THE INADEQUACY OF THE THEORY OF OBJECTIVATION IN UNDERSTANDING

To review the history of the problem of hermeneutic objec-tivity, one must begin with the aim of Dilthey’s hermeneutics, namely, emphasizing the objects in which human life is expressed. Dilthey writes that hermeneutics has a further and main purpose behind its theorizing, namely, to preserve the general validity of interpretation against romantic caprice and skeptical subjectivity. A theoretical justification is needed upon which every certainty of historical knowledge is followed.1

Hermeneutics includes both grammatical and psychological interpretation. As Gadamer correctly shows, in Schleiermacher’s theory of hermeneutics more emphasis is placed upon psychological interpretation described ultimately as an apprehension of the inner origin of the composition of a work, a re-creation of the creative act.2 In this sense, interpretation is a reproduction of an original pro-duction, a reconstruction which begins from the vital moment of conception. This view of understanding, as Gadamer explains, pre-vents us from seeing the reference of hermeneutic in terms of its subject matter, in the sense of Schleiermacher’s "being". Following Kant, Schleiermacher considers artistic thoughts as life moments which contain pleasure, but still are not regarded as tied to being.

This involves a crucial distinction between the poetic text and the scientific text. According to this account of interpretation, poetic utterance is not subject to the criterion of agreement with the thing meant, because what is said in poetry cannot be separated from the way it is said.3 Yet, in this understanding, the object of the her-meneutic reference is not a strong foundation. In spite of the case of complete understanding which is fully illuminated in a divine mani-festation of being such as is observable in the Scriptures, still there is a lack of adequate explanation of how understanding relates to the hermeneutic reference.4

Schleiermacher thinks of the act of understanding as a recon-struction of production, which means that different aspects of a thought are hidden from the consciousness of the author.5 For Gada-mer, the "better understanding" that:

Distinguishes the interpreter from the writer does not refer to the understanding of the text’s subject matter, but simply to the understanding of the text, i.e., to what the author meant and expressed. This understanding can be called ‘better’ insofar as the explicit, thematized understanding of an opinion, as opposed to actualizing its contents, implies an increased knowledge.6

Under the title Teoria generale della interpretazione (1955), Betti studies questions concerning the objective status of interpre-tation. Restricted by the claim of a hermeneutical method for the interpretation of things, he criticizes Gadamer’s rejection of this and states that such lack of methodology imperils the objectivity of interpretation.7 Instead, he returns to the mental objectification and meaningful forms proposed by Dilthey, assuming a "triadic pro-cess", that is, an interpretative act in which meaningful forms mediate between the mind of the author and the mind of the inter-preter. In this hermeneutic manner the interpreter understands the objective reference: the interpreter reproduces the original creative activity of the creator of the text, whether it is a written or unwritten text.

By referring to the Hegelian terms of subjective and objective spirit, Betti believes that the subject and the object, as objectivations by mind of the process of interpretation, are locked together in an antonymous relationship. The mind congeals into permanent form and confronts the subject as an other. But both are dependent upon one another. A given, interested subjective mind requires objective activity in order to develop consciousness and becomes free from itself. The objectivations (Vergegenstandlichungen and not Versa-chlichungen) contained in what is handed down are themselves completely dependent on the interested mind, in its disposition to-ward interpreting the things, in order to be brought to the under-standing, i.e., to be reintroduced into the sphere of understanding via the process of interpretation.8

Since Betti regards interpretation as a means toward under-standing, objective interpretation would help overcoming barriers of understanding and facilitate the re-appropriation of the objective mind by another subject. The need for ‘relatively objective’ know-ledge requires the subject of interpretation to enter into a subject-object relationship with a text even through the object represents the expression of another subject. Any interpretative act is a triadic process in which meaningful forms mediate between the mind of the author which is objectivated in these forms and the mind of the interpreter.9 In his rejection of the subjectivity and relativism intro-duced into hermeneutics by existentialist philosophers, Betti re-affirmed the possibility of, at least, relative objectivity of the results of interpretation. Objectivity is possible in principle owing to the autonomy, the existence-in-themselves, of the objectivations of mind.10

Historic Geisteswissenschaften have been characterized by the attempt to assimilate the research process regarding what the mind creatively objectivates, especially in history, to the standards of the natural sciences. Betti has argued forcefully against failing to take account of the specificity of the object of the Geisteswissens-chaften since this requires an internal recognition and recon-struction, and is dependent on the spontaneity of the perceiving subject. In Dilthey’s view, "Human studies have indeed the advan-tage over the natural sciences that their object is not sensory appear-ance as such, no mere reflection of reality within consciousness, but is rather first and foremost an inner reality, a coherence experienced from within."11

Betti holds this reconstruction as a responsibility in order to protect the objectivity of the results of the interpretations produced in all the human sciences. In this way, Betti does not follow the overtly objectivist nature of the "historical school" around von Ranke. It can be argued that his concern with salvaging at least "relative objectivity~ through the implementation of a set of canons is a residue of the scientific approach to the non-natural sphere.12

On the one hand, for Betti the content of interpretation does not presume to be totally in agreement with the intent of the con-scious representation of the author.13 As a result, it becomes possible to conceive an activity through which thought, without having the intent, becomes an object of interpretation. Proclaimed to defend the objective characteristic of interpretation, yet, this analysis of thought as a reluctant non-phenomenological term leads finally to the possibility of a sort of abstractive hermeneutics.

The problem becomes more complicated when seen with regard to the content of the practical activity of jurists and historians. This leads Betti to claim that, because of the absence of any conscious intent at representation, the most genuine and reliable indication of the attitude of both jurist and historian (with some differences) is provided by allowing safe inferences regarding the underlying mentality of the author.14 Thus, the only way to implement the doctrine of "meaning-full forms" of objectivation of mind is to make clear how the fundamental representational charac-teristic inherent in these forms is possible. Betti introduces his general theory of interpretation by considering this problematic relationship between the perceiving mind and object. The inter-pretation of "meaning-full forms" he hopes will provide insight into the possibility of objective understanding in general.15

Accordingly, in explicating the relation between understanding and interpretation, it must be pointed out that the final goal of the process of interpretation for Betti is to solve the epistemological problem of understanding. "Interpreting, in view of its task, is to bring something to the understanding." But Betti, in a circuitous explanation, says that the unity of the process of interpretation can be comprehended only in terms of the elementary phenomenon of understanding as actualized through the mediation of language.16 A real object for understanding is not the same as a ready-made physical object which we receive. This Kantian presupposed object plays the role of material source of "a stimulation directed at our insight to re-translate what has been perceived and to reconstruct its meaning from within."17 Betti generalizes von Humboldt’s thesis regarding understanding according to which the process of inter-pretation is designed to solve the problem of understanding, because it is unified and homogeneous despite the differentiations required in its application in any usages of language. A demand is made on the spontaneity of the one called upon to understand which cannot be fulfilled without his active participation. "A challenge and appeal emanates from meaning-full forms in which mind has objectivated itself and which is directed at a subject, an active and thinking mind, whose interest in understanding has been stimulated by the varie-gated concerns of everyday life."18

Based upon this, interpretation is a "triadic process" at stra-tegic positions in which the interpreter, the thinking mind and the mind objectivated in meaning-full forms are found. Through the simultaneous mediation of meaning-full forms, these three parts of the triadic process interconnect. "Subject and object of the process of interpretation, i.e., interpreter and meaning-full forms, are the same as those found in every process of cognition; only here they are characterized by specific traits which derive from this fact that we are not dealing with just any object but objectivations of mind."19

Interpretation as explained by the objectivation of mind pro-vides a hermeneutical process in which the interpreter retraces the steps from the opposite direction by re-thinking them in his inner life. Betti himself acknowledges that the difficulty in such an inver-sion rests in the transposition into another subjectivity which differs from the first one. Objectivity is the interpreter’s reconstruction of the meaning contained in meaning-full forms and corresponds to their meaning content; the subjectivity of the interpreter lacks awareness of the preconditions of his ability to understand in a manner adequate to the subject matter (thanks to which the require-ment of objectivity can be met). These two contradictory require-ments lead to an antinomy of which Betti himself is aware. It intro-duces "the whole dialectic of the process of interpretation and provides the starting point for a general theory of interpretation just as the antinomy between the being-for-itself of the subject and the otherness of the object."20 Coming into contact with meaning-full forms (sinnhaltige Formen) provides a place for inter-communica-tion. Understanding can know its subject matter by apprehending the meaning reserved by these forms. In different realms of under-standing "whenever something from the mind of another approaches us there is a call on our ability to understand, issued in the hope of being unfolded."21

In order to make a valid general theory of interpretation Betti formulates the first criterion of hermeneutics, i.e., what he calls the "hermeneutical canon," on the basis of the hermeneutic autonomy of the object (the source of hermeneutical enterprise) or meaning-full forms. This source of hermeneutical enterprise has to be understood with reference to the other mind that has been introduced through meaningful forms. This first and most important hermeneutical canon is not to be regarded as an independent guideline, having for itself any meaning, while abstracted from the representational fun-ction, as what is acquired by the form itself. Betti also believes that the meaning to be determined may not "be inferred into" meaningful forms in an arbitrary act, but rather ought to "be derived from" it. This characterization of the necessary reference of the object does not agree with what earlier was mentioned in explaining the struc-ture of this canon, i.e., the immanence of the standards of herme-neutics. Moreover, Betti holds that meaning-full forms should be judged in relation to the original intention: "The created forms should correspond to formulate an impulse in the course of the creative process; it follows that they must not be judged in terms of their suitability for any other external purpose that may seem relevant to the interpreter."22 For him, however, it remained obscure whether this original intention itself is justifiable by the hermeneu-tical characteristic of the reference in meaningful forms.

Betti tries to clarify the relation between the objective and the subjective element in all understanding. He formulates a complete canon of hermeneutical principles, at the head of which stands the autonomy of the meaning of the text according to which the meaning, i.e., what the author intended to say, can be gained from the text itself. This canon is emphasized equally with the adequacy to the object. However, his view requires the work of the interpreter as a particular perspective and as an integrating element of hermeneu-tical truth.23

The texts which are approached with a meaning -- inferring ‘preunderstanding’ (Vorverstandnis) -- are not to be used to confirm already held opinions; we have to suppose, instead, that they have some-thing to say that we could not know by ourselves and which exists independently of our meaning infer-ence. It is here that the questionable character of the subjectivist position comes to full light; it is ob-viously influenced by contemporary existentialist philosophy and tends toward the confounding of the interpretation and meaning inference and the re-moving of the canon of the autonomy of the object.24

The tension between objectivity and subjectivity is a precon-dition for the perception of a personal or cultural "style" in which continued "tendencies" and an "inner coherence" are apparent. There is a doubt whether the epistemological solution to the problem of objective understanding provides the pivotal point in the entire argument.25 A false theory of hermeneutics is one in which the sub-jective and objective elements of the problem are not conciliable in a manner of being unitarily justified. We must search for at least a proper definition of the hermeneutic game (as Gadamer develops it), in which both sides of subjectivity and objectivity can be dialec-tically united in an interaction.

The hermeneutic game carries the task of providing sig-nificance for the object of interpretation. Through the act of understanding in the human sciences, the structure of Dasein is projected and, realizing its own being, Dasein appears as under-standing.26

In chapter 19 of his outlines of the 1819 lectures, Schleierma-cher had told us to equate ourselves with the author by objective and subjective reconstruction. With objective reconstruction one pro-ceeds through a knowledge of the language as the author used it. The resulting knowledge is more exact than even that of the original readers, for one must put oneself into the place of the author through a subjective reconstruction in which one proceeds through know-ledge of the author’s inner and outer life.27 Emphasizing objective reconstruction, Betti in contrast to Schleiermacher argues for the essential autonomy of the object of the hermeneutical reference. Betti aims his argument at Gadamer’s dialogical approach, critici-zing it for inserting the subject into the hermeneutical circle. In Betti’s view, this approach leads to both subjectivism and relati-vism, with the consequence that hermeneutics is unable to adjudi-cate between correct and incorrect interpretation.28

In his reply to Betti’s critique Gadamer claims that his line of thought prevents us from dividing the hermeneutic problem in terms of the subjectivity of the interpreter and the objectivity of the meaning to be understood. In Gadamer’s view this would be starting from a "false antithesis" that cannot be resolved even by recognizing the dialectic as subjective and objective.29 Based on the fact that aesthetic consciousness does not confront an object, Gadamer replies to Betti’s charge of subjectivism that its validity depends on its being posed within a dualistic framework. If understanding is granted as the project of a subject confronting an alien object, then the activity of such understanding can be called "subjective behavior." But for Gadamer, understanding is constructed dialogi-cally and dialectically as a process of question and answer. This process of understanding (hermeneutical Urphanomeno) ties it to the being of that which is understood.30 In order to illuminate the ontological basis of the hermeneutical object, Gadamer takes the concept of play in its broader understanding as found in Kant, Schiller, and later in Betti.

Play, in reference to the experience of art, does not mean the state of mind of the creator or of those enjoying the work of art. The real hermeneutical application of play is in the "mode of being of the work of art itself" in which aesthetic consciousness cannot be restricted only as an object. The work of art, as Gadamer views it, is not an object that stands over against a subject for itself. The work of art "has its true being in the fact that it becomes an experience that changes the person who experiences it."31 It is the work itself, not the subjectivity of the person who experiences it, that can be considered the real subject of the experience of art. As Gadamer explains it: "This is the point at which the mode of being of play becomes signifi-cant. For play has its own essence, independent of the consciousness of those who play."32 The being of art can not be defined as an object of an aesthetic consciousness.

Based on the fact that the interpretative play is independent of presenting for, we can see how 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 toward which understanding can be directed. If the linguistic meaning can be founded on the ontological structure of a thing, then, correspon-dingly, this indicates that the being that can be understood is lan-guage. The hermeneutical phenomenon here projects its own univer-sality back onto the ontological constitution of what is understood, determining it in a universal sense as language and determining its own relation to beings as interpretation.33

Heidegger in his On the Essence of Truth, takes the term Being usually to mean beings as such taken as a totality (das Seiende im Ganzen). In so far as this totality is affected by negativity, it is called "mystery". But it is clear that for Heidegger Being is more than just this totality. It is referred to by the expression wesen, which is to be taken in a verbal sense as emerging into presence and abiding as such. It too is inherently affected by negativity: Being is said to be the one, and the only one, which conceals itself. This one and only "self-concealing" is what we call Being.34

Finally, on this basis, a text at least as a hermeneutical para-digm can be said to constitute the hermeneutical objectivity. In this case, as Ricoeur believes of written discourse, the author’s intention and the meaning of the text cease to coincide. The text’s career escapes the finite horizon lived by the author. A text can surpass the ostensive references of spoken discourse by opening up possible modes of being, a whole new "world," over and above the restricted "situation" in which the partners of a dialogue find themselves. Through its display of non-ostensive references the text, in a way, faces the meaning of discourse from the dialogical situation. Ricoeur believes that through being permanently fixed, a text can achieve a universal range of its addresses, in contrast to the often limited number of partners in spoken discourse. This points to a possible solution for the hermeneutical dilemma of objectivity.35 Ricoeur sees the primary concern of the hermeneutics of the text to be to unfold a world in front of the text, rather than to discover the subjective intentions of the author behind the text. This hermeneu-tical prospect transforms the relation of the world to the subjectivity of the reader. In addition, exposing oneself to the world that the text puts forward enables the hermeneutic inquirer to recognize the possibility of the falsifiabilities in the act of the subject in hermeneu-tics.36

THE PRINCIPLE OF THE UNIVERSALITY OF HERMENEUTICS

Since it is necessary to evaluate the basis of the objectivity of the hermeneutical question, as we pointed out in the previous section, then we must make clear whether universality of the inter-pretation, as the most important characteristic of hermeneutic play and disclosed in the objectivation of the meaningful form, can itself be considered as the philosophical correspondent for the dilemma of the validity of the interpretation.37 Hermeneutics from the time of Schleiermacher has depended on an artificial methodical abstraction to establish a universal instrument of the mind, and has tried to use this instrument to express the saving power of the Christian faith. In Dilthey’s grounding of the human sciences, however, hermeneutics is more than a means, it is the universal medium of the historical consciousness for which there no longer exists any knowledge of truth other than the understanding of the expression and, through the expression, the understanding of life. "Life and history make sense like the letters of a word."38 As in Dilthey, the thematic investigation of conscious life must override the tendency to base itself on individual experiences.39

So far as the concept of history depends on life, it is grounded on presentiment of the meaning of the whole which is concealed from us. Understanding is more than just a universal method that oc-casionally appeared through the affinity of the historian with his historical object. It is not the historian’s own fortuitous sympathy, but rather the historicality of the historian’s own understanding that works in his choice of objects.40 Betti could not describe clearly how an historical element works in his distinction between legal and historical hermeneutics. For Gadamer, there is no antithesis between these two aspects, for we naturally assume that the legal meaning of a legal text is clear and that the present legal practice simply follows the original meaning. Yet he does not point out that this original meaning for both legal and historical hermeneutics in general must become available through the text itself for hermeneutics.

To be more clear, a legal historian apparently is concerned only with the original meaning of the law, the way in which it was meant, and the validity it had when it was first promulgated. But how does he know this? Can he know the original meaning without being aware of the change in circumstances that separates his own present time from that past time? Must he not then do exactly the same thing as the judge, i.e., ultimately assume the original meaning from the vantage point of the present? The hermeneutical situation of both the historian and the jurist seems to Gadamer to be the same in that, faced with any text, one has an immediate expectation of meaning. There can be no such thing as a direct access to the historical object objectively revealing its historical value. The historian has to undertake the same reflection as the jurist.41 The legal hermeneutics is, in Gadamer’s interpretation, not a special case. On the contrary, it is capable of restoring the hermeneutical problem to its full breadth and so of reestablishing the former unity of hermeneutics, in which the jurist and the theologian meet the philologist.42 In an approach of greater hermeneutical relevance to the question of universality, the hermeneutical situation of both the historian and the jurist would be the same in that when faced with any text there would be an immediate expectation of meaning.

Moreover, Gadamer’s hermeneutic philosophy represents a gigantic re-orientation of hermeneutics by freeing it from a methodologically secured objectivity. This provides a perspective for viewing scientific progress in general in terms of the universality of the hermeneutic aspect (which was expounded on parallel lines by Kuhn’s paradigm-oriented conception of scientific revolutions).43 This fact must be understood together with a universality correspon-ding to Kant’s principle. Based upon this the validity of an aesthetic judgement, which is correlated to the practical judgement in her-meneutics, can not be derived and proved from a universal principle. (Indeed, we must distinguish the work of art from aesthetic theory which is restricted to a scientific conception of truth. Truth and Method, p. xxiii.) Moreover, as Gadamer acknowledges, there is an a priori principle in Kant’s discussion of the aesthetic of taste which is not legitimized through an empirical universality.44 Questions of taste cannot be resolved by a general sense of argument and proof. We cannot motivate taste, nor can it be attained by empirical univer-sality.

Gadamer considers that the universality (Allgemeinheit) limited by ascribing it to the faculty of judgment is by no means as common (gemein) as Kant thinks. Based on Kant’s idea of judgment the particular can be grasped as an instance of the universal and sound understanding is "common" in the truest sense of the word; it is to be found everywhere without possessing any merit or advan-tage.45 In Gadamer’s example, a swindler, who correctly calculates human weakness and always makes the right move in his deceptions, nevertheless does not possess "sound judgment" in the highest sense of the term. Although a swindler has judgments about right and wrong, he does not know what is really important, i.e., from a right and sound point of view. On the other hand, according to Gadamer, taste is more than recognizing this or that as beautiful. It looks at the whole and allows things to harmonize beautifully. Having a true sense of community, taste does not depend on an empirical univer-sality, nor is it social such that everyone will agree with another’s judgment or that others must agree necessarily, as Kant suggests. For Gadamer, taste carries knowledge in that it is certain of the agreement by an ideal community. It follows that taste knows some-thing, though in a way that cannot be separated from the concrete moment in which that object of taste occurs.46 This sense of taste opens a new and special way of knowing. For Gadamer both taste and judgment evaluate the object in relation to a hermeneutical whole, seeking to fit all together. Hence, there must be a sense of taste rather than an understanding.47 Gadamer states that this sense of taste obviously is needed wherever a whole is intended. But taste is in no way limited to what is beautiful in nature and art, rather, it contains the whole realm of morality and manners.

Following his consideration of universality, Gadamer poses a new definition for the concept of judgment when he says that judg-ment is not so much a faculty as a demand that has to be made of all. Every one has enough "sense of the common" (Gemeinsinn), i.e., judgment, that he can be expected to show a "sense of community" (Gemeinsinn), genuine moral and civic solidarity; but that means judgments of right and wrong, and a concern for the "common good."48 "Even moral concepts are never given as a whole or deter-mined in a normatively univocal way. Rather, the ordering of life by the rules of law and morality is incomplete and needs productive supplementation. Judgment is necessary in order to make a correct evaluation of the concrete instance."49 This function of judgment is familiar, particularly in jurisprudence, in which case the supplemen-tary function of hermeneutics entails an adapted realization of the law.

In addition, Gadamer explains that in order to study a tradition more thoroughly and closely, a receptivity to the "otherness" of the work of art or of the past must already be presumed. This idea of tra-dition naturally led Gadamer to follow Hegel in emphasizing the general characteristic of Bildung, i.e., keeping oneself "open to what is other -- to other, more universal points of view."50 At the same time Gadamer considers Bildung in a manner that it has no goal outside itself. He transcends the notion of Bildung as merely practicing and cultivating to an end.51 This hermeneutical concept of Bildung embraces a sense of proportion and distance in relation to itself and consists in rising above itself to universality. "To distance oneself from oneself and from one’s private purposes means to look at these in the way that others see them." But it must be taken into consideration that, as Gadamer says, this universality is by no means a universality of the concept in understanding. It is just as conceivable as the "viewpoints of possible others."52 The universa-lity of the concept in this hermeneutical appeal is that it remains open to a particular field and grasps the objective/subjective distinc-tion within what is opened to it.

For Gadamer, discussion about the hermeneutical whole and part must be treated more in the context of hermeneutic universalism than as a question of method. Gadamer raises the question whether or not "the universality of understanding involves a one-sidedness in its contents since it lacks a critical principle in relation to tradition and, as it were, espouses a universal optimism." One can prove knowledge of the intentio operis only by comparing it with the text as a coherent whole. This idea, too, is an old one and comes from Augustine (De doctrina christiana): any interpretation given of a certain portion of a text can be accepted if it is confirmed, and must be rejected if it is challenged, by another portion of the same text. In this sense the internal textual coherence controls the otherwise uncontrollable drives of the reader.53 Nonetheless, the concept of the whole is itself to be taken as understood only relatively.54 As a result, the whole of meaning that has to be understood in history or tradition is never the meaning of the whole possibility of history as we shall point out later.

In the language of conversation, poetry, and interpretation the speculative structure of language emerges not as the reelection of something given, but as the coming into language of a totality of meaning. This draws us toward the dialectic of the Greeks, who did not conceive understanding as a methodical activity of the subject, but as something the thing itself does and which thought "suffers" or undergoes. It is, this activity of the thing itself which is the real speculative movement that takes hold of the speaker.55 To come into language does not mean that a second being is acquired, but rather, that something presents itself as it belongs to its own being. Thus language has a speculative unity; the distinction it contains between its being and its representations of itself is no distinction at all.56

It would seem that interpretation or understanding, repre-sented in the beingness of beings, presents and represents (metaphy-sically) the totality of beings as such. Through describing the most universal attributions of beings, interpretation unveils what under-standing references in the beingness of beings as one. Based on the hermeneutical universal traits of beings, therefore, the unity of experience is prior to the discreetness of experiences. This can be derived from the fact that the necessity of the hermeneutical refer-ence, accompanied with the fact that all have an understanding of it, is prior essentially to the variety of experiences. This fact unveils the reason why Heidegger, before others, describes the concept of understanding merely as the universal determinateness of Dasein.57

Here we must exchange a poor understanding of historical thinking for one better equipped to perform the task of under-standing. It is the historical character of understanding that Betti sees negatively as the factor allowing only ‘relative objectivity.’ We know that real historical thinking must take account of its own historicity, for only then will it cease to chase the phantom of an historical object that is the object of "progressive research" and learn to view the object as a counterpart. The true historical object cannot be an object at all, but an unseen persisting relationship that constitutes both the reality of history and the reality of historical understanding. Thus, an adequate hermeneutics would have to de-monstrate the reality and efficacy of history within understanding itself,58 without which any claim of objectivity in historical know-ledge is raw and incomplete.

One thing is common to all contemporary criticism of histori-cal objectivism, namely, the insight that the so-called subject of knowledge has the same mode of being as the object, so that object and subject belong to the same historical movement. The subject-object antithesis is legitimate where the object, or res extensa, is the absolute order of the res cognitans. Nonetheless, historical know-ledge cannot be appropriately described by this concept of object and objectivity.59

Historical knowledge, in Gadamer’s view, can be gained only by seeing the past in its continuity with the present which is exactly what a jurist does in his practical, normative work of "ensuring the unbroken continuance of law and preserving the tradition of the legal idea." The jurist asks whether the case being discussed is really characteristic of the general problem of historical understanding. It is a critical question for Gadamer whether a legal historian who turns to the legal cultures of the past (and certainly any other histor-ian seeking to understand a past that no longer has any direct continuity with the present), would recognize himself in the case we have been considering, namely, a law which is still in force. He would say that legal hermeneutics has a special dogmatic task that is quite foreign to the context of historical hermeneutics.60

Obviously legal hermeneutics cannot seriously be satisfied with using the subjective principle of the meaning and original intention of the lawgiver as a canon of interpretation. Often it cannot avoid applying objective concepts, e.g., the notion of law expressed in a particular law. Thus one can regard applying the law to a concrete case as the logical process of subsuming the individual under a universal.61

In Gadamer’s view against Betti it would not be enough to say that the task of the historian is simply to "reconstruct the original meaning of the legal formula" and that of the jurist to "harmonize the meaning with the present living actuality. This division would make the definition of the jurist more comprehensive to include the task of the legal historian. Someone seeking to understand the correct meaning of a law would have to know the "original one." Thus, according to Betti, he must think in terms of legal history taking historical understanding as merely a means to an end.62

Gadamer believes that the question of the meaning of a law would be both juridically and historically the same. This recalls Kant’s distinction between determinative judgment, which sub-sumes the particular under a given universal, and reflective judg-ment, which seeks a universal concept for a given particular. Hegel has rightly shown that to separate these two functions of judgment is a mere abstraction; judgment always is really both. The universal under which the particular is subsumed continues to determine itself through the particular. Thus the legal meaning of a law is determined through adjudication, and fundamentally the universality of the law is determined through the concreteness of the case.63

In a similar manner, Nietzsche, against Schleiermacher, holds that there is no general, abstract, and universal interpretation. Scien-tific explanation (Erklarung) is merely a form of interpretation where the singularity of an active configuration prevails over the perspective plurality of active drives in their varied and variable ensemble.64 Nietzsche, from a more generalized point of view, emphasizes interpretation, rather than explanation of a text. Only in an interpretive reading of a text can we have the real singularity of a possible bodily plurality. "Perspectives are plural or many, formal and in abstracto: each one is real as a singularity, and only passes from one to the other by metaphor."65

The interpretive reference to texts, whether it corresponds to a determinative or reflective judgment is not in principle different from the verbal reference to objects of the world of experience in accordance with Schleiermacher’s argument that the experience of a universal can be achieved only in unceasing approximation of the particular. Wherever a literary hermeneutics pretends to perceive its specific potentials for interpreting, as Schleiermacher believes, it operates on the border between regional hermeneutics and metaher-meneutics. Oscillating between both, it uncovers as the latter the general conditions of understanding and as the former the particular, material and historical modifications which traverse all pretensions toward universal validity.66

Gadamer holds that in an intimate conversation with a friend his way of living and thinking are more familiar to the conversa-tional partner than the linguistic and historical conditions under which a text arose. Even under such circumstances, in which the totality of linguistic, historical and personal factors are given, still, difficulties of understanding arise. This devalues the thesis that all particulars can be completely explained through a given whole. For a segment breaks from the formation of a given horizon of agree-ment and thereby betrays the consensus between the speakers, itself oriented toward "an ideal of a preestablished harmony."67

Betti follows Dilthey in emphasizing the need for historical categories which guide and elucidate the inner coherence and style of various meaningful constructs, and which have the character of changeable elements in accordance with given historically condi-tioned situations.68 Betti does not take the subject historically as a participant in a tradition, in universal discourse, etc. He conceives the concepts he employs initially as instrumental and potentially determined by the objectivity of interpretation.69

An hermeneutics that does not make the nature of the historical question the central thing, and does not inquire into an historian’s motives in examining historical material, lacks its most important element.70 Yet, the hermeneutic problem is universal and prior to every kind of concept of history because the latter is concerned with what is always fundamental to "historical ques-tions." Gadamer regards the question of what is historical research without considering primarily historical questions. Simply put, hermeneutics is a kind of knowledge that something is so because of understanding that it has come about so.71 Historical research re-quires applying the theory of understanding itself. Application, for Gadamer against Betti, must be involved in the activity of both the legal historian and the practicing lawyer, with both having the same legal understanding of the law. The judge’s decision aims at being a correct, never an arbitrary, application of the law. Therefore, he must have a correct interpretation which necessarily includes the "mediation between history and the present in the act of understanding itself."72

The general structure of understanding, Gadamer says, is realized in historical understanding, in that the concrete bonds of custom and tradition and the corresponding possibilities of one’s own future become effective in understanding itself.73 We will develop later that there is no knowable or necessary a priori; except that which makes an hermeneutical object of history possible. The hermeneutical interpretation of a thing becomes manifested in histo-rical understanding, whereas historical understanding can not be based conceptually on itself since there is no longer any correspon-dence in the subject or in the object.

As Gadamer made clear, the historian chooses concepts to describe the historical particularity of his objects without expressly reflecting on their origin and justification. He simply follows his interest in the historical material and "takes no account of the fact that the descriptive concepts he chooses can be highly determined to his proper purpose if they assimilate what is historically different to what is familiar and thus, despite all impartiality, subordinate the alien being of the object to his own preconceptions."74 In following Gadamer, we must replace badly understood historical thinking by one which can better perform the task of interpretation. Real histo-rical thinking must be able to give a convincing interpretation of its own historicity. The object of hermeneutical research based on its internal determination prefers an object as counterpart to the historical object. In this sense not only is the true historical object not an object at all, but even the unity of the one and the other cannot be explained except by the correspondence which is characteristic of the hermeneutical game itself. This hermeneutical unity is the only thing that can drive the possibility of the hermeneutical pheno-menon. Having this unity, an essential hermeneutics would bring the reality and efficacy of historical subject-matter within interpretation itself. Whether or not this interpretation can be considered as an historically effected event, remains a fundamental question.

The term "history" in this definition by Gadamer still can be investigated as in an objectively independent hermeneutical study. Consciousness of being affected by history (wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein) is essentially and primarily consciousness of the hermeneutical situation.75 The truth of the hermeneutic situation means finding oneself within the situation with regard to the tra-dition we want to understand. The illumination of this situation that reflects effective history, as Gadamer explains, can never be com-pletely achieved due to our essence as historical beings. As histori-cal, the knowledge of oneself never can be complete.76 Indeed, the hermeneutical text "that is understood historically is forced to abandon its claim to be saying something true," since acknowle-dging the otherness of the other, in historical understanding, is to make the otherness an object of objective knowledge rather than only a hermeneutical source of historical understanding, and this requires suspension of its true character.77 The ideal of a universal history necessarily becomes a special problem for the historical world view. The universal content of history lacks the self-containedness of a text for the critic, and which, for the historian, seems to make a bio-graphy a complete unit of meaning: a text that is intelligible within itself.78 Indeed, Dilthey formed his romantic hermeneutics based on relative wholes. In the theory of universal history, as in hermeneu-tics of the concept of life, a totality of meaning must be considered detached from the person who understands it. Gadamer sees the hermeneutical basis as going even further here.79 Given the pro-blematic situation with regard to universal history, there is, there-fore, a question with regard to hermeneutics as a foundation for the study of history since there is no other history but universal history. Hermeneutics is endowed with this universality by which the signifi-cance of the parts is determined.

Based on Betti’s view of the historical interpretation of a text, it is not sufficient merely to reconstruct a past event (in analogy to philological interpretation), for historians have to consider the con-text in which a document was produced. The continuity of world history is conceived neither teleologically nor in the style of the pre- or post-Romantic Enlightenment in terms of a final state as the end of history, but according to the historical school for which there exists neither an end of history nor anything outside it. Gadamer concludes that, the whole continuity of universal history can be understood only from historical tradition itself. "But this is pre-cisely the claim of literary hermeneutics, namely that the meaning of a text can be understood from itself." Hence, the foundation for the study of history can be found safely in hermeneutics.80

Granting that universal history is hermeneutic, still it can be said that the interpreter involved in hermeneutical criticism in philology or history generally is not simply trying to understand; he is not interested in or intending the objective truth of what is said as such, even if the text itself claims to teach truth.81 Hegel was the first to believe that the truth of the experience of the work of art is me-diated with historical consciousness, but this must be understood, as Gadamer indicated, so that there are not two really different hori-zons, that is, one in which the person tries to understand and another in which he regards himself historically. Any neglect of this fact leads to an artificial concept of the historical object as really non-hermeneutical.

In the context of a critique of historical objectivism Gadamer considers Erich Rothacker’s work important since it enables herme-neutics to face the problem of relativism. He sees the concept of the dogmatic thought form as an entirely hermeneutical concept. The dogmatic is defended as a productive method of knowledge in the human sciences, insofar as it elaborates the immanent content that determines an area of significance. Rothacker appeals to the fact that the concept of dogmatic enjoys by no means a merely critical and pejorative sense in theology and jurisprudence. But in contrast to these systematic disciplines, the concept of dogmatic is not intended to be merely a synonym for systematic knowledge, e.g., for philosophy, but signifies "another attitude," to be defended as some-thing separated from the historical inquiry which attempts to under-stand the process of development. For Rothacker, "dogmatic" has its fundamental place within the total historical attitude and receives its relative justification therefrom. It refers ultimately to Dilthey’s concept of the structural context and its particular application to historical methodology.82 Such a dogmatic, nevertheless, according to Gadamer, exercises its corrective function where there is histo-rical thinking and knowledge.83

Gadamer confirms the Heideggerian position in phenomenology that historical knowledge is not a projection in the sense of extrapolation of aims of the will or ordering of things according to prejudices, rather it remains something adapted to the object, a men-suratio ad rem. This object, as manifested in the mirror of art, is not a factum brutum or something merely at hand, but itself ultimately has the same mode of being as Dasein.84

The dilemma of objectivity in historical knowledge can be pursued also alongside by asking whether "ontological radicalization" contributes to the construction of an historical hermeneutics. Heide-gger’s existential analytic of Dasein implies no particular historical ideal of existence.85 Since the historical meaning of a phenomenon cannot offer a convincing account of the fact that the interpreter belongs to his hermeneutical object and that his stand must be considered only an hermeneutical task, the problem of hermeneutics becomes universal in scope, even attaining a new dimension through Heidegger’s transcendental interpretation of understanding.86

However, if understanding is not viewed totally in terms of history, understanding is not a merely reproductive, but also a pro-ductive activity as well. There is a question whether we can refer to the productive understanding as better understanding. Gadamer comes to the conclusion that understanding is not understanding better, either in the sense of superior knowledge of the subject because of the clearer ideas or in the sense of fundamental superio-rity of conscious over unconscious production. It is enough to say that one understands and interprets in a different way, if there is understanding at all.87

Returning to Husserl’s logical investigation, we must say, consciousness is an "intentional experience" as distinguished from the real unity of consciousness in experience and from its inner perception. As Gadamer pointed out, this sense of consciousness was not an "object," but an essential coordination. Investigating this coordination revealed the starting point for overcoming `objecti-vism.’ Intention and fulfillment of meaning belong essentially to the unity of meaning rather than that of object; like the meaning of the words, every valid existent is of its nature an "ideal universality of actual and potential experiencing modes of givenness."88 In herme-neutics these modes of givenness can be revealed in the under-standing of a text as the reference of hermeneutics of which the unity of meaning is derived.

Since it seems that the human understanding exchanges position in dialectical hermeneutics, even if a prejudice becomes questionable in view of what another person or a text says to us, this does not mean that it is simply set aside and the text or the other person accepted as valid in its place. Rather, historical objectivism in a productive understanding shows its naivete in accepting such disregard of ourselves as what actually happens. In fact our own prejudice is properly brought into play by being put at risk. Only by being given full play is it able to experience the other’s claim to truth and make it possible for him to have full play himself.89

The understanding of a text is not to be compared with an immovable point of interpretation that has only one question for the interpreter. Therefore, again, understanding certainly is not limited essentially as is historical interpretation, which seems ostensively to be possible through reconstructing the time of the text as it came into being. Since it is not merely a conceptual truth, understanding is to be determined by the text, rather than by the time of the text in order to follow the way of truth as it is recognized in the experience of art itself. Is this to say that "interpreter’s own thoughts too have gone into re-awakening the text’s meaning?"90 In an ultimate hermeneu-tical analysis of understanding, the effect of the interpreter’s own horizon can be seen only insofar as it helps the interpreter "make one’s own what the text says."91 Hence, instead of historical vali-dity, it is the absolute validity in hermeneutics which makes mean-ingful defining the universal element in understanding.

We have already noticed that a person seeking to understand something has a bond to the subject matter that comes into language through a connection with the tradition from which the text speaks.92 On the other hand, hermeneutical consciousness is aware that its bond to this subject matter does not consist in some self-evident, unquestioned concord, as is the case with an unbroken stream of tradition. Hermeneutic work is based on a polarity of familiarity and certainty of the meaning; but this polarity is not to be regarded psychologically as with Schleiermacher in the range of the mystery of individuality, but truly hermeneutically, i.e., in the language in which the text addresses us and the story that it tells us. Here, too, there is a tension between being as an historically intended, distan-ciated object and being as belonging to a tradition. The true locus of hermeneutics and the question of the aesthetical truth is this in-between.93