ITTOL - Lecture 3 - Gadamer, Hermeneutics and Effective History
Lecture 3 Assignment: "The Elevation of the Historicality of Understanding to the Status of Hermeneutical Principle" (The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, Third Edition, David H. Richter, Bedford/St. Martin's, Boston, NY, 2007 p721-737)
Hans-Georg Gadamer questions the value of historical objectivism, an attempt to "...recapture the author's attitude of mind..." (729), as a principle of textual interpretation.
When we read, are we trying to understand how an author interprets his subject matter (the "object" of the text, "what is there") or are we trying understand the subject matter itself?
Gadamer is concerned with what the text says about the subject matter and whether or not what is said is true. For him, "...we try to recapture the perspective within which he [the author] has formed his views." (729) but only because "...the goal of all communication and understanding is agreement concerning the object [subject matter, content]." (729).
By tradition Gadamer is referring to "...the constant process of education." (730) which occurs within the community. The text itself takes precedence over the author as "...always the meaning of a text goes beyond its author." (731); it influences the community. That same community influences us and is a source of our pre-judgement. This, according to Gadamer, is the real work of hermeneutics; not to "develop a procedure of understanding" (put yourself in the author's mind, reveal the author's genius) but to "clarify the conditions in which understanding takes place" (731).
We cannot reasonably know how much influence a text has had on the tradition, the prejudices it has inspired (or whether these prejudices are negative or positive), until there is some temporal distance between ourselves and the text. Gadamer describes this distance in terms of horizons.
Imagine yourself standing in a dark room, a spotlight suspended above your head; your horizon is defined by the circle of light that surrounds you. You can't physically move about the room but you can pull a chord hanging from the spotlight, gradually increasing the circle of light it throws. Each pull on the chord takes a specific amount of time and widens your horizon; the combination of time and widening horizon determines the temporal distance between you and the edge of the circle of light; each pull creates a new horizon, such that each new horizon becomes your effective-horizon; until you pull the chord again.
Each time the text you are reading raises a question in your mind you are "pulling the chord" (in Gadamer's words, being "pulled up short") and moving your effective-horizon; your relationship to the text.
When is a text likely to raise a question in your mind? When what it says differs from what you expect based on your education; what you've already learned (your pre-judgements) about the subject matter from the traditional sources. And here we can see why Gadamer claims hermeneutics real concern is to "clarify the conditions in which understanding takes place" rather than to "develop a procedure of understanding". There is no way one can get to the truth of a text, or even reveal all one's prejudices, by relying solely on effective-horizons. Gadamer, himself, concedes these points:
Gadamer's effective-history is the joining of the reader's effective-horizon with that of the text's. Whether the effective-horizon of the text remains stationary, or is seen to move towards the present as the text influences the community, is irrelevant since the reader's effective-horizon is always moving it is as impossible to get to the truth of the text or reveal all the prejudices with effective-history as it is with effective-horizon.
Gadamer's effective-horizon (effective history or effective historical consciousness) does not allow a way out of Heidegger's hermeneutic circle. If you can never arrive at the truth or become fully aware of your prejudices you will be forever trapped within the hermeneutic circle. According to Gadamer, Heidegger claimed that
Hans-Georg Gadamer questions the value of historical objectivism, an attempt to "...recapture the author's attitude of mind..." (729), as a principle of textual interpretation.
When we read, are we trying to understand how an author interprets his subject matter (the "object" of the text, "what is there") or are we trying understand the subject matter itself?
Gadamer is concerned with what the text says about the subject matter and whether or not what is said is true. For him, "...we try to recapture the perspective within which he [the author] has formed his views." (729) but only because "...the goal of all communication and understanding is agreement concerning the object [subject matter, content]." (729).
...understanding means primarily, to understand the content of what is said, and only secondarily to isolate and understand another's meaning as such. (730)Historicism, in the form of the Enlightenment's "historical interpretation", "romanticism" or Schleiermacher's splitting of the hermeneutic circle into objective and subjective aspects; seeks, first, to understand the author (to take his meaning) and, secondly, to understand the subject matter. To understand the author, an attempt is made to objectively put oneself in the author's frame of mind or to discover his genius. Gadamer argues that complete objectivity is not possible as the process by which we ultimately come to understand texts, Heidegger's hermeneutic circle, is essentially prejudicial.
A person who is trying to understand a text is always performing an act of projection. He projects before himself a meaning for the text as a whole as soon as some initial meaning emerges in the text. Again, the latter emerges only because he is reading the text with particular expectations in regard to a certain meaning. (722)Any reader trying to understand a text is constantly projecting meaning based on their own expectations of the text's content; these expectations undergo constant revision as we proceed through the text. Our projections are pre-judgements or prejudices that we bring with us to the text and they, by their very nature, make true objectivity extremely difficult, if not impossible, especially as we are rarely aware of our own prejudices. For Gadamer,
...[the] recognition that all understanding inevitably involves some prejudice [projection] gives the hermeneutical problem its real thrust. (724)It is not the author's meaning or genius we need to unveil but our own "anticipatory ideas". We do this not by trying to put ourselves in the author's mind but by locating both the text, and ourselves, accurately within the tradition from which the text arose. The author, the text and ourselves are part of a larger community that contributes to the tradition surrounding the text's subject matter.
By tradition Gadamer is referring to "...the constant process of education." (730) which occurs within the community. The text itself takes precedence over the author as "...always the meaning of a text goes beyond its author." (731); it influences the community. That same community influences us and is a source of our pre-judgement. This, according to Gadamer, is the real work of hermeneutics; not to "develop a procedure of understanding" (put yourself in the author's mind, reveal the author's genius) but to "clarify the conditions in which understanding takes place" (731).
We cannot reasonably know how much influence a text has had on the tradition, the prejudices it has inspired (or whether these prejudices are negative or positive), until there is some temporal distance between ourselves and the text. Gadamer describes this distance in terms of horizons.
Imagine yourself standing in a dark room, a spotlight suspended above your head; your horizon is defined by the circle of light that surrounds you. You can't physically move about the room but you can pull a chord hanging from the spotlight, gradually increasing the circle of light it throws. Each pull on the chord takes a specific amount of time and widens your horizon; the combination of time and widening horizon determines the temporal distance between you and the edge of the circle of light; each pull creates a new horizon, such that each new horizon becomes your effective-horizon; until you pull the chord again.
Each time the text you are reading raises a question in your mind you are "pulling the chord" (in Gadamer's words, being "pulled up short") and moving your effective-horizon; your relationship to the text.
When is a text likely to raise a question in your mind? When what it says differs from what you expect based on your education; what you've already learned (your pre-judgements) about the subject matter from the traditional sources. And here we can see why Gadamer claims hermeneutics real concern is to "clarify the conditions in which understanding takes place" rather than to "develop a procedure of understanding". There is no way one can get to the truth of a text, or even reveal all one's prejudices, by relying solely on effective-horizons. Gadamer, himself, concedes these points:
But the discovery of the true meaning of a text...is never finished; it is in fact an infinite process. (733)The true meaning is never finished as effective-horizons are infinite; when will there be no more present moments? When the universe ceases to be? He is implicitly saying there is no absolute truth, for any subject matter. When there is no absolute truth there is no end to seeking the truth; another interpretation is always possible.
He [the reader] is not able to separate in advance the productive prejudices that make understanding possible from the prejudices that hinder understanding and lead to misunderstanding. This separation, rather, must take place in the understanding itself, and hence hermeneutics must ask how it happens. (731)We cannot separate, in advance, productive or non-productive prejudices for the same reason we cannot get to the truth: effective-horizons are infinite; a new interpretation always lurks beyond the horizon. Every time we enter a text we create at least one effective-horizon and the possibility of a different, future interpretation. Gadamer's statement that separation "must take place in the understanding itself" is a bit of a cheat and claiming hermeneutics "must ask how it [understanding] happens" deftly side-steps hermeneutics raison d'etre: interpretation.
Gadamer's effective-history is the joining of the reader's effective-horizon with that of the text's. Whether the effective-horizon of the text remains stationary, or is seen to move towards the present as the text influences the community, is irrelevant since the reader's effective-horizon is always moving it is as impossible to get to the truth of the text or reveal all the prejudices with effective-history as it is with effective-horizon.
Gadamer's effective-horizon (effective history or effective historical consciousness) does not allow a way out of Heidegger's hermeneutic circle. If you can never arrive at the truth or become fully aware of your prejudices you will be forever trapped within the hermeneutic circle. According to Gadamer, Heidegger claimed that
In the circle is hidden a positive possibility of the most primordial kind of knowing. (721)The failure of Gadamer's effective-horizon, as his interpretation of Heidegger's "primordial kind of knowing"; however, does not mean there is no escape, but it does raise a question re: Heidegger's description of how we understand. In other words, with the failure of the effective-horizon, is there any other reason to accept Heidegger's description of the process by which we come to understand a text?