István M. Fehér
The claim that there are significant parallels and connections between hermeneutics and humanism may be plausible from the mere fact that the magnum opus of contemporary hermeneutics, Gadamer’s Truth and Method, opens with a chapter on “The significance of the humanist tradition for the human sciences.” (For the English-speaking reader, this connection is even more apparent following from the English translation of “Geisteswissenshaften” as “human sciences.”) Since the hermeneutical problematic has traditionally been closely linked to the philosophical interpretation and justification of the Geisteswissenshaften so that it may even be claimed to grow out of it (Dilthey assigned hermeneutics the task of founding the Geisteswissenschaften [see Dilthey 1924, 331]), this circumstance provides a first link between hermeneutics and humanism, whereby the linking takes place through the mediation of the Geisteswissenschaften. The significance of the humanist tradition for the human sciences parallels to a great extent the relevance of this tradition for hermeneutics. If the humanist tradition has some significance for the human sciences and hermeneutics is originally a philosophical interpretation of the latter, then the humanist tradition must have some relevance for hermeneutics as well.
In what follows, I will expand in some detail on the importance of Gadamer’s chapter on the humanist tradition for the self-interpretation of his whole work. A brief interpretation of this chapter and its philosophical background will be followed by a short interpretive reconstruction of the origin and history of the concept of humanism and its interconnections with hermeneutics. Finally, I will attempt to draw two conclusions.
The problem of Geisteswissenschaften has a long-standing tradition in German philosophy; it dates back to the first half of the nineteenth century when it began to become a distinctively philosophical issue. Schleiermacher, Ranke and the historical school, Droysen, the Neo-Kantians of the Baden school (Windelband and Rickert), finally—and in particular—Dilthey are the names whose work may, in one or more respects, be mentioned in connection with this endeavor. The effort common to all of these schools and persons aimed at establishing, in one way or another, the autonomy of the human sciences with respect to, or in opposition to, the knowledge provided by natural science or metaphysics (be the latter idealistic, e.g., Hegelian, or naturalistic in nature). The authors belonging to these tendencies, up to und inclusive of Gadamer himself, found themselves in opposition to the positivistic idea of unified science or the unity of science (see Gadamer’s critical reference in GW 2, 109). According to this idea, all science has—or is supposed to have provided if it lays claim to being called and ranked as science—basically the same method, for human knowledge as well as scientific knowledge is also unified or unitary. Disagreement may only concern the precise identification and description of this method but not the expectations and the universal scope it is to fulfill. The unified or unitary method was typically identified with (different understandings or pre-understandings of) the method applied by the natural sciences, whereby the view was predominant that natural sciences set the unquestionable example for what should count as science at all. For positivism, the paradigm of human knowledge is supplied indisputably by (natural) science. The human sciences should, therefore, be based on the model of the successful natural sciences and follow their pattern, provided they ever want to constitute themselves as sciences, to become or develop from human studies to something such as the human sciences. Auguste Comte, founding father of the positivistic flow, modeled social science upon the natural; for him the model of sociology was physics. Indeed, he came to define sociology in terms of “social physics” (“physique sociale,” see, e.g., Comte 1936, 34), that is, as a subdivision or branch of physics.
This positivistic endeavor was viewed by a great part of German philosophical tradition with little enthusiasm; it was regarded as a misunderstanding—or even as a subversion—of the specific work the historical and human sciences were called to achieve. It was also regarded as a preliminary distortion of their specific “subject,” namely, man in his historicity, for it meant depriving him of his liberty and degrading him to the status of a pure being of nature. Natural science strives to attain knowledge of the universal, something that has been dubbed the laws of nature—even for Kant it is in each case “a necessary law” that human “reason seeks and requires” (Kant KrV Bxiii, see Kant 1998, 109)—but, from the viewpoint of the opposing tradition, it would be a misunderstanding to believe that the specific task of the human studies consisted in a similar way in discovering laws (the alleged “laws of history” are, e.g., for Rickert a “contradictio in adjecto” [Rickert 1913, 227]) in order to predict future processes, and their inferiority with respect to natural science would be just the fact that they had not yet been successful in this regard but might succeed one day. As Gadamer put it: if natural science “is concerned with establishing similarities, regularities, and conformities to law which would make it possible to predict individual phenomena and processes,” with respect to the human sciences it is very much the case that “one has not rightly grasped their nature if one measures them by the yardstick of a progressive knowledge of regularity.” For,
whatever ‘science’ may mean here … historical research does not endeavor to grasp the concrete phenomenon as an instance of a universal rule. The individual case does not serve only to confirm a law from which practical predictions can be made. Its ideal is rather to understand the phenomenon itself in its unique and historical concreteness.
(Gadamer 1999, 4f.)
Gadamer draws here implicitly on the Neo-Kantian defense of the autonomy of the human sciences in terms of the distinction between the natural sciences as sciences of laws (Gesetzeswissenschaften) and the human sciences as sciences of events (Ereigniswissenschaften) (Windelband 1911, vol. 2, 145; see Rickert 1913, 244). Scientific knowledge, namely, its method, is, “nomothetic” (law-oriented) in the one case, and “idiographic” (event-oriented) in the other. The aim of knowledge is, in the natural sciences, the universal, the eternal, in the form of law, whereas in the human sciences what we strive to know is the individual, the historical that existed irreplaceably in its uniqueness here and now. Empirical reality will be “nature when regarded with respect to the universal, and it will be history when regarded with respect to the particular and the individual” (Rickert 1913, 224; for an anticipation, see Droysen 1977, 20f.). Thereby it is and remains indisputable from Droysen to Dilthey that the object of knowledge in the human sciences is the individual (Droysen 1977, 28; Dilthey 1922, 26; 1927, 87). It was the defense of the autonomy of the human sciences, their irreducibility to the natural sciences or to some kind of a unitary scientific method, that has led to the distinction between the natural and the human sciences. The latter distinction finds its ultimate philosophical justification in the logical-epistemological distinction between the universal and the individual.
Gadamer fully shares, and enthusiastically joins hands with, the basic effort common to a German tradition of more than a hundred years, but, without explicit criticism, he tacitly distances himself from the specific way the Neo-Kantians and Dilthey attempted to philosophically legitimate the autonomy of the human sciences by basing it upon a logical-epistemological distinction. As a thinker brought up in Heidegger’s school—and, at least from this perspective, as a good Heideggerian1—he is reluctant to recognize the primacy of logic and epistemology in matters of foundation. This is the precise context in which at this early point of his masterwork Gadamer goes back to and draws on the tradition of humanism. He goes as far as to offer it as a both reasonable and desirable alternative to any kind of “scientific” grounding. Instead of a logical-epistemological founding of the human sciences, Gadamer suggests (and subsequently performs) their “humanist founding.” This concise formulation is destined to express Gadamer’s opposition to, and his novelty with respect to, the efforts of the leading epistemological tendencies of the age. It is a novelty, a “renewal” that, in fact, turns back to and activates (in a Heideggerian sense, recuperates or retrieves) something very “old.” The real element of the Geisteswissenschaften (the philological–historical studies) is identified by Gadamer not so much in methodical knowledge, the growth of controllable cognitions and their application or utilization for the purpose of gaining mastery over nature. Rather, it consists in their capacity of Bildung (education, edification), that is, the ability to form (that is, educate, change, or shape) people, to help them develop, come into their own and become fully (and occasionally, even transcend) themselves. It is not a specific scientific method (be it “idiographic” or other) that makes the human sciences distinct from the natural sciences, but Bildung. This may rightly be considered to be the leading concept of what Gadamer calls “the guiding concepts of humanism.”
The concept of self-formation, education, or cultivation (Bildung) … was perhaps the greatest idea of the eighteenth century, and it is this concept which is the atmosphere breathed by the human sciences of the nineteenth century, even if they are unable to offer any epistemological justification for it.
(Gadamer 1999, 8)
The modern concept of science and the associated concept of method are insufficient. What makes the human sciences into sciences can be understood more easily from the tradition of the concept of Bildung than from the modern idea of scientific method. It is to the humanistic tradition that we must turn. In its resistance to the claims of modern science it gains a new significance.
(Gadamer 1999, 18; italics in original)
Obviously, the attempt at a “humanistic” foundation of the Geisteswissenschaften raises the question of how Gadamer understands that to which he wants to connect the human sciences as to their philosophical foundations—a distinctively hermeneutical question itself, for it concerns Gadamer’s (pre-) understanding of the humanistic tradition.
The answer to Gadamer’s pre-understanding of the humanistic tradition is to be reconstructed and elicited from the chapter “The Guiding Concepts of Humanism.” This applies the method (for even Gadamer does have one, for all his aversion to “method”) of “conceptual history” [Begriffsgeschichte]2 in an attempt to make accessible the specific way Gadamer understands the humanistic tradition. It is his selection of the specific humanistic concepts no less than the method of explicating them that shows us Gadamer’s conception of humanism—the latter being nevertheless a somewhat exaggerated designation, for one can scarcely speak of an explicit, or thematized conception of humanism in his work. What he has a more or less elaborate conception of is, rather—given the main scope of his work—the human sciences or hermeneutics. These are interpreted through reference to humanism. Humanism is, accordingly and basically, what is interpreted with, rather than what is being interpreted; it serves, in other words, as an auxiliary device (however important it may be) with which the human sciences are interpreted, but humanism itself is not an autonomous object of interpretation. This does not mean devaluation or depreciation; in a sense, the contrary is true. Gadamer’s whole work draws on, and is permeated by, the humanistic tradition although (or by the very fact that) this remains in the background. That means: of all that appears in the foreground, it is more or less the humanistic tradition that constitutes the background—background against which what appears can emerge and gain specific characters for the first time.
The concepts which Gadamer discusses in some detail under the heading of “the guiding concepts of humanism” are “Bildung,” “sensus communis,” “judgment,” and “taste.” As to their structure and the role they play in human life, they have all some common features. First, none of them implies some abstract-universal or autonomous knowledge, such that would, in a second step, require being applied to concrete, individual cases from time to time. They do not provide knowledge of the general, or universal. Further and more importantly, they represent “a mode of being” no less than “a mode of knowing” (Gadamer 1999, 16). The mode of being is one that has become (“gewordenes Sein,” ibid., 17), that owes its being to its having become, to its having superseded a previous state. “The guiding concepts of humanism” refer all to a kind of knowledge that always already comprises application. Also, we have to do here with a particular kind of knowledge that does have some relevance for life, in the manner of Nietzsche’s On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life. Historical education or knowledge is beneficial only if it is in the service of life, or, more precisely—what this comes down to for Gadamer—for the life of a community of people. This kind of knowledge is rooted in, and gains its significance for, a specific community. Taste is, for example, “a social phenomenon of the first order” (Gadamer 1999, 32), sensus communis is “the sense that founds community” (ibid., 21); and characteristic of all of Gadamer’s guiding concepts of humanism is their being related to, and rooted in, a community or commonality of people. It is “practical knowledge, phronesis,” which is “another kind of knowledge” (ibid., 21).
This reference to a community of people is of relevance for us in the context of exhibiting the path to Gadamer’s pre-understanding of humanism. To be a “humanist” thus amounts to, from this perspective, living and behaving in a particular manner, in conformity with and for a community; it is to live, to act, that is, to be (in a specific way), not only to know, that is, to possess a certain amount, and be it however huge, of knowledge. Indeed, what kind of knowledge would taste be supposed to be? Whoever has taste or tact can be identified or recognized by “a special sensitivity and sensitiveness to situations and how to behave in them” (ibid., 16), that is, by the fact that, in particular situations, he or she acts, lives, or behaves in a particular manner, rather than by his or her capacity to recite from memory a certain stock—possibly, a fairly great amount—of knowledge concerning universal principles or objects.
The significance of this first part of Gadamer’s work is often overlooked, neglected, or underrated by interpreters although its importance can hardly be overestimated. At a closer look, what we have to do with here is, in fact, nothing less than the preparation of the ontological turn of the hermeneutically central concept of understanding to be treated with reference to Heidegger in subsequent chapters. It is due to this ontological turn, operated by Heidegger and taken over and elaborated upon by Gadamer, that the concept of understanding changed or turned from an epistemological concept into an ontological one, from a way of knowing into a way of being. This fundamental change or turn in the concept of understanding (a radically new way of understanding understanding, we may say) is the main operation which allows us to legitimately speak about the ontological turn of hermeneutics, and, more generally, about the hermeneutic turn of twentieth-century philosophy.
Gadamer formulates his summary of this new (Heideggerian) understanding of understanding as follows:
Understanding is … the original form of the realization [Vollzugform] of Dasein, which is being-in-the-world. Before any differentiation of understanding into the various directions of pragmatic or theoretical interest, understanding is Dasein’s mode of being.
(Gadamer 1999, 259; the last italics added.)
In the immediately following passage, Gadamer comes back to and expands on this point:
The concept of understanding is no longer a methodological concept, as with Droysen. Nor, as in Dilthey’s attempt to provide a hermeneutical ground for the human sciences, is the process of understanding an inverse operation that simply traces backward life’s tendency toward ideality. Understanding is the original characteristic of the being of human life itself [Seinscharakter des menschlichen Lebens selber].
(Gadamer 1999, 259)3
The concept of understanding is thus no more in the service of an epistemological grounding of the human sciences. Just as the guiding concepts of humanism do not solely indicate ways of knowing but also ways of being, likewise, the ontological turn of hermeneutics in the twentieth century centers around a similar transformation or radicalization of the concept of understanding. From this viewpoint, understanding is no more a way of knowing, proper to the human studies, in contradistinction to explanation as the way of knowledge characteristic of the natural sciences, but is rather a way of being of the being called human. Humans are understanding, so to speak, all along. Just as the guiding concepts of humanism have a practical (i.e., not only theoretical or scientific) import, in a similar vein, understanding operates in human life in general, not only in specific branches of the (human) sciences. What humans understand in the first place are not scientific issues or matters of fact out there in the world, but the way they find themselves in the world, involved in it and coping with it. Understanding something is a way of being, such that to possess a certain understanding is to be in a certain way. If understanding undergoes change, so does being. He or she who understands becomes involved in what he or she understands, and what one understands affects, changes, and transforms the person who performs the understanding. The guiding concepts of humanism constitute a way of being precisely in the way as does the ontologically radicalized concept of understanding in hermeneutics. This state of matter brings hermeneutics and humanism reciprocally in the proximity of each other. “For the hermeneutical problem too is clearly distinct from ‘pure’ knowledge detached from any particular kind of being” (Gadamer 1999, 314; italics suppressed). If, from the perspective of humanism, Bildung changes, shapes, and transforms the being of humans, understanding amounts to, from the perspective of hermeneutics, achieving much the same. What Gadamer says about “tact”—that it “is not simply a feeling and unconscious, but is at the same time a mode of knowing and a mode of being” (ibid., 16)—is characteristic of all of the guiding concepts of humanism.
If Bildung (“self-formation, education, or cultivation”) is “the atmosphere breathed by the human sciences” (ibid., 9; literally: the “element” in which the human sciences “live”), if this constitutes their natural medium (as water does for fish or air for birds), then it must be regarded as an embarrassment or a self-misunderstanding, on the part of the human sciences, to have tried for so long, in an attempt to compensate for their sense of inferiority with respect to the natural sciences, to borrow the measure or concept of their scientific character (method or rationality) from those sciences rather than developing or elaborating a character of their own, conforming to their object and task.
In summary, it may be said: the specifically scientific character of the human sciences does not lie, for Gadamer, in a new or different kind of method (“idiographic” or other), as the Neo-Kantians thought it did. It is not objectifying knowledge or gaining mastery over the object of knowledge that is characteristic of the human sciences, and this is also not what they should aim at. It is, rather, participation in (“Teilhabe”; see Gadamer 1999, e.g., 124, 128, 293 [= GW 1, 298], 481), or belonging to (“Zugehörigkeit” see Gadamer 1999, e.g., 262ff., 458ff., 463), the object of knowledge, and thereby self-cognition, self-formation that matters. If, for Gadamer, as cited earlier, “[i]t is to the humanistic tradition that we must turn back” (Gadamer 1999, 18), that is, “turn back” for the purpose of founding and legitimating the human sciences, then it may be claimed that, from this perspective, it is humanism—its different historical forms—as well as its ideal of education or edification (Bildung) that constitute the foundations of the hermeneutical tradition. For through interpretation (the main operation of hermeneutics), we not only gain knowledge about a piece of the past—a series of past events or alien people; what interpretation achieves is not exhausted in possession and increase of knowledge. What is achieved is, rather, that through interpretation we gain self-interpretation or self-knowledge, thereby coming into our own and becoming humans in ways other than we have been before. While understanding and interpreting the historical past, we come to understand our own selves, and in conformity with this understanding we come to shape our lives more consciously, in a fuller and richer way. Understanding is in the service of appropriation and reappropriation of ourselves. This view may be named as the referring back (reduction) of hermeneutics to humanism, or also, as the humanistic (self-) interpretation of hermeneutics.
Obviously, humanism on its part also requires interpretation and thereby hermeneutics. Accordingly, if hermeneutics becomes embedded in humanism, the inverse relation is no less true: humanism becomes embedded in hermeneutics, that is, it refers back—so to speak from itself—to hermeneutics. This state of matters may be expressed as follows: the humanistic (self-) interpretation of hermeneutics becomes complemented by a hermeneutical approach to humanism. If every tradition requires being interpreted, then humanism can be no exception either (nor can, incidentally, the hermeneutical tradition itself). A short scrutiny of the concept of humanism will therefore be of interest, whereby it is not to be overlooked that one of the most anti-hermeneutical questions one might ask would center on the “essence” of a concept, on what the “real” or “general” concept of “x” (humanism, hermeneutics, or anything else) consisted in. Heidegger’s quip in 1919 is not to be forgotten: “Just no free-floating unfounded conceptual questions, please!” (“keine freischwebenden, unfundierten Begriffsfragen!” [GA 56/57, 126]). Hermeneutics (just like phenomenology) is not primarily concerned with concepts but with the subject matter, whereby the motivation and context of a question makes it a meaningful question in the first place. Our scrutiny is thus motivated by the interest in discovering which traditional interpretations (pre-understandings) of humanism Gadamer draws on when tracing and reconstructing the conceptual history of what he calls “guiding concepts of humanism.”4
The coining of the word “humanism” is relatively late. Following the occurrence of such early phrases as “studia humaniora” or “studia humanitatis,” used by Cicero and introduced into common usage by Italian humanists, it was the German theologian, religious philosopher, and Bavarian educational reformer Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer (1766–1848), a fairly close acquaintance of the Idealists and a friend of Hegel (on his relation to Hegel, see Pinkard 2000, 268–275), who coined the term “humanism” and used it in a work with the title Der Streit des Philanthropinismus und des Humanismus in der Theorie des Erziehungs-Unterrichts unsrer Zeit (The Dispute between Philanthropinism and Humanism in the Educational Theory of our Time), published in 1808. By “humanism,” Niethammer understood an educational plan which stressed the importance of the humanities over against the reform called “philanthropinism,” committed to practical utility and training. “Humanism, as opposed to Philanthropinism, defends man’s spiritual nature in its autonomy, its independence from the material world, and thus asserts something that is very true,” wrote Niethammer here (Niethammer 1808, 72; see Birus 1994; see also Graf 2006). The contrast between the “dark” Middle Ages and “bright” humanism and Renaissance is, of course, to be regarded as outdated now (see Garin 1966, 225ff.). In any case, the diffusion of the term humanism for designating a certain attitude and worldview projected back into a particular historical (mainly cultural and intellectual) movement of the Renaissance which stressed secular concerns together with and as a consequence of the rediscovery and study of the literature, art, and civilization of ancient Greece and Rome, parallel with the emergence and diffusion of the term Renaissance itself (see, e.g., Garin 1966, 1986, 431)—as well as their partial fusion, epitomized by the not infrequent designation “Renaissance humanism”)—is a product of the second half of the nineteenth century.
This state of affairs can itself be explained in hermeneutical terms. Insofar as the starting as well as the vantage point of every and each interpretation is the present, past opens up (as Heidegger has convincingly shown in his Natorp report5) only dependent upon, and in function of, the present—a present that on its part, as Heidegger taught, is primarily future-dependent (see Heidegger 1979, 326/373f.). Past, in this sense, not so much precedes as succeeds present. It is, in an important respect, always the present that dominates the character and essence of a past, thereby preceding it in a logical, a priori sense and making it possible for the first time. In other words: it is the followers who discover their predecessors; if and as long as there are followers, there are also predecessors. Conversely, if there are no followers there are no predecessors either. In this sense, followers precede—and make thereby possible—the predecessors or founders (St. Paul precedes Christ). The emergence of (the awareness related to) a tradition can only be subsequent to the founding acts and events.
This hermeneutical perspective may be brought to bear upon hermeneutics itself. The tradition of hermeneutics (no less than that of humanism) begins, so to speak, at the end. As to hermeneutics, Gadamer in this sense precedes Plato or Aristotle (the latter’s De Interpretatione, for example). It is due to and thanks to Gadamer that we may speak of a history and tradition of hermeneutics today; the history of hermeneutics begins with Gadamer (on this point, see also Grondin 1991, 4).
In the debate which, following the emergence and the establishment of the term of humanism, was under way about its real beginnings in the second half of the nineteenth century and in the first half of the twentieth century, an authoritative view was voiced by the German scholar Konrad Burdach. He emphasized, in accordance with what we have been saying about the “objective” detectability of the beginnings of something—in our case, of humanism—that it is basically a question of present-day perspective and pre-understanding to establish both the temporal origin and the essence of humanism. He writes:
The debate that has been going on in multiple ways about the beginnings of humanism … rests upon a distorted positing of the question. There were humanistic currents in a broad sense in the whole Middle Ages. What we call humanism in a narrower and more proper sense … differs from similar movements of earlier centuries by the far-reaching power of its influence and the new spirit which informs it. Quite a few people in the Middle Ages knew ancient authors and formed thereby their use of Latin no less than their knowledge and views. But it was only in the cultural movement commonly called humanism that such knowledge and such following of the ancient authors appear for the first time as a program for a new world-view and a new conduct of Life [Gestaltung des Lebens], as an enthusiastically praised source of enrichment and refinement of men.
(Burdach 1918, 99; italics in the original; see also Garin 1986, 453)
It is because the rise and acceptance of new ways of life in the nineteenth century found its source and inspiration in humanism, that is, as a consequence of and owing to a particular preliminary “fusion of horizons,” that humanism and Renaissance could appear as a new beginning in European cultural history. The precise meaning and significance humanism as a new way of life had for a variety of people made it possible for them to raise (and be interested in) the question of its beginnings as an important, urgent, and reasonable issue.
In addition to his considerations about the beginnings of humanism, Burdach makes in the quoted passage another point of relevance for our discussion. Humanism is, according to this view, not only—or perhaps not even primarily—a view of life but at the same time also a conduct of life. This points decisively to the direction of Gadamer. Indeed, as he points out, “since the days of humanism, criticism of ‘scholastic’ science has made itself heard” (Gadamer 1999, 18); that is, in contrast to scholastic science, pursued as an end to itself and alien to the needs of people, humanism for the first time shifted the emphasis on to knowledge in service of life. “The enthusiasm,” he goes on to argue, “with which the humanists proclaimed the Greek language and the path of eruditio signified more than an antiquarian passion.” Together with “a new valuation of rhetoric … [i]t waged battle against the ‘school,’ i.e., scholastic science, and supported an ideal of human wisdom that was not achieved in the ‘school’” (ibid.). Again, with regard to Vico, Gadamer speaks about “the contrast between the scholar and the wise man” (ibid., 20), and commenting on another guiding concept of the humanistic tradition, Gadamer similarly points out: “A critical note directed against the theoretical speculations of the philosophers can be heard in the Roman concept of the sensus communis” (ibid., 22).
From this perspective, we come to a further parallel between hermeneutics and humanism; the commonality lies in their practical import. If, for humanism, what matters is not primarily knowing but being, acting, living, then the same holds true, in hermeneutics, with respect to a new (ontological) understanding of the concept of understanding, being no more a purely epistemological concept, but primarily a mode of being of humans. Understanding and interpretation are no more restricted to the area of sciences, or their theory, but have great relevance in and for the life of both individuals and communities. As Gadamer put it, understanding is more than a skill or an ability—the ability to analyze and interpret texts of the past. “Understanding can particularly contribute to broadening and expanding our human experience … Understanding is always also attainment of an expanded and deeper self-understanding. This means however: hermeneutics is philosophy, and as a philosophy, it is practical philosophy” (Gadamer 1972, 343).
***
Possible or plausible consequences of what has been said (a formulation such as this may be appropriate also in view of the fact that hermeneutics does have to do with what is plausible, rather than with what is necessary, and is therefore, a philosophy of “modesty” [Gadamer GW2, 505]) include the following two theses: (1) hermeneutics is humanism; (2) the contemporary form of humanism is hermeneutics.
Hermeneutics is humanism: This means that the primary aim of hermeneutics is not theoretical; it strives not for a possibly “correct” or allegedly “objective” interpretation of inherited texts (although it is not, as is sometimes conjectured, inimical to and does not exclude this effort). In any case, its primary achievement lies in its individuality—and community-constituting character.
The contemporary form of humanism is hermeneutics. After all earlier (mainly “substantive”) forms of humanism, which claimed to be able to establish what the essence of humans lie in, have been discredited, that is, after the deconstruction of all “substantive” definitions of humans, hermeneutics is and remains the only position capable of taking over the legacy of humanism. Giving up the claim of putting forth one more substantive definition (and recognizing the implausibility of such an ambition), it stresses the importance of self-understanding, self-description, and self-interpretation (no matter what results they lead up to) as an integral part of the life of individuals and communities
From this perspective, hermeneutics may be said to be the heir of the legacy of the humanist tradition and may be entitled to be called its form in the twentieth and twentieth-first centuries more than any other philosophical stance.
This research was supported by the European Union and the Hungarian State, co-financed by the European Social Fund in the framework of TÁMOP 4.2.4. A/1-11-1-2012-0001 National Excellence Program, as well as by Herder Foundation.
Bibliographical Remark: The volumes of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe and of Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke are cited with the abbreviations GA and GW, respectively, followed by the volume number, comma, and page numbers. If there are references to both the original German text and the corresponding English translation, the German pagination and the English pagination are separated by a slash. For example: in “GA 20: 417/301f.,” the number before the slash indicates the German edition, the one after the slash the English edition.