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Alt_houg~ in general I shall use the term "human sciences" to refer especially
sofar as this provides a unified model of understanding and truth for the human
sciences as a whole.
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cerned with something beyond accuracy (i.e., with the truth of the
matter which presents itself in history) . In other words, such a notion
of truth fails to take into consideration the relatedness of both the
historical matter and the historian to a common question: the truth
which is revealed in and through historical existence . It is, indeed,
this shared concern which constitutes the inner, if often concealed,
continuity of historical existence.
In order to establish his position, Gadamer must exhibit (a) the
ways in which the "objects" of historical study stand in a relation to
the question of truth, (b) the ways in which the "subjects" who pursue
historical research also stand in a relation to the question of truth, (c)
the unifying bond between these two, and (d) how and why this
relatedness to truth has been forgotten through the modern concern
with methodology. In this sense, Gadamer is following the Heideggerean path of Wilderholung: 4 just as Heidegger attempted to
retrieve the question of Being from the Seinsvergessenheit into which
it had fallen in the history of Western thought since Plato, so
Gadamer attempts to retrieve the question of truth from the human
sciences which have, in their concern for method, lost sight of this
question. In order to do so, he must show that the human sciences
have grounded themselves on an inadequate understanding of both
the being of the historical "object" and the being of the historian as
"knowing subject." Thus, before the positive dimension of the
phenomenon of "truth" can be exhibited, it is necessary to free
understanding from the false, methodologically-based objectivism
which has concealed the question of truth from it. Just as Heidegger
found a destruction of the history of Western ontology necessary in
order to free the question of Being, Gadamer finds a destruction of
the history of the human sciences necessary in order to free the question of truth from the boundaries of methodological accuracy.
At the risk of not doing justice to the inner unity of Gadamer's
position here, I shall, for the purposes of analysis, consider the
"negative" and "positive" dimensions of his task separately, although
these are - at least to some extent - simply two sides of the same
hermeneutical coin.
4 0n the differences between Heidegger and Gadamer on this point, see T.
Kisiel , "Repetition in Gadamer's Hermeneutics," Analecta Husserliana, II (1972),
196-203. On the more general relation between the two, see Hermann Braun,
"Zurn Verhaltnis von Hermeneutik und Ontologie," Hermeneutik und Dialektik,
edited by Rudiger Bubner, Konrad Cramer , and Reiner Wiehl (Tiibingen: J ohr,
1970), Vol. II, 201 -18.
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anticipation of meaning - with, in Heideggerean terms, a foreproject of understanding. Precisely because that which we are approaching is something yet to be understood, we are always ahead of
both ourselves and the object. We can never know in advance
whether this anticipation will be confirmed by the object itself, for if
this were the case, we would have already understood it. It is only in
the process of working out this initial projection of meaning that we
discover whether or not it is justified. Thus the process of working-out
involves putting our preliminary understanding, our prejudices, "on
the line," risking the possibility that they will not be confirmed.
Because understanding is always ahead of itself, because it is
necessarily temporal in character, it must necessarily approach the
objects to be understood with its own prejudices, i.e., with judgments
which are "given before all the elements that determine a situation
have been finally examined. "6
The basic philosophical error committed by those who maintain
the primacy of a particular method in the human sciences is that they
fail to recognize that their method is itself a specific anticipation of
meaning, i.e., a highly formalized foreproject of understanding.
Their method is, in other words, itself a prejudice in that it is a judgment which is given before all the elements that determine a situation
have been finally examined. Insofar as they maintain the primacy of
their method, insofar as they maintain that their particular method is
the measure of truth itself, they raise a particular prejudice to the
level of an absolute measure of truth itself. Moreover, insofar as they
do this, they insulate their own prejudice from any possible
counterclaims which would reveal its inadequacy or falsity by making
that prejudice the measure of truth. It then becomes impossible in
principle to recognize a truth claim which would count against the
method - or prejudice - itself, for the acceptance of that prejudice
is the condition of the possibility of recognizing any truth claims at
all . Finally, insofar as this prejudice is itself rooted in the historical
situation of those who advance it as a method, that historical situation itself is raised to the level of an absolute which is immune to the
truth-claims of earlier history. Thus truth (in its fundamental sense)
disappears from history, and a methodologically-based criterion of
accuracy takes its place: the commitment to the primacy of method
exempts the historian from raising questions about the truth of his
own situation, and this commitment leads him to forget the question
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concept of play for the hermeneutical phenomenon as for the experience of the beautiful. " 14 In this sense, understanding is only possible because of a prior involvement in a language game and a commitment to its rules as the condition of the possibility of understanding at
all. Thus Gadamer concludes the penultimate paragraph of Truth
and Method:
What we encounter in the experience of the beautiful and in
understanding the meaning of tradition has effectively something
about it of the truth of play. In understanding we are drawn into
an event of truth and arrive, as it were , too late , if we want to
know what we ought to believe . 15
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that the "right" move is the one which is productive of further moves,
and Gadamer's own discussion of prejudices suggests a similar point.
Insofar as he speaks of "justified prejudices productive of
knowledge," 33 of "hermeneutical productivity," 34 of a "genuine productivity of process, " 35 Gadamer is suggesting that the claim to truth
is established in the process of working - or playing - out the game.
That which is true is that which is productive. The implication here is
~ha~ ~he definition of what counts as productive is given, not by the
mdlVldual, but by the tradition in which the individual finds himself.
In this sense, tradition decides the quaestio Juris independently of the
individual's will.
Conclusion
If the preceding analysis and criticism of Gadamer's position is
correct , the claim of hermeneutics to truth is, at best, an ambiguous
one. Truth is an event which plays itself out in human history, but it
is one which to a large measure takes place independently of individual action and decision . Yet to the degree that this is the case,
truth becomes something which we cannot determine: it determines
us. The ambiguity, however, of Gadamer's claim is that, if this is the
case, hermeneutics consigns itself to an odd kind of irrelevance. Insofar as understanding and truth have the structure of events which
happen to us, hermeneutically-grounded self-understanding makes
no difference to the playing out of these events. If "history does not
belong to us, but we belong to it," if the "self-awareness of the individual is only a flickering in the closed circuits of historical life, " 36
then hermeneutics leads, at best, to a recognition that hermeneutics
itself makes little difference in the way in which these events are
played out. At the same time, hermeneutics undermines its own claim
to truth, for the fundamental truth which it seems to uncover is that
we - even with a hermeneutically-grounded self-understanding have little control over the way in which the event of truth plays Itself
out in history. If hermeneutics allows the possibility of any control at
all, it is primarily in terms of the degree to which we give ourselves
over to this game; yet to the degree that this is a game which is played
with us rather than by us, even the hermeneutical exhortation to
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