THE TEXT AS THE PRIMARY CRITERION OF HERMENEUTICAL UNDERSTANDING

The question of being as the reference of hermeneutics, is more radical than the question of hermeneutics. We have come to this point: that the text opens to interpretation a mode of being-in-the-world which provides the possibility of interpretation. In this section, we must elucidate why the reference of the text is believed to deserve priority over understanding. Since understanding always pertains to Being-in-the world, all interpretation operates in the fore-structure. Any interpretation which is to contribute under-standing, must already have understood what is to be interpreted.401 We live in traditions and experiences are led to a knowledge of the unknown source. These are not a fragment of our world experience; rather, it is the world itself that communicates what is experienced and given over to us as an "infinitely open task." Thus, the hermeneutical sense of the world-text is not like the world on its first day, but one that is already handed down to us.402

Based on the world text hermeneutic experience does not encounter an object, but rather stands in a relationship to tradition, i.e., to the text (or texts) which have been handed down.403 Openness to the tradition reflects the structure of a question of the text. This question can be conducted through a conversation, which in turn allows one to refer to the event to which the partners in the conversation are directed. This, however, means that the question of the text elaborated in any use of language aims to discover the meaning of the text itself. This, however, correlates the pre-hermeneutic language of the text with all modes of hermeneutic consciousness.404

Truth as the disclosure of being must be revealed in the play or let us call it the dialogue of the text and interpreter. Being that comes to be represented in play is defined as the transformation of reality into truth or speech.405 Can we take this truth as holding the interpreter to a fixed meaning limited by the structure of language? In this sense, the text becomes the ultimate point of reference for discovering the hermeneutical truth by which misunderstanding and understanding of a text both have the same hermeneutical validity in providing an objectivation of the text in tradition. Thus, the hermeneutical truth of a text would be emphasized by any affirmative or negative stand on the possibility of understanding as we can observe in Gadamer (or Derrida). The text is where Gadamer believes an authentic understanding of a text discloses an historical truth.406

Concerning our assumptions that the text stands behind or beyond or below us, there is no doubt that our judgments and interpretations can be free of assumptions and beliefs. We like to think of ourselves as minds free from any textual determination. Also we want to think of our assumptions and beliefs as not textually, but naturally grounded, and that we operate unaware of the text. We equate our beliefs and our myths with our nature. This is the reason why we try to deny our textual location in play, but the more we deny restrictions and directions the more we are determined by it.407

When one is engaged in a particular concrete kind of interpretation, in the sense of exact textual interpretation, one likes to appeal (berufen) to what "stands there."408 But in contrast it must be stated that what stands there in the first instance is not only an unreflected assumption of the person who does the interpreting. The text really does stand there, for otherwise nothing remains for understanding except some illusions. There must be a `text there’ that has been taken for granted in any interpretation precisely as an interpretation i.e., that which has been presented in the forehaving, foresight and foreconception.

If we presuppose, as Gadamer acknowledges, that there is no such thing as a fully transparent text or a completely exhaustive interest in explaining and translating texts, then all that is perceived relative to the hermeneutical statements are to be shifted. This leads us to think of a given subject matter, rather than simply to interpret the evident content of a statement.409

Therefore, everyone who asks a question tries to find another confirmation for his own assumptions in the answer. We cannot separate these assumptions from the text itself. In one aspect, these prejudices are also partially constructive of the text as the being in interpretation. However, as Gadamer points out, the text itself remains as the first point of relation over against the questionability or the possibilities of interpretation directed towards the text.410 It is not contrived to reflect upon the presuppositions implicit in our questions; Gadamer states that on the contrary it is artificial to imagine that statements fall down from heaven. They cannot be subjected to analysis without bringing into consideration why they are primarily responses to something.411 If we take texts to be primitive criteria as coming from heaven then questions must come from heaven since we already pointed out that "questions" are indeed "questions of." Therefore if we want to evaluate our hermeneutical question we must study how questions truly come down to us. It would not be more justifiable to say that a question in itself is not another question. Each and every question in hermeneutics goes back, that is, can be regarded as reference rather than as answer, as Gadamer suggests.

We understand the subject matter of the text when we locate its question. In attempting to gain this question the text in its historical horizon is continually transcendent.412 To locate the question of the text is not simply to leave it, but to put it again so that understanding itself is questioned by the subject matter of the text. While the text as the center of interpretation stands beyond what we understand of it, the need to question the text always remains.413

One can think about a hermeneutical method as a description of "what understanding is" as we saw in Gadamer’s holding fast to the hermeneutical circle. It is impossible to break out of this circle unless the description of "what understanding is" is realized and identified by" what understanding is of." A true estimation of what understanding is might never forget that in the procedure of uncovering the given meaning the text unveils itself only in the very truth of "understanding of." Understanding cannot construct itself if there is no text in front of one even though this text can be mere under-standing itself. The text as other is not necessarily laid out outside understanding, but the mere presence of the other helps under-standing by extending itself to break out of its own base and narrowness. It follows then, as Gadamer himself acknowledges, that there is something else in understanding’s experience that is a potentiality for being other (Anderssein) that lies beyond every coming to agreement about what is common.414

The text can be explained by its hierarchial aspects. Dasein’s understanding of itself can be interpreted as though it functions by fulfilling the transcendental condition for the question of its reference in hermeneutics. This fact forces us to recognize in Heidegger’s later works a priority of being as the reference of hermeneutics over Dasein’s self-understanding. Understanding faces itself as already signified by the reference. That which is disclosed in understanding, that which is understood, according to Heidegger, is already accessible in such a way that its ‘as which’ (or what can be revealed as its referential significance) can be made to stand out explicitly.415 The procedure of the explicitness of anything that is understood depends on the "as" or referential significance, or, rather, is constructed by it.

Gadamer in the second and third part of his work comes to realize that the study of understanding is particularly identical with that of the understanding of the texts.416 Unfortunately, in spite of grasping the reaching back to the text as such, he never tried to explain the hermeneutical return to the text as a fundamental characteristic of hermeneutics itself. He thinks that reaching back to the text is an accidental result motivated by something unusual having arisen in the process of understanding.417

For Ricoeur, to understand a text is to follow its movement from sense to reference, from what it says (as the text characteris-tique primus), to what it talks about.418 Through this vantage point, the identity of the text within the process of interpretation can be rescued while, on the other hand, the act of the reader’s participation which is the subjective side is also taken into careful considera-tion.419 The reader must obey what is said in a text. This means that the reader or interpreter extends himself by force of play. If we write on Plato explaining what he already said in the Phaedrus, we are only repeating Plato. Indeed, it is said in this work of Plato that writing can only repeat itself, that is, signify always the same, and that it is a "game" (paidia).420

Nonetheless, to do justice to the text does not require that we exclude a plurality of readings. We require a plurality of readings in order to do justice to the text, something which a single reading perspective of itself can never sustain.421 In a responsible interpretation which tries as far as possible to do justice to the text, it cannot be merely a question of an innocent fusion of the horizons of the reader and the text. Rather, every understanding of the text must be verified in the accompanying explanation of the coherence of the text and of its claim to make sense, as Paul Ricoeur has convincingly shown.422

On the other hand, application as articulated by hierarchal understanding is where the subject makes the proper re-entry to the text as an effect of its appropriation (Aneignung). In application there is nothing behind the text, but only that which the work un-folds, discovers and reveals.423 Application or the meaning of going to the reference subsumes every particular interpretation in the process of understanding, so that finally understanding or interpretation finds its real determination through a referential contemplation of the text.

According to Heidegger the question of the possibility of the understanding of being results in something that transcends being, a "beyond." We know that understanding itself belongs to the basic constitution of the Dasein and since Dasein is rooted in temporality, temporality is the condition of possibility for understanding, as was pointed out earlier. Therefore, when something within the world is encountered in interpreting there is no naked thing which is present-at-hand over which we then throw a signification. The thing in question already has an involvement which is disclosed in our under-standing of the world: this involvement is laid out by the interpre-tation.424 This is why thinking, as Gadamer believes, always points beyond itself. Platonic dialogue has an expression for this by referring to the one, the being.425

Thus, as is manifested in the process of interpretation in application, the thing spoken about no longer belongs to the situation shared by the different participants in a dialogue, but becomes a "matter of the text."426 Every interpretation of a thing attempts to be transparent to the text so that the meaning of the text can speak for any further time.427 It is indeed true to say that in our under-standing of the text, what is said and what it referred to remain absolutely the same.428

Consequently, through this analysis of the text, entities within the world, being considered as projected upon a whole of significance which reference-relations concern, i.e., Being in-the-world, have been tied up in advance. Entities have meaning (Sinn) when discovered along with the Being of Dasein, as being understood.429 What is understood is not meaning; rather it is the entity or alternately the text. Therefore, the difference of the entity we are interpreting refers back to the entity itself or being.

As was pointed out earlier, hermeneutical phenomenology thematically considers the source of interpretation as demanding an interpretation of its object. Heidegger in Being and Time acknowledges that, based on an authentic phenomenology, what remains hidden and replaces and gets covered up again is not just this or that entity, but rather the Being of entities. This Being can be covered up so that it becomes forgotten by our understanding and no question arises about it or about its meaning.430

We must add that, there is an inauthenticity of the existential analytic which has its present counterpart in man’s pretense to consider himself master of his own speech. Authenticity in Ricoeur becomes the ability to hear, obey and respond to the Urdichtung, the originary utterance of language as revelation of being which thinkers and poets present.431 The world manifests itself in the situation of understanding as a power-to-be. For this reason the power of hearing is stronger than the power of saying. The fundamental root of "saying" is keeping silent. As Ricoeur believed, the sciences of language should move within the limits of speech so that simple saying (reden) can be reached only by going to the very roots of the matter.432 Therefore, whereas even a common understanding (Verständigung) is not possible (because of, e.g., the lack of a language), hermeneutics still exists, not in saying but in silence. The hermeneutic task, here, poses itself as the task of finding a common lan-guage.433 The ability to understand as a fundamental endowment of man becomes possible by way of language and partnership in conversation. Therefore the universal claim of hermeneutics is beyond any doubt motivated by language.434 For Gadamer, however, this phenomenon of language, in its hermeneutical sense, is restricted in the dialogue.

By Heidegger’s posing the question of being in terms of a language, it no longer is concerned with pronouncing judgment and thinking a corresponding validity claim in terms of objectivity, but rather is continuously concerned with the whole of being.435 Through this concern totality is not an objectivity to be determined in the procedure, but is the world horizon embracing understanding.436

Through bringing written fixed language once again into speech, interpretation is consequently the event of overcoming self-alienation. The return is not a reconstruction; for the thing meant is nowhere else than in the appearing word.437 This means that in interpretation we face a newly constructed text, rather than a reconstruction of an old reference of meaning. There is an essential relation between a newly constructed text and the previous text which was discovered once as a reference of our meaning, but taking the reconstruction of meaning as finding the text again is perhaps an illusionary act of mind. Gadamer seems to have distinguished this fact in dialogical reference when he saw it as an endeavor that continually modifies itself and as such leaves "behind the intended meaning" of the speaker; hence this return is the hermeneutic event of speaking again in a new voice.438

For Gadamer it is only by considering together both the concept of interpretation and the concept of the text that we are able to constitute a central concept in the linguistic structure as such.439 The wording of the text as its linguistic foundation comes into question when the process of understanding is disrupted. Understanding is possible (might be and must be) only after the wording of the text and in the forgetfulness of it. But this does not indicate that understanding is there before any text appears as given. The wording of the text, as Gadamer pointed out, is to be differentiated from the text itself, even though this nomenclature always can act also as a substitute for the other.440 Each word in its turn has a circle of the unexpressed preceding the meaning of the language.441

We can think of the relation of meaning as sign to a being that can be logically represented in combining of concepts in judg-ment.442 Kant tried to explain how the ‘copula’ functions in a judgment, saying that it can be thought of as posited merely relatively. But then there is a question whether the ‘copula’ itself is the purest text at all. To view the ‘copula’ as a text by virtue of which any literal text becomes meaningful is rooted in the fact that ‘copula’ in itself cannot be taken in any way into consideration unless it be found in an interpretive attribution. It is rather an indication that there is an attribution that cannot be repeated in interpretation. Based on this, the ‘copula’ functions as a connective text never attainable in itself. The very significance of this unreferentiable reference is that it shows the being, whereas it itself is in absence. Through this aspect of the ‘copula,’ the logos apophantikos (statement) is considered inseparable from the general meaning of logos. In other words a real understanding of logos could be possible if the copula is taken as a hermeneutical term, as mentioned above. ‘Copula’ as understood in a hermeneutical sense looks like a text that enables reading being true or being false in an assertion while it itself cannot be pointed to (or read). Otherwise how is being true related to the being that is also present in the assertion in the sense of the is as ‘copula’?443

The "is" need not be expressed necessarily in language; it can be found also in such statements as "it rains." The "to be" that appears in the sentence is termed the `copula’. The determinative thinking basically is preceded by the "is," by being. This indicates that there is a special connection between thought and being which determines the priority in hermeneutics. Thinking is, in turn, a being and as such is directed toward beings.444

The question of being itself (die Frage nach dem sein), as Heidegger in his famous lecture What is Metaphysics? argues, is not asked by traditional metaphysics, which on the contrary concealed this question, inasmuch as it constructed metaphysics from the concept of being as what is circumscribed as already out-there-now. Gadamer believes that the real intention of what was asked in Heidegger’s question about being can be understood only in the light of what Gadamer himself describes under the concept of interpre-tation.445

Heidegger says that any interpretation which is to contribute to understanding must already have understood what is to be inter-preted.446 Whether understanding in hermeneutics is preliminary to interpretation (as most would agree is Heidegger’s view) or not, understanding of a text must begin with some pre-hermeneutical knowledge of the text to be understood. Understanding the text is an act of searching for something. Without having any idea about what we are looking for we cannot understand it as what we were looking for. Therefore, there is a sense of the text which is already under-stood wherever it comes to be understood. Understanding cannot be delivered without this sense of the text in which what one finds is what one is referred to.

Gadamer claims that he himself tried to reconcile the discus-sion of Being (not the Being of the beings) with the pure study of understanding itself. But this step was not taken by later Heidegger who abandoned the concept of the hermeneutics.447

For Heidegger the problem is that truth and being true as unveiledness and unveiling must be studied within the Dasein’s mode of being. We meet with a being’s being in the understanding of being. It is understanding that first of all discloses or reveals some-thing like being. Being "is given" only in the specific disclosedness that characterizes the understanding of being.448 We must be aware of the fact that hermeneutics originally would be possible between Dasein’s ontical closedness to itself and ontological distance from itself. To the Dasein as unveiling there belongs essentially some-thing unveiled in its unveiledness. To unveiling there belongs as to every other intentional comportment an understanding of the being of that to which this comportment as such relates. If the closedness of something is truth, then Being is given only if there is disclosure. But there is truth only if a being exists which opens up and discloses. This means that disclosing or truth itself belongs to the mode of being of this being.449

Heidegger says that if man is to find his way once again into the nearness of Being (in die Nähe des Seins) he must first learn to exist in the nameless. Heidegger’s statement that ‘the substance of man is ek-sistence’ can be considered as the way that man in his proper essence (in seinem eigenen Wesen) becomes present to Being (zum Sein anwest) in ecstatic inherence in the truth of Being.450 This indeed means that as concerns the being of Dasein, we never really are free of interpretation in talking about being. In other words, the text as a nameless reference in Dasein can become present to it only as interpretation. The destiny (Geschichte) of Dasein exists in inter-pretation. Now, since the ‘end of man’ is the thinking of Being and man is the end of the thinking of Being, it is impossible for Dasein to be in a ‘nameless-Being’. Consequently, it is not possible to say that the text as nameless Being can never be thought of in itself. In other words, it is in itself, and prior to the thought of itself.

In constructing the Being of the Da, understanding comes along equiprimordially. The state of mind is one of the existential modes in which the Being of the ‘there’ maintains itself. If under-standing is taken as a fundamental existentiale, this means that it is conceived as a basic mode of Dasein’s Being.451 The ambiguity of this explanation lies in considering the Being of the ‘there’, that is, Dasein in such a way that maintains itself only in some aspects of the existential structure rather than others. How would the Being of the ‘there’ not maintain itself at all, that is, how would the Being of the ‘there’ not be there since it is not maintained by itself? Otherwise in spite of Heidegger’s disinterestedness as shown in Being and Time, the only remaining solution would consist in referring to Being rather than to the Being of Dasein.

Gadamer agrees with Heidegger that the understanding in which Dasein understands itself in its Being is not a way of com-porting itself toward definite objects of knowledge, but is rather the carrying out of Being-in-the-world itself.452 This understanding raises a new realm of hermeneutics based on facticity. Heidegger explains that in Dasein itself and hence in Dasein’s own under-standing of Being, the way the world is understood is, as we shall show, reflected back ontologically upon the way in which Dasein itself gets interpreted.453 In whatever way we conceive under-standing, it is a comportment toward beings.

Based on this, in Heidegger’s view, understanding must not be considered as comportment toward beings. All practical-technical commerce with beings is a comportment toward beings. On the other hand, an understanding of being is present also in practical-technical comportment toward beings so far as we have at all to do with beings as beings. In all comportment toward beings, whether it is specifically cognitive or whether it is practical-technical, an understanding of being is already involved. A being can be encountered as a being in the light of the understanding of being, but there is a question whether an understanding of being always and already lies at the basis of all comportment of the Dasein toward beings, whether nature or history, theoretical or practical. If this is so, we cannot define the concept of understanding.454 Finally, since understanding is not at all primarily a cognition and since existence is more than mere cognition in the usual spectator sense of knowledge, which knowledge presupposes existence, it is rather a basic and prior determination of existence itself that determines the cognitive agent.

Dasein is occupied with its own being, with its ability to be. Heidegger neglects to define how the multiplicity of possibilities is united under Dasein. He thinks that Dasein is free for specific possibilities of its own self: it is its own most peculiar ability-to-be. There are some possibilities in Dasein itself which are nothing except determinations of existence. If the Dasein is free for definite possibilities of itself then it is these possibilities themselves.455 The understanding of being belongs to the human Dasein which makes possible all comportment toward beings. The understanding of being itself has the mode of being of the human Dasein. The more appropriately we define this being in regard to the structure of its being, the more demand one faces to comprehend the structure of the understanding of being that belongs to the Dasein. Hence, based on the primary character of the being or text in hermeneutics, we can ask more clearly and unequivocally "what is it that makes this understanding of being possible at all.456

That which is understood gets articulated when the entity to be understood is brought close interpretatively by taking as our clue the ‘something as some-thing’; and this articulation lies before (liegt vor) our making any thematic assertion about it. In such an assertion the as (als) does not turn up for the first time; it just gets expressed for the first time, and this is possible only in that it lies before us as something expressible.457

When we have to do with anything, the mere seeing of the Things which are closest to us bears in itself the structure of interpretation, and in so primordial a manner that just to grasp something free as it were, of the ‘as’, requires a certain readjustment. . . . When we merely stare at something, our just-having-it-before-us lies before us as a failure to understand it any more. This grasping which is free of the ‘as’, is a privation of the kind of seeing in which one merely understands.458

Text or Being as "what is" above all else includes thinking, which establishes the relation between Being and man. It does not cause this relation to be, but merely offers this relation back to Being as something first handed over to it by Being. This returning back to Being is implied by the Being itself as the result of giving itself to Dasein. The sending of Being (die Schickung des Seins) takes place in seeking for Being.459 Based on this principle, the ereigenis (e-vent) of appropriation, the event which sends Being to thought and makes the history of metaphysics possible, does not mean Being but that which grants Being. One can not say that Being there is (es gibt) mere Being, and that ereigenis is the "It" which gives Being to thought since the history of metaphysics is the history of the various ways in which Being is named, while leaving the "it" which gives Being unthought.460

In the history of metaphysics the forgetting of Being, which can be addressed by es gibt, is grounded in forgetting the difference between Being and beings. Since the text is being in hermeneutics, this forgetfulness results in oblivion of the origin or text, and there-fore, oblivion of textual thinking is forgetting the distinction between Being and beings. In so far as Heidegger asks about the meaning of Being or the essence of truth, he is still engaged in meta-physical language of the being that thinks the thing as something out there that is to be discovered (Vorhandenen und Aufzufindenen).461 Therefore, as Gadamer says, the concept of interpretation, if it is formulated in the manner of Nietzsche, does not entail the discovery of a preexisting meaning, but the positing of meaning as we see in the Will to Power.462

Let us explain this. The history of Being means that the sending of Being structures the possibility of hermeneutics. The historical character of the history of Being must be determined on the basis of that which is characteristic of this sending and not from some undetermined coming-to-pass. The sending itself or being allows being unveiled in understanding as well as that mysterious "it" which sends, holds itself back in the various ways in which Being "shows" itself. To hold oneself back means in Greek, epochë. This is the reason we speak of epochs of the sending of Being.463

To think means to move into the proximity of Being and to let oneself be addressed by Being itself through its sending of beings. Therefore, by responding properly to Being’s address, man will be able to bring to light the truth of Being.464 Man’s standing out into the truth of Being does not mean that man is the ruler and above Being. Rather, man is thrown by Being itself into the truth of Being so that, eksisting in this way, he may only argue the truth of Being in order that beings may appear in the light of Being as the beings which they are. Thus man does not decide whether and how being appears, whether and how God, history, and nature, for example, come forth into the clearing of Being, come-to-presence, or depart. Rather, the advent of all beings lies in the destiny of Being’s sending.465

There is another way of explaining the problem in Gadamer’s statement that for Heidegger Being does not unfold totally in self-manifestation, but rather withholds itself and withdraws with the same primordiality with which it manifests itself. In its turn this doctrine leads Gadamer’s hermeneutics toward not forgetting the limit which is implicit in every hermeneutical experience of mean-ing.466 In other words, the fact that being can never be completely understood indicates that as a text it can occur in hermeneutics again and again.

If philosopheme as symptom of something in a textual work, as Derrida states, cannot be presented in the history of philosophy, or better, is nowhere present,467 then the text never comes in its determination as presence, which Heidegger recognized as the destiny of philosophy. However, the inefficiency of the Derridian symptom must be regarded in the fact that it is not to be a presented text; rather it is described more as a writing text and not a mere text that immediately corresponds to Being as one might see in Heide-gger’s outlook.

Therefore, we must point out that the secret and validity of the text is not dependent on the life or the death of the author. The same is true concerning the reader. The text can be unveiled through changing events, but only the text itself talks to us here or there. Hence, Gadamer notes that by the theme of the text there is more at stake than reflections upon the methodology of the philosophical sciences.468 Text for Gadamer is more than a title for the subject matter of literary research and correspondence, and therefore inter-pretation is more than the technique of scientifically interpreting texts.469 It is in the act of assessing the textual sense that every inter-pretation finds at once its consistency and its vulnerability. The latter invites new efforts at interpretation and accordingly under-lines in principle the open-ended character of every interpretation.470 Therefore, the process of retrieval means something more than an exposition of what an author has said already. It means, rather, bringing what he cannot and does not yet say but nevertheless is laid before our eyes as unsaid in the expressions which one actually uses. What must become decisive, then, is not merely what is expressed in explicit formulae, but what is laid before our eyes as still unsaid through the formulae used.471

It is the reflection on the textuality of texts which provides the position of determining more accurately the relationship between text and reader. Through this way, the presence of subjectivism or an objectivism in the process of interpretation can be recognizable.472 As the result of the textuality of the text, it becomes possible to unfold the self rendering a critique of the ego by accompanying all stages of the collection of sense in the self-understanding of the interpreter. This fact realizes the possibility of understanding of her-meneutics based on an understanding totally different from Gada-mer’s concept of understanding.

For Ricoeur, a textual production must be understood as a process of distanciation and decontextualization from which results textual autonomy, making the text susceptible to future appropria-tions.473 Therefore, textuality while containing distanciation as its intrinsic element, presupposes discourse as a living language with its immanent dialectic of meaning and event.474 For Gadamer inter-pretation is probably recreation, in a certain sense; however, this recreation does not follow the process of the creative act, but the lines of the created work which has to be brought to representation in accord with the meaning the interpreter finds in it.475

It is clear that the interpreting text has to be derived from the interpretative text, in a productive or recreative manner. It is proble-matic to take merely the interpreting text or interpretation as a con-structive hermeneutical foundation.476 Understanding is a perpetual attempt toward a text while this attempting enables one to see the reference of his interpretation as long as this becomes wider and deeper and darker in the temporality. In this sense, conceptually the text is interpretative in itself, although not because of being inter-pretable, that is, a text that can be interpreted. Therefore, it must be acknowledged that it is impossible to speak of interpretation or of something resembling an interpretation unless one points to some-thing having the role of the interpretative text, to something playing the role of the interpreting text only through a productive hermeneu-tics exchange for (as) the first text (interpretative text).477

We must also notice the fact that a text occurs in the process of textual unveiling because there is always a potentiality of other-ness. For Gadamer, the fact that a potentiality of otherness remains suggests that the text remains plural.478 This potentiality is amalgamated with the ambiguity of the text as reference of different interpretation. Thus, the plurality in this potentiality virtually must be considered beyond the structure of interpretation itself. The text emerges in its performative character here so that it takes its direction from the communicative situation (Verständigungssi-tuation) in which it is located merely as a concept.479

On the other hand, the criticism introduced by Nietzsche concerning the hermeneutical doctrine of the text, characterizes interpretation as the substitution of an interpreted text for an interpretable text. Based on this criticism, one cannot distinguish the moment of criticism which establishes the text, from the hermeneutic moment that is the moment of commentary (or based on our attitude, the textualization process). The critic would seek "to re-establish the original text, to eliminate interpretations, corruptions, errors in coping, etc. Now, in order to decide on the version of the text to be retained, the critic will be anticipating possible interpretations of it."480 Therefore, the text to be interpreted is already the result of an interpretation. Descombes reacts to this anti-text theory by stating that there is no question here of denying that the interpretive text can itself be the product of an interpretation, but it is also the product of another interpretation, that is, of another substitution. This means in other words, that one interpretation resting on another results from the very notion of the substitution of one text for another.481

The interpretation provides a contrast only for the text to establish its own textuality or the meaning "tendency of the text." Therefore, the textuality of the interpretive text comes from the core of the text, rather than from what is seen to be substituted for the text; the textuality of a text is its process of coming to an interpretation. Therefore, the textuality of a text is the text’s process of coming to an interpretation of itself. A text establishes itself in a variety of ways. Its right to interpretation is not comparable to any particular understanding which might determine it in such a way. A text is interpretative in a wide variety of ways: in interpretation, in its "textuality and textualities", it formulates the dominance and limits, centrality and supplementarily, decidability and indicidability of its interpretativity.482

We must note that man fundamentally is concerned with beings. When he begins to think and presents beings as beings, he undoubtedly relates to Being. As we mentioned earlier, in truth he usually thinks of beings as such, but never of Being itself. Even in its critical phase, philosophy thought from beings back to other beings, and in passing had only a glimpse of Being. Being itself cannot be thought. Thus that which is free in the most original sense is not Dasein, but Being itself. Being is liberation which frees from con-cealment.483 There is no listening to the others; indeed Being listens to itself while others listen to Being.

Likewise, that which comes into language is not something pregiven before language; rather, the word gives it its own deter-minateness.484 The literary text is text precisely because it points back to an originary act of linguistic utterance while it also pre-scribes all repetition and act of speaking. In the literary text ac-cording to Gadamer the word first attains its full self-presence (Selbstpräsenz). The word makes what is said present and also makes itself present in its radiant actuality as sound. It must not only be read, but also must be listened to.485 As Heidegger says in Unter-wegs zur Sprache, the word is not a thing and if we search for it we shall never find it among things. But he does not explain whether a word can be forgotten in others or not. The word "is" not, if we reserve the word "is" for the realm of things, but nonetheless it is in a more privileged way than all things since the things must refer to the word "is." As far as the word is concerned, in this relation `it is’ (es ist) must be replaced by `it gives’ (es gibt).486 Es gibt in this textual actuality of the word, implies thinking not as a dictating but rather a listening to being. It is an opening oneself up for Being’s demand; thus, it truly is an act of freedom by which man as Dasein acquiesces to Being’s address. Yet, Being’s call to thought does not necessitate; it invites but does not compel. It leaves Dasein free to refuse its call; it is the address of Being which makes man free.

Following Heidegger we can say, even if the text or referential signification of a thing ontically be unexpressed, this must not pre-vent us from regarding it as a constitutive state for understanding it existentially and a priori. The text is a tissue or a galaxy of mean-ings which refer to other meanings only within itself and the inten-tionality of it.487 The words used by the interpreter have their origin in the content of language that comes to form an aura of meanings which are quite unique. The appropriation of textual meaning, con-sequently, has to be regarded not so much as a duplicate effort, but as a genuine creation itself.488

For Heidegger, everything which is "thought-provoking" gives us to think or, perhaps it would be better to say, to interpret. Moreover, "It always gives that gift just so far as the thought-provoking matter already and intrinsically is what must be thought about."489 Based on hermeneutical terms, thought-provoking is the real source for interpretation. This means, however, that the text itself is what provokes interpreting itself.

It is clear that textuality corresponds not to a certain intention or consequence of discourse generally, whether written or oral. This is to be understood in opposition to orality, as taken by Derrida. "It provides a world we have in common." The intentions and conse-quences of the discourse, the existence of a common world to which we can refer, do not depend only on those artifacts we think of when the word "text" is used, such as books, documents, and laws.490

The problem of this circular movement from interpretation to the text, and from the text to the interpretation, would seem to disappear if the text is taken into consideration as an original text and understanding is seen as an interpreting such that the hermeneutical possibilities of the text are disclosed by the event of hermeneutics. Even in a very pure logical sense of determination, the reference of the interpretation is the starting point. Gadamer thinks that, as a hermeneutic precondition, only if we pursue everyday speech in accord with the concept of understanding are we able to see the hermeneutic circle as really directed toward the structure of being.491

In short, if the text responds to any interpretation referred to it, then it is the text itself again which is corresponded to in the hermeneutical determination of things. This can be done by having the character of an event be in allowing its being-reference to open up to new further references in understanding the things again and again. This genuine characteristic of the text as reference seems neglected by some hermeneuts like Ricoeur, so that the reference for the latter appears only as the second aspect of the meaning, that is, the intentional direction toward a self.492 Explanation and sense are text-internal categories whereas understanding and reference are external to the text. The reference expresses, as is pointed out by Ricoeur, the full exteriorization to the extent that the meaning is not only the ideal object intended by the utterer, but also the actual reality aimed at by the utterance.493 But it becomes clear that this actual reality can be defined only by referring to the text since otherwise the referent of the text will be a non-essential referent. Therefore, it is completely to misunderstand the meaning of the hermeneutical text if we think interpretation is not a means of getting back to an original expression which is textual.

Textuality thus can and must be defined in its characteristic as based on referability. There are some other characteristics of textuality, like stability, iterability, and past-future inclusiveness. But all these secondary characteristics result from the referability of the text. The textual is that which we can assume or to which we can refer.494

Reference might be described as the pointing into the interpretative purview of information. A reference, that is information known about the referent. becomes available to transformations in the same way as the other conditions of the text. A reference itself does not specify its function; the function of a reference must be denied through combinations of transformations and inferences.495

If we are still not thinking it stems from the fact that the thing itself that must be thought about turns away from man.496 What must be interpreted turns away from man; it withdraws from him. The question is how we can find a definition for the source of interpretation whereas it withdraws from the outset of interpretation. The reason we can not define this provoking-source is because indeed we name our interpretations of it. One can never know a true name for a text but only what the text is called in itself; we can only point to it. The source of interpretation is withdrawn; it is as hermeneutical beings that we draw toward it.

By widening the hermeneutic characteristic of activity and potentiality we can examine this view that the concept of the thing (Sache) reflects more than the concept of Res. The meaning of the Sache is permeated above all by what is called cause, that is the disputed matter under consideration. Sache, as Gadamer defines it, is the thing placed in the middle between the disputing parties since a decision must be rendered regarding it. Sache was to be protected against the grasp of one party or the other.497 Heidegger thinks that the thing is there as a holding of things in relation and therefore, the thing things.498 The thing as indicative of the difference and identity of things enables things to be there. As far as it concerns the thing, that is in a state of coming, its arrival into the world as thing is only in so far as it describes itself as distanced from other things.499 A thing becomes a hermeneutical source only to the extent that it has never totally arrived at the possibilities of interpretation a text contains in itself. Therefore, in facing the question what is a text as signified by a thing we can say that a text is that which is in the process of interpretation.

As Gadamer says, the text with its charge of meaning (Sinn-bezug) constitutes the only present. We are thrown back on the meaning relations that articulate the framework of the whole text when we read a text; the text is uttered in its whole meaning each time we leaf back through the text. While beginning and reading anew, we discover new dimensions of meaning of the text.500 We do not leave the text behind; no act of studying or reading a text can leave the text behind as understood completely. Whatever text be given for understanding, we go more and deeply into its meaning. The text is not behind any understanding; rather we have already entered into it forever. We are in the present text just as everyone who speaks is in the words he says and does not hold them at a distance.501

Heidegger in his later period tries to depart from the Dasein-centered terminology to hiddenness as well as unconcealedness; thereafter, the hermeneutical reference toward being can stand in itself and withhold itself from interpretation.502 Following this principal view, Gadamer believes that the conflict between concealment and unconcealment is not restricted to the hermeneutics of art in any particular meaning, but rather reveals the textual tendency wherever it might be.

The agreement on textual meaning, whenever achieved, is to be accounted for by another ground that is the simple distinction between a supposed meaning-in-itself and its significance for the interpreter.503 According to Gadamer, the meaning of the text cannot be restricted to the mensa auctoris. Tradition builds upon what he calls the "excess of meaning" that it finds in the text.504 There is an incommunicability of the text which has been affirmed by poets. In Hölderlin for instance it is a means for approaching the inapproachable. It brings to the "not said" as what makes possible "la communication de l’incommunicable et aboutit au language." This means, in other words, that the poet speaks, but doesn’t speak. In this turning and backing away from speech, the poet elevates himself in the ruin; the speaking speaks from within the silence that refuses speech.505

The returning or coming back of a text again to itself never takes place in Heidegger and in Derrida. Indeed this "homelessness" of the text becomes a concern in Derrida’s The Postcard. Other Heideggerians, such as Blanchot, consider transcendence as a distance whose divisions are not capable of being unified even in the utopian sense of the text.506

In hermeneutical theology also, because of not having a fundamental definition of the text, there are a great many confusions around the relation between the Bible as sacred scripture and the text as being. For example, without predicating its logical consequences, Ricoeur proclaims that the Bible should come to the fore only in the conclusion of a hermetic process.507 We must state that the first misconception which can result from this theory is that it regards as possible having a philosophical determination presumably unrelated to the question about the origin of a being, in other words, without a presupposed theological subject-matter of being. Nonetheless he agrees that defining the Bible as the word of God does not rely on a psychologistic concept of inspiration, rather, it is addressed to the quality of the view of being as it announces itself.508

This is neither understanding as a universal concept nor a universal structure of understanding, but the textual understanding from which philosophical statements about a certain type of human self-understanding are justified.509 There is here an important question which is not answered by Gadamer, namely, whether tex-tual understanding can be distinguished from his concept of under-standing. Every interpretation would be in a position to justify its existence if its textually was realized through postulating an expla-nation of its possibility. The possibility of an interpretation de-mands an analysis of the text which regards the act of interpretation as its capacity of referentiability. The determinative characteristic of the textual referentiability must not be considered as against the possibilities of understanding.

Understanding becomes possible on the basis of the textual possibilities. Any text which discloses itself in possibilities of inter-pretation is itself a potentiality for the coming texts. The develop-ment of the unveiling of the text in different possibilities gradually determines its interpretation (Auslegung) in which understanding appropriates what can be understood in the text. This is why Heide-gger states that in interpretation, understanding does not become something different, but becomes itself.510 Interpretation is not about acquiring merely what is referred to as a text, rather it is the possi-bilities of the text which are worked out of it. Determinate interpre-tation can go on because being has already been understood in some specific way. In this way it is not that we grasp being, but being that grasps us through this determination.511

There is a circular activity of the text and its interpretation, and this hermeneutical circle is the right way to understand a being. This circle reflects the process of textuality from text to the interpretation and from this interpretation as a text again to a new and different text. The text cannot engage in new being addressed again and again unless it remains the same. The text can become a text, for that which is said is not simply understood, rather it becomes an object in order to reproduce that which was intended (not to be identified as the multiplicity of possible intentions).512

The defect or shortcoming of the metaphysical definition in the question of being calls us to modify the meaning of the text so that it is considered not as a mere universal characteristic in various interpretations as metaphysical being. Text, as the reference of the hermeneutics, represents beings coming forward into unconcealedness in the event of disclosure. It then becomes clear why Being and Time already begins to counteract the forgetfulness of being designated as the essence of metaphysics.513

We must attempt to determine the text from Being as coming-to-presence and from time as the fundamental transcendental do-main in which coming-to-presence in its diversities is granted. There is a position that time is the "it" which grants Being. But it must be considered also that time itself is the gift of an `it grants.’514 Thus, this mysterious "it" is still undetermined and is open for further investigation in a hermeneutics of "es gibt."

In answering whether there is a text in itself, in a letter to Detiev Ludres, Heidegger sees himself willing to strike his "impossible remark" concerning the priority of interpretation.515 In-deed, for him the question of when a text is fully appropriated is constitutively prior to such questions as whether the text is itself made of interpretation (as his interpretative preoccupation is with the essentially "unsaid" or what is expressed by logos).

Let us review the story. Heidegger’s remarks on Hölderlin’s fragmentary hymn "Der Ister" come to this conclusion that the poetry itself must always be "what is first and present" and therefore it must legitimate the interpretation offered to it.516 The poem, as Blanchot says, is that which holds together and gathers in its unanchored unity an open unification of principle. The fissure of illu-mination discovers a foundation on which something comes to ap-pearance and enables what appears to maintain itself in agreement or in tune (un accord) vacillating but stable.517 The conceptual explanation cannot exhaust the content of a poetic creation and its uniqueness. This has been recognized, as Gadamer says, at least since Kant. Poetry can take a form of speech in which meanings come together in their relatedness. Since the separation of the ae-sthetic from the theoretical and freeing it from the concepts and rules is not enough, hermeneutics must help us to determine the special place of poetry in the structure of the binding force of language, where the conceptual is in play.518 Based on this determination, lan-guage is realizable as art and can be demonstrated in poetic crea-tions where it emerges in its full autonomy so that it stands for itself and raises itself to this position.519

Wittgenstein’s idea of language discovers a notion of the game which is similar to Gadamer’s own concept of prejudice structures, whereas what he finds in the concept of language game is not unlike what Heidegger and Gadamer see in the understanding of being.520 It is language that can be unveiled in both poetry and more basically in literature.521 In an opposite direction, here the fact that language occurs once again, in both vocabulary and grammar, within the inner infinity of the dialogue is the fundamental dimension of herme-neutics. Hermeneutics, thus as the universal task, becomes possible through a language in which words are sought in order that one can reach the other.522

On the one hand, it is true that the ability of the myth can be comprehended in a language through its need to change and open-ness for ever new interpretations on behalf of symbol. The symbol can be regarded as a structure of meaning in which a primary literal sense designates in addition another sense which is secondary and which can be apprehended only through the first.523 Symbol gives rise to thought and wants to be thought with all its presuppositions. This indicates that the interpreter does not posit the meaning; it is given by the symbol. What it gives is something for thought, some-thing to think about, in other words, first the giving and then the po-siting. It is for reasoning ever to begin again and re-begin everything in the perspective of thought.524

A mediation on symbols must start from the fullness of lan-guage and of meaning already there. It begins from within language which has already taken place and in which everything in a certain sense has already been said.525 In this sense, symbol must represent a direct language of myth, not because of its posing thought, but rather since it speaks of something which is already said; that is, the origin of language exists in myth. Symbol provides an ahistorical condition for myth in language and must be taken a priori of any mythical interpretation. Heidegger interpreting Hölderlin’s poem "We are a sign that is not read," says that "myth means the telling word." For the Greeks, to tell is to lay bare and make appear: both the appearance and that which has its essence in the appearance, its epiphany. Mythos is what has its essence in its telling, that is ap-parent in the unconcealedness of its appeal. As Heidegger em-phasizes, logos and mythos are the same, and logos means also the telling word (following Parmenides, Fragment 8). Thus, myth covers up all hermeneutical activity. "Mythos are the Logos become separated and opposed only at the point where neither mythos nor logos can keep to its original nature."526

We must also know that the myth, as the highest source of her-meneutic effective consciousness, solidifies its being as concept of religious source. Gadamer explains how Augustine notes that light is created before the differentiation of things and the creation of the light-giving heavenly bodies. When light is created God speaks for the first time. Augustine sees the way in which light is created and commanded as the coming into being of mental light by means of which the difference among created things is made possible. Only through light is the formlessness of the first created mass of heaven and earth rendered capable of being shaped into a multiplicity of forms.527

Philosophical hermeneutics cannot be addressed merely as a general theory from which hermeneutics of the myth, as we see in biblical hermeneutics, is derived. Rather the latter offers an irre-placeable cultural mediation for that "unique case" represented by faith, since faith as such lies outside any possible generalization and brings the whole hermeneutical question back to its original non-hermeneutic roots.528 Yet, biblical discourse can be considered not as absolute, but as a particular case within general hermeneutics, at one and the same time, where philosophical hermeneutics might appear ultimately like the organon of theological hermeneutics.529

It is an important fact that biblical faith cannot be separated from the movement of interpretation which elevates it into the power of a word ceaselessly renewed by its interpretation in signs and symbols which have created this concern for centuries. Hence, theo-logy is enmeshed in texts, rather than mere language i.e., the lan-guage used in interpretation. Texts are the manner in which theolo-gical thinking can be accomplished. This insight rests on the know-ledge which has emerged in textual linguistics according to which the leading paradigms of linguistic usage consist not of the word or the proposition, but rather of the text. The importance of this know-ledge for theological thought deserves to be investigated because it can happen that, from the perspective of textuality, theological thought and discourse disclose a new understanding. This is similar to literary science which turns anew to the text as paradigm, away from the fragments of discussion about individual propositions within a text. Such discussion is outside the frame of reference of the text.530

As in theological hermeneutics, in legislative hermeneutics there is a tension between the fixed text-the law (such as the gospel) on the one hand and, on the other, the sense arrived by applying it at the concrete moment of interpretation, either in judgment or in preaching. The claim of the validity of law rests on the fact that it is like a text. Law as a text requires interpretation for practical ap-plication. This means conversely that the law or the text (and not interpretation) has already entered into every practical application. A law is not only for historical understanding, but more to be realized in its legal validity by being interpreted. Similarly, the gospel does not exist in order to be understood as a historical docu-ment. Therefore, the text, no matter what it would be, must be understood at every moment in a new and different way.531 (This does not deny the fact that, as we mentioned earlier, the text falls in temporal changes.) As is insisted on repeatedly by Gadamer, under-standing is nothing but application of different texts in various realms. In addition, it is clearly one thing to be interpreted as a law and quite another to have to interpret the Holy Scripture, hence the meaning of such texts is determined not for a neutral understanding but, by their own claim to validity.532

In order to be able to understand the "mysterious message" contained in texts, it was necessary to look for a revelation beyond human utterances, one which would come announced by divinity itself, using the vehicle of vision, dream and oracle. But such an unprecedented revelation, never heard before, would have to speak of an as yet unknown god and of a still-sacred truth. In contrast, Ecco believes that as soon as a text becomes `sacred’ for a certain culture, it becomes subject to the process of suspicious reading and therefore to what is undoubtedly an excess of interpretation. Through this extension of hermeneutics this had happened, with classical allegory, in the case of the Homeric texts, and it could not but have taken place later in the scriptures (as in Jewish culture with the interpretation of the Torah).533

Gadamer tried to describe the mystical aspect of the text in a more delicate manner. A literary text, for him, does not disappear in the act of understanding but stands there confronting the under-standing, with normative claims. The text is authentically there only when it comes back to itself. Only in this way is it text in the original and authentic sense. Through this explanation, it seems that Gada-mer comes close to a real hermeneutical understanding of the con-cept of the text. Thus, the word of a text, in constituting literature, is authentically there only in coming back to itself.534 These words help the text to develop itself out of itself. The text speaks. The literary text has such a primary character that in reading it one must listen. "When such texts are recited, one not only listens but in-wardly speaks with them. They attain their true existence only once one has learned them `by heart’." Then they live as a mysterious message. They live in the hermeneutics as remembrances of the great bards, the chanting choruses (choreuten), the lyric singers."535

Gadamer also is prompted to extend the sense of a literary text. A literary text is not only the rendering of spoken language into a fixed form or what refers back to an already spoken word. The literary text in the most special sense in the highest degree prescribes all repetitions and acts of speaking. No speaking can match ade-quately the prescription given in the poetic text. However, it seems that Gadamer sees in the constitution of poetic texts ultimately what can be seen in the real hermeneutical pattern of text. "The poetic text exercises a normative function that does not refer back either to an original utterance nor to the intention of the speaker, but is some-thing that seems to originate in itself, so that in the fortune and felicity of its success, a poem surprises and overwhelms even the poet."536

Interpreting Hölderlin, Jean-Luc Nancy says: One of the meanings does not arrive (Mais l’un du sense n’advient pas). Not that there is no meaning, but the non-advent of the unity of meaning is what alone counts with respect to meaning. This unique thing may survive within meaning unto meaning.537 Following this, the success of the work originally constituted by its origin provides its meaning. This means that it is not only what is meant by the work that can provide the meaning. If the text is not maintained, how could inter-pretation be referred to significatively by different parts of dialogue. In other words, hermeneutics has a universal significance which is not threatened, accidentally, when an entire culture is threatened by radical doubt and critique; this significance is really a "persuasive inner logic" by a merely hermeneutical appeal. Indeed, hermeneutics can be regarded as a very pure philosophical question which does not result necessarily in doubt regarding the credibility of the knowledge of a thing. Rather, a doubt indeed cannot have any meaning except it be referential. Hence hermeneutics embraces even doubts about doubt.

In its constructive character, the notion of text is relative. For example, it is from the point of view of a translation or commentary that one thing becomes the text and the other the interpretation.538 But what does the authenticity of the text and the inveracity of the other mean? The answer is that there is nothing important or even existent everywhere beyond the textuality of the text. In other words, nothing precludes translating a translation, it must be seen as another exercise in translation.

In this regard, it is possible to think of Kant’s architectonic of human reason in terms of the hermeneutic model.539 We know that the hermeneutical model cannot be constituted without the auto-nomy of the judgment as the grounds for practical reason. Based upon this position, we see that in his discussion on Leibnitz’s doc-trine of judgment Heidegger explains how the proposition has the alternative, true or false, in so far as something is said about some-thing.

The question is, as was pointed out previously, what is the essence of judgment, or, in other words, what can be explained of the judgment in its essence. As a judging about beings, it is in itself related to beings. This constructive relationship to beings is called intentionality.540 Judging about it is in itself intentional, in itself it constructs what is judged as determined in the judging. In a judg-ment, there is a relation of the subject and the predicate. But, ac-cording to Heidegger, there is another relation in judgment articu-lated by a relation; this is called the relating relationship. To be in-tentionally related is intentional in the sense of determining some-thing as something.541

The question about the essence of truth as far as this is con-cerned with the judgment, becomes the question about the essence of judgment. Judgment, for Heidegger, shows the structures of inten-tionality and bifurcatation, both of which are structures of judging Dasein.542 The constructive priority of judgment not only can be regarded in logic as attributed to Aristotle, but is deeply adopted with the basis of any hermeneutics about the being. In fine, judgment is being in is and being is judgment in is. Regarding this hermeneu-tical ground of judgement, it is justifiable to state that the concept of assertion is related to the concept of judgment.

From the point of view of a morphological phenomenon, this cannot be evidence of a relationship of cause and effect, since it does not fit in with other data concerning causal relationships. According to Eeco, hermetic thought made use of a principle of false tran-sitivity by which it is assumed that if A bears a relationship X to B, and B bears a relationship Y to C, then A must bear a relationship Y to C.543 Yet hermeneutic inference should be grounded on being to the extent that it brings the contribution of the sciences into funda-mental hermeneutical agreement. As we said, hermeneutics is not just a repertory of methods, but refers to the fundamental question of various sources in being. Only in this way can we think of herme-neutics as philosophy which is able to give an account of the ques-tions that are "prior to the application of every science." These are the questions which Gadamer sees as determinative for all human knowing and doing.544

Das Fragen sucht den Grund für das Seiende, so fern es seiend ist. Den Grund suchen, das heisst: ergrun-den. Was in Frage gestellt wird, ruckt in den Bezug zu Grund. Allein weil gefragt wird, bleibt ofen, ob der Grund ein wahrhaft grundender, Grundung erwirkender, Ur-grund ist ; ob der Grund eine Grundung versagt, Ab-grund ist; ob der Grund weder das Eine noch das Andere ist, sondern nur einen notwendigigen Schein von Grundung vorgibt und so ein Un-grund ist.545

Habermas himself considered the dangers of the groundlessness of a hermeneutics with no hermeneutical origin in itself. For example, he provided a basis for constructive hermeneutical reflection in refer-ence to universal history, a goal that lifts itself out of the multiple goals and conceptions of goal in social actions.546

Husserl’s ideas were based on accepting a pure science (sciences) of essential being as not only possible, but as necessi-tating the science of fact. In the pure sciences like pure logic, pure mathematics, etc., no experience qua experience, i.e., qua con-sciousness that apprehends or sets up reality or concrete being can take over the function of supplying a logical ground. "Where ex-perience functions in them, it is not as experience."547 In addition, the scholastic distinction pointed out between the actus signatus and the actus exercitus were interviewed by Heidegger as the distinction between saying "I see something" and "I am saying that I see some-thing." This statement originally taking place is already something as a new intentional object in which this seeing is presented alive.548 Here, the practice of understanding in life and also in science is similarly the expression of the affinity of the one who understands to the one whom he understands and to that which he understands.549

Practical philosophy is scientific knowledge of the universal that as such can be thought and learned. Yet it demands of the one learning it the same indissoluble relationship to practice as of the one teaching it.550 But it must always be recognized that this know-ledge has an indispensable relation to the good (or what for Derrida can be represented by father)551 as an ultimate text must be read by asking questions of it.

Moreover, hermeneutical activity presupposes that both con-versational partners are concerned with a common subject matter, a common question about which they converse, for dialogue is always dialogue about something. The difference between Gadamer and his hermeneutic predecessors, Schleiermacher and Dilthey, is based on the fact that he focuses his attention on the subject matter of the text itself that possesses a certain ideality of meaning, rather there is taking the language of the text as a cipher for something lying behind the text. It is not a kind of dialectical question between different partners, but rather a participation in the communication which the text makes to us. What is said to be present in understanding means it is entirely independent in hermeneutics although this under-standing can be historical (which is not independent of history).552 The text is a universal category of human activity. As such, textual genres play a significant role in human communication. Essentially the major function of the text can be announced through different strategies, for instance by the title, by the manner of presentation or by being embedded in a larger content of action.553

Ricoeur develops four themes of the text: the text as the relation of speech to writing, the text as a structured work, the text as a world projection and the text as a mediation of self-under-standing. As we can see, the sense of the text that is the reference of interpretation remains hidden from Ricoeur’s eyes.544 For him it is the notion of language as discourse rather than the notion of being, which is the immediate basis of the notion of the text which ulti-mately is a phenomenon of discourse. In his hermeneutic philosophy of existence, Ricoeur tries to show how the textual element effec-tively functions in the world of interpretations. The Freudian inter-pretation of dreams, of art works, of jokes, can be read as a type of hermeneutics. A patient, for instance, where he expresses himself does interpret, and hence also the psychotherapist. We must inter-pret for example the dream "text." But, for Ricoeur the object of this interpretation is no longer a text as such, but is the human subject which, as a result of radical phenomenological vision, can be deciphered again as a new text. The connection between the "world of the text" and the "text of the world" is not determined by Ricoeur. In other words, Ricoeur takes the text, that is a discursive text, as not being closed in itself, but as having a world , that is the "world of the text" in which it is discovered.555 This understanding of the text con-tains the "world of the text" as supplementary in the determination of the text. The genuine cause of this fault results from a very funda-mental logical definition of the meaning the text. This has been constructed only on the primacy of the semantic with respect to the semiological dimension.

For this reason, metaphysics is criticized by Heidegger since it thinks about beings as beings, whereas this sight is owed to the light of being. The light itself, or what such thinking experiences as light, does not come within the range of metaphysical thinking.556 In spite of this fact, however, it does not seem that the hermeneutical approach of the text is impeded by any metaphysical argumentation since nowhere can the light itself be studied in itself beyond its metaphysical representation.

The intention of the Heideggerian fundamental question what is metaphysics? is to inquire what metaphysics really is in contrast with what metaphysics "wants to be and with what it understands itself to be." What is the significance of the fact that the question of philosophy took the shape of metaphysics. Gadamer says: "If one understands the question, what is metaphysics? in the sense that one asks what happened with the beginning of metaphysical thinking, then the Heideggerian question first acquires the force of its provocativeness and is disclosed as an instance of the new notion of interpretation."557 Based upon this, the new notion of understanding and consequently of hermeneutics, surpasses the limits of any her-meneutic theory, no matter how universally understood.558

Philosophy for Heidegger is universal phenomenological on-tology which takes its departure from the hermeneutic of Dasein.559 The Being of Dasein on which the structural whole as such is sup-ported ontologically becomes accessible to us only through this whole of a single primordially unitary phenomenon which is consi-dered in such a way that it provides the ontological foundation for possibilities.560

The dynamism of the construction of hermeneutics springs finally from Being itself in granting itself to Dasein and dominating it. What is meant by sending Being or Sendung des seins is that Being gives itself to Dasein. The sending of Being comes with its destiny which asks hermeneutically after and for Being. Being sustains the process of sending and guards it so that in its light Beings can appear as what they are.561 The appropriating of event can be Being in itself in a certain perspective. Being appears as a hermeneutical reference in arising out of the event which is simply Being in so far as it sends itself in any given epoch. The term "event" is therefore another word for "sending"; its advantage is that it suggests the ontological difference as such.562

In Of Gramatology, the Heideggerian Sprache has been brought within a metaphysical framework in order to deconstruct it so that it cannot provide the fundamental question of being. Derrida notes that Heidegger after evoking the "voice of being" recalls that it is silent, mute and wordless and the voices of the sources are not heard. A rupture between the original meaning of being and the word, between meaning and the voice which at once confirms a fun-damental metaphor, translates the ambiguity of Heidegger’s posi-tion with regard to the metaphysics of presence.563

We find in ancient Hermetism and in contemporary ap-proaches some disquietingly similar ideas such as the view that a text is an open-ended universe where the interpreter can discover infinite interconnections. It is possible also to think that a text, as pretending to assert something univocal, is a miscarried universe, that is, the work of a muddle-headed Demiurge (who tried to say that ‘that’s that’ and on the contrary elicited an uninterrupted chain of infinite deferrals where ‘that’ is not ‘that’).564

Without regard to the text as poet (we do not mean poet as text), we must say that, language is unable to grasp a unique and pre-existing meaning. Language can show that what we speak of is only the coincidence of the opposites and it reflects the inadequacy of thought. Hermeneutics is to transform the text from an illusion of meaning to awareness that the meaning of the text can be infinite.565