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A New Defense of Gadamer's Hermeneutics Author(s): David Weberman Reviewed work(s): Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Jan., 2000), pp. 45-65 Published by: International Phenomenological Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2653427 . Accessed: 21/12/2012 11:07
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Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

Vol. LX, No. 1, January 2000

A New Defense of Gadamer' s Hermeneutics

DAVID WEBERMAN

Georgia State University

This paper re-examines the central thesis of Gadamer's hermeneuticsthat objectivity is not a suitable ideal for understandinga text, historical event, or cultural phenomenon because there exists no one correct interpretation of such phenomena. Because Gadamer fails to make clear the grounds for this claim, this paper considers three possible arguments.The first, predominantin the literatureon Gadamer,is built on the premise that we cannot surpass our historically situated prejudgments.The paper rejects this argumentas insufficient. Similarly, the paper rejects a second argumentconcerning the heuristics of understanding.The paper then articulates a third argument that the object of understandingchanges accordingto the conditions in which it is grasped. The paper appeals to the notion of relational properties to make sense of this claim and to defend the position against two objections: i) that it conflates meaning and significance, and ii) that it is saddled with an indefensiblerelativism.

Gadamer's theory of philosophical hermeneutics amounts to a sustained argumentfor a view that one might call "anti-objectivism"or "interpretive pluralism."' This view holds that in understandinga text, historical event, culturalphenomenon or perhapsanything at all, objectivity is not a suitable ideal because there does not exist any one correct interpretation of the In is phenomenonunderinvestigation.2 Gadamer'swords, "understanding not merely a reproductivebut always a productive activity as well" (G 280; E 296); it is a "fusion of horizons" of the past and present, objective and subjective (G 289; E 306). At the same time, Gadamerwants to steer clear of an "anything-goes"relativism. In other words, in Gadamer's view, understanding is a process that invites and even demands a pluralityof interpretations, but not at the expense of giving up criteria that distinguish right ones from wrong ones.
1

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode: Grundziige einer philosophischen Hermeneutik, 4th ed. (Tiibingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1975, originally 1960). Translated as Truth and Method, 2nd ed., by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Crossroad, 1990). "G" and "E" refer to the German and English editions respectively. I have modified some of the translatedpassages. The sense of "objectivity"at issue here is roughly this: An interpretationis objective to the extent that it is not shapedby the historicalsituatednessof the interpreter.

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Intriguingas this view is, what exactly are Gadamer'sgroundsfor denying the existence of a uniquely correct interpretation a text, object, or event? of And how can pluralismescape relativism?Because I believe that Gadamer's writings are ambiguouson both questions, I begin by looking at the rationale underlying Gadamer's anti-objectivism. Gadamer sometimes suggests that objectivity is not possible because an inquirer'sprejudices or prejudgments (Vorurteile) are ultimately inescapable.I will show that this premise, though perhaps true, is simply too weak to establish Gadamer's conclusion. A second argumentthatprejudgments necessaryfor any access to the historiare cal object also fails to substantiate Gadamer's anti-objectivism. Finally, a third, more promising argumentcenters on the claim that objectivity is not possible because the object of understandingis not determinate,but rather This is an ambitiouspremise, constitutedanew by each act of understanding.3 but one that Gadamerleaves vague and incomplete. My goal in this paper is to provide a fuller justification for the third argument and thereby defend Gadamer'sposition. I do so by reformulatingthis thirdargumentin terms of relationalproperties so as to establishthatthe knower's situatednessplays, as Gadamerhimself insists, a positive, constitutiverole in the process of understanding.A majoradvantageof this account is that it offers an explanationof how pluralism can recognize criteria for determiningcorrect interpretations and thereby avoid a perniciousrelativism. I should mention at the outset that my intention here is not merely to defend Gadamerbut also to support,generally, the anti-objectivist, interpretivepluralist position. For this reason I will sometimes, especially later on, departfrom Gadamer'sown vocabulary and argumentative strategies. I. The unsurpassability of prejudgments

Gadamer'stheoryconcernsthe natureof "understanding" (Verstehen)-a concept central to attempts in German philosophy since Dilthey to expand a narrow conception of knowledge based on the model of giving cause-effect explanations.Borrowingfrom Heidegger,Gadamerarguesthatunderstanding, essentially historical and groundedin human "facticity,"is always a kind of it "self-understanding." Furthermore, is "theprimordialontological character of human life itself' (G 246; E 259f.), not so much a deviation from objective scientific knowledge as its necessary foundation.What defines the act or for event of understanding both Heidegger and Gadameris that it has a forestructure,i.e., that when we understandsomething, we do so in a way that is shaped by a set of priorcommitmentsto a way of life, a linguistic/conceptual scheme and specific expectations about the object of understanding.4 is It
3 4

I When I speak of the "object of understanding," do not mean a physical object, but that is toward which our understanding directed,be it a text, artwork,historicalevent, etc. See Heidegger's three-tiered fore-structureof understanding(Vorhabe, Vorsicht, Vorgriff), in Sein und Zeit, 15th ed. (Ttbingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1979), p. 150. For
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these background commitments that Gadamer has in mind when he talks about tradition,prejudgments(Vorurteile), and the "essential prejudgment(G of ladenness (Vorurteilshaftigkeit) all understanding" 254; E 270).5 What Gadamer means by prejudgments is not so much a set of explicitly held but beliefs that are in place prior to the act of understanding, ratheran often inexplicit set of practicaland theoreticalprecommitments(Voreingenommenheiten), shaped in large part by cultural traditions, that determine how we experiencewhatwe experience. Why is all understanding laden with the prejudgments or historically specific precommitmentsof the knower?The idea here seems to be a simple one. Try as we might to leave behind these precommitments in order to follow the guidelines of reason sub specie aeternitatis, we cannot. Gadamer writes:
[T]he idea of an absolute reason is not a possibility for historicalhumanity.Reason exists for us only in concrete, historical terms-i.e., it is not its own master but always remains dependent on the given circumstancesin which it participates....In fact history does not belong to us; we belong to it.... The individual's self-reflection is only a flickering in the closed circuits of historical life. (G 260f.; E 276)

Gadamer'sclaim here is for the historicityof reason. Avoiding the looseness of the term "reason"we might reformulatehis point in this way: Gadameris insisting on the historicity of all acts of understandingand all knowledgeclaims including both first-orderbeliefs about the world as well as secondorder beliefs about epistemic principles governing what kinds of beliefs are and For acceptableor unacceptable.7 Gadamer,first-order second-orderbeliefs
explication, see Hubert Dreyfus, "Holism and Hermeneutics" in Hermeneutics and Praxis, ed. RobertHollinger (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1985), pp. 22747. rather than "prejudice"-a rectification of the I translate "Vorurteil" as "prejudgment" translation as well as Gadamer's own word-choice since "Vorurteil," like "prejudice" has pejorative connotations at odds with Gadamer's argument. Gadamer's point really concerns "prejudgments" ("Vor-urteile," with hyphen), i.e., practical and theoretical precommitments (Voreingenommnenheiten, see note 6 below), not "prejudices," i.e., types of thinking. judgments involving unfair,one-sided or discriminatory Thus: "-... prejudgments(Vorurteile), in the literal sense of the word, constitute the initial directedness (die vorgdngige Gerichtetheit) of our whole ability to experience. Prejudgments are precommitments(Voreingenommenheiten)of our openness to the world. They are precisely conditions for our experiencing anything-for the fact that what we encounter says something to us." See "Die Universalitit des hermeneutischenProblems" in Hans-GeorgGadamer,Kleine Schriften I (Tubingen:J. C. B Mohr, 1967), pp. 101-12, here p. 106. English translation: "The Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem" in Philosophical Hermeneutics, ed. David E. Linge (Berkeley: University of California, 1976), pp. 3-17, here p. 9. On the relevance of the distinction between first-order and second-order beliefs to Gadamer's position, see Charles Larmore,"Tradition,Objectivity and Hermeneutics"in Hermeneutics and Modern Philosophy, ed. Brice R. Wachterhauser (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), pp. 147-67, here pp. 149-53.

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are historicalbecause of the limitationsof self-reflection.While knowers may be in a position, at least in principle, to examine and reject many of their prejudgments,they can never be in a position to critically examine, let alone reject, all of them. This is so for two reasons. First, as the Americanpragmatists and thinkers such as Neurath have also argued, critical scrutinizing is always a piecemeal affair.We always hold certainbeliefs constantwhile questioning others. Second, and more importantfrom Gadamer'spoint of view, many precommitments are such that we are not able to see them from an independent standpoint.As Gadamersays, traditionoften "has"us, i.e., we belong to it and cannot divorce ourselves from (all of) it at will.8 In short, we cannot have an absolutely objective understanding of an object due to the truthof the following premise: Premise 1: We cannot overcome the historical specificity and parochialityof (all) our epistemic and practicalprecommitments. This premise is one that many philosopherswould regardas true. It does not, however, entail Gadamer'sconclusion that there does not exist any uniquely correct understandingand hence that objectivity is not a suitable ideal for humanunderstanding. This is so for the simple reason that even if objectivity in the form of a total break with historically specific precommitmentsis an impossibility, one might still hold that it is a suitable regulative ideal for understanding,i.e., an ideal that permits not realization,but at least approximation.9It is quite true that the ineliminabilityof serious differences among interpreters' prejudgments may lead to irreconcilable,substantivedifferences about what ought to, in a given case, count as an objective interpretation. But even so, such differences aboutthe actualrealizationof objectivity might well coexist with a consensus about objectivity as an appropriatemetatheoreticalideal. One might recall here that Gadamerholds that his theory aims to describe what we "alwaysalready"do wheneverwe understand, prescribewhat we not ought to do, and hence is not about ideals at all (G 483f.; E 512).1'' Still,
8

Larmore discusses the first reason, but fails to notice the second. See Larmore, "Tradition,Objectivity and Hermeneutics,"pp. 149, 151. Larmore makes this point in "Tradition, Objectivity and Hermeneutics," p. 151: "Although we must recognize that the ideal that at least epistemologically we can completely neutralize the force of traditionby subjecting all of our beliefs to critical examination will not be realized, we do not thereby have reason to discard that ideal as one worth pursuingas far as possible." Gadamer does not consistently abstain from making prescriptions since he puts forth ideals such as the anticipationof truthand completeness. For a convincing argumentthat Gadamer cannot abstain from prescriptionswithout making his own theory irrelevantor incoherent, see Lawrence Hinman, "Quid Facti or Quid Juris? The FundamentalAmbiguity of Gadamer'sUnderstandingof Hermeneutics,"Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 40 (1980): 512-35.
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even if Gadamer'stheorywere regardedas having no prescriptiveforce whatever (which is not very plausible), this fact would still not disarm the criticism. For an objectivist could still maintainthat what we are doing whenever we seek truly to understandsomething is trying to approximate an understandingof the object free of all prejudgmentsand precommitments.Striving for objectivity, one might argue, is a core feature or even a necessary and constitutive condition of any genuine act of understanding.I conclude then that the impossibility of overcoming historical situatedness does not itself entail that objectivity does not or cannot serve as an ideal. It fails to establish Gadamer'santi-objectivism. II. Prejudgments as giving access

Objectivity can continue to serve as a suitable regulative ideal until it can be shown thatprejudgments traditionare not always obstacles to understandand ing, but that they have, as Gadamersays, a "positive"and "constructive" role in the accomplishmentof understanding 251, 255, 267; E 266, 270, 283). (G In what sense or on what groundscould the precommitmentsone has priorto encounteringa given object or phenomenonplay a constructiverole in one's understanding of that object? Gadamer must answer this question if his hermeneuticsis to have any bite against objectivism. While his pathbreaking discussions of tradition, temporal distance and Wirkungsgeschichte are all intended to answer this question by showing the constructiveness of prejudgment, in the end they seem to come down to two basic premises. Here I will present and examine Premise 2 and explain why it is also too weak to support Gadamer's conclusion. The rest of the paper will be devoted to the crucial Premise 3. There is evidence for the second premise at various points in Gadamer's work, most explicitly perhaps,in the following two passages:
of The anticipationof meaning that governs our understanding a text is not an act of subjectivthat binds us to the tradition.(G 277; ity, but proceeds from the commonality (Gerneinsamkeit) E 293) [T]he meaning of "belonging"(Zugehlirigkeit)[to tradition].. is embodied by the commonality of fundamental,enabling prejudgments.Hermeneuticsmust start from the position in which a person who seeks to understand something has a bond to (ist verbunden mit) the subject matter...and has, or comes to acquire, a connection (Anschluss) with the traditionfrom which the text speaks. (G 279; E 295)

The idea is that we can understandonly that with which we can, in some measure, empathize and we can only empathize with that with which we share, to some extent, a common backgroundof meaningfulness (consisting of practices, linguistic structures,concepts, beliefs, values, etc.). This is an

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idea that owes much to Dilthey's concept of Verstehen."1That is, despite Gadamer's criticisms of what he perceives to be Dilthey's methodological dualism (concerning the naturaland the human sciences) and his objectivist goal of reconstructing meaning, Gadamer is very much committed to the Diltheyan view that understanding presupposescommonality.Let us call this the access thesis and formulateit as follows: Premise 2: Our historicallyspecific precommitments a necessary are condition for having access to any understanding an object insofar of as they share with the object a backgroundof meaningfulness that makes the object intelligible in the first place. Without commonality there can be no true understanding. Imagine trying to understanda cultural or historical phenomenon, say, Chinese opera or the actions of Japanese soldiers in World War II, without having any sense of their aesthetic or ethical values. Only to the degree that a knower shares a traor dition with the object of understanding can "identify,"in some sense, with the persons involved, will the knower be able to understandmuch of anything. Understanding requires translatabilityand translatabilityrequires a shared background of meaningfulness (or in Gadamer's language: prejudgmentsand tradition). I want to argue that while premise 2 is true (thoughits exact truthand full implications merit further examination), it is also too weak to establish Gadamer's conclusion. An objectivist could concede that a common backgroundof meaningfulnessmay be necessary for making sense of an object of understanding, especially for grasping all its nuances. But the objectivist could go on to argue that this common backgroundof meaningfulness is a heuristic device that must eventually be isolated and subjected to impartial scrutiny. In other words, the process of understandinghuman phenomena might be thought to have two stages. The first stage consists in sharing (or a insofar as one does not share,in appropriating) set of background(practical, The second stage consists in takconceptual, value-related)precommitments. ing distance or working oneself free from the operativeprecommitmentsand, in general, approximatingthe ideal of an unbiased, objective stance towards those very precommitments.It is the superimpositionof distanced impartiality onto a sharedbackgroundof meaningfulnessthatmakes for a sensitive yet
See, e.g., Wilhelm Dilthey, GesammelteSchriften,vol. 7 (Leipzig/Berlin:Teubner, 1933), p. 191 and p. 230: "Diese Selbigkeit des Geistes...in der Totalitat des Geistes und der Universalgeschichte macht das Zusammenwirkender verschiedenen Leistungen in den Geisteswissenschaften moglich. Das Subjekt des Wissens ist hier eins mit seinem Gegenstand, und dieser ist auf allen Stufen seiner Objektivation derselbe....Die erste Bedingung fur die Moglichkeit der Geschichtswissenschaftliegt darin, dass ich selbst ein geschichtliches Wesen bin, dass der, der die Geschichte erforscht, derselbe ist, der die Geschichte macht."

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balancedunderstanding thatprovidesthe ideal for the one correctinterpreand tation for which inquirersstrive. If this argumentis correct,then Premise 2 is compatible with objectivism and the denial of interpretivepluralism. It also fails to give Gadamerwhat he wants. III. The indeterminacy (underdeterminedness) of the object of understanding Given the limitations of the access thesis, is there some furtherreason for thinking that the inquirer's precommitmentsplay a constitutive role in the act of understanding? Thereis indeed, accordingto Gadamer,because without precommitments there would be no object to understand. This bold and seemidea is suggested by the following passages: ingly counterintuitive
[I]n the human sciences.. .the theme and object of research are first constituted by the motivation of the inquiry. Historical research is thus carried along by the historical movement of life itself and cannot be understoodteleologically in terms of the object of research.Such an "object in itself" clearly does not exist at all. While the object of the naturalsciences can be ideally described as what would be known in a complete (vollendete) knowledge of nature, it is meaningless to speak of a complete knowledge of history, and precisely for this reason we cannot makes sense of talk of an "object in itself' toward which historical research is directed. (G 269: E 284f., emphasis added) Truly historical thinking must take account of its own historicity. Only then will it cease to chase after the phantom of a historical object,...but rather learn to see the object as the counterpartof itself and thus to see both. The true historical object is not an object at all, but the unity of the one and the other. (G 283; E 299, emphasis in original)12 [T]he horizon of the present cannot be formed without the past. There is no more an isolated horizon of the present in itself than there are historical horizons which have to be acquired. Rather, understandingis always the.fusion of these horizonsputatively existing by themselves. (G 289; E 306; emphasis in original, bold type-face added)'3

So, for Gadamer,the object of historical research, whether an event such as the Russian Revolution, a text or an artwork,is a kind of "phantom."By this, of course, he cannot mean that such events or objects are simply illusory. What he must mean is that they do not exist wholly or in themselves apartfrom the inquirer.This view is not a rehearsalof Kantian transcendental idealism. Gadamer's point is that the object does not exist

12

13

See also the reference in Gadamer's earlier "Wahrheitin den Geisteswissenschaften" (1953), Kleine Schriften I, p. 42, to the "phantomof a truthremoved from the standpoint of the knower" ("das Phantom einer vom Standort des Erkennenden abgel~isten Wahrheit"). That the subject's horizon exists in itself only putatively is relatedto Gadamer'sview that understandingis not really an act carriedout by a subject. See G 274; 277; E 290, 293. I will not comment furtheron this claim except to say that the subject's belonging to a tradition does not, as Gadamersometimes implies, obviate all talk of the subject.

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independentlyof the specific, historically situated inquirer.14This yields the indeterminacy underdeterminedness) (or thesis: Premise 3: The object of understandingis indeterminate(or underdetermined);it is constituted in part by the horizon of the specific historically situated knower and changes according to what that horizon is.'5 It should be clear that, if true, premise 3, unlike premises 1 and 2, does in fact entail interpretivepluralismand secure Gadamer'sconclusion since only premise 3 denies that there is one unchangingobject to be understood.But is it true and on what possible grounds? Gadamerdoes not lay out the steps supportingthe claim contained in the as above passages and re-formulated premise 3. But there is a decisive clue in the first passage just quoted when he writes that the object of inquiry in the human or historicalsciences does not, in principle, admit of complete knowledge. We find the reasoning behind this claim for incompleteness in distance." Gadamer'sdiscussionof "temporal
The importantthing is to recognize temporaldistance as a positive and productivecondition. It is not a yawning abyss but is filled with the continuity of custom and tradition,in the light of which everything handed down presents itself to us. Here it is not too much to speak of the genuine productivity of the course of events enabling understanding....Temporal distance obviously means something other than the extinction of our interest in the object. It is what first lets the true meaning of the object fully emerge. The discovery of the true meaning of a text or a work of art is never finished; it is in fact an infinite process.. New sources of understanding are continually emerging that reveal unsuspectedelements of meaning. (G 281f.; E 297f.)16

Gadamer is saying that the object of understanding(at least as concerns human phenomena) is incomplete because it, or its "meaning,"is revealed differently as a result of subsequentevents that brings about different points of view. Before offering some illustrationsof this claim, let me briefly point to a theorist from a different philosophical tradition who makes a similar claim. In Analytical Philosophy of History (1965), Arthur C. Danto writing specifically about the nature of historical knowledge also adopts the
14

15

16

Besides, Gadamer(like Heidegger) repudiatesany Kantian noumenal realm. See G 423; E 447 where Gadamerasserts that although all that we have are specific, historically situated world-views, such world-views do not constitute a "relativization"of the "world" since the "world""is not differentfrom the views in which it presents itself." In both premise 1 and premise 3 all understandingof objects is shaped by the inquirer's horizon. But in premise 1, this fact is due to an epistemic failing (our inability to leave our historical situatednessbehind). In premise 3, it is due to an ontological incompleteness or underdeterminedness the object of understanding. of See also G 355; E 373: "Historicaltraditioncan be understoodonly as something always in the process of being defined by the course of events..-it is the course of events that brings out new aspects of meaning in historical material."
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incompleteness thesis: "Completelyto describe an event is to locate it in all the right stories, and this we cannot do. We cannot do it because we are temporally provincial with regard to the future.""7Danto's reasoning is as follows: Historians ineluctably make use of what Danto calls narrativesentences, i.e., sentences thatdescribeone event by referringto one or more later events, e.g. the sentence "The Thirty Years War began in 1618." Danto correctly infers that because of the indispensability of narrative sentences to historianscan never, even in principle, give a comhistorical understanding, plete descriptionof past events since this would presupposeknowledge of all relevant later events. Danto's position is not quite as strong as Gadamer's. While Danto insists on the incompleteness of any possible description or account of historical objects or events, Gadamer is committed to the incompleteness of the objects and events themselves."8In either case, that later events and later points of view always bring out new aspects of the object of understandingleads both thinkers to the idea of incompleteness. constantly comes Incompleteness exists because the object of understanding to have differentrelationalpropertiesfrom those thatit formerlyhad. Consider, an artworksuch as a Cubist painting by Picasso or Braque, a text such as the American Constitution, or a historical event such as the of Russian Revolution. Ourunderstanding these "objects"is quite differentin virtue of the temporaldistance that separatesus from them. The importance of temporaldistance here consists not in any alleged growth in impartiality, but in the way in which more recent events have broughtout new aspects of or "retrodetermined" earlierphenomena.In the case of cubism, there is, of the course, the subsequentdevelopment of increasingly abstractpainting. In the case of the American Constitution,there is the two-hundredyear history of new issues and cases as well as a continuing traditionof judicial interpretation and precedent relating to the Constitution's original provisions. In the case of the Russian Revolution, there is the occurrenceof Stalinist totalitarianism, eventual economic stagnation and finally the collapse of Soviet Communism. The point is that the Cubist paintings, the Constitution and the Russian Revolution not only appear in a very different light, but have come to have different relational properties as a result. They have become phenomenathat bear certainnew (causal and non-causal)relations to objects and events that came after them. It is in this sense that the object of understanding can never be completely grasped.As Danto expresses it, the object
17

18

ArthurC. Danto, Analytical Philosophy of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), p. 142. This book has been reissued with some new essays as Narration and Knowledge (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985). JurgenHabermaswas the one who first called attention to the partial convergence of Gadamer's hermeneutics and Danto's argument in Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften (Frankfurta. M.: Suhrkamp, 1970), pp. 267-74. Yet see the discussion and extension of Danto's argumentin my paper, "The Nonfixity of the HistoricalPast"in Review of Metaphysicsvol. 50 (June 1997): 749-68.

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can never (until the end of time) be located in all the right stories. In Gadamer's terms, the object itself is "constantly being formed" ("in bestdndiger Bildung begriffen")(G 277; E 293). Now if the object or event grows or changes over time, this means that there is no single, enduring correct or objective understandingof it. But to say that the object always changes over time and is, as a result, never determinate is not to say that everything about the object changes. Some of its propertiesare indeed fixed (see Part VI). For this reason, it might be less misleading to talk about ratherthanfull-blownindeterminacy. underdeterminedness IV. Relational properties as the ground for underdeterminedness As mentioned earlier, there is a certain obscurity surroundingGadamer's incompleteness thesis. I believe that this thesis can be better articulatedand defended if we construe it as the thesis that the object of understandingis constituted, in part, by its relational properties. To this end, I turn now to three tasks. First, I will define the crucial notions of intrinsic and relational properties.Second, I will arguefor the ontological status of relationalproperties. Third, I will explain why relationalpropertiesresult not only from temkinds of distanceas well. poral distance,but from othernontemporal Objects, whether artworks,texts, artifacts or natural-kinds,have properties. So do events. We can divide such propertiesinto two types: intrinsicand extrinsic or relational. Intrinsicpropertiesare those propertiesthat an object or event has "in virtue of the way that thing itself, and nothing else, is," such as shape, size, chemical composition or having red hair. Extrinsic or relational properties are those properties of an object or event that depend wholly or partly on something other than that thing, such as being an uncle, living next door to a judge, being loved by Joe or having a red-haired brother.'9What are the implications of this distinction for Gadamer's antiobjectivism? To begin with, it allows us to formulate more precisely Gadamer'spoint about temporaldistance:A given object or event changes as time passes because it comes to have new relational properties. Hence, temporal distance from past events enables (or obliges) us to recognize in those events what might be called their delayed relationalproperties.It is the existence of these ever-changing,ever-new delayed relationalpropertiesthat provides (partof) the validationfor Gadamer'sclaim for the positive contribution made by the historicalspecificity of the knower. (I say "partof' because, as we will see, temporalor delayed relationalpropertiesare not the only kind of relationalpropertiesthatunderlieGadamer'sincompletenessthesis.)
19

See David Lewis, "Extrinsic Properties," Philosophical Studies 44 (1983): 197-200. Gadamer,of course, does not employ terms such as "relationalproperties."Yet there is a hint of this idea in Gadamer'swritings, e.g., when he writes that "[i]n this in-betweenness (In diesernZwischen) lies the true locus of hermeneutics"(G 279; E 295).

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Now one might well wonder whether relational properties have the constitutive role I ascribe to them. A skeptic might contend that relational propertiesare not ontological propertiesof the object at all, but only epistemological items that merely introduce changes in the ways we describe an ontologically determinateobject. On this view, when a later historical event leads us to see an earlierhistoricalevent differently,it is only our description of the earlier event that changes, not the earlier event itself. In effect, this position denies the ontological reality of relationalproperties.It is mistaken for the following reason. It is true that our descriptions of earlier events change as a result of later events. Yet it is not just our descriptions that change. Relationalpropertiesare not featuresof our descriptivepredilections, but of the events themselves. Consider that our descriptions sometimes change because we have changed and sometimes change because the object's differencebetween have changedand thereis an important relationalproperties these two types of changes. For example, if a person describes the Russian Revolution differentlybecause she has undergonea political conversion, this descriptive change is a result of a change in that person's epistemic or attitudinal makeup and not in the event itself. If, however, a person describes the Russian Revolution differentlybecause the Revolution has come to bear new relations to new events, then it is not the person that has changed but the Revolution, insofar as it now has new relationalproperties(e.g., the property of having led to a 70-year failed alternativeto capitalism). For this reason, relationalpropertiesmust be regardedas ontologically real; though they may lead to new descriptions, they are not merely changes in the epistemic makeupor descriptiveactivities of persons. This brings me to the third question: Are the only relational properties its that account for the incompletenessof the object of understanding delayed be relationalproperties?Or might not the object of understanding incomplete due to non-temporalrelationalpropertiesas well? What I have in mind here are relational propertiesthat derive from the distance between the object of and distinguishednot by its understanding the vantagepoint of the interpreter temporal, but by its cultural specificity. This point certainly goes beyond Danto's specifically temporal argument as well as the main emphasis in Gadamer's presentation of his theory. Yet I think that it is implicit in Gadamer'stheorynonetheless. Truthand Method does indeed focus on the temporalaxis. Thus, its preoccupation with Uberlieferung(traditionor more literally "whatit is handed down to us") and its formative role and with the temporal distance from which we look back upon it. Gadamerhas little to say about the distance or or Why understanding. separationoperativein crosscultural even interpersonal is this so? I would suggest that Gadamer's own interests and especially his cultural backgroundaccounts for this limitation. Gadameris working from within a culturally unified German or Europeanhigh culture (more unified
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when Truth and Method appearedin 1960 than today) and one that is, for better or worse, stronglybackward-looking tradition-oriented. or However, if the object of understandingwere incomplete and multiply interpretable only in virtue of the temporaldistance between interpreter and object, this would mean that at any one point in time, there would be just one correctinterpretation. That is, once temporal differences are factored out, objectivity would still be a suitable regulative ideal. Yet Gadamernowhere suggests anything like this sort of position. His interpretivepluralism does not regardthe fact that we always understand differentlyto be a consequence of temporaldifferences or prejudgmentsof hindsight alone. Not only do substantialtemporal differences always involve culturaldifferences,but the fundamental insight of the "fore-structure understanding" of borrowedby Gadamer from Heidegger,is not limited to or primarilyconcerned with the precommitmentsbased solely on temporal perspectives and the delayed relational properties they reveal. Gadamer'stheory (like Heidegger's) claims legitimacy and a constitutiverole for precommitmentsin general, whether owing to temporal or cultural (and factors. perhapseven biographical) What this means is that the object of understandingis underdetermined because its relationalpropertieschange accordingto the temporaland cultural vantage point of the knower. If it is true that King Lear is a different object for a 20th-centuryreaderthanfor a 17th-century readerbecause of its delayed relational properties, it seems no less true that the same play is a different object for differentreadersat the same historical instantbecause of the different relational propertiesKing Lear has as a result of its relation to different cultural points of view.2"1 The code of honor of a JapaneseSamuraiwarrior, for example, will have different relational properties when understood in relation to a culture with a high sense of honor of its own than in relation to a more utilitarianculture. Or, as one historianhas recently shown, the nature of the American Revolution takes on a very different shape (less egalitarian and, in certain respects, less emancipatory)when brought into relation not with the revolutions of France, China, or Russia, but with revolutions in the Caribbeanand Latin America.2'There may be importanttheoretical differences between temporalor delayed relationalproperties,on the one hand, and relational properties that depend on cultural distance. Paying attention to certain of the object's culturally relational propertiesmay be more optional than paying attention to its delayed relational properties since many of the delayed propertiesare causally related in a way that the culturallyrelational properties are not.22But the importantpoint here is that Gadamer's claim,
20 21 22

None of this, as I argue in PartVI below, entails an anything-goes relativism. See Lester D. Langley, The Americas in the Age of Revolution, 1750-1850 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). There is another importance difference. In crosscultural understanding, tradition or Wirkungsgeschichtewill not play the same role. In backward-lookingunderstanding,the

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that the object of understandingis not complete or in itself but in a state of constantly being formed, should best be understoodin terms of the object's changingrelationalproperties,both temporaland nontemporal. V. Meaning or significance? I come now to an importantobjection to Gadamer's interpretivepluralism and to my reconstruction of that position. In an early, widely discussed response to Gadamer's work, E. D. Hirsch argues that Gadamerfails to pay attention to the difference between a work's meaning and its significance. While the significance of a work does indeed shift, its meaning remains entirely stable.23Or to reformulateHirsch's criticism in terms of my reconstructionof Gadamer,the changing relationalpropertiesof objects of understanding show only that the significance of the object is in flux, not its meaning. Hirsch lays out his basic idea in this manner:
It is not the meaning of the text which changes, but its significance... .This distinction is too often ignored. Meaning is that which is representedby a text; it is what the authormeant by his use of a particularsign sequence; it is what the signs represent.Significance, on the other hand, names a relationship between that meaning and a person, or a conception, or a situation, or indeed anything imaginable.... Significance always implies a relationship, and one constant, unchanging pole of that relationship is what the text means.... Significance always entails a relationshipbetween what is in a man's verbal meaning and what is outside it....24

Hirschgoes on to say thatthe differencebetween meaningand significance and brings with it a difference between two tasks or aims, interpretation criticism: "Significance is the proper object of criticism, not of interpretation, whose exclusive object is verbalmeaning."25 Two features of Hirsch's theory should be noted here. First, unlike Gadamer,Hirsch is concerned not with understandingin general, but only with our understandingof (literary)texts. What Hirsch would say about our
object we are trying to understandis partof the very traditionthat has formed us-hence, however, though the phenomenonof Wirkungsgeschichte.In crossculturalunderstanding, we have been formed by our tradition,the object of understandingbelongs to a different does not come into play. tradition.Thus, the double effect of Wirkungsgeschichte E. D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967). Hirsch regards Gadamer's theory as an instance of what he calls "radical historicism" (pp. 42, 254ff.). pp. Hirsch, Validityin Interpretation, 8, 63. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation,p. 57. As Hirsch notes (p. 210) Philip August Boeckh makes this same distinction in his Enzyklopddie und Methodologie der philologischen Wissenschaften (1877): "[W]e distinguish interpretationand criticism as separate but essential elements... [C]riticism is.. that philological performance through which an object becomes understoodnot by itself nor for its own sake, but for the establishmentof a relation and a reference to something else, so that the recognition of this relation is itself the end in view." In The Hermeneutics Reader, ed. Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (New York: Continuum,1994), pp. 133, 142.

23

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of understanding historicalevents is unclear.Perhaps,he would maintainthat the meaning of a historical event is fixed by its intrinsicproperties,while its significance shifts with its relations to other events. For present purposes, I will assume that this would be a natural extension of Hirsch's objection. Second, Hirsch interprets the stable meaning of a text to consist in the author's intention. It is importantto point out that the stable meaning of a text might be construeddifferently:not in terms of authorialintention, but in terms of the intrinsic propertiesof the text. This is a view that is sometimes called formalism.26So the idea that a text's meaning is stable and separate from its relationalpropertiesmight be defended in at least two ways: either by thinking of the stability of its meaning as fixed by the author's intention or by its formal, intrinsicproperties,whateverexactly these may be. In either case, however, if Hirsch is right about the basic distinction, then Gadamer's anti-objectivist, interpretivepluralism goes down with its conflation of the interpretation of fixed meaning and criticism's interest in shifting significance. Now, how can I defend Gadameragainst Hirsch's point about the difference between meaning and significance, when my reconstruction Gadamer of relies on the distinction between relational properties and something fixed (intrinsic properties or authorial intent) that Hirsch makes the basis of his attack? I will argue that although the distinction between relational and intrinsicis correctand essential to makingsense of Gadamer,Hirsch is wrong to think that the object of understanding-the object that we seek to understand and eventually do understand(when our efforts are successful)-is the object shorn of all its relational properties. In other words, significance or relationalpropertiesare always operativein and constitutiveof our encounter with thatwhich we seek to understand.27 Is or What, then, is the object of understanding interpretation? it, should it or can it ever be strippedof its relationalproperties?Or are these relational propertiesintegralto it? I begin with the case of a (single-authored)text and the two views of the text that see its meaning as fixed non-relationallyby i) the author'sintention(Hirsch's view) and ii) its intrinsicproperties.

26

27

Hirsch refers to this view, which he rejects, as "semantic autonomism."It says that "It does not matterwhat an authormeans-only what his text says." See Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation,p. 10ff. One might answer Hirsch differently by showing that the distinction between meaning and significance collapses in the face of interpreters' epistemic inability to keep the object's relational properties from affecting their understandingof the object's meaning (whether author's intention or intrinsic properties). But this argument fails for the same reason that Premise 1 failed. Although it may be that interpreters'historical situatedness prevents them from working free from significance so as to construe an object's pure meaning, one might still try to approximate,as far as possible, the ideal of meaning free of significance.

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The question of authorialintention has been much discussed. Part of the debate turns on what is meant by intention, whether something like an inner mental event or, as Hirsch regardsit, an item that is objective and shareable (following Husserl's argument about the ideality of meaning in Logical Investigations). Particular difficulties attachto either conception of authorial intention, but both are susceptible to the following criticisms. First, antiindividualisttheories of mind have shown thatthe identificationof something like an intentionwill depend on certainfacts aboutthe environmentalcontext in which that intention is situated. So intentions already involve context. Second, and more important,it seems altogetherodd to think that the meaning and uniqueness of a work is identical with and exhaustedby the author's intention. There are (at least) two reasons for thinking that there is more to the text than what the authorintends.First, as Gadamerwrites,
What expression expresses is not merely what is supposed to be expressed in it-what is meant by it-but primarilywhat is also expressed by the words without its being intended-i.e., what the expression, as it were, "betrays".(G 318; E 335f.)

One need not be a Freudianor Marxistto believe thattherecan be much more in an utteranceor expression than what a person had in mind. Individualsare not always the best judges of their own expressive and verbal behavior. The second reason has to do not with the author's activity, but with the reader's activity and motivation. Why do we try to understandwhat we try to understand? Why do we read Shakespeareor Max Weber? Is it really in order to reconstructtheir psychology, their thought or their will? Or is it not much more a matter of trying to understandthe subject-matterthat they address, i.e., "the Whips and Scornes of Time" (Hamlet) or the influence of religion on social structures?In most cases a wish to reconstructintention remains the When I read and teach Foucault, ancillaryto understanding subject-matter. I am interestedin what he intendedto say (and what the text says) in order to understandbetter the subject-matteraddressed. Gadamer makes this point is repeatedly.He states that understanding always a matterof "coming to an about something"(G 168; E 180; emphasisadded)and that "the understanding hermeneutic task automatically turns into a problematic about the subjectmatter(eine sachliche Fragestellung)" 253; E 269).28 (G
28

Gadamer puts the point in this way (G 280; E 296): "Every age has to understand a transmittedtext in its own way, for the text belongs to the whole traditionin which it takes a subject-matter oriented (sachliche) interest." When Georgia Warnke, in Gadamler: Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987) p. 25, writes that: "Gadamer'scriticism of a historical intentionalismis.. .that we remain historically situated even where we are concerned with an agent's intentions, and our description of those intentions will therefore representno more than one perspective on them," she misses the deeper reasons for Gadamer's rejection of authorial intentionalism: it is not our ineluctable prejudgmentsthat make intentionalismwrong but our abiding interest in the subject-matter ("die verbindlicheAllgemeinheit")(G 281: E 297).

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This point is especially evident in the case of legal texts. Consider the debate concerning the interpretation of the U. S. Constitution. Recent "originalintent"theorists such as formerAttorneyGeneralEdwin Meese and Judge Robert Bork have arguedthat the provisions of the Constitutionmean only what the authorsof the Constitutionintended. On this view, later interpretations of the Constitution and later events in history (though they may stand in obvious relation to the Constitution)should have no bearing on the way we now interpretthe Constitution.Many prominentlegal scholars have criticized this position. For one thing, it is not clear that the framers of the Constitution intended their intention to be the sole determinant of its meaning. For another, it is often impossible to determine what the framers had in mind, either for practicalreasons (they are gone and documentationis lacking) or in principle(where new technologies requireinterpretations never envisioned by the framers).29 My argumentfor the centrality of relational properties presents an argumentagainst "original intent" that is even more crucial: The theory of original intent fails to see that the meaning of a text (especially a legal document) is not a thing apartfrom its relation to things outside of it (and its author's mind). A similar view was once expressed by former Justice William J. Brennan,Jr.:
We current Justices read the Constitution in the only way that we can: as Twentieth-Century Americans. We look to the history of the time of framing and to the intervening history of interpretation.But the ultimate question must be, what do the words of the text mean in our time? For the genius of the Constitutionrests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but in the adaptabilityof its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs. What the constitutional fundamentals meant to the wisdom of 30 other times cannot be their measureto the vision of our time.

While it may be interesting and possible, to some extent, to reconstruct is an author'sintention,the object of understanding not limited to antiquarian interests.The text always exceeds the author'sdesigns.31
29

30

31

See H. Jefferson Powell, "The Original Understandingof Original Intent," pp. 53-115 and Paul Brest, "The Misconceived Quest for the Original Understanding," 227-62 in pp. Interpreting the Constitution: The Debate over Original Intent, ed. Jack N. Rakove (Boston: NortheasternUniversity Press, 1990). See William J. Brennan, Jr. "The Constitution of the United States: Contemporary Ratification" in Interpreting the Constitution, pp. 23-34, here p. 27. For more on this debate, see Cass Sunstein, The Partial Constitution(Cambridge:HarvardUniversity Press, 1993), Chapter4. In a later article, Hirsch comes somewhat closer to the Gadamerianview. In "Meaning and Significance Reinterpreted,"Critical Inquiry 11 (1984), pp. 202-25, he writes that: "If we adhere to the principle that meaning is the aspect of interpretationwhich remains the same, while significance is what changes, we now find that we must take a more generous and capacious view of what remains the same. We cannot limit meaning to what was within an original event.... So the first amendmentI must make in my original explanation of the distinction between meaning and significance is to reject my earlier claim that future applications of meaning, each being different, must belong to the domain of

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Consider now the formalist (or semantic autonomistview) that the meaning and uniqueness of a text consists in its intrinsic properties. Here too similar problems arise. In orderto identify a text's properties(e.g. the meanings of the words and their interrelations)social and linguistic context must be broughtin. Intrinsicpropertiesare never really wholly intrinsicin the first place. Second, our intereststypically concern more thanjust a text's intrinsic properties.Even if it is possible, to some extent, to perform a kind of phenomenological reductionin which we bracketout the ways in which the text bears relationsto things outside itself in orderto focus exclusively on a text's intrinsic properties,to do so is to engage in an activity quite different from the more common and more naturalways in which we understand.What we when we understand meaning usually understand strive to understand) (or the and uniqueness of a text is not the text divorced from but illuminated by its relations to what lies outside of it. Let me turn now from texts to historical events. Here the opponent of Gadamer's view might argue that the historical event consists solely in its intrinsic properties,i.e., the propertiesit has in virtue of its being what it is and not in virtue of the relations it bears to events outside of it (especially, pace Gadamer,events that come after it). But the anti-relationalistposition of seems even weakerhere. Restrictingour understanding events (and actions) to intrinsicpropertieswould make it impossible to refer to events in many of the ways that we typically do. Consider the following examples. We could not understanda shooting as a killing if the victim were to die some time after the shooting because the killing involves a relation between the shooting and anotherevent, the subsequentdeath of the victim. Nor would we be able to understandthe bombing of Pearl Harboras the immediate cause of of U.S. militaryinvolvement in World War II because this understanding the bombing involves relatingit to later events.32 when we understand If my argumentis correct,what we understand (texts, events, etc.) are objects in terms of their intrinsic and relational properties. To stay with Hirsch's vocabulary, the meaning and uniqueness of the phenomenon of interpretationis always (notwithstanding certain specialized efforts at grasping intentions and supposedly formal properties) bound up with its significance. And because relational propertiesvary for the reasons is discussed above, the object of understanding never once and for all determined.
significance. This was wrong, because different applications do not necessarily lie outside the boundaries of meaning. If you think of your beloved in reading Shakespeare's sonnet, while I think of mine, that does not make the meaning of the sonnet different for us, assuming that both understand(as of course we do) that the text's meaning is not limited to any particularexemplificationbut ratherembraces many, many exemplifications." (p. 210) Still Hirsch's concession here is restrictedto the relevance of different applications only insofar as they are in accordancewith the author'sintentions. For a fuller version of this argument,see my "The Nonfixity of the Historical Past."

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VI. Circumventing

pernicious

relativism

Does anti-objectivismor interpretivepluralismentail an anarchicrelativism unable to distinguish right from wrong or better from worse interpretations? is One might think that if the object of understanding unstablethen it can no for validity in interpretation.If so, then perhaps longer serve as a standard everything is up for grabs. Following this line of reasoning, several commentators have concluded that, whether he admits it or not, Gadamer is squarely in the camp of thorough-going relativists.33Yet Gadamer clearly does want to distinguish better from worse and right from wrong interpretaBut tions and thus avoid a perniciousrelativism.34 can he do so or does interpretive pluralismprecludethe availabilityof criteriafor validity in interpretation? Many of Gadamer'santi-relativistcritics assume that pluralismentails pernicious relativism. I will argue that their reasoning on this point is fallacious. On the other hand, certain of Gadamer'sdefenders hold that there is a viable middle position between objectivism and relativism but fail to specify the nature of the criteria for validity available to such a middle position. I will argue that what makes this middle position viable is the constraintsprovided by the fixed intrinsic and shifting, though not arbitrary,relational propertiesof the object at issue. First, let me expose the fallacy in the argument that pluralism entails anarchic relativism. Consider the following passage from E. D. Hirsch as of representative this argument:
If a meaning can change its identity and in fact does, then we have no norm for judging whether we are encountering the real meaning in a changed form or some spurious meaning that is pretending to be the one we seek. Once it is admitted that a meaning can change its characteristics, then there is no way of finding the true Cinderella among all the contenders. There is no dependableglass slipper we can use as a test, since the old slipper will no longer fit the new Cinderella.35

33

34

35

See Larmorepp. 148, 154, where he speaks of the "historicalrelativism that Gadamerin fact embraces" and that "for Gadamerthe only alternativeto objectivism, or the pursuit of objectivity, is relativism."See also Hirsch pp. 42, 249. On a point closely relatedto the worry about relativism, see Habermas'sargumentthat Gadamer'shermeneuticsis bound to traditionin a way that makes critical distance unlikely if not impossible in his essays in a. Hermeneutikand Ideologiekritik,Karl-OttoApel et. al., eds. (Frankfurt M.: Suhrkamp, 1977). For Gadamer'sinsistence on distinguishinglegitimate from illegitimate prejudgmentsand interpretationssee G 252, 279, 282, 336; E 267, 295, 298f., 353. For his rejection of anarchic relativism see "Wahrheit in den Geisteswissenschaften" in Hans-Georg Gadamer,Kleine SchriftenI: Philosophie Hermeneutik(Tfibingen:J.C.B. Mohr, 1967), p. 42: "But what takes the place [of objectivity] is not a vapid relativism. It is not at all random or arbitrarywhat we ourselves are and what we are able to hear from the past." See also G 90; E 95, where Gadamer rejects as an "untenable hermeneutic nihilism" Valery's assertion "Mes vers ont le sens qu'on leur prete." Hirsch, Validityin Interpretation, 46. p.

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Hirsch is right that once we acknowledge that something changes its characteristics, then there is no way to find the true Cinderella,i.e., the one true and unchangingCinderella.But why should we assume that there is an unchanging Cinderella to begin with? Perhaps Cinderella changes, but this hardly means, as Hirsch claims, that we no longer have a means for judging whether we have found Cinderella.The mistake in this argumentis in the following inference: Premise: X (or the meaning of X) changes, i.e., is not the same at different times, places and when presented from different perspectives. Conclusion:Therecan be no standard normfor deciding whethera or given representation interpretation X is corrector not. or of The problem is that the conclusion itself is ambiguous. If the conclusion says there can be no standardfor judging the correctnessof the interpretation of X without specifying the time, place and circumstancesunder which X is presented, then the conclusion follows. However, once we specify the time, place and/orconditions in which X appears,then there is a standardfor judging the correctnessof an interpretation, namely, whetherthe interpretation of X conforms to X presented under the conditions specified. Thus, the sound and loudness of a piano changes accordingto the conditions underwhich the piano is heardbut this, of course, does not mean that once the conditions are specified, there is no standardor norm for judging its sound or loudness. The same goes for texts, historicalevents, etc. for This compatibilityof change and standards correctnessbrings us to the pluralistmiddle position between objectivism and relativism. David Couzens Hoy has described this Gadamerianposition as contextualist. In contrast to is subjectivisticrelativism in which interpretation made valid by the happens stance of an interpreter' preferences,contextualismis the view that
is interpretation dependentupon, or "relativeto" the circumstancesin which it occurs-that is, to its context (particularframeworks or sets of interpretiveconcepts including methods). For contextualism, rationalreflection and dispute do no stop with the interpreter'spersonal preferences. On the contrary, although the choice of the context.. is underdeterminedby the evidence, justifying reasons for the appropriatenessof that context rather than alternative ones can and should be given. ...Gadamer's version of contextualismthus holds that the interpretive understandingis conditioned by preunderstandings (Vorverstdndnisse)arising out of the situation of the interpreter.36

The conclusion that Hoy wants to reach is, I believe, the right one. Yet his account does not make sufficientlyprecisejust what it is that keeps contextu36

David Couzens Hoy, The Critical Circle: Literature, History and Philosophical Hermeneutics (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1982), p. 69f.

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alism from being just a respectabledisguise for subjectivisticrelativism. Is it just the fact thatinterpreters appealto the priorexistence of a background can framework,methodor set of preunderstandings? Why is the choice of these or those frameworks,methods or sets of preunderstandings differentfrom a any personal preference? Is it because one could offer "justifying reasons" for them? But couldn't one offer justifying reasons for one's preferences?In any case, there must be something to the reasons used to justify one's framework or preunderstandings.What is the nature of such reasons? Without further argument,these circumstancesand preunderstandings might well appearevery bit as subjectiveor conventionalas an interpreter's casual preferences.37 This is why we need the idea of relational(and intrinsic) properties.The existence of intrinsic properties ensures that those interpretationsthat get these propertieswrong will be incorrectinterpretations. Though we may be unable to reconstructthese propertiesin a manneruninfluencedby our own historicity, we can at least endeavor to approximatesuch a reconstruction. The fixed intrinsic properties constitute one central source for rational constraintson validity in interpretation.3 Yet, as I have argued,the object of is understanding more thanjust the sum-totalof its fixed intrinsicproperties; to it belong, like its secondary properties, its relational properties as well. And even though they depend on the specific conditions under which an object is presented, they are not at the whim of the interpreter,but intersubjectively verifiable.The fact that the Russian Revolution of 1917 eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet state is a relationalpropertythat is there for all to see, not a matterof subjective preferenceor whim. The same goes for other relationalproperties.Whetherthey obtain (or are known to obtain) is relative to the interpreter'sposition, but not simply up to the interpreter. So, contraryto the views of Hirsch and other objectivists, we should see that historicism need not be anarchic. Although relational properties make for both intrinsic and relationalpropertiesconstrainthe multiple interpretations, possible range of such multiplicityand accountfor the indispensabilityof the ideals of a certain impartiality and fidelity to the act of interpretation, hermeneutically understood.

37

38

This decisionism about the backgroundset of beliefs is the weakness in the interpretive pluralism espoused by Stanley Fish in his famous "Is There a Text in This Class?" in Is Therea Textin This Class? (Cambridge,Massachusetts:HarvardUniversity Press, 1980). The fixity of intrinsic properties explains how Gadamercan maintain that "it is equally possible that an interpretermisses the point entirely." See Hans-Georg Gadamer,"Reply to Stanley Rosen," in The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadarner,Lewis Edwin Hahn, ed. (Chicago: Open Court, 1997), p. 221. It also explains how he can hold that there is something self-same that underliesmultiple interpretations. G 375; E 398 "[T]o understand See a text always means to apply it to ourselves and to know that, even if it must always be understoodin different ways, it is still the same text presentingitself to us in these different ways."

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VII.

Conclusion

I have arguedthatGadamer'santi-objectivistic interpretive pluralismprovides a solid account of the historicityof understanding long as we understand as it to rest on a thesis aboutthe underdeterminedness the object of understandof ing. Interestingly enough, Gadamer's contention that understanding is a "fusion of horizons"and thatthe object is a sort of phantomconverges in certain respects with the view made famous by Wilfrid Sellars that the perceptually Given is a sort of myth. Both hermeneuticistsand followers of Sellars hold that the knower plays an ineluctable and constitutive role in the formation of the object. Both camps also hold that abandoningbelief in the Given or the phantom object does not entail a relativism (or idealism) that denies the existence of an extra-mentalreality.39 this new defense of Gadamer's In hermeneutics, the category of relational properties of the object of understanding both explains the non-fixed nature of the object and its multiple and interpretations helps to underwritethe criteriagoverning the validity and of nonarbitrariness such interpretations.*

39

See John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1994) for someone who explicitly recognizes the convergence of Gadamer's "fusion of horizons"with his own post-Sellarsianway of thinking. For discussion and comments on an earlier draft, I would like to thank Claudia Card, Charles Guignon, Eric Idsvoog, Sabina Knight, Francis Schrag, Marcus Singer and an anonymous referee of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

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