6 An Ethics Close to Life
Nevertheless, the thought here cannot be that one learns how to live in the right way, and is finally capable of it, in the manner in which one learns how to sing, speak or write. (IG 121/GW7 196)
The Aristotelian concept of practice has yet another specific emphasis inasmuch as it is applied to the status of a free citizen in the polis. This is where human practice exists in the eminent sense of the word. (RAS 91/VZW 81)
. . . if the essence of a utopia could be defined other than in the form of a distant longing. (GW7 277)
1. Is a Philosophical Ethics Possible?
To understand means to apply; understanding is always put into practice and thus becomes a form of action in itself, in the world, and with others. It should come as no surprise that hermeneutics, as it recuperates the theoretical as well as practical value it has had since antiquity, develops in proximity to practical philosophy. Gadamer emphasizes this point in his 1972 essay, “Hermeneutics as Practical Philosophy” (RAS 88–112/VZW 78–109). Here the ethical dimension of hermeneutics becomes clearer: it does not lie in understanding as such, and even less in the alleged task or duty of understanding, but rather in the openness of hermeneutic consciousness, which is pushed to overcome its own limits in the “beyond” offered by the other, and to raise itself to ethical vigilance.
Considered more closely, Gadamer’s path of thought was marked by ethics even prior to hermeneutics. The influence of the Marburg School, Hartmann’s role in bringing him closer to Scheler’s value ethics, and finally Heidegger’s famous seminar from 1923 in Freiburg on the sixth book of the Nicomachean Ethics—all these contribute to awakening Gadamer’s attention to ethics, which never subsided.1 His writings bear witness to this: his Master’s thesis from 1922; the essay “Der aristotelische ‘Protreptikos’” from 1927; the important essay “Practical Knowledge,” which was long unpublished and goes back to 1930; the 1931 book on Plato’s Dialectical Ethics; the chapter on Aristotle appended to “The Problem of Historical Consciousness” that is taken up again in the excursus of Truth and Method; and the more than twenty essays from his later years on this topic.2 Finally, in 1998, Klostermann published Gadamer’s edition of the sixth book of the Nicomachean Ethics.3
The rediscovery in recent decades of the relevance of the Greek philosophers’ ethics and politics is in large part due to philosophical hermeneutics. In particular, Gadamer’s reading of Aristotle brought ethical questions back to the center of philosophical debate, and especially in Germany led to the “rehabilitation of practical philosophy.”4 However, not only his return to Aristotle but also his entire view of ethics has often been misunderstood. Gadamer has been accused of ethical relativism, though this would be a charge more appropriate to “Neo-Aristotelianism.” There has even been a certain dismissal of his project because one assumes that Heidegger had already, years before, said everything there was to say about Aristotle and practical philosophy.
In an important 1963 essay entitled “On the Possibility of a Philosophical Ethics,” which has probably provoked the greatest reaction, Gadamer plays Aristotle off against Kant.5 It would be a trivial misunderstanding, however, to read this essay as supporting Aristotelian relativism against Kantian universalism. The primary question addresses the very possibility of a philosophical ethics, in other words the “foundation” of ethics in Husserl’s sense, as Gadamer states more precisely later in the 1989 essay, “Aristotle and Imperative Ethics,” when he returns to the problem.6 Here there lies concealed a “nearly indissoluble aporia” that appears when ethics, in order to become philosophical, reaches the level of a reflection on the universal (HRE 19/GW4 176). A philosophical ethics that wants to be unconditional and absolute is, however, an ethics that is at a remove from life—as Kierkegaard showed—and separated from any concrete situation that would call for a decision. Kant made two important contributions: on the one hand he exposed the arrogance of Enlightenment ethics when he showed that the “voice of reason” can be heard by everyone; on the other hand he secured the universal absoluteness of a moral law that is free from all inclinations and interests, and in which good will expresses itself. Thus, what is the trouble with imperative ethics? Certainly not its universality, but rather a kind of intellectualism that makes the rightness of moral action depend on an abstract norm, as if the person acting were always able to recognize the norm objectively and with the necessary detachment. In this way, however, moral action is reduced to the paradigm of a method. And if in contemporary ethics the concept of “norm” dominates, shaped by the model of scientific laws, one reason is because Kant formulated the categorical imperative as a law of nature. Gerhard Krüger clarified this issue: Kant’s ethics presumes that the moral law has already been recognized.7 The example used to discuss this argument is suicide. According to the categorical imperative, in which one’s own maxims should be as valid as a universal law, the suicidal person, as long as he is in possession of reason, should not be able to overlook the indefensibility of his decision. This way of looking at things is, however, far too intellectualistic: it is unlikely that anyone haunted by thoughts of suicide will possess sufficient reason to reflect on the unlawfulness of his or her own deed. Kant measures reflection in accordance with the ideal of objective knowledge, which he binds his ethics to when he characterizes the limits of judgment as an index of both the obfuscation of purity and heteronomy. But does one not lose sight this way of the particularity of moral action, when action is not based solely on knowledge, much less objective knowledge? Are there really absolute norms to which moral action must conform, or are we not rather dealing with a kind of lawfulness that, quite different from scientific law, recalls the Jewish Torah or the nómoi of the Greeks?
First and foremost, Gadamer’s critique of Kant warns against an ethics at a distance from the situation in which the person who must act finds himself, and which subsequently covers over the concrete demands of the situation by abstracting from an “exceptional situation”—which ultimately is no exception if one remembers that “the temptation to consider oneself an exception is a universal human situation” (HRE 26/ GW4 181). By placing the accent on the situation, from which no one, least of all the philosopher, can claim to escape, Gadamer shows the impossibility of a philosophical ethics that is unaware of its own open-endedness, that refuses to take this open-endedness as its essential content—for only in this way can ethics claim to satisfy the unconditionality of the moral: “This means, however, that philosophical ethics occurs in the same situation where everyone else finds themselves” (HRE 28/GW4 184).8 The philosopher who is concerned with ethics is thus not an expert who knows more than others and can give recommendations, construct new laws, or write new stone tablets—on the contrary, he is much more in danger of fleeing the situation.9 Experts in ethics, bioethics, and business ethics create a problem, as indeed every other “expert” does, too, because ultimately they claim the decision making for themselves and thereby take away responsibility from others. And it is far from evident that they are wiser.
2. Phrónesis: Acting Reasonably
We are generally dissatisfied with the definition of the good, because we would want to know what the good is in order to put it into practice. Hence philosophical ethics cannot be separated from practical ethics: it is precisely in ethics where the inescapable transition from theory to practice becomes clear. Here lies the relevance of Aristotle: his entire ethics is predicated by that “other kind of knowing” that is at stake in life (HRE 148/GW7 388).10
In his critique of the “theoretical subject” of metaphysics, which in contrast to Dasein is artificially cut off from understanding themselves in their care for the world, Heidegger made a decisive step toward the rediscovery of practical knowledge. Traces of this critique are to be found in his 1921–23 lectures on Aristotle, in the Natorpbericht, and in his study of book 6 of the Nicomachean Ethics, which was first conducted in 1923 in Freiburg as a seminar and then revisited in 1924–25 in his Marburg lectures.11 It is therefore certainly true that Heidegger’s early phenomenological research led the way to the rehabilitation of practical philosophy; but it is just as true that the ethical dimension of Heidegger’s thought, which is much discussed today, leaves the care for others in the dark as it focuses on care for the self.12 It is no coincidence that after 1945 his closest students turned to ethics: from Krüger, who takes up Kantian morality, and Hannah Arendt, who brings the vita activa to its high point, to Leo Strauss, who highlights the Greek natural law, along with those who invoke Heidegger only indirectly, above all Emmanuel Lévinas, who raises ethics to First Philosophy. All of these philosophers begin with the priority of the other and ask less about individual action than about collective and communicative action.13 Gadamer belongs among these philosophers. His rehabilitation of practical philosophy, even though it was certainly influenced by Heidegger’s starting point, follows another path instead, which is clear already in the 1930 essay “Practical Knowledge” (GW5 230–248) and which is taken up again later in the chapter on “The Hermeneutic Relevance of Aristotle” in Truth and Method (TM 312–324/GW1 317–329). This chapter, which signals the rebirth of practical philosophy in the twentieth century, outlines in just a few pages at least four key ideas: the autonomy and particularity of practical actions; the value of phrónesis, which Gadamer translates as “reasonableness” and which guides human behavior; the necessity of taking ethós into consideration, in particular the context in which ethico-political relations orient action; and finally his view of a necessarily dialectical path for ethics, in which the theoretical search for the good, which is articulated in the dialogue with the other, is already in itself a realization of the practical good.
Yet how does Gadamer’s position actually differ from Heidegger’s? Their perspectives are different and to a certain extent even opposed. Heidegger leaves Plato behind in order to turn to Aristotle, whereby he does not have phrónesis in mind as much in mind as sophía, which ultimately forms the basis on which he develops his theoretical philosophy.14 By contrast, Gadamer reads Aristotelian ethics in the light of Plato’s dialectic, and Aristotle interests him only to the extent that he can be more Socratic than Socrates himself—as is shown clearly through his entire confrontation with Greek philosophy.15 Given his Platonic perspective, which also stresses the unity of theory and practice, it is not surprising that Gadamer sees practical wisdom less in its individual and more in its communitarian dimension.16 Gadamer’s attention is not so much turned to the relation between sophía and phrónesis, but rather to the relation between phrónesis and téchne. This relationship, which runs through his entire account of Greek philosophy, embodies in a nutshell the distinction between “truth” and “method.”17 Although the chapter on Aristotle deals with philosophical problems of considerable weight, as for example the problem of “application,” and hence the problem of a new concept of the “universal” that cannot be imposed on concrete particulars, the “hermeneutic relevance” of Aristotelian ethics lies for Gadamer in the new paradigm offered by phrónesis. The core of Gadamer’s argument lies precisely in delimiting the practical knowledge of phrónesis. Such delimiting creates no difficulties for the theoretical knowledge of epistéme or science, which, as mathematics shows, is knowledge of what is immutable and objectively proven. This is all the more true for sóphia, which thinks the immutable being of things on the basis of its principles. Those who know a great deal are often not at all wise; they may know “marvelous things” and yet still overlook human goods.18
The relationship between phrónesis and téchne is much more complex: practical knowledge is both the wisdom that guides action (práxis) and the skill that guides the craftsman in the production of things (poíesis). So what distinguishes the two? For example, what is the difference between the knowledge that guides my behavior and the knowledge that governs the way in which I fashion clay into a vase? In order to create a vase, I must in the first place have learned a téchne—otherwise I would not know how to proceed. A téchne can be learned, but also forgotten (TM 317/GW1 322).19 Ethical knowledge is different. I can of course choose whether I want to learn an art or take up a profession, and I can choose to give up my work, or to interrupt it, in order to rest. But I cannot withdraw from the constitutive human situation that compels me to act, that is, to make decisions. “The human being always already stands within the realm of what is at stake in phrónesis” (GW5 242). Here it is not a matter of learning or teaching, and also not a matter of training, as in the sense of perfecting technical knowledge. It is senseless to devote oneself to the chimera of a technical knowledge that could lessen or even abolish the toil of a day’s deliberation. This toil, this work is so complex because it is not limited to discovering the means useful for reaching some specific end. Here a second important difference comes into view, which concerns the relationship between means and ends. Ethical knowledge is never entirely complete before its application, and thus it is not in any way objectifiable or objectified, so that the appropriate means for reaching an end could be learned or taught. The very choice of means is an ethical question. What is more important is that here one must make a decision about the goal. “There is no pre-existing certainty about what the good life is directed toward as a whole” (TM 318/GW1 326). This should not mean that ethics does not establish ideal models to show the right mean point or the midpoint we ought to aim for—much as the archer effectively aims at his target by looking at a particular point; but it cannot guarantee that the center will be hit.20 To hit the center means to apply knowledge to the situation at that moment. Perfection lies in making the right decision at the right moment, without letting the kairós slip away. Such a hit is not seeing in the sense of pure seeing, but rather intuiting, through noûs, of what the right thing to do would be. What would be the opposite of this? Not error or illusion, but being blinded or dazzled. Whoever is overcome by the passions loses sight of the goal and can no longer keep moving in the right direction (TM 319/GW1 327).
For Gadamer’s argument, however, a further distinction is more significant, that between ethical and technical knowledge, which also bears on the distinction between acting and making. To understand it one must refer back to Aristotle’s famous distinction between érgon and enérgeia, or between the work itself and the activity of working.21 All human activity can be divided here: either it is a making that has its goal in some external work (érgon), or it is an action that carries its goal within itself. The examples Aristotle uses are of building and seeing: whereas the activity of building is completed in the built house, the goal of seeing coincides with the activity itself. When I fashion a vase, my work ends in the product. My ethical action has, by contrast, its goal in itself. More than doing it is Being, indeed it is one’s very manner of Being in the world. You are how you comport yourself. This perspective brings the distinction between ethical and practical knowledge more clearly into view. According to practical knowledge, the produced object is separate from me. Yet in ethical action, I cannot deal with myself as if I were an object. What is clearly missing here is the detachment that makes it possible to look at myself in the way one looks at an object, for one is always already involved in the situation in which one must act. Practical ethical knowledge is a “self-knowing” that takes the form of neither objectification nor detachment from oneself, but is given rather in the form of “vigilance” (GW5 238).
If hermeneutic ethics, which is so close to life and hence fundamentally antinormative, questions every a priori norm, it does not follow that, as a countermove, the situation or even the éthos becomes normative, in other words the totality of “those convictions, values, habits we all hold in common” (GW2 319–329, 325).22 Otherwise the role of the phrónesis of every individual would be undervalued. The dialogical relation between language and speaker can clarify this ethical model (EPH 165–180, 178/GW2 155–173, 170). On the basis of the ethical order of the pólis, everyone acts in accordance with his phrónesis by virtue of articulating the éthos in light of the individual situation. One can, by recognizing what is “doable,” what is both appropriate and right, take aim at the center, actually find the mean and realize the good, the prákton agathón. Thus “the good is in the first place nothing more than the logos shared by the community” (IG 147/GW7 208).
Our action, the prohaíresis or “choice of the better,” that self-projection into the future of possibility that defines our Being, always occurs “within the horizon of the polis” (HRE 29, 31/GW4 185, 188). Or to put it another way: ethical action is also always political action. This explains Gadamer’s attention to those “modifications” in Aristotle’s discussion of phrónesis in the Nicomachean Ethics (TM 319/GW1 328).23 What becomes more important is the reference to responsibility, not only to oneself, but also to the other, a responsibility included in phrónesis when Aristotle speaks of sýnesis. Phrónesis leads to a decision involving consultation with the self that is always consultation with others. Just as my consultation is never abstract and isolated, phrónesis is not individual wisdom, for it is inseparable from sýnesis, or sympathetic understanding, which makes it possible for me to grasp the action of the other. The ability to have insight and patience, to discriminate correctly, to enter into the situation of the other and thus to judge correctly (the Aristotelian concepts are gnóme, syngnóme, and epeikeîa), is possible only on the basis of that “belonging” which always already binds me to the other in the community. On the one hand this “belonging” prevents me from adopting an external, disinterested standpoint, but on the other hand it allows me to give and accept advice—all this in the name of friendship.
3. The Unity of Theory and Practice
Even if his position on an ethics close to life emphasizes the transition from theory to practice, it does not follow that Gadamer agrees with those who denigrate theory. Rather the opposite is the case. He published Praise of Theory in 1983, where he suggests a new way of seeing theory and practice that conceives of their relationship as a substantial continuity. It should also be clear that philosophical hermeneutics, even though it understands itself to be a practical philosophy, in no way relinquishes its claim to be a theoretical philosophy.
The antagonism between theory and practice, which is so widespread today, can be encapsulated in a familiar turn of phrase: “That is all pure theory; but what happens in practice?” Nevertheless the new evaluation of practice brings about a new evaluation of theory. What has happened, instead, over the last centuries? On the one hand theory has lost prestige and been reduced to a purely instrumental concept, used in the service of new scientific insights. On the other hand practice has sunk to the level of mere scientific application. In order to rediscover the value of theory and practice, the context of Greek philosophy should be taken into account, in which theoría is a form of práxis. The most active ones are those engaged in the activity of thinking.24 Important here is the translation of theoreín, which has more the meaning of “participating in” than of “looking at,” as for example participating in the sacredness of a festival or art.25 To go beyond oneself and to dwell in or with another means being-there, being alive.26 Thus theory is a form of life; indeed it is the highest form, just as the eye that guides it seeks the highest point. Theory is a way of acting, living, and being there with and through others, an active participation in what suddenly appears and offers itself to everyone as “shared property” (RAS 77/VZW 64). In contrast to the goods that remain only private and dwindle when they are shared with others, the good that is at stake in theory is never private, but always held in common, and far from dwindling, it becomes greater and grows when it is shared with others (PT 31/LT 45). If theory is an action that is ultimately a practice, then practice for its part is always already theory. For it is a looking away from oneself in order to turn toward others and, together with them, to strive for what is right or the common good (PT 33/LT 47–48). “Practice is conducting oneself and acting in solidarity” (RAS 87/VZW 77). The gesture beyond the self and the participation in what is shared by all mark the continuity between theory and practice.
Gadamer means here the specifics of human practice. Every living being can be described in terms of practice. But in the case of animals, their behavior is bound to nature and the instinct for self-preservation. Human beings can free themselves from the cycle of nature; our actions transgress the immediate requirements of life. Survival is a living beyond oneself that is confirmed in the burial of the dead—a decisive step in becoming human.27 As Hegel already emphasized, survival manifests itself in the enormous renunciation of work, whose product belongs less to the individual than to the community. Survival is just as evident in language, which, taking distance from what is present, and making present what is distant, allows us to exercise prohaíresis, that is, the preliminary choice, and it allows us to deliberate on the realization of future common goals. Here can be grasped the political character of human practice, whose ethos is articulated as lógos and forms the foundation of the pólis.
4. The Technological Rationalization of Life: On the Art of Healing
When practice is reduced to an anonymous application, to Technik—mere technique, technology, or method—freedom almost disappears. Not only does production dominate action, but production is no longer oriented toward a naturally given model; instead it aims to replace nature itself with an “artificial counter-reality” (EH 6 /UVG 18). A totalizing technological civilization not only leads to the artificial transformation of nature and the conquest of space, but brings with it an escalating rational control over ever greater areas of human life. This modification of life has consequences that remain unknown and difficult to gauge. The only certainty is that it favors the “tendency towards conformity” and disadvantages “creative capacity” or the power of judgment (RAS 81/VZW 60). In the closed laboratory of the earth, space of what is common to all is dwindling. Clearly, the endless search for profit grants priority to private goods. As “if the world was a single, large factory,” it should come as no surprise that economic rationality dominates over social rationality (EPH 166/GW2 156). At the same time, though, a simple critique of technology, like any cultural critique, carries “little conviction,” since it enjoys the benefits of what it criticizes (EPH 169/GW2 159). Emotional resistance to the new and superstition, which often takes the form of a flight from freedom, are extreme reactions that only show how little humanity is prepared for the progress of technology (EH 1–30/UVG 11–49).
Yet the consequences of this progress should not be blamed on science. Even if science is able to demythologize itself, action is once again the task of politics. For Gadamer this means developing “an awareness out of necessity once again of new normative and common solidarities,” the need to generate cohesion precisely where division holds sway, and to show that our very “extant differences” ultimately bring us together (RAS 87/VZW 76; EPH 178/GW2 171). It is politics that must show science its limits, for whatever the capabilities of science, it “will not be able to exceed a measure which perhaps no one knows and to which, nevertheless, we are all subject” (EPH 180/GW2 173).
It is also true, however, that while the opposition between political action and technical production has become extremely tense, the realm of action for politics has increasingly narrowed. The technical rationalization of life, which translates into an escalation of the means for exercising control, leads to disorientation and makes the choice of ends superfluous. Moreover, the relationship between means and ends has been entirely reversed. This reversal can be seen for example in the language of computer science, which excludes all ends that cannot be codified by the means at its disposal. According to this view, only that which can be codified and communicated can be thought. This is just one example among many. In fact this reversal has a bearing on all forms of life, where we enjoy the extraordinary powers that technology offers and where, in comparison with the past, we can do more. But this “more” casts a shadow on what we can no longer make, and perhaps it is not even what we wanted to make. The pact we have made with technology forces us to renounce our freedom of action. Often unconsciously we put our choices in the hands of those who know the means better than we do: the experts.
In his 1989 essay “The Limitations of the Expert,” Gadamer stresses the irreplaceability of this figure who mediates between scientific knowledge and its social effects (EPH 181–192/EE 136–157). Nevertheless, he says, the risks of a “society of experts” based on specialization should be discussed. The expert is the one who has a particular knowledge at his disposal and as such must be listened to; but there is no guarantee that he is wiser or more experienced than others. For this reason, it would be a mistake to give him the final decision and the last word. This would have the devastating effect, among others, of the majority relinquishing their responsibility and surrendering their possibilities for action and decision. The result would be a further erosion of the social rationality that should guide us in the choice of common goals, and hence a widespread irrationality.
If the possibilities for action are narrowed, this will also reduce that fragile site equilibrium that enables human life to find a way from destinal “eccentricity” back to its center (EH 12/UVG 26). It is precisely medicine, because it is concerned with this balance, that shows how important practical experience and judgment are. Gadamer’s 1993 book, The Enigma of Health, expresses his interest in the “art of healing.” It was written not only for doctors and patients but for all, since everyone must learn how to care for themselves. In this book, Gadamer explores the unique ambiguity of medicine from the standpoint of the enigmatic complexity of good health. Despite tremendous technical and scientific progress, medicine still requires practical knowledge and the decision-making prowess of the physician. Medicine’s distinctive character lies in the fact that its results do not culminate in a product—although the trend toward hospitalization and the treatment of patients as objects, as sick bodies, grows increasingly stronger. The task of the physician is to heal, that is, to restore the natural balance (EH13/UVG 26).28 Medicine is thus the very art of balance that works together with nature and so manifests a clear hermeneutic vocation: not only because the physician is also a patient but because the treatment, like any good interpretation, succeeds only when it withdraws in order to restore that balance (EH 31–42/UVG 50–64).29 The disappearance of the physician, who withdraws in order to leave the patient free again, is even more important for psychiatry. In a lecture from 1989 entitled “Hermeneutics and Psychiatry,” Gadamer insists above all on the participatory relationship: if the one who heals is himself a patient, then the one who is the patient will not be condemned to the passivity of taking medication, but rather will be called to the active care of the self (EH 138–151/UVG 201–213). Nothing should be simply and completely entrusted to the expert, least of all the balance of one’s life, for action that allows participation in the community is the inalienable right of all.
5. “Thinking in Utopias”: The Philosopher and the Polis
From the 1930s on, Gadamer’s political thinking unfolded with unmistakable continuity within the framework of his engagement with Plato’s philosophy, and specifically with the Republic. Gadamer’s political thinking is closely aligned with his project of a philosophical ethics. The concept of “utopia” is the pivotal moment of this project, and over the years it becomes ever more important in Gadamer’s thinking until it ultimately characterizes a way of thought. Hermeneutics, as political philosophy, is necessarily thinking in utopias. But what does utopia mean?
A utopia is “far removed from any reality”: Gadamer describes it this way already in his 1942 essay, “Plato’s Educational State” (DDP 73/GW5 251), and later he often returns to this designation (RAS 80/VZW 67). In order to understand the meaning he attributes to “utopia” we should go back to the lecture of 1934, “Plato and the Poets,” before looking at the important essay of 1982, “Plato’s Thinking in Utopias,” in which he defends the critical significance of Plato’s utopia in a polemical discussion with Karl Popper.30
How was Socrates possible, “the just man in the unjust state?” (DDP 76/GW5 252). Socrates’s condemnation lies at the core of Platonic utopia, which hence does not represent an abstract claim but emerges out of a concrete political context. Though he was directed toward a career in politics, Plato fell silent when faced with the death of his teacher. His philosophy is born from this death, which is why it is spoken through the mouth of Socrates. Even the visits to Syracuse should not be read as deviations from this path.31 Yet the renunciation of a career in politics by no means signifies a renunciation of politics; quite the contrary: “Plato is no more a statesman than Socrates but no less either” (DDP 76/GW5 251). What Gadamer writes about Plato in 1942 could equally apply to himself.32 Plato’s utopia arises from the reality of the polis, and it refers back to that reality.
Plato’s otherwise incomprehensible attitude toward the poets can be explained only if we remember the situation in Athens at his time. In the tenth book of the Republic, Homer and the great dramatic poets are excluded from the state.33 Here it is a matter of neither criticism of mythology nor the ancient hostility between poetry and philosophy. It would be reductive to suppose that Plato was compelled by the ontological presuppositions of his system to see poetry as a representation of reality, in other words as a copy of a copy of the world of ideas. Gadamer suggests we consider the context in which Plato banishes the poets (DDP 48/GW5 193). This suggestion should obviously be considered relevant for Gadamer himself, who was writing in the years of National Socialism. Poetry was the basis of Greek paideia, the ground from which sophism took root and grew. On the one hand, the sophists used the texts of the poets, but at the same time emptied them of their content; on the other hand, they outlined a new ethos, according to which justice was the right of the strongest (DDP 50/GW5 195). The condemnation poetry in Plato’s writing on the state is an attack against sophism and has a twofold aim. First, it is about exposing the dangers of an art that is entirely dedicated to putting people under a spell and forgetting themselves, deprived of all truth-value. The critique of poetry is thus not at all an ontological critique: inasmuch as it concentrates on effects, it is more of “a critique of ‘aesthetic consciousness’” (DDP 65/GW5 206).34 Secondly, with the utopia of an “inner state” Plato wants to suggest a new educative model that could be the prelude to a rebirth of the polis. This second aim can be achieved only by a philosophy that promotes the human disposition of “being for others” (DDP 57/GW5 200). Socrates praises the new “educational state” for the kind of justice that begins when everyone watches over themselves, instead of demanding rights over others. This state is founded on the new reformation of the soul. Only a person who is rightly attuned to him- or herself can be in harmony with others.35 Hannah Arendt, too, emphasizes the Platonic analogy between the parts of the soul and the parts of the city.36 However, whereas Arendt sees action already integrated in the realm of theoretical cognition, Gadamer takes Plato’s main point to be that political action is different from technical production and is bound up inextricably with philosophy as the practice of education. The community of Plato’s academy, which aimed at the realization of this practice, stands in sharp relief against the backdrop of the Republic. The utopian state gestures toward an education that is “not authoritative instruction based on an ideal organization at all,” but rather the experience of justice itself, which is acquired in the process of dialectical investigation (DDP 52/GW5 197).37 No political institution can achieve any good end without the philosophical education of its citizens (DDP 52/GW5 197). Philosophy is the tonic against the abuse of power, because it teaches us to keep the common good in view.
It is therefore mistaken to take Plato’s “educational state” as a real proposal for reform, as Popper does and as Aristotle had already done.38 Aristotle grasped just as little of the ideological value of the eîdos in the ideal state as of the theory of ideas. Plato’s works, the Republic but also the Laws, belong to the literary genre of utopian writing—this is Gadamer’s argument—a genre that was already well represented in ancient Greek literature. Utopias are not concerned with blueprints for the implementation of actual reforms; rather they offer an ironic critique of the present. Nevertheless, with Plato utopia takes on a deeper political and philosophical meaning.
Utopia becomes a cipher of the further and the beyond that thinking of and in the polis cannot dismiss. Utopia becomes a cipher not only of political thinking but also of thinking itself, of that thinking which refuses to come to a standstill, which rejects closure and instead remains open to the further and the beyond. Plato’s great achievement lies in transforming the atopia of Socrates, influenced by his peculiarity and strangeness, his being out of place, which forced him to the margin of the polis, to utopia.39 The philosopher remains on the margin—and Gadamer’s Plato emphasizes this especially during the “Third Reich”—but from this non-place, or better this not-yet-place, he gives a sign, an intimation, a gesture from afar (GW7 277). The dialogue that he writes is a speculative signpost, and Socrates is a “utopian figure of thought” (GW7 283). He reflects political reality, sets it in a brighter light, by revealing what the polis is not. From its margins he critically marks the limits of the polis. Hence, Plato’s intention is clearly not to introduce some new reform. The “practical” value of utopia, which aims not at action but at critical reflection, lies in the significance not of wishing, but of choosing (RAS 81/VZW 67–69). This does not mean, however, that utopia evaporates into unreality. Instead, it reinterprets the ou-topos, the non-place, as the place that is otherwise and beyond, the place that does not yet exist but will exist and in the unconditionality of the common word, on the basis of which the polis can be thought anew. Utopia proves to be a “dialectical concept”: thanks to the dialogical carrying-over and the carrying-through into the beyond of the other, utopia becomes for hermeneutics a “way of thinking” (GW7 283).
Denken in Utopien, “thinking in utopias,” means to think in the endlessly finite process of dialogical and dichotomous dialectics. This form of thinking demands the choosing of a responsible response. It involves “bringing about the possible in the image of the impossible,” reaching an opening to the further and the beyond that only the other can offer. Here is where philosophical hermeneutics takes its political stance: without silencing the negative moment of critique of the present, it turns toward the utopian word of the future (DDP 72/GW5 197).40
The dialectic of utopia lies in its speculative character. The ideal city inversely reflects the limits of the real city. Even though it never becomes reality, the “rule of the philosopher” reveals the abuse of power that is a temptation for anyone who exercises power. In his 1978 essay, “The Polis and Knowledge of the Good,” which appears in his book The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy, Gadamer insists on the speculative dialectic of utopia (IG 63–103/GW7 162–185). Here utopia is the political model that Gadamer opposes to planning. With the economic order clearly in mind, Gadamer had warned against the planning, or misplanning, of the political world order as early as 1966 in his essay “Notes on Planning for the Future” (EPH 165–180/GW2 155–173). Planning seduces us into believing in a normative politics that takes as its task the elimination of disorder, as for example in the disorderly, “underdeveloped” countries. Finally it presents the world as the object of rational scientific production. Order for the sake of order takes over, and the means become ends in themselves: the “perfect administration,” whose ideal is neutrality, no longer recognizes any ideal (EPH 169/GW2 160). Against this backdrop of world planning, the dialectical value of “the game of utopia” stands out more distinctly. In this game—as Plato shows (IG 72–73/ GW7 168)—reason and wisdom leave room for the disorder of human things, without however ceasing to point toward the further and the beyond that belong to the ideal city of justice.
Notes
1. On the debate with value ethics, compare the essays: Gadamer, “Das ontologische Problem des Werte” (1971), GW4 189–202; “Wertethik und praktische Philosophie” (1982), GW4 203–215.
2. See Gadamer, “Der aristotelische ‘Protreptikos’ und die entwicklungsgeschichtliche Betrachtung der aristotelischen Ethik” (1927), GW5 164–186; “Praktisches Wissen” (1930), GW5 230–248; TM 312–324/GW1 317–329.
3. See Aristotle, Nikomachische Ethik VI, ed. and trans. Hans-Georg Gadamer (Frankfurt/M: Klostermann, 1998).
4. See Manfred Riedel, Die Rehabilitierung der praktischen Philosophie, 2 vols. (Freiburg: Rombach, 1972–74); this work signaled the rehabilitation of practical philosophy in Germany. For an overview that includes critical questions, see Franco Volpi, “Praktische Klugheit im Nihilismus der Technik: Hermeneutik, praktische Philosophie, Neoaristotelismus,” Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie 1 (1992): 5–23; and Volpi, “Herméneutique et philosophie pratique,” in Guy Deniau and Jean-Claude Gens, eds., L’héritage de Hans-Georg Gadamer (Paris: Le Cercle Herméneutique [Collection Phéno], 2004), 13–36.
5. Gadamer, “On the Possibility of a Philosophical Ethics,” in Hermeneutics, Religion and Ethics, trans. Joel Weinsheimer (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999), 18–36; “Über die Möglichkeit einer philosophischen Ethik,” (1963), GW4 175–188.
6. See Gadamer, “Aristotle and Imperative Ethics,” in Hermeneutics, Religion and Ethics, 142–161; “Aristoteles und die imperativische Ethik” (1989), GW7 381–395.
7. Gadamer had at hand a copy of the work by Gerhard Krüger, Philosophie und Moral in der Kantischen Ethik (Tübingen: Mohr, 1931).
8. See Ronald Beiner, “Do We Need a Philosophical Ethics? Theory, Prudence, and the Primacy of Ethos,” in Robert Bartlett and Susan Collins, eds., Action and Contemplation (Albany: SUNY Press, 1999), 37–52.
9. Compare Gadamer’s view of the philosopher in chapter 9, part 1, of this volume.
10. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1141b 33, 1142a 30; Eudemian Ethics, 1242b 36.
11. The Natorpbericht appears in Heidegger’s Phänomenologische Interpretationen, 341–415. The seminar on book 6 of the Nicomachean Ethics is published as the introduction to the lecture on the “Sophists”: Heidegger, Platon: Sophistes, GA 19, ed. Ingeborg Schüssler (Frankfurt/M: Klostermann, 1992), 21–188.
12. Gadamer also expressed his views on the question of ethics for Heidegger. Compare for example his review on the book by Werner Marx, Is There a Measure on Earth? Foundations for a Nonmetaphysical Ethics, trans. Thomas J. Nenon Jr. and Reginald Lilly (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), in GW3, 333–349.
13. The ethics of intersubjective communication was developed by Apel and Habermas.
14. In the afterword to his edition of the Nicomachean Ethics Gadamer writes: “Obviously Heidegger is not pursuing an interest in ethics,” Nikomachische Ethik VI, 61–68, 67. Rather, Heidegger is much more interested in the difference between theoretical and practical philosophy. On this difference see Günter Figal, “Vollzugssinn und Faktizität,” in his Der Sinn des Verstehens: Beiträge zur hermeneutischen Philosophie (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1996), 32–44. Following Figal, Stolzenberg has emphasized Gadamer’s “practical” starting point: Stolzenberg, “Hermeneutik der praktischen Vernunft. Hans-Georg Gadamer interpretiert Martin Heideggers Aristoteles Interpretation,” in Günter Figal and Hans-Helmuth Gander, eds., “Dimensionen des Hermeneutischen”: Heidegger und Gadamer (Frankfurt/M: Klostermann, 2005), 133–152, especially 134–135. For a critical debate with Gadamer, see Enrico Berti, “The Reception of Aristotle’s Intellectual Virtues in Gadamer and the Hermeneutic Philosophy,” in Riccardo Pozzo, ed., The Impact of Aristotelianism on Modern Philosophy, Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy 39 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2004), 285–300.
15. See chapter 7, part 7, in this volume.
16. See on this theme P. Christopher Smith, “Phrónesis: The Individual and the Community: Divergent Appropriation of Aristotle’s Ethical Discernment in Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s Hermeneutics,” in Mirko Wischke and Michael Hofer, eds., Gadamer verstehen/Understanding Gadamer (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2003), 169–185.
17. Gadamer, “Natur und Welt: Die hermeneutische Dimension in Naturerkenntnis und Naturwissenschaft” (1986), GW7 418–442, 430.
18. Nicomachean Ethics, 1141b 5–7.
19. See Joseph Dunne, “Aristotle after Gadamer: An Analysis of the Distinction between the Concepts of Phronesis and Techne,” Irish Philosophical Journal 2 (1985): 105–123.
20. Nicomachean Ethics, 1094a 23.
21. Nicomachean Ethics, 1094a 3–6.
22. See Ernst Tugendhat, Probleme der Ethik (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1984), 39. Doubts about the call to the human ethos have recently been raised by Ineichen: see Hans Ineichen, “Gadamer über praktische Philosophie. Einige kritische Bermerkungen,” in Andrzej Przylebski, ed., Das Erbe Gadamers (Frankfurt/M: Peter Lang, 2006), 247–254, 252.
23. “Einführung,” in Nikomachische Ethik VI, 9–10.
24. Aristotle, Politics, 1325b 21.
25. See in this volume chapter 3, part 9.
26. See in this volume chapter 9, part 5.
27. See in this volume chapter 9, part 3.
28. On this topic see Fred Dallmayr, “The Enigma of Health: Gadamer at Century’s End,” LL 155–169. See also Vittorio Lingiardi, “Hermeneutics and the Philosophy of Medicine: Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Platonic Metaphor,” Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 20 (1999): 413–422; Fredrik Svenaeus, “Hermeneutics of Medicine in the Wake of Gadamer: The Issue of Phronesis,” Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 24 (2003): 407–431.
29. On this concept of interpretation see chapter 8, part 11, of this volume.
30. Gadamer, “Plato and the Poets” (DDP 39–72/GW5 187–211). “Platos Denken in Utopien,” GW7 270–289. The work under discussion is Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies (London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1949); Die offene Gesellschaft und ihre Feinde (1944), 2 vols. Gesammelte Werke in deutscher Sprache, vols. 5–6 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003).
31. See Plato, Seventh Letter, 327e; Plato, 1649.
32. Grondin’s claim that Gadamer’s work is “nonpolitical,” because Plato’s state was not a historical project, fails to see the role that Platonic utopias played in Gadamer’s work from the outset. See Grondin, Hans-Georg Gadamer: A Biography (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), 213; Gadamer: Eine Biographie, 215. By contrast, Dallmayr lays emphasis on the political dimension of Gadamer’s thought. Dallmayr sees the Republic as a utopia, a “city in speech.” See Fred Dallmayr, “Hermeneutics and Justice,” in Kathleen Wright, ed., Festival of Interpretation (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990), 95–105, 95–96. On Gadamer and the political scope of poetry see Dennis J. Schmidt, “Wozu Hermeneutik? On Poetry and the Political,” in his Lyrical and Ethical Subjects: Essays on the Periphery of the Word, Freedom and History (Albany: SUNY Press, 2002), 19–31, 20ff.
33. Republic, 595–608c; Plato, 1199–1212.
34. Gadamer returns to the aestheticization of art in Truth and Method (see chapter 3, part 1, of the present volume).
35. See Republic, 434d–445c; Plato, 1066–1076.
36. See Hannah Arendt, Vita activa oder Vom tätigen Leben (Munich and Zurich: Piper, 1981), 244–245, 260–261. See Lawrence Biskowski, “Reason in Politics: Arendt and Gadamer on the Role of the Eide,” in Polity 31 (1998): 217–244.
37. See also “Platos Denken in Utopien,” GW7 284.
38. See Aristotle, Politics, B 1; see also Robert R. Sullivan, “Poets, Education and State,” in his Political Hermeneutics (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989), 137–164, 142–143.
39. On the significance of atopos for hermeneutics see chapter 8, part 8, of this volume.
40. In an interview with Dutt, the affinity of hermeneutics with both ideology critique and the Frankfurt School comes to light. Hans-Georg Gadamer im Gespräch: Hermeneutik, Ästhetik, praktische Philosophie, ed. Carsten Dutt (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 1995), 72–75.