Lawrence K. Schmidt
There are broad and narrow senses of hermeneutic application as well as of hermeneutic praxis. The broad sense of hermeneutic application may coincide with the broad sense of hermeneutic praxis; it means using what one has already understood in some later situation. In Validity in Interpretation, E. D. Hirsch, Jr., argues that the meaning of a text, determined by the author’s intention, must be strictly distinguished from the significance of that meaning, the relationship between that meaning and someone or something else. Significance is the broad sense of hermeneutic application. Hermeneutic praxis in the broad sense can also be restricted to an actual action that is based upon a completed understanding. Hermeneutic praxis in the narrow sense refers to an interpreter using a hermeneutic theory to interpret written or spoken language. The narrow sense of hermeneutic application is discussed by Hans-Georg Gadamer in Truth and Method as the central problem of philosophical hermeneutics. It means, simply stated, the translation of the saying of the text or an other into the interpreter’s horizon of meaning. This narrow sense of hermeneutic application will be justified and distinguished from the other senses of application and praxis.
If Friedrich Schleiermacher is correct that hermeneutics is the art of understanding spoken and written language and that the strict practice of hermeneutics presumes misunderstanding, then hermeneutics has occurred in some manner as long as humans have been speaking and writing to each other. If one uses what has been understood, then hermeneutic application in the broad sense has also occurred. If Gadamer is correct that the narrow sense of application, interpretation, and understanding form that one unified process that we usually just call understanding, then this narrow sense of application occurs in all cases of understanding, and even misunderstanding, spoken or written language whether one is aware of this or not.
In Truth and Method, Gadamer states, “Thus we are forced to go one step beyond romantic hermeneutics, as it were, by regarding not only understanding and interpretation, but also application [Anwendung] as comprising one unified process” (GW1, 313; TM, 308). Gadamer introduces the discussion of application by referring to the subtilitas intelligendi (understanding), subtilitas explicandi (interpretation), and the subtilitas applicandi (application). His project is to argue that application also must be united with the first two to constitute that “one unified process.” Gadamer states at the end of his discussion of application in order to stress its importance: “Application does not mean first understanding a given universal in itself and then afterward applying it to a concrete case. It is the very understanding of the universal—the text—itself” (GW1, 346; TM, 341).
The mistaken idea, according to Gadamer, separates these three talents, claiming one understands first, then may interpret what is understood, and perhaps finally apply that interpreted understanding to some situation. Schleiermacher had noted that the lax practice of hermeneutics, which had been previously the main form of hermeneutics, assumes that understanding usually succeeds and that interpretation is only called for in difficult cases where misinterpretation might occur. In general, it appears that in everyday spoken and written communication understanding occurs without any need for interpretation. On the other hand, Schleiermacher argues that his universal hermeneutics is the strict practice and “assumes that misunderstanding results as a matter of course” (HC, 22). In this case, understanding and interpretation form one process. Schleiermacher excludes the “presentation of understanding” (HC, 5) from hermeneutics; this would include hermeneutic application in the broad sense. Hermeneutic theories that develop Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics and accept the author’s intention as the criterion for correct understanding and interpretation distinguish the interpreted meaning from the application (in the broad sense) of this already understood meaning to another situation.
In Being and Time, Heidegger unites understanding and interpretation for ontological reasons. As thrown projection, understanding is always initiated from the fore-structures of understanding. “Interpretation is not the acknowledgement of what has been understood, but rather the development of possibilities projected in understanding” (SZ, 148). In understanding a text, to claim to just understand “what ‘is there’ … is nothing else than the self-evident, undisputed prejudice of the interpreter” (SZ, 150). This understanding is just an unquestioned use of the fore-structures of understanding in the interpretation. Heidegger does not discuss application in Being and Time. However, since understanding projects possibilities for Dasein as being-in-the-world, it would involve a kind of self-understanding that might be associated with hermeneutic application or praxis in the broad senses.
Gadamer clearly incorporates application with understanding and interpretation in that one unified process of understanding. Application is the central problem of philosophical hermeneutics and is concerned with the fusion of horizons. The central and narrow sense of application in philosophical hermeneutics is the translating process whereby the interpreter brings what the text has to say into his present horizon of meaning. The interpreter’s horizon of meaning is constituted by all his consciously and unconsciously held prejudices, which are legitimate prejudgments leading to understanding or illegitimate ones resulting in misunderstanding. The narrow sense of application is part of the projecting of the historical horizon in the fusion of horizons. The saying of the text is applied to the interpreter’s specific hermeneutic situation. The fusion of horizons consists of two processes: the projection of this historical horizon, which is the horizon of the text or other person, and the adjudication of the conflicting prejudices or positions in the hermeneutic event of truth. To project this historical horizon is the one unified process of understanding, interpreting, and applying. The interpreter begins from his present hermeneutic horizon, that is, his present set of prejudices that includes his present understanding of language.
The projection of the historical horizon follows the fore-conception of completeness, the ideality of the word, and effective history of language. The fore-conception of completeness means that the interpreter initially presupposes that the text is saying something coherent and truthful. If the text’s meaning appears incoherent following the interpreter’s prejudices, the interpreter needs to project other prejudices different from his own so that the text makes sense. The same is required with reference to the truth claims made by the text. The ideality of the word and effective history of language allow the interpreter to work back from his contemporary understanding of language to project the meanings expressed in the text’s language. The interpreter then applies or translates this meaning back into his own language in order to project the saying of the text, that is, an understanding of the text.
In fact, this projecting of the historical horizon is actually an expansion of the horizon of the interpreter. “Rather, understanding is always the fusion of these horizons supposedly existing by themselves” (GW1, 311; TM, 306). In working back and forth from the parts to the whole, the interpreter is continually expanding her horizon to include the different prejudices found in the saying of the text or other. To project a meaning different from one’s own for a word used in the text is to expand one’s horizon to include this new meaning as understood, that is, applied, in a definition in one’s own horizon of meaning. If a text or an other presents a truth different from one’s own prejudices, this truth must be expressed, that is, applied, in one’s own language horizon. In the movement from part to whole and whole to part, the interpreter is continually understanding, interpreting, and applying in order to project the text’s horizon.
Even in misunderstanding, application in this narrow sense can occur. In this case, the interpreter mistranslates the saying of the text or other into her horizon of meaning. In the everyday understanding, interpretation and application also occur, but go unnoticed. Because contemporaries share a common language, the translation, that is, application of what the other is saying, is usually just what is said, only rarely is a word used in a sense not shared. However, one can disagree about a truth and the other’s truth is projected, that is, interpreted and applied, as the other’s horizon.
Only after the saying of the text in the projected historical horizon has been established, can the question of truth be raised. This is the hermeneutic event of truth that leads to the adjudication of prejudices and the fusion of horizons. Gadamer emphasizes that it is not just the “preponderance of reasons for the one and against the other possibility” that decides a question. “The thing itself [Sache selbst] is known only when the counterinstances are dissolved, only when the counterarguments are seen to be incorrect” (GW1, 370; TM, 364). The event of truth is not part of the narrow sense of application. The event of truth as the fusion of horizons depends on having first understood, interpreted, and applied the saying of the text in the projected historical horizon.
Since Gadamer is primarily concerned in Truth and Method to analyze the event of truth where the interpreter judges something from tradition to have something truthful to say to us, he does not often discuss the case where the interpreter understands a text, that is, applies it to his or her context, but then judges that it suffers from an illegitimate prejudice in the fusion of horizons. The danger of understanding application to mean only the completed understanding of something truthful from tradition as it speaks to the present hermeneutic situation is that if all understanding involves this sense of application, then understanding is always finding the truth in the inherited text, an interpretation of Gadamer’s hermeneutics that Habermas and Apel share and that, for them, makes critique of tradition impossible in Gadamer’s hermeneutics.
In “Reply to My Critics,” Gadamer responds to Apel’s misunderstanding of the hermeneutic concept of application. Countering Apel’s fears, Gadamer says there is no “‘conscious application’ at work from which one could fear an ideological corruption of knowledge” in philosophical hermeneutics (R, 296; RC, 282). By exposing the prejudices that frame an ideology, it may be critiqued. “Hermeneutic praxis” is not guided by “an intention directed at application, let alone application directed at the conscious legitimation of an accepted tradition” (R, 297; RC, 282). Application, as the translation of the saying of the text, is guided by the text and not a previous decision to “misread” it. Gadamer’s example concerns his critique of other interpreters of the Pre-Socratics. He identifies the main prejudices that guided the others’ interpretations and influenced them to understand the Pre-Socratics in their particular manner. “One seeks to understand what is there, indeed to understand better by seeing through the prejudice of another” (R, 298; RC, 283). In projecting the historical horizon, the interpreter works back through previous interpretations of the subject matter and discovers, where possible, the guiding prejudices that have informed these interpretations. Once one has understood the other, one can, in the event of truth or fusion of horizons, judge that the other’s prejudice is illegitimate. So, critique is possible even though application is a part of the one unified process of understanding. Application in the narrow sense concerns the projection of the historical horizon and not the hermeneutic event of truth.
The discussion of legal hermeneutics in Truth and Method, which is central to the interpretation of application, only makes sense if one understands application in its narrow sense. In this discussion, Gadamer presents three pairs of interpreters: the jurist or judge and the legal historian, the preacher and theologian, and the philologist and historian. In the first two pairs, it is clear that the judge in preparing to deliver his judgment and the preacher in preparing her sermon both include application of the text to their specific contexts as part of understanding and interpretation. Gadamer’s point is to demonstrate that the legal historian and theologian must also apply the text to their present concrete situations in order to just understand the text.
In the case of the judge, it is clear that he must apply the law to the specific concrete case that is before him. He must take the universal, the legal text, and realize it, that is, apply it in his judgment of this specific case. This does not mean that the judge may include subjective or arbitrary opinions, for he is bound by the law. “It is true that the jurist is always concerned with the law itself, but he determines its normative content in regard to the given case to which it is to be applied” (GW1, 332; TM, 326). Sometimes the realization of the law itself will require a new precedent developed from the application of the law to this specific case. Gadamer’s discussion of Aristotle’s concept of epieikeia (equity) demonstrates how the realization of the law for a particular case, that is, its application, may require a new precedent. Emilio Betti and others claim that the legal historian has no applicative element in his understanding. It is against this position that Gadamer argues:
By contrast, the legal historian has no case from which to start, but he seeks to determine the meaning of the law by constructing the whole range of its applications. It is only in all its applications that the law becomes concrete. Thus the legal historian cannot be content to take the original application of the law as determining its original meaning. As a historian he will, rather, have to take account of the historical change that the law has undergone. In understanding, he will have to mediate between the original application and the present application of the law.
(GW1, 331; TM, 325)
The first point to make is that the legal historian has no concrete case to decide. So if hermeneutic application includes the decision of a concrete case, then it would mean that the legal historian is not applying his understanding. However, this is precisely the position Gadamer is arguing against. The legal historian in understanding a law must also interpret and apply it, for this is the one unified process. “The hermeneutical situation of both the historian and the jurist seems to be the same in that, when faced with any text, we have an immediate expectation of meaning” (GW1, 332; TM, 327). The immediate expectation of meaning is constituted by our current prejudices as they structure our present horizon of meaning. Gadamer discusses the case where a law is still in effect. Just as translating revealed elements of understanding in general, so too this case of a law still in effect indicates general conditions of understanding any law. Since the meaning of a law would include its various precedents or history of applications, the legal historian could not claim that the original application of the law contained the full meaning of that law. However, even in the case where a law is no longer in effect, the meaning of that law would also include its history of applications until it was judged improper and why it was so judged. The historian must then work back in time projecting the various applications that the law has had. All of these applications will present different aspects of the law as it has been interpreted and applied to different situations.
The legal historian’s task of mediation from present to past and returning is the projection the horizon of meaning for the legal text. “Trying to understand the law in terms of its historical origin, the historian cannot disregard its continuing effect: it presents him with the questions that he has to ask of the historical tradition.” (GW1, 334; TM, 328).
Gadamer’s example of mediating between past and present concerns understanding an order. The true meaning of an order occurs “when it is carried out and concretized in accordance with its meaning” (GW1, 339; TM, 334). This might suggest that application does require an actual action. However, Gadamer says that one could understand the order and yet refuse to carry it out because of the concrete situation. He concludes that the correct understanding of an order is not “in the actual words, nor in the mind of the person giving the order, but solely in the understanding of the situation and in the responsible behavior of the person who obeys” (GW1, 339; TM, 334). Usually, after one has understood, interpreted, and applied an order to the concrete situation, one would carry out that order as it was understood. This action that follows from understanding is hermeneutic praxis in the broad sense.
In the analysis of application, Gadamer discusses Aristotle’s concept of phronesis (ethical understanding) because it “offers a kind of model of the problems of hermeneutics” (GW1, 329; TM, 324). Phronesis is a model for the hermeneutic problem of application since it too concerns the application of a universal to a particular situation. Hermeneutic understanding is not scientific understanding where the specific case is deductively subsumed under the universal law. In Phronesis, techne (technical knowing), and hermeneutic understanding application occurs, although it is different in each. In techne, the craftsman knows the means and the end to create her result. In phronesis and hermeneutic understanding (the virtue or subject matter) is not known completely but functions as a guiding image. Determining how to apply the virtue or text to the concrete, particular situation is an essential part of even understanding it, and in this application the universal is itself better known. Gadamer writes, “The self-knowledge of which Aristotle speaks is characterized by the fact that it includes perfect application [vollendete Applikation] and employs its knowledge in the immediacy of the given situation” (GW1, 327; TM, 322). Through self-deliberation, one knows what is morally required in that specific situation, and perfect application is knowing how to realize the virtue as guiding image in that situation. Having understood what is required, one can then act by employing one’s knowledge.
It would be a misreading to equate phronesis with effective historical consciousness. To do so would limit philosophical hermeneutics to just the ethical realm violating the universality claim of philosophical hermeneutics and would limit understanding to only ethical situations. Phronesis, as Gadamer said, is a model for application, that is, a model for applying the universal, the text, to the concrete situation of the interpreter. If ethical application includes concrete action, it would also be a mistake to equate it with hermeneutic application in the narrow sense. This would require that the understanding of a text or other is only completed when the interpreter uses the interpreted understanding as the basis for some action, since application is a necessary part of understanding. This would also disallow the case where one correctly understood the saying of a text, but did not act. Of course, when one has discovered some truth in a correctly understood text, one often acts upon that knowledge. This would be the broader sense of application, and not one that must occur in all cases of understanding.
Hermeneutic application and praxis have been used in different senses, even by Gadamer. However, the narrow sense of hermeneutic application is the only sense that satisfies the universality claim of Gadamer’s hermeneutics and his contention that understanding, interpreting, and applying form that one unified process. It means the translation or application of the saying of the text or other to the interpreter’s concrete hermeneutic situation and is part of the process of projecting the historical horizon in the fusion of horizons. Application cannot include the event of truth in the fusion of horizons, if critique is possible, for one must be able to correctly understand, interpret, and apply a text, but then judge that it is incorrect. Application cannot require applying what is understood to a concrete decision, for then the legal historian would not use application in understanding a law, which is the position Gadamer argues against. This is the broader sense of hermeneutic application, also referred to as the signification of a text. Application cannot require that the interpreter actually do something with what he has understood; one can correctly understand and not act. The broader sense of hermeneutic praxis does mean acting upon what has been understood. The narrow sense of hermeneutic praxis is to apply some hermeneutic theory in order to interpret spoken or written language.