Morten Sørensen Thaning
Günter Figal’s contribution to hermeneutics should be conceived from the point of view of his conception of hermeneutical philosophy as a theoretical endeavor as it is paradigmatically developed in Objectivity (2010 [2006]) and Erscheinungsdinge (2010).1 The notion of theory at stake in his hermeneutical philosophy is a phenomenological form of inquiry that implies a bracketing out (epochē) of all self-evident preconceptions. Reinterpreting Plato’s conception of dialectic, Figal claims that, unlike all other sciences, philosophy is characterized by lacking any determinate presuppositions (hypotheseis).2
Figal’s conception of epochē expresses a fundamental divergence from dominant interpretations of Husserlian phenomenology.3 According to Figal, the decisive feature of epochē is not its “metaphysical neutrality,” that is, the idea that the execution of the epochē excludes the actual existence of the world and the character of reality from consideration. The hermeneutical epochē does not develop within the immanence of consciousness so as to threaten to introduce a gap between the world as it appears to us, and the world in itself. Figal also rejects the idea that the purpose of the epochē is to open a transcendental inquiry concerning the structures of the perpetually functioning but previously hidden transcendental subjectivity which is conceived as “the subjective condition of possibility for any manifestation.”4 The focus of hermeneutical philosophy is neither metaphysically neutral psychological descriptions nor is it the structures of transcendental subjectivity but rather the correlation between interpreter and subject matter (Sache). This correlation is prefigured in the double meaning of the Husserlian concept of phenomenon: “The word signifies not only what appears, but rather, also its appearing; it names what is there at the same time in its existence.”5 Although Figal acknowledges the Husserlian origin of the notion of “correlation,” he maintains that the crucial equipoise between interpreter and subject matter implied by this notion is eschewed in Husserl’s thinking in favor of the subjective side. Husserl understands the subject matter which appears as a derivative aspect of its appearance, and thus conceives the subject matter as a “subjective phenomenon.”6
According to Figal, the early Heidegger’s hermeneutics of facticity, as well as Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, both attempt to revise Husserl’s imbalanced position but for different reasons they fail to articulate a proper understanding of the correlation between interpreter and subject matter and are therefore also unable to recognize a proper role for hermeneutics as a theoretical endeavor. As for Heidegger, despite his critical excavation of the ontological prejudices intrinsic to the concept of subjectivity, his concept of Dasein still suffers from an unhappy prioritization of the “subject” pole in the correlation between interpreter and subject matter.7 Guided by the concept of intentionality, Heidegger conceives the subject matter as relevant only in so far as it puts Dasein’s being at stake.8 On this view, the very idea of a theoretical hermeneutical philosophy can only, as theory in general according to Heidegger, appear as a deficient or at least derivative mode of understanding. Figal acknowledges that for Gadamer the focus on subjectivity is a mirror of distortion and that his conception of philosophical hermeneutics even rejects the idea of Dasein’s understanding of its being as the foundation of hermeneutics. According to Gadamer, the attempt to achieve self-transparency, which he claims is still shaping Heidegger’s hermeneutics of facticity, fails to acknowledge the fundamental role of historicity in our understanding. No matter how radically we question the concepts and conceptions of the philosophical tradition, we are influenced in our very act of critique by the tradition in ways we cannot make completely reflectively transparent. Understanding is in Gadamer’s sense an effect of the historical “substance.”9 But even though Gadamer succeeds in undermining the priority of subjectivity, according to Figal his emphasis on the power of historicity still obscures the originariness (Ursprünglichkeit) of philosophy, which centers on the correlation between interpreter and subject matter.10 For Figal, originariness denotes that, if successful, a philosophical interpretation of a subject matter is irreducible to a prior level or origin and can therefore also not be seen as a mere effect of historical substance.11
It seems that the practical conception of hermeneutics emphasized by Heidegger and Gadamer is not really left behind, as Figal could seem to imply, but rather tacitly assumed as a valid and perpetually functioning perspective also in his theoretical hermeneutics. According to Figal, the philosophical distance toward all self-evident presuppositions is also a historical (geschictlich) form of thought.12 He does not expect the epochē to open a “view from nowhere”; rather, it expresses the attempt of the interpreter to achieve a distance toward what has shaped him in order to interpret a subject matter anew in an originary manner. Given this non-Archimedean interpretation of the epochē, we might ask with Heidegger whether our self-conception, as in all other forms of understanding, is not at stake in such a theoretical endeavor—perhaps even in an especially intense manner? And, correspondingly, if the interpreter is indeed a historical subject—and not imagined to inhabit an ahistorical perspective—should we not with Gadamer acknowledge that his interpretation is shaped by historical prejudices over and above what he can make fully reflectively transparent?
The idea of philosophy as a free theoretical attitude characterized by originariness is already at stake in Figal’s earlier books on Heidegger (1988 and 1992), Nietzsche (1999), and Hegel (2001). In his interpretations of these authors, what he later characterizes as theoretical, hermeneutical philosophy is prefigured, but not until Objectivity is this conception developed as a full-fledged position.
The hermeneutical notion of objectivity employed by Figal is evidently different from the notion as it is employed in generic forms of epistemology. He is not concerned with criteria for knowledge, justified true belief, or with the (alleged) challenge of skepticism. Rather, he assumes that the questions which shape epistemology about the legitimate constraints on our understanding can be clarified though phenomenological descriptions of how we acknowledge the objectivity of the subject matter. In order for something to be objective in Figal’s sense, it must appear in discontinuity from our everyday, practical comportment in the world. At the same time, our experience of it is more than a “negative” experience of something that escapes our self-evident conceptions in a sudden event of comprehension: “It is true that the emergence of the objective is an occurrence. Something steps over and against and is all at once there. Yet, determinacy belongs to the objective; something steps over and across from and remains. This remaining is like a waiting; it is also a promising. It indicates and thereby releases the possibility of the desire to understand.”13 What presents itself as objective challenges us to preserve our relation with it and avoid it sinking back into the function it is ascribed within the immanence of our practical comportment. In principle, everything can become objective, not only texts, but also everyday objects, an expression in a conversation which suddenly appears enigmatic, or an aspect of a person’s comportment. In this case, the relevant aspect loses its self-evident status and becomes an irreducible subject matter to be interpreted and as such part of the hermeneutical space which is ultimately coextensive with the world as such.14
Interpretation conceived as an attempt to acknowledge the objectivity of the subject matter is presentation (Darstellung) aimed at understanding. This triad of interpretation, objectivity, and understanding is termed the structure of presentation (Darstellungsgefüge).15 Regarding the concept of presentation, Figal follows Plato in claiming that when the interpreter presents the subject matter he “makes himself similar” to it in order to demonstrate what it is and thereby emphasize its recognizability:16 “The conduct or historical event is not simply described. Rather, one gets involved in it descriptively; one, as it were, creates a place for it in one’s own thought, in order to make it accessible in its complex unity.”17
Figal also distinguishes two main types of interpretation, explication (Auslegung) and clarification (Deutung), which each to a different extent shape a given presentation. In an explication of a subject matter, the comprehension of the reader is articulated specifically and in a detailed manner in order to bring out the different internally related parts or arguments of the text. Explication amounts to more than a commentary because the inner structure of the text as a whole must be implicitly recognized and addressed. A clarification, however, aims rather to articulate the text as a whole explicitly. The clarification is made from a specific point of view, more or less external to the text, and the interpreter is reflectively aware of his approach. On Figal’s conception of hermeneutics, clarification is a higher form of interpretation than explication: “Clarification is more presentation; it [the Deutung] allows what is read to become clearer [deutlicher], in the literal sense of the word. One no longer only moves within it by following its inner connections, but, rather, achieves clarifying distance from it.”18
In order to achieve understanding, an interpretation must make the text or the work itself present.19 At the same time, understanding for Figal implies a reflective awareness of the difference between work and interpretation. This awareness of difference is not secured by an external comparison between work and interpretation since the work is only presented as a subject matter in interpretation. The interpreter must rather express a reflective awareness about the modal categories of possibility and actuality as they bear both on the work and on his interpretation: “An interpretation is actual as the presentation of a work, a work has its actuality as what is presented in an interpretation. Yet, viewed on the basis of the possible work, an interpretation in its actuality also remains a possibility; as actuality, which it is, it is given an index of possibility, based on the fullness of the possible, which the work is. Interpretation is the presentation of something that cannot be exhausted by any presentation.” 20 Therefore, the Aristotelian categories of ergon and energeia which signify completion and fulfillment do not pertain to the work, which, taken for itself, is simply “the undeveloped fullness of the possible.”21 In sum, Figal’s hermeneutics thus defends a pluralistic conception of interpretative normativity which is based on the idea of the exteriority of the objective. The act of interpretation should present what is objective but precisely because of its objectivity the subject matter remains irreducibly exterior; every interpretation of it is only one among others. Hence, the notion of truth as designating a binary alternative is not the crucial concept in Figal’s hermeneutic philosophy. A more relevant criterion is, rather, adequacy (Angemessenheit): “Interpretations are not isolated expressions that are, in a simple alternative, true or false. If they really are interpretations they cannot miss the object they are concerned with …. The question of an interpretation’s adequacy is generally not a question of the yes or no but rather a question of comparatives. There are … levels of phenomenality, levels of appearance.”22
Insofar as the objects of fine art already in Objectivity were conceived as expressing a distinct kind of objectivity, Figal’s aesthetics is developed in direct continuation of his hermeneutical philosophy.23 However, Erscheinungsdinge is also a philosophical aesthetics with systematic ambitions in its own right.24 In his philosophical approach to art, Figal distances himself from a tradition of philosophical aesthetics reaching from Hegel and Schelling to Nietzsche and Heidegger. Despite valuable analyses of the structure of artworks, this tradition tends to overburden or instrumentalize the structure of the work of art as a means of achieving insight into the meaning of history or the human condition. We thus lose our conception of the unique type of understanding (Erkenntnis) which is at stake in our encounters with art.25 A work of art is, according to Figal, not to be conceived as a historical truth-event but rather as an experience of the beautiful which on its part demands an aesthetical type of reflection. Such a project aims, in other words, at a rehabilitation of the tradition of philosophical aesthetics which was rejected by Heidegger and Gadamer as overly subjectivist in its conception of art. More specifically, Figal’s attempt to articulate aesthetical experience takes its point of departure in Kant’s Kritik der Urteilskraft and aims to rearticulate Kant’s central thought that the experience of the beautiful stimulates “the free interplay of the faculties of cognition.”26 In this play, the imagination presents the faculty of understanding with a structured manifold, which the understanding for its part seeks to bring under a concept. Yet, the task of achieving such an overarching determination of unity of the presented manifold transcends the power of the understanding. Its concepts show themselves to be inadequate; in its attempt to determine the manifold exhaustively through conceptualization, it manages only to pick out singular aspects.27 Even if Figal emphasizes that the aesthetical experience cannot be brought under a concept, he makes it clear that such an experience is not a completely opaque impression. The free interplay of the faculties of cognition should rather be understood as a specific form of reflection which can be articulated and therefore also communicated and discussed with others. This reflective articulation of the aesthetic experience cannot be undertaken independently of the interpretation of the work of art. The aesthetical reflection is, in fact, actualized as an attempt to articulate the subject matter in as unprejudiced and consistent a manner as possible.28 Figal’s interpretation purports to show that Kant’s analysis not only indicates but continuously presupposes that the experience of art as the free play of the cognitive faculties does, in fact, have an objective correlate even if he dogmatically denies this in his explicit theses on the experience of art.29 Since Figal in this way insists that the correlate of the experience of art is not immanent to consciousness but a real object, he claims to avoid the subjectivism that for the critics of Kant is a fatal consequence of his philosophical aesthetics.
It is of decisive importance for Figal that the work of art is a structured manifold. He defines the work of art as a decentralized order (dezentrale Ordnung) and thereby highlights a formal characteristic of what is brought to appearance in a work of art, whether it is in the narrative of a novel or what is made visible in a painting. The adjective “decentralized” indicates an irregular kind of order that cannot be captured by a set of rules and therefore cannot be brought under concepts. A decentralized order should not, however, be confused with a vague order. Decentralized orders can be quite precise and determinate; what is decisive is that the order in question is only accessible in the encounter with the work of art and therefore demands that the interpreter engage with this encounter in order to experience it.30 With this determination of the essence of the work of art, it is irreducibly connected to its sensuous perceptibility. Our commentaries and interpretation can at best help us to achieve the sensuously mediated understanding (Erkenntnis) that is in the end solely bestowed in the encounter with the work of art. Despite his emphasis on the sensuous appearance of art, Figal does not seek to develop an aesthetic centered upon the perceptibility and materiality of the work of art.
The main aim of Figal’s project is to reinterpret beauty as the central aesthetic category. With his idea that beauty is to be conceived as decentralized order, he places himself beyond any interpretation of beauty in terms of harmony, reconciliation, or even idyll. Art is not beautiful because it pretends, however indirectly, to point toward a “reconciled life,” as Adorno would have it. Instead, art is beautiful in and through presentations of works of art which can include any possible theme or subject matter.31 Figal also rejects the prejudice against the concept of beauty which finds it inadequate to deal with the enigmatic and “dumb” character of modern art, as we encounter it in some modern forms of painting. Such forms of painting highlight a feature that is indeed fundamental for every work of art but which tends to be concealed by premodern art: Because of their greater familiarity or integration into a preestablished overall worldview, classical works of art can lead to the misplaced conviction that their meaning can be articulated in advance of an engagement with their sensuously mediated, decentralized order. Indeed, the means of presentation of modern forms of painting challenge this mistaken conviction in a fundamental manner and thereby urge us to find beauty in the decentralized presentation of the works of art rather than deduce it in relation to a preestablished worldview—even when we interpret classical works of art. In this sense, modern forms of painting cannot be conceived as an exception—let alone a sign of decline—but are on the contrary to be understood as an indication of the general essence of art.
An audacious feature of Figal’s aesthetic is the attempt to reinvigorate the classical discussion about how to distinguish between fundamental forms of art. Figal claims it is an indispensable task for a philosophical aesthetic to clarify why our always already practiced habit of categorizing works of art mirrors not just arbitrary conventions. In line with his phenomenological method, he moves behind the established genres of art and develops correlations between different types of experience and corresponding forms of art.32 In this way, he articulates forms of art, the visual, the musical, and the poetic. The decisive thought, however, is that every specific work of art expresses a mixture of these three forms. The three categories of the visual, the musical, and the poetic are thus not to be understood as positively existing genres of art that each and every work of art can be assigned to. Rather, they constitute principles of understanding, so-called forms of accessibility (Formen der Zugänglichkeit) that we continuously make use of, implicitly or explicitly, in our understanding of a work of art.33 In his phenomenological articulation of forms of art, Figal insists on a form of phenomenological Platonism which is an alternative to the classical form of Platonism as it is expressed in a theory of genres of art which pretends to determine the content of the art genres in abstraction from actual interpretation of artworks and by drawing on criteria independent of art. But he also seeks to avoid a conventionalism or social constructivism which claims that the categorization of artworks is most fundamentally grasped by reducing it to structures or patterns explored by a historical or social scientific mode of inquiry.
In his interpretation of the classical opposition between art and nature, Figal rejects both the Hegelian conception that art constitutes an overcoming or sublation (Aufhebung) of nature as well as the idea that the work of art gestures beyond itself to a nature which is inaccessible in itself (Adorno). Figal claims that the work of art makes nature accessible in and through its presentation (Darstellung). Art should and cannot, however, effect reconciliation with a (lost) nature. The aspects of nature presented in the work of art retain an exteriority or alien character that exceeds every anthropocentric determination of purpose. Instead, nature is experienced in its irreducible objectivity. On the one hand, this objectivity of nature is not to be confused with a crude immediacy. On the other hand, when nature appears through the mediation of art, it appears not merely as a means to our ends, because in the work of art the only end is to make it appear, to present it. This often requires an intense handling (Bearbeitung): “The texture [Maserung] of wood is concealed in the tree and can only be excavated through cutting; its colour can only come into its own by the application of oil. … There are qualities of the natural which are not immediately available. In the works of art they are brought into appearance.”34
In some of his analyses, Figal imbues art with a potential for articulating metaphysical insight. In an interpretation of Cézanne’s late pictures of Montagne Sainte-Victoire, for example, Figal speaks of “texture” (Textur) as designating a pre-intentional field lacking distinct relations and differences. It is our perceptual access to this level which Cézanne attempts to excavate in his painting when he presents distinct forms as emerging from a web or mesh (Gewebe) of colors. Through the meticulous work of abstraction expressed in Cézanne’s work of art, his painting gives us access to an important aspect of our perceptual experience which is concealed in our everyday experience. He articulates a simultaneously given, undifferentiated abundance of qualities (of, for example, color), which are co-given in our experience but which for the most part escape our thematic attention because we are focused on distinct objects and their mutual relations. A decisive question, however, is what status we should ascribe to this aspect of our perceptual experience which is isolated through the abstraction attained in Cézanne’s artistic method (as it is interpreted by Figal). Does it belong in the overall intentionality of our worldview? Or are we justified in interpreting it as pointing to an independent level of reality which is even the foundation of all significance and therefore also the condition of possibility of art as such?35 It is not clear that Figal’s phenomenological analysis justifies the latter, metaphysical interpretation of the “texture” articulated in Cézanne’s paintings. He provides phenomenological evidence that our everyday experience contains a textural aspect—as, for example, when the hissing of the wind or the murmur of the waves forms the non-thematic background of the shriek of a bird which captures our attention.36 Yet, how does this incontestable phenomenological fact substantiate a metaphysical thesis as to the primacy of the textural and the idea of a primordiality of perception when directed at this aspect of experience? 37