In the first part of Truth and Method, which is entitled “The Question of Truth as It Emerges in the Experience of Art,” Gadamer explores a topic that is barely mentioned by Descartes and might even seem peripheral to Cartesianism. Gadamer’s main concern is with the “subjectivisation of aesthetics in the Kantian critique,” but it is here that he also begins his assault on the Cartesian legacy. The questions that preoccupy Gadamer here are these: How are we to account for the typically modern denigration of the idea of the truth of works of art? How are we to deal with the modern embarrassment in even speaking about truth in regard to works of art? What is the source for the deep prejudice that the appreciation of art and beauty has nothing to do with knowledge and truth? Gadamer examines the sources of this modern prejudice because he wants to question and challenge it. He finds that Kant’s Critique of Judgment (especially the first part of this critique) and its decisive influence played a key role in the emergence of aesthetics and the concepts of “aesthetic consciousness” and “aesthetic differentiation.”
It is important to appreciate the problem Kant confronts in his analysis of aesthetic judgment. Kant, after completing the first two critiques, in which he sought to reveal the a priori foundations of knowledge and morality, now faced the task of not only unifying the critical project through a study of judgment, but also of demonstrating the legitimacy of judgments of taste, and in particular the type of reflective judgment characteristic of aesthetic judgment. He sought to provide an analytic and a deduction that would reveal the a priori foundations of this distinctive type of judgment. Aesthetic judgments are not to be confused or identified with knowledge of the phenomenal world or with the activity of pure practical reason. But this does not mean that for Kant aesthetic judgments are merely arbitrary or idiosyncratic. They do make a distinctive claim to universality (or more accurately, generality or communicability).10 Throughout Kant maintains a basic dichotomy between the subjective and the objective, although the meaning of these concepts is transformed because of Kant’s Copernican Revolution.
The specific problem for him was to explain how aesthetic judgment is related to a distinctive type of subjective aesthetic pleasure (to be carefully distinguished from other sorts of pleasure) and at the same time to account for the communal validity of such judgments. Kant tells us that the cognitive powers are here in “free play, because no definite concept limits them to a definite rule of cognition. . . . This state of free play of the cognitive faculties in a representation by which an object is given must be universally communicable.”11 Using a more contemporary idiom, Kant’s project was to show that aesthetic judgments are grounded in human subjectivity and yet are not merely relative to an individual subject. Taste is communal, not idiosyncratic.
Aesthetic judgments, however, are not judgments of truth or falsity. Gadamer locates the same tendency—to exclude completely the question of truth—in Kant’s analysis of genius. Anticipating what happened after (and partly as a result of) Kant, Gadamer tells us:
The radical subjectivisation involved in Kant’s new basis for aesthetics was a completely new departure. In discrediting any kind of theoretical knowledge apart from that of natural science, it compelled the human sciences to rely on the methodology of the natural sciences in self-analysis. But it made this reliance easier by offering as a subsidiary contribution the “artistic element,” “feeling,” and “empathy.” (TM, p. 39; WM, p. 38)
It is this “radical subjectivisation” of aesthetic judgment that Gadamer calls “aesthetic consciousness,” and he claims that it no longer left any room for speaking of knowledge or of claims to truth by a work of art. Such a notion of “aesthetic consciousness” goes hand-in-hand with what Gadamer calls the abstraction of “aesthetic differentiation,” according to which we are to disregard everything in which a work of art is rooted, such as its original context and its secular or religious function, in order for the “pure work of art” to stand out. We can call this the “museum” conception of art, which assumes that by isolating the work of art from its original context and placing it in a museum we abstract it from everything that is extraneous to it in order to appreciate and judge it aesthetically. And Gadamer does claim that the growth of the modern museum as the repository of works of art is closely related to the growth of aesthetic consciousness and aesthetic differentiation.
Given these tendencies that are implicit in Kant’s understanding of aesthetic judgment, it is not difficult to see how they lead to consequences that undermine what he sought to accomplish. Once we begin questioning whether there is a common faculty of taste (a sensus communis), we are easily led down the path to relativism. And this is what did happen after Kant—so much so that today it is extraordinarily difficult to retrieve any idea of taste or aesthetic judgment that is more than the expression of personal preferences. Ironically (given Kant’s intentions), the same tendency has worked itself out with a vengeance with regard to all judgments of value, including moral judgments.
Gadamer draws out these consequences of Kant’s “radical subjectivisation” in order to begin to show what is wrong with this entire way of approaching works of art. At this stage in his inquiry, he raises a series of questions which indicate the direction of his thinking.
Is there to be no knowledge in art? Does not the experience of art contain a claim to truth which is certainly different from that of science, but equally certainly is not inferior to it? And is not the task of aesthetics precisely to provide a basis for the fact that artistic experience is a mode of knowledge of a unique kind, certainly different from that sensory knowledge which provides science with the data from which it constructs the knowledge of nature, and certainly different from all moral rational knowledge and indeed from all conceptual knowledge, but still knowledge, i.e., the transmission of truth? (TM, p. 87; WM, p. 93)
If such questions are not to be taken as merely rhetorical but as questions that can be given, as Gadamer thinks they can, affirmative answers, then we need to find a way of thinking that overcomes this “radical subjectivisation.” In this regard we can appreciate the introduction of a concept that might at first seem incidental, and even fanciful—the concept of play. Its importance, however, is indicated when Gadamer speaks of play as “the clue to ontological explanation” and claims that it points the way toward understanding “the ontology of the work of art and its hermeneutical significance” (TM, p. 91; WM, p. 97).
Many philosophers who identify themselves with the phenomenological movement have a tendency to talk constantly about phenomenology and what it can achieve, rather than to do phenomenological analysis. But Gadamer’s rich description of play and games is an example of phenomenological analysis at its best. But why introduce the concept of play here? And what does it mean to say that play is the “clue to ontological explanation”? To anticipate, Gadamer is searching for a phenomenon or model that provides an alternative to the Cartesian model that rivets our attention on “subjective attitudes” (Vorstellung) toward what is presumably “objective.” If he is to succeed in moving beyond objectivism and relativism (and the entire cluster of dichotomies associated with this opposition), then he needs to show us—to point the way to the alternative. This is what he seeks to accomplish by introducing the concept of play. Gadamer not only gives a subtle phenomenological description of play; he also draws upon Huizinga’s penetrating analysis of play and upon the crucial role of “free play” in Kant’s analysis of aesthetic judgment.12
Beginning with ordinary games and children’s play, Gadamer stresses the primacy of the game or the play that we participate in. “Play fulfills its purpose only if the player loses himself in his play” (TM, p. 92; WM, p. 97). Gadamer calls attention to the internal buoyancy, the to-and-fro movement that belongs to play itself. Play is a “happening.”
Play obviously represents an order in which the to-and-fro motion of play follows of itself. . . . The structure of play absorbs the player into itself, and thus takes from him the burden of the initiative, which constitutes the actual strain of existence. This is seen also in the spontaneous tendency to repetition that emerges in the player and in the constant self-renewal of play, which influences its form. (TM, p. 94; WM, p. 100)
Gadamer seeks to show us that there is a distinctive “mode of being” of play. For play has its own essence (Wesen), independent of the consciousness of those who play. According to Gadamer, “The players are not the subjects of play: instead play merely reaches presentation [Darstellung] through the players” (TM, p. 92; WM, p. 98). Furthermore, play is not even to be understood as a kind of activity; the actual subject of play is not the individual, who among other activities plays, but instead the play itself.
As we explore Gadamer’s understanding of philosophic hermeneutics, we will see just how central this concept of play is for him; it turns out to be the key or the clue to his understanding of language and dialogue.
Now I contend that the basic constitution of the game, to be filled with its spirit—the spirit of buoyancy, freedom and the joy of success—and to fulfill him who is playing, is structurally related to the constitution of the dialogue in which language is a reality. When one enters into dialogue with another person and then is carried along further by the dialogue, it is no longer the will of the individual person, holding itself back or exposing itself, that is determinative. Rather, the law of the subject matter [die Sache] is at issue in the dialogue and elicits statement and counterstatement and in the end plays them into each other.13
But at this point one might be inclined to object. If we are really speaking about human games and play, then there is no play without players—the subjects. And the objects here, insofar as we are speaking about games (and not just “free play”), are the rules of the game and the objective to be achieved—for example, scoring the most points. Gadamer, of course, knows this as well as anyone else. But such an objection is likely to miss the point of Gadamer’s phenomenological description. There is a not-so-innocent epistemological sense of what is “subjective” and what is “objective” (which is basic to Kant’s understanding of aesthetics) that Gadamer is seeking to undermine. If we recognize the distinctive features of play that Gadamer is highlighting—the primacy of the play itself, the to-and-fro movement of play, the sense in which play has a rhythm and structure of its own—then we may begin to realize that trying to analyze play in terms of the attitudes of subjects toward what is objective or “out there” distorts the very phenomenon that we are trying to describe. But still we may ask, what does the concept of play have to do with the ontology of a work of art, truth, and with hermeneutical understanding? If asked to answer in a word, I think Gadamer would say, “Everything”—but let us see how this unfolds.
As Gadamer develops and enriches his analysis of play, it becomes clear that he is showing that the concept of play provides an understanding of the ontological status of works of art—how they are related to us and we are related to them. It is not as if we are somehow detached or disinterested spectators simply looking upon “objects” and seeking to purify our “aesthetic consciousness” by “aesthetic differentiation.” Rather there is a to-and-fro movement, a type of participation characteristic of our involvement with works of art.
My thesis, then, is that the being of art cannot be determined as an object of an aesthetic awareness because, on the contrary, the aesthetic attitude is more than it knows of itself. It is a part of the essential process of representation [Seinsvorganges der Darstellung] and is an essential part of play as play. (TM, p. 104; WM, p. 111)
A work of art is not to be thought of as a self-contained and self-enclosed object (something an sich) that stands over against a spectator, who, as a subject, must purify himself or herself in order to achieve aesthetic consciousness of the work of art. There is a dynamic interaction or transaction between the work of art and the spectator who “shares” in it.14
Even this way of speaking can obscure the fact that a work of art is essentially incomplete, in the sense that it requires an interpreter. And the interpreter is not someone who is detached from the work of art but is someone upon whom the work of art makes a claim. The spectator, then, is present to the work of art in the sense that he or she participates in it. This even has an affinity, as Gadamer notes, with the early Greek idea of the theoros, the witness to sacred festivals (and is source of the later philosophic notion of theoria). “Theoria is a true sharing, not something active, but something passive (pathos), namely being totally involved in and carried away by what one sees” (TM, p. 111; WM, p. 118).15 This also helps to explain why Gadamer characterizes a work of art not as a thing or object but as an event or happening of being. “A work of art belongs so closely to that to which it is related that it enriches its being as if through a new event of being” (TM, p. 130; WM, p. 140).
In order to further clarify the distinctive ontological character of a work of art, Gadamer discusses dramatic and musical performances—what he calls “the reproductive arts.” He introduces a theme here that plays a major role in his understanding of hermeneutics.
It is thus of the nature of dramatic or musical works that their performance at different times and on different occasions is, and must be, different. Now it is important to see that, mutatis mutandis, this is also true of the plastic arts. But in the latter it is not the case either that the work exists an sich and only the effect varies: it is the work of art itself that displays itself under different conditions. The viewer of today not only sees in a different way, but he sees different things. (TM, p. 130; WM, pp. 140–41)
If it is true that “we” are as deeply involved in the ontological event of a work of art as Gadamer suggests, and also true (as Gadamer maintains) that “we” are always changing because of our historicity, then it begins to look as if Gadamer’s understanding of works of art and their interpretation leads straight to relativism. This is the criticism that has most frequently and persistently been brought against Gadamer. I have already indicated that this is to misunderstand what he is doing and saying. (Later we will consider whether Gadamer in fact avoids historical relativism.) But if we are to escape such a blatant relativism, then our task is to comprehend what it means to claim that works of art do not exist an sich but are events involving spectators or interpreters in a manner that avoids relativistic consequences. The problem becomes even more acute when we turn to the written word (which has always been the primary subject of hermeneutics), and specifically to literary works of art, for Gadamer tells us “to be read is an essential part of the literary work of art” (TM, p. 143; WM, p. 153).
Summarizing (and generalizing), Gadamer again raises a series of questions.
As we were able to show that the being of the work of art is play which needs to be perceived by the spectator in order to be completed, so it is universally true of texts that only in the process of understanding is the dead trace of meaning transformed back into living meaning. We must ask whether what was seen to be true of the experience of art is also true of texts as a whole, including those that are not works of art. We saw that the work of art is fully realised only when it is “presented,” and were forced to the conclusion that all literary works of art can achieve completion only when they are read. Is this true also of the understanding of any text? Is the meaning of all texts realised only when they are understood? In other words, does understanding belong to the meaning of a text just as being heard belongs to the meaning of music? (TM, p. 146; WM, p. 156)
This passage also indicates the movement of Gadamer’s own thinking. Although Gadamer begins with a discussion of works of art, he moves to the question of the interpretation of texts, to history, to anything that is “handed down to us” through a living tradition. What is now required is to understand understanding itself and to do this in a manner that permits us to make sense of the claim that understanding belongs to the meaning of a text. Gadamer has already given us a hint about how to approach this question by his comments on the reproductive or performing arts. Consider a musical or a dramatic performance. Here the original score or text needs to be understood and interpreted by those engaged in the performance. In this context we do not have any difficulty in speaking of the original score or text making claims upon the interpreter and in realizing that all interpretation involves highlighting. Furthermore, it makes no sense to speak of the single or the correct interpretation. We recognize that there can be a variety of interpretations, and we can even discriminate distinctive interpretations, such as Schnabel’s interpretations of Beethoven’s sonatas. We can also distinguish between better and worse performances—the brilliant interpretations of a distinguished performer from those of the novice. Here, too, it is quite easy to grasp what is meant by saying that the work of art is fully realized only when it is performed. Of course, a Beethoven sonata consists of the notes written down by Beethoven, but the sonata is also the realization of the written score. We not only recognize that different musicians will perform a work differently but even that on each occasion the performance of a given artist will itself be different. But in this instance, acknowledging the variety of different interpretations does not invite us to speak of relativism or to think that all performances are of equal merit. And we certainly judge better and worse performances, making judgments that are not to be assimilated to the expression of private likings (even though we do acknowledge that there can be conflicting judgments).
Now it may be objected that while this is true when speaking about different performances, the analogy breaks down as soon as we shift to literary texts and start talking about the claims to truth that they make upon us. But we can see where Gadamer is leading us when we realize that in drawing an analogy between interpretation in the reproductive arts and interpretation of texts he is not punning or making some sort of “category mistake.” We are dealing with the same phenomenon: the phenomenon of understanding.
The classical discipline concerned with the art of understanding texts is hermeneutics. If my argument is correct, however, then the real problem of hermeneutics is quite different from its common acceptance. It points in the same direction in which my criticism of the aesthetic consciousness has moved the problem of aesthetics. In fact, hermeneutics would then have to be understood in so comprehensive a sense as to embrace the whole sphere of art and its complex of questions. Every work of art, not only literature, must be understood like any other text that requires understanding, and this kind of understanding has to be acquired. This gives to the hermeneutical consciousness a comprehensive breadth that surpasses even that of the aesthetic consciousness. Aesthetics has to be absorbed into hermeneutics. . . . Conversely, hermeneutics must be so determined as a whole that it does justice to the experience of art. Understanding must be conceived as a part of the process of the coming into being of meaning, in which the significance of all statements—those of art and those of everything else that has been transmitted—is formed and made complete, (italics added, TM, p. 146; WM, p. 157)