9 Hermeneutics as Philosophy
Philosophy never really finds it necessary to justify its existence, since whoever would contest it is also engaging in the process of reflection that one calls philosophy. (IG 171/ GW7 223)
I didn’t dare to use the pretentious word “philosophy” with respect to myself, and tried to apply it only attributively. (GW10 199)
1. Children and the Future of Philosophy
What role does philosophy play today? What will be its future? Who is the philosopher in the age of technology? Gadamer was asked these questions more and more frequently, above all in his last years. This was because many saw him as the last philosopher, with whom a great century came to an end. He was conscious of the need to justify philosophy, and answered such questions in numerous essays and interviews. On these occasions he also made clear how hermeneutics should be understood as philosophy.
In contrast to others, Gadamer never believed in the “end” of philosophy. Of course it is undeniable that the scientific and technological age is deeply anti-philosophical. In the meantime it has become customary to ask what philosophy is good for. Everywhere we can see that philosophy has fallen into disrepute.
We live in an age that would as soon count philosophy among the theological relics of a bygone age or that suspects nothing so much of having a dependence upon secret or unconscious interests as the ideal of pure theory and of knowledge for the sake of knowledge alone. (RAS 139/VZW 110)
The passion for philosophy seems only to be an “irresponsible flight into a world of fading dreams” (RAS 139/VZW 110). In an epoch marked by acceleration, do we still have time for leisurely and unproductive speculation about unsolvable problems?
The old prejudices against philosophy have consolidated and intensified since, beginning with Galileo, experimental science based on mathematical methods imposed itself with unprecedented success. The new concept of science not only narrowed philosophy, which for the Greeks was the highest “science,” but undermined its identity and forced it into permanent “self-defense” (RAS 6/HE 15). The systematic philosophical constructions of the last centuries have become merely unsuccessful attempts to reconcile the inheritance of metaphysics with modern science. The “rapid demise of the Hegelian empire of absolute Spirit” only confirms for Gadamer that metaphysics has exhausted itself and that science has moved to the center of human knowledge (RAS 111/VZW 140).
The split between science and philosophy appears to have lead to mutual exclusion. But what becomes of philosophy then? Should it not adapt to the successful model of rigorous science and disguise itself as theory of science? “Philosophy or Theory of Science?”—Gadamer formulated this alternative in a 1974 essay.1 The question primarily concerns science. Despite all of our expectations, science can offer us only an endless process of the investigation of nature, yet no orientation in the world—in a world that has become “ever more strange because it has been all too changed by ourselves” (RAS 20/VZW 25). The perception of this new alienation does not mean, of course, that philosophy should be relegated to a private sphere. The very limits of science prevent this. It is not only a matter of the will to control every area of life, without however being able to eliminate that strange phenomenon of death. The paradox lies rather in this: on the one hand the authority of science frees us from the responsibility of decision, which now appears objective; on the other hand science itself proves to be incapable of assuming responsibility, because it is unable to give an account of the importance it has gained for human life—it suffices here to think about genetic manipulation or global warming. In the moment when science must justify itself beyond its own procedures, it is already forced to go beyond itself; it is already philosophy (ibid. 162/138–139). As soon as science, in order to legitimize itself, switches from formalized terminology back to everyday language and its web of language games, science not only shows that it needs a foundation, but it also legitimizes philosophy and the flight into the logoi defended from Plato to Hegel.
Surely no one can hold the view the philosophy might regain the role it had in the past, and integrate all of our knowledge into a unified image. Nevertheless Gadamer was convinced that philosophy should continue to intervene in the work of the sciences, and that it must begin with technically rationalized life. Philosophy should not be brought too close to art, even if the great authors of the nineteenth century—it is enough to mention the name of Dostoevsky—assumed a philosophical task for themselves (ibid. 19/24).2 Philosophy is not only “the expression of life,” for it cannot escape the labor of the concept.
Even in the age of science we cannot do without philosophy, because it is obviously more than merely a phase of the human journey. Drawing on Kant, Gadamer puts forward the thesis that philosophy is a “natural inclination of humans.”3 It does not come and go—it does not reach an end. Philosophy is a characteristic trait that marks humans just as much as the knowledge of death. Philosophy is nothing other than this thought of a beyond (RAS 140/VZW 114). This “beyond” is already contained in the name of metaphysics. It was Socrates who first pointed in this direction and gave philosophy the meaning it has even today. He brought philosophy to the people and transformed it from the investigation of nature into a restless, untiring dialogue about the knowledge of oneself that is always a not-knowing. Precisely this is the value that hermeneutics seeks as philosophy.
Since it is a natural inclination, philosophy cannot be a profession. Here lies its weakness, which is however at the same time its strength. What would a professional philosopher look like? It is an illusion to believe that there can be experts who ask questions and who can find the appropriate answers to them. The philosophy professor is not necessarily wiser than others; indeed she is not even necessarily wise. Nothing can protect her from error. What distinguishes her from others is her knowledge of the tradition, which should enable her to formulate more easily the questions everyone wants to ask. Her responsibility consists in this ability and in the influence she can exert as teacher and as model.4 But philosophy is not a specialized form of knowledge, for everyone philosophizes—no matter how unconsciously. Even children ask questions about the future, about death, and about happiness. “A child is a bit of a philosopher, a philosopher is a bit of a child.”5 This guarantees the future of philosophy.
2. Taking Leave of Metaphysics
Yet what is the relation between hermeneutics and philosophy’s past, particularly metaphysics? The answer to this question is necessary to determine the place of hermeneutics within the constellation of contemporary philosophy. The difficulty, however, is that Gadamer never really clarified this relation. This has given rise to numerous misunderstandings. But a clarification would surely have entailed an explicit distantiation from Heidegger and the question of Being.
Hermeneutics is not metaphysics, and it does not aim to be. Yet at the same time hermeneutics is not anti-metaphysical—as for example Heidegger’s philosophy understands itself. Hermeneutics conceives of itself even less as a post-metaphysical philosophy, for it does not share the worry about the overcoming of metaphysics that has passed from Heidegger to many contemporary philosophies, from Derrida’s deconstruction to Rorty’s neo-pragmatism and Vattimo’s “weak thought.” Hence, it would be pointless to look for Gadamer’s writings on metaphysics or the question of its overcoming.6 What characterizes the attitude of hermeneutics towards Being is its nonmetaphysical quality.
As with most philosophers after Heidegger, Gadamer speaks of “ontology” rather than of “metaphysics.” Truth and Method ends with an ontological turn, which takes place following the guiding idea of language. But with this turn, hermeneutics distances itself at the same time from ontology altogether. For ontology is the logos that wants to say what Being is. But since Being cannot be grasped in an immediate intuition, hermeneutics will understand it, since Being is always linguistically mediated, as an infinite process in which per definitionem there can be no last word. With this turn, hermeneutics radicalizes Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. There is no Being without the understanding of Being. If that is so, then ontology must recover itself in hermeneutics—which means at the same time reestablish itself, as if after an illness, but also retreat or revoke itself. To put it differently: ontology necessarily becomes hermeneutics.
Hermeneutics draws all the consequences from this and from the outset gives up all metaphysical aspirations.7 Hermeneutics does not ask the question of Being because it has already become the question of understanding. Therefore, hermeneutics looks away from Being. While it admits that it cannot do anything but understand Being, hermeneutics is aware of its ties to understanding and aware of its finitude.
3. The Hermeneutics of Finitude
It is less a farewell to Being than the attention to understanding that drives hermeneutics to the limits of finitude. Finitude always already affects understanding. In this sense, hermeneutics is a philosophy of finitude. By declaring itself to be the heir of phenomenology and the Heideggerian analytic of Dasein, hermeneutics reveals a trait that it has in common with many contemporary philosophies. Since it is conscious of the danger that finitude could now take the place of the absolute, it does not hesitate to recognize itself as finite. In short: a philosophy of finitude brings with it the unavoidable transition to the finitude of philosophy. As a philosophy of finitude, hermeneutics unfolds by trying to understand the forms in which finitude manifests itself. On the other hand, however, it is finitude that defines and determines understanding, that is, the manner of its philosophizing. From this it follows that a philosophy of finitude, which knows itself to be finite, can be nothing other than hermeneutic.
Such a radicalization of finitude, which thereby becomes the standard for philosophy, brings forth an equally radical transformation of philosophy. At this point philosophy, which adopts the form and condition of its thinking from the finite, recognizes itself as finite and thus knows that it, without renouncing universality, can only think itself at the limit of its own, inappropriable, finitude.
The concept of the limit, of the border and the end, traverses the entirety of hermeneutics and constitutes its guiding thread.8 Consciousness of the limit—not so much to have a limit but rather to be a limit—is what defines human finitude.9 As a result, to experience means to perceive the limits of one’s own finitude.10 The limit is perceived as the site where understanding becomes nonunderstanding (and self-understanding is no exception to this), where interpretation carries the trace of finitude in itself and demands further interpretations, where knowledge never attains the in-itself of things, where time withdraws and is no longer available, indeed is even “already at the end,” where every day we are overwhelmed by sleep and stand constantly menaced by death. There is no experience that can avoid running up against a limit in some way. To live means to experience one limit after another, between the limits of birth and death. In this context Gadamer cites a fragment by Alcmaeon of Croton: “Human beings perish because they are not able to join their beginning to their end.”11 The fatefully determined linearity of humans separates them from the perfect circularity of nature, in which the beginning and the end coincide.12 In light of this transitoriness the end is not the aim, the conclusion does not bring the achievement of the goal, and finality founders on mortality. Finitude is not completion.
Language tells us this, for it is the trace of our finitude, the middle point, the “medium” or the méson on which we as finite beings depend. But finitude does not mean merely mortality, temporality, and linguisticality. The appeal to finitude in hermeneutics should not be misunderstood and interpreted as a belated version of existentialist positions. It is rather a matter of the questions asked by hermeneutics, not coincidentally, in a world made increasingly uniform by the ever-increasing breakdown of spatial and temporal limits. Paradoxically it is technology itself that, eager to overcome one limit after another, determines the collision with the limit that enables finitude in all its incomprehensibility to resurface from contemporary amnesia. The illusion of limitlessness only increases our disappointment at the limit, and insufferance only makes our suffering more acute. It is hence here that hermeneutics interrogates itself on the limits of finitude, which can no longer be understood as privation.
4. Between Plato and Hegel: Reclaiming the Infinite
By radically thinking finitude as position and not as privation, hermeneutics reveals its debt to Heidegger. Both Heidegger and Gadamer know that they are the inheritors of pre-Socratic philosophy, in which the finite is valued as perfect and the infinite as imperfect. Already in Christianity, however, the peripety of the finite in the history of thought becomes inescapable. The infinite is the sovereignly perfect absolute, in front of which the finite is destined, for centuries and through unlimited variations, to remain secondary and derivate—at least until Kant, who, pointing to the limits of reason, legitimizes finitude in epistemology. As Heidegger makes clear, the repercussions are also ontological. The limit becomes the condition of unlimited knowledge, the possibility of transcendence itself. Where there is a limit, there is also transcendence. For transcendence is overcoming: what transcends points beyond experience, beyond the limit of the ontic in the direction of the ontological. It is precisely in Kant that Heidegger indicates in finitude the place from which ontology arises.13 For Heidegger, to think of finitude in a radical way means to think of finitude as the source of a new ontology. Even if human finitude is a daily revelation, it must be seen in its essential primordiality. To put it differently: finitude is bound up with the end, with the Being-towards-death of Dasein. Only when Dasein recognizes that it “exists finitely,” can it make a decision for the end that is its own most authentic possibility (BT 378/329). Here lies for Heidegger the finite temporality of Dasein, which is only “da” or “there,” that is, it exists, because it understands and because each being, insofar as it understands, is enabled to come into Being; Being, too, only occurs as such in this finitude. Ontology happens as Dasein. For finite Dasein, to exist means to understand and to understand means to transcend. Dasein is always a beyond. Yet the beyond does not move toward the infinite, for Heidegger it redefines the finite each and every time. What is, always has a limit, and Being as such is always finite.14 In light of this originary finitude, the infinite is denied.
This negation of the infinite raises many problems. For the “royal road” to finitude that Heidegger opened appears to be a dead end. If finitude is originary, then it has originary consequences for Being, which is indeed finite for Heidegger. Nevertheless, this finitude always remains secondary to Being. Of course it could—at the limit—take leave of Being. But the difficulty would still remain because finitude would now involve a relation to negated infinity. Will originary finitude not claim to be a new absolute, which gathers into itself also the attributes of the infinite? How can the finite be preserved as finite, without reverting into an infinite? How can a philosophy of finitude do without the infinite?
This is the question that Gadamer asks, though not explicitly. The distance between both philosophers here should not be overlooked: for Heidegger the finite negates the infinite, whereas Gadamer recuperates this negated infinite. For hermeneutics the infinite lies in the “beyond,” since Dasein moves forward in understanding from finitude to finitude in the infinite. It is, therefore, not so much a farewell to Being as it is the way indicated by understanding that clarifies the hermeneutic need to interpret finitude in the light of an infinite that is still possible and can therefore never be extinguished. This amounts to an infinitely finite finitude.
Most symptomatic of the differences between the two philosophers are their differing attitudes toward finitude, but also toward the final end, the most extreme limit of death. Gadamer’s reflections on death take shape in his interpretation of Plato’s Phaedo, which goes back to 1973, develop further in the essay on “Death as a Question” from 1975, and lead finally to the short work on “The Experience of Death” from 1983.15 Gadamer does not share Heidegger’s Being-towards-death, because for him there is neither authenticity nor appropriation in the relation with the final end. Death is the unexpected, unforeseeable event, which cannot be appropriated. Death is the incomprehensible par excellence.16 To think of death would mean to think of one’s own nolonger-being. Accordingly, the human thought of death experiences a “defeat,” which Gadamer however reverses: “The inconceivability of death is the highest triumph of life” (GW4 172). No one can think of no longer being. From this there emerges the antinomy of death and thought, which for philosophical hermeneutics already makes the question of death philosophically impossible. Since thought refuses to think its own not-being, it transforms not-being into a future life. In this way, thought supports life in its continual self-overcoming. The impossibility of thinking the end is subsequently translated into the freedom of thinking the possibility of a beyond. Gadamer here draws on Simmel, and speaks of the “transcendence of life” (GW4 168). Whoever lives cannot accept dying. This forgetting of death, which for Heidegger merges with the forgetting of Being, is interpreted in hermeneutics by contrast as the necessity of the finite that demands the possibility of the infinite, that is the beyond opened by dialogue—even after death.17 Insofar as it is destined to be an infinite dialogue, it is not surprising that hermeneutics, in its eschatological aspirations, declines itself again in the word and conjugates itself in the dialogue. Precisely at the most extreme limit, hermeneutics speaks of the reciprocal connection of the finite and the infinite. Thinking, revealing the aporia of the finite and the infinite, makes such a connection emerge: if it is true that thinking is finite, then it is just as true that it cannot think its own not-being and so it transforms it into being other, or overcomes it in a beyond, and in this way manifests its vocation to the infinite.
Gadamer recuperates the infinite after Heidegger without suppressing finitude. Gadamer finds support for this in Hegel’s bad infinity and Plato’s indeterminate dyad.18 Hegel’s infinity is the one of consciousness that, in its dialogue with itself, by saying “I” to itself, is already divided in itself.19 This “inner difference,” this self-differentiation of the undifferentiated, is the infinite that self-consciousness shares with life. Despite its finitude, life will always remain infinitely exposed to the question that extends beyond it, just as consciousness that asks about, thinks about, and reflects on itself will always be open in an infinite dialogue. The end in bad infinity is an end that is always beyond and to come. Owing to the negative side that makes this infinity the accomplice of finitude, there is no conclusion, and the dialectic is destined to aporetic openness.
Here Hegel draws on Plato and in this light refers the self-differentiation of the undifferentiated to the indeterminate dyad. Hermeneutics asserts its need to hold onto the infinite with the help of Plato’s reading of the negative infinite in its connections with not-being, that is, with being-other. In the same breath in which the “not” becomes the cipher of difference, the infinite turns out to be the undifferentiated in its undefined self-differentiation. With every differentiation, the “is” simultaneously expresses the “is not.” The presence of the identical announces the absence of the different. “Is” can be said only insofar as “is not” is also implied (HW 84/GW3 245). The infinite and the finite call forth each other reciprocally: the finite cannot avoid evoking the infinite, and, for its part, the infinite cannot avoid articulating and declining itself in the finite. Being must compromise itself with not-Being, in order to come into Being, to become understandable, and to become sayable in the interweaving of identity and difference, the one and many, the finite and the infinite. Therefore Being is not finite, but defined, that is, interwoven with the infinite of not-Being in the logos. Once again, logos takes on here a paradigmatic importance for Gadamer.
By recuperating the infinite in this way, hermeneutics can hold fast to the limit of finitude. But holding fast does not mean coming to a standstill: hermeneutics is not an asceticism of the limit (TM 99/GW1 105).20 Here it follows Kant’s gesture, which, to a more conscious reason, indicates the limit that could be transcended. For hermeneutics, conversely, finite and infinite are correlated and should not be grasped statically.21 At this point, again, Gadamer’s distance from Heidegger can be seen. The finitude of hermeneutics must not negate the infinite in order to posit itself; indeed it demands it as the possibility of an impossibility, a beyond. Yet hermeneutics interprets this beyond in a new way, as a being-further that is at the same time a being-other.
5. Being Hermeneutical: On Vigilance
In hermeneutics the limit is an inception, because it opens the beyond that is the play-space of the other and with the other. Each encounter with truth is also an encounter with ourselves, whereby “encounter” means above all to run up against own limits, so that one is forced to go beyond them. It is no coincidence that Gadamer, in order to explain this, repeatedly comes to speak of play. Considered closely, it is play that, traversing hermeneutics, puts metaphysics into play. Even more so: the phenomenology of play presents itself as an alternative to all ontology or to any discourse on Being that claims to be final and fundamental. Play is the paradigm for the interpretation of the beyond that characterizes both understanding and life, or indeed, that reveals their reciprocal connection. The seal of finitude is imprinted in the “transcendence of play,” and “to play” means not only “to elevate,” but also “to bestow permanence” (RB 46/GW8 137). These expressions mean not so much to keep or to hold onto; rather they refer to a movement that goes beyond one’s own life. Life is, specifically, not only living further; it is surviving in the sense of a living beyond oneself.
For hermeneutics, the beyond is a way of describing human existence that is always an existence at the limit. This means that there is no-limit situation; instead the limit itself is the situation of human beings that are Grenzgänger, wanderers on the edge between this side and the other, destined to remain at the boundary, at the mercy of the boundary (EH 67/GW4 293). But what constitutes the step beyond?
Whoever takes part in a game, and does this in order to hold on to existence in its transitoriness, in order to go beyond themselves, lingers in the game. This lingering shows an affinity to theorein, which means to be drawn in, taken in, and captured.22
The condition of someone who takes part in a game is to be outside themselves. According to the perspective of rationalism, this “being-outside-oneself”—in contrast to being with oneself—has a privative and negative connotation. For hermeneutics, the opposite is the case.
To be hermeneutic means to be outside oneself. Culture emerges in this distance from oneself, in the sense of “seeing with the eyes of the other.”23 All of the experiences bound up with this are characterized by a devoted attentiveness or an attentive devotion, which ultimately coincide with hermeneutics. This is vigilance (Wachsamkeit), which hermeneutics substitutes for the concept of consciousness in the philosophical tradition.24 Only if one is attentive and vigilant can one be ready for the step beyond oneself and outside of oneself. This step requires a turning away from oneself, which is also a forgetting of oneself. Paradoxically, the forgetting of oneself means here precisely to be wakeful and vigilant. For only if one can distance oneself from oneself in order to reach out toward the other, does one then become completely enthralled and absorbed by the other—and only then is one really with oneself. To stay by oneself, to withdraw into oneself, means by contrast: no longer being with oneself. Caring about oneself is nothing other than caring for or about the other (EH 147/GW4 183–184). The life that closes in on itself and stops at the limit is the kind of life that can go no further beyond itself. To be outside oneself, to tarry with others, is therefore a way of saying that one is alive.
The model of full self-presence and of perfect self-transparency, which corresponds to the Greek concept of the noûs or the modern concept of ideal subjectivity, reveals its entire eccentricity in hermeneutics. To be in oneself means to be outside oneself, that is, to be in the other. In order to be with oneself, one must be with others and one needs others. The beyond is to be read here as other. Far from being an asceticism at the limit, hermeneutics is a theory of ecstatic absorption in the other. The instance of the beyond translates into the passage beyond the limit and moving toward the other.
6. The Limit That Is the Other
The new conception introduced by hermeneutics, and over against Heidegger, is that of the limit as other. Although it is often repeated that Being for Heidegger is always Being-with, Dasein remains absolutely alone in its thrownness. Here the other is lacking, and the limit proves to be an insurmountable wall. If Dasein goes beyond itself, it is precisely not toward the other; rather it turns toward itself and toward authentic self-appropriation.
Gadamer questions this way of grasping the finitude of Dasein as “thrownness,” because he directs his attention to the other and to the absence of the other. In his essay on “Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity, Subject and Person,” from 1975, he writes:
In any case Heidegger’s answer seemed to me to give short shrift to the phenomenon I was concerned with. It is not only that everyone is in principle limited. What I was concerned with was why I experience my own limitation through the encounter with the Other, and why I must always learn to experience anew if I am ever to be in a position to surpass my limits.25
By encountering the other, one’s own finitude becomes perceptible.26 Only when the limit is perceived and understood as other, and not as one’s own limit that can be appropriated, but rather as the limit of the other, which refers and turns toward the other, then the limit is open and becomes the opening point of newer possibilities.
In order to clarify this point, Gadamer draws on the myth about the nature of love as it is narrated in Plato’s Symposium.27 According to the myth, humans were originally spherical and therefore perfect. But because of human pride, the gods cut them in half. Since then, everyone has been merely a fragment: a countermark, a sýmbolon, divided into “two out of one.”28 Here the two of the indeterminate dyad reappear, and point to the infinite concealed in every fragment, despite its finitude. As a fragment, the human being will always remain dependent on the other. This means that finitude is defined by the other, not in the sense that it would be closed and confined by the other, but conversely, in the sense that the other in their infinite being-other forces us to transcend our limits. Independent of how she or he is experienced, whether as a stranger, an enemy, or an opponent, it is still the other who pushes us beyond the limit.
Even if the limit points to the other, nevertheless the other is not only the limit. He or she is not only the completion, compensation, or other fragment of the symbol. Much more than this, the other is the encounter and the participation in the encounter that overcomes finitude and opens the way to the infinite.
7. The Infinite Dialogue
Yet what is this infinitude? And how is the question of the infinite connected to the insurmountable finitude of the one who is asking the question? Is there a way of showing philosophy the connection of the finite and the infinite, and in doing so to strengthen it? The hermeneutical way—as Gadamer does not tire of repeating—is the way of language.29
It is surely true that language is the trace of our finitude. If there were not a word that originally discloses finitude, then there would also be no finitude. But this means that language is finite precisely because it is open. The finitude disclosed by the word is that of a “middle,” such as the opening of a mouth that begins to speak. All of our understanding, our speaking, and our existing lie in this openness, in the midst of the becoming of history and language. It is in the everydayness of the now that both the finitude of every spoken and every understood word, as well as the finitude of the speaker who must rely on the word, are experienced. In this way there arises the unquenched and unquenchable desire for another word, which would give voice each time to what is unsaid and not understood. But this is possible only because the word in its finite presence evokes the absent infinitude of what still remains to be said and what lets itself be said.30 The limit of every word is thus always the beginning of something infinitely new. For every word demands another word—in an infinite dialogue. The other is the possibility of overcoming finitude because his or her word, which is received, understood, and repeated, in the mystery of an identity that differs, becomes a communal word. Finitude is overcome in this way; indeed it is already beyond itself in the word of the other, since this word also discloses the access to the infinite of the dialogue.
In this sense the other is not only the limit. The transition to the infinite is possible only with the other, in the encounter and during the participation in the encounter. The finite word, which is always shared since it arises from the middle, the shared center, is the opening limit that initiates the free play of the other, with the other, the infinitude of the dialogue. As the Greek term méson suggests, what lies in the center, in the openness of the encounter, is also what is shared, what is shared with one another. Once again, Gadamer names this point of transition from the finite to the infinite using Plato’s term hikanón. In contrast to the technical concept of the “unconditioned,” which belongs to the logic of mathematical proof, the “unconditional” feature of Platonic dialectics is the necessary limit to reciprocal understanding. Thus the hikanón is the point at which the speakers agree, in order to begin the infinite play of question and answer, the infinitude of the dialogue, in the reciprocity of their participation.
In this moment, in which hermeneutics follows the path of language, it renounces as philosophy any ultimate foundation. For wherever one insists on an ultimate foundation, language must be ignored, and wherever language is admitted, the ultimate foundation must be renounced. How could the claim for an ultimate foundation, the idea of the system, the principle, the founding, the derivation, be brought into harmony with language, in which there is neither a first nor a last word—but only reciprocity? The unconditional is here the hikanón, the finite and limited point of encounter of the shared word, which, through reciprocity, opens participation to the infinite of the dialogue.
With its dialectical interweaving of the logos, hermeneutics reveals the possibility of the reciprocal participation of the finite and the infinite, with which the one can be read in light of the other. In this logos, this dialogue without end, hermeneutics recognizes itself again and adopts the dialogue as the form of its own philosophizing. Hermeneutics is this infinite dialogue.
In this way hermeneutics also defines its position as philosophy. Here, too, it follows a suggestion from Plato. In the myth of the winged chariot narrated in the Phaedrus, finitude and the destiny of the human soul are described.31 As in the nocturnal ascent of the stars, human souls proceed on winged chariots led by the gods. They continue until the limit of the firmament, until the site of the beyond where the hyperuranium is disclosed and the true, immutable, perennial forms of Being can be contemplated. Whereas the gods give themselves over fully to this vision, the human souls are troubled by it. After having cast a fleeting glance, in the confusion they lose their wings and, separated from the “plain of truth,” from alétheia, of which they retain only a vague memory, they fall back to earth. In the exile of finitude only a few souls can regain their wings and elevate themselves, even only briefly, to truth.32 These are the human souls who have chosen and have loved sophia. The gods, who have stayed behind in the celestial vault and from there continue to gaze on the truth, do not philosophize. With this myth Plato describes the path of philosophy, which is an exclusively human path between heaven and earth. Hermeneutics follows this path, and so situates itself in the middle between the one and the dyad, the finite and the infinite. Although it knows itself as finite, it does not renounce the infinite. It consigns itself to the opening of an aporetic dialectic where, not having said the first word, it also does not claim to say the last.
Notes
1. Gadamer, “Philosophie oder Wissenschaftstheorie?” (1974), VZW 125–149; “Philosophy or Theory of Science?” in Reason in the Age of Science, trans. Frederick G. Lawrence (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981), 151–170.
2. See “Über die Naturanlage des Menschen zur Philosophie,” 118–119; “On the Natural Inclination of Human Beings Toward Philosophy” 147.
3. Immanuel Kant, “Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik, die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können,” in Werkausgabe, Band V, hrsg. von Wilhelm Weischedel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1978), A 48, 141; Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, trans. Gary Hatfield (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), A 48, 141.
4. See Gadamer, “Über die politische Inkompetenz der Philosophie” (1992/1993), in Hermeneutische Entwürfe. Vorträge und Aufsätze (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 38; “On the Political Incompetence of Philosophy,” in The Heidegger Case: On Philosophy and Politics, ed. Tom Rockmore and Joseph Margolis (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 364–9, 366.
5. See Gadamer, “Cent’anni senza solitudine,” interview with Donatella Di Cesare, in Corriere della sera, February 7, 2000.
6. In the few essays where he refers to metaphysics, Gadamer deals either with the question of metaphysics for Heidegger or the question of the language of metaphysics (see chapter 7, part 2, in this volume).
7. It is important to keep in mind how far Gadamer’s hermeneutics is from all nihilistic consequences, but also from positions that aim at a rehabilitation of metaphysics. See Reiner Wiehl, “Heidegger, Gadamer, und die Möglichkeit einer Ontologie heute,” in Wiehl, Metaphysik und Erfahrung (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1996), 127–154.
8. This is probably why Gadamer never devoted a single essay to the topic of finitude.
9. See chapter 5, part 12, in this volume.
10. See Gadamer, “Dialogues in Capri” in Religion, ed. Jacques Derrida and Gianni Vattimo (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996), 205–206.
11. Alcmaeon of Croton, VS 24 A 1, 3.
12. Gadamer, “Über leere und erfullte Zeit,” GW4 144–145; “Concerning Empty and Ful-filled Time” in Martin Heidegger in Europe and America, ed. E. G. Ballard and C. E. Scott (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), 86.
13. See Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik. GA 3, hrsg. von Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1991); Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. Richard Taft (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997).
14. See Heidegger, “Was ist Metaphysik?” in Wegmarken, 120; “What is Metaphysics?” in Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 95.
15. See Gadamer, “Die Unsterblichkeitsbeweise in Platos ›Phaidon‹” (1973), GW6 187–200; “The Proofs of Immortality in Plato’s Phaedo,” in Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight Hermeneutical Studies on Plato, trans. and ed. P. Christopher Smith (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980),187–200; “Der Tod als Frage,” (1975), GW4 161–172; “Die Erfahrung des Todes” (1983), GW4 288–294. “The Experience of Death,” in The Enigma of Health: The Art of Healing in a Scientific Age, trans. J. Gaiger and N. Walker (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996), 288–294.
16. For more on this topic, see Donatella Di Cesare, “Savoir vivre—savoir mourir. Der Tod als Grenze zwischen Heidegger und Gadamer,” in Günter Figal and Hans Helmuth Gander, eds., Dimensionen des Hermeneutischen—Heidegger und Gadamer (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann 2005), 73–87.
17. This was emphasized by Derrida in his commemorative address.
18. Bruns reads the dyad in a similar way. See Gerald L. Bruns, “The Hermeneutical Anarchist: Phronesis, Rhetoric, and the Experience of Art,” in Gadamer’s Century: Essays in Honor of Hans-Georg Gadamer (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002), 45–76, 52.
19. See Gadamer, “Die Dialektik des Selbstbewußtseins” (1973), GW3 47–64; “Hegel’s Dialectic of Self-Consciousness,” in Hegel’s Dialectic: Five Hermeneutical Studies, trans. P. Christopher Smith (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1976), 47–64, as well as Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 104–105. See also Robert B. Pippin, “Gadamer’s Hegel,” in Robert J. Dostal, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 225–238, 230 (this same essay is published again in Gadamer’s Century, 217–238).
20. See “Die phänomenologische Bewegung,” GW3 141; “The Phenomenological Movement,” trans. David E. Linge, in Philosophical Hermeneutics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 134–135.
21. The question of finitude is interpreted in a similar way by Ruggenini: see Mario Ruggenini, “Wahrheit und Endlichkeit,” in Ingeborg Schüssler and Alexandre Schild, eds., Genos. Phenomenologie et hermeneutique (Lausanne, Payot, 2000), 175–189.
22. See chapter 3, part 9, and chapter 6, part 3, in this volume.
23. See chapter 2, part 2, in this volume.
24. See chapter 5, part 5, in this volume.
25. Gadamer, “Subjektivität und Intersubjektivität, Subjekt und Person” (1975), GW10 87–99, 98; “Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity; Subject and Person,” in Continental Philosophy Review 33, no. 3 (2000): 275–287, 285.
26. See chapter 8, part 8, in this volume.
27. Gadamer, “Die Aktualität des Schönen,” GW8 122–123; “The Relevance of the Beautiful,” in The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, ed. and intro. Robert Bernasconi and trans. Nicholas Walker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 31.
28. Plato, Symposium, 191d.
29. See Gadamer, WM, GW1 460–463/TM 456–460; “Die Natur der Sache und die Sprache der Dinge” (1960), GW2 71; “The Nature of Things and the Language of Things,” in Philosophical Hermeneutics, ed. and trans. David E. Linge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 75; “Das Erbe Hegels,” GW4 480 “The Heritage of Hegel,” in Reason in the Age of Science, trans. Frederick G. Lawrence (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 1981), 56.
30. See chapter 8, part 4, of this volume; see Gadamer, “Wie weit schreibt Sprache das Denken?” GW2 206.
31. Plato, Phaedrus, 243e–257b.
32. See Gadamer, “Die Aktualität des Schönen,” GW8 106. “The Relevance of the Beautiful,” 15.