10 Keeping the Dialogue Going

One must seek to understand the other, and that means that one has to believe that one could be in the wrong. (DD 119/GW10 130)

It would be a poor hermeneuticist who thought he could have, or had to have, the last word. (TM 581/GW2 478)

 

1. When a Philosophy Becomes Koiné

Following the publication of Truth and Method, hermeneutics moved quickly into the spotlight on the philosophical scene. Gadamer’s work found great resonance, insofar as it was soon recognized as one of the most significant contributions to twentieth-century philosophy, which is evinced by the numerous reviews from the 1960s onward.¹ The widespread enthusiasm with which it was received in Europe, as well as in North America, gives a sense of its potential, which extends far beyond the horizon of philosophy.

Yet the publication of Truth and Method, which for Gadamer himself was still a work in progress, also marked the beginning of the complex history of the effects of hermeneutics. When put to the test, hermeneutics has consistently shown that, depending on the focus of one’s position, it can be understood differently. The success of hermeneutics can largely be attributed to its flexibility, as well as to its readiness to confront even the sharpest critiques and the harshest attacks. Thus all attempts to put the validity of hermeneutics into question, even when they actually identified problematic central points, came to nothing and quickly passed into oblivion.

The case of the Italian legal scholar Emilio Betti (1890–1968) is exemplary. His Allgemeine Theorie der Interpretation, which mainly reviews the development of the discipline until Dilthey, seeks to establish hermeneutics as a normative aesthetic doctrine that would provide rules and principles in order to guarantee the objectivity of method.² According to Betti, from philology to historiography, from theology to legal practice, a universally valid interpretation would always be necessary. Betti’s polemic against Bultmann and Heidegger arises from this position: both compromise the objectivity of hermeneutics, since they conceive of understanding as a determination of existence. His vehement attack on Gadamer is simply a consequence of this critique. Betti accuses Gadamer of making prejudice the “condition” of understanding, and through his theory of application, confusing the objective “meaning” of texts with their “significance” for the interpreter. In this way, for Betti, Gadamer misses the actual goal of establishing the meaning of the text in the way in which it was intended by the mens auctoris. Yet for Gadamer this general theory of interpretation would never be able to deliver on what it promises, that is, a hermeneutics that could guarantee positive objectivity. In the foreword to the second edition of Truth and Method from 1965, Gadamer defends his own hermeneutics as a philosophy that seeks to be neither a method nor a reflection on method. The technical question, “How should we understand?” is always preceded by the philosophical question, “How is understanding possible?” (TM xxvii–xxxviii/GW2 441)

The objection raised by Betti was taken up again by the literary critic Eric Donald Hirsch (b. 1928). His work, Validity in Interpretation, represents the first significant confrontation with hermeneutics in the United States.³ Yet Hirsch narrows the breadth that understanding had acquired for human existence and again reduces it to a methodical process of textual interpretation. According to Hirsch, philosophical hermeneutics is untenable because it fails to deliver valid objective criteria. For Hirsch, the “original meaning,” which coincides with the author’s intention, must be differentiated from the “significance”—in other words, from the relation between the original meaning and the multiple meanings derived by the readers. Whereas criticism seeks the text’s significance, interpretation should aim for textual meaning. In order to avoid the contradictions that allegedly weaken hermeneutics, which proceed for example from an “identity” that is not actually an identity and a “repetition” that is not actually a repetition, one should always presuppose a self-identical textual meaning that varies only according to the situation of the reader. According to Hirsch, this is what Gadamer actually means to say, or “should have meant by the concept of Horizontverschmelzung.”⁴ Beyond the difficulties that Hirsch seems to have had with the new hermeneutic concept of “identity,” his distance from Gadamer is already marked by his conception of understanding, which for Gadamer “is never a subjective relation to a given ‘object’ but to the history of its effect; in other words, understanding belongs to the being of that which is understood” (TM xxviii/GW2 441).⁵ By forcefully bending circularity into linearity, Hirsch lets himself be led by a concept of truth derived from a realistic epistemology, and, not by chance, he seeks a marriage between hermeneutics and the falsification theory of Karl Popper. In light of the history of effects, however, it must be admitted that today very little remains in the humanities of the search for a method, undertaken by Hirsch and Betti, that could ascertain objective textual meaning.

By contrast, the influence of philosophical hermeneutics on literary studies has steadily increased over time. Gadamer’s philosophy had already gained considerable significance in the 1960s. After a brief period when it was marginalized by the stronger interest in French structuralism, it was rejuvenated in the 1990s in American departments of comparative literature, in part because of the growing philosophical vocation in the humanities.

One of the most interesting results of hermeneutics in this area is represented by the “Constance School,” which was initiated by Hans Robert Jauss (1921–97) with his “aesthetics of reception.”⁶ Already in his famous 1967 essay, “Literaturgeschichte als Provokation der Literaturwissenschaft” (“Literary History as a Provocation to Literary Studies”), Jauss draws on Gadamer’s “history of effects” in order to formulate the thesis that literary historiography arises from the interaction of text and reader, and should be conceived according to this dialogical model.⁷ A literary work is, accordingly, not a historical fact but rather an event that requires “reception” in order to reach its true existence. This new hermeneutic paradigm does not prevent Jauss, however, from raising critical objections against Gadamer—the most important of which involves the concept of the “classical”⁸—and in this way to distinguish his position from Gadamer’s. For example, Jauss develops the argument that the text determines our “horizon of expectations,” and from that point controls the further reading process. For Gadamer, by contrast, the text is limited to giving an impetus; otherwise the text should be considered a transhistorical structure. It is not the text that controls the change of horizon, but the reverse: the event of understanding is the uncontrollable way in which the horizon changes. Wolfgang Iser (1926–2007) also belongs to the “Constance School,” and he developed a phenomenology of reading on the basis of the phenomenological aesthetics of Roman Ingarden (1893–1970).⁹ Gadamer’s influence on musical studies should also be recognized, in particular on Carl Dahlhaus (1928–1989), who can be seen as the most important music theorist of the second half of the twentieth century. In his numerous writings, Dahlhaus frequently referred to Gadamer and developed many hermeneutic theses with his conception of music. Only the time interval is understood differently by Dahlhaus, since the tunings of the past should become for him a constitutive moment of the performance.

Whereas the first critical objections against Truth and Method came from within, and above all from those who argued for a return to traditional hermeneutics, there were also attacks from without, as for example the one by Hans Albert (b. 1921). In 1968 he published his Traktat über kritische Vernunft, which directed, in a very questionable way, Popper’s falsification theory against hermeneutics, even though Popper himself had directed his work against analytic trends.¹⁰ Albert has recently returned to his polemic, which beyond Gadamer also criticizes Habermas, Heidegger, and all of German thought back to Hegel.¹¹ Albert accuses hermeneutics of wanting to expand textual analysis as far as knowledge of reality in general, and in this way to bring about a break between science and philosophy, whereby the latter would fall into a dangerous proximity to theology. Without too much difficulty, Gadamer replied that for hermeneutics, too, “there is only one ‘logic of scientific investigation’”—but this is not the main point, since the main issues to consider are selective and epistemological, practical viewpoints that in each case determine the research in advance. A theory of science that neglects these will end in complete irrationalism, precisely for the sake of rationalism (TM 563/GW3 453). Albert’s accusation against Gadamer is clearly unjustified, as has been shown by the recent developments in American theory of science, especially those arising from the contextualism of the paradigm theory of Thomas S. Kuhn (1922–96), who recognized in hermeneutics an important ally against neopositivism.¹²

From Protestant theology in the twentieth century there arose the “new hermeneutics,” which was initiated in the 1950s by Ernst Fuchs (1903–83) and developed further in different ways by Gerhard Ebeling (1912–2001), Eugen Biser (b. 1918), Günter Stachel (b. 1922), and Eberhard Jüngel (b. 1934).¹³ What is characteristic of this movement, which draws on Heidegger as well as the Marburg theology of Bultmann and Barth, is the meaning that the word of God acquires when it becomes the event of revelation.¹⁴ Truth and Method consolidated the theoretical core of this approach and thereby inspired further reflections on language. In any case, the debate around Gadamer’s hermeneutics in the theological area remained relatively limited, whether because of the anti-dogmatic potential of hermeneutics or because its religious dimension was hidden for a long time. Philosophical hermeneutics represented a problem more than a possibility for both Protestant and Catholic theology—perhaps because theology still wavers between its metaphysical inheritance and the obsessive fear of relativism. In recent years, however, theology’s hermeneutic interest has become more persistent and deeper, as in for example the essays published in 2002 in the comprehensive collection entitled Between the Human and the Divine.¹⁵

Beyond theology and literary studies, hermeneutics has had important consequences not only for the philosophy of law but also for judicial practice, as the works of Franz Wieacker (1908–94), Fritz Rittner (b. 1921), Ronald Dworkin (b. 1931), and Joachim Hruschka (b. 1935) reveal.¹⁶ The relevance of the dialogue model for the relation between legal texts and their interpreters has above all been underlined by Giuseppe Zaccaria (b. 1947).¹⁷ The important consequences of philosophical hermeneutics in the area of historiography should also be mentioned, where Gadamer’s privileged interlocutor, Reinhart Koselleck (1923–2006), applied hermeneutical theses in an original manner.¹⁸ For his part Gadamer always kept open the debate with the “Historical School,” in particular with Erich Rothacker (1888–1965), the theorist of “conceptual history” and the founder of the Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte in Bonn. After Rothacker, the direction of the Archiv went to Gadamer and Joachim Ritter (1903–74), an important representative of Neo-Aristotelianism.¹⁹ In the course of these debates philosophical hermeneutics has left clear and numerous traces on the historiography of philosophy, too, especially in Germany.

But it is probably impossible to sketch an overview, in just a few strokes, of all the multifaceted developments that have been promoted or inspired by hermeneutics. This counts not only for contemporary philosophy, which has been decisively marked by hermeneutics, but also for the overall cultural life of recent decades, in which hermeneutics continually played a leading role. It is sufficient to mention here the most important debates between philosophical hermeneutics and Habermas’s ideology critique, Rorty’s neo-pragmatism, Derrida’s deconstruction, and Vattimo’s “weak thought.” The impressive bibliography that has been gathered in the process sheds considerable light on the complex and multilayered phenomenon of this reception.²⁰ What is remarkable are the numerous Festschriften or collected volumes dedicated to Gadamer’s philosophy—since 2000 alone more than twenty have appeared. The volume published by Hahn for the Library of Living Philosophers in 1997 represents a significant recognition and a kind of official investiture. In addition, however, there are also a number of recently published collections that offer a useful perspective on the many remarkable changes in the history of the effects of hermeneutics. In these the more traditional themes that were discussed into the 1980s recede into the background, such as the self-understanding of the humanities, the conception of history and the relation to historicism, and all the classical hermeneutic questions about the history of hermeneutics, including its influences on other areas, from literary criticism to sociology. On the one hand, the polemics between hermeneutics and the ideology critique have waned, whereas the debate between hermeneutics and deconstruction, particularly after Derrida’s passing, has been taken further and rethought anew.²¹ Unchanged is the attention to practical philosophy, which remains, along with aesthetics, an unavoidable theoretical core. But what has gained prominence in recent decades is the reflection on language, the difficult and often misunderstood question of understanding, the relation of hermeneutics to Greek philosophy, the issue of politics and the concept of utopia, the debate with the theory of science, and the problem of the philosophical status of hermeneutics. In the process Gadamer’s interpretations of Plato and Hegel have acquired more visible contours, and while the connection of hermeneutics to phenomenology has been more strongly emphasized, its relation to Heidegger at the same time appears in a new light.

An important recent development is the interest that analytic philosophy in North America has shown in hermeneutics. With this an omission has been corrected on both sides, for both should have reflected on their proximity, starting from the linguistic turn.²² Thus David C. Hoy emphasized the affinity between Gadamer’s hermeneutics and the principle of charity that for Donald Davidson (1917–2003) guides benevolent interpretation.²³ Whereas the relation between Gadamer and Davidson, but also between Davidson and Heidegger, is the topic of an essay by Jeff Malpas in the collection Gadamer’s Century, the attention of analytic philosophers has concentrated above all on the question of understanding.²⁴ John McDowell (b. 1942), whose relationship to Gadamer’s philosophy had already become visible in the 1994 book Mind and World, has also contributed an important recent essay in this context that more clearly emphasizes the connection.²⁵ The opening of analytic philosophy to hermeneutics proceeds together with a rediscovery of Hegel and the entirety of classical philosophy.²⁶ It is surely of some importance that analytic philosophy has chosen philosophical hermeneutics, from all of continental philosophy, as its chief interlocutor.

Even though it has been criticized repeatedly, and frequently from quite opposite directions, Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics has maintained a dominant position within continental philosophy. Already in an essay from 1985, Vattimo had called hermeneutics in this sense the philosophical koiné or common language of recent decades.²⁷ If the hub around which debates had turned in the 1950s and 1960s was Marxism, and structuralism in the 1970s, in the 1980s the central position had been taken by philosophical hermeneutics. Often the very different currents of European thought flowed together in hermeneutics, which through the increasingly urgent confrontation with analytic philosophy was forced to recognize itself as the new koiné. Vattimo’s claim, which gave rise to many discussions, clearly testifies to the destiny of hermeneutics.

From this destiny, however, it is necessary to emphasize one particular trait. Philosophical hermeneutics has had less a centrifugal than a centripetal impact on contemporary culture. It has exercised a strong power of attraction, rather than radiating out and spreading itself around. But this has also led to persistent backlashes against hermeneutics.²⁸ Its effects have called forth or inspired positions that could not be characterized as “hermeneutic” from their original starting points, but perhaps rather from their convergence with Gadamer’s original project—a convergence that, however, in the following developments has often proven to be a divergence. It should suffice here to mention the related hermeneutic phenomenology of Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005).²⁹

Against this background, of course, the question arises whether a philosophy can ever be a koiné, and what constitutes the price that hermeneutics would have to pay for that status. In today’s linguistic usage, “hermeneutics” has certainly become a synonym for “continental philosophy.” As much as this role of “standing for” continental philosophy has undoubtedly brought advantages, it has also brought great disadvantages—first and above all the charge, too often misused and too extreme, of vagueness.³⁰ Hermeneutics has not had nearly as much difficulty with the attacks as with the positive acceptance it has encountered. From the debates with Habermas, Rorty, and Derrida, hermeneutics has gone forward strengthened.³¹ By contrast, what has weakened hermeneutics is precisely its expansion to a koiné, a kind of common idiom, which can easily be instrumentalized because it has been robbed of nearly all its semantic density, and ultimately comes close to the terminology that Gadamer often equated with metaphysics. From this tendency there has emerged, especially after Gadamer’s passing, the clear necessity to reinterpret philosophical hermeneutics.³² It is not a matter of abandoning the key questions of hermeneutics, but on the contrary, of discovering them anew and strengthening them in their theoretical core.

2. Hermeneutics and the Critique of Ideology

In a long research article entitled “Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften” published in the 1967 Philosophische Rundschau, Jürgen Habermas took a position on Gadamer’s philosophy for the first time.³³ With this article a debate began between hermeneutics and ideology critique, which lasted only a brief while and was heavily marked by the Zeitgeist of the late 1960s. Nevertheless the debate had important consequences for both the critique of ideology and hermeneutics. Gadamer responded with an essay entitled “Rhetorik, Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik. Metakritische Erörterungen zu Wahrheit und Methode.”³⁴ Soon other representatives from both parties entered the discussion, including Albrecht Wellmer, Karl-Otto Apel, and Rüdiger Bubner. Habermas developed his position further in the work “Der Universalitätsanspruch der Hermeneutik,” from 1970, to which Gadamer responded with his “Replik,” one year later.³⁵

Habermas comes from the Frankfurt School but was for a long time in contact with Gadamer, who in 1961 had secured a position for him in Heidelberg as an assistant professor. Habermas’s intention was to develop an emancipatory critique of ideology, which had as a point of reference Freudian psychoanalysis and Marxist thought. Against the objectivist positivism that dominates sociology, he seeks a linguistic theoretical foundation for the social sciences. Social action is not organized according to the model of atomistic and causally, interactively effective centers of force; rather, it is carried out according to linguistic schemes that guide the interaction. Habermas finds support in the later Wittgenstein, who succeeded in reaching beyond the phenomenological lifeworld to recognize linguistically constituted “life forms” articulated in a multiplicity of “language games.” Insofar as it converges with the practice of language games, social action turns out to be communicative action.³⁶ Yet for Habermas, who emphasizes the commonalities more than the differences, it is necessary to dissolve the “monadic structures” of language games in which every actor would otherwise remain imprisoned. Thus the accent must be placed on the connections between the language games, or better, on their “translation.”³⁷ With the aim of overcoming the remnants of positivism that he found in Wittgenstein’s conception, Habermas appeals to the hermeneutic starting point. In order to tear down the grammatical limits, it is not at all necessary to leave everyday language behind, by for example following the path of Noam Chomsky; it suffices, following Humboldt, to take up Gadamer’s teaching. Hermeneutics has shown that language can always transcend itself; in this it discloses the self-reflexive potential of reason.³⁸ The hermeneutic experience is nothing other than the movement by which reason escapes the coercion of language and, on the other hand, gets articulated as linguistic. Everything that is said can always be said differently: therein lies the universality of reason. By simultaneously reflecting and negating the limits of language, reason asserts itself each time in the act of translation. The limit case of translation between languages shows the kind of reflection that also takes place within the same language, where the horizons are open and the forms are dynamic. Wittgenstein had not seen that the application of rules is also an interpretation, that linguistic spheres are “porous” to the inner and the outer. Thus he had neglected historicity, which decisively marks translation. As a historical process translation is not only horizontal but also vertical, because it runs through generations and epochs. Whoever proceeds from the hermeneutic situation of dialogue cannot ignore the “openness” of language. By reaching back to Gadamer’s “great critique” of the self-understanding of the humanities, which also affects the “false consciousness” of its practitioners, Habermas ultimately becomes the authority that speaks for the claim of hermeneutics to universality.³⁹

In light of this basic solidarity, the controversial topics between hermeneutics and the critique of ideology have only a secondary importance, for they refer either to misunderstandings or to insufficiently clarified points. In general the controversy involves three areas of debate. The first revolves around the concept of “tradition,” which Gadamer had subjected to critical reflection without presumably finding the proper balance between authority and reason. This goes together with a kind of “prejudice” that Gadamer’s displays toward prejudices and a discrediting of the Enlightenment. Yet even though some of the formulations in Truth and Method may sound excessive, Gadamer never sought to obscure reason. His aim was rather to show that reason, far from being sovereign, is situated in tradition and gets worked out in history.⁴⁰ Habermas himself recognizes this when he elaborates: “One is tempted to use Gadamer against himself,” in order to defend the right of reflection.⁴¹

Further, Habermas accuses hermeneutics of “linguistic idealism.”⁴² This means, according to Habermas, not seeing the outer limits of language, which is everything that cannot be said, as well as the inner limits, namely the web that every language weaves around every speaker. If the first part of this accusation is simply unjustified, the second part by contrast bears considerable weight for the hermeneutic debate.⁴³ “Language is also a medium of domination and social power,” runs the thesis by Habermas.⁴⁴ Language is, therefore, ideological, because it reflects “interests.” But this conclusion is reached only thanks to the hermeneutic investigation of the relation between language and speaker, that is, the dialogue whose conflict-laden character Habermas justifiably underlines. With this sharpening of the conflict hermeneutics is radicalized, it becomes ideology critique—without, however, ceasing to be hermeneutics.

In order to unmask the power relations at work in language, and thereby to underline the constraining role of consensus, Habermas mobilizes both ideology critique and psychoanalysis. In his third criticism, he questions the dichotomy of truth and method and shows the possibility of a methodical understanding that, “behind the back of language,” returns to the false individual or social consciousness and, in the name of undistorted communicative relations, subjects it to critical reflection.⁴⁵ Psychoanalysis and ideology critique become the proof of a methodizing and objectifying understanding in the area of the social sciences.⁴⁶ Indeed, Gadamer—in contrast to Ricoeur—does not consider the scientific status of these disciplines and emphasizes rather their openly hermeneutic character.⁴⁷ For Gadamer it is important to defend the distinction between truth and method in order to turn against the thesis, which has become widespread in modernity, that there could be no truth outside of method.⁴⁸ Nevertheless he also draws attention to another point: the transposition of the psychoanalytic model to social critique.⁴⁹ The therapeutic dialogue takes place between a patient, who subjects himself to an asymmetrical relationship in order to regain his balance, and a psychoanalyst, who is responsible for this but who is “never analyzed to the end.”⁵⁰ It would therefore be quite dangerous to transpose this schema, which arises through “voluntary submission,” onto all areas of social life. This would resemble the attempt to turn every speaker into a patient, who is emancipated, either voluntarily or against their will, from the troubles and pressures of communication, and who in this way would be elevated by “metahermeneutics” to a rational and more self-transparent form of consciousness. This questionable transposition, which Habermas however does not insist upon, indicates in any case another more far-reaching and more complex question, whose answer forms the watershed between both philosophers. Whereas the psychoanalytic dialogue is, for Habermas, the extreme case that puts the universality of hermeneutics in question, Gadamer sees only an individual case in it, since it is linguistically performed and thus influenced by a preliminary agreement, in the sense that it proceeds from the play of language that no speaker can escape.⁵¹ Language, according to Gadamer, is “the game in which we all play.”⁵² But agreement does not mean consensus—as was already shown. And understanding means neither accepting necessarily nor approving. This is the equation that Habermas mistakenly employs. To speak a language means to be enmeshed in the web of language, but not held captive; to this extent, language is no ideological prison. If language is seen as a prison, then it becomes an autonomous power over and above the speaker. In the process the reflexive ability of the speaker is overvalued, who, in order to avoid all forms of blindness seems to gain an external perspective in which he, according to the model of the Enlightenment, would be emancipated from “the rhetorically produced consensus.”⁵³ Philosophical hermeneutics, which lies at the dividing line between the rhetorical and the hermeneutic aspects of linguisticality, raises to consciousness the position of the speaker in relation to language, and thereby opens the path to a reflection made possible by the speculative structure of language. Although in its transcendence it can reveal new and further possibilities, reflection based on language can never reach a “complete, idealistic transparency of meaning.”⁵⁴ This does not exclude, however, that hermeneutics also begins with the agreement of language and then aims for an approval that—according to Apel—should be seen as the regulative ideal of an infinite dialogue.⁵⁵ Habermas called this ideal the “anticipation of the good life,” which is common to all and gets articulated through the play of forces in the dialogue through which the community is constituted. Habermas himself, in the 1980s, will put the basic hermeneutic category of “linguistic agreement” once again into play, and derives the telos that guides his “discourse ethics” from this: “This underlying agreement, which unites us before the fact and in the light of which every actually attained agreement can be criticized, grounds the hermeneutic utopia of universal and unlimited dialogue in a commonly inhabited lifeworld.”⁵⁶ The debate between hermeneutics and ideology critique was not without repercussions.⁵⁷ Gadamer will in the future pay more attention to unfolding the critical potential of hermeneutics. To be sure, reflection cannot bring us out of tradition, but tradition, and particularly the one from which the drive to emancipation emerges, needs critical questioning in order to be understood. In an important passage in his “Replik,” Gadamer writes: “Philosophical hermeneutics [. . .] thus no longer serves to overcome certain difficulties of understanding, as might occur with texts or in dialogue with other people, but what it strives for is, as Habermas calls it, a ‘critical reflexive knowledge.’”⁵⁸ The agreement that authorizes the continuity of tradition will at the same time legitimize its change. Even revolution is not absolute and hence abstract change, but a kind of confrontation with tradition. Similarly, complete agreement can also be read as “revolutionary solidarity.”⁵⁹

This debate also leaves its mark in Habermas’s thought. Clearly, since 1970 psychoanalysis no longer represents the paradigm of a critical theory of society. By contrast, Habermas develops in his Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns a “discourse ethics,” which brings to light, under many aspects, the debt he owes to the hermeneutic dialogue. What binds Gadamer and Habermas further to each other, even after their debate, is the concept of “solidarity,” whereby what is common is made possible in language. It is the thesis of Richard J. Bernstein (b. 1932) that philosophical hermeneutics contains a political critique, confirmed by the role of phrónesis or practical wisdom. Bernstein perceives here an influence exercised by ideology critique.⁶⁰

Habermas himself insisted on this point in his laudatio of 1979, which has become known by the title “Hans-Georg Gadamer. Die Urbanisierung der Heideggerschen Provinz” (“The Urbanization of the Heideggerian Province”).⁶¹ Habermas can be credited with having emphasized the emancipatory potential of hermeneutics, which he happens to share with Vattimo; yet he still did not see this potential in its “thinking in utopias,” principally because he had neglected the role of Plato in hermeneutics. With the authority of a voice that can hardly be contradicted, he had at the same time contributed to putting Gadamer in Heidegger’s shadows—despite his connection to Hegel and the substantial differences between Heidegger’s “turn to the mysticism of Being” and Gadamer’s “humanism.”⁶² But in this approach by Habermas there lies a problem that goes beyond Gadamer’s hermeneutics and concerns the difficult relation of German philosophy to its history and its identity.

3. Hermeneutics and Neo-Pragmatism

After 1968 Gadamer taught at various American universities. At first his work was far more received by literary scholars, theologians, and legal scholars than in philosophy departments, where analytic philosophy dominated. But Gadamer never sought to avoid the debate with analytic philosophy and was searching there, too, for possible ways to build bridges.⁶³ The contemporary constellation in the United States seemed entirely favorable for the arrival of hermeneutics. On the one hand North American thought can look back on a solid tradition of pragmatism, and on the other hand analytic philosophy has been in crisis for a long time. It is thus not surprising that hermeneutics would find its preferred interlocutor in the neo-pragmatist Richard Rorty (1931–2007), who was just in the process of stepping down from his position at Princeton University, one of the strongholds of mainstream analytic philosophy. His 1979 book, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, confirmed Rorty’s departure from analytic philosophy. He declared the era of systematic philosophy at an end and sought to open a new epoch in which philosophy would be a struggle against “normalization,” that is, it would be hermeneutics.

Rorty’s argument becomes clearer in light of the numerous common features shared by American pragmatism and continental hermeneutics. Both William James (1842–1910) and, especially, John Dewey (1859–1952) begin with the need to overcome the epistemological perspective that has become mired in the modern division between subject and object. By contrast they promote connections with the lifeworld, in which the self forms itself with others and with the world. Reciprocity becomes the cipher of this new concept of truth. Art plays a significant role for them; as an event that reveals truth it can far more substantially transform existence than the abstract assertions of truth by science. Pragmatism agrees with hermeneutics that reason must be stripped of its claim to absoluteness. Reason is, for pragmatism too, always concrete and historical.⁶⁴

In his renewal of the pragmatic tradition, through which he begins a critique of analytic philosophy, Rorty draws explicitly on Gadamer’s hermeneutics. This undeniable proximity is accompanied, however, by a distance between them, which can be explained for the most part on the basis of the American philosopher’s background.⁶⁵ Yet precisely for this reason Rorty’s access to hermeneutics opens the way to new and original developments.

According to Rorty, hermeneutics gives a twofold answer to the questions about the future of philosophy: it says no to “epistemology” and yes to “education or selfformation” (Bildung). Epistemology, for him, is in a broader sense a kind of foundationalism, since it postulates the necessity of providing an ultimate epistemological basis for philosophy. In a narrower sense it is the normal science, as Kuhn had conceived it, that is, a complex of methods and contents that develop within dominant “paradigms.” As against such foundationalism, hermeneutics offers a clear alternative. Rorty finds confirmation for this in the critique Gadamer launched against Husserl’s concept of “ultimate foundation.”⁶⁶ At the same time, however, hermeneutics is entirely prepared to dialogue with epistemology as “normal discourse,” and thus to show its ability not only to let various “normal” discourses interact, but also to open itself to “abnormal” discourses, that is, to such discourses that are articulated in alternative paradigms and are incommensurable with the dominant paradigm.⁶⁷ As normal discourse supposedly needs the abnormal, this latter is always “reactive” or “parasitical.” Such a sharp distinction seems to yield more than one difficulty—both for hermeneutics and for philosophy in general. For either hermeneutics identifies with abnormal discourse, whereby it would make room for a systematic philosophy involved with normal discourse, or it would admit, in just as dangerous a way, the articulation of a normal discourse, which can however be elevated to a foundational discourse.

If hermeneutics renounces an ultimate foundation, this occurs because from the very outset it renounces an understanding based on a pre-given vocabulary that can adequately translate all discourses. For a post-foundationalist philosophy, however, the problem of understanding the multiplicity of paradigms still arises. With this Rorty touches on a key question for hermeneutics and comes very close to Gadamer’s position. Far from being a matter of appropriation and subjugation, understanding rather shows respect for the vocabulary in which the incommensurability of the other is articulated. Understanding as suggested by hermeneutics is, according to Rorty, “more like getting acquainted with a person than like following a demonstration.”⁶⁸

The theme of a “dialogue,” and “dialogue” with partners who are different and incommensurable, is developed further on the basis of the hermeneutic concept of Bildung.⁶⁹ Rorty translates this complex and multilayered German word not with “education,” but with “edification.” “Edification” for him does not mean the knowledge of what is “out there”; rather it means to form oneself and others, so that edification should be taken as the “reinterpretation” of our familiar environment. Accordingly, edification is not necessarily constructive: “For edifying discourse is supposed to be abnormal, to take us out of our old selves by the power of strangeness, to aid us in becoming new beings.”⁷⁰ It would be a mistake, however, to understand “edification” as “a structure erected upon foundations.” For edification is for its part “dialogue.”⁷¹ Although Rorty indicates a way out of epistemology, his answer is not a foundationalist one, since it points to the possibility of leaving the dialogue endlessly open.

On this point Gadamer would agree with Rorty and probably also subscribe to his interpretation of Bildung. But he would have doubts about Rorty’s way of reading the concept of wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein, or “effective historical consciousness.” Whereas Derrida thought he could sense the residue of a metaphysics of consciousness in this concept, Rorty want to find the basic principle of neo-pragmatism in it:

Gadamer develops his notion of wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein (the sort of consciousness of the past which changes us) to characterize an attitude interested not so much in what is out there in the world, or in what happened in history, as in what we can get out of nature and history for our own uses.⁷²

Obviously, in this way of reading, wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein is not oriented toward an interpretation of the past. But under the sign of free self-determination, it decides on the usefulness of the past for the present and the future. Rorty distorts Gadamer’s concept not so much because he projects it into the future, but because he introduces the criterion of usefulness, which is of course central to pragmatism, but alien to hermeneutics.

Rorty’s philosophical project aims at a radical “deontologization” of hermeneutics that does not coincide with a dismissal of its metaphysical remnants. For him, it is much more a question of turning our gaze away from Being and toward language, or better, toward dialogue as the site where a common experience of truth is possible in a non-foundationalist manner. With this emphasis on the post-metaphysical outcome of hermeneutics, Rorty’s contribution opens new perspectives for continental philosophy.

4. Hermeneutics and Deconstruction

The first meeting between Gadamer and Derrida took place at the Goethe Institut in Paris April 25–27, 1981. The aim was a public debate between the main representatives of continental philosophy. But both participants and witnesses were unanimous in speaking of the event as a dialogue between the deaf, and the proceedings published a little later in Germany and France seem to confirm this impression.⁷³ Nevertheless this “improbable debate”—as Philippe Forget defined it—was epoch-making. The 1989 American edition, entitled Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida-Encounter, contains new essays by philosophers from both sides.⁷⁴

The legitimate question of the difference between hermeneutics and deconstruction was left open, even after the Paris meeting. Not coincidentally the debate continued primarily in North America, where the proximity of both philosophical currents led to doubts about whether truly different positions could be identified behind the different labels.⁷⁵ The common provenance of hermeneutics and deconstruction is entirely evident in Europe.⁷⁶ Both follow the way opened by Heidegger, engage with Hegel, and ceaselessly return, even if on different paths, to Greek philosophy. Their commonalities are also reflected in the themes they share. It is sufficient to think of the significance of art, especially literature and poetry.⁷⁷ Nonetheless hermeneutics and deconstruction represent various philosophical alternatives and demand that this difference be illuminated. Thus the question developed in the North American context in the 1980s has still lost none of its relevance: How hermeneutic is deconstruction and how deconstructive is hermeneutics?

Regarding the two protagonists, it seems that the debate at first left deeper traces in Gadamer’s thinking, since he accepted Derrida’s challenge and changed his positions, or made them more precise, in several essays: “Destruktion und Dekonstruktion” from 1985, “Frühromantik, Hermeneutik, Dekonstruktion” from 1987, “Dekonstruktion und Hermeneutik” from 1988, and “Hermeneutik auf der Spur” from 1994.⁷⁸ In these essays Gadamer clearly expressed how seriously he took the debate and revealed, above all, his esteem for the French philosopher. He recognized in Derrida one of the most important figures he had encountered since the publication of Truth and Method:

Back in the 1960s, when I had finished up my own project in philosophical hermeneutics and offered it to the public, I paused to take a look at the world around me. At that time, two important things struck me, in addition to the works of the later Wittgenstein. The first of these was that I met the poet Paul Celan, in whose late works I began to immerse myself. The other was the fact that Derrida’s essay, “Ousia et Grammè,” published in the Festschrift for Beaufret, came into my hands, followed later by the several important books that Derrida published in 1967 which I immediately began to study. (GR 377/GW10 149)

Derrida for his part only occasionally engaged hermeneutics, and when he did it was especially to emphasize the difference between his deconstruction and hermeneutics.⁷⁹ But one year after Gadamer’s death, on February 15, 2003, Derrida gave a memorial address in Heidelberg entitled “Rams: The Uninterrupted Dialogue between Two Infinites, the Poem.”⁸⁰ From the “strange interruption” of that time in Paris, Derrida returned to the “uninterrupted dialogue,” that “encounter” or “clash” between two rams, alluding to the thread of the poem that bound them. He welcomed the word “dialogue” in his vocabulary in order to announce an unexpected interpretation: that “improbable debate” had been “successful,” contrary to what most believed—and precisely because of the interruption, which had not been an “original misunderstanding,” but “an epoché that made one hold one’s breath, withhold judgment or conclusion.”⁸¹ Thus it had left behind a living and provocative trace that promised more than one future. In returning to the uninterrupted dialogue Derrida renews the topic of “interruption,” which already arose during the Paris encounter, but which had afterward remained in the shadows. He pointed, even if only indirectly, less to the proverbial opposition between orality and writing and more to the question of understanding, that motif which had guided the debate and which could still illuminate the distance and the nearness between both philosophies. For in the topic of understanding it becomes clear how hermeneutics begins with unity and deconstruction proceeds from difference.

When Gadamer held his opening address in Paris, which was published subsequently with the title “Text und Interpretation,” he seemed most concerned to distinguish himself from French philosophy in general and deconstruction in particular through the conception of the “text” (GR 156–191/GW2 330–360).⁸² He advocated the need to give voice to the text again, in order to highlight its “unity of meaning” and to lead it back to the dialogue from which it originally sprang.⁸³ His unquestionable reversions to the “language of metaphysics”—Gadamer spoke for example of the “task of understanding”—contributed to the fact that his remarks must have sounded like a provocation to Derrida’s ears. Gadamer reached his culmination when he spoke of “the goodwill to try to understand one another,” and with these words provoked the discussion (GR 174/GW2 343).⁸⁴

It is not surprising that on the next day Derrida responded with three short questions that aimed to call into question the entirety of hermeneutics and converge in a single goal. Behind the efforts of hermeneutics to understand the other, behind its “appeal to goodwill,” is concealed Nietzsche’s “will to power.”⁸⁵ Already with his first question, Derrida charges hermeneutics with a relapse into metaphysics. The will to understand, which precedes every concrete interaction between speakers, suggests for Derrida the outlines of an ethical axiom that would equate Gadamer’s good will to understand with Kant’s “good will.” Would not the good will to understand, which is as axiomatic and unconditioned as the “absolute value” of Kant’s will, amount to a new version of metaphysical “subjectivity,” which would, following Heidegger’s expressed suspicions, amount to a domination of Being? With a second question Derrida appeals to psychoanalysis, which is of course a borderline case, but nevertheless paradigmatic for abandoning “good will” and so bears witness to the failure of the “living dialogue.” Habermas had already recognized a problematic limit in psychoanalysis and expressed his doubts about whether it could be integrated into a general hermeneutics. For his part, Derrida emphasized that psychoanalytic discourse would even explode the broad interpretative context that Gadamer suggested. To this extent it calls for a kind of productive interpretation that would at first require a rupture. Derrida’s third, philosophically decisive question turned around this concept of the rupture, or better, the interruption. What came under discussion here was what Gadamer called “understanding.” One would have to ask, according to Derrida, whether the condition of understanding would be not the limitless readiness for dialogue, the continuous relation to the other, but instead the “the interruption of rapport, a certain rapport of interruption, the suspending of all mediation.”⁸⁶ With this the suspicion of deconstruction overtakes the hermeneutic dialogue. Deconstruction seems to offer an alternative view because it prefers the interruption, protects disunity, preserves the difference and the otherness of the other, which cannot be appropriated, as well as the impossibility of understanding.

Gadamer responded with an equally brief paper entitled “Und dennoch: Macht des Guten Willens.”⁸⁷ He lets the contradictions in Derrida’s position appear by using the classic argument against the skeptics. “I am finding it difficult to understand these questions that have been addressed to me. But I will make an effort, as anyone would do who wants to understand another person or be understood by the other” (DD 55/ TI 59). However, this “effort” has nothing to do with metaphysics or with Kant’s “good will.” Gadamer would much rather draw on the Platonic Socrates, who explains in the Gorgias that it would be better to be refuted than to refute.⁸⁸ This principle, in which hermeneutics recognizes itself again, is however not an ethical instance. “Even immoral beings try to understand one another” (DD 55/TI 59). Thus it is a matter of a phenomenological position describing the everyday practices of speaking and understanding. Whoever opens their mouth to speak would like to be understood—unless he or she wants to hide something. Derrida and Nietzsche do not constitute exceptions: “both speak and write in order to be understood” (DD 57/TI 61).⁸⁹ But this in no way means that nonunderstanding and misunderstanding could be eliminated. Gadamer agrees with Derrida that there is no unbroken understanding. The psychoanalytic dialogue, which aims to understand not what the speaker wants to say, but what he or she does not want to say, is an extreme manifestation of such a break.

Then where does the distance lie between Gadamer and Derrida, if not in the need for the interruption? For hermeneutics the interruption is not something fundamental and originary, because the prelude of language always takes precedence. Thus interruption already writes itself into the constellation of language; it is difference that inscribes this unity. Here hermeneutics shows its proximity to the critique of ideology.⁹⁰ A still greater distance from deconstruction is shown in the conception of the rupture. Even where the rupture is more noticeable and the collision more violent, as in the work of art and above all in the poetic text, hermeneutics takes up this collision but does not strengthen it, just as it also does not deepen it. Rather it acts in the reverse way: for hermeneutics the interruption opens the dialogue, but does not close it off. Though it may know that the rupture never heals, that nonunderstanding is never eliminated, hermeneutics gives itself over to an infinite dialogue.⁹¹ This is, by the way, the position that Gadamer also takes up in the debate with Derrida. One year after the encounter in Paris, Gadamer writes: “Whoever wants me to take deconstruction to heart and insists on difference stands at the beginning of a conversation, not at its end” (DD 113/GW2 372).

The distance between hermeneutics and deconstruction, in other words, lies not in the good will to understand but in understanding itself, in the way in which understanding follows either from the unity of the uninterrupted dialogue or from the difference of the interruption. For Gadamer, one perspective points to the other. After Heidegger’s attempt to dismantle the language of metaphysics there are for Gadamer only two ways, or perhaps one common path, that could still lead into the openness of philosophical experience: the path of hermeneutics, which goes from dialectics back to dialogue, and the path of deconstruction, which in écriture causes the laceration of metaphysics.⁹²

In his memorial speech, “Béliers,” Derrida returns to the topic of interruption, which this time refers to a final interruption, the separation of life and death. What will become of the dialogue after death has stamped its seal on it? Will there still be a dialogue after death? The dialogue continues, according to Derrida, and follows the traces in those who survive, who in the future will allow the voice of the dead friend to be heard. The promise and the obligation find their expression in the verse of the poet who brought the two philosophers together: Paul Celan. The world is gone, I must carry you.⁹³ The topic of death interweaves itself here with the topic of dialogue, but also with the topic of the poem. Two works by Gadamer stand in the background: Poem and Conversation and Who Am I and Who Are You? The death of the other is the “world after the end of the world.”⁹⁴ The surviving one remains alone, robbed of the world of the other, remains in the world outside of the world, responsible alone and thereby determined to carry both the other and his or her world further. As Heidegger had pointed to the nearness of “thinking” (Denken) to “thanking” (Danken), Derrida draws together “thinking” (penser) and “weighing” (peser). In order to think and to weigh, also in the sense of bearing a weight, one must therefore carry, carry within oneself and on oneself. Yet

To carry now no longer has the meaning of “to comprise” [comporter], to include, to comprehend in the self, but rather to carry oneself for bear oneself toward [se porter vers] the infinite inappropriability of the other, toward the encounter with its absolute transcendence in the very inside of me, that is to say, in me outside of me.⁹⁵

It means, above all, to transmit and translate what is untranslatable, what will remain as such, as an irreducible surplus, if that remainder of “unreadability” will be preserved which hermeneutics has made possible and which makes hermeneutics possible. The obligation of deconstruction consists of carrying hermeneutics, and in the process to perceive what is common to them and to preserve the remainder of the difference. Unity and difference, difference and unity, offer in return the uncanny secret of their elusive reference. Between two infinities, Celan is the tertium datur, more than the point of convergence, a point of new orientation.

5. Hermeneutics or Nihilism?

The unique history of hermeneutics in Italy began with the translation of Truth and Method, which Gianni Vattimo published in 1972.⁹⁶ Gadamer is read, studied, and reviewed, and his thought finds such widespread resonance that it is almost seen as the result of the indigenous philosophical tradition. But more than anywhere else, hermeneutics in Italy essentially becomes the koiné of philosophy, with all the advantages and the disadvantages that this brings. It delivers a shared idiom for many and various voices, whereby it becomes difficult in this polyphony to find a common tone in which such vastly different philosophical projects could be harmonized.⁹⁷

Hermeneutics fits into a many-sided and eclectic horizon in Italy. Its acceptance has been encouraged by historicism, which since Benedetto Croce (1866–1952) has deliberately aimed to do justice to the individual and the differentiated character of historical reality. Yet hermeneutics finds a fruitful ground above all in the humanistic tradition, which already with Vico had contributed to a rediscovery of rhetoric. This strong affinity also explains why the phenomenological components of hermeneutics at first remained hidden. The enormous spread of Heidegger’s philosophy, which found easy entry within existentialism, led to a certain antagonism toward phenomenology. Heidegger opened the door for Gadamer, so to speak. But we should nevertheless ask how advantageous this was for Gadamer. “Heidegger and Gadamer” is the formula that gained quick acceptance and became a questionable interpretative cipher for Gadamer’s philosophy.

A key role in the reception of hermeneutics in Italy was played by Luigi Pareyson (1918–91). Far more influenced by the Christian tradition than by Greek philosophy, Pareyson saw in Fichte and Schelling a possible corrective to Hegel, whereas his existentialism brought him much closer to Jaspers than to Heidegger. These features alone make visible the distance separating him from Gadamer.

Certainly there is no lack of contact points. In his 1971 work, Verita e interpretazione, Pareyson emphasizes that the original relation to Being is necessarily hermeneutic, which appears above all in art.⁹⁸ By highlighting the irreplaceability of the person in order to have access to truth, however, Pareyson at the same time emphasizes the strongly personal character of truth. According to him, hermeneutic truth unfolds in an endless series of interpretations that, to be sure, do not reciprocally relativize each other, yet nevertheless cannot claim the absoluteness that remains reserved only for its inexhaustible source. If truth is such, then every interpretative experience turns out to be an experience of freedom. This is the thesis that underlies his posthumous book from 1995, Ontologia della liberta.⁹⁹ His distance from Gadamer becomes clearly visible here: Pareyson places the accent on interpreting, which comes about as “congeniality,” whereas Gadamer accents understanding, which results primarily from a “collision.” Moreover, the historical character of truth, which for philosophical hermeneutics is irrevocable, is increasingly passed over in silence by Pareyson, until it tragically becomes silent in the immemorial that is the source of mythos. “Ontological and personal” thought, concerned with the question of salvation, declines itself in this source, in a hermeneutics of Christianity as the founding myth of modernity.

This obvious difference between Gadamer and Pareyson determines the fate of philosophical hermeneutics in Italy, for most of the representatives of hermeneutics come from the Pareyson school, and almost all of them rely on him in an unmediated way.

Isolated and emblematic is the figure of Valerio Verra (1928–2001), who, as a student of Pareyson, was nevertheless strongly influenced by Gadamer. Already in 1963, Verra wrote a balanced and insightful review of Truth and Method, and at the same time explicitly showed his support.¹⁰⁰ Verra devoted significant essays to philosophical hermeneutics: from the early ones on the question of the consciousness of effective history to the later, in which he compares Gadamer’s aesthetics to Kant’s and Hegel’s and thereby shows how far hermeneutics is from any relativization of truth. Nonetheless his interpretations, which remain close to the texts and take Plato and Hegel as reference points, have to this day found only limited resonance.

The “urbanization of the Heideggerian province,” which in the meantime has become almost a continent, took place toward the end of the 1970s in a complex context. The renewal of Marxism, which was to be freed from its Enlightenment inheritance as well as from the systematic and closed thinking of Hegel, found a new starting point in Nietzsche’s critique of modern subjectivity and in Heidegger’s destruction of metaphysics. With the “crisis of reason,” which the Frankfurt School had warned of for years, the debate began about postmodernity.

The protagonist of this debate is Gianni Vattimo (b. 1936), who, as the student of Pareyson, Löwith, and Gadamer, lastingly influenced the impact of hermeneutics into Italy. He is to be thanked not only for his excellent translation of Truth and Method, but also for the resounding success of this work.¹⁰¹

Though he was an original interpreter of philosophical hermeneutics, Vattimo also developed his own philosophy, with references primarily to Nietzsche and Heidegger. In the extent to which he, over time, more clearly emphasized his distance from Gadamer’s hermeneutics, Vattimo’s philosophy emerged as an independent project. After 1983 his philosophy takes the name pensiero debole, or “weak thought.” “Nihilism” became his key term. The history of Being, which for the Heidegger of Being and Time had suffered the most extreme transformation into the mè ón, in other words, the negation into that not-being which is the nothing, is welcomed by Vattimo in its decline. Weak thought, which is conscious of this “weakening” of Being, takes it up and sees in nihilism “the only path possible for ontology.”¹⁰² Embracing this declining Being, which, groundless, hermeneutically gives itself in becoming, in the transitory forms of history and language, weak thought in turn plays itself out in an infinite play of interpretations. In light of the identification of Being and language, Vattimo reads hermeneutics as “the ontology of the decline of Being,” or as the “ontology of actuality”—if the contemporary age is the “age of nihilism.”¹⁰³ In this way, weak ontology moves in Nietzsche’s wake and recognizes itself again in that “complete” nihilism that determines, after the disappearance of all values, that it no longer possesses the truth, that truth is given only in the infinite perspectival effects of interpretations. The conquest of truth would accordingly be “a path leading away from the real as the immediate pressure of the given, the incontrovertible imposition of the in itself.”¹⁰⁴ Nietzsche’s perspectivism plays a decisive role here and sets in motion a philosophy of interpretation—in Vattimo’s recuperation of the famous saying, “there are no facts, only interpretations.” At the same time, Pareyson’s influence should not be underestimated. This is true both for the breadth of the interpretation and for the meaning that Christianity has in Vattimo’s later philosophy. In a hermeneutics that is attentive not so much to the meaning of Being but to its history, and is thus prepared to recognize its own event character and its own provenance, Christianity, read in light of the present, reveals itself to be that interpretative event from which hermeneutics itself emerges. The birth of the verbum, which takes the place of the “death of God,” leads the way to the nihilistic process of the weakening of God’s Being, that downgrading which initiates the “secularization” of Being. The Christian kénosis is thus for Vattimo the origin and fate of hermeneutics as nihilistic ontology, which in taking up, even promoting, the weakening of God’s Being retains support only through caritas. This religious outcome should not be misunderstood. Aesthetic experience finds a new voice that was already central in the first phase of Vattimo’s thought.¹⁰⁵ In late modernity, for Vattimo, art, recognizing itself in its truth claim as secularized religion, can help religion to free itself of its dogmatic content.

But what remains here of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics? Weak thought is a particular reworking of hermeneutics—but not only that. Here one must guard against confusion: hermeneutics is not nihilism. It is also important to hold these two terms apart from each other in the future, in order both to do justice to Vattimo’s philosophical contribution and to bring clarity to the debate about hermeneutics, which could have further positive effects for the debate between continental and analytic philosophy.

As hard as one may try, it is impossible to find the word “nihilism” in Gadamer’s writings.¹⁰⁶ But it is even more important that a “hermeneutic ontology” represents a kind of contradictio in adjecto, since hermeneutics has taken leave of ontology as logos, which wants to say what Being is.¹⁰⁷ Thus in hermeneutics there is no longer the concern for Being, and just as little the thought of “overcoming” that Vattimo takes from Heidegger. If this absence of Being and the concern for Being is taken into account, then Gadamer’s hermeneutics is nearer to Derrida’s deconstruction. And if hermeneutics does not speak of Being, then it speaks even less of nothingness. The path of philosophical hermeneutics is in these ways exactly opposite to nihilism and its “meontology,” or the study of non-being: hermeneutics reads mè ón in Plato’s sense as ouk ésti. From the abyss of nothingness, hermeneutics rethinks the Being of nothing as being other; the transformation that occurs is from Being to alterity. The lack of any tragic accent in hermeneutics is simply further confirmation of this change. Not coincidentally, Vattimo senses in hermeneutics the disappearance of that tragic element which still marked Heidegger’s ontology, in a vision of history and language that is all too “irenic” for him. Hermeneutics leaves behind the negativity of a limit that is nothing and silence, in order to turn to the beyond of the other. In the consciousness of the limit, and in the instance of the beyond, that “religious comportment” of hermeneutics becomes visible, which Gadamer consistently summarized with the famous title from a discourse of Kierkegaard’s: “On what is edifying in the thought that against God one is always wrong” (GR371/GW10 70).

What weak thought undoubtedly does have in common with philosophical hermeneutics is the rejection of the ultimate foundation of philosophy. But the way in which this rejection is conceived again shows an important difference, which goes by the name of Nietzsche. While Vattimo separates hermeneutics from phenomenology, he gives considerable space to Nietzsche’s philosophy of interpretation. Accordingly, he conceives of hermeneutics as a “philosophy of interpretation.” Yet hermeneutics is not a philosophy of interpretation and hermeneutics has never understood itself as such. This is probably the greatest misunderstanding that still burdens the reception of hermeneutics.¹⁰⁸ The question that Gadamer asks is that of understanding—not the question of interpretation. Understanding is not interpretation; interpretation is rather a borderline case of understanding.¹⁰⁹ Wherever understanding is replaced by interpretation, there Nietzsche’s influence makes itself felt.

Gadamer stands just as far from Nietzsche as he stands close to Plato and Hegel. How can this distance be explained? Here it is not question of an aversion, but rather of philosophical motivation. Gadamer sees in Nietzsche’s hermeneutic radicalism the reverse side of Cartesian metaphysics, since a truth that does not exist, or no longer exists, is still the absolute truth of the fundamentum inconcussum. Measured by the absoluteness of this truth, everything else will appear as mere interpretation and become relativized to a perspective. Here lies the complicity of metaphysics and nihilism, which hermeneutics cannot accept. Correspondingly, it also does not accept the resignation that takes the lack of absolute values and fixed positions as characteristic of our age. To see a collapse of all support in the lack of an ultimate foundation of truth is, rather, the indication of intellectual arrogance, another form of the will to power.¹¹⁰

But even if it puts metaphysics at stake and rejects the claims of science, which forgets its roots in finitude, hermeneutics does not therefore deliver itself over to the swindle of a perspectivism in which everything is indifferent. Philosophical hermeneutics does not give up on truth. In no way does it abandon every support. For hermeneutics the support is not simply found in the other, in the otherness that cannot be appropriated, but in the Being with the other.

6. A Hermeneutics of the Other: New Perspectives

In an essay devoted to Gadamer’s philosophy in 2002, Charles Taylor (b. 1931) writes: “The great challenge of this century . . . is that of understanding the other,” and he adds that precisely on this issue “Gadamer has made a tremendous contribution to twentieth-century thought.”¹¹¹ Yet for some decades, the way in which hermeneutics has from the beginning conceived itself as the understanding of the other has been sharply and to some extent vehemently disputed.

An important part of the debate in continental philosophy, marked by the “thought of difference,” has energetically argued for the right of the individual to his or her otherness. Hence otherness has been advanced as an ethical category, whose recognition and respect are strongly promoted. But such a focus on alterity is a novum in Western philosophy. As is well known, the difference between the one and the other has been seen by most philosophers as merely accidental, and thus not as important for reflection. In this sense the question of the possibility of the radical otherness of the other has distinguished twentieth-century thought.¹¹² On this everyone would probably agree. What is problematic, however, is to determine where and how the question of the other was first raised. Already here opinions would begin to differ. For those who represent the thought of difference, and who above all connect it with more recent French philosophy, the invention of the other has an unquestionable origin, namely, phenomenology. The question of the knowability of the other first arose in the phenomenological investigations of Husserl, who was one of the first philosophers to deal with the topic of intersubjectivity. With this claim, though, other sources are put aside, beginning with the Jewish tradition, which was heavily influenced not only by the “philosophers of dialogue,” Buber and Rosenzweig, but also by Levinas, if not also by Derrida. What is neglected and forgotten by this view, however, is also the source of hermeneutics, indeed even the hermeneutics of Schleiermacher.

Undeniably, hermeneutics raises the question of understanding for the first time in philosophy. As with the question of the other, so the question of understanding had previously had no philosophical relevance. Presumably the one question belongs with the other. In any case hermeneutics unfolds with the guiding question of understanding, which in a discontinuous continuity provides the background in which the question of the otherness of the other becomes unavoidable. Yet hermeneutics still faces the objection that it seeks, in the process of understanding, to reduce the difference of the other to identity. Thus understanding would conceal the “destruction of the individual by the universal.”¹¹³ Even the simple repetition of what one has heard would be, secretly or not according to this view, under pressure to conform. Understanding would basically mean wanting-to-understand. Unmasked as the last version of the metaphysics of will, the hermeneutic project, in which the attempt to reach understanding would always amount to a consensus and thereby to the reduction of the other to oneself, should be rejected out of hand. The misunderstood understanding of hermeneutics is reduced—perhaps violently?—to an act of violence. Seen in this way, hermeneutics—as the basic tenor of its critics could by summarized—would dispense with every ethical dimension.

This diametrical opposition between philosophical hermeneutics and the thought of alterity, however, seems quite conspicuous and questionable, as if the one would exclude and would have to exclude the other. Such an opposition, which is scarcely motivated by philosophical concerns, can perhaps be explained by the strategic need that forces the thought of alterity to gain in profile by emphasizing the break with hermeneutics. To this end the philosophical hermeneutics of Gadamer is presented as the last, suspicious version of the old way of thinking. The suspicion is fed by the proximity of philosophical hermeneutics to Plato, Hegel, and not least to Heidegger. But what is decisive is the, more or less conscious, emphatic demand to free oneself from German philosophy, to break with it forever, to a certain extent repress it, and only to save phenomenology from it. Not coincidentally, hermeneutics is accepted in this context only insofar as it can be brought back to its phenomenological roots.

In following this strategy several themes are ignored or even passed over in silence, while at the same time the accent is placed upon a few, mostly extrapolated, formulations. These allegedly show that hermeneutic understanding would involve the appropriation of the other, the integration, inclusion, and finally even the very incorporation of what is radically foreign. Animated by the frenzy of understanding, hermeneutics would strive to make the nonunderstandable understandable, the ungraspable graspable and intelligible; it would simply conquer and overwhelm the foreign, bracket out the different and seek to force it into a consensus or into a pseudo-dialogue.

“Beyond Meaning and Understanding”: thus reads a chapter in the volume Vielstimmigkeit der Rede (The Polyphony of Discourse), the last in the four-volume Studien zur Phänomenologie des Fremden (Studies on the Phenomenology of the Foreign) by Bernhard Waldenfels (b. 1934). In this chapter Waldenfels critically confronts Gadamer’s hermeneutics. The fundamental critique he levels against hermeneutics is: “Is the foreign allowed to be conquered on the basis of hermeneutics, or is it likely to put hermeneutics itself into question?”¹¹⁴ Following Schleiermacher, Gadamer would consider the “overcoming of foreignness” as the “actual task” of hermeneutics. In this overcoming, in this movement from the foreign to one’s own, one would have to discern a moderate Hegelianism. Similar to Derrida, Waldenfels thinks he recognizes a “will to meaning” in the presumed hermeneutic “usurping” of the foreign.¹¹⁵ Although he admits that the foreign is more than a moment for hermeneutics that must be overcome, Waldenfels nevertheless aims to bring into effect that “anti-hermeneutic counter-force,” which would arise from the “incursions of the incomprehensible” and would as such provoke hermeneutics. Without this counter-force, hermeneutics would circle around itself and, searching for the “original form” of the dialogue, or for the “true dialogue,” would simply only validate itself.¹¹⁶ Against the “generally ordered understanding of hermeneutics,” which already as a fore-understanding wants to incorporate or eliminate each new claim by the foreign, Waldenfels returns to Levinas’s “asymmetry,” which is meant to interrupt the dialectical tension between the claim and the response. The dialogue begins differently for Levinas than for Gadamer; it does not begin with the “common.” “The much-proclaimed ‘dialogue that we are’”—Waldenfels asserts—“comes from the distance of the stranger, whose claim precedes every partnership.”¹¹⁷

It would be doing an injustice not only to Gadamer, however, but also to Schleiermacher to claim that the foreign would be sublated. Waldenfels’s view, according to which the incomprehensible is “an indissoluble limit that shifts but never lets itself be extinguished,” has already been very clearly formulated by Schleiermacher as well as by Humboldt.¹¹⁸ It is certain, for Schleiermacher, that “non-understanding never wants to dissolve itself completely.”¹¹⁹ Perhaps even more clearly, Humboldt emphasizes: “Thus all understanding is always at the same time non-understanding, all assent in thought and feeling is at the same time a dissent.”¹²⁰ Since Humboldt and Schleiermacher, who not by chance took a very critical position toward Hegel, understanding has no longer been valued as self-evident, since it is influenced from the outset by nonunderstanding and misunderstanding. This significant and controversial legacy of the hermeneutic tradition should not be disavowed. Within the phenomenological lifeworld Gadamer follows the way to language opened by hermeneutics, and it is precisely language that is the watershed that distinguishes his perspective on dialogue from that of Waldenfels.

From a hermeneutic standpoint one can support without hesitation the statement by Levinas: “The other remains infinitely transcendent, infinitely foreign.”¹²¹ The question for hermeneutics, however, is the question of the foreign. What is meant by the “foreign”? Is it the original, radical, absolute foreign? The absolute foreign is endangered by the silence that threatens every absolute. It remains inarticulate and inarticulable—beyond human language, beyond hermeneutics. It is certainly not the case that hermeneutics undercuts the understanding of the foreign. Rather, it develops its conception of the foreign on the basis of the understanding. Once more, language offers the starting point for this movement. To this extent the priority for hermeneutics is not the foreign, but the common linguisticality of understanding. The foreign can emerge as such only in relation to what is held in common; the foreign can show itself only on the basis of linguistic unity. Foreignness has duration, relative to this unity. The absolutely foreign cannot be spoken of hermeneutically, since this would have the position of something entirely inadequate. For hermeneutics the foreign is always relative—it steps forward wherever there is already an access, wherever linguisticality is already common. Foreignness is the difference of the unintelligible that breaks in on what has already been understood and taken as self-evident, in order to initiate the movement of understanding once again.¹²² Thus the foreign is discovered in each understanding. The foreign is, however, not an absolute quantity. The foreign is always relatively foreign, and as such it is the unintelligible of the other. The relativity of foreignness, however, is in no way the subjugation of the foreign to understanding. Foreignness is not obtained by understanding; it remains unobtainable in understanding. The charge from those who want to give priority to the foreign as a radical provocation is, therefore, unwarranted.¹²³ Despite all criticisms, philosophical hermeneutics does appear to open a play-space in which the other as feminine, masculine, or neuter can intervene as an unexpected, extraordinary event.¹²⁴

As hermeneutics can be brought into a productive dialogue with deconstruction, however, so it can be shaken, provoked, and spurred on by a phenomenological starting point that places the accent on foreignness. The “sting of the foreign” can drive hermeneutics to be at home in a world it never believed in, to get to know this world further through the other and with the other.¹²⁵ It is certain in any case that a future hermeneutics cannot ignore the revised accentuation that has been introduced by the phenomenology of the foreign. The problem for hermeneutics is the return (Rückkehr). As long as hermeneutics remains bound up with Heidegger’s legacy, it will hardly be able to escape the temptation to return to the origin and thereby to follow the movement from one’s own to the foreign and, through the foreign, to return to one’s own. The simple abandonment of the return would, on the other hand, end in the swindle of nihilism. Yet the urbanization of the province enables for hermeneutics an opening to the globalized world, from which the movement toward the other and the return can be thought anew.

For hermeneutics, though, the other in their otherness can be recognized only from the starting point of linguistic commonality. Thus it takes its point of departure from the communal.¹²⁶ It should not be forgotten that hermeneutics limits itself to describing the everyday practice of speaking and understanding phenomenologically. Hence it is not a question of striving, making an effort, having a task or even a duty in a moral sense. Here at first an ethical and political dimension is lacking. For language is the articulation of our world. Only on the basis of this linguistic community can an ethics and a politics be erected: “The commonality between the partners is so very strong that the point is no longer the fact that I think this and you think that, but rather it involves the shared interpretation of the world which makes moral and social solidarity possible” (GR 96/GW2 188). Hermeneutics has never campaigned for consensus and reconciliation. The “agreement” from which all speakers proceed is the harmony of a common language. For speaking is always a coming-to-agreement. The other is already recognized here: even before every agreement with oneself, each speaker comes to an agreement with the other. Hence, to speak means to articulate the linguistic commonality further and otherwise. That does not prevent language, however, in its always open movement between familiarity and foreignness, understanding and nonunderstanding, from offering not only the starting point but also the paradigm of an ethics, a politics, or justice, which can be thought on the basis of its hospitable, common, and nevertheless differentiating in-between. This in-between is the space for the other and with the other, the undetermined of hermeneutic truth, and the finite meeting point of common words, which opens participation in the infinitude of the dialogue.

Timeline

February 11, 1900		Hans-Georg Gadamer is born in Marburg.
October 1902		The family moves to Breslau.
1907–18		HGG attends the school Zum Heiligen Geist (Holy Ghost).
1918–19		Registered at the University in Breslau. HGG listens to the lectures in philosophy by Richard Hönigswald.
October 1919		HGG continues his studies at the University of Marburg and attends, among others, lectures on art history (by Richard Hamann), Romance studies (by Ernst Robert Curtius), and philosophy (by Paul Natorp and Nicolai Hartmann).
April–September 1921		HGG studies for a semester in Munich, where he hears the name of Heidegger for the first time in a seminar given by Moritz Geiger.
May 17, 1922		Completion of the dissertation with Natorp. Title: “The Essence of Pleasure according to the Platonic Dialogues.”
August 1922		HGG falls victim to polio and must spend many months in isolation.
April 20, 1923		Marriage to Frida Kratz.
April–July 1923		HGG spends the summer semester in Freiburg, where he attends courses taught by Martin Heidegger and meets Edmund Husserl.
1924		First publication: “On the Idea of a System in Philosophy.” Discussion of the Metaphysics of Knowledge by Nicolai Hartmann.
October 1924		Gadamer follows Heidegger and returns to Marburg.
1925–1927		HGG studies classical philology with Paul Friedländer.
July 20, 1927		State examinations in classical philology.
February 23, 1929		Habilitation in philosophy with Martin Heidegger. Title: “Interpretation of Plato’s ‘Philebus.’”
July 10–12, 1930		On the invitation of Paul Friedländer, HGG participates in the famous conference of classical philologists in Naumburg (and also meets Werner Jaeger).
1931		The revised version of his habilitation is published by Meiner. Title: Plato’s Dialectical Ethics.
1933		Hitler seizes power.
April 21, 1933		Martin Heidegger becomes rector of the University of Freiburg and officially announces his involvement with National Socialism.
1933–1937		HGG receives a teaching contract for “Ethics and Aesthetics” at the University of Marburg. Substitute positions in Kiel and Marburg.
January 24, 1934		Lecture on “Plato and the Poets” for the Society of the Friends of the Humanistic Gymnasium in Marburg, whose chairman was Rudolf Bultmann.
June 30, 1934		Röhm-Putsch. Hitler has the leader of the SA murdered and takes over the position himself.
April 1935		The National Socialist League of University Teachers (Dozentenbund) rejects Gadamer’s application for the title of an unofficial assistant professor.
1936		In the summer semester Gadamer gives the lecture course on “Art and History,” which later becomes the basis of Truth and Method
April 20, 1927		HGG becomes assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Marburg.
November 9, 1938		Kristallnacht. The universities in Germany are emptied by the emigration of the Jews.
January 1, 1939		HGG becomes associate professor of philosophy at the University of Leipzig.
September 1, 1939		Germany attacks Poland. The Second World War begins.
May 10, 1940		The Wehrmacht marches into Holland, Belgium, and France. HGG visits Karl Jaspers, who is in Heidelberg under house arrest.
June 22, 1941		Hitler orders the attack on the Soviet Union. The mass extermination of the Jews in Europe begins.
February 2, 1943		German capitulation in Stalingrad.
December 4, 1943		The center of Leipzig is completely destroyed by the Allies’ bombing attacks.
June 6, 1944		Allied landing in Normandy. HGG hears the news from a woman student.
May 8, 1945		Capitulation of Leipzig.
January 21, 1946		HGG becomes the rector of the University of Leipzig, which has been reopened by the Russian occupying forces. Rector’s speech: “On the Primordiality of Science.”
October 1, 1948		Resettlement in the Western zone, where HGG is called to the University of Frankfurt.
March 30–April 9, 1948		Travels to Argentina, where he takes part in the first international philosophy congress after the war. HGG meets Löwith and Kuhn again.
September 2, 1949		HGG accepts the position as professor of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg.
June 1950		Moves to Heidelberg. Second marriage begins, to Käte Lekebusch.
May 27, 1951		Accepted into the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences.
1953		With Helmut Kuhn, HGG founds the journal Philosophische Rundschau.
November 19–30, 1957		Lectures in Leuven: “On the Problem of Historical Consciousness.”
1960		Truth and Method. HGG is elected as the chairman of the General German Society for Philosophy (Allgemeine Deutsche Gesellschaft für Philosophie)
1961		Lecture tour in Italy (Milan and Rome). Meeting with Emilio Betti.
February 14, 1968		Retirement. But HGG continues his teaching activities.
1968–1988		HGG gives lectures and seminars at several universities in the United States.
February 11, 1970		Two-volume Festschrift: Hermeneutik und Dialektik. Debate with Habermas.
1971		Publication of the book Hegels Dialektik (Hegel’s Dialectic: Five Hermeneutical Studies). HGG becomes knighted to the order, “Pour le merite,” and wins both the Bundesverdienstkreuzes (the Federal Cross of Merit) and the Reuchlin Prize from the city of Pforzheim.
September 1972		Participation in the Celan Colloquium at the Goethe Institut in Paris. One year later publishes the book Wer bin Ich und wer bist Du? (Gadamer on Celan: “Who Am I and Who Are You?” and Other Essays).
December 16, 1976		In response to the death of Martin Heidegger, HGG holds the memorial address in Freiburg, “Being, Spirit, God,” which later in 1983 appears in the book Heideggers Wege (Heidegger’s Ways).
June 13, 1979		Hegel Prize from the city of Stuttgart. Jürgen Habermas gives the laudation, “Die Urbanisierung der Heideggerschen Provinz” (“The Urbanization of the Heideggerian Province”).
April 25–27, 1981		Encounter with Jacques Derrida at the Goethe Institut in Paris.
May 2–9, 1981		First seminar at the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi filosofici in Naples, where HGG will return to almost every year until 1997.
November 12, 1981		Honorary doctorate at MacMaster University in Hamilton, Canada.
1982		Travels to Poland. HGG visits Breslau for the first time since the war.
1985		Publication of the Gesammelte Werke (Collected Works) begins with the publisher Mohr Siebeck in Tübingen.
May 25, 1986		Participation in Messkirch in the symposium for the Martin Heidegger Society (HGG remains an honorary member until his death). Lecture: “Der eine Weg Martin Heideggers” (“The One Way of Martin Heidegger”)
June 15, 1986		Karl Jaspers Prize.
July 1989		First hermeneutics meeting organized in Heidelberg by North American philosophers.
November 9, 1989		Fall of the Berlin Wall, which leads to Germany’s reunification one year later on October 3, 1990.
October 20, 1993		First trip to the new German states. Ceremonial address at the University of Leipzig.
February 11, 1995		The tenth and final volume of the Collected Works appears, entitled Hermeneutik im Rückblick (Hermeneutics in Review). Antonio Feltrinelli Prize of the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome.
February 12, 1996		Honorary doctorate from the University of Breslau (Wroclav). In the same year HGG receives the honorary doctorate from the University of Leipzig.
1997		In the United States a volume of the Library of Living Philosophers series dedicated to HGG appears.
March 27, 1997		Travels to Prague, where HGG receives an honorary doctorate.
June 24, 1999		Honorary doctorate from the University of Marburg.
February 11, 2000		A celebration in Gadamer’s honor is organized by the city of Heidelberg and held at the university. Among the participants are Habermas, Rorty, Theunissen, Vattimo. Publication of HGG’s last volume: Hermeneutische Entwuerfe (Hermeneutic Sketches). His students dedicate two Festschriften to HGG: Hermeneutische Wege (Hermeneutic Ways), published by Mohr Siebeck, and Begegnungen mit Hans-Georg Gadamer (Encounters with Hans-Georg Gadamer), published by Reclam.
July 7, 2000		Honorary doctorate from the University of Saint Petersburg.
March 13, 2002		HGG dies in a university clinic in Heidelberg.

Notes

1. See Helmut Kuhn, “Wahrheit und geschichtliches Verstehen. Bemerkungen zu Hans-Georg Gadamers philosophischer Hermeneutik,” Historische Zeitschrift 193, no. 2 (1961): 376–389; Joseph Möller, “Wahrheit und Methode,” Theologische Quartalsschrift 5 (1961): 467–471; Helmut Ogiermann, “Wahrheit und Methode,” Scholastik 27 (1961): 403–406; Oskar Becker, “Zur Fragwürdigkeit der Transzendierung der ästhetischen Dimension der Kunst,” Philosophische Rundschau 10 (1962): 225–238; Alphonse De Waehlens, “Sur une herméneutique de l’herméneutique,” Revue philosophique de Louvain 60 (1962): 573–591; Heinz Kimmerle, “Hermeneutische Theorie oder ontologische Hermeneutik,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 59 (1962): 114–130; Karl-Otto Apel, “Wahrheit und Methode,” Hegel-Studien 2 (1963): 314–322; Walter Hellebrand, “Der Zeitbogen,” Archiv für Rechtsund Sozialphilosophie 49 (1963): 57–76; Otto Pöggeler, “Wahrheit und Methode,” Philosophischer Literaturanzeiger 1 (1963): 6–16; Franz Wieacker, “Notizen zur Rechtshistorischen Hermeneutik,” in Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963), 1–22; Johannes Lohmann, “Wahrheit und Methode,” Gnomon 37 (1965): 709–718; Klaus Dockhorn, “Hans-Georg Gadamer: Wahrheit und Methode,” Göttingen Gelehrte Anzeigen 218 (1966): 169–206; Helmut Ogiermann, “Wahrheit und Methode (Zweite Auflage),” Theologie und Philosophie 14 (1966): 450–451. Of particular resonance was the review by Pannenberg, who claimed that Gadamer had fallen back into a Hegelian perspective: see Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Hermeneutik und Universalgeschichte,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 60 (1963): 90–121, reprinted in Hans-Georg Gadamer and Gottfried Boehm, Die Hermeneutik und die Wissenschaften (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1978), 283–319.

2. See Emilio Betti, Allgemeine Auslegungslehre als Methodik der Geisteswissenschaften (Tübingen: Mohr, 1962). Betti published a summary of his theory in German as an open polemic against Gadamer: Emilio Betti, Die Hermeneutik als allgemeine Methodik der Geisteswissenschaften (Tübingen: Mohr, 1962).

3. Eric D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 1967).

4. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, 255.

5. Gadamer, “Foreword to the Second Edition,” GW2 441/TM xxxi.

6. Hans Robert Jauss, Ästhetische Erfahrung und literarische Hermeneutik (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1977); Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics, trans. Michael Shaw (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982).

7. See Hans Robert Jauss, “Literaturgeschichte als Provokation der Literaturwissenschaft,” in Rainer Warning, ed., Rezeptionsästhetik (Munich: Fink, 1994), 126–162; “Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory,” in Towards an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Timothy Bahti (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982).

8. See chapter 5, part 5, in this volume.

9. See Wolfgang Iser, Der Akt des Lesens. Theorie ästhetischer Wirkung (Munich: Fink, 1976); The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. See Nicholas Davey, “Art’s Enigma: Adorno, Gadamer and Iser on Interpretation,” in Mirko Wischke and Michel Hofer, eds., Gadamer verstehen/Understanding Gadamer (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2003), 232–247.

10. See Hans Albert, Traktat über kritische Vernunft (1968), 5th ed. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1991).

11. See Hans Albert, Kritik der reinen Hermeneutik (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994).

12. See Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).

13. See Ernst Fuchs, Hermeneutik (1954), 4th ed. (Tübingen: Mohr, 1970); See also James M. Robinson, ed., Die neue Hermeneutik (Zürich: Zwingli, 1965). See also Hans-Josef Jeanrond, Text und Interpretation als Kategorien theologischen Denkens (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1986). Interesting comparisons between Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics and Wittgenstein’s linguistic-philosophical positions in relation to the New Testament are in Anthony C. Thiselton, The Two Horizons: New Testament Hermeneutics and Philosophical Description with Special Reference to Heidegger, Bultmann, Gadamer and Wittgenstein (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W. B. Eerdmans, 1980), 330–427. A defense of hermeneutics, particularly in regard to its productivity for theology, is by Bernd Jochen Hilberath, Theologie zwischen Tradition und Kritik. Die philosophische Hermeneutik Hans-Georg Gadamers als Herausforderung des theologischen Selbstverständnisses (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1978). See also Charles Richard Ringa, Gadamer’s Dialogical Hermeneutics: The Hermeneutics of Bultmann, of the New Testament Sociologists, and of the Social Theologians in Dialogue with Gadamer’s Hermeneutic (Heidelberg: Winter, 1999). On a connection between hermeneutics and homilectics, see Jeffrey Francis Bullock, Preaching with a Cupped Ear: Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics as Postmodern World (New York: Peter Lang, 1000), 77–120. See also Fred Lawrence, “Gadamer, the Hermeneutic Revolution, and Theology,” in Robert J. Dostal, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 167–200, 188–189. A reading of Gadamer’s hermeneutics from a theological standpoint has also been recently developed by Philippe Eberhard, The Middle Voice in Gadamer’s Hermeneutics (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004); on hermeneutics and theology, see esp. 172–215.

14. On Gadamer and Bultmann, see Thomas Ommen, “Bultmann and Gadamer: The Role of Faith in Theological Hermeneutics,” Thought 59 (1984): 348–359; Jean Grondin, “Gadamer und Bultmann,” in Wischke and Hofer, Gadamer verstehen—Understanding Gadamer, 186–208.

15. See Andre Wiercinski, ed., Between the Human and the Divine: Philosophical and Theological Hermeneutics (Toronto: Hermeneutic Press, 2002).

16. On Gadamer and Dworkin, see Kenneth Henley, “Protestant Hermeneutics and the Rule of Law: Gadamer and Dworkin,” Ratio-Juris 3 (1990): 14–27.

17. See Giuseppe Zaccaria, Ermeneutica e giurisprudenza. I fondamenti filosofici nella teoria di Hans-Georg Gadamer (Milan: Giuffre, 1984).

18. See Reinhart Koselleck and Hans-Georg Gadamer, Sprache und Hermeneutik. Eine Rede und eine Antwort (Heidelberg: Manutius, 2000). See Reinhart Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1989). See also Koselleck, Zeitschichten Studien zur Historik (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 2000), with a contribution from Gadamer.

19. See Gadamer “Hermeneutik und Historismus” (1965), GW2 387–424, 398–399/TM 541–542. See also in this volume chapter 6, part 1.

20. Gadamer himself tries to take stock of this in his “Afterword to the Third Edition,” GW2 449–478/TM 551–579; “Zwischen Phänomenologie und Dialektik—Versuch einer Selbstkritik,” GW2 3–23.

21. In contrast, a discussion of the relation between philosophical hermeneutics and “weak thought” remains to be developed. See part 6 in this chapter.

22. Already in 1970 Tugendhat had expressed the desirability of a debate between hermeneutics, understood from its phenomenological roots, and linguistic analysis. See Ernst Tugendhat, “Phänomenologie und Sprachanalyse,” in Rüdiger Bubner, Konrad Cramer, and Reiner Wiehl, eds., Hermeneutik und Dialektik (Tübingen: Mohr, 1970), 2:3–23.

23. See David C. Hoy, “Post-Cartesian Interpretation: Hans-Georg Gadamer and Donald Davidson,” in Lewis E. Hahn, ed., The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer (Chicago: Open Court, 1997), 111–128. See also Karsten R. Steuber, “Understanding Truth and Objectivity: A Dialogue between Donald Davidson and Hans-Georg Gadamer,” in Brice R. Wachterhauser, ed., Hermeneutics and Truth (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1994), 148–171; Joel Weinsheimer, “Charity Militant: Gadamer, Davidson, and Post-Critical Hermeneutics,” in Revue international de philosophie 54 (2000): 405–422; Bjorn Torgrim Ramberg, “Interpretation and Understanding in Gadamer and Davidson,” in Carlos G. Prado, ed., A House Divided: Comparing Analytic and Continental Philosophy (Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity Books, 2003), 213–234.

24. See Jeff Malpas, “Gadamer, Davidson, and the Ground of Understanding,” in Jeff Malpas, Ulrich Arnswald, and Jens Kertscher, eds., Gadamer’s Century: Essays in Honor of Hans-Georg Gadamer (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002), 195–215. Davidson himself, who studied with Jaeger, has written on his relation to Gadamer in an essay on Plato’s “Philebus.” See Donald Davidson, “Gadamer and Plato’s ‘Philebus,’” in Hahn, The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer, 421–432. It must be underlined here, however, that “interpretation” for Davidson is a much more comprehensive concept that at times risks becoming too unspecific. Not coincidentally Davidson speaks of “radical interpretation,” though he often does not distinguish between understanding and interpretation. See Donald Davidson, “Radical Interpretation,” in Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (1984), 2nd ed. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 125–139. On this topic, see this chapter, part 5.

25. John McDowell, “Gadamer and Davidson on Understanding and Relativism,” in Gadamer’s Century, 173–194; McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). A very informative contribution is the one by Alasdair MacIntyre, “On Not Having the Last Word: Thoughts on Our Debts to Gadamer,” in Gadamer’s Century, 157–172; see also his response to Truth and Method in MacIntyre, “Context of Interpretation: Reflections on Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Truth and Method,” in Boston University Journal 24 (1976): 41–46.

26. Rorty’s case in this respect is characteristic. See part 3 of this chapter.

27. See Gianni Vattimo, Beyond Interpretation: The Meaning of Hermeneutics for Philosophy, trans. David Webb (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998).

28. Especially the situation in Italy has been exemplary for this. See part 5 in this chapter.

29. See Gary E. Aylesworth, “Dialogue, Text, Narrative: Confronting Gadamer and Ricoeur,” in Hugh J. Silverman, ed., Gadamer and Hermeneutics (New York: Routledge, 1991), 63–81; see also James Di Censo, Hermeneutics and the Disclosure of Truth: A Study in the Work of Heidegger, Gadamer and Ricoeur (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990).

30. See Andrzej Przylebski, “Die Grenzen der hermeneutischen Vernunft. Über die vermeintlichen und wirklichen Begrenzungen der Hermeneutik Gadamers,” in Wolfram Hogrebe, ed., Grenzen und Grenzüberschreitungen. XIX Deutscher Kongress für Philosophie (Bonn: Sinclair, 2002), 221–226.

31. Direct attacks have had little influence, as for example the one by Heinrich Rombach, Welt und Gegenwelt. Umdenken über die Wirklichkeit. Die philosophische Hermeneutik (Basel: Herder, 1983), who refers to a “hermetics” that is much more originary than hermeneutics, or the indirect critique by Luhmann, concerning the question of understanding. See Niklas Luhmann, Soziale Systeme. Grundriss einer allgemeinen Theorie (1987) (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 2000); see on this Jaromir Brejdak, “Der hermeneutische und der differentielle Begriff des Verstehens: Gadamer—Luhmann,” in Andrzej Przylebski, ed., Das Erbe Gadamers (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2006), 227–245.

32. Günter Figal has raised this very question, see Günter Figal, “Philosophische Hermeneutik—hermeneutische Philosophie,” in Günter Figal, Jean Grondin, and Dennis J. Schmidt, Hermeneutische Wege (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2000), 335–344; cf. also Figal, “Gadamer im Kontext. Zur Gestalt und den Perspektiven philosophischer Hermeneutik,” in Wischke and Hofer, Gadamer verstehen/Understanding Gadamer, 141–156. Figal’s most recent book can also be understood as an answer to this question, cf. Gegenständlichkeit. Das Hermeneutische und die Philosophie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006). On this topic, see also Donatella Di Cesare, “Re-interpreting Hermeneutics: U-topias from the Continent,” Philosophy Today 49 (2005): 325–332.

33. See Jürgen Habermas, “Zu Gadamer’s Wahrheit und Methode,” in Karl-Otto Apel, ed., Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1971), 45–56; “A Review of Gadamer’s Truth and Method,” in Understanding and Social Inquiry, ed. and trans. Fred R. Dallmayr and Thomas A. McCarthy (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977), 335–363. This research report was later republished: Jürgen Habermas, Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften (1970), 5th expanded ed. (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1982), 331–366; On the Logic of the Social Sciences (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988), 143–171.

34. Gadamer, “Rhetorik, Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik,” GW2 232–250; “Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Ideology-Critique,” trans. G. B. Hess and R. E. Palmer, in Rhetoric and Hermeneutics in Our Time: A Reader, ed. Walter Jost and Michael J. Hyde (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997), 313–334.

35. The debate included representatives of both ways of thinking, such as Karl-Otto Apel, Claus von Bormann, Rüdiger Bubner, and Hans-Joachim Giegel, and has been collected in the volume by Karl-Otto Apel, ed., Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik.

36. See Habermas, Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), 240ff.; On the Logic of the Social Sciences (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988), 206–207. Habermas contributed substantially to making Wittgenstein known in Germany.

37. Habermas, Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften, 272; On the Logic of the Social Sciences, 179.

38. See chapter 7, part 6, in this volume.

39. Habermas, Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften, 284; On the Logic of the Social Sciences, 163.

40. See chapter 5, parts 3–5, in this volume.

41. Habermas, Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften, 305; On the Logic of the Social Sciences, 170.

42. Habermas, Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften, 309; On the Logic of the Social Sciences, 174.

43. See chapter 8, part 6, in this volume.

44. Habermas, Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften, 307; On the Logic of the Social Sciences, 172.

45. Habermas, Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften, 309; On the Logic of the Social Sciences, 174.

46. Habermas, Zur Logic der Sozialwissenschaften, 342; On the Logic of the Social Sciences, 188.

47. See Paul Ricoeur, De l’ interpretation. Essai sur Freud (Paris, 1965); Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, trans. Denis Savage (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1970).

48. See Gadamer, “Rhetorik, Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik,” GW2 238; “Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Ideology-Critique,” 320.

49. See Gadamer, “Replik zu ‘Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik’” (1971), GW2 251–275, 257–259.

50. Gadamer, “Replik zu ‘Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik,” GW2 272.

51. See chapter 8, part 8, in this volume. Gadamer draws explicitly here on Jacques Lacan and the interpretation of Lacan by Lang: Helmut Lang, Die Sprache und das Unbewusste. Jacques Lacans Grundlegung der Psychoanalyse (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1973).

52. Gadamer, “Rhetorik, Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik,” GW2 243; “Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Ideology-Critique,” 325.

53. Habermas, Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften, 334; On the Logic of the Social Sciences, 174.

54. Gadamer, “Replik zu ‘Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik,’” GW2 265.

55. See Gadamer, “Replik zu ‘Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik,’” GW2 272. See also Karl-Otto Apel, Transformation der Philosophie, 2 vols., vol. 1: Sprachanalytik, Semiotik, Hermeneutik; vol. 2: Das Apriori der Kommunikationsgemeinschaft (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1973), as well as more recently: Apel, “Regulative Ideas or Truth Happening? An Attempt to Answer the Question of the Conditions of the Possibility of Valid Understanding,” in Hahn, The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer, 67–94.

56. Jürgen Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handels, vol. 1: Handlungsrationalität und gesellschaftliche Rationalisierung (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1981), 193; Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), 134.

57. For more on this debate, see Demetrius Teigas, Knowledge and Hermeneutic Understanding A Study of the Habermas-Gadamer Debate (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1995); see also Dieter Misgeld, “Critical Theory and Hermeneutics: The Debate between Habermas and Gadamer,” in John O’Neill, ed., On Critical Theory (New York: Sabury Press, 1976), 164–183; Michael Kelley, ed., Hermeneutics and Critical Theory in Ethics and Politics (Cambridge, Mass., and London: MIT Press, 1990); Tuan A. Nuyen, “Critique of Ideology: Hermeneutics or Critical Theory? (Gadamer-Habermas),” in Human Studies 17 (1994): 419–432; Alan How, The Habermas-Gadamer Debate and the Nature of the Social (Brookfield, Vt.: Averbury, 1995); Jose Maria Aguirre Oraa, Raison critique ou raison herméneutique? Une analyse de la controverse entre Habermas et Gadamer (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1998); Austin Harrington, “Some Problems with Gadamer’s and Habermas’ Dialogical Model of Sociological Understanding,” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 29 (1999): 371–384; David Ingram, “Jürgen Habermas and Hans-Georg Gadamer,” in Robert C. Solomon and David Sherman, eds., The Blackwell Guide to Continental Philosophy (Malden and Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 219–242.

58. Gadamer, “Replik zu ‘Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik,’” GW2 254.

59. Gadamer, “Replik zu ‘Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik,’” GW2 269. Warnke’s criticism, according to which hermeneutics disallow revolutionary practice, cannot be sustained; on the contrary, Warnke understands revolution in much too abstract a way. See Georgia Warnke, Gadamer: Hermeneutics, Tradition, and Reason (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1987.

60. In a letter to Bernstein, Gadamer acknowledged this influence only slightly and with particular emphasis on Plato. See Richard J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), 58–93. See also the more recent essay: Richard J. Bernstein, “The Constellation of Hermeneutics, Critical Theory and Deconstruction,” in Dostal, The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer, 267–282.

61. See Jürgen Habermas, “Urbanisierung der Heideggerschen Provinz,” reprinted in Habermas, Philosophisch-politische Profile, 3rd exp. ed. (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1981), 392–401; “Hans-Georg Gadamer: Urbanizing the Heideggerian Province,” in Philosophical-Political Profiles, trans. F. Lawrence (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983), 189–197.

62. Habermas, “Urbanisierung der Heideggerschen Provinz,” 397; “Hans-Georg Gadamer: Urbanizing the Heideggerian Province,” 193.

63. See Gadamer, “Mit der Sprache denken,” GW10 347.

64. On Gadamer and James, see Paul Fairfield, “Truth without Methodologism: Gadamer and James,” in American Catholic Quarterly 67 (1993): 285–298; on Gadamer and Dewey, see also Victor Kestenbaum, “Meaning on the Model of Truth: Dewey and Gadamer on Habit and Vorurteil,” Journal of Speculative Philosophy 6 (1992): 25–66; Lawrence K. Schmidt, “Participation and Ritual: Dewey and Gadamer on Language,” in Lawrence K. Schmidt, ed., Language and Linguisticality in Gadamer’s Hermeneutics (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2000), 127–142.

65. See the lecture Rorty gave in Heidelberg on Gadamer’s one-hundredth birthday, entitled in English “Being That Can Be Understood Is Language,” in Bruce Krajewski, ed., Gadamer’s Repercussions: Reconsidering Philosophical Hermeneutics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 21–29, 26. See Georgia Warnke, “Hermeneutics and the Social Sciences: A Gadamerian Critique of Rorty,” Inquiry 28 (1986): 355–361; see also Steve Bouma-Prediger, “Rorty’s Pragmatism and Gadamer’s Hermeneutics,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 57 (1989): 313–324.

66. See chapter 4, part 4, in this volume.

67. Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979), 320.

68. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 319. See also Rorty, “Questioning,” Bochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch 2 (1997): 243–252; “On Hans-Georg Gadamer and the Philosophical Conversation,” London Review of Books 22, no. 6 (2000): 23–25.

69. See chapter 2, part 3, in this volume.

70. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 360.

71. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 319.

72. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 359.

73. See Philippe Forget, ed., Text und Interpretation. Deutsch-französische Debatte (mit Beiträgen von Jacques Derrida, Philippe Forget, Manfred Frank, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jean Greisch und Francois Laruelle (Munich: Fink [UTB], 1984).

74. Diane P. Michelfelder and Richard E. Palmer, eds., Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida-Encounter (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989). The volume includes essays by Fred Dallmayr, Josef Simon, James Risser, Charles Shepherdson, Gary B. Madison, Herman Rapaport, Donald G. Marshall, Richard Shusterman, David F. Krell, Robert Bernasconi, John Sallis, John D. Caputo, Neal Oxenhandler, and Gabe Eisenstein.

75. See Hugh J. Silverman and Don Ihde, eds., Hermeneutics and Deconstruction (Albany, SUNY Press, 1985); John D. Caputo, Alexander Nehamas, and Hugh Silverman, “Symposium: Hermeneutics and Deconstruction,” Journal of Philosophy 83 (1986): 678–692. See also Graeme Nicholson, “Deconstruction or Dialogue,” Man and World 19 (1986): 263–274; Ernst Behler, “Deconstruction versus Hermeneutics: Derrida and Gadamer on Text and Interpretation,” Southern Humanities Review 21, no. 3 (1987): 201–223; Wayne J. Froman, “L’Écriture and Philosophical Hermeneutics,” in Silverman, Gadamer and Hermeneutics, 136–148; Jean Grondin, “La définition derridienne de la déconstruction. Contribution au rapprochement de l’herméneutique et de la déconstruction,” Archives de Philosophie 62 (1999): 5–16.

76. See Heinz Kimmerle, “Gadamer, Derrida und Kein Ende,” Allgemeine Zeitschrift fuer Philosophie 16 (1991): 223–235; Toni Tholen, Erfahrung und Interpretation. Der Streit zwischen Hermeneutik und Dekonstruktion (Heidelberg: Winter, 1999); Rodolphe Gasché, “Deconstruction and Hermeneutics,” in Nicholas Royle, ed., Deconstructions: A User’s Guide (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2000), 137–150; Stephen Feldman, “Made for Each Other: The Interdependence of Deconstruction and Philosophical Hermeneutics,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 26 (2000): 51–70. An important contribution to the discussion is contained in the book by Georg W. Bertram, Hermeneutik und Dekonstruktion. Konturen einer Auseinandersetzung der Gegenwartsphilosophie (Munich: Fink, 2002), esp. 9–23 and 219–221; see Bertram, “Sprache und Verstehen in Hermeneutik und Dekonstruktion,” in Przylebski, Das Erbe Gadamers, 205–226; see also Fabian Stoermer, Hermeneutik und Dekonstruktion der Erinnerung. Über Gadamer, Derrida und Hölderlin (Munich: Fink, 2002); Zoran Jankovic insists on their common Heideggerian inheritance in Au-delà du signe: Gadamer et Derrida. Le dépassement herméneutique et deconstructiviste du Dasein (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003); Emil Angehrn, Interpretation und Dekonstruktion. Untersuchungen zur Hermeneutik (Verbrück: Weilerswist, 2003). See also the volume Déconstruction et herméneutique: dossier central, issue 2 of Cercle Herméneutique (Le Cercle Herméneutique, 2004), 59–170 (with contributions from Guy Deniau, Natalie Depraz, Zoran Jakovic, Catherine Malabou, Vincent Houillon, and Donatella Di Cesare).

77. For a fuller discussion of this topic, see my article: Donatella Di Cesare, “Stars and Constellations: The Difference between Gadamer and Derrida,” Research in Phenomenology 34 (2004): 73–102.

78. Gadamer, “Destruktion und Dekonstruktion,” GW2 361–372; “Destruktion and Deconstruction,” in Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter, ed. Diane P. Michelfelder and Richard E. Palmer (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989), 102–113; “Frühromantik, Hermeneutik und Dekonstruktivismus,” GW10 125–137; “Hermeneutics and Logocentrism,” in Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter, ed. and trans. Diane P. Michelfelder and Richard E. Palmer (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989), 125–137. “Dekonstruktion und Hermeneutik,” GW10 138–147; “Letter to Dallmayr (1985),” in Dialogue and Deconstruction, 93–101. “Hermeneutik auf der Spur,” GW10 148–174; “Hermeneutics Tracking the Trace [On Derrida],” in The Gadamer Reader: A Bouquet of the Later Writings, ed. Richard Palmer (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2006), 372–406.

79. On the nature of “difference” for Derrida, see Rodolphe Gasché, Inventions of Difference: On Jacques Derrida (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994).

80. Derrida, “Rams. Uninterrupted Dialogue—Between Two Infinites, the Poem,” in Sovereignties in Question: The Poetics of Paul Celan, ed. Thomas Dutoit and Outi Pasanen (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), 135–164.

81. Derrida, “Rams,” 136.

82. See chapter 8, part 2, of this book.

83. Gadamer, “Text und Interpretation,” GW2 353; “Text and Interpretation,” in Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter (Albany: SUNY, 1989), 185.

84. Originally printed in Forget, Text und Interpretation, 38. It is important to emphasize here that, in the entire Gadamerian oeuvre, this expression appears only this one time. What remained neglected in the discussion, however, is among other issues the concept of the “text,” which is interpreted differently by Gadamer and Derrida, since Gadamer proceeds from the unity of the text. Derrida takes aim at precisely this presupposed unity. See on this Rodolphe Gasché, The Tain of the Mirror (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), 278–280.

85. Derrida’s last statement at the Paris meeting revolved around Nietzsche. See Jacques Derrida, “Guter Wille zur Macht (II). Die Unterschriften interpretieren (Nietzsche/Heidegger),” in Forget, Text und Interpretation, 62–77; “Interpreting Signatures (Nietzsche/Heidegger): Two Questions,” in Dialogue and Deconstruction, 58–71. The target of his polemic is Heidegger’s interpretation, according to which Nietzsche would be the last metaphysician. For Derrida it was, on the contrary, Heidegger who remained chained to a logocentric metaphysics, because he consistently asked about Being and about the meaning of Being. Heidegger thus presumed to be able to hold Being in a logos.

86. Derrida, “Guter Wille zur Macht,” in Forget, Text und Interpretation, 58; “Interpreting Signatures (Nietzsche/Heidegger): Two Questions,” 53.

87. Gadamer, “Und dennoch: Macht des Guten Willens,” in Forget, Text und Interpretation, 59–61; “Reply to Jacques Derrida,” 55–57.

88. Plato, “Gorgias,” 458a.

89. But Gadamer’s attempt to derive Derrida’s position from Nietzsche’s is questionable. Gasché correctly warns of this: “Specters of Nietzsche,” in Daniel O. Dahlstrom, ed., The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, vol. 8, Contemporary Philosophy (Bowling Green: Philosophy Documentation Center, 2000), 183–193.

90. Gadamer draws on the “exceptional Derrida critique” by Habermas. See Gadamer, “Zwischen Phänomenologie und Dialektik. Versuch einer Selbstkritik,” GW2 23. See Jürgen Habermas, Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1985), 191ff; The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. Frederick G. Lawrence (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1987), 198.

91. See chapter 8, part 7, in this volume.

92. See Gadamer, “Destruktion und Dekonstruktion,” GW2 367–368; “Destruktion and Deconstruction,” 108.

93. Paul Celan, “Grosse glühende Wölbung,” in Celan, Atemwende, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 2, ed. Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert with the assistance of Rolf Bücher (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1986), 97.

94. Derrida, “Der ununterbrochene Dialog,” 15; “Rams,” 140.

95. Derrida, “Der ununterbrochene Dialog,” 47–48; “Rams,” 161.

96. The Italian translation is the first one in general.

97. The question remains relevant today. An overall view of Gadamer’s reception in Italy is given in the important contribution by Valerio Verra, “Hans-Georg Gadamers hermeneutische Philosophie in Italien,” Heidelberger Jahrbücher 34 (1990): 177–188. See also Reiner Wiehl, “Vielstimmige Hermeneutik in Italien,” Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie 2 (1996): 286–292. The article reviews the volume Beiträge zur Hermeneutik aus Italien, ed. Franco Bianco (Freiburg and Munich: Alber, 1993). The unavoidable fragmentation of Italian hermeneutics also speaks, however, for its originality.

98. Luigi Pareyson, Verita e interpretazione (Milan: Mursia, 1971).

99. Luigi Pareyson, Ontologia della liberta. Il male e la sofferenza (Turin: Einaudi, 1995).

100. See Valerio Verra, “Hans-Georg Gadamer e l’ermeneutica filosofica,” Filosofia (1963): 412–418.

101. Vattimo expressed his views very early. See Gianni Vattimo, “Estetica ed ermeneutica in Hans-Georg Gadamer,” Rivista di estetica 8 (1963): 117–130, now in Vattimo, Poesia e ontologia (Milan: Mursia, 1967), 167–186.

102. Gianni Vattimo, Aldi la del soggetto. Nietzsche, Heidegger e l’ermeneutica (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1984), 71.

103. See chapter 8, part 5, in this volume.

104. Vattimo, Beyond Interpretation, 93.

105. See Gianni Vattimo, Dopo la cristianita. Per un cristianesimo non religioso (Milan: Garzanti, 2002). A similar starting point can be found in the book by Vaclav Umlauf, Hermeneutik nach Gadamer (Freiburg and Munich: Alber, 2007), which among other things does not contain what is stated in the title, since it deals with a religious-nihilistic reading of the most frequently considered topics in Gadamer’s philosophy.

106. In the two or three cases where it appears, for example in the title “Im Schatten des Nihilismus” (GW9 367), it has a negative meaning.

107. See chapter 9, part 2, in this volume.

108. The analyses by Scholz aim at a much more comprehensive concept of interpretation, the “presumptive” character of interpretation. See Oliver R. Scholz, Verstehen und Rationalität. Untersuchungen zu den Grundlagen der Hermeneutik und Sprachphilosophie (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2001), 147–249. Kraemer’s more recent critique, which however contains productive initiatives, also relies on a much too comprehensive conception of interpretation. See Hans Kraemer, Kritik der Hermeneutik. Interpretationsphilosophie und Realismus (Munich: Beck, 2007).

109. See chapter 8, part 8, in this volume.

110. See Gadamer, “Nietzsche—der Antipode. Das Drama Zarathustras” (1984), GW4 448–462; “The Drama of Zarathustra,” trans. T. Heilke, in Nietzsche’s New Seas, ed. M. A. Gillespie and T. B. Strong (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 220–231. On this topic, see Nicholas Davey, “A World of Hope and Optimism Despite Present Difficulties: Gadamer’s Critique of Perspectivism,” Man and World 23 (1990): 273–294. On Nietzsche and Gadamer, see also Johann Figl, “Nietzsche und die philosophische Hermeneutik des 20. Jahrhunderts. Mit besonderer Berücksichtigung Diltheys, Heideggers und Gadamers,” Nietzsche-Studien 10/11 (1981–82): 408–430.

111. Charles Taylor, “Understanding the Other: A Gadamerian View on Conceptual Schemes,” in Gadamer’s Century, 279–297, 279.

112. See Nicole Ruchlak, “Alterität als hermeneutische Perspektive,” in Hans-Martin Schönherr-Mann, ed., Hermeneutik als Ethik (Munich: Fink, 2004), 151–167; see also Ruchlak, Das Gespräch mit dem Anderen. Perspektiven einer ethischen Hermeneutik (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2004). On the question of alterity in hermeneutics, see Robert Bernasconi, “‘You Don’t Know What I’m Talking About’: Alterity and the Hermeneutical Ideal,” in Lawrence K. Schmidt, ed., The Specter of Relativism (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1995), 178–194; Lawrence K. Schmidt, “Respecting Others: The Hermeneutic Virtue,” Continental Philosophy Review 33 (2000): 359–3791; see also Nicholas Davey, Unquiet Understanding. Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics (Albany: SUNY, 2006), 179–180.

113. Robert Schurz, Negative Hermeneutik. Zur sozialen Anthropologie des Nicht-Verstehens (Opladen: WestdeutscherVerlag, 1995), 207.

114. Bernhard Waldenfels, Vielstimmigkeit der Rede. Studien zur Phänomenologie des Fremden, vol. 4 (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1999), 67. On this, see Helmuth Vetter, Philosophische Hermeneutik. Unterwegs zu Heidegger und Gadamer (Frankfurt/M: Peter Lang, 2007), 148–149. Here is not the space to roll out the entire debate about the foreign, which has in the meantime widely branched out into various areas. An overview of the state of the discussion can be gathered from various perspectives: Iris Därmann, “Der Fremde zwischen den Fronten von Ethnologie und Philosophie,” Philosophische Rundschau 43 (1996): 46–63; Herfried Münkler, ed., Furcht und Faszination. Facetten der Fremdheit (Berlin: Akademie Verlag,1997); Franz Martin Wimmer, “Fremde,” in Christoph Wulff, ed., Vom Menschen. Handbuch Historische Anthropologie (Weinheim and Basel: Beltz, 1997), 1066–1078.

115. See Waldenfels, Vielstimmigkeit der Rede, 71–72. It is remarkable that almost all the citations Waldenfels uses from Gadamer are from Truth and Method.

116. Waldenfels, Vielstimmigkeit der Rede, 73; see also Antwortregister (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1994), esp. 122–137.

117. Waldenfels, “Antwort auf das Fremde,” in Bernhard Waldenfels and Iris Daermann, eds., Der Anspruch des Anderen. Perspektiven phänomenologischer Ethik (Munich: Fink, 1998), 35–49, 43.

118. Waldenfels, Vielstimmigkeit der Rede, 83.

119. Schleiermacher, Hermeneutik und Kritik (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1977), 328; Hermeneutics and Criticism, And Other Writings, trans. and ed. Andrew Bowie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 227.

120. Wilhelm von Humboldt, Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues, ed. Donatella Di Cesare (Paderborn: Schöningh [UTB], 1998), 191; On Language: On the Diversity of Human Language-Construction and Its Influence on the Mental Development Human Species, trans. Peter Heath, Texts in German Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 63. Translation modified.

121. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 194.

122. See the explanations of átopon in this volume, chapter 8, part 8.

123. See also Bertram, Hermeneutik und Dekonstruktion, 77.

124. There are few alternatives to this to be seen. See Werner Kogge, Verstehen und Fremdheit in der philosophischen Hermeneutik. Heidegger und Gadamer (Hildesheim: Olms, 2001), 156–157. I have tried in this volume to reconstruct the space for the other in the hermeneutics of infinite finitude.

125. See Bernhard Waldenfels, Der Stachel des Fremden (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1998). New challenges also arise from the various contributions in the volume edited by Lorraine Code, Feminist Interpretations of Hans-Georg Gadamer (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003).

126. On the concept of community, see Stephen Watson, “Interpretation, Dialogue and Friendship: On the Remainder of Community,” Research in Phenomenology 26 (1996): 54–97; Thomas M. Alexander, “Eros and Understanding: Gadamer’s Aesthetic Ontology of the Community,” in Hahn, The Philosophy of Hans Georg Gadamer, 323–345; Donald Maier, “Community and Alterity: A Gadamerian Approach,” Philosophy in Contemporary World 4 (1998): 26–33; James Risser, “Philosophical Hermeneutics and the Question of Community,” in Charles Scott, ed., Interrogating the Tradition: Hermeneutics and the History of Philosophy (Albany: SUNY, 2000), 19–34.