AN INQUIRY INTO THE PREJUDICIAL CONDITION OF UNDERSTANDING

Following Kant’s critique of the condition of our knowledge, Gadamer traces a philosophical question in human sciences and experience as lived, that is, how is understanding possible. He turns to an old insight, according to which the manner in which under-standing of a text is achieved has three dimensions: understanding (intelligere), interpretation (explicare), and application (applicare). These mental refinements, formerly referred to as ‘subtilitates’ are now considered by Gadamer to be integral parts of the hermeneu-tical process. Accordingly, this concept of understanding reaches its climax in application, which concludes the fusion of horizons. Ap-plication, then, is conceived not as an afterthought or a contingent element in the phenomenon of understanding, but rather as deter-mining this a priori and in its totality.94

We have noted in the previous chapter that understanding as it occurs in the human sciences is essentially historical, i.e., that in the human sciences a text is understood only if it is understood in a different way as the occasion requires.95 Understanding can be our director in hermeneutical experience, but we must be cautious about the result of assuming the conception of understanding to be an ex-ceptional ground for hermeneutical analysis.

In his revival of hermeneutics, Gadamer believes understanding not to be a so-called hermeneutical method to which the in-quiring consciousness can have recourse in order to gain an objec-tive knowledge in experiencing an event. His intention is not to create for classical hermeneutics a manual for guiding under-standing as is formed in the methodical procedure of the human sciences.96 Indeed, being situated within an event of tradition, it is a process of handing down the prior condition of understanding.97 If understanding be a method, then, it should hold itself unprejudiced, free from relating to tradition; but that would disregard the true meaning of tradition, in which understanding is able to question con-tinuously, provided the door of knowledge be open. This means that understanding cannot be restricted only as a simple interpreting activity of consciousness. Rather, it is a prejudicial condition of in-terpretation which is provided transcendentally by the event of being in different occasions.

In order to analyze the applicability of understanding as the prejudicial condition of interpretation, we must remember that the possibility of a "direct" contact between subject and object, in which the former could suppress any categories that are not appropriate to the object, is problematic. The interpreter can commence his activity only on the basis of the use of categories of thought; rather, these ca-tegories have already been "put to work" when he approaches any-thing.98 The art of interpretation essentially claims that it is looking for what the author intended in his or her own sense. This "own sense" does not mean what the author himself intended, but rather that understanding can go beyond the author’s subjective act of meaning; even that it necessarily and always goes beyond it.99

But we know also that understanding is not self-understanding in the sense of the self-evident, as certain idealisms have asserted. Also it is not exhausted in the revolutionary criticism of idealism that thinks of the concept of self-understanding as something that happens to the self and through which it becomes an authentic self. Understanding, as Gadamer stresses involves a moment of "loss of itself."100

We are not so restricted within prejudices as not to be able to judge by our understandings. In any activity of human understand-ing a new judgment comes out, something not mentioned or remem-bered by any experience. But how can we know this judgment to be new where no comparable judgment exists? The new judgment can be established only when we already know what is coming as new (in contrast to the old). In some aspects our expectation and our readi-ness to hear the new judgment necessarily are determined by the old. Hereby, Gadamer relates the concept of prejudice to that of au-thority, while neglecting the mere original fact that the prejudices are justifiable because it is only through thinking them as supra-empirical "givens" that the very beginning of a hermeneutical text can be remarked. The role of a supra-empirical norm can be recog-nized in Kant’s classification of the aesthetic judgment. In this, the aesthetic judgment appears to justify an a priori aspect, although it remains limited by the claim to universality.101 This, however, does not mean that the text can be considered as a realm of prejudices, nor can a prejudice gua prejudice be regarded as a text. An exception is when we are talking about prejudices in order to find their structure, then prejudices are regarded as text qua text. The relation between the text as what is talked about and prejudices is as remarkable as the immediate relation of the text and understanding. Hence, we can think of the text as that which should be faced hermeneutically through temporally prejudicative interpretation since understanding as an act of interpretation is not to be considered, even conceptually, purely as prejudice.

In Heidegger’s analysis of understanding, a person in his attempt to understand, is tuned by fore-meanings that are not borne out by the object reference itself. The task of understanding is to work out appropriate projections to be confirmed by the things themselves. Here, again, objectivity is the confirmation of a fore-meaning through its being worked out.102 The interpreter, approach-ing the text while relying on the given fore-meaning, examines its origin in the event. Yet we must understand this confirmation in terms of Heidegger’s disclosing the fore-structure of understanding through reading what is there.

Understanding is, for Heidegger, the original form of the reali-zation of Dasein, which is being-in-the-world. It is Dasein’s mode of being, in so far as it is potentiality-for-being and possibility.103 Based upon this, Heidegger’s doctrine that it is not our judgments, but rather our prejudices that constitute our being, provoked Gada-mer to formulate a positive sense of prejudice. By giving a new approach to this concept, he broadened it apparently beyond what the French and English Enlightenment could think of only as unjusti-fied and erroneous and thereby inevitably a distortion of the truth.104 The existential prejudices, entailed in the historicity of our exist-ence, constitute the initial human ability to experience. On this ground, "Prejudices are biases of our openness to the world." We cannot have experience of something unless it is conditioned by prejudices.105 Experiences only occur when what is encountered her-meneutically in being says something to us.

Consequently, given the intermediate position in which herme-neutics operates, it follows that its work is not to develop a proce-dure for understanding, but to clarify the conditions in which under-standing takes place. In other words, to understand how a thing happened indicates identically that it is so.106 Additionally, these conditions do not amount to a "procedure" or method which the interpreter must of himself bring to bear on the text; rather, they must be given.107

According to Baumgarten’s definition, judgment is not simply a pre-given concept of the thing, but of the sensible individual grasped in itself merely as it exhibits the agreement of the many with the one.108 As Gadamer extensively interprets it here, this is an ap-plication of the universal, but internal coherence of itself. According to such a notion of judgment, that we can have a concept of a thing as given implies that the individual object comes immanently to our interpretation.

On the other hand, temporal distance can resolve the herme-neutical question of how to distinguish true prejudices by which we understand from false ones by which we misunderstand. It makes conscious the prejudices governing our own understanding, so that "the text, as another’s meaning can be isolated and valued on its own."109 Gadamer explains that as long as the mind is influenced by a prejudice, one cannot consider it a judgment; further, judgment does not simply mean applying a pre-given concept of the thing, but rather the sensible individual is grasped in itself.110 Therefore we can not foreground (abheben) a prejudice. It is not possible to make ourselves aware of a prejudice while it is constantly operating unnoticed. As a result, the open admission of the productive power of prejudice in the nature of understanding leads Gadamer into explicit opposition to the scientific ideal of an unprejudiced objec-tivity in interpretation. We can say that understanding loses itself in its own prejudices. This loss of itself in understanding requires a mysterious realm of language which is unconscious and selfless, which will be explained in the next chapter.

By transforming the negative idea of prejudice in the En-lightenment, Gadamer initiates a new positive meaning for prejudice through and before which all the elements that determine a situation must be finally examined.111 Prejudices are not necessarily unjusti-fied and erroneous distortion of the truth. Indeed, the historicity of our existence entails that prejudices, in the literal sense of the word, constitute the initial point of our whole ability to experience. "Preju-dices are biases of our openness to the world." In interpreting our environing world they preoccupy our understanding. It is more our prejudices than our judgments that constitute our being.112

Gadamer acknowledges that more than thinking about the tradition covering the source of interpretation, hermeneutics by disclosing whatever exists of prejudices in our understanding must try to save tradition itself from the "tyranny of the hidden preju-dices" that makes our understanding deaf to what speaks to us in tradition.113

The reader, as the person who understands, already antici-pates sense in the fore-understandings as prejudices which he brings to bear on the text. These preconditions become available for the interpreter in the first conversation with the text in its general meaning. Gadamer went so far as to consider prejudices as precon-ditions of understanding.114 Hereafter, we can communicate with the sacred by explicitating the precomprehension which animates the interpretation. We can be optimistic about the challenge between understanding and prejudicial symbols of belief when hermeneutics (as a child of modernity) enables modernity to overcome its forget-fulness of the sacred.115 As Ricoeur states, hermeneutics starts out from the comprehension of the very thing which through interpre-tation it is trying to understand. This might imply a fruitful function for hermeneutics where understanding is unable to judge, for example as regards being. Being speaks to us not only in the pre-critical form of immediate belief, but also indeed as the second immediacy identified with understanding as the aim of herme-neutics.116 In other words, understanding cannot initiate an herme-neutics, unless prejudices have been related to all the beings already there, whereas hermeneutics is concealed by being again.

While hermeneutical understanding takes its origin in each case from a traditionally determined fore-understanding which changes within linguistic communication (as with Habermas), a depth hermeneutics demands a systematic fore-understanding which extends to language as a whole.117 Hermeneutics shows how lan-guage works within the limits of the pre-understandings, which in turn effect and give form to conventional dialogues.118 One can speak only when one’s private pre-understandings can be shared with others through a language. There is a question whether we can count one’s speaking to oneself as a real speaking. It becomes clear that pre-understandings can be related and discovered through a fundamental discussion of tradition, although they are not essen-tially linguistic.

In its turn, language functions for both author and reader to the degree that although the work cannot be grasped totally as it might be, it is not conditioned also by the use of language by both sides. This function relates to the fact that language attains its ulti-mate significance in the act of expressing itself (des Sich-Ausserns). In this self-expression necessarily it assumes a distance from the meaning-term syntheses that previous language usage had reserved in conventions.119

Nevertheless, the function of language, for Gadamer, depends mostly on the prejudices of comprehending rather than on showing how the linguistic reference of a text becomes disclosed. This defini-tion of language restricts hermeneutics to what is readable, rather than to what is referred or returned to. On the other hand, with re-gard to the problem of language itself, as Gadamer acknowledged, the fundamentally linguistic character of understanding cannot in-dicate that all experiencing of the world takes place only as language and in language since there are prelinguistic and metalinguistic dawnings, dumbnesses and silences in which the immediate meeting with being expresses itself.120

There is an argument that if language is a closed system of signs, within which each element refers only to the other elements of the system, then the claim of hermeneutics to reach beyond the "sense" as the immanent content of the text to its "reference" can be excluded.121 Thus critics cannot challenge the fact that the reference of the text, as to what it says about the world can be regarded as sense-free or beyond sense.

It is useful to mention that a purely linguistic study shows the importance of the idea Wittgenstein by expressed in Philosophical Investigations,122 that the learning of a language is not explanation, but training. In the concept of language games Wittgenstein has for-mulated an idea of understanding that is not unlike what Heidegger and Gadamer call an "understanding of being." It is more than simply the product of the individual’s "inner experience." Under-standing in this sense has intersubjective validity which goes before and along with all empirical experience of the events and yet is pre-ontological (preconceptual).123

Consequently, every interpretation in its linguistical determi-nation remains in the final analysis hypothetical. Sartre too spoke of the hypothesis of understanding we must propose in order to under-stand what is not discovered by the convention of discourse and words. Otherwise, even if we had an expression, there would be no-thing new in it. Hence, there is an irreducibly hypothetical character of understanding that distinguishes textual interpretation from the methodological and deductive procedures of scienticism.124

On the other hand, coherent philosophical discourse of a text can be at once hermeneutic recovery of the enigmas which precede and envelop this discourse and inquiry. Such discourse, in its turn, also is similar to the performance of a poet or of musician. The meta-linguistic ambiguity lies also here in the relation between hermeneu-tics and reflection on a symbol. If every symbol gives birth to under-standing by means of an interpretation, then how does it become possible for understanding to appear both in and beyond the symbol?125 Can we say that here prejudices lead to the symbols, whereas understanding comes after prejudices have already ha-ppened? Does this mean that we must believe in order to understand?

Phenomenology, can be used here to understand one symbol by another. For Ricoeur the first stage of the movement of under-standing is determined the comprehending of symbol by symbol, that is, by the totality of symbols. A symbol would be understood here by a rite and a myth, i.e., by other manifestations of the sacred.126 The same symbol unifies several experiences of representation by which understanding becomes more and more extended. The phenomenology of symbols shows how understanding sheds light on prejudices by leading into internal coherence like a symbolic system. However, the hermeneutic philosopher is responsible for showing whether symbols can play a hidden role in language. What gives value to this hidden role is the text’s over-determination. Therefore, symbolic language says something of something other than what it seems to say. This symbol’s meta-language provides a living condition for our prejudices by releasing interpretive meanings.

Finally, it must be noted that in its manner Gadamer’s herme-neutics is based also upon finitude and the historical character of Dasein and tries to carry forward Heidegger’s turn away from his transcendental account of himself. It does not follow Heidegger’s direction reflecting an inspiration from the poetic mythos of Holder-lin, but rather is a return to the open dialectic of Plato.127 Whereas Heidegger’s half-poetic attempts at discourse are sometimes more expressive of a linguistic need than of its overcoming, Gadamer emphasizes the interchange of dialogue and the dialogical structure of language in which an entirely undogmatic dialectic is constantly enacted.128

Hermeneutics on behalf of prejudicial understanding antici-pates meaning, whereas hermeneuein creates the anticipatory or annunciative structure of meaning itself. Jean-Luc Nancy129 notes that the first is possible only on the ground of the second, while the latter does not define interpretation, "nor in all rigor something like pre-understanding." Thus hermeneuein determines a manner through which condition understanding is possible only by the anti-cipation of meaning which creates meaning itself.130

Socrates indicates that the rhapsodist must comprehend the poet and give an exegesis, but his activity cannot be called herme-nia, which implies knowledge that is simple and direct. Here even the task of deciphering hidden meanings would no longer exist. As a conclusion, ekmathesis consists in what the poet says through what he says, while hermeneia consists in restoring the poet in his verse, in making him speak in his own words.131 Socrates notices that it is impossible to be a good interpreter if one does not know what the poet means to say (o ti legei). This critical definition introduces a theory of hermeneutics in which hermeneia is distinct from the acquisition of understanding relating to this logos. Interpretation provides that a beautiful or good hermeneia be possible for the listeners; otherwise hermeneia never become disclosed. Hermeneuein is to interpret the meaning of the orator and to produce the logos of the poet. "The Logos (and/or the dianoia) distinguishes itself from the verse (epe) as such, and the good hermeneus is the one who makes heard (fait entendre: makes understood) the logos in the delivery of the verse."132

Therefore, those who are not poets simply speak again a language which is already prepared, given and conditioned. Holder-lin describes accurately the procedural mode of the poetic spirit where he says that the poet’s word has to dissolve completely all prior factors and conditions of linguistic formation and construc-tion. The poet finds the word which makes possible his poem; he does not possess it as something already given. In order to be poetical, language must be free for its own infinity. Conclusively, Gadamer comes to his view that in the creation of the poet, the "all in all" becomes a lasting being. As a hermeneuein we all have the same linguistic experience in a certain sense, while the poet has it in the most exemplary way. In other words, whoever speaks on and in different events finds the language which is not yet there. Every real speaking is a "language event," as Holderlin would say, "Something infinitely new." A real word which addresses someone presupposes a readiness to leave behind what one brings along by prejudices and prior attitudes.134 We can reveal this as indeterminate openness to-ward the text, an openness which occasionally conditions whenever a word addresses us. This openness implies in human experience a "beginning" and a new creation of interpretation and language.

In response to the question why this indeterminate openness becomes poetic, we must refer to what Gadamer sees as the poetic work and as pertaining to art, rather than as a primordial truth happening, as did Heidegger. The poetic work is not a corrective for the ideal of objective determination. Rather poetic work provides food for thought for our own hermeneutic orientation since in his hermeneutics, following Plato, language is thought up out of dia-logue.135 Consequently, we must try to provide a fluidity for the language of the text even when it is presupposed by some fixed concepts produced in thematic analysis.

Understanding comes into action through the fact that we are engaged in conversation by the text of art and our anticipations of meaning and our prejudices are challenged to measure themselves against the text and thus become open to question ad infinitum. The structure of a question to the text can be recognized in the manner of a suspension of judgment, and especially of prejudices.136 How far this question can relate to Kant’s definition of the aesthetic judgment in which no concept is given, but rather in which the individual object is judged immanently, must be treated again in the context of hermeneutics.

AN INQUIRY INTO THE POSSIBILITY OF THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD IN HERMENEUTICS

As the question of methodology in the theory of interpretation is very important, Gadamer addresses the issue explicitly in his afterward in Truth and Method.137 The open dialectic of absolute knowledge in Schleiermacher appeared far more promising as the foundation for a methodology of the historical sciences, as we see in Dilthey, than the dialectical methodology found in Hegel’s treat-ment of the historical science. Hermeneutics would like to find in the temporal understanding of the text a nontemporal methodology.

In a romantic hermeneutics, grounded on Kant’s Third Criti-que, the transcendental justification of the aesthetic judgement is the basis of the autonomy of aesthetic consciousness; historical con-sciousness is legitimized on the same ground while believing the radical subjectivisation in Kant’s aesthetic to have been truly epoch-making, Gadamer criticizes Kant’s position in reserving the concept of truth to conceptual knowledge (in keeping with Schleiermacher’s view of hermeneutics) and not extending it to the work of art.138 Nonetheless, Kant’s critique cannot be covered by the historical method.139

Whoever wants to learn a science has to master its methodo-logy.140 But there is a basic question whether the application of a method in hermeneutics as inseparable from understanding will be productive (which we will discuss laster in chapter which will be discussed later in chapter four, section two).

Based on the previous chapter and in company with Husserl, subjectivity is not opposite to objectivity, because such a concept of subjectivity itself would then be conceived in objective terms. The transcendental reduction taken by Husserl goes beyond the Kantian dissolution of the opposition between realism and idealism and the judgement, is the "judged content of the judgement as such," which is nothing other than what we ordinarily refer to as judgment as such.148 For hermeneutic interpretation this refers primarily to its content. This does not constitute a special problem in the case of texts because the context can be referred to in any experience of judgement. For Husserl the noema found in reality (wirklich) can be seized in its full concreteness in judging, for the noema of the act of presenting becomes part of the concrete act of judgement.149

The pre-predicative experience of Husserl does not seem to be free from the structure of predication. Heidegger is right when he observed an "ontological prejudice" operative in Husserl’s founda-tional structure, which finally affects the whole idea of a constitutive phenomenology.150 Husserl can escape this criticism by saying that every sense of being must itself be capable of exhibition in con-stitutional analysis and that "Dasein" comes into the discussion only as the eidos "Dasein".151 It is not easy to find the point from which Heidegger could confront the phenomenological idealism of Husserl.

Indeed Heidegger’s project in Being and Time does not itself escape completely the problematic of transcendental reflection. The idea of fundamental ontology and its foundation in Dasein, which is concerned "with being" and the analysis of Dasein, at first seemed simply to mark a new dimension within transcendental phenomeno-logy.152 But under the title of a hermeneutics of facticity, Heidegger objected to Husserl’s eidetic phenomenology that a hermeneutic phenomenology must contain also the theory of facticity, which is not in itself an eidos, Husserl’s phenomenology which consistently holds to the central idea of proto-I cannot be accepted without reservation in interpretation theory in particular that this eidos belong only to the eidetic sphere of universal essences. Phenomeno-logy should be based ontologically on the facticity of the Dasein, and this existence cannot be derived from anything else.153

Nevertheless, Heidegger’s complete reversal of reflection and its redirection of it toward "Being", i.e, the turn or kehre, still is not so much an alteration of his point of view as the indirect result of his critique of Husserl’s concept of transcendental reflection, which had not yet become fully effective in Being and Time.154 Gadamer, however, would incorporate Husserl’s ideal of an eidetic ontology somewhat "alongside" transcendental constitutional research. Here, the philosophical justification lies ultimately in the completion of the transcendental reduction, which can come only at a higher level of direct access of the individual to the object. Thus there is a question of how our awareness of essences remains subordinated to transcen-dental phenomenology, but this does not rule out the possibility of turning transcendental phenomenology into an essence-oriented mundane science.155

Heidegger does not follow Husserl from eidetic to transcen-dental phenomenology, but stays with the interpretation of pheno-mena in relation to their essences. As ‘hermeneutic’, his pheno-menology still proceeds from a given Dasein in order to determine the meaning of existence, but now it takes the form of a fundamental ontology.156 By his careful discussion of the etymology of the words "phenomenon" and "Logos" he shows that "phenomenology" must be taken as letting that which shows itself be seen from itself, and in the very way in it which shows itself from itself.157 The more genuinely a methodological concept is worked out and the more comprehensively it determines the principles on which a science is to be conducted, the more deeply and primordially it is rooted in terms of the things themselves;158 whereas if understanding is restricted to the things themselves only so far as they correspond to those judg-ments considered "first in themselves", then the things themselves cannot be addressed beyond particular judgements regarding events.

Heidegger called this "descriptive phenomenology" which is fundamentally tautological.160 He explains that phenomenon in Greek first signifies that which looks like something, or secondly that which is semblant or a semblance (das scheinbare, der Schein). He sees both these expressions as structurally interconnected, and having nothing to do with what is called an "appearance" or mere "appearance".161 Based on the ordinary conception of phenomenon, the definition of "appearance" as referring to can be regarded also as characterizing the phenomenological concern for the text in itself and for itself. Only through referring to the text in itself can we have a real phenomenology based on appearance. This theory, however, requires a broad meaning of appearance including what does the referring as well as the noumenon.

Heidegger explains that what does the referring must show itself in itself. Further, the appearance "of something" does not mean showing-itself, but that the thing itself announces itself through something which does show itself. Thus, Heidegger urges that what appears does not show itself and anything which fails to show itself can never seem (was sich in der Weise nicht zeigt wie das Erschei-nende, kann auch nie scheinen). On the other hand, while appearing is never a showing-itself in the sense of phenomenon, it is precondi-tioned by something showing-itself (through which the thing announces itself). This showing itself is not appearing itself, but makes the appearing possible.162 Appearing then is an announcing-itself (das sich-melden) through something that shows itself.

Also, a phenomenon cannot be represented by the word "ap-pearance" if it alludes to that wherein something appears without itself being an appearance. That wherein something appears means that wherein something announces itself without showing itself, in other words without being itself an "appearance" (appearance signi-fying the showing itself which belongs essentially to that "wherein" something announces itself). Based upon this argument, phenomena are never appearances. This, however, does not deny the fact that every appearance is dependent on phenomena.163

For Heidegger, it is most characteristic of hermeneutical phe-nomenology to discover the specific meaning of the Logos. This can be recognized also in terms of the thinghood (Sachhaft) of that which is to be described by the scientific determination provided by any text. Only through this textualization of phenomenology does it become possible to have both ordinary and formal signification of the phenomenon as really united in the exhibition of an entity as it shows itself in itself. Nonetheless, as Heidegger elaborates it, when-ever something is explicitly exhibited by its very essence, it does not show itself at all, but lies hidden, while belonging as well to what shows itself.164

Ricoeur follows Husserl only at a secondary level, namely, with regard to the eidetic phenomenology that supersedes the descriptive phenomenology (which had been the abiding interest of Husserl’s Cartesian Mediation and Ideas). What role can eidetic phenomenology play in the hermeneutics of a text? Ricoeur takes the longer route by, first of all, allowing for a hermeneutic philosophy in some contrast to the classical methodical approach to the text. He sees phenomenology as an indispensable presupposition of hermeneutic theory.165 On the other hand, Ricoeur is concerned about the epistemological legitimacy of methods and techniques developed independently of any ontological grounding, for no mediating ground between discourses can be supposed a priori. He fears that an exclusively ontological hermeneutics become just another self-contained discourse.166 Therefore, philosophical hermeneutics must distinguish itself from the methodological disciplines.167

Language is more than the consciousness of the speaker, and thus more than a subjective act. Play is fundamentally prior to the consciousness of the player and represents an order in which the to and fro motion of play follows of itself. From this authentic sense it follows that hermeneutics is not only without goal or purpose, but also without effort of understanding.168 Play happens, as it were, by itself; it refers phenomenologically (and not naturally) to the absence of strain. The structure of play absorbs the hermeneutic consciousness into itself.

On the other hand, the idea of a scientific philosophy is not surrendered. Husserl’s The Crisis reflects a certain change in his former confidence that by his "total life-situation which in the end becomes fully without an object he could provide a foundation for philosophy as an apodictically rigorous science,169 As a result, in contrast to typically scientific method, according to Gadamer the method of phenomenology deals with that which has no foundation; it proceeds by a transcendental experience rather than empirical induction; and it must first create its own ground.170

Though phenomenology’s call for philosophy as a rigorous science is unable to satisfy the common need for a world view,171 Gadamer still believes that one’s own philosophical standpoint shines through his description of the basic meaning of phenomeno-logy. Moreover, he joins philosophy and phenomenology in one by stating, "It is simply not possible in philosophy to isolate a methodo-logical technique that one can learn independently of its applications and their philosophical consequences."172

There is no unique sense of phenomenology, since everyone has his own opinion about what it really means. Has then Gadamer trapped himself in recognizing different "reflections on phenomenology", rather than merely one phenomenology? He acknowledges that there is a "hierarchy of self-evidence" united by a "systematic consistency." Restriction to pure phenomenon first opens the pheno-menological dimension of question. The need for knowledge was not satisfied by mere differentiation of essence and fact, nor by appeal to the self-evidence of what is given directly in the intuition of essences. In the last analysis, the appeal to self-evidence had only the legitimation of a belief in oracles, as Husserl recognizes in The Crisis.173 In order to reach more certain knowledge, a further reduction was needed, one that distinguished within what was given in self-evident intuition as that whose non-being was absolutely absurd and impossible. As Gadamer emphasizes, only from such "apodictic self-evidence" could a hierarchy of evidence be expected that would satisfy the claim of philosophy to be a rigorous science.174

In the Heideggerian point of view hermeneutics is also phenomenological. Hence the term ‘hermeneutics,’ used by the early Heidegger, cannot be reduced to a methodology, but is a theory of the real experience that thinking is.175

For Heidegger, there are three basic components of the phenomenological method: reduction, construction and destruction. All these belong together in their content, and their mutual related-ness must be grounded. In philosophy construction is necessarily destruction, that is to say, a de-constructing of traditional concepts carried in an historical turn to the tradition. But this de-construction must not be taken as a negation of the tradition; rather, as destruc-tion belongs to construction, philosophical cognition is essentially historical cognition. The history of philosophy belongs to the con-cept of philosophy as science, to the concept of phenomenological investigation.176

Husserl had made it a universal working method to go back to life, abandoning the restrictions of the scientifically advocated me-thods (including that of the human sciences). Indeed, Husserl’s analysis of the life world had given the question of objectivity a totally new background. "Science is anything but a fact from which to start." Beyond this transcendental objectivity, Heidegger takes a radical step toward being. By assuming the special methodological nature of the historical sciences, with Husserl, (and against Dilthey) he believes that historical being is not to be distinguished from natural being.177

Phenomenological apprehension must direct itself toward a being in such a way that the being of this being is thereby brought out and can be thematized. Such an apprehension of being always turns at first and necessarily to some being, but then it is led away from the being and back to its own being. This leading back or re-duction of investigative vision from a naively apprehended being to being is phenomenological reduction and can be called the phenomenological method.178 Phenomenological reduction is this method of leading phenomenological vision from the natural attitude of a human being whose life is involved in the world of things and persons back to the transcendental life of consciousness and its experiences of the noetic-noematic events. As an hermeneutic approach, this means leading phenomenological vision back from the apprehension of being to the "understanding" of the "being" of the being.179

Phenomenology is the name for the method of ontology, that is, of scientific philosophy, which precludes its expressing any thesis about being.180 To return to the phenomenological given as such one must renounce all theory and metaphysical construction. Thus, phenomenological reduction is connected closely with epoché, the suspension of all interpretation. But transcendental reduction is not a suspension of all the "being references" of hermeneutics: rather it releases all the interpreted references. Reduction should not be oversimplified; its goals is not to reduce to the unity of a principle, but to discuss the wealth of self-given phenomena in an unbiased way. Thus, there is no real conflict between the Husserlian reduction of epoche, understood as seeking a single principle, and the general hermeneutic sense of a self-given phenomena, provided that in first defining the source of being hermeneutics is not disregarded.

Nonetheless, phenomenology, notes Gadamer, has been no less criticized than the habits of thought of contemporary philo-sophy. Though phenomenology sought to avoid every unwarranted construction and tried to subject the philosophical theories to criti-cal examination, such phenomenology is nonetheless a prejudiced construction in Gadamer’s eyes since, for example, it attempted to derive all the phenomena of human social life from a single prin-ciple.181

Accordingly, phenomenology comes up against a limit for its ideal of a "final grounding." The aporiai connected with the self-referential character of phenomenology as the science of pure consciousness, as well as the aporiai connected with the self-con-stitution of temporality, brought the entire project of a transcen-dental phenomenology to its downfall.182 It is perhaps, for this reason that Gadamer says that Husserl’s The Crisis attempts to give an implicit answer to Being and Time.183

Hermeneutics as the science of being is fundamentally distinct in method from all other natural and even human sciences. Herme-neutics as an interpreting concern of philosophy cannot be merely the methodological basis of the so-called human sciences. The methods of the human sciences are not at issue here.184 The herme-neutics developed by Gadamer, for example, is not a methodology of the human sciences, and the hermeneutical phenomenon is not basically a problem of method at all.185 The hermeneutic pheno-menon goes beyond the methodological self-consciousness of the human sciences to reflect an understanding of what the human sciences are. It is also not an art or a technique of understanding, for it does not propose to prescribe for the sciences of the conduct of life. In the context of the history of human sciences which are the products of those modes of experiences outside of the natural science, Gadamer discusses whether hermeneutics stands closer to rhetoric or to logic and the methodology of sciences. Inquiry into the history of such sciences as linguistics indicates that the notion of method fundamentally dissolves the notion of science by opening it to the nature of being human.186

Hermeneutical reflection, indeed, serves a unique methodological endeavor of science by making transparently clear the guiding pre-understandings in the sciences, thereby opening new dimensions of questioning. Meanwhile, in hermeneutics, there is no way for understanding to become the consumer of the inventions and information attained by science. Conversely, this understanding, by providing all human relations to the world, stands as a point of inde-pendent validity within science and resists any attempt to be reinterpreted as a scientific method.187

Although the historical sciences’ attitude toward method and the influence exerted by the successful model of the natural sciences led philosophical reflection to restrict the universality of the hermeneutical experience to its scientific form, the full extent of the fundamental hermeneutical uniqueness of experience was not indicated before Gadamer, either in the work of Wilhelm Dilthey or in the studies of the neo-Kantians. For Gadamer, Heidegger’s extension of the concept of understanding to an existential, i.e., to a fundamental categorical determination of human existence, should be regarded as the fundamental impetus in the fundamental herme-neutical experience. This led Gadamer to transcend the discussion of method and initiate a new and expanded formulation of the herme-neutic question.188 Only by this attempt can the methodological uni-queness of the human sciences among the historical human sciences and the natural sciences ground its legitimacy.

This hermeneutical question seeks, first of all, "to discover and bring into consciousness something which that methodological dispute cannot serve or even conceal and neglect, something that does not so much confine or limit modern science as precede it and make it possible."189 Moreover, this question does not make its own immanent law of advance any less decisive.190 Gadamer sometimes calls this question the "problem of phenomenological immanence"; he acknowledges too that his book is phenomenological in method. Yet he leaves unexplained how this hermeneutic phenomenology would join with the fundamental question of understanding being.

It must be mentioned, first, that the priority of the question of knowledge shows how the idea of method is fundamentally limited.191 This question appears as the starting point for our argu-ment as a whole. "There is no such thing as a method of learning to ask questions, of learning to see what is questionable. Socrates taught us that important knowledge is knowledge that one does not know."192 And it is crucial that important knowledge remain knowledge even when nobody knows of it in any manner.

Concern with the question of knowledge, the traditional point of opposition between Plato and Aristotle, could be less and less confirmed. Both are ruled by the enduring urgency of the Socratic question of the good. Therefore, the content of the Platonic dialo-gues can be depicted on an Aristotelian conceptual level. Gadamer believes there is a unique contemporaneity (Aktualitat) of the Platonic dialogues in the fact that they transcend all ages in the same way as great masterpieces of art.193 The indissoluble entanglement of theoretical and practical knowledge testifies to the continuity of the Socratic question which binds Plato and Aristotle to one another and both to every human present (Gegenwart).194

There is a primary question of how interpretive knowledge can be achieved in a methodical manner. The perplexing task of herme-neutics is grounded neither on a methodical praxis of art history and historical scholarship, nor on the consciousness of method; rather, it is the philosophical idea of grounding an argument to the extent that it is a philosophical requirement of science and method to recognize their distinctive character in the context of human Existenz.195 We must remember that although Gadamer in Truth and Method takes the aesthetic question as a starting point for his reflection and oc-casionally returns to it, this plays a rather subordinate role in de-veloping his investigations. Aesthetics has to be absorbed into hermeneutics.196 For him, hermeneutics has to do basically with a theoretical attitude toward the practice of the understanding of the texts (and as Gadamer thinks, toward the experiences interpreted in them).197 Understanding for Gadamer is conceived as part of the process through which meaning comes into being, in which the signi-ficance of all statements in art or other dimensions is formed and made complete. Thus, in the third part of his work, the study of understanding is practically identical with that of the understanding of texts.198 This also means that without an understanding of the text there are no practical situations of understanding that can be resolved by hermeneutics.

On the other hand, Gadamer attempts to articulate the effec-tive historical consciousness as well as the aesthetic question as combined with the being in hermeneutics, rather than with the understanding itself. He says: "What in Heidegger’s thinking had led to `the turn’, I for my part attempted to describe as the horizon experience of our self-understanding, as the effective historical consciousness (wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein) that is more being than being conscious."199

The consciousness of effective history seeks to be aware of the prejudgments and to control its own pre-understanding; thus it also does away with naive objectivism.200 In this connection, for Gada-mer a task of speaking on behalf of understanding and also of over-coming modern times takes place in the analysis of the hermeneutic experience as it becomes aware of itself. Gadamer says that what he means by wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein is inevitably more being than consciousness, though being is never fully manifest. Only through hermeneutical reflection is one free over against oneself and able to evaluate freely what in one’s pre-understanding may be justified and what is unjustifiable.201 Thus, the hermeneutic con-sciousness, for Gadamer, seeks to confront something of the truth of remembrance with what still is and remains ever real.202 In this context, hermeneutics can be freed from the consequences of a tran-scendental theory of consciousness. This fact can be studied through Heidegger’s idea of half-poetic language whose task it is to go beyond the language of metaphysics in which transcendental con-sciousness still can be realized by adopting its own method of procedure.203

As we made clear, understanding is the placing of oneself wi-thin a process of tradition, in which past and present are constantly fused. This is what must be expressed in the hermeneutical question of knowledge, as we see in Truth and Method, which is far too do-minated by the idea of a process, a method. The understanding subject does not contribute the interplay of the movement of the interpreter, but moves in the common ground, connecting it with tradition from which it gleans the fore-understandings which acti-vate the dialogue with the text.204

The strangeness of the tradition, criticized by Romanticism, becomes the basic methodological presupposition of the hermeneu-tical procedure. Hermeneutics, thus, becomes a universal and general "methodical attitude" in the study of tradition that presu-pposes the forgiveness of the content that is to be understood. Its first task is to overcome this foreignness by the understanding. The foundation of the modern sciences gets validity from hermeneutical reflection on alienation which has achieved reflective awareness through the concept of method. This psychological-historical under-standing, according to Schleiermacher, is the immediate insight into the subject matter and becomes the only genuinely "methodical, scientific attitude." Therefore hermeneutics becomes the universal organ of the historical method in human sciences.205

One is aware of the normative viewpoints in the practical situation in which one stands owing to its binding validity, rather than to theoretical knowledge. (Practical philosophy can make this awareness an object of its theory, described by Aristotle as ethical virtues.) The theoretician can see these viewpoints adequately only from the standpoint of their concrete realization, in so far as he experiences himself as bound by their validity. Gadamer follows Aristotle’s view that the possibility of theoretical insight is re-stricted apparently by the practical field. The same is true for Geis-teswissenschaften, and beyond that in a more general hermeneutical way of thinking of being. It must be remembered here, that without this practical knowledge gained from the methodical attitude of tradition the theoretical analysis of the possibilities of under-standing would not in itself be an objectifying reflection enabling understanding to be mastered by means of science and methodo-logy.206

The hermeneutical object of reference does not appear to be fulfilled completely, either in theory or in practice, by a phenome-nology such as we see in Hegel, in which an object in itself is active in the hermeneutical process. The free play of our interpreting being is not operative in real philosophical speculation. The doctrine ad-dressed by the historical attitude of philosophy, as in pheno-menology, "to the things themselves" appears similar in this. The fact that in hermeneutics there is no room for unprejudiced analysis of the phenomenon puts it basically in controversy with the traditional classical understanding of the concept of the thing. Also, as reflected in hermeneutics, the concept of the thing tells us more than the concept of res. The hermeneutical object of reference is more placed in the concept of the thing or Sache in the German world, by which, as Gadamer says, "all what is called causa is permitted above."207 This object of reference here represents the disputed matter which is under interpretation.

Beyond the idealistic of knowledge of a thing in Hegel, life experience and ideas brought Gadamer to the view that the truth of a single proposition cannot be measured by its merely factual re-lationship of correctness and congruency. Rather it depends, ulti-mately, upon the genuineness of its foundation, since the meaning of a statement in hermeneutical consciousness is not merely exhausted in what is stated.208 This basic givenness of the hermeneutical pro-blem can be made concrete in terms of fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. As Gadamer says here, we must be concerned with what historical-hermeneutical consciousness requires. In fact, methodologically consciousness will be concerned, not with forming anticipatory ideas, but with making these ideas conscious, so as to acquire right understanding from the things themselves.209

Regarding the issue of the hermeneutic thing itself, Husserl perceives the coincidence of its intuition and explication, but he fails to draw all its consequences.210 Here, all phenomenology is an expli-cation of evidence and an evidence of explication. The phenome-nological experience is nothing more than that evidence which is explicated and which unfolds evidence. Based upon this view, phe-nomenology can be realized only as hermeneutics. Indeed, pheno-menology and hermeneutics presuppose one another if the idealism of Husserlian phenomenology succumbs to the critique of herme-neutics.211 It is only in the light of interpretation that something becomes a fact, and only within this process can we express any observation of a thing (what-so-ever it might be).212 In this sense of phenomenology one can follow the trace of an ontological method required by the study of the thing itself.

Ricoeur shows how in the encounter between essential in-tuition and interpretation Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations in-dicated that interpretation becomes necessary at the point of culmination of phenomenological idealism, i.e., in the context of the problematic of constitution. Hence Seinsgeltung is completely enclosed in the transcendental life of the ego; what exists for me (für mich) derives from myself (aus mir selbst) all its validity as being.213 Phenomenology, with its idealistic self-interpretation, according to Ricoeur, cannot attain the significance of intentionally, viz., that the meaning of consciousness lies beyond the intention. Hermeneutics as the theory of the text performs a radical decen-tering from the subject to the world.214 In Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of the text, the subject is no longer the ego bearing the ultimate responsibility for the world as its radical origin. Subjectivity finds its validity at the end of a hermeneutical process, the moment of application where the ontological constitution of a finite, plural, historical subjectivity is the issue.215

There remains always a question whether hermeneutics can carry a methodological concern or not. This methodological con-cern, however, permits another attitude of hermeneutics which sets it apart from the anti-methodological cast of Gadamer who in this issue appears the more faithful disciple of Heidegger. There is always a question whether shifting from eidetic phenomenology to phenomenological hermeneutics is ultimately preferable. In this way, Ricoeur tries to demonstrate the universality and fertility of in-tentional analysis applied to the effective and lived experiences, and also to use the results won by this stretching of the phenome-nological method to call into question the transcendental doctrine erected on the narrow base of the analysis of representations.216 Ricoeur believes that it is not a question of providing some kind of imaginative intuition, but rather of thinking, of elaborating concepts that comprehend and make one comprehend, concepts woven together, if not in a closed system, at least in a systematic order. It is also a question of transmitting, by means of this rational elabora-tion, a richness of "signification that (is) always there," that has already preceded rational elaboration. Based on this fact, it can be concluded that all that hermeneutical methodology represents is a way in which what has been said by any human being takes place before philosophy (meta hermeneutica). Heraclitus already warned us of this where he said, "The master whose oracle is at Delphi does not speak, does not dissimulate; he signifies."217

Therefore, hermeneutics and phenomenology, despite their opposite questions, stand in reciprocal relatedness which needs to be brought out. Hermeneutics is erected on the basis of phenomenology which in turn remains an unsurpassable presupposition of herme-neutics. Based upon this, Ricoeur acknowledges that phenomenology cannot constitute itself without a hermeneutical presupposition. This hermeneutical position of phenomenology is linked to the role of Auslegung (explication) in the fulfillment of its philosophical project.218

Ricoeur believes that each of the terms, ‘phenomenology’ or ‘hermeneutics,’ represents the point of arrival of histories which criss-cross the general history of ideas. Phenomenology is the ultimate embodiment of philosophical idealism. Hermeneutics is the final stage of the art (techne) whose name it bears, that of reading omens, interpreting signs and announcing messages. This later became the art of the jurisconsults, the exegetes of sacred books, the learned scholars of the classics. Later still it was the general theory of interpretation, an organon of historical reason. Thereby now it has become ontological and foundational.219

In addition, there are two concepts of hermeneutics of pheno-menology. The first is what Ricoeur calls Heidegger’s "short route," that is the ontology of understanding, through which we determine the conditions upon which a knowing subject can understand a text. The other way is Ricoeur’s "long route," which moves along the paths of semantics as well as of reflection.220 As a result of the solidarity between hermeneutics and phenomenology, the phenomenological question can direct itself toward a being, while it must yet do so in such a way that the being of this being is thereby brought out in order so that it can be thematized. Apprehension of being, for Heidegger, always turns, at first and necessarily, to some being; but then it is led away from that being and back to its being. This basic component is called the phenomenological method, i.e., the leading back or re-duction of investigative vision from a naively appre-hended being to a phenomenologically reduced being.221

Here, there is a question of how meaning would be restored on behalf of hermeneutic methodology, how we can return to a dis-course which does not pertain to my cultural circle. For Ricoeur this is the inverse problem of demythologization, for which it was a question of eliminating discourse which is no longer our own. It is, indeed, a question of how we can recover a discourse and express it in modern speech. The solution, for Ricoeur, lies in posing the question of philosophy as a hermeneutics. The task of philosophy is to elaborate a general theory of interpretation (as we see in the light of Marx, Nietzsche and Freud). Schleiermacher had begun and Dilthey continued this. Ricoeur sees this as extending the problem of the understanding of texts to understanding all signs susceptible of "being considered as texts."222

Understanding being within a phenomenological manner means to regard hermeneutics with the sense of the text, not as behind it, but in front of it and disclosed. What has to be understood is not the initial situation of discourse, but what points toward a possible world, due to the non-ostensive reference of the text.223 Every theory of interpretation postulates a theory of text; it becomes the task of hermeneutics to read a text and to distinguish its true from its apparent sense, to search for the sense under the sense, to search for the intelligible text under the unintelligible text. There is a proper way of uncovering what was covered and veiled, of removing what Nietzsche identifies by the metaphor of mask.224 The relation of concealing and revealing of the text calls for a specific reading of the text, that is, for hermeneutics.

Frege was concerned with the cognitive value of a sentence; for him the sense and the reference of the thought deserve the same attention. These concepts indeed should be ranked after the level of the text in order to affirm that the ideality (Sinnidealitat) of texts is not exhausted in subjective representations. Moreover, an objec-tivity of meaning (Sinn) can be defined only in such manner that the text is a kind of atemporal object unbounded by ties to any historical development of events.225

Yet the early Husserl strongly insisted on the Ansich (in-itself) of the object of hermeneutics.226 This object of hermeneutics as what can be defended in phenomenology is not exactly that for which the question of being or text is responsible, but is the prior question in hermeneutics. What Husserl regards as a necessary condition of philosophy as a rigorous science, for Heidegger is impossible except by negation of the philosophical attitude. Heidegger denies any reduction of the human being to only pure consciousness and of Being to being-object. One experiences oneself not as pure con-sciousness, but rather as a Being-in-the world who ek-sists toward worldly beings.227 Heidegger makes a completely new beginning in this issue. His point of view is completely different since pure analysis and description do not have the same value for him as for Husserl who thinks of phenomenology only as the instrument of a pre-existing, but yet implicit doctrine.228 In contrast, Heidegger here takes a radical step toward the hermeneutical question of being.229

Consequently, in hermeneutics we need an ontological me-thod, but not in the sense of some definite hermeneutical discipline interconnected with others. Rather it must be taken in terms of the objective requirements of definite questions and the kind of treat-ment which ‘things themselves’ require.230

In clarifying the scientific character of ontology, the task of demonstrating the ontic foundation and characterization of this foundation itself and of distinguishing the mode of knowing opera-tive in ontology as the science of being are not strictly separable.231

Understanding-of-being is transcendence, whether pre-ontolo-gical and non-thematic, or thematic and conceptually ontological.232 This disclosure is the metaphysically primordial being, the truth which is transcendence itself, veritas transcendetalis. With the "happening of transcendence," beings are already manifested to be in the first instance and at length concealed so that truth must be called unconcealedness with reference to this corresponding con-cealedness.233 Beings are generally concealed as long as they are not faced with understanding-of-being. As the Greek word aletheia shows, beings must first of all be drawn out from concealment. Later we will point out that concealment and unconcealment of being become understandable to Dasein only through the hermeneutical discovery of the text.

We must remember in brief that Gadamer’s hermeneutics is grounded on the separation of Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics from his dialectics, while trying to defend Dilthey’s attempt to establish-ing a pure hermeneutics against the consequences drawn by Heidegger and Nietzsche. On the other hand, Gadamer proceeded with Hegel who challenged Gadamer both negatively and posi-tively.234 At the end of his introduction to Truth and Method, through a comparison to the method of phenomenology, Gadamer describes what kind of method hermeneutics might be. He states that his investigation of hermeneutics is directed by Husserl’s con-sciousness of phenomenological description, by Dilthey’s breadth of historical horizon, and, not least, by the reference to both of these by Heidegger. This is the standard by which the hermeneutician desires to be measured.235 Indeed, Gadamer’s aim is not to propose a method, but rather to describe what is the case when understanding takes place.

He studies these basic states of affairs in Truth and Method guided by an understanding of texts. With the help of textual under-standing he carries out his transcendental reflection, and derives his theoretical insights.236 Thus, Gadamer tries to build philosophical hermeneutics by describing what always happens whenever an inter-pretation is convincing and successful. Consequently, it is not a doctrine about a technical skill that would state how understanding ought to be.237

The very idea of a definitive interpretation seems intrinsically contradictory in unveiling the truth of the text. Interpretation cannot be the result of a procedure for interrogating and construing pre-given texts by a methodically informed interpreter. The real power of hermeneutical consciousness is our ability to see what is ques-tionable.238 Interpretation is always on the way. The word ‘inter-pretation’ points to the finitude of the human being and of know-ledge.239 Hermeneutics is not a "know-how" which, like some know-ing-how-to make, just chooses its task. It is posed according to the practice of one’s living.240 As a result, like practical philosophy (politics) for Aristotle, hermeneutics is more than the highest tech-nique. Reflecting upon the possible, interpretation can be defined as a teaching about a technical skill (Kunstlehre) in the manner of rhetoric and in the same manner is a natural capacity of human beings.241

Philosophy, in this connection, can be regarded as a herme-neutics, an analysis of significations. (This recalls Husserl’s defini-tion of phenomenology as philosophy). Hermeneutics, then, is not simply a reflection on the rules of exegesis, because culture itself is a text. Consequently, philosophy is exegetical in the degree to which it is a deciphering behind the masked signs of the intentions.242

For this reason Heidegger sees the acceptance of the doctrine of ideas as the beginning of the forgetfulness of being, and believes the earliest Greek thinking about being prepared for the forget-fulness of being in metaphysics. Gadamer discloses this by defend-ing the authentic dimension of the Platonic dialectic of ideas beyond every thing that exists (or what we call text vis-a-vis interpretation); this allows us to understand by going beyond a simple-minded acceptance of ideas. In the final analysis this is a countermovement against the metaphysical interpretation of being as the being of existing beings (Sein als des Seins des Seienden). Yet, Gadamer appreciates Heidegger’s view regarding the forgetfulness of being by recalling the question of being through dismissing whatever had been attempted by the metaphysical tradition toward understanding being.243

If being is the proper theme of philosophy as hermeneutics and if philosophy is also not a simple world view, can we determine the specific method of hermeneutics as ontology? In answer we must say that hermeneutics in principle relates to the origins of interpretations as beings or texts, while philosophy deals with what every positing of being, even that by a world view, must presuppose fundamentally. The method of ontology, that is, of philosophy in general, is the analysis of the truth-character of being. Being is given only if the understanding of being, i.e., Dasein, exists; accordingly this lays claim to a distinctive priority in ontological inquiry. It makes itself manifest in all discussions of the basic problems of ontology and above all in the fundamental question of the meaning of being in general. Ontology, then, as a fundamental discipline, is the analytic of the Dasien. This means that ontology cannot be established in a purely ontological manner; its possibility is referred back to a being, to something ontic, that is, to Dasein.244 This new concept of ontolo-gy can be defined basically without any need for a methodological understanding of a text or being.

Consequently, hermeneutics in this manner, as always, reflects upon the possible (instead of ‘possibilities’) interpretation as useful and advantageous not for anything except itself. Therefore the hermeneutical analysis must be determined by the limit of philosophical interpretation or discourse. The limit (not the death) of philosophy is the condition for philosophy to become possible (or to be dead). Through this episteme, hermeneutics is taken as in-scribed within the text in contrast to the hermeneutical view that attempted to govern it from without.245 The fact that scientific knowledge demands rigorous scientific demonstration of its grounds, is not a task of methodology, but is a characteristic of her-meneutics which in any case is already operative in that which is understood. Therefore, results as scientific come to maturity only in the circle of understanding or interpretation.246

For Gadamer, the event of understanding is the formation of a comprehensive horizon in which both the horizon of text and that of the interpreter become united into a common view of the subject matter i.e., the meaning.247 We can gain critical awareness of preju-dices of understanding and correct them in our effort to hear what the text says to us. As far as it depends on our understanding, the correction of prejudices is no longer to be regarded as transcen-dening all prejudices toward a prejudice-free arena.

Consequently, a so-called hermeneutical methodology can come into account in differing presence. This is the very basis on which present interpretation is announced or desired; it corresponds to the method of hermeneutics. It no longer exists without différ-ance, but must be understood as something other than the classical economy of metaphysics. The movement of différance as producing different things is the reference of different things. It becomes that which differentiates as the common root of all the oppositional con-cepts that mark language, such as sensible or intelligible, intuition or signification, nature or culture, etc. Through considering différ-ance as a common root, that is the element of the same, it already has been assumed as one reference to which all differentiations of beings must refer through the hermeneutical method of differentiating.248