INTERPRETATION AND THE TEMPORALIZATION OF TIME249

In his earlier works, and notably in Being and Time, Heidegger had already advanced the view that temporality constitutes the meaning of the human’s mode of Being. Temporality is also the condition which makes historicity possible as a temporal mode of Being constitutive for man’s coming-to-pass as such.250

There is a temporal continuity in Dasein. This is required for the revelation of a work of art through interpretation, both as under-standing which already was, and as the way in which understanding was. Understanding is possible only in the temporal revision of one’s standpoint through the mutual relations of author and interpreter which allow the subject-matter to emerge. Here, the prejudices held by the interpreter play an important part in opening an horizon of possible questions.251

It may be argued that the historian tries to curb this historical distance by getting beyond the temporal text in order to force it to yield information that it does not intend and of itself is unable to give. With regard to the particular text in application, this would seem to be the case. For example, what makes the true historian is an understanding of the significance of what he finds. Thus, the testimony of history is like that given before a court. In the German language, and based on this reason, the same word is used for both in general, Zeugnis (testimony; witness).252

But referring back to Gadamer’s position, we can see that it is in view of the historical distance that understanding must reconcile itself with itself and that one recognize oneself in the other being. The body of this argument becomes completely firm through the idea of historical Bildung, since, for example, to have a theoretical stance is, as such, already alienation; namely, dealing with something that is not immediate, but is other, belonging to memory and to thought. Moreover, theoretical Bildung leads beyond what man knows and experiences immediately. It consists in learning to affirm what is different from oneself and to find universal viewpoints from which one can grasp the thing as "the objective thing in its freedom," without selfish interest.253 This indicates that an aesthetic discovery of a thing is conditioned primarily on assuming the thing where it is no longer, i.e., from a distance.

In this connection, we can extend critically Gadamer’s concept of the dynamism of distanciation from the object of under-standing which is bounded by the frame of effective consciousness. This is based on the fact that in spite of the general contrast between belonging and alienating distance, the consciousness of effective history itself contains an element of distance. The history of effects, for Ricoeur, contains what occurs under the condition of historical distance. Whether this is either the nearness of the remote or efficacy at a distance, there is a paradox in otherness, a tension between proximity and distance which is essential to historical consciousness.254

The possibility of effective historical consciousness is grounded in the possibility of any specific present understanding of being futural; in contrast, the first principle of hermeneutics is the Being of Dasein, which is historicity (Geschichtlichkeit) itself.255 In Gadamer’s view, Dasein’s temporality, which is the basis for its historicity, grounds the tradition. The last sections of Being and Time claimed to indicate that the embodiment of temporality can be found in Dasein’s historicality.256 As a result of this, the tradition is circularly grounded in Dasein’s temporality, while also surpassing its borders in order to be provided by a hermeneutical reference in distance.

We must study the root of this dilemma in so far as it is related to the sense of time. This is presupposed by historical conscious-ness, which in turn is preceded essentially by temporality. This inherent enigma in the hermeneutics of Dasein’s time led Heidegger to distinguish between authenticity and inauthenticity in our relation to time. The current concept of time can never totally fulfill the hermeneutical requirements. Ricoeur considered that time can be understood only if grasped within its limit, namely, eternity, but be-cause eternity escapes the totalization and closure of any particular time, it remains inscrutable.257

Based on this aspect, each word is absolutely complete in itself, yet, because of its temporality, its meaning is realized only in its historical application.258 Nevertheless, historical interpretation can serve as a means to understand a given and present text even when, from another perspective, it sees the text simply as a source which is part of the totality of an historical tradition.259

For Heidegger, the past character of time, i.e., the ‘pastness’ (passétité) belongs to a world which no longer exists, while a world is always world for a Dasein.260 It is clear that the past would remain closed off from any present were present Dasein not itself to be historical. Dasein, however, is in itself historical insofar as it is a possibility of interpreting. In being futural Dasein is its past, which comes back to it in the ‘how’. This is the ontological question of a thing in contrast to the question of the ‘what.’ The manner of its coming back is, among other processes, conscience. This makes clear why only the ‘how’ can be repeated. According to Ricoeur, history presents a past that has been as if it were present, as a function of poetic imagination. On the other hand, fictive narration imitates history in that it presents events as if they had happened, i.e., as if they occurred in the past.261 This intersection between history and fiction constitutes human time (le temps humain) when-ce an historical consciousness develops, where time can be understood as a singular totality.262

Since the text can be viewed temporally, interpretation, as the work of art, is temporal and the best model for hermeneutical under-standing is the one most adequate to the experience of time.263 Nevertheless, against Ricoeur, Gadamer found the identity of understanding not to be fixed in eternity. Instead, it is the continuity of our becoming-other in every response and in every application of pre-understanding that we have of ourselves in new and unpredict-able situations.264 On this issue, it can be asked whether there is a way to reconcile Gadamer and Ricoeur on the issue of hermeneutical temporality.

The authentic source in the eternal return to Being can be discovered in Heidegger’s position: the eternal repetition of that which is known as that which is unknown, the familiar as the unfamiliar. The eternal return introduces difference which is disruptive to our conceptions of temporal movement. However, identity and differ-nce must be destabilised in favor of the performance of a new concept of hermeneutics. In this a temporal event requires that one cross over to another hermeneutics of time that cannot be thought restricted only in temporalization since it is beyond when one begins. This concept is called by Heidegger the nearness of what lies after.265

In addition, understanding is to be taken not as reconstruction, but as mediation in sofaras it conveys the past into the present. Even when we grasp the past "in itself," understanding remains essentially a mediation or translation of past meaning into the present situation. As Gadamer states, understanding itself is not to be thought of so much as an action of subjectivity, but rather as the entering into an event of transmission in which past and present are constantly mediated.266 This requires not detaching temporality from the ontological preconception of the present-at-hand, but trying to distinguish that from the simple horizon phenomenon of temporal consciousness.267 The event of hermeneutics never takes place if understanding is considered to be defined in the arena of the tempo-ralization of time in the past in itself.

The Greek understanding of history as deviation from the order of things was changed in medieval philosophy to accept that there is no recognizable order within history except temporality itself. (Nonetheless, the absolute epoch is not to be taken merely as similar to a Christian understanding of time, which would result in a technological conception of time in terms of which the future is unable to be planned or controlled.) The new in temporality comes to be as the old is recalled in dissolution. In recollection, the dissolution of the old becomes provocative, i.e., an opening of possibilities for the new.268 The dissolution of the old is not a non-temporal characteristic of temporalization.

Therefore, the old is able to be surveyed in itself as something departed, where an indefinite future begins. Gadamer here states explicitly that hermeneutical transition is not the same as the ‘now’ that couples together what has preceded and what is to come, while it itself does not endure. Transition appears for Gadamer as the true being of time in the sense that everything is in it at the same time, such that past and future are together. Therefore understanding an epoch is not a chosen departure from something in order to under-stand it; but, rather, concerns time itself.269 For Gadamer this transition is a definite indefinite being which brings the flow of time to a standstill. In transition, the new comes to be as the old that is recalled in its dissolution.270

From the discussion of the continuity and discontinuity of time, we arrive at the point that what is distinctive about specificity (Jeweiligkeit) is that, through running ahead into authentic time, it has all time for itself in each specific case.271 The difficult question is whether time itself occurs in hermeneutics or not. We know only that time never becomes long because originally it has no length. Based on the fact that Dasein is temporal, the nature of the hermeneutical experience is not, as Gadamer says, outside of our inter-retations. However, as a result of this dilemma, it seems, we are possessed by something as a temporalization of time which enables us to be opened up for the hermeneutical moment concerning our experience whether past or future.

But it is the reality of time which is so experienced. In experience, time is not conscious as an empty horizon embracing every occurrence in time. Rather, it is conscious as primordial tempora-lity, which occurs as an entity as such, and which is driven by the anxiety of our life. This is why, consequently, Gadamer insists in reckoning ‘world-time’ as secondary time compared to the primor-dial time which comes from the core of time in itself.272

The achievement of continuity among previously discontinuous moments is something "new," and thus presents a discontinuity of its own. In this way, the logical process, reflected in the tempora-lization of time, remains open and without a preordained end.273 This logical process must not mistakenly be regarded as the hermeneutics of time although it is congruent therewith.

As we have stated about Dasein, here also with regard to time, the fundamental phenomenon is the future. Hence, Gadamer’s understanding of Aristotelian time as empty calls for a sense for time which is primarily a sense for what is future. This sense is present in the prolepsis of time and refers what is present to what is not present. As human creatures, we can set objectives for ourselves and thus are able to seek means which are appropriate to these objectives. This presupposes distance from what captivates one for the present moment. Therefore, based on this sense of time, hermeneutical understanding prejudices itself in the future while anticipating the purposes of time.274 It does not seem correct to say that this under-standing has a free hand in creating prejudices. It means, instead, that it is false to claim a sense of hermeneutical absence in the present.

According to Ricoeur, since the meaning of a text is open to any one who can read and interpret it, it is the omnitemporality of meaning which opens it to unknown readers. The historicity of reading is the counterpart of this specific omnitemporality. Yet for Ricoeur it is difficult to think that there is a moment in which the text separates from its author and the author’s situation, that provides the text with the ability to procure new interpretations.275 We can ask why omnitemporality of meaning can provide futural events, while temporality itself is determined with the present situation.

We come to the conclusion that temporality is the condition of the possibility of all understanding of being; being is understood and conceptually comprehended by means of time.276 Not only in Aristotle’s notion of being as ti en einai, but also in Hegel’s notion of Wesen, the temporal horizon of being resounds. Moreover, Aristotle’s concept of time, and also that of Hegel as pointed out by Heidegger, is the representative of the vulgar notion of time as mea-sured time, which, in fact, constitutes the object of their thematic analysis of the problem of time.277 Does not this indicate that Aristotle was aware of the fact that time itself must be referred by the hermeneutical determination of time?

But time itself is ecstatic; ek-sistence transpires in ectasis. Dasein is thrown into the ectasis of time and one can understand oneself only in time. Time is the horizon through which under-standing is brought about.278 It seems, thus, that time as the origin of events must be regarded as a horizontal text before Being. Through the unveiling of time, Being unveils itself in understanding.

In the ontological analytic of Dasein it becomes clear that the original constitution of Dasein’s being is temporality.279 Temporality as the original meaning of Dasein is the origin of the concept of time. The understanding of being is possible only on the basis of temporality, which constitutes the meaning of the being. Therefore one can conclude that time is the horizon from which something like being becomes at all intelligible.280 This means that Being is interpreted by way of time, that is, temporally. In other words, it is Being’s temporality that makes possible the understanding of Being. Through Being’s temporality it can be understood why the most original temporalizing of temporality as such is temporality.

We must mention briefly, however, that Heidegger is not concerned to conceive the horizon of time in terms of the self of Dasein, but rather in terms of "there" (Dort), as the ontological structure of resoluteness. Thus primordial temporality is not the being of the futurity of Dasein which understands itself out of its being, but rather it is the "event of Being." We shall explain this in the next section.281 The temporal horizon implied by the event of Being is the region in which concern for ‘care’ understands itself. This, however, means that the understanding of care itself is not preceded by hermeneutical understanding, that is, by understanding Dasein by itself, but must be distinguished from that. This new sense of understanding essentially does not require that Dasein’s reality be outside of temporality. Rather, Dasein’s understanding as the projection of a temporal horizon is to be possible by the above men-tioned understanding of `care’. We measure time because we must reckon with time.282

Moreover, we should mention that the temporality of language makes it difficult to explain an authentic understanding of a text. Temporality operates in a transcendental realm, rather than in a normal sense. Derrida goes beyond the situated temporality of Dasein and its community to disclose an autonomous temporal sphere, by which the constitution of anything becomes possible.283 His departure from Heidegger refers back to the concept of origin where he criticizes the value of propriety (Eigentlichkeit) and of original authenticity. For him this is a fanaticism of monotony which, although startling, is not really sufficient. Grammatology, controversially, is the general science of the ‘architrace’, presenting itself as an explicating thought of the myth of origins. It is concerned only with the original, rather than with historical origin.284

Blanchot accurately expresses the temporal situation of the hermeneutic activity when he says that things are terrible when there is neither the time to corrupt, nor the origin to find oneself, and where things eternally find their own likenesses. In being temporal, out of themselves, things do not affirm themselves, but rather, beyond the dark flux and reflux of repetition, affirm the absolute power of the resemblance which is no one’s and which has no name and no face. That is why, as Blanchot says, "We can love and love only what is most terrible!"285

THE TEMPORAL TEXT AND THE QUESTION OF TIME

Let us explain. Time is essentially a self-opening and an expanding into the world. Heidegger says that it is, therefore, difficult to go any further here by comparisons. The interpretation of Dasein as temporality in a universal ontological way is an undecidable question which remains "completely unclear" to him.286 Time as a philosophical problem is a kind of question which no one knows how to raise because of its inseparability from our nature. As Gadamer notes, we can say what time is in virtue of a self-evident preconception of what is, for what is present is always understood by that preconception.287 Insofar as it makes no claim to provide a valid universality, philosophical discussion is not a systematic determination of time, i.e., one which requires going back beyond time (in its connection with other categories).288

In his doctrine of the productivity of the hermeneutical circle in temporal being, Heidegger develops the primacy of futurity for possible recollection and retention of what is already presented by history. History is present to us only in the light of futurity. In Gadamer’s interpretation, it is rather our prejudices that necessarily constitute our being. His view that prejudices are biases in our openness to the world289 does not signify the character of prejudices which in turn themselves are regarded as an a priori text in the terms already assumed. Based upon this, prejudices in this sense are not empty, but rather carry a significance which refers to being. Thus we can say that prejudices are our openness to the being-in-the-world. That is, being destined to different openness, we face the reference of our hermeneutical attributions. Therefore, the historicity of the temporal being is anything except what is past.290

Clearly, the past is not some occurrence, not some incident in my Dasein, but its past; it is not some ‘what’ about Dasein, some event that happens to Dasein and alters it. This past is not a ‘what,’ but a ‘how,’ indeed it is the authentic ‘how’ (wie) of any temporal being.291 The past brings all ‘what,’ all taking care of and making plans, back into the ‘how’ which is the basic stand of a historical investigation.

For Gadamer and Ricoeur the past as a text always changes its meaning in relation to the ever-developing world of texts; so it seems that the future is recognized as textual or the textual character of the future. In this sense the text itself is not tradition, but expectation.292 Upon this text the hermeneutical difference essentially can be ex-tended. Consequently, philosophy is no history of hermeneutical events, but philosophical question evokes the historicity of our thinking and knowing. It is not by accident that Hegel, who tried to write the history of philosophy, raised history itself to the state of absolute mind.293

What matters in the question concerning time is attaining an answer in terms in which the different ways of being temporal become comprehensible. What matters is allowing a possible connection between that which is in time and authentic temporality to become visible from the very beginning.294 However, the problem behind this theory still remains even after long exposure of the Heideggerian interpretation of whether Being-in-the-world can result from temporal being or vice versa. After the more hermeneutical investigation, it seems that Being-in-the-world must be com-prehensive only through Being-in-time.

But, in The Concept of Time, Heidegger has already taken into consideration the broader grasp of the text by considering Being as the origin of the hermeneutics of time. If human Being is in time in a distinctive sense, so that we can read from it what time is, then this Dasein must be characterized by the fundamental determinations of its Being. Indeed, then being temporal, correctly understood, would be the fundamental assertion of Dasein with respect to its Being.295

As a result, only the interpretation of being as its reference by way of temporality can make clear why and how this feature of being earlier, of apriority, pertains to being.296 The a priori character of being as the origin of temporalization calls for a specific kind of approach to being-a-priori whose basic components constitute a phenomenology which is hermeneutical, as shown in chapter two.

Heidegger notes that with regard to Dasein, self-under-standing reopens the possibility for a theory of time that is not self-enclosed. Dasein comes back to that which it is and takes over as the being that it is. In coming back to itself, it brings everything that it is back again into its own most peculiar chosen can-be.297 It makes it clear that, although ontologically the text is closest to each and any of its interpretations in its own event, ontically it is closest to itself. But it must be remembered that this phenomenology does not determine completely references of the text by characterizing the temporalization of the text. Through phenomenological research regarding the text, in hermeneutics we are informed only of how the text gets exhibited and unveiled.

Indeed, as we mentioned in the previous chapter, it is the hermeneutics of time which enables us to believe the text interpretively exposed. Husserl was the first to make clear that for the interpreter the text is simply there; in a verbal or figurative sense it is "present". This is so whether or not one pays any special attention to it by concerning oneself with it, considering, thinking, feeling, willing.298

The réell can represent the textual component of the lived temporality of experience which is non-real. The réell exists neither in the world nor in experience. By introducing this component, it becomes possible to have a philosophy which is not based on presence. Here, Husserl’s theory of internal time consciousness can provide a non-hermeneutical determination of the text in temporality in Derrida. As a result of this, in Derrida’s view the study of I is tied to its temporal foundation, which seems similar to the Husserlian investigation of time. The réell, however, indicates the other side of temporality which is indispensable throughout the hermeneutical process of willing (reading or writing) a text.299

Gadamer finds in his own way the Platonic dialogue in which there is an authentic mode for understanding the "thing itself," the subject matter of historical texts which is the same subject matter for the present and future.300 Heidegger believes that the thing is there as a holding of things in relation: The Thing Things. Because of the thing, that is, the thing as indicative of the difference and identity of things, there are things generally. It can also be said that the thing is in a state of appearing in the world as thing only if it discloses itself as distanced (dis-stanced) from other things. Hence the thing comes into Being only to the extent that it has never fully arrived into the world as thing as a thing-in-itself.301 This can also be observed by the fact that the thing in interpretation is never regarded satisfactorily by what becomes exposable as thing-in-itself through the past.

It is noteworthy that hermeneutics reflects the contrast between Leibnitz and Heidegger that derives from the different interpretation from the point of view of the monad and of Dasein as far as temporality is concerned. By placing the Cartesian ego cogito at the basis of his conception of the monad, Leibnitz takes the monad as substance enclosed in itself without any windows toward the outside since the monad has everything within. Heidegger urges that monads have no windows because there is neither an outside nor an inside because the temporalization of the monad in itself requires that the ecstatic happening of world-entry of the time is not a mundus concentratus, but the converse.302 We can see that, as far as the unity of the monad as a temporal reference is obstructively separated from the unity of being in itself, it requires that a sense of ecstasy be taken as having no determination for itself. The ecstatic happening of world-entry can be considered a dark point; without having the most firm senses of unity, it is impossible to interpret the temporal ecstatic of being as text. Even the word happening testifies to that: there can be a window in the monad open to the outside only if there is a room.

Dasein is authentically alongside itself; it is truly existent whenever it is running ahead, which is nothing other than the authentic (eigentliche) and singular (einzige) future of one’s own Dasein. In running ahead Dasein is its future, in such a way that in this futural it returns to its past and present. Therefore the Being of understanding, conceived in its most extreme possibility of Being, is time itself, not in time.303 In Being and Time, as Gadamer interprets it, the real question is not how being can be understood, but in what way understanding is being, because the understanding of being represents the existential distinction of Dasein.304 Does this mean that hermeneutics, rather than being in time, is itself time in being temporal (not temporality)?

For the later Heidegger being is essentially temporal. And since it is a continual coming into being, it is said to be "older" than the intervals of time (die Zeiten) that can be measured by beings. Yet it is not "older" than time itself, because Being is time in its origin. In other words, Being is neither beyond time, if time is understood in the usual metaphysical sense, nor eternal, if eternal is defined as is usual in Christian theology.305 This means that this is the under-standing of time which can imply the recognition of understanding as temporal. Here, the understanding of time obviously represents the temporal distinction of hermeneutics.

Time is Dasein which is my specificity, and this can be specified in what is futural by running ahead correspondingly to the certain yet indeterminate past. Dasein always is its possible tem-poral being and as the origin of any thing that can be said about the time. Time is temporal as far as hermeneutics represents the un-veiling of this temporality; it is not time, but temporality (Zeitlich-keit). The fundamental assertion that time is temporal is therefore the most authentic determination. It is not a tautology, because the Being of temporality signifies nonidentical actuality. In this running ahead, as Dasein I am authentically time, I have time.306 Time itself is meaningless, (not baseless) as Heidegger states, i.e., it is not to be interpreted at all since it can be interpreted only in each case where there are many times, or, let us to say, when time is temporal. In the Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, time is interrogated in terms of Dasein’s being beyond being i.e., beyond its ek-stasis wherein time is disclosed.307

As Heidegger states, temporality is itself the self-unifying ecstatic unity in ecstatic temporalization.308 The unity of temporality, for Heidegger, is characterized in such a way as to eliminate the notion of anything thing-like, present at hand, which is between having-been-ness and the future.309 It should not be taken as a personal center beside being. The essence of time lies in the ecstatic unified oscillation which is the origin of the unity of temporality. In other words, the unity of horizons belongs to this peculiar unity of time.310 However, this ecstasy surpasses every being beyond being located in the sphere of the subject. It is nowhere, since it presents no determinate being. It exists not as such, but as it temporalizes itself.311

Heidegger, however, thinks the unity of the ecstasies of time must not be regarded as something present at hand unecstatically. But he does not prove sufficiently why it itself is ecstatic. We can speak about the being of the ecstasies only when this being is considered to be grounded directly in the free ecstatic momentum.312 Without considering the text in temporalization, there is not enough reason why the ecstatic is identified by unity and vice versa, how the hermeneutic unity of the text unveils itself in understanding.

Moreover, by and through having an ecstatic character, time indeed measures and reckons us, which means that it takes the other into account. Every Dasein is acquainted with time and knows what he means when he refers to time, yet one seldom has a conception of time. Every understanding reveals time itself, yet time remains something strange. Hölderlin says there is something lasting in a lingering sojourn of time.313 We must free our vision for the total essence peculiar to that which reveals itself as time. Time itself is named by "now": we say "now" immediately, completely and without reflection. Nevertheless, this does not mean that "now" itself can be meant in a truly thematic manner, since we do not find it as having such and such a quality.314 The "now" itself guides our understanding forward to that which is just transpiring there in the now.

There is no discrepancy between the structure of time in its ecstatic process and that "there is time" (Es gibt Zeit). In both, time must be understood from the "present," which must be taken, not as "now," but as presence. But what is to be understood by presence (Anwesenheit)? This is the continuous lingering-dwelling-abiding (verweilen) which concerns understanding. Dasein is always concerned with the presence of something which is present, and never immediately heeds presence itself.315

Let us disregard the answer and repeat the question. What happened to the question? It has transformed itself. What is time? becomes the question: who is time? More closely: are we ourselves time? or closer still: am I my time? In this way I come closest to it, and if I understand the question correctly, it is then completely seriously . . . then Dasein would be: being questionable.316

It can be stated that, textuality provides past and future in presence. Here, the reference to the text can be made in presence even though there is no reality for presence as is pointed out. The question of hermeneutics is identified by the status of present time as a matter open to debate. Textuality, which can be treated tem-porally, clarifies present time while also keeping us away from establishing present time as a stable reality to which we can refer.317

In Heidegger, temporality is disclosed in language as the persistence of what is. Past, present and future belong to the appropriation (with regard to the text) of persistence (with regard to the time). The nearness of temporal moments occurs as the metalepsis of saying, in which repetition and displacement, identity and difference, redundancy and unrecuperability occur.318

The question of the temporality of the interpretation of a text can culminate in the rhetoric of ontology without becoming distracted by the question of being as nostalgically seeking a plentitude within paracusia i.e., the revelation of Being. The continuum of temporal consideration of the question of being recognized by the différance, initiates the effect of the disconstituting différance from within a continuous teleological structure, that is, thinking from origin to end.319

Text as being in hermeneutics becomes unconcealed whereas we forget the nature of presence. We know that the beginning and origin (Anfang und Ursprung) of existing things is the apeiron, which concerning the existing things becomes unveiled, even though it also transpires in what lies beyond.320 To apeiron has an indeter-minacy which implies a nihilistic wear and tear on that which is given by being. The apeiron is not simply a genesis from which (and to which) Being is originated (or a forgotten origin), but it is a temporal source in which Being is at once revealed and concealed.321 Therefore, to apeiron is more than a beginning or something which comes after; it is what transpires in a manifold of temporality. We have already discussed some of what hermeneutics would mean if regarded as philosophy. Heidegger’s answer is that it would mean an adoption of history instead of a break with, or repudiation of, it. In Being and Time he calls this ‘destruction’ (Destruktion), which is not a destroying (zerstoren) but a dismantling, liquidating or putting to one side (sondern Abbauen, Abtragen und Auf-die Seite-stellen).322 The meaning of the historical assertions about the history of philosophy is an opening of our ears and freeing of ourselves for what the Being of being wants interpretatively to speak to us in tradition. This speaking of the Being-text enables understanding to attain the reference or the interpretation of that reference.323

Based on what has been stated, there is a chance here to modify Heidegger’s statement in choice between attempt to regard time as a being-concept since time "is" not or rather time as temporalizing itself. A question always remains how time can be the subject of the basic `temporalizing’ concern due to the fact that Heidegger attri-butes `temporalizing’ to time by saying that time temporalizes. In other words, time must be fitted into a hermeneutical reference in saying that time temporalizes, even if this equals time is time. This reflects the fact that time "is" not, but that temporalization is a reference to being. Heidegger attested to this fact by attributing to time the primordially self-unifying unity of expectancy, retention and making-present. This unity of time, mentioned earlier, has its hallmark in the heart of the temporal reference. In the "then, when . . . an onward-reference occurs to beings."324

After his discussion of time as "now," Heidegger turns to consideration of "then." He says that "then" can not be grasped in an object or in a subject in the traditional sense. "Then" (now not yet) is indeed in our "on-the-way," as the stepping-over or as transcendence. The on-the-way is only a reference to the "location" of the "is" which is uttered as time character.325 "Formerly" always pronounces a retention of something previous; it is equally the utterance of a forgetting. "Now," in contrast, expresses being toward that which makes present (Anwesendes); we term this presentation of the text or being toward presencing of things a holding in being present making present.326 That is why there, then, formerly, and now appear in their unity.

Expecting (Gewärtigen) as Heidegger characterizes it, is nothing other than that getting-carried-away (Entruckung) into the then-quality which lies at the basis of intentional compartments toward the futural, which has previously already overleapt all possible beings (emphasis mine) about which we can and must say they will be then. The then and each particular then essentially is only the utterance and expression of the expectancy that is potentially in advance (emphasis mine), always carried away beyond all beings. For this reason the then in its own foundation is an indicator (emphasis mine).327 It now becomes more clear, why we must believe that everything that is said and is there in the text stands under anticipation so that it can be understood and not be merely unintelligible.328

Expectancy, as Heidegger meant, is to understand oneself from out of one’s own capacity-for-being. Approaching oneself in advance, from one’s own possibility, i.e., experience is the primary ecstatic concept of the future.329 Heidegger illustrates this structure in the following diagram:

Obviously, the question mark means that the horizon is open (and ambiguous).330 Regarding the monad-ness of the reference of time, the diagram can be completed as follows:

As has been pointed out, for Heidegger time has first of all an ecstatic character. It neither passes nor remains, but temporalizes itself. Temporalization is the primal phenomenon of motion. Time, in its metaphysical meaning, exists in motion. The temporalization of time constitutes, methodologically, the metaphysical continuity of Dasein. It is not intelligible if Dasein is construed as a theoretical scheme. In addition, the analysis of Dasein must select for its guiding horizon the horizon which guides Dasein’s being-toward-itself, continuously, in its being-with other.331

Heidegger states that Being has always been interpreted as Being-present (Anwesen), while Being-present and presence (Anwe-senheit) refer to the present (Gegenwart), which in turn, together with the past and the future, constitutes what is characteristic of time. Thus as Being-present, Being is determined by time. Both Being and time determine each other, but Being is not temporal and time is not something-which-is. It is more a question of whether we can transcend Being and time toward a higher and wider unity since this leads away from the thing itself. Thus, whether the relationship between Being and time results from a certain combination of being and time is an important question. We can also think that this relationship itself is primary, so that Being and time both result from it. Being is a theme of thought, but not a thing; and time is a theme of thought also, but not something temporal. We can say that the thing "is," while with respect to Being and time, we can say there is (es gibt: there is something which grants) Being and there is time.332 In agreement with Kockelmann’s interpretation of Heidegger, it seems that there are henceforth two autonomous realms of hermeneutics, one having being as its source interpretation, and the other dealing with the interpretation of the temporal. The first is a classical understanding of philosophy, while the second appears ambiguously in Gadamer’s discussion of the fulfillment of time. Even in Philosophical Hermeneutics there is no sign that Gadamer ever tried to explain the hermeneutical uniqueness by which Being and time are able to ground the understanding of each other.

Whenever we speak about Being in general, we present it in a way in which it never presents and gives itself. For Being appears in particular historical forms, as physics, logos, idea, energia, substance, and so on. The way in which Being gives itself is itself deter-mined so that it itself gives and sends itself. As such, Being endures and abides for us only in so far as it frees its genuine re-collection. The same is true also for our experience of the characterization of the difference of Being and beings as such, in which to each case there corresponds a given interpretation of beings.333

Based on what has been brought out, remembrance, not as expecting and in contrast to it, has no history, and theories have no such thing as a growing remembrance. Remembrance is what comes to one; what overcomes in represencing (Wiedervergenwartiges) offers a brief respite from passing away and forgetting. But remembrance of a being is in no way the memory of a prior knowing now ‘presencing.’334 Remembrance, therefore, for Gadamer is not remembrance of a lost text, taken in its very uniqueness as what can be considered in a question. In this sense it can be accepted that remembrance is the meaning of a "prior question" (rather than "prior questioning" as used by Gadamer which is more likely articulated as the function of hermeneutical understanding) instead of a prior knowing. Nonetheless, it is very important that, even if the reference of the remembrance is restricted only as a "prior question," this question, in its mere significance, is the question of something, that is, of what we call text. Since we can remember again and again, the questions can be produced time and time again, and concern for the answers can be indispensable, but "questions" always and forever mean "asks for".

As a result, we can also conclude that textual time can be presented in the intentional structure of symbol. It intends something beyond and stands for this something. But it is not that any time is a symbol, for a symbol conceals in its intention a double intentiona-lity.335 The symbolic meaning is constituted in and through the literal meaning, which brings about the analogy by giving the analogue. The temporal symbol can be regarded as the very movement of the primary meaning which makes us share in the latent meaning. It thereby assimilates us to symbolized time, without our being able intellectually to dominate the similarity. The text gives time since it is a primary intentionality that gives the second meaning. Here, by means of language, the poet is like an horizon gathering together moments in which the poem arrives as an articulation of that which speaks from beyond our lived or worldly sense of time.336

An important question arises and, indeed, imposes itself regarding thinking in an hermeneutical act. On the other hand, we have learned from Gadamer that the there is no method for learning how to ask questions in hermeneutics. If understanding the text is what we would find by asking questions, then it is obvious that the text is the fundamental basis which allows one to make question of it. Is it the text itself that is to be questioned, or is the text itself in the place of a question. This, however, can shed light upon the basic concept of the text in hermeneutics. The old rhetorical doctrine de inventione contains an indirect indication of the significance of the question for all knowledge,337 yet contemporary hermeneutics has not addressed what can be asked in the search for knowledge. Besides there is the issue of the origin of the question for further hermeneutical processes of questioning. Therefore, any knowledge containing its own correlated questions is already determined by the origin of the questions.

On the other hand, according to the validity of Collingwood’s logic of question and answer, the two are intrinsically related with one another. Replying to the query "why question" Gadamer answers that an answer is something that one must understand, but this can be through understanding the question itself. This, in turn, limits the dogmatic claim of any proposition.338

In this light, one can question the text by interpreting it, but the discussion must deal also with whether and how it is the text that speaks, whatever be the response. The understanding of the text has not begun at all, as Gadamer affirms, as long as the text remains silent.339 If the text begins (we think that it has already begun) to speak, it does not speak simply a word which is always the same, but gives ever new answers to the new pattern of questions and poses new questions which it is supposed to answer in turn.

The most important task of hermeneutics is that every event has to be seen as a response to a question and that the only way to understand a statement regarding an event is by taking it as an answer. As we pointed out in the first chapter, Gadamer calls the hermeneutical question ‘a prior questioning’. This has its own direction of meaning and is "by no means to be gotten hold of through a network of background motivations, but rather reaches out to the broader contexts of meaning encompassed by the question and deposited in the statement."340 By putting modern philosophical her-meneutics in contrast to traditional hermeneutics, Gadamer clearly points out the important characteristic of fundamental hermeneutics i.e., that hermeneutics is based more on the questions than on the answer.341

Gadamer initiates the term hermeneutical urphänomen, by which he means that no assertion is possible that cannot be under-stood as an answer to a question, and that all assertion must be understood in this way.342 This means that whatever is brought in a literary works has its origin in the question itself. The same argument can be applied with regard to the aesthetic character of these texts, with their own language. There could be no absolute text in literature if there were no content with an objective meaning that one can discern. But at least the hermeneutical question of a text must involve entering into a relation with what we will find meaningful in the answer.

Gadamer himself agrees that by an articulate reading of what is there as a text one disregards much of what is there so that it is simply not there any more (as in vision for example). Understanding what is there involves entering into an indefinite relation which marks same specific answer to the question about a thing.343 But as we already pointed out in the second chapter, our perceptions grasp the thing itself as a text in its direct givenness in understanding.344 Understanding of the thing itself is not attained simply by looking beyond what one grasps based on a perception of a thing. Besides, none of these perceptions of a thing can address the other’s role in understanding the text. Knowledge as intuition, in perception for example, is the direct givenness of what is known in perception, having its own certainty in itself.345 Based on this phenomenology of perception, found in Heidegger, philosophical problems and concepts must be studied scientifically by returning to the original sources of intuition and the insights into the essences to be derived therefrom. In this way concepts can be clarified intuitively, pro-blems can be posed anew on an intuitive ground which is further identified in principle. There is a unity in the thing itself, in its direct givenness, for every perception is perception of both the perceiving and the perceived in one. This is the sense of the saying: aisthesis is aisthesis aistheseos. This concept of unity is absolutely aesthetical and aesthetically absolute.346

This hermeneutical unity of question is reflected in phenomenology in which in every experience in its noetic phase the essential nature of a thing functions as a belief consciousness in the sense of the protodoxa.347 In other words, one can look towards what is problematically required in the world of presumptions in interpreting the things only after being involved primarily in the proba-bility-for-being itself and as such. This can be explored in the hermeneutical question itself. Phenomenologically, questioning can be carried out in the intention towards the noematic object in which the presumption-noesis has been given. This is why Husserl believes that, from the second viewpoint, the object with its meaning, together with this probability-character, is given as being (Seined).348

We are persistently aware of the intentional object in the process of consciousness. Although in this experience the object is ever presenting itself differently, it may be the same object with but other predicates. Husserl believes that if it is always understood as a noematic description of what is meant at the time, then the self-same intentional object separates itself off "self-evidently" from the shifting and changing predicates.349 In the temporal description of the noema, while detaching itself as the central noematic phase, the object, the objective unity (Objekt), the self-same, the determinate subject of its possible predicates, "the pure x in abstraction from all predicates", disconnects itself from any predicate.350 This pure x can be considered as the textual reference for the hermeneutic act of intention. However, this reference, indicated as text or x here, can-not have the validity of an original hermeneutic notion unless it not be preconditioned. Recognizing this problem, Ricoeur tries to extend the meaning of the text beyond phenomenological boundaries. According to him, the text becomes an object for explanation without becoming a natural object.

The difficulty is to establish the authenticity of experience in hermeneutics without annihilating the unity of the work of art. The critique of authenticity is formulated from one reduction to another in search of the original evidence until the evidence itself is subjected to reduction.351 Phenomenology as displayed in transcendental reduction needs to establish the validity of being in its interpretation of intentionality. This is the question of original foundation itself which in the hermeneutical response. Is this the reason why in phenomenology, however, being as the being-object in the question is less important than sense or meaning? According to this view, every being is only a meaning for, in and through consciousness.352

We have already pointed out Heidegger’s view that under-standing being is not the result of the objectifying operation of con-sciousness that we see in Husserl’s phenomenology; rather the real question in Being and Time is in what way understanding is being rather than in what way being can be understood.353 On the other hand, the variety of performances or interpretations are not simply subjective variations of a meaning related to subjectivity, but in fact belong to the ontological possibility of the work.354

Moreover, phenomenology must face the problem of how interpretation of a fact can result in a new interpretation by claiming that the references to reality which appear in the immediately valid premises of eidetic sciences can reappear only in mediated positions. Concisely speaking, within a hermeneutical frame of analysis this leads to a total independence of hermeneutical events from each other in relation to the interpretation of the text, neglecting the interdependence of the text and the hermeneutical sciences. Heidegger acutely states that the meaning of phenomenological description as a method lies in interpretation. Thus hermeneutics as a science of interpretation lays the basis for fundamental phenomenology which deals with the authentic meaning of Being. Consequently, the phenomenology of Dasein is a "hermeneutic in the primordial signification of this word, where it designates the work of interpreting."355

Beyond phenomenological boundaries, the being itself with which thinking is concerned is not initially dependent on thinking or hermeneutical interpretation. The problem of Being in Heidegger occurs as a question precisely in the treatment of the concept of "question" in which we shall discover this reference to a self. What does it mean that the problem of Being occurs as a question and that what has been forgotten is not only being, but the question of being?356 Thinking comes to the point at which it arises from being itself so that it corresponds to being as such only when being itself affects thinking. This principle is followed by both Gadamer and Heidegger (except that for Heidegger, hermeneutics is more like the science of the concealment or unconcealment of the poet).

Additionally, as the unveiledness of that to which assertion refers, truth is a possible determination of the being present-at-hand. It is a determination of the being present-at-hand so far as the being-present-at-hand is unveiled in an assertion. Hence, following Aristotle, Heidegger concludes that truth is not in the understanding, if the understanding is taken as the subject of the present-at-hand. Truth is in things, so far as things are taken as the uncovered objects of the assertion made about them. Being-true is present-at-hand neither in things nor in mind.357 This is the reason Gadamer makes a case for partnership in the conversation of thought with itself in spite of the fact that he attributes it to what appears in Heidegger’s perspective as a growing oblivion of being.

Hence, the hermeneutics of Dasein by Heidegger no longer refers to the science of interpretation, i.e., theoretical hermeneutics, but rather to the process of interpretation which is an essential characteristic of Dasein. Far beyond that, Dasein is an entity which in its very being comports itself understandingly toward itself, to-ward its being. Dasein, as Heidegger says, can, should, and must become master of its moods. This means that Dasein is disclosed to itself prior to all cognition and beyond the range of disclosure.358 Nonetheless it is not mentioned, either by Heidegger or by Gadamer, that the question of the relation of the text and interpretation can be formulated in terms of deciphering meaning as that which is most fundamental in interpretation.

In regard to the question of whether a non-idealistic philos-phy of meaning, that is, a non-Husserlian phenomenological hermeneutics, is possible Ricoeur thinks that the subject as a being for meaning is such that meaning does not appear as simply a product of the subject. This saves hermeneutics from the accusation of being idealistic since, for Ricoeur, idealism consists in the claim of con-sciousness to be able to create meaning, where creation is taken "in the absolute sense". Here Ricoeur finds a non-idealistic conception of meaning. Even in Husserl’s Logical Investigations, the first formulation of the theory of intentionality indicates that no consciousness is self-consciousness without first being consciousness of something toward which it transcends itself.359

On the methodological level, the conception of the fixedness of meaning provides, of course, the pre-supposition of any attempt at objective interpretation, a notion to which Ricoeur strenuously ad-heres.360 In a hermeneutical methodology, we can see imaginatively what is questionable in the subject matter and further question the subject matter. The precondition of this capacity is to be open to being questioned as the text.361

If we state that no reading of a text without interpretation would be possible, we destroy the very essence of hermeneutics having the priority of a valid science by itself. Indeed we must state that interpretation is possible as interpretation of a text, and as a result no understanding of the text is possible except by interpreting it. Only on this foundation is it justifiable to claim that the conditions of possibility of an interpretation in general are such that they preclude interpretation being a condition of possibility of comprehension of meaning in general, or a condition of the possibility of reading a text in general.362

The classical debate is aimed at finding in a text either what its author intended to say, or what the text said independently of the intentions of its author.363 Hence, for Gadamer, understanding is not a matter of relating the parts of a text to the whole or the text to the interpreter. Rather, for him, the aesthetical thing itself is related to the process of dialogue between the text and reader. The complete-ness of the aesthetical work is not measured by the criterion of its purpose, i.e., the use that is to be made of it. Therefore, only after accepting the second horn of the dilemma can one ask whether what is found is what the text says by virtue of its textual coherence and an original underlying signification system, or rather only what the addressees find in it by virtue of their own systems of expecta-tions.364

In the final passage of Text and Interpretation, Gadamer concludes that we understand what is beautiful and the autonomy of the work of art, so that it does not depend on any context of use. Our ear hears and our understanding takes in the shining of the beautiful (des Schein des Schönen) as its true nature. The interpreter, who gives his reasons, disappears and the text speaks.365 Kant’s ex-pression of the non-conceptuality of taste has not been applied to the mode of existence of the object being judged aesthetically. This di-mension of the question necessarily opens up from the standpoint of taste, though going beyond it.366 What is beautiful, however, shines blissfully in itself; "Was über schön ist,selig scheint es in ihm selbst", says Mörike. Moreover, when there is no longer any inter-pretation, there remains the naive belief in the natural goodness of things, the simplicity of events, the evidence of appearances. The desire to preserve such a naive belief exists where the reference of interpretation cannot be interpreted. In this situation, what one can see is not merely what one can see, but rather it is clear that what one can see is what is there to see and one can see it.367

It can be said that the aesthetic definition of any object created under the aesthetic dispensation would be guided by its capacity to elude what is conceived to be our "normal" worldly interests by creating its own self-sufficiency. The literary text perhaps can be preferred over others; it is set up as an idol to be adored and end-lessly interpreted, in pursuit of the interactions its language gene-rates. Disinterestedness is emphasized, to set the text apart from the world and from the rest of language, just as we frame a painting to cut it off from the surrounding wall and then place it in the separate sanctity of the museum. In the case of a verbal artifact worthy of being called "aesthetic," it begins to define the tendency to use language.368

For Kant the harmony and coherence discerned between the whole and the parts creates the architectonic structure of interpretation or understanding.369 Transcendental idealism is an entire system enabling one to make perfect sense of empirical experiences as well as of a priori knowledge. In any hermeneutical experience of being as what is already there, something is repeated continually throughout this familiar experience. For Gadamer "there is always a world already interpreted".370 Therefore, if the world is familiar, being-in-the-world is already interpreted in any hermeneutical moment. In fact, we are already aware of the world since the being-in-the-world is already interpreted, providing hermeneutics be un-veiled. But there remains an important question of why the being-in-the-world is urhermeneutics, that is, already hermeneutical before any hermeneutics appears.

Gadamer would redevelop the dialectic within hermeneutics. Plato had designated the network of relationships among the logoi as dialectic. This logoi dialectic pertains to the being which exposes itself to thought. In Gadamer’s interpretation of Plato the being itself may never be apprehended in the unrestricted presence of some unitary intuition (unus intuitus) or of an infinite Leibnitzian monad. Heidegger had admitted the possibility of reading Being and Time based on the dialectic of consciousness and of being close to the Platonic dialectic as Gadamer suggested later.371 Recognition of the Platonic dialectic can be another evidence of the fact that the text is already deciphered, although the deciphered text in itself does not imply that it is certainly understood.

Interpretation as a work of thought consists in deciphering the hidden meaning in the apparent meaning, in unfolding the levels of meaning implied in the literal meaning of the text which is responsible for its plurality. This relates to the older exegetical tradition of deciphering texts where the text was not a simple narrative or descriptive treatise, but one in which there was some analogical or allegorical meaning. The surface meaning may hide or conceal, or at least contain, a less obvious deep meaning which nevertheless is dependent upon the literal surface meaning. Therefore, the hermeneut must discover and explicate the significance of the text.372

Concerning the problem of multiple interpretations of text, the fact is that predicates are predicates of "something," as Husserl said. But this "something" stays alongside the predicates as such. On the other hand, this something makes the predicate to be a predicate, because without it no predication is possible. This "some-thing" is the central point of the unification and connection of the predicates.373 This "something" provides an independent hermeneutical sense of unity without which the unity of the predications in itself would not be possible.

It is argued that whatever can be interpreted can also not be interpreted. This fact points to general reasons for interpretating something, whatever it might be (and also for not interpreting it). We must add that the text, having its own authenticity, is what can be interpreted or cannot be interpreted. Therefore, to say that ‘a text does not rule out its being interpreted equals saying that it does not rule out its not being interpreted,’ manifests only a repetition of an ambiguity of the reference.374

In the relation between what we interpret and interpretation, it can be said, that there is the text or the original source of interpretation and the interpretation of the text or the translation of the original source. There is no text to be determined merely as an interpretation of what we interpret, since this so-called text which equals interpretation can never stand alone. This does not mean that it is impossible to interpret a text since we only face the text or what we interpret. The interpretation cannot be discovered as long as the text does not appear to be interpreted. Strictly speaking, based on Schleiermacher’s principle of interpretative understanding, there would never be any interpretation, but only attempts to face the new texts again and again. This leads to the fact that an interpretation of a text would be possible only when first of all one assumes in questioning that the text is there without interpretation. A text can be interpreted only if there exists a prior text which does not need to be interpreted.375

According to Gadamer, the history of the concept of text shows that it does not occur outside an interpretive situation. The text refers to all that resists integration in experience. From the perspective of interpretation, the text is the authentic given which is to be understood. In this sense, the text would be nothing outside the firm point of relation of the possibilities directed towards the text.376 But what is behind these different possibilities of interpretation that we release? It is always the same text presenting itself to us under-stood in different ways. Yet hermeneutics is not merely a matter of deciphering; rather Gadamer sees it as a question of meaning.

Gadamer’s reading of the history of the concept of the text is not sufficient. His not attempting to extend transcendentally his metaphysical reference to the book of nature rests upon the same foundations. He thinks of the text as a phase in the execution of the communication event (Verständigungsgeschehen).377 In Gadamer’s understanding of text, the nature of interpretation can never be a matter of deciphering that would reproduce the text in explanation. Text and interpretation coalesce into one movement of departure and return. A text attains ideality in the way it stands apart from necessary repetition.378

The text is what is readable. Therefore it is the subject matter of the text and not the text itself that is the point of interpretation.379 This fact, however, does not prevent seeing that philosophical hermeneutics needs to take the hidden text as what is most fundamental and required by a readable text, without which no interpretation or reference of this interpretation would be possible. The same issue emerges when Gadamer defines the text as what only oneself about being in general, it is necessary to begin with the "there" of a being.388

If Being be considered as the source of hermeneutics and can be accounted as the reference for a hermeneutical discussion, it is a text that is referred to. Hermeneutics is nothing but acknowledging that this reference is not resourceless. In other words, interpretation affirms the referent or what affirmatively is taken as the answer. Heidegger claims that any relation because of its formal general character has its ontological source in a reference.389 But no interpretation in its final hermeneutical expression, can be explained without considering the phenomenon of reference.

The different ways of hermeneutical indicating are grounded in the mere possibility of a reference. Considering the main characteristic of the reference grounded on the being-structure of equipment (in serviceability for), Heidegger does not define the notion of reference as totally responsible for the general hermeneutical question, since the understanding of being overlaps the being structure of equipment as it is regarded in Dasein. This fact led to a confusion when Heidegger agreed that "referring" is wider than "indicating," yet held "referring" to belong essentially to Dasein’s Being-in-the-world. Dasein is always directed (ausgerichtet).390 There is a question whether indicating (raised by sign) is finally an equipmental character of something ready-to-hand since it belongs, as mentioned, essentially to Dasein’s Being-in-the-world, taken for granted by Heidegger. He thinks that the indication belongs to a totality of equipment in context of assignments or references.

Reference for Heidegger is not an ontic characteristic of something ready-to-hand. Yet, in answering the question, in what sense reference is presupposed ontologically in the ready-to-hand, he states that, in anything ready-to-hand, the world is always ‘there’ (though not thematically). The world is that in terms of which the ready-to-hand is ready-to-hand, while, on the other hand, the constitutive state for the ready-to-hand as equipment is one of reference.391 This dualistic thinking of the origin of understanding comes from an unfounded separation of the reference of interpretation and of Being as the fundamental constitution of hermeneutics.

Unfortunately, without solid grounding, Gadamer creates a distance between language about a thing and the nature of the thing. While the nature of the thing is capable of being encountered in different opinions, the language of the thing implies its being heard in the way in which the thing brings itself to be expressed in lan-guage.392 This separation between thing and language brings hermeneutics to a distinction between speech and things in themselves (the same as one can observe in Protagoras). Moreover, this leads to creating an unbridgeable distance between hermeneutics as the language of the thing in interpretation and the language of the thing in itself if it be language at all, since the thing itself cannot be defined as knowable only through the language of others, rather than from its own language.

As a result of the temporalization of language, authentic Dasein is born from the response to Being, and in responding it preserves the strength of Being by the strength of the word.393 The word is both a fusion of horizons between epochs and an epochal event itself. For Gadamer, the word calls us to take leave of our prejudices and prior attitudes and to hold ourselves open to the future, which as noted earlier, is indeterminate.394

There is always a question whether or not we are able to restore the word.395 Hermeneutics carries this enigmatic property as a heritage; it is as if thinking is brought to its own self through its own word. We stated that the interpretation of a text is such only when the text answers to what interprets. Does this make clear why in Western metaphysics the destiny of the being as the text is determined to be separated from that of the being in interpretation? The assertion that what is most thought provoking is that we are still not thinking, does not indicate that we are no longer thinking, nor does it say that we are not thinking at all, since after all we are conditioned by hermeneutics. Yet in this connection Heidegger is not optimistic regarding the present moment of Western thought.396

Finally on the question of the word as the text, carried by metaphor, there are constructive results. Metaphor implies the polarity of sense and reference, and the possibility of distinguishing between, on the one hand, what is said by the sentence as whole and by the words as parts of sentence, and, on the other hand, what is said, i.e., to speak is to say something about something.397

Rather than an aesthetic opposition between metaphor and symbol, Gadamer accepts that these two terms carry meanings which have something in common. Both terms refer to something whose meaning "does not consist in its external appearance or sound, but in a significance that lies beyond it."398 It also has been acknowledged that more than a metaphor, a memory of what originally was the case, initiates descriptively the work of hermeneutics as a conversation with the text.399 According to Ricoeur, a symbol and metaphor itself, instead of being self-sufficient as to significance, require interpretation, which constitutes the stages of the path towards a theory of interpretation. They are not simply units or a store of abstract words of the language or of the linguistic system. They function on the level of discourse, whose linguistic form is the text. With this, reflection reaches the level of the text. Henceforth, the significance and centrality of the text can be shown increasingly in one’s own hermeneutics.400