There are two ways of interpreting the concept of historicity as a condition of understanding in the human sciences: the historicity of understanding signifies the conditions and the interests from which any historical research starts, or it signifies the conditions affecting the subject matter of the historical sciences. The first issue concerns the problem of method in the social sciences, while the second is related to the epistemological status of knowledge in the human sciences.

In fact, in modern epistemological theories, attempts to deal with the knowledge of history run into the problem of relativism in different forms. All the questions concerning relativism can be reduced ultimately to an epistemological doctrine concerning the validity of human knowledge. First, the question concerning the possibility of establishing the epistemological principles of human knowledge on an absolute ground is carried into the problem of historical knowledge. Second, to the general problem concerning the nature of historical knowledge, its extension and legitimacy, a solution is sought in terms of a principle of historical knowledge that must be something either within history or outside history. Historicism becomes viable when the validity of historical knowledge is measured against a principle within or without the historical process itself.

The question of relativism emerges as a central problem within philosophical hermeneutics, because of Gadamer’s emphasis on the historicity of understanding. It is either an epistemological principle, as described above, or a principle concerning man’s relation to his world that precedes the question of the ground of human knowledge. Gadamer claims that his theory, by relying on the historicity of human experience and life, can provide a solution to the problem of relativism as it arises when the human sciences deal with the problem of historicism. In critical debates, this aspect of Gadamer’s thesis is often ignored. As a result, Gadamer’s theory has been charged as being relativistic. Critics of philosophical hermeneutics attribute a form of relativism to Gadamer’s theory based on the central role of the notion of historicity. It is argued that because the historicity of understanding constitutes an essential part of Gadamer’s system, philosophical hermeneutics falls into a form of relativism. This chapter investigates the link between the hermeneutic notion of historicity and the problem of relativism.

We examine the problem of relativism as this twofold issue in the context of the thesis of the historicity of understanding. First, we examine Gadamer’s theory as his attempt to offer a resolution to the "aporias of historicism."3 Second, we analyze the theoretical issues underlying the charges of relativism against Gadamer’s hermeneutics.

Gadamer presents philosophical hermeneutics as an attempt to deal with the problem of understanding in the human sciences against the background of the development of the theory of the scientific method and the rise of historicism in the nineteenth century.4 In order to determine the success of Gadamer’s project of overcoming the "aporias of historicism" through a transition from methodological hermeneutics to "historical hermeneutics,"5 we first introduce his arguments against historicism. Then we describe the fundamental concepts of philosophical hermeneutics developed for this purpose. This is followed by an examination of critical issues that Gadamer’s hermeneutics raises, and the objections against them. Gadamer’s hermeneutic theory deals with the problem of relativism in the human sciences as it is treated as the problem of historicism.

Among the important philosophical movements that Gadamer mentions are the dissolution of the dialectical approach to history and its replacement by the historical method. The revival of Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegelian dialectics and Nietzsche’s critique of historicism are the two sources that shape Gadamer’s arguments against historicism and relativism. Yet Gadamer adopts the concept of an ethical continuity of life from Kierkegaard, against the nihilistic conclusions that Nietzsche draws from the fact of historical change. Another difficulty concerns the conceptual framework of philosophical language within which neither relativism-historicism nor the truth of art could be explained. Gadamer specifically mentions the preoccupation, in the early part of this century, with the problem of historical relativism as discussed in the views of Dilthey and Troeltsch.6 Heidegger’s critique of subjectivism and objectivism has paved the way for dealing with the "aporias of historicism."7 Gadamer’s theory relies on this new conceptual framework of phenomenological description.

One of the silent but critical purposes of philosophical hermeneutics is to react against historical relativism and the nihilism of the sort that started with Nietzsche’s critique of the value of historical knowledge for the creativity and the spontaneity of life. Gadamer considers relativism and nihilism to be inevitable and radical conclusions of any historical method that recognizes only the past as historical, while forgetting the historicity of the present. At the foundation of historical consciousness lies the forgetfulness of the historicity of the human being. If history is nothing but the interpretation of the past in its own context without any consideration of its meaning for the present, the radicalization of historical change leads to a historicism that annihilates itself through historical consciousness.8 Nietzsche draws historicism to its natural conclusion, that there are no historical facts but only interpretations we impose on history, that is, only self-interpretations based on history.9

In an early article10 on the subject, Gadamer proposes an historical hermeneutics for combatting the notion that historical knowledge is, like scientific knowledge, free from the historian’s own present concerns. Gadamer claims that the idealist concept of reflective detachment from the object of knowledge and the methodical use of reflection in historical study had divested the past of any meaning for the present.11 Against this divesture of meaning, Gadamer searches for the source of historical continuity that cannot be based on individual consciousness. His critique of historicism concerns the formal historical objectivism that attempts to transcend historical change through the notion that historical research should abstract from present concerns and perspectives in order to attain an objective knowledge of the past. The horizon of the present should not be involved, because of its historicity, yet the methodological ideal of objectivity consists in the belief that the meaning of the past can be objectified in its own horizon for the purpose of historical study. Historicism can only recognize that the past age has its own horizon, and the interpreter supposedly can transpose himself into the past by methodologically suspending his prejudices that are rooted in the present.

Gadamer argues against the notion that one can reflectively suspend one’s own opinions and can transform oneself into another. This would suggest that our relation to the past is arbitrary. What would justify the assertion that transposition into the horizon of the past is not arbitrarily chosen? To overcome this difficulty, historicism must have a universal historical world view. Historical consciousness, as awareness of one’s own historicity as transitory and changing, undercuts the ability to understand another world view. Historical objectivism without a teleological view of historical development conceals its own relativism and nihilism.

Thus, Gadamer’s critique is directed not only against historicism but also against the radicalization of historicism into an historical nihilism that opposes historical reflection antithetically against the spontaneity of the present. Gadamer’s concept of understanding as consisting of a movement or happening (Geschehen)12 between fore-understanding and the anticipation of completeness deals with the antithesis between the present and the past. At this point, we can introduce the concepts that Gadamer develops in order to explicate positively a form of historical hermeneutics that would avoid falling into historical relativism and nihilism.

Gadamer aims at articulating the distinctively historical character of hermeneutic understanding in order to overcome the impasse of historicism and the one-sided concept of scientific method. Historical hermeneutics, he argues, takes cognizance of the continuity of history through the linguistic mediation of tradition. Gadamer elevates the historicity of understanding to the "status of a hermeneutic principle."13 The traditional concept of the hermeneutic circle no longer signifies only the formal relation of the whole and the parts of texts, or the relation of particular historical events to the larger historical context, but rather encompasses the human relation to the contents of tradition and language. The principle of the historicity of understanding explicates this reciprocal relation between understanding and tradition. Let us briefly describe hermeneutic concepts related to the principle of historicity.

These two complexes of concepts are central to philosophical hermeneutics. Understanding replaces the epistemological concept of pure perception and pure experience. The historicity of understanding signifies the knowledge of the known. The hermeneutic relevance of this concept lies in the fact that understanding more suitably accounts for the historical-hermeneutic attempt to close the distance between the object and the subject in the human sciences’ research. Historicity signifies not only the finite and limited nature of human understanding, but also the dependence of its knowledge on conditions previously given. According to Gadamer, as Heidegger has also demonstrated, since the circularity of understanding is derived from the temporality of human existence, the hermeneutic circle does not represent merely an epistemological problem, but rather "possesses an ontologically positive significance."14

Tradition and Prejudices.—Probably the most controversial concepts of philosophical hermeneutics are "tradition," "prejudices" and the recognition of the "authority of tradition"15 over individual’s understanding of the past, all of which describe the conditions of hermeneutic understanding. Gadamer introduces these concepts under the heading of the historicity of understanding as a hermeneutic principle. All these concepts are loaded with negative connotations within the discussions of the scientific method. Gadamer has also a polemical intention in his attempt to rehabilitate them from their negative connotation. Although he is not consistent about the distinction, prejudices may be said to consist of the fore-understanding concerning the subject matter of interpretation and the fore-conception and meaning derived from the language we use concerning the content of understanding.16 Prejudices also refer to the purpose and the interest under whose influence the interpreter conducts his research in the human sciences.17

Gadamer’s concept of tradition is another source of the confusion in hermeneutic debates. Tradition has a vagueness in that it signifies both the tradition of research in a particular field as well as the concrete contents of a historically transmitted living tradition.18 Tradition represents both the lucid concretization and the fulfillment of historical process at a particular period.19 In the concept of tradition, Gadamer also incorporates the distinction between historical sources as the subject matter of historical study and remnants of the past as the materials of historical inquiry in the present.20 Tradition in this sense encompasses the relation and the continuity of the past in the present. The human relation to tradition cannot be taken to be a form of blind obedience and, hence, always to be suspect; it might be based on the acceptance of an authority whose legitimacy depends on acknowledgement and knowledge.21 

Effective History and Fusion of Historical Horizons.—Gadamer proposes the hermeneutic principle of the historically effected consciousness as a corrective to the form of historical consciousness that has led to historicism and positivism in historical studies. The concept of horizon fusion designates the awareness of the mutual relation between understanding texts, history and the conditionedness and limits of this understanding.22 The fusion of horizons describes the constitution of historical continuity in the process of understanding texts from the past and the merging of the present and the past in a wider horizon encompassing both. Finitude and the historicity of understanding prevents us from transcending the whole that is formed in every renewed attempt to understand the contents of texts.23 This concept also signifies the difference between romantic hermeneutics as a re-constructive method and philosophical hermeneutics dealing with the integration of the past and present in hermeneutic experience.24

Philosophical hermeneutics, as a theory of understanding, distances itself from the methodological concerns of textual interpretation, as well as from the research methods of particular human sciences. However, Gadamer often chooses his examples from interpretations of a text and raises a critique that the pre-occupation with the problem of method in the human sciences has created a situation that has constricted the human relevance of their results.25

Furthermore, Gadamer does not hesitate to specify certain internal criteria of correctness for the interpretation of texts, such as the appropriateness of understanding to the subject matter.26 He suggests that temporal, linguistic and structural distances must also be considered as the criterion of objectivity for the interpretation of a text or an artwork.27 Thus, hermeneutic understanding is not to be conceived as construing a self-identical meaning of the text or artwork, but rather as a continuous dialogue. Dialogue as the model of hermeneutic understanding confirms the mediation of meaning. His concept of experience as an open process paves the way for the notion that a meaning cannot be determined by an approach from the perspective of propositional logic, but rather through the logic of question and answer. By finding out what is the question to which the text serves as an answer, we also question ourselves in face of the truth claim of the text. The testing of pre-understanding and pre-judgment that conditions understanding takes place in this confrontation.28

Gadamer’s critical approach to hermeneutics as a theory of interpretation and method of historical science is intended to offer a solution to problems of historicism in the human sciences. The details of this subject are treated in the second chapter of the present work. Gadamer tries to support his arguments with a critique of epistemological assumptions concerning scientific experience and methodological control of the process of understanding in the humanities. His arguments against the univocal application of scientific method and the limitations of the concept of scientific experience address the central issues in the debates on philosophical hermeneutics. We present Gadamer’s theory concerning the ontological grounds of hermeneutic experience in Chapter Three of this study. For now we return to Gadamer’s critical approach to scientific method and experience.

Gadamer not only criticizes the application of the criteria of objectivity and certainty characteristic of the scientific method to interpretation, he also describes the experience of the human sciences as extrascientific. He is extremely ambivalent on the question of the objectivity of understanding in the human sciences. On the one hand, he insists that the method and the ideal of objectivity are only relevant for determining the formal structure and conditions of the texts and historical sources.29 On the other hand, he insists that the experience of truth in the human sciences transcends the methodological limits of sciences. Gadamer seeks the mediative nature of understanding in the basic structures of experience itself. Gadamer argues for the openness of experience. The nature of experience cannot be explained as a theoretical fixation upon its objects.

In the first two parts of Truth and Method, Gadamer presents the hermeneutic problem through a critique of aesthetic and historical consciousness. Theories about aesthetics and historical knowledge approach artworks and the meaning of history in terms of the doctrines of the historical alienation and the artistic genius of the individuals who have created the artwork and those who interpret it in the present. From a critique of the romantic and idealist conception of aesthetic and historical understanding, Gadamer draws the conclusion that the concept of language as the "universal medium" of historical mediation must replace idealist and empirical approaches.30

Thus, on the basis of a critical examination of the problem of historical understanding, Gadamer develops his thesis that the historicity and linguistic character of understanding are ontological structures of our experience of the world. Hermeneutic philosophy raises two objections concerning the relevance of the natural scientific ideal of objectivity and methodological criteria to the human sciences. Understanding in the human sciences is accomplished not from a free and distanced position, but rises from immediate life concerns, prejudices and tradition that shape both the interpreting subject and the object of the research.31 Moreover, it is not only the case that interpretation is guided by fore-understanding. Also the objectivity of the result cannot be measured by the yardstick of method according to the model of the natural sciences.32

However, under the ideal of objectivity belonging to the scientific method, the interpreter is required to abandon all prejudices. Application of the ideal of objectivity to the human sciences, Gadamer argues, covers up the true nature of the subject matter of the human sciences which is the realm of human life.33

Gadamer recognizes that historical understanding takes place only from the present perspective, and he denies the possibility of access to history and historical texts through a complete suspension of the prejudices and the concerns in the present. Secondly, he denies that textual meaning is self-contained, whether in the sense of the meaning intended by the author, or in the sense that this meaning is a part of historical circumstances. He accepts that the question of the genesis of meaning is relevant when the understanding of a text fails, and only then do we appeal to the genetic circumstances to supplement our understanding.34 

The interpreting subject belongs to the historical and cultural tradition he is dealing with, because every historical research originates out of questions and concerns of the present.35 Interpretation does not require one to abandon one’s own horizon, but involves an integration of the horizon of the past with one’s present horizon, because the historical text is not received in isolation but within the continuity of the history of its application, i.e. the effective history of the text. Gadamer attacks various theories concerning the meaning of texts.36 The first theory he attacks is the psychological method which is based on the assumption that the object of interpretation is the meaning intended by the author.37 The second theory he attacks is that of historical method based on the doctrine that the meaning of the text can be determined by re-construction of the historical conditions in which the text originates.38 Third, he attacks structuralism as the view that the meaning of a text is represented by the structural unity of the text. The former two methods require the interpreter to follow a reverse procedure of reconstructing an author’s intentional or mental process--psychologism; or the reconstruction of the meaning as it could have arisen in the immediate historical circumstances in which the text came into existence as a response by its author to his own historical situation, while also requiring the reconstruction of the reception of text by its original reader--historicism. Hermeneutics, in the sense of understanding in the human sciences, is itself determined not only by the temporal historical distance of the objects of study but also by the historical situation of interpretation. In other words, the task of historical hermeneutics is twofold. The concern is to understand not only the meaning of an object from a historical distance, but also the historical transmission of this understanding, i.e., how it will be received in the future.39 

Hermeneutics deals with the interpretation of texts as well as the inquiry into the interpretive nature of human self-understanding as a mode of being. The practice of textual interpretation furnishes an exemplary case for revealing the ontological structure of understanding. In this sense, inquiry into the historicity of understanding is distinguished from an historical study which attempts to understand the empirical course of history.

According to Gadamer, the human relation to history cannot be explicated on the basis of a subject-object distinction, because historicity as the ground of this distinction precedes our cognitive relation to history. Nor can this relation be established on the basis of temporal succession, or causal relation. Understanding is as much conditioned by history as the reality of history is conditioned by our understanding of it. History is an evolving process that is constituted by the human interpretations and understandings of it. The understanding of history is mediated by the inherited tradition in which the interpreter lives.

When Gadamer speaks of tradition, he does not appeal to the truism that every human being belongs to a tradition. Rather, he means that the contents of tradition are not something objectified within a single consciousness, but are constantly expanding through language and, therefore, involve a community. Historical continuity and the meaning that encompasses this continuity are not experienced by a single individual consciousness, but have a social significance. Philosophical hermeneutics seeks to discover how the meaning intended by an individual author or the meaning understood by an interpreter acquire historical significance.

According to Gadamer, the hermeneutic experience is universal, and it reflects the universality of the "activity of the thing itself; the coming into language of meaning points to a universal ontological structure, namely to the basic nature of everything towards which understanding can be directed."40 However, this thesis of the universality of hermeneutics, based on the assertion that understanding depends on the universality of the relation between language and reality, is taken in the sense that philosophical hermeneutics should be applicable to all areas of knowledge. On the question of the application of the principles of Gadamer’s theory, philosophical hermeneutics seems to face constraints mentioned by critics.

Critics have demanded that if the universality of hermeneutics is accepted, it must be proven to be applicable to all fields of knowledge. This brings us to another major issue: does philosophical hermeneutics concern the conditions of understanding limited to the humanities alone, or does it apply also to knowledge of the natural sciences? Even if it is granted that the modes of knowledge operative in the human sciences and the natural sciences are different, critics assert that the specific nature of knowledge and the experience of truth in the human sciences must be ascertained. Critics argue that if a different form of objectivity and a different concept of truth follow from the historicity principle, it still must be compatible with the notion of objectivity.

Gadamer accepts either a dualistic position, in which the hermeneutic problems remain different on the epistemological or methodological level from those on the ontological level which philosophical hermeneutics deals with, or a position according to which philosophical hermeneutics represents a later stage and, because it is at a higher level of reflection, it overcomes the earlier stage.41 There is evidence in Gadamer’s text supporting both views. He acknowledges the legitimacy of objectivity for scientific research, but he also criticizes methodologism in the human sciences. As Gadamer states: "I have endeavored to mediate between philosophy and the sciences. . . . That, of course, necessitated transcending the restricted horizon of scientific theory and its methodology. But can it be held against a philosophical approach that it does not consider scientific research as an end in itself but, rather, thematizes the conditions and limits of science within the whole of human life?"42

The main point of contention concerns the question whether, from the description of the ontological status of human knowledge, an epistemological rule can be drawn. Gadamer refuses to limit the scope of hermeneutics to an inquiry into the "methodology of the human sciences."43 He considers hermeneutics to be a study of "the phenomenon of understanding and of correct interpretation of what has been understood."44 Ambiguity in Gadamer’s position on the relation between method and understanding in the humanities has led to critical debates on the principle of the historicity of understanding in the context of the hermeneutic theory expounded in Truth and Method.

Based on the assumption that Gadamer does not offer any criteria for objectivity and the validity of an interpretation, Gadamer’s theory falls into a subjectivist and historicist relativism according to some critics. Gadamer’s theory encounters the problem of relativism when seen as lacking norms for objectivity, as well as from the perspective of the historical conditioning of hermeneutic theory itself. The charges that philosophical hermeneutics falls into a subjectivist form of relativism originate from the fact that Gadamer expands the formal concept of the hermeneutic circle to include the human relation to the historical and natural world. In his critics’ views, this is not justified. According to critics, the historicity thesis represents human conditionedness by tradition, culture, history, language, social institutions, the value system of a community and so forth. By bringing tradition and prejudice into his discussion, Gadamer supposedly gives priority to tradition and the past.

Gadamer’s theory is criticized also from the point of view that history is the medium in which all cognitive and practical activity of mankind takes place, as well as the standard to evaluate and judge all knowledge claims. Such a view of history imputes a certain form of relativism to Gadamer’s theory, if relativism itself is understood as the lack of an a-temporal criterion of validity and truth in the sense that all validity claims are conditioned in the historical process of life.

According to many critics, such as Betti, Hirsch, Habermas, Apel,45 by emphasizing the principle of the historicity of understanding, Gadamer undermines the traditional concept of objectivity, that is, the possibility of establishing norms of valid textual interpretation. For some critics, the denial of the objectivity of textual interpretation amounts to the denial of objectivity as such. Those who read Gadamer’s hermeneutics as a strong version of opposition to objectivity accuse Gadamer of deriving from a viable thesis of historicity unacceptable relativist and historicist conclusions.46 It is also argued that by extending his critique of the ideal of objectivity in the human sciences to a broader argument against objectivity in general, Gadamer falls into an historical relativism.47

These critics consider that these two claims concerning the historicity of understanding and the universality of the hermeneutic experience are incompatible and have argued that Gadamer’s hermeneutic theory fails to offer a criterion for the objectivity and validity of interpretation in the human sciences. The debates between Gadamer and his critics, which are examined in Chapter Four of this study, are entangled in three stalemates that have defined the nature and the scope of contemporary hermeneutics. At the center of these debates is the thesis of the historicity of understanding. The first argument is that the historicity of understanding signifies that we cannot have an objective knowledge of history because we have no access to a given past in order to be able to judge it against the criteria available in the present. This argument is characteristic of the historicist thesis. Gadamer argues against this view by pointing out that the historicity of understanding is itself constitutive of the continuity and the relation between the present and the past. Many commentators attribute the same historicist thesis to Gadamer’s hermeneutics, and argue that his view of the historicity of understanding would prevent us from gaining a genuine access to the past. According this view, we cannot have access to the past because understanding of the past arises out of the prejudices belonging to the present historical situation.

Historical relativism entails the notion that no historical study can enable us to grasp the meaning of the past. Our understanding of history is always relative to conditions under which past events took place, and the meaning of these events are understood only with reference to a certain historical process which is constantly changing. Although the fact that every historical work is limited by social and individual psychological conditions is uncontestable, historical relativists claim that the meaning of a historical work, its validity, can only be understood by referring its content to historical conditions. Thus, the relativist maintains that in order to understand history we must understand a text by inquiring into what is said only in the light of why it is said in a certain manner. This problem is known as the question of the genesis and the value of historical meaning. By giving primacy to the genetic question historical relativism commits itself to what is called "the genetic fallacy"

The second argument concerns the issue of whether the principle of historicity refers to the status of the historians’ and interpreters’ own interest in the choice of the historical material. As Maurice Mandelbaum states: "the fountainhead of relativism is to be found in interpretations placed upon the indisputable fact that the historian selects and synthesizes his material."48 If the current interest in the historical object is taken to be one of many perspectives on the same object then it would seem that the interpreter is led by this interest and the historical situation under which he conducts his study to understand the object according to one perspective rather than another. Differences and conflicting interpretations arise because of the differences in respective standpoints, and the possibility of arbitration between valid and invalid interpretations cannot be decided without a criterion of appropriateness.

The third issue in the critical debates concerns the determination of human subjects by the historical process itself. It is argued that the object of historical study is the interaction and the structures of a basic process of historical change. The historicism involved in hermeneutic theory, according to critics’ arguments, is related to the principle of historicity signifying only separate elements of change within the structure of the total developmental process of history. Instead of accepting a changing element as a principle of understanding, they argue, Gadamer should postulate an intersubjective, historical, yet normative ideal according to which historical knowledge can be judged. It is necessary, they insist, to make a distinction between historical, changing elements and the elements for which change must be directed.

The distinction made by Dilthey between cultural and social systems as being two forms of historical effects on the individual can also be found in Gadamer’s account of the consciousness of historical effects. While participation in the cultural systems which consist of art, history, etc., is free, social systems demand and insert a necessary and forceful participation. In the first part of Gadamer’s work, we find an analysis of forms of participation that are free in historical life.49 Gadamer shows, in his analysis of the humanist concept of Bildung as the culturation of a person that enables him to rise from individuality to the universality of the objective spirit of cultural community, that Bildung reflects this free, yet self-regulative participation in the inter-subjective domain of social life.

This distinction between free and compulsory domains of cultural life seems to collapse because of the ambiguity of Gadamer’s argument concerning prejudice and authority as the possible sources of understanding in the human sciences. If Gadamer maintains that participation in tradition in the form of art and history is free and considers that the authority of tradition over the individual results from freely accepted choice, there is no contradiction involved here. But Gadamer also speaks of tradition in the sense of institutions, social structures and customs50 which are considered in romantic hermeneutics, especially in Dilthey’s writings, as social, compulsory systems.

For those who hold that Gadamer confuses the distinction between free and compulsory participation in cultural life, Gadamer becomes susceptible to charges of subjectivism and traditionalism. Among these, many argue that philosophical hermeneutics reinforces the actual state of relativism relevant in social discourse by an appeal to an ideal ethical community.51

Therefore, all critics impute a lack of norms for the validity and the critique of interpretations and the adjudication between conflicting interpretations. They challenge Gadamer on the issue of the roles of prejudices, tradition and authority in understanding. Also for some critics, hermeneutics’ claim to universality cannot be sustained in the face of the distortion and domination inherent in historical practices as transmitted through language. In the absence of critical norms, Gadamer’s hermeneutics submits to tradition and its authority for justification of the validity of understanding in the present.

According to Habermas, in order to escape historicism, Gadamer’s theory must project one or the other, either a universal history or a an ideal language.52 If he fails to do so, he falls into either an historical relativism or relativist idealism, respectively. Apel, on the other hand, argues that Gadamer’s theory confounds the conditions of the possibility of hermeneutic understanding with the conditions of the validity of understanding. The pre-reflective or pre-scientific life-world can be described as the ground of intersubjective understanding, but normative conditions of validity should be posited as a rational ideal of the counter-factual existence of a free community of interpreters. For Apel, then, historical life cannot serve as the condition of the validity of understanding; therefore philosophical hermeneutics falls into an existential-historicist relativism.

The problem of relativism becomes central to these debates because of conflicting views on the meaning and the nature of historical process. Critics arguments remain within the epistemological context of the problem of historical knowledge which we have mentioned at the start of this chapter. Any epistemological account of historical knowledge that is based on a principle within history raises a problem concerning the objectivity of this knowledge. If Gadamer’s principle of historicity itself belongs to an historical category, critics argue it abolishes the objectivity of all knowledge. In this approach, critics adhere to an epistemological view of history. By setting the problem in epistemological terms, critics require that either reason or the methods of inquiry remain outside of history and preserve their impunity through the changing effects of history. In this view, then, the object is recognized as being in history, and the absolute inseparability of the object from its historical circumstances is also recognized, while the subject is required to acquire an objective attitude against it lest the object be severed from its historical surrounding. The issue of relativism associated with the historicism emerges from this position.

Gadamer does not take history and the historicity of human understanding as negative, but rather he recognizes history as a category of human knowledge. Also the historicity of understanding belongs to the ontological—or in epistemological terms to the a priori—structure of "understanding as." The human relation to history is not a formal relation. Human understanding is neither in history nor above and beyond history, but moves along with it. The concept of history must be understood here in its peculiar sense. History is not a domain independent of human involvement. In other words, to think of history and human beings separately is possible only on the level of abstraction and theoretical reflection. But, whether it is seen from an ontological or from an epistemological vantage point, history cannot be separated from the being of humanity. This must be elaborated further, because it is crucial to the issues that critics have raised against Gadamer.

The approach to history as only an epistemological category needs a vantage point from which the historical elements effecting the object of historical sciences can be distinguished from the historical elements effecting the interpreter such that the object can be represented independently of history.

The source of the disagreement among the participants of debates on hermeneutics must be sought somewhere else: in the differing concepts of what constitutes the proper object of historical studies. According to one account, the task of historical science is to discover the universal laws of the development of history. It is claimed that although they are different from natural laws, there are, nonetheless, historical laws that can be discovered in the chronological order of historical development, and these laws may be confirmed in their repetition by events reported in historical sources or by the present events that can corroborate them. The uniformities observed in social life can be explained by these laws.

Against this positive account of history as constituted by the observable sequence of events, the other approach to history takes the concept of the historical object as a particular and unique event. But, again, since no science can be built on the study of particulars, the universality of historical studies must be based on the those elements that make these events historical objects. According to this view of history, the object of historical studies is composed of the intention, the motivations and the will of the individuals who make history. Therefore, psychology becomes the most relevant part of the method of historical understanding. But if the concern of historical study is reduced only to those individuals, history would be limited only to stories and there could not be a science of history.

We can observe that the former view approximately describes the position of the critical theorists, while the latter describes the position of the proponents of methodological hermeneutics. Gadamer’s critique of the middle position represented by Collingwood may apply to both views. Collingwood describes the objectivity of historical understanding in terms of a "re-enactment of the past thought in the historian’s own mind."53 The question that Collingwood’s position raises is how the transition from the narrow psychology of individuals to the historical significance of these individuals can be made. Gadamer not only sees the problem that such a transition from individual acts to their historical significance implies, but he sees also the problem of how our understanding of the individual’s intentions and thought processes would enable us to have a hermeneutics of history.54 Collingwood surpasses the weakness of historical positivism, but fails to account for the hermeneutic mediation of understanding the thought of the historical agent and its historical significance.

If the question of historical knowledge is formulated in terms of the subjectivity of the author or the agent in history and the subjectivity of the interpreter, a psychological and sociological reconstruction of the original conditions of the text and its reception by different interpreters is presupposed. Critics impute to philosophical hermeneutics an epistemological concept of history and argue that objectivity, for Gadamer, depends on the ability to understand not only what the effective history consists of, but also the historical condition of opposite interpretations and the ability to compare these interpretations with one’s own. This objection is raised from the point of view that each individual has his or her perspectives on a particular subject matter.

If each perspective truly binds individuals, it seems impossible that one can understand and compare the perspective of someone else. In other words, Gadamer’s view of objectivity is built on the basis of a phenomenological concept of perspective according to which objects present themselves according to one’s own perspective. Contrary to the phenomenological concept of perspective, the historical perspective is a formal concept signifying either a subjective perspective or an historical world view.

Gadamer’s view of the objectivity of historical understanding is built on the notion that historical objects present themselves according to their own perspective. Our subjective perspective should be replaced with the perspective in which the object presents itself.55 The objectivity of historical understanding can be determined by establishing the relations of historical judgements to their valuational basis that will include a general perspective conforming to the subject matter. But the totality of perspectives of the subject matter is not given to an individual consciousness. This view might be supported by Gadamer’s conception of the "fusion of horizons."56 At first sight, the concept of the fusion of horizons signifies something similar to the concept of synthetic judgement that follows the rule that the last view of an object will always be the best. However, this cannot approach a closure of further possibilities. Gadamer refuses to admit that historical knowledge requires a notion of a world history or that a teleological account of history is necessary to understand the meaning and the truth of historical phenomena. Even if we presuppose such an end to history, it is impossible to know it because of the finitude and historicity of our knowledge, for before we may predict the end of an historical process, we must know its goal and such knowledge of the whole in its true nature is impossible for finite beings.

Although Gadamer accepts the view that the horizons of the past and the present constitute a continuous whole, we cannot say they are co-extensive and co-determinate. The evidence for this lies in his argument that historically effected consciousness can reflectively rise above the effects of history, but not above the object in its otherness.57 The objections against the relativism implied in hermeneutic theory depends on an assumption that consists in identifying the knowledge concerning an historical object with all the characteristics of that object. In fact, Hirsch raises this objection against Gadamer.58 But the identification of the knowledge of the object with all that can be known of the object is fundamentally out of line with the general nature of experience described by Gadamer as essentially negative. If one claims to know an object, this does not necessarily mean that one comprehends the nature of that object in its totality. In our cognitive relations with an object, there is an awareness that the object transcends that which we know concerning it. Gadamer calls this transcendence the otherness of the subject matter.59 Even if we apprehend successively various characteristics of the object, we are always aware that they do not exhaust all that can be said about the object, yet we still believe that we have obtained some knowledge of the object. The fact that the object might have many other characteristics we may not now or ever know, does not change the satisfaction of having some insight into the object through the knowledge already gained from it.60 

Gadamer adapts the historical method to his conception of the textual content to be determined according to a logic of question and answer. But he denies that in order to determine the meaning, we would have to reconstruct the text’s historical circumstances which are already given in the continuity of history. What is given in this continuity also includes the history of the reception of the text, which is also changing. Gadamer considers the textual meaning to be preserved in the continual self-presentation of its subject matter, the Sache of the text.61 Gadamer does not deny the internal criteria of interpretation in terms of the correctness of an interpretation and its appropriateness to the subject matter of a text. However, he wants to allow that any text must remain open to different appropriations. It is for this reason, according to many critics, that Gadamer’s hermeneutics falls short of providing a definite criterion for the validity and correctness of interpretation.

Gadamer contrasts "historical consciousness" with his own concept of a "historically effected consciousness."62 For Gadamer, historicism and relativism are a consequence of the exaggeration of change at the expense of the stability in life. The historical consciousness and historical world view (historischen Weltansicht)63 signify this attitude.

These two approaches to history are contrasted with the hermeneutic conception of history. Gadamer recognizes that historical consciousness belongs to the rationalistic view of history. According to a rationalist approach to history, the understanding of historical phenomena and their value are to be obtained by an analysis of the contribution they made within the process of development. We call this view the developmental notion of history. In order to assess the radical aspects of such a thesis, one must compare this to what is called the historical world view, or the historical sense which involves being on guard against the prejudices and conditions of historical research in the present while one is investigating the past. In other words, we must be careful not to assume that the conditions under which the historical phenomenon occurred are the same conditions which obtain in the present. To make a value judgement concerning any historical phenomenon, one should take its own historical context into account. In addition, it implies that one should avoid applying to past phenomena standards and values characteristic of the present.

Although these two positions are not identical, they share the same fundamental thesis that any historical phenomenon should be viewed in a particular context, whether the context characterizes a certain phase of the development of an idea, a culture or an historical period. But these positions differ on a fundamental point concerning the meaning and value of an individual, particular historical event. Historical consciousness suggests that the meaning of a particular event can be understood only on the basis of the contribution it has made to the progress of historical development, whereas the historical world view seeks to preserve the uniqueness of an individual and particular historical phenomenon.

Historicism is said to be the thesis that rejects the view that historical events have a unique and particular character apart from the role they play within a certain pattern of development. From this, what is essential to historicism is the notion that every understanding of historical events involves grasping them as part of an historical progress.

In this sense, we can speak of historicism in the broader sense of its own historical world view. The most characteristic notion of historicism is the idea of progress or evolution. Whatever is intended by progress, development or evolution in historicism, a certain sense of an historical change in the spiritual or intellectual outlook of social life is involved in understanding the nature of historical phenomena.

Thus, in the broader sense of the term, an historical sense or historical consciousness denotes the recognition of change as the fundamental aspect of historical phenomena. However, what distinguishes historicism is, as Karl Mannheim puts it, the attempt to derive an "ordering principle" from this change itself, to capture a structural unity within the pervasive phenomena of change.64 The Enlightenment view of history, or any other rationalist approach, pursues such a principle in terms of an analysis of the leading motif of a cultural, intellectual life which is traced back to its earlier forms in the past. This approach includes, for instance, even Romanticism’s model of historical investigation as an attempt to provide the forms and models of ideas in the past as they illuminate the present.65

One of the natural outcomes of naive historicism is the specter of relativism that it entails. The doctrine of historicism suggests that every knowledge claim is historical. Gadamer offers a peculiar interpretation of historicism to the effect that historicism depends on the notion that events in the past and the value judgements concerning them are determined by history. The only exception to this determination is the understanding subject. In this diagnosis of the problem of the historicism, Gadamer shares something with Leo Strauss,66 namely, the belief that radical historicism falls into the logical fallacy of claiming that every knowledge claim, except for that of historicism itself, is historically determined. Because of this, historicism itself reflects the paradox of relativism. Gadamer recognizes this paradox in historicism, but argues that by including the historicity of understanding and the subject within the process of history, hermeneutic theory can escape the relativism and the paradoxical claim that it entails.

Gadamer in a way combines the historical and hermeneutic questions into an account of historical continuity and the experience of this continuity. Historical distance helps to account for the critical assessment concerning the text’s claim to truth, while the continuity of meaning is mediated through language. He denies, however, that the actuality of any historical phenomenon can be known as an "object in itself"67 because of the finitude and limitedness of human knowledge. In the absence of an absolute knowledge and a conception of universal history, Gadamer tries to avoid the predicament of such a situation with the help of the concept of the "consciousness of the historical effects."68 He holds the notion that the effects of history and the consciousness of effective history constitute a unity in which the appropriateness of knowledge and its object can be judged. The consciousness of historical effects includes not only our fore-conceptions, prejudices and present interests, but also the historical phenomena as mediated through language. Gadamer’s position implies a perspectivist view of historical knowledge based on the notion that language presents historical objects from different perspectives that belong to the being of objects themselves. If, for instance, the sun is only a planet for the astronomical sciences, it is also a source of inspiration in poetry.

The implications of relativism in hermeneutic theory have been discussed either in the context of epistemological conditions of historical knowledge, or in the context of a rationalistic, pragmatist concept of history. These arguments belong to a concept of history and language different from those held by Gadamer. As becomes clear from the foregoing analysis, the issues surrounding the problem of relativism and the approaches to deal with it vary according to the views held concerning the concept of truth and criteria. On one side of the debate, it is argued that our knowledge and understanding are contingent upon historical and cultural conditions. If this is the case, we cannot uphold the conception of an absolute truth that is prevalent in traditional philosophy. According to this view, it is impossible to know universal principles a-historically. They offer a concept of truth established upon the consensus of interpreters. They argue that the historicity of understanding requires that the concept of an absolute truth must be abandoned in the light of the need for a critical epistemology.

The problem of relativism in the context of the method of interpretation is defined in many different ways. Among these is the view that the hermeneutic theory relinquishes the idea of objectivity because hermeneutics relies on the thesis that understanding is historical. The second argument is an extension of the first, in the sense that its reason for the denial of objectivity depends on its giving up the concept of truth as a-historical, a-temporal property of judgment. But the question of the hermeneutic concept of truth presents a two-sided interpretation: either Gadamer adheres to a conception of truth as historical or he adheres to the concept of the historicity of the experience of truth. These are two separate issues.

In these discussions three forms of relativism are to be distinguished. The first is the self-refuting claim that all knowledge is relative. The second is subjectivistic relativism implying that the relativity of knowledge claims remain on the level of the person making that claim. The third form of relativism combines certain aspects of the first two. This doctrine aims at denying the existence of a standard view of truth other than those based on the social practices and conventions. According to the latter two doctrines of relativism, any agreement or adjudication between contending knowledge claims through rational discourse becomes almost impossible. These forms of relativism cannot be imputed to hermeneutic theory. For Gadamer, all arguments for or against relativism are formal, they do not have a content.69 As Gadamer points out several times, once we convert those statements concerning the relativity of knowledge to the content of a specific knowledge, the formality of the arguments becomes evident. In other words, Gadamer repeats, in modern language, Plato and Aristotle’s arguments against skepticism.70

We need also mention those who defend Gadamer’s alleged relativism from a position questioning the possibility of relativism itself. In our view, they still rely on the forms of relativism we have mentioned. Generally, cultural or historical relativism defends a doctrine that the claims to knowledge and truth are incommensurable. Thus, the relativist argues that the multiplicity and the variety of perspectives and frameworks need not be evaluated according to a single standard of truth.

According to this view, for any search for truth there is no single criterion for judging the claims to truth, value and meaning. Some commentators who call such a view perspectivism, claim that, according to Gadamer’s hermeneutics, it is possible to develop different positions on the same subject matter without steering into irrational positions. According to this sort of perspectivism, understandings and interpretations of a text can be dependent upon, and relative to, the historical conditions in which they take place. The inherited interpretive practices, conceptual frameworks and methods would constitute the particular context within which interpretation is made.

Some commentators attribute this contextualist relativism to Gadamer’s hermeneutic philosophy. According to this form of relativism, it is not the individual’s preference or reflections that determine the rationality of discourse, but on the contrary, the specific context of the arguments brought in favor of the choices one makes determine the plausibility and rationality of the interpretation.71 Although no conclusive argument can be given for justifying the correctness of one interpretation over another, evidence and support can be provided for justifying the appropriateness of the choice of one context against another. According to this view, because no context of interpretation occupies an absolute position, different interpretations can remain justifiable. This position is distinguished from a radical relativism only from the consideration that not all contexts are equally appropriate or justifiable.72 As Hoy points out, contextualism escapes the charges of relativism in the strict sense because "contextualism denies that there is an objectively neutral first step providing an unquestionable methodology. This general position is not properly called relativism because it is held by both relativists and non-relativists."73 

Hoy’s argument that contextualism is not a relativism in the strict sense is further advanced by others. For instance, according to Grondin, rather than defending an absolute point of view to argue against the possible imputation of relativism to historical hermeneutics, we should focus on the possibility of relativism itself.74 Some of Gadamer’s remarks seem to suggest that such a defense against the charges of relativism is possible. But the question is whether this entails a weakening of the requirement of objectivity. If Gadamer’s position is interpreted as advancing a form of contextualism, and contextualism, too, requires justification and reasons for any particular interpretation, does this lead us to abandoning anything other than ad hoc criteria? Habermas’, and Apel’s readings of the historicity thesis take their starting point from such a contextualist position attributed to hermeneutics. These distinctions are relevant for our inquiry for two reasons. First, Gadamer answers in the affirmative the question whether his thesis concerning the historicity of understanding is not itself an historically conditioned view, such that it may prove wrong in another historical period. But his argument that it might be the case has a different implication than the suggestion that this probable change of the opinion about the historicity of understanding would be the result of a mere passage of time or the availability of new information. Rather, he holds open the possibility that the historicity thesis might reveal a different aspect over time. But Gadamer also distinguishes the historicity of understanding from the statements or beliefs concerning its validity.

This approach corresponds to the problem known in the analytic tradition, that the statements about a fact and the statements about the language stating a fact must be distinguished. The evidence provided by Gadamer’s rejoinder to the critics’ arguments concerning the relativistic implications of his historicity thesis suggests that Gadamer acknowledges that his hermeneutics entails a certain form of historicism, but in no way implies a relativistic historicism.75

The other challenge he faces is based on the assertion that only by appealing to nature as the realm in which historical life takes place can we avoid historicizing everything. Given the fact that Gadamer argues that our relation to nature is not immediate but mediated by language, his only solution lies in the speculative nature of language in mediating the infinite and the finite.76

Making language the substrate and the medium of historical continuity raises the question of linguistic relativism. His argument that language is the universal medium of understanding and the mediation of man’s experience of the world must face the challenge of the multiplicity of languages. But as we will demonstrate, language is not the only the universal condition of hermeneutic understanding. As Gadamer states: "The speculative character of being that is the ground of hermeneutics has the same universality as do reason and language."77

The speculative structure of language and its relation to the speculative character of being make it possible for human reason to have access to a universal understanding despite the historicity and finitude of its existence. Thus, the historicity of understanding means not only that understanding comes out of a concrete situation which is both the condition of understanding as well as its limitation, but also that historicity orients us towards the universal self-presentation of the objects of our understanding, such as art and history.

In the light of this analysis, we aim to demonstrate that philosophical hermeneutics is not interested in developing a method of interpretation in the social sciences. By giving a phenomenological description of the ontological structure of the experience of under-standing and interpretation, philosophical hermeneutics does not defend the thesis that knowledge is relative to the historical conditions within which these experiences take place.

Gadamer recognizes the difficulty and the danger of falling into an historical relativism. He is aware that if we put the issue in rigid epistemological terms, relativism can only be resolved by an appeal to an absolute idealism or to a metaphysical idea of an infinite intellect.78 As a post-Kantian and post-Heideggerian philosopher, Gadamer can appeal to neither of these positions. Although Gadamer bases his theory on a metaphysical view of the relation between language and reality, he does not postulate it as a foundation of his philosophy. However, there is a clear difference between the denial of an absolute position, knowledge, truth, etc., and not positing that there is an absolute standpoint from which human knowledge is judged.

In this research, the historicity of understanding is treated as a quasi-transcendental foundation in the hermeneutic theory. For our purpose, the relation between the historicity thesis and the problem of transcendence presents the following choices: The principle of historicity is transcendental, either in the sense that it is beyond our knowledge or in the sense that historicity precedes our knowledge as something belonging to the mode of the Being of humanity. In other words, the question of transcendence represents a two-pronged question that is not peculiar to hermeneutic philosophy. Even in the context of traditional philosophy, reality in its totality transcends our capacity to know it, despite the fact that certain immanent principles are given to human understanding. The notion of self-evident principles of knowledge is an indication of this. Modern philosophy in its Cartesian beginning replaced the notion of the givenness of these self-evident principles with the subjective certainty of consciousness’s own being. Heidegger subjected both the notions of objective and subjective givenness to a strong criticism.

Besides Gadamer’s critique of historical objectivism and positivism in order to refute historicism, we will present a critical appraisal of the attempts to develop a hermeneutic theory based on subjectivism and objectivism. Historicism and relativism arise as a consequence of inconsistencies in construing the method of the natural sciences as the measure of all worthy of knowledge. As we show in the next chapter, Gadamer’s refusal of objectivity must not be understood in an unqualified sense, but as a critique of the ideal of objectivity upheld in historical studies.