, Heidegger argues that in the averageness
of everyday existence, we tend to interpret ourselves not by what
differentiates us from others, but, instead, by what can be attributed
indifferently to anyone. Such interpretations may be attractive
because accessible to anyone, but they come at the price of being
distorting and reductive. In the averageness of everyday existence,
the sense of self that comes into focus through self-interpretation is
not a self in its singular possibilities to be. It is rather a sense
of self characterized by circumscribed possibilities, which, for
Heidegger, finds expression in the pronoun 'they,' or
'one' (*das Man*)--so that we interpret our own possibilities
restrictively in terms of what 'one' thinks, what
'one' does, and no more (see Heidegger *Being and
Time*, SS 27; see also Heidegger, *Ontology*, SS
6).



Another, related difficulty of self-interpretation concerns the
historical transmission of interpretations. In this, Heidegger
maintains that, as interpretations of existence are passed down from
tradition, the "original sources" of concrete, existential
concern, come to be covered over (Heidegger, *Ontology*, 59).
Indeed, for this reason, Heidegger calls for a
"destruction" or, perhaps, 'de-structuration'
(*Destruktion*) of interpretations of being and the being of
existence that have been passed down from the history of Western
philosophy (see Heidegger, *Being and Time,* SS6).
This, to be sure, is a call that has important implications for the
study of the history of philosophy, one that has been influential for
philosophers such as Jacques Derrida, John Sallis, and Claudia
Baracchi.


## 4. Contemporary Hermeneutics



Contemporary hermeneutics is largely shaped by Hans-Georg
Gadamer's 'philosophical hermeneutics.'
Gadamer's approach is guided by the insight that the success of
understanding involves a distinctive experience of truth. Consider,
once more, the example of coming to understand something through an
interpretation of Thucydides' *History of the Peloponnesian
War*, namely, that in politics, prudent reasoning is not always
persuasive enough to stem the tide of war. When I come to understand
this, so goes Gadamer's insight, I experience what I understand
not simply as a novel or enriching idea. Rather, I experience what I
have understood as something that makes a claim to be true. Thus, to
understand something means to understand something as true. The chief
issue of Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics is to clarify that
such a hermeneutical experience of truth is not only valid in its own
right, but that it is distinct from, and even more original than, the
sense of truth at issue in knowledge secured through the norms and
methods of modern science. Indeed, it is precisely this concern that
Gadamer's title of his *magnum opus* is meant to evoke:
his philosophical hermeneutics focuses on a hermeneutical experience
of *truth* that cannot be derived from scientific
*method*.


### 4.1 Humanism and Art



The *point de depart* for Gadamer's philosophical
hermeneutics is the concern that the success of the scientific method
has alienated us from the validity of the truth at issue in
interpretive experience. Philosophical hermeneutics therefore begins
with an attempt to recover the sense of truth at issue in interpretive
experience by focusing our attention on motifs from the tradition of
humanism and on the ontology of art. Gadamer's considerations of
motifs from the tradition of humanism are oriented by Weimar
classicism and its legacy in nineteenth-century German intellectual
life. His account helps us to recover the validity of an experience of
truth that is not measured by scientific method but that, instead,
depends on our education, grasped as formation (*Bildung*)
through formal education and experience, as well as the concordant
cultivation of capacities, such as common sense
(*sensus communis*), judgment, and taste (Gadamer,
*Truth and Method*, Part I.1.B).



Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics upholds that the primary
example of the hermeneutical experience of truth is found in our
encounters with art. Gadamer believes this becomes clear once we
overcome modern assumptions about the subjectivity of aesthetic
experience, in which the being of art is reduced to that of an
immediately present object that, in turn, has the property of
producing affects, such as aesthetic pleasure, in a subject. In his
hermeneutics, by contrast, the being of art is rather a matter of a
realization or "enactment" (*Vollzug*) that we
participate in (Gadamer, *Truth and Method*, 103). The
experience of an artwork unfolds as an event of interpretation that,
when it is a success, allows us to recognize something that purports
or claims to be true.



In Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, the treatment of the
experience of art is expansive, but a synopsis of his definitive
formulation from *Truth and Method* is instructive. Gadamer,
first, introduces the theme of 'play,' or, of the
'game' (*Spiel*) to emphasize that the experience
of art is an event of interpretation that exceeds the subjective
intentions or interests of those involved in it (Gadamer, *Truth
and Method*, Part I.II.1.A). Insofar as we agree to play a game,
we give ourselves over to the context of meaning that comprises the
game. We allow ourselves to be oriented by the norms that govern, and
thus enable but never determine, thoughts and actions appropriate to
the playing of the game. Likewise, when we participate in an
experience of an artwork, we give ourselves over to the context of
meaning that comprises the work, and, thus, allow our interpretive
experience to be governed by the limits and possibilities of
interpretation appropriate to the work. When we experience a
performance of Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona's
*The Island*, for example, we allow our interpretive experience
to be governed by limits and possibilities of interpretation that have
to do with apartheid-era South Africa, Robben Island Prison, and
parallels with Sophocles' *Antigone*.



Gadamer maintains that in our experience of art, such play culminates
in what he calls 'transformation into structure.' By this,
he means that our experience of art comes to be that of a work,
grasped in its 'ideality' or meaningfulness, in
distinction from the activities involved in its presentation (such as
the activity of actors presenting a drama). With our experience of
such a 'transformation into structure,' the work of art
allows us to recognize something as true (Gadamer, *Truth and
Method*, Part I.II.1.B). He describes this interpretive experience
of truth as a process of mediation, by which a claim of truth at issue
in an artwork comes into view through the repeated projection and
supersession of inadequate interpretations, until such mediation
becomes sufficient, or 'total.' There is, as anyone who
has experienced an artwork will confirm, no method to ensure the
success of this process of repeated projection and supersession; it
depends on the quality of our interpretive work, and, this quality can
be enlarged by our formation of our capacities such as common sense,
judgment, and taste.


### 4.2 Tradition and Prejudice



Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics proceeds on the basis of
these considerations of humanism and art as an attempt to establish
the essential elements of the hermeneutical experience of
 truth.[5]
 In this, the hermeneutical experience of truth is conditioned by
*tradition* and *language*.



The claim that the hermeneutical experience of truth is conditioned by
tradition is not reducible to historicism or the historicist project
of determining, say, what an artist or an author *took to be
true* through a reconstruction of the historical context of the
artwork or text under consideration. Quite to the contrary, the
hermeneutical experience of truth concerns something that holds true
for our own existence. Rather, then, the hermeneutical experience of
truth is conditioned by tradition in the sense that it is limited and
made possible by the historical transmission of meaning. The claim
that the hermeneutical experience of truth is conditioned by tradition
stresses the sense of the etymological origins of the word
'tradition' in the Latin *tradition*-
(stem of *traditio*), a handing over, delivery or
handing down of knowledge (*OED* 2020, "tradition,
n."). This claim also stresses the sense of Gadamer's
German term for tradition, *Uberlieferung*, which,
translated literally, means a 'delivering over.' In this,
the hermeneutical experience of truth involves belonging to a
historical tradition. Contrary to a common misconception of Gadamerian
philosophical hermeneutics, traditions are not monoliths. Traditions
are more like processes--idiomatic, dynamic, and
evolving--that, to borrow from Whitman, "contain
multitudes" (Whitman, *Song of Myself*, Sec. 51).
Accordingly, to belong to a tradition is not first to possess an
identity derived from a cultural or ethnic heritage; it is, rather, to
be a participant in a movement of handing down, delivering over.



In Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, the
hermeneutical experience of truth, as conditioned by tradition, is
thus a matter of prejudice. Gadamer clarifies the meaning of
'prejudice' in reference to the early Heidegger. Gadamer
agrees with Heidegger that human existence is characterized by
facticity, so that understanding, or, our projection of possibilities,
is oriented by 'pre-structures' that are a matter of thrownness. Yet, such 'pre-structures' are best described
as 'prejudices' because they concern more than the
individual situations that comprise our existence. These
'pre-structures' are shaped by the larger context of
historically inherited meanings that remain operative, or, in effect,
in such situations of our individual existence in the first place
(Gadamer, *Truth and Method*, Part II.II.1.A).



Tradition, so conceived, proves to be a legitimate source of authority
for the hermeneutical experience of truth. Gadamer's
philosophical hermeneutics thus comprises a counterpoint to the
rejection of the authority of tradition in modern science. Gadamer
associates this rejection above all with the "prejudice against
prejudice" developed in the European Enlightenment (Gadamer,
*Truth and Method*, 270). In this, the *motto* of the
Enlightenment is that we should think for ourselves, basing our
beliefs in our own use of reason and not the authority of tradition,
whether this authority is conceived in terms of superstition,
religious or aristocratic rule, or custom. Gadamer recognizes that the
Enlightenment charge to think for ourselves is legitimate, but he does
not believe it follows from this that tradition cannot be a source of
truth. He writes,



> 
> The Enlightenment's distinction between faith in authority and
> using one's own reason is, in itself, legitimate. If the
> prestige of authority displaces one's own judgment, then
> authority is in fact a source of prejudices. But this does not
> preclude its being a source of truth, and that is what the
> Enlightenment failed to see when it denigrated all authority
> (Gadamer, *Truth and Method*, 279).
> 
> 



In Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, the experience of truth
does not demand that we liberate ourselves from the authority of
tradition, but, on the contrary, recognizes tradition as a possible
source of our claims of truth. To be sure, tradition is not therefore
a foundation of claims to truth. Tradition is, after all, a process of
transmission, which is ultimately "ungroundable" and
"underivable" (Gadamer, *Truth and Method*, 254,
translation
 modified).[6]
 Yet, even if it is not a foundation, tradition is a legitimate
interpretive wellspring, in the sense that it makes possible and
shapes all understanding.


### 4.3 Normative Implications



The hermeneutical experience of truth is, therefore, governed by the
"principle of history of effect" (Gadamer, *Truth and
Method*, Part II.II.B.iv). This means that our attempts to
understand are always guided more by tradition, and thus prejudice,
than we are able to make explicit to ourselves. This principle, as
Gadamer maintains, has important normative implications for
interpretive experience. These implications follow from the fact that
it is impossible to become completely self-conscious of the prejudices
operative in our attempts to understand. As Gadamer puts the point in
an ontological register, "*to be historically means that
knowledge of oneself can never be complete*" (Gadamer,
*Truth and Method*, 302). Because of this, the experience of
truth leads not to self-certainty, but to the insight that we should
proceed always with a Delphic self-knowledge of our limits.



Such Delphic self-knowledge should carry over to our assessment of
knowledge secured by modern science, as well. For, as Gadamer puts the
point, "when a naive faith in scientific method denies the
existence of effective history, there can be an actual deformation of
knowledge" (Gadamer, *Truth and Method*, 301). This is
evident first of all from the humanistic study of the history of
science. After all, knowledge based on the best results of science
today may well have the same fate as the discredited scientific
knowledge of past times. It is also evident that we should carry over
Delphic self-knowledge to our assessment of scientific knowledge from
the fact that scientific inquiry is always guided by more prejudice
than can be kept in check by any method: for example, in the selection
of research questions, in hypothesis formation, and in any number of
metaphysical (or other) assumptions tacitly or unconsciously used to
characterize objects of inquiry.



Gadamer maintains that the normative implications of the
'principle of history of effect' mean that in our
interpretive experience, we should attempt always to expand our
horizons. By horizon, Gadamer has in mind the "range" of
our capacity to understand (Gadamer, *Truth and Method*, 302),
as this is made possible and limited by the breadth and depth of what
we have already come to understand in our lives. In this concept of
horizon, it is not difficult to hear the echo of the humanistic
sensibility that interpretive experience is *educative*. Our
horizon is the formation we have achieved through our interpretive
experience, both from our formal education and from our
life-experience. Thus, the normative demand of interpretive experience
is always to become more educated.



Gadamer describes the expansion of our horizons as a "fusion of
horizons" (Gadamer, *Truth and Method*, 306). This term
is perhaps misleading, however, because it can be mistaken to signify
that an interpreter has a distinct 'horizon' that is then
expanded through the assimilation of another distinct horizon, say,
that of a text we are interpreting. Really, though, what Gadamer means
is that in interpretive experience, our attempts to understand can and
should lead us to recognize that our own horizon is not as insular or
narrow as we first thought. Rather, we can and should come to
recognize that our horizon belongs to a larger context of the
historical transmission of meaning, so that when we come to understand
something, we are thereby raised "to a higher level of
universality that overcomes not only our own particularity but also
that of the other" (Gadamer, *Truth and Method*, 305). In
this, 'fusion' signifies something closer to the verbal
form of Gadamer's *Verschmelzung*, that is
*verschmeltzen*, to melt together. We expand our horizons
through interpretive experience that melts away at the rigidity of our
horizon, so that we can see how it melts into and mixes with a larger
movement of transmission.


### 4.4 Language



The hermeneutical experience of truth is conditioned by not only
tradition but also language. In Gadamer's philosophical
hermeneutics, the relation of truth to language is described in
reference to being. Gadamer expresses this relation in a celebrated
*motto*, "being that can be understood is language"
(Gadamer, *Truth and Method*,
 474).[7]
 According to this *motto*, language is primarily a
'medium' that shows us the being, or meaningful order, of
the world and the things we encounter in it (Gadamer, *Truth and
Method*, Part
 III.1).[8]
 Thus, language is only secondarily an instrument that we use, among
other things, to represent something, communicate about it, or make
assertions about it. The experience of language as a medium takes
place in what Gadamer calls "*hermeneutical
conversation*" (Gadamer, *Truth and Method*, 388).
The primary example of such hermeneutical conversation is a
conversation between interlocutors about something; but, he believes
that hermeneutical conversation also includes all interpretive
experience, so that the interpretation of artworks and texts is
conceived as a conversation between the interpreter and work about the
subject matter of the work. In hermeneutical conversation,
interlocutors may, of course, use language to represent, communicate
or make assertions. More originally, however, hermeneutical
conversation concerns the being of the matter under consideration.
Hermeneutical conversation is thus an event of interlocution that aims
to show something in its being, as it genuinely or truly is.



The hermeneutical experience of truth can be described as the success
of conversation so conceived. But, in this, truth is not experienced
as a matter of "correctness," or as this may be clarified,
a matter of correct predication (Gadamer, *Truth and Method*,
406). In the experience of truth as correct predication, truth is
typically conceived as the property of a proposition, statement or
utterance that suitably connects a subject with a predicate. In the
hermeneutical experience of truth, by contrast, the concern is not
with predication, that is, the connection of a subject with a
predicate, but, instead, with conversation, grasped as an event of
interlocution concerned with the being of a subject itself. In such a
conversation, truth is reached, if it is reached, not when a subject
is suitably connected with something else, but, instead, when the
subject is sufficiently shown in its own being, as it truly is. The
measure of such sufficiency is established not in advance, but is
achieved in the course of conversation along with the claim of truth
that it measures.



Philosophical hermeneutics maintains that the experience of truth as
correct predication is dependent on the hermeneutical experience of
truth. This is because in truth as correctness, the proper connection
of subject and predicate depends in part on the being of the subject. In
predication, the being of the subject is typically either left out of
account or is presumed already to be determined or interpreted. But,
the being of the subject--what it truly is--is a matter of
interpretation. In illustration, we may consider the fictional
conversation presented by Plato in the *Republic* among
Socrates, Glaucon and other interlocutors about justice. In conclusion
of our interpretive experience, we may assert the proposition,
'justice is nearly impossible to achieve!' But, whether
this is so will depend on the being of justice, and the truth of the
being of justice will depend, in turn, on an interpretation of it,
whether we derive it from Plato's text or otherwise. Truth as
correctness, then, depends on the hermeneutical experience of truth,
and such truth, in turn, is a matter of interpretation.



Finally, in Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, it is claimed
that the hermeneutical experience of truth is 'universal.'
This does not mean that the hermeneutical experience of truth takes
place every time we converse about something. Rather, it means that
the hermeneutical experience of truth remains always a problem,
whenever we wish to understand something, and even when a conversation
culminates in an experience of truth. Each hermeneutical experience of
truth remains open to further interpretation (see Gadamer, "The
Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem").


## 5. Symbol, Metaphor, and Narrative



Contemporary hermeneutics receives further contour from Paul
Ricoeur's considerations of language, and especially of
linguistic forms such as symbolism, metaphor, and narrative. Ricoeur
takes orientation from the claim of the early Heidegger's
hermeneutical phenomenology that self-understanding is, in the end, to
be grasped in ontological terms: self-understanding is the
self-interpretation of human existence, grasped as the enactment of
the distinctive possibility of such existence. Ricoeur, however,
proposes a hermeneutical phenomenology that, as he puts it in an
important early essay, 'grafts' hermeneutics to
phenomenology in a different manner than Heidegger proposes (Ricoeur,
"Existence and Hermeneutics," 6). Heidegger believes that
for the self-interpretation of human existence, the interpretations of
the human condition found in the human sciences are derivative; what
is called for is an analysis of the sense of being, or, the structures,
of human existence as these are disclosed through our own individual
being in the world. Ricoeur criticizes Heidegger's proposal as a
"short route," or perhaps better, short cut, that bypasses
the significance for our self-interpretation of the multiple and even
conflicting interpretations of the human condition found in other
disciplines and areas of philosophy (Ricoeur, "Existence and
Hermeneutics," 6). He proposes, instead, a hermeneutical
phenomenology that embraces a "long route" of
self-interpretation, one that is mediated by passing through
hermeneutical considerations of these multiple and conflicting
interpretations (Ricoeur, "Existence and Hermeneutics,"
6).



Ricoeur's contributions are notoriously difficult to reduce to a
specific position or otherwise categorize, in part because he
practiced what he preached. In his career, his route to
self-understanding was influenced by reflexive philosophy, Husserl and
Heidegger, French structuralism, as well as by contemporary
Anglo-American philosophy (see Ricoeur "On
Interpretation," 12-15). Moreover, his inquiries range
over topics in areas as diverse as religion, anthropology, psychology,
history, and literature. His contributions to hermeneutics are perhaps
especially characterized, however, by the concern for possibilities of
the mediating role of language to establish critical distance in
interpretive experience and by his focus on the significance of
interpretive experience for ethical and political agency.



In an early formulation of what he has in mind by the hermeneutical
'long route' to self-understanding, Ricoeur maintains that
the pursuit of self-understanding has to be mediated by hermeneutical
considerations of semantic structures of interpretation that are
common to research across the human sciences (Ricoeur,
"Existence and Hermeneutics," 11). In this,
Ricoeur's approach is "organized around the central theme
of meaning with multiple or multivocal senses..." or, what
he calls "symbolic senses" (Ricoeur, "Existence
and Hermeneutics," 11). This involves a novel conception of
interpretation itself. Traditionally in hermeneutics, the purpose of
interpretation is thought of as making apparent the single, unitary
meaning of something. Ricoeur, by contrast, stresses that the aim of
interpretation also includes making apparent the plurality of meanings
at issue in a speech act or text. He writes,
"Interpretation...is the work of thought which consists in
deciphering the hidden meaning in the apparent meaning, in unfolding
levels of meaning implied in the literal meaning" (Ricoeur,
"Existence and Hermeneutics," 13).



Ricoeur explains that the itinerary of the hermeneutical long route to
self-understanding passes through an analysis of a broad range of
symbolic forms, such as the "cosmic" symbolism revealed by
the phenomenology of religion, the symbolic character of
"desire" revealed by psychoanalysis, and the symbolic
forms revealed by the study of literature and the arts (Ricoeur,
"Existence and Hermeneutics," 13). In his *Freud and
Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation*, Ricoeur describes Freud,
along with Nietzsche and Marx, as a master of the 'hermeneutics
of suspicion.' In this, interpretation, as a 'deciphering
of hidden meaning in the apparent meaning,' takes on a critical
function through the exposure of repressed or distorted meaning that
lies beneath the surface of commonly accepted meaning.



Later in his career, Ricoeur's considerations of the
hermeneutical long route to self-understanding shift attention from a
semantics of symbols to considerations of metaphor and especially
narrative. Ricoeur's considerations of metaphor build from the
claim that metaphor should be grasped not first as the substitution of
one conventional name for a different one, but, instead, as a
"peculiar predication," one "consisting in the
attribution to logical subjects of predicates that are incompossible
with them" (Ricoeur, "On Interpretation," 8).
Crucial for Ricoeur is that metaphorical predication thus not only
concerns what Frege called 'sense' but also
'reference.' Metaphors are linguistic innovations that
allow us to refer to aspects of reality for which words are otherwise
unavailable (Ricoeur, "On Interpretation," 10).



Ricoeur maintains that narrative, too, concerns both sense and
reference, but on a different scale. By narrative, he has in mind
"the diverse forms and modes of the game of storytelling"
(Ricoeur, "On Interpretation," 2) and in his three-volume
treatise *Time and Narrative*, he focuses on the role of
narrative not only in literary fiction but also in the recounting of
history. He argues that while there are a diversity of forms and modes
of narrative, all narratives nevertheless perform a common function,
namely, they mark, organize, and clarify temporal experience (Ricoeur,
"On Interpretation," 2). In this, he claims that in
narrative the work of such schematization of temporal experience is
achieved by the composition of the plot, or, emplotment. Through
narrative emplotment, we make apparent the meaning of persons,
relations, and events that comprise human affairs--say, in
fiction, those that can happen, and in history, those that have
happened. Crucial for Ricoeur is that narrative emplotment is
referential; as he makes the point in regard to fiction, "the
plots we invent help us to shape our confused, formless, and in the
last resort mute temporal experience" (Ricoeur, "On
Interpretation," 6).



Ricoeur maintains, however, that the referential function of narrative
is not simply to assert something about the world but has implications
for ethical and political life. In fiction, narrative emplotment not
only helps us evaluate the meaning of human actions, but, moreover,
contributes to the creation of "the horizon of a new relating
that we may call a world" (Ricoeur, "On
Interpretation," 10; see also Ricoeur, "Imagination in
Discourse and Action"). In so doing, fiction refers to
possibilities of reality that can orient our agency and contribute to
our efforts to reshape reality.


## 6. Philosophical Controversies



The development of hermeneutics since Gadamer forwarded his
'philosophical hermeneutics' in *Truth and Method*
has been fostered by philosophical controversies about the
consequences of his project. The most significant of these
controversies are about the consequences of philosophical hermeneutics
in relation to critical theory and to
 deconstruction.[9]
 Although philosophical interest in these controversies is extensive,
in each case, discussion arises in close connection with Gadamer
himself. In the case of the controversy in relation to critical
theory, discussion originates between Jurgen Habermas and Gadamer
over the problem of critique, or, more specifically, the critique of
ideology. In the case of the controversy in relation to
deconstruction, discussion originates between Jacques Derrida and
Gadamer. While this discussion is itself layered and gives rise to new
questions over time, it concerns, in part, the question of whether the
success of understanding genuinely achieves a determination of
meaning.



Gadamer's engagements with Habermas and Derrida themselves are
sometimes hailed as examples, or perhaps case studies, of his own
conception of hermeneutical conversation. Gadamer has claimed that
such conversation proceeds always from "recognizing in advance
the possibility that your partner is right, even recognizing the
possible superiority of your partner" (Gadamer,
"Reflections on My Philosophical Journey," 36). Gadamer
famously puts this belief into practice in his discussions with both
Habermas and Derrida, and the legacy of these debates plays an
important role in Gadamer's subsequent thinking.


### 6.1 Hermeneutics and Critical Theory



One important controversy about the consequences of Gadamer's
philosophical hermeneutics, then, concerns whether it offers a basis
for the critique of ideology. This concern is raised with emphasis by
the critical theorist Jurgen Habermas. Habermas, building on
Hegel, Marx and Engels, as well as his original theory of recognition
and communication, maintains that an ideology is a nexus of political
doctrines, beliefs, and attitudes that distort the political realities
they purport to describe. Accordingly, ideologies reinforce equally
distorted power relations that, in turn, prevent the openness of
discussion that is necessary for legitimate democratic political
deliberation and decision-making (see Sypnowich 2019, Sec. 2). In view of
this, one purpose of critical theory is to establish a basis to
critique ideology. Habermas and other critical theorists sought a
basis of critique with the ability to expose even some of our most
cherished political doctrines, beliefs, and attitudes as ideological
distortions that result from forms of domination passed down from
tradition.



Habermas raises the objection against Gadamer's philosophical
hermeneutics that the hermeneutical experience of truth offers too
little basis for such critique (see Habermas, "The Universality
Claim of
 Hermeneutics").[10]
 Habermas raises the objection that philosophical hermeneutics, with
its adherence to the authority of tradition, leaves no room for the
critique of ideologies entrenched in the historically transmitted
prejudices on which our experience of truth relies. Moreover, as we
might accordingly worry, what Gadamer describes as the hermeneutical
experience of truth might not be an experience of truth at all, but,
rather, a distorted communication that is complicit in ideology, since
the so-called truth results from a conversation that might not be
open, but oriented by prejudices that reinforce relations of
domination.



While the influence of Habermas's objection is extensive,
Gadamer has mounted rejoinders on behalf of his philosophical
hermeneutics (see "Reply to My Critics"; see also
"What is Practice? The Conditions of Social Reason"). The
thrust of Gadamer's argument is, first, that it is actually
Habermas's position, not his own, that remains uncritical, since
it is naive to believe in the possibility of a basis of critique
that is somehow not subject to the authority of tradition. And,
Gadamer stresses, second, that the hermeneutical experience of truth
is no blind acceptance of the authority of tradition. Rather, as he
argues, interpretive experience remains critical, in that such
experience unfolds precisely though the questioning of our prejudices,
and judgment about what aspects of our prejudices remain valid and
which have become invalid for matters of concern to us now.


### 6.2 Hermeneutics and Deconstruction



A further important controversy about the consequences of
Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics arises in the context of
Derrida's project of deconstruction. While the relation between
hermeneutics and deconstruction is complex, pivotal for the
controversy is whether the success of understanding really achieves a
determinate meaning. Gadamer, as we have seen, maintains that the
success of understanding is to understand something in its being, as
it genuinely or truly is. Moreover, we experience such a truth as a
claim, one that we can agree or disagree with, and that purports to be
justified by the interpretive experience which first gives rise to it.
Yet, as we may now observe, Gadamer's notion of the success of
understanding thereby trusts in the authenticity of our own experience
that we really have come to understand something determinate, or, in
any case, determinate enough that it makes a claim of truth.
Derrida's deconstruction poses a challenge to this idea because
Derrida argues that discursive experience is governed by an
operation--or, perhaps better, a structure of
inoperativity--that would preclude the possibility of
understanding something with such determinacy (see Lawlor 2019).



Derrida clarifies the character of this structure of inoperativity in
terms of a number of concepts over the course of his career, but
perhaps none are more influential than that of
"*differance*" (see Derrida,
"Differance"). Derrida describes
*differance* as a twofold structure of difference and
deferral. Building on terms from Saussure's linguistics,
*differance* thus indicates, first of all, that in
discursive experience, determining the meaning of
something remains beyond our reach because linguistic signs
present what they are supposed to signify never *per se* but
always only heterogeneously through signifiers. And
*differance* indicates, furthermore, that since this
heterogeneity cannot be superseded, our attempts to determine the
meaning of something remain interminably in deferral (Derrida,
"Differance"). Because discursive experience is
thus imbued with heterogeneity, our attempts to determine the meaning
of something are not fully under our control but, instead, remain
subject to a free play of signs (see Derrida,
"Differance," "Structure, Sign and
Play").



Derrida's deconstruction poses a challenge to Gadamer's
notion of the success of understanding as a hermeneutical experience
of truth. Gadamer, as we have said, trusts that our experience of
truth really involves a determinate claim. Derrida's
considerations suggest, however, that such trust is misplaced. If, in
the success of understanding, our experience purports to involve a
determinate claim to truth, then our experience of this determinacy
must be misguided, since the possibility of determinacy is precluded
in advance by *differance*. As Derrida puts the point
during the 1981 initial meeting with Gadamer, "I am not
convinced that we ever really have this experience that Professor
Gadamer describes, of knowing in a dialogue that one has been
perfectly understood or experiencing the success of
confirmation" (Derrida, "Three Questions to Hans-Georg
Gadamer," 54). Indeed, in an important early essay, Derrida
maintains that the pursuit of success of such a kind is not merely
misguided, but a symptom of our suppression, perhaps repression, of an
anxiety about the insuperable role of heterogeneity involved in all
interpretive experience (Derrida, "Structure Sign and
Play," 292).



Gadamer takes up the challenge posed by Derrida's deconstruction
not primarily as an objection to his hermeneutics but, instead, as an
impetus to dedicate renewed attention to the role played by difference
in interpretive experience. After all, even though philosophical
hermeneutics does not involve the technical notion of
*differance*, Gadamer's hermeneutics makes space
for difference in important regards. First, Gadamer certainly
recognizes that every determinate claim of truth remains open to
further interpretation. And, second, he recognizes that the
hermeneutical experience of a determine claim of truth is itself a
legacy of difference, since interpretive experience unfolds in the
free play of conversation. Gadamer's response to the challenge
posed by deconstruction unfolds in attempts to expand and deepen these
and related considerations of the role played by difference in
interpretive experience. Gadamer develops this response in a number of
essays, and is led to develop hermeneutical considerations of a number
of themes brought into focus by his encounter with Derrida, such as
the significance of what he calls the eminent text (see for example
Gadamer, "Hermeneutics Tracking the Trace," and
"Text and Interpretation"). Matters of central concern for
the philosophical controversy between hermeneutics and deconstruction
have also been further developed by several philosophers associated
with hermeneutics, such as John Caputo (1987), James Risser (1997),
Donatella di Cesare (2003) and others.


## 7. Postmodern Hermeneutics



The rise of postmodernism has proved to be an important impetus for
developments within hermeneutics. While 'postmodernism'
signifies a number of things, of particular influence in philosophy is
Jean-Francois Lyotard's definition of postmodernism as an
"incredulity toward metanarratives" (Lyotard,
*Postmodern Condition*, xxiv). By 'metanarrative,'
Lyotard has in mind foundational stories of modern Western philosophy,
especially, as these foundational stories function to legitimate
discourses in the sciences (Lyotard, *Postmodern Condition*,
34). Examples of metanarratives include, say, stories about the
objectivity of science and the contribution that science makes to the
betterment of society.



Lyotard sees both a danger and a possibility in the postmodern
rejection of metanarratives. Lyotard maintains that postmodern
incredulity toward metanarratives has resulted, first, in the
increased danger that our valuation of knowledge will be reduced to
one, totalizing standard, namely, that of an "information
commodity" produced and exchanged for the accumulation of wealth
and power (Lyotard, *Postmodern Condition*, 5). But, he
believes, the postmodern incredulity toward metanarratives has
resulted in a new possibility, too, of liberating the creation of
narrative meaning from the need to establish legitimating foundations.
Philosophers of postmodernism have sought to clarify such a postmodern
possibility for the creation of meaning through the development of
hermeneutics (see Vattimo, *Beyond Interpretation*, Gary
Madison 1989, John D. Caputo 1987, 2018; for a creative intervention
in postmodern hermeneutics, see Davey 2006). In this, hermeneutics
places stress on the possibility of interpretive experience to produce
new meaning and shifts away from concerns about truth and
existence.



Probably the most influential conception of postmodern hermeneutics is
embodied in Gianni Vattimo's notion of 'weak
thought.' Vattimo's hermeneutics is influenced not only by
figures such as Gadamer and Heidegger, but also Nietzsche, as well as
the important Italian philosopher Luigi Pareyson (see Benso, 2018). By
'weak thought,' Vattimo has in mind interpretive practices
that incrementally diminish the efficacy of narratives about the
purported 'being' of things that have been passed down
from the tradition of Western metaphysics. Vattimo embraces the
postmodern possibility to liberate the creation of meaning from any
needs for foundation or legitimacy. Building on Heidegger and
Nietzsche, Vattimo argues that despite all postmodern incredulity,
narratives passed down about the purported 'being' of
things continue to be in effect, often tacitly, in a broad range of
our current beliefs and practices. What is then called for are
interpretive practices that loosen the hold of these narratives, and
thus expose that what they have to say about the 'being'
of things are not eternal verities but, instead, mockups that are
subject to interpretive revision. Vattimo, then, defines interpretive
experience not in Gadamerian terms of a conversation that brings
something into focus in its being, as it genuinely is. Rather, he
conceives of interpretive experience as a practice of recovery, even
convalescence (*Verwindung*), that weakens the effects of
interpretations of 'being' passed down from Western
metaphysics. Indeed, Vattimo associates the possibility to liberate
meaning through weak thought as the pursuit of what he calls
'accomplished nihilism,' in that weak thought seeks to
unmask every sense of 'being' which purports to be more
than the result of an interpretation (see Vattimo, *Beyond
Interpretation*, *The End of Modernity*).


## 8. Further Developments



Research in hermeneutics is perhaps more diverse now than at any other
period in the historical movement, and has also begun to expand
interest in hermeneutical considerations to contexts such as feminist
philosophy (see Warnke 2015), comparative philosophy (see, for
example, Nelson 2017), philosophy of embodiment (see, for example,
Kearney 2015), and Latin American philosophy (see, for example, Vallega
2019). While it is impossible to gather all directions of current
research in a short article, some further developments have received
particular attention.


### 8.1 Hermeneutics in Anglo-American Philosophy



Hermeneutics, grasped as a historical movement, is typically
associated with continental European traditions of thought and the
reception of these traditions in the global context. This reception
has included contributions to the development of hermeneutics made by
noteworthy Anglo-American philosophers. Hermeneutics has been adopted
by Richard Rorty, has been connected with the later Wittgenstein and
Davidson, and has also been taken up by philosophers associated with
the so-called 'Pittsburgh school,' Robert Brandom, and
John
 McDowell.[11]



Rorty, in his now classic *Philosophy and the Mirror of
Nature*, presents a ranging critique of modern philosophy that
focuses on epistemology, especially the idea that knowledge is a
representation or mental 'mirroring' of mind-independent
reality. Against epistemology, Rorty proposes hermeneutics, which he
characterizes as "an expression of hope that the cultural space
left behind by the demise of epistemology will not be
filled..." (Rorty 1979, 315). Hermeneutics holds this void
open with what he calls 'conversation.' In this,
conversation pursues not the truth, conceived as a correspondence of
mind and mind-independent reality, but, instead, edification (Rorty
1979, 318, 360, 378). Edification, itself Rorty's proposed
translation of the German *Bildung* (Piercy 2016, 447) concerns
not truth, then, but instead the discovery of new and useful
possibilities.



Philosophers associated with the University of Pittsburgh have also
taken up and developed themes in hermeneutics. Robert Brandom, for his
part, has argued that his inferentialist approach in semantics is able
to support major tenets of Gadamerian hermeneutics, thereby suggesting
that the traditions of inferentialism and hermeneutics can complement
one another (see Brandom 2002 and 2004; see also Lafont 2007). John
McDowell, in his *Mind and World*, also introduces a notion
connected with hermeneutics. In this text, McDowell wishes to resolve
the question of how the mind, ultimately, in the
'spontaneity' or freedom of reason, relates to the world.
He argues that the question itself is a symptom of naturalism, the
idea typical of modern science that immutable laws govern everything
in nature. In this, the worry about the place of the spontaneity of
reason in nature arises precisely from our reductive conception of
nature in the first place. McDowell resolves the question of the
relation of reason and nature, then, through the proposal of an
alternative naturalism, one that treats reason as a 'second
nature,' or, a process of the realization of potentials.
McDowell draws on notions of tradition and formation
(*Bildung*) in order to clarify this second nature. He writes,
"human beings are intelligibly initiated into this stretch of
the space of reasons by ethical upbringing, which instills the
appropriate shape to their lives. The resulting habits of thought and
action are second nature" (McDowell 1994, 84).



It is an open question how consistent Rorty's, McDowell's
and Brandom's reactions to hermeneutics are with views developed
within the historical movement of
 hermeneutics.[12]
 Still, Rorty's and McDowell's respective critical stances
toward modern epistemology and science, their novel uses of the
concept of formation (*Bildung*), as well as Rorty's
novel use of the concept of conversation, place them in a productive
exchange with continental philosophical scholars on themes more
customarily associated with nineteenth- and twentieth-century German
philosophy generally as well as with the historical movement of
hermeneutics. Moreover, Rorty's turn to edification and the
discovery of novel possibilities it affords as an alternative to the
pursuit of truth places him in proximity to postmodern hermeneutics,
in
 particular.[13]


### 8.2 Hermeneutics in Ethical and Political Philosophy



Hermeneutics, since Heidegger at least, claims a special affinity with
practical philosophy. Both Heidegger and Gadamer, for example, uphold
Aristotle's ethics as an important source for their respective
approaches to interpretive
 experience.[14]
 Gadamer, in particular, develops the implications of his hermeneutics
for practical life. Although Gadamer provides no systematic ethical or
political theory, he maintains the significance of interpretive
experience as a counter to the alienation produced in modern,
bureaucratically managed society, he develops a hermeneutical approach
to the ethical significance of friendship as well as a related
approach to political solidarity (see Gadamer, "Friendship and
Solidarity"; see Vessey 2005). Moreover, Paul Ricoeur has argued
that an important test of the universality of hermeneutics is the
extension of hermeneutical considerations to the practical sphere. In
this, he clarifies that and how interpretive experience, especially
the interpretive experience of narrative, plays an important role no
less in practical agency than political critique (see Ricoeur,
*From Text to Action*).



It is therefore perhaps no surprise that several philosophers have
developed approaches and positions in ethical and political philosophy
in connection with hermeneutics. In ethical philosophy, for example,
Dennis Schmidt has recently argued that Gadamer's philosophical
hermeneutics comprises an 'original ethics,' in that
Gadamer clarifies normative implications of interpretive experience
that, however, are irreducible to any ethical system or principles
(see D. Schmidt 2008, 2012 and 2016). In political philosophy, Richard
Bernstein's considerations of human rationality 'beyond
objectivism and relativism,' and the attention he gives to
hermeneutics in this context, has been an important impetus (Bernstein
1983). Relatedly, Genevieve Lloyd has invoked hermeneutic motifs to
question norms of rationality from a feminist perspective (Lloyd
1984). Fred Dallmayr's use of Gadamer's hermeneutics in
his considerations of political theory, comparative political theory,
and inter-cultural dialogue (see for example Dallmayr 1987, 1996 and
2009) have been likewise influential. Georgia Warnke has defended
Gadamer's hermeneutics as a middle path between subjectivism and
conservatism, and, in turn, she has examined the significance of
hermeneutics for democratic theory, theories of deliberative
democracy, questions of race and identity, and solidarity (see for
example Warnke 1987, 1993, 2002, 2007 and 2012). Linda Martin
Alcoff has also drawn substantially on Gadamer's hermeneutics in
considerations of race and gender identity (see Alcoff 2006). Lauren
Swayne Barthold has drawn on hermeneutics to develop a feminist
approach to social identity and, more recently, to examine the
significance of civic dialogue to foster pluralistic, democratic
communities (see Barthold 2016 and 2020).


### 8.3 The Return of Normativity to Hermeneutics



Recent research in hermeneutics has seen a rise of interest in the
role played in interpretive experience by a number of normative
matters. In this, some argue that the influence of Heidegger and
Gadamer over contemporary hermeneutics has led to a neglect of
normative considerations in current debate. To be sure, it is possible
to defend Heidegger and Gadamer against the charge that their
approaches leave too little room for normative considerations. When it
comes to Heidegger, Steven Crowell, for example, argues that
phenomenology as conceived by Husserl and Heidegger can itself be
grasped as inquiry into a "normatively structured 'space
of meaning'" (Crowell 2016, 238). Crowell, in his
consideration of Heidegger, focuses on Heidegger's analysis of
human existence, arguing that Heidegger's view of the role
played by care in human existence speaks to the possibility of being
responsive to norms as such (Crowell 2013). When it comes to Gadamer,
attempts to defend his philosophical hermeneutics against charges that
it neglects normative concerns have played an important role in debate
since Habermas first raised objections against Gadamer.



Recent interest in the role played in interpretive experience by
normative considerations, though, has also led to a revival of
interest in these matters in hermeneutics before Heidegger. Kristin
Gjesdal, in her recent *Gadamer and the Legacy of German
Idealism*, for example, recommends that we return to
Schleiermacher in order to focus attention on
"critical-normative standards in interpretation" (Gjesdal
2009, 7). Rudolf Makkreel, in his recent *Orientation and Judgment
in Hermeneutics*, argues for the priority of judgment, and with
it, reflection and criticism, in interpretive experience. Really,
Makkreel's project is to develop an original position or
approach within hermeneutics in its own right, one that takes up
hermeneutical considerations in our contemporary, multi-cultural
context, and that relies on a broad range of philosophers associated
with hermeneutics. But, he develops his view of judgment, and the
normative considerations involved in it, in reference to Kant and
Dilthey in particular.


### 8.4 Hermeneutics and New Realism



Recent developments in hermeneutics have arisen in response to
'new realism.' This school of thought is represented
especially by philosophers Maurizio Ferraris and Markus Gabriel, and
invites comparisons with the 'speculative realism' of
philosophers such as Quentin Meillassoux and Graham Harman (see
Ferraris 2012, Gabriel 2015, Gabriel 2020, Meillassoux 2008; Harman
2018). The new orientation toward realism is characterized, first of
all, by a rejection of a common thesis of postmodern and radical
constructivism: the position that our interpretations are constitutive
of what we otherwise call reality. To this extent, the new interest in
realism is compatible with other forms of realism. Yet, new realism
opposes not only radical constructivism but also a basic tenet of
metaphysical realism: the idea that reality is comprised exclusively
of mind-independent things. One of the most influential approaches of
such new-realist opposition against metaphysical realism is found in
Gabriel. He makes a distinction between metaphysics and ontology, and
argues in his new realist ontology that what we usually associate with
mind, namely, our descriptions or interpretations of things, are no
less real than what they relate to. Such descriptions or
interpretations are rather distinguished by their function, which is
to individuate (Gabriel 2015, 9-11).



The rise of this orientation toward realism has garnered significant
attention in its own right. Especially important for contemporary
hermeneutics, however, is that this new orientation toward realism has
been an impetus for new developments. At one extreme, the rise of
realism has recently led Gianni Vattimo not only to defend his
postmodern hermeneutics against realism, but, moreover to develop a
polemical critique of the motivations, philosophical and otherwise, to
pursue realism. In this, Vattimo maintains that the rise of realism is
motivated, in part, by a conservative reactionism against the
consequences of postmodernism. He writes, for example, that among
other roots of realism is "the fundamental neurosis that follows
the late-industrial society as the regressive reaction of defense
against the postmodern Babel of languages and values" (Vattimo
2016, 77).



Other developments within hermeneutics have been much more favorable
toward the renewed interest in realism. Some philosophers, such as
Gunter Figal and Anton Koch, have discerned important affinities
between hermeneutics and new realism, and, in turn, have developed
positions that they have identified as 'hermeneutical
realism.' Hermeneutical realism opposes the postmodern view that
interpretations constitute reality, maintaining, by contrast, that
interpretive experience belongs to reality. Figal, in his
hermeneutical realism, develops his realistic approach principally in
terms of the phenomenological problem of appearance. In this, he
focuses on space, grasped as what first places us in referential
relations to objects, and, with this, makes available interpretive
possibilities to determine the sense of them (Figal, 2009, 2010 and
2015). Koch, for his part, develops his hermeneutical realism on the
basis of motifs found in German Idealism, arguing for the necessity of
the subject, grasped in its spatio-temporal, corporeal, and living
subjectivity, as what makes things interpretable (as he has it,
readable and translatable) (Koch 2016 and 2019). Thus, on his view,
while real things are independent of individual interpretations, such
things are not independent of being interpretable in general.



Finally, hermeneutical realism has also led to novel research on
classical figures in hermeneutics. Whereas Vattimo, for example, sees
in Gadamer the seeds of his postmodern hermeneutics (see Vattimo,
"Story of a Comma"), Figal, by contrast, brings into focus
the realism of Gadamer's concern for the substantiveness
(*Sachlichkeit*) of interpretive experience (see Figal 2010, 2).
Moreover, some philosophers have found that hermeneutical realism
sheds light on central motifs of the later Heidegger (Keiling
2018).