Truth and Method by Gadamer Hans-Georg

Author:Gadamer, Hans-Georg
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

The recovery of the fundamental hermeneutic problem

The hermeneutic problem of application

In the early tradition of hermeneutics, which was completely invisible to the historical self-consciousness of post-romantic scientific epistemology, this problem had its systematic place. Hermeneutics was subdivided as follows: there was a distinction between subtilitas intelligendi (understanding) and subtilitas explicandi (interpretation); and pietism added a third element, subtilitas applicandi (application), as in J. J. Rambach. The process of understanding was regarded as consisting of these three elements. It is notable that all three are called subtilitas—i.e., they are considered less as methods that we have at our disposal than as talents requiring particular finesse of mind.51 As we have seen, the hermeneutic problem acquired systematic importance because the romantics recognized the inner unity of intelligere and explicare. Interpretation is not an occasional, post facto supplement to understanding; rather, understanding is always interpretation, and hence interpretation is the explicit form of understanding. In accordance with this insight, interpretive language and concepts were recognized as belonging to the inner structure of understanding. This moves the whole problem of language from its peripheral and incidental position into the center of philosophy. We will return to this point.

The inner fusion of understanding and interpretation led to the third element in the hermeneutical problem, application, becoming wholly excluded from any connection with hermeneutics. The edifying application of Scripture in Christian preaching, for example, now seemed very different from the historical and theological understanding of it. In the course of our reflections we have come to see that understanding always involves something like applying the text to be understood to the interpreter’s present situation. Thus we are forced to go one step beyond romantic hermeneutics, as it were, by regarding not only understanding and interpretation, but also application as comprising one unified process. This is not to return to the pietist tradition of the three separate “subtleties,” for, on the contrary, we consider application to be just as integral a part of the hermeneutical process as are understanding and interpretation.52

The current state of the hermeneutical discussion is what occasions my emphasizing the fundamental importance of this point. We can appeal first to the forgotten history of hermeneutics. Formerly it was considered obvious that the task of hermeneutics was to adapt the text’s meaning to the concrete situation to which the text is speaking. The interpreter of the divine will who can interpret the oracle’s language is the original model for this. But even today it is still the case that an interpreter’s task is not simply to repeat what one of the partners says in the discussion he is translating, but to express what is said in the way that seems most appropriate to him, considering the real situation of the dialogue, which only he knows, since he alone knows both languages being used in the discussion.

Similarly, the history of hermeneutics teaches us that besides literary hermeneutics, there is also a theological and a legal hermeneutics, and together they make up the full concept of hermeneutics.

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