Carlos G. Tee (鄭永康)摘要

April, 2010

A Prelude to Gadamer and Philosophical Hermeneutics

In Philosophical Hermeneutics and Literary Theory, Joel Weinsheimer sums up the major issues of philosophical hermeneutics by tracing the development of Hans-Georg Gadamer's celebrated work, Truth and Method.

In the first chapter, Weinsheimer emphasizes historicity as being crucial in hermeneutics. Here, Weinsheimer, heavily influenced by Kant's transcendentalism, argues that historical knowledge “possesses a more immediate ground of intelligibility and reliability than natural science” (6). For him, the historical world shows far more intrinsic connection and relation among experiences than in the natural world.

Weinsheimer also shows agreement with Heidegger's emphasis on the ontological in hermeneutics, citing the latter's argument that “understanding is not only a way of knowing but also of being (7). Heidegger proposes the idea of covered-up-ness (8), whose uncovering is the goal of interpretation. This is similar to “obscurity” and “secrecy” in Frank Kermode's hermeneutics. For Heidegger, meaning exists before interpretation and this ontological basis further serves as his point of departure in hermeneutics. For Heidegger, therefore, “the coming to be—the unfolding or explication—of what Dasein can be” is what he calls interpretation (10).

While the hermeneutical circle has been discussed in terms of space—parts versus whole—Heidegger takes it to have temporal dimensions. Thus, the so-called whole is understood as ‘a whole historical world' or a “past world already understood that is continually modified in interpretation' (10). According to Weinsheimer, the “prior understanding of the whole Gadamer calls prejudice,” which may be either true or false. And it is precisely the task of interpretation to ‘sort out the true from the false ones' (15). For Gadamer, therefore, a true interpretation “is one that has performed this discrimination of false from true prejudices” (15).

One important notion of Gadamer is “fusion of horizons,” in which text and interpreter continue to engage in dialogue.

For Weinsheimer, interpretation is a never-ending unveiling, thereby suggesting the “inexhaustibility of interpretation” (19). Weinsheimer quotes Gadamer in saying that:

It is part of the Hermeneutic approach to project a historical horizon that is different from the present. Historical consciousness is aware of its own otherness and hence foregrounds the horizon of the past from its own. (85)

Weinsheimer explains that Gadamer's purpose in philosophical hermeneutics is neither to establish normative principles or methodology nor to offer some theory, but rather “to discover what is common to all modes of understanding” (27). Method does not exhaust truth. Instead, truth exceeds method (29). Therefore, philosophical hermeneutics starts from where theory and methods have left off. Weinsheimer contends that philosophical hermeneutics' lack of practical application may spell defeatism (33) and fatalism, but reasons out that in literature, tragedy too has no practical meaning yet it makes possible catharsis. While Weinsheimer puts emphasis on the philosophical implications of Gadamer's hermeneutics, he stresses that reflective practice (italics mine) is needed to tell true prejudice from the false (40). Weinsheimer concludes that hermeneutic activity is the subject's action, while philosophical hermeneutics is a passion.

While he admits that Gadamer has little to say about metaphors, Weinsheimer discusses at length the issue of the metaphoricity of language. Here, he draws from Paul Ricoeur who discusses a dialectic between understanding metaphors and understanding of texts (65), in which the metaphorical is said to make the speculative better understood. However, Gadamer, according to Weinsheimer, contends that the speculative is also plurisignificant like the metaphorical (67) and that it does not need metaphors to ‘rouse it from moribundity' (68).  Weinsheimer argues that metaphor is the linguistic correlate of Gadamer's Bildung of spirit (73).

Weinsheimer explains that the concept of interpretation has two poles: pole of correctness and pole of creativity. The former means that it is not true that in interpretation anything goes (88) while the former rejects the idea that there is only one correct interpretation.

For Gadamer, a word is not just a sign; it is also something like a copy or image (88). Here, Gadamer contradicts Ferdinand de Saussure by denying the sufficiency of the semiotic concept of language. However, Gadamer agrees with Saussure that symbol is the contrary of sign. For him, symbol is “the coincidence of the sensible appearance and suprasensible meaning” (91). Gadamer draws from Ernst Cassirer's neo-Kantian equation of symbolic form and sign (90), and again differing from Saussure, believes that language is form not substance, and therefore symbolic. For Cassirer, words are imperfect representatives of signs, and for this reason, linguistics cannot be the master-pattern for semiology as Saussure argues. Instead, it must be mathematics. For Weinsheimer, interpreting is not copying but creating something new, and this new interpretation is itself the understanding of the text.

Work Cited

Weinsheimer, Joel. Philosophical Hermeneutics and Literary Theory. New Haven: Yale UP, 1991.