Introduction to Phenomenology by Moran Dermot

Author:Moran, Dermot.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-134-67105-2
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Gadamer’s influence

Gadamer has inspired a whole generation of students as a living exemplification of his own commitment to dialogue. He has been responsible for reviving the hermeneutical tradition and, along with Paul Ricoeur, for bringing it centre stage in contemporary European philosophy. He has, however, been criticised by other exponents of hermeneutics, for example E. D. Hirsch and Emilio Betti, for failing to put forward criteria for validating interpretations.46 How does Gadamer distinguish false from true interpretations? Gadamer’s acceptance of Heidegger’s concept of truth means that he has little use for truth as correctness, and indeed for the notion of measuring truth against falsity. He is clearly more concerned with the phenomenological description of what takes place in the effort to gain understanding, and in recognising the historical ebb and flow of understanding, than with judging the correctness of any particular interpretation. Thus, he readily acknowledges that misinterpretation has as much to teach us as genuine interpretation. However, it is still not clear how he deems an interpretation to be a misinterpretation. Gadamer is reluctant to state in advance the criteria for successful communication and understanding, and indeed seems not to have criteria for distinguishing interpretations at all.

As we have already indicated throughout this chapter, Gadamer has been involved in a long-running debate with Jürgen Habermas.47 Habermas has criticised Gadamer both for a kind of ‘linguistic idealism’ (Sprachidealismus) which elevates language above human beings, and also for neglecting, in his account of reaching consensus in understanding, the manner in which such a consensus can be ideologically distorted. Dialogue is shared understanding, but it may also be an exercise in power and domination. Authority (as legitimated by tradition) is not the same as genuine knowledge, though Gadamer does not appear to appreciate this point, according to Habermas. Habermas suspects that Gadamer sides too much with the conservatism of tradition, and insists that even a reappropriation of tradition is not sufficient to liberate us from domination, and to achieve a genuinely communicative reason. Gadamer, in response, has defended the ability of hermeneutical reflection to cut through ideological distortion and mistaken self-understanding. Gadamer has himself acknowledged that he can be seen as too optimistic. In the Foreword to the Second Edition of Truth and Method he posed himself the question:

Does not the universality of understanding involve a one-sidedness in its contents, since it lacks a critical principle in relation to tradition and, as it were, espouses a universal optimism?

(TM xxxvii; xxiii)

Does it not belong to the nature of our relation to tradition that we can break with tradition? Gadamer acknowledges that he has emphasised the moment of assimilation of the tradition over moments of criticism, but his philosophy does not deny the perennial need for vigilance in terms of what is taken over from the tradition. However, there is a sense in which Gadamer’s philosophy supports a very conservative view of tradition, especially in its understanding of prejudice as possessing authority. Gadamer does not seem to have learned the lesson of the Nazi

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