CHAPTER I

 

THE PROBLEM OF RELATIVITY AND OBJECTIVITY IN

INTERPRETATION

 

 

But how is one to reconcile the claim to an absolute truth with the experience of human finitude?1 Taking this question as the point of departure for his philosophical hermeneutics, Gadamer contends that we can understand a text only by sharing or assuming that we share a common linguistic and cultural horizon. A text is a phase in a communicative event within this horizon. The horizon itself, however, is grounded in the ontological features of the subject matter of the text. These ontological features, he maintains, manifest themselves in the dialogical character of language and provide a transcendental ground for the possibility of giving a true interpre-tation of a text. The meaning of a text retains an identity, in Gadamer’s view, though it is capable of assuming an indefinite variety of finite expressions of its content. Gadamer accordingly argues that the meaning of a text cannot be legitimately equated with the intention of its author.

In light of this argument, does Gadamer’s rejection of the identification of meaning with author’s intention imply that he eliminates from his philosophical hermeneutics the question: "What role in the hermeneutic event [or process] does author’s intention play?" As some critics of Gadamer, specifically intentionalists like Hirsch and Juhl complain, Gadamer refuses author’s intention as a criterion for textual meaning.2 According to Gadamer, "the mens auctoris is not admissible as a yardstick for the meaning of a work of art. Even the idea of work-in-itself, divorced from its constantly renewed reality in being experienced, always has something about it."3 Thus, not just occasionally but always, "the meaning of a text goes beyond its author."4 However, we should ask the question: "In what sense and to what extent does Gadamer discard ‘author’s intention’ as a criterion for true interpretation?" He also argues:

It is only the failure of the attempt to admit what is said as true that leads to the endeavor to "under-stand" -- psychologically or historically -- the text as the opinion of another. . . . To understand means primarily to understand [oneself in] the subject-matter, and only secondarily to detach and understand the opinion of the other as such.5

 

Gadamer contends that understanding is basically dialogical in character, i.e., it is coming to an agreement on a subject matter, thus, a matter of participation. Consequently, understanding is never a "subjective relation to a given object but to the history of its effect; in other words, understanding belongs to the being of that which is understood."6 If this is the case, we should not understand ‘agree-ment’ or ‘participation’ to mean total agreement with someone or accepting what the other says as true. In this context, Gadamer argues that an agreement in understanding never means that "difference is totally overcome by identity. When one says that one has come to an understanding with someone about something, this does not mean that one has absolutely the same position."7

However, at this point the main question is: How can we identify truth with subject matter while rejecting the identity of meaning with the author’s intention? Stated more clearly, when identifying truth and subject matter, do we not reduce truth to our own perspective, on the one hand, while arguing that meaning transcends someone else’s perspective (intention), on the other?8 This question refers to the main source of discussion between Gadamer and intentionalists, like Betti and Hirsch on the issue of relativity and objectivity in interpretation. In maintaining the essential autonomy of the object to be interpreted, Betti criticizes Gadamer’s perspective for inserting the subject into the herme-neutical circle. Such an introduction, in his approach, inevitably leads to both subjectivism and relativism, "with the consequence that hermeneutics is unable to adjudicate between correct and incorrect interpretation."9

Hirsch believes that only when meaning is identified with author’s intention can interpretation theory have an "object" which is stable, i.e., sharable by everyone, and subject to the validation process. Therefore, according to Hirsch, objectivity in interpretation seems to be based on the determinacy of meaning and the source of determinacy of meaning cannot but be its author.10 Hirsch argues that "no logical necessity compels a critic to banish an author in order to analyze his text."11 Behind this reasoning lies the argument that a text has to represent somebody’s meaning—if not the author’s, then the critic’s.12 Therefore, meaning in its structure is referential to the consciousness of its creator, namely, as long as it does refer back to its originating mind, it is what it is.13

Thus, meaning is functional in its nature, and its function is to represent the mind behind it. Precisely because of this fact, Hirsch maintains that meaning is a matter of consciousness and not of physical signs or things. Consciousness is, in turn, an affair of persons, and in textual interpretation the persons involved are the author and the reader. The meanings that are actualized by the reader are either shared with the author or belong to the reader alone.14 Therefore, "there is no magic land of meanings outside human consciousness."15 In Gadamer, it seems that understanding is grounded on ‘subject matter’ (Sache), i.e., ‘perspective’ is based on subject matter16, in Hirsch understanding is grounded on the mind of the other, namely, subject matter becomes subsequent to perspective.17 Criticizing this approach, Gadamer asks, if we dis-cover only someone’s standpoint and his horizon in order to get to know him, are we not failing in the understanding that is asked of us? In his view, this is a failure because we are here "not seeking an agreement concerning an object, but the specific contents of the conversation are only a means to get to know the horizon of the other person."18

One might question Gadamer’s viewpoint from Hirsch’s intentionalist approach: if we reject the identity of meaning (truth) with the author’s intention and give intention a second position with respect to truth (subject matter) how can we understand one’s intention psychologically or historically, as Gadamer claims? In other words, if we know that we do not share the same ground with someone, on what ground can we know what he intends? Moreover, if we can know what someone intends, are we not sharing the same ground with him, which is in Hirsch the intended meaning? As can be seen, behind these possible objections from the Hirschian perspective lies Hirsch’s basic belief that when we discover the standpoint or horizon of the other person, his ideas become intelligible without our necessarily having to agree with him.19

As these questions indicate, the real problem between Gadamer and Hirsch is not whether the author’s intention (the mind of the other) can be known.20 However, we are not saying that in Hirsch and Gadamer the intention of the author can be known whenever an interpreter wishes. Both Gadamer and Hirsch accept that in some cases it is impossible to know the author’s intention21 due to lack of information about the author or his conditions. Some of the well known examples of this fact are the Vedas in Hindu tradition22, proverbs, pseudo authors23, and some texts which were written with "conscious camouflaging of the true meaning due to the threat of persecution by the authorities or by the church,"24 as L. Strauss has shown in his Persecution and the Art of Writing.25 Besides this, it is also possible that an author can consciously or intentionally mislead his readers.26

Moreover, as Beardsley shows in his defense of non-author’s meaning, "some texts have been formed without the agency of an author."27 At this point, we should mention that behind this argument for non-author’s meaning lies the approach which separates intention from meaning. In other words, these arguments against intentionalist view consider author’s intention external to textual meaning. Nevertheless, in some recent intentionalist perspectives, due to the difficulties of identifying intention with meaning as taken separately and the fear of falling into psychologism, the idea that intention is not external but internal to meaning has been defended more commonly.28 In this context, some consider Hirsch an advo-cate for author’s intention being internal to the meaning of a text.29

In the usages of everyday speaking, where it is not a matter of passing through the fixity of writtennes, I think it is clear: One has to understand the other person’s intention; one must understand what the other person is saying as he or she meant it. The other person has not separated himself from himself, so to speak, into a written or whatever other form of fixed speech, and conveyed or delivered it to an unknown person, who perhaps distorts through misunderstanding, willful or involuntary, what is supposed to be understood. Even more, one is not separated physically or temporally from the person one is speaking to and who is listening to what one says.30

 

Therefore, according to Gadamer, the discussion of the mens auctoris (author’s intention or mind) becomes a hermeneutical problem, provided one is not dealing with a living conversation but with fixed expressions, or texts.31 In this case, it seems that the problem of author’s intention becomes a matter of discussion between Gadamer and Hirsch in the context of the truth of the text and of how it reveals itself to the interpreter (or through the interpreter). Obviously, the nature of written or fixed texts plays an important role in this discussion. Therefore, while the basic question in Hirsch is: "How is it possible to understand a written or fixed text?" Gadamer asks: "How is it possible to bring the meaning (truth) behind the physical signs (text) back to the living conversation again?" Is this possibility based, in each case, on our going back to the moment of creation of meaning (or perspective) or on its pre-givenness in our historical linguistic tradition (horizon), thus, on our self-understanding?

It seems that when we accept the idea which has been defended by the intentionalist tradition, we should ask the question which was directed by Gadamer to the intentionalist and historicist tradition of interpretation: How is it possible to go back to the moment of creation of meaning, i.e., to reconstruct the mind of the other (author’s horizon) and historical past by transcending our own horizon? Is not the idea of reconstructing past meanings to restrict the truth of what is said to its historical moment of origination, and thus to cut it off from living tradition of meaning? However, when we accept the idea which has been maintained by Heideggerian-Gadamerian ontological hermeneutics, the objections directed mainly by Betti and Hirsch should be expressed: If we deny the possibility of reconstructing the historical intention, since we cannot transcend our own horizon, the meaning of the historical text will be relative to our horizon, and consequently we cannot have an objec-tively grounded meaning. In other words, since we will not have any "principle for distinguishing between an interpretation which is valid and one that is not, there is little point in writing books about texts or about hermeneutic theory."32

It is clear that, as we saw above, in the background of Hirsch’s and Betti’s intentionalist criticism of Gadamer, we find the presu-pposition that meaning is objectively determinate; it is an ahistorical entity. Hence, intentionalist positions share the same approach with other objectivist but anti-intentionalist contentions against Gada-mer’s perspective of meaning. While Gadamer argues that in the human sciences, an "object in itself" clearly does not exist at all,33 objectivist positions hold the idea that "the meaning of the text is an objective fact, something which in principle could be discovered once and for all."34 Therefore, objectivist approaches, whether intentionalist or anti-intentionalist, are monistic and ignore what Gadamer calls "an ontological, structural aspect of understanding."

As Connolly and Keutner mention, the objectivist positions that are subject to criticism from Gadamer’s perspective can be divided into three groups as follows. The first objectivist perspective (the so-called intentionalist position) argues that the interpretive goal is to bring to light the hidden meaning which is in the text by appealing to the mind of its writer. Therefore, a text has its meaning "quite independently of any interpreting which might be done."35 The second objectivist view claims that the object of interpretation is not the author’s intention but something like the text-intention. This view is held by the New Critics, like M. Beardsley and W. K. Wimsatt.36 The third view maintains that the correct interpretation is the one which captures the understanding had by the text’s original audience. Gadamer refers to the third kind of objectivist view:

According to this self-interpretation of the methodology of the human sciences, it is generally said that the interpreter imagines an addressee for every text, whether expressly addressed by the text or not. This addressee is in every case the original reader, and the interpreter knows that this is a different person from himself.37

 

The problem of the meaning of method and of its ontological presuppositions in Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics has been discussed mostly in the context of objectivity and relativity. By referring to the title and the content of his magnum opus, Truth and Method, many critics argue that Gadamer contraposes truth and method.38 For instance, Ricoeur argues:

On the one hand, alienating distanciation is the attitude that makes the objectification that reigns in the human science possible; on the other hand, this distanciation that is the very condition which accounts for the scientific status of the sciences is at the same time a break that destroys the funda-mental and primordial relation by which we belong to and participate in the historical reality which we claim to construct as an object. Thus we reached the alternative suggested by the title of Gadamer’s work, Truth and Method: either we have the methodological attitude and lose the ontological density of the reality under study or we have the attitude of truth and must give up the objectivity of the human sciences.39

 

Does Gadamer’s differentiation of truth from method refer to the fact, as Ricoeur argues, that he gives up also the objectivity of the human sciences? Can we say that "when Gadamer is attacking the idea of method in the humanities he is, of course, not objecting to a methodological approach within different fields?" For instance, Stueber distinguishes ‘method’ from ‘methodological approach’ in Gadamer’s hermeneutics and understands by the latter "the idea of proving one’s thesis in confrontation with the evidence, be it experiments in the natural sciences or the systematic collecting of historical sources."40 Thus, in his views, Gadamer rejects by ‘method’ the epistemological picture that accompanied scientific research as it was introduced in the works of Descartes and Bacon.41

In order to clarify the place of method in Gadamer’s approach, we should first discuss the meaning and the function of method. Gadamer remarks that the idea of knowledge which dominates Western thinking is determined through the concept of method. Therefore, it consists "in pacing out a path of knowledge so con-sciously that it is always possible to retrace one’s steps. Method means the path of repeated investigation [nachgehen]."42 Hence, to be methodical is always to be able once again to go over the ground one has traversed and is the basic characteristic of the procedure of science. It seems that since method, as Gadamer remarks, provides a condition for repeatability and verification, i.e., establishes a standard for certainty in knowledge, the ideal of knowledge and truth is satisfied only by ‘the ideal of certainty.’ 43 At this point, we can trace the imprint of the first rule of Descartes’ method behind this ideal of certainty: "Thus I must," says Descartes, "carefully withhold assent no less from these things than from the patently false, if I wish to find anything certain."44 Consequently, the ideal of certainty based on faith in method seems to be a basic motivation for denying one’s own historicality and refers to one of the points where Gadamer rejects objectivism.45

It seems that in the human sciences the limitation of knowing truth by method on the basis of verification and certainty is the point where Gadamer rejects or, rather, limits the idea of method. In his view, the universal claim of scientific method is resisted by the experience of a truth "that transcends the domain of scientific method wherever that experience is to be found."46 He refers to three different areas, philosophy, art and history, where the experience of truth is communicated and cannot be verified by the methodological means proper to science.47

Therefore, Gadamer remarks in the Foreword to the Second Edition of Truth and Method that the investigation he will make takes its starting point from a transcendental question: "How is understanding possible?" Thus, he mentions that his hermeneutic project is not a ‘methodological inquiry’48 as traditional (such as Schleiermacherian) hermeneutics tried to achieve or a ‘founda-tionalist’ (as Diltheyan) hermeneutics pursued, but ontological in its character.49 In other words, since the understanding and inter-pretation of a text is not only "a concern of science, but obviously belongs to the human experience of the world in general,"50 the hermeneutic phenomenon is essentially not a "problem of method." Thus, the transcendental question above "precedes any action of understanding on the part of subjectivity, including the methodical activity of the ‘interpretive sciences’ and their norms and rules."51 Gadamer here seems to imply that since methodological activity falls under the concept of subjectivity, hermeneutic inquiry is prior to this category.

Gadamer’s association of method with subjective activity reveals an important aspect of the idea of method and explains partially why his hermeneutics is not a methodological investigation. When criticizing Betti, who charges Gadamer with relativism since he rejects method and thus objectivity, Gadamer remarks that "that he [Betti] can conceive the problem of hermeneutics only as a problem of method shows that he is profoundly involved in the subjectivism which we are endeavoring to overcome."52 The para-doxical situation of the objectivism of Betti and Hirsch, which falls into subjectivity while trying to overcome it, seems to stem, first, from reducing the being of meaning to its creator’s mind (subjec-tivity) and, second, from trying to capture it objectively through a method based on the subject-object ontology. Stated more clearly, objectivism assumes to reach at the objective meaning in the reconstruction of the subjective act (perspective) of the author. In this context, Hirsch remarks, "My point may be summarized in the paradox that objectivity in textual interpretation requires explicit reference to the speaker’s subjectivity."53

Thus, it (objectivism) considers the interpretive activity as a double-movement process which is sourced from the subject-object scheme. First the interpreter goes back to the subjectivity of the author and second brings it back to the present in the objectively graspable form.54 If meaning was not already objective, i.e., sharable in its nature, how could the interpreter grasp it, and, if it was objective and sharable in itself, why should the interpreter go back to the subjectivity of its creator? Thus, are not subjectivism and objectivism fused together when the subjectivity of the author is accepted as the point of departure for the objectivity of meaning? In other words, is not what is happening here nothing else than presupposing the subjectivity of the author as an objectively known entity when Hirsch claims, for instance, that "the only universally valid cognition of a work of art is that which is constituted by the kind of subjective stance adopted in its creation?"55

Any interpretive act is a triadic process in which meaningful forms mediate between the mind objec-tivated in them and the mind of the interpreter. . . . It is the task of the interpreter to re-cognize or re-construct the ideas, message, intentions manifested in them; it is a process of internalization, in which the content of these forms is transposed into an ‘other,’ different subjectivity.56

 

However, in the last analysis, these meaningful forms are not autonomous in their full sense and their objectification depends on the extent to which they represent the mind behind them and the degree to which they can be actualized in the mind of the interpreter. In other words, even though, according to Hirsch and Betti, mind and meaning are inseparable, it seems that the mind is always more than its expression.57 This is another way of saying that since the mind is not objectified as such in its expression, there is no criterion for knowing to what degree the mind was objectified in the expression. Thus, it can be said that even the author’s mind has itself no control over its expression in the process of its being objectified since according to Betti’s and Hirsch’s intentionalist approach, meaning cannot be detached from its creative consciousness.58

Gadamer’s assertion that every use of method presupposes the alienation of its object from the subject (inquirer), and "requires from him constantly to distance himself from himself, and to weigh alternate possibilities,"59 looks to be another reason for his rejection of method. It seems that for Gadamer the alienation presupposed by method requires that we step out of our own consciousness and view the text in itself. Such a demand assumes that we can understand the text once we have divorced it from all the relative conditions "which make our understanding possible."60 In other words, while believing that it is possible to gain access to the alien horizon of the text simply by leaving out one’s own horizon, objectivism fails to recognize the fact that the interpreter’s situation and his present interests, such as choice, perspective, evaluation, have been intro-duced into a supposedly objective reconstruction of meaning.61 In this context, Gadamer remarks that even in objective historical investigations research seems to proceed from a historical interest, i.e., it does not seem to have any relation to the present, and the real historical task is to realize and determine the meaning of what is investigated in a new way. This is because the meaning exists at the beginning of "any such research as well as at the end: as the choice of the theme to be investigated, the awakening of the desire to investigate, as the gaining of the new problematic."62

By overlooking this fact, Hirsch’s theory of objective inter-pretation assumes a view of the object in absolute separateness. As we saw above, Hirsch holds the idea that determinacy and repro-ducibility of the author’s meaning is the basis for an objective interpretation and establishes the sole criterion for the validity in interpretation. This is another way of saying that the object of inter-pretation has its own being which is quite independent of any interpreter’s horizon. Thus, "if an interpreter," says Hirsch, "did not conceive a text’s meaning to be there as an occasion for contemplation or application, he would have nothing to think or talk about. Its thereness, its self identity from one moment to the next allows it to be contemplated."63 However, on the other hand, since ‘meaning is an affair of consciousness,’ it cannot have its auto-nomous being independent of its originating mind. Thus, while the author’s mind is to be represented by the meaning, meaning needs a mind to be obtained.

Consequently, Hirsch has to reduce the being of meaning either to its creator’s mind or to its interpreter’s. Here, the main problem is how to bridge the seemingly insurmountable gap between the author’s mind and the interpreter’s mind as long as a subject-object dichotomy is held.64 It is clear that according to Hirsch, lan-guage cannot provide a mirror-like medium between them because almost any word sequence can, under the conventions of language, legitimately represent more than one complex of meaning. "A word sequence means nothing in particular until somebody either means something by it or understands from it."65

According to Hirsch, owing to the impossibility of detaching meaning from the consciousness that determines it, interpretation is not based on a ‘given,’ i.e., ‘autonomous meaning,’ but is a matter of construction which takes its starting point from interpreter’s choice: The interpreter should choose either to reconstruct the author’s historical meaning or intention, or to impose his own meaning on the text (which is an anachronism).66 "Any normative concept of interpretation," Hirsch remarks, "implies a choice that is required not by the nature of written texts but rather by the goal that the interpreter sets himself. . . . [T]he object of interpretation is no automatically given, but a task that the interpreter sets himself."67 According to Hirsch, the concept of choice reflects also the general characteristic of Schleiermacher’s first canon: "Everything in a given text which requires fuller interpretation must be explained and determined exclusively from the linguistic domain common to the author and his original public." Hirsch argues that Schleiermacher’s norm is not deduced at all; it is chosen. It is based on value-preference, and not on theoretical necessity. His preference for "original meaning over anachronistic meaning is ultimately an ethical choice."68

As a result, while arguing that the object of interpretation is independent of the interpreter’s subjectivity, Hirsch has to accept the interpreter’s subjective act of choice as the starting point of interpretation.69 While maintaining that meaning is self-identical from one moment to the next, he also remarks that "the nature of text is to mean whatever we construe it to mean. . . . Indeed, we need a norm precisely because the nature of a text is to have no meaning except that which an interpreter wills into existence."70 This paradoxical situation in Hirsch’s approach shows itself clearly when he notes that even though the choice of a norm for interpretation is a free social and ethical act, as soon as anyone claims validity for his interpretation "he must be willing to measure his interpretation against a genuinely discriminating norm, and the only compelling normative principle . . . is the old fashioned ideal of rightly understanding what the author meant."71 In other words, the objec-tivity of interpretation as discipline depends upon our being able to make an objectively grounded choice between "two disparate pro-bability judgments on the basis of the common evidence which supports them."72

However, if meaning is a matter of construction and based finally on the will and consciousness of the interpreter, does not Hirsch have to recognize that meaningful evidence for it is also a matter of construction? He accepts the circular relation between textual meaning (intention) and the evidence for it: "Every inter-preter labors under the handicap of an inevitable circularity: all his internal evidence tends to support his hypothesis because much of it was constituted by his hypothesis. . . . An interpretive hypothesis—that is, a guess about genre—tends to be a self-confirming hypo-thesis."73 Therefore, the idea of method in Hirsch’s theory of inter-pretation establishes only the objective part of the circle of interpretation of which the interpreter’s guess constitutes an "unme-thodical, intuitive, sympathetic" part.74

As we have seen, Hirsch’s insistence on the intention of the author as the measure of understanding is based on an ontological misunderstanding. He presupposes that the interpreter could just somehow reconstruct this intention again through a kind of identi-fication and reproduction, and only then turn to the words as a standard of meaning. To assume that he can do so is "to make an epistemological assumption that has been refuted by phenomenological research—namely, that we have before our consciousness a kind of image of the actual thing that is meant, a so-called Vorstellung, that is, a representation."75 Therefore, in Hirsch’s subject-object ontology, the author’s intention is both the beginning and the end of the interpretation process at the same time. As Gadamer remarks, "wherever it arises, the problem of the beginning is, in fact, the problem of the end. For it is with respect to an end that a beginning is defined as a beginning of an end. . . . For every beginning is an end and every end is beginning."76 Precisely because of this circularity of the beginning and the end Hirsch’s objectivist perspective is involved with the subjectivism it tried to overcome. In other words, supposedly objective meaning can find a place only in the subjectivity of the author and the interpreter, and since it is a matter of construction, there is no borderline which separates these two subjectivities.

Meanings that are actualized by a reader are of course the reader’s meanings—generated by him. Whether they are also meanings intended by an author cannot be determined with absolute certain-ty, and the reader is in fact free to choose whether or not he will try to make his actualized meanings congruent with the author’s intended ones.77

 

So, in order to talk about the self-same identity of the text which is ahistorical, Hirsch has to presuppose an ahistorical mind which can contemplate this meaning in its identity.78 This means that the interpreter will be "freezing both his object and himself into static patterns"79 by exhausting the meaning of a statement in a concept. However, since meaning is a matter of construction, i.e., ‘meaning’ is mute and silent in its nature, Hirsch should accept that meaning has no power to resist the misconstruction of the subjectivity of the interpreter. Therefore, a paradoxical relation between the ahisto-rical mind of the interpreter and a constructed meaning seems to exist. At this point, Hirsch might postulate the ahistorical mind of the author which is objectified in the expression and stands against the interpreter’s mind. However, the mind of the author must also be constructed by the interpreter’s mind.

Besides this, as we saw above, Hirsch’s argument that every construction (guess) is tested against available evidence does not seem to be convincing because, since the evidence itself, like the intention of the author, is subject to construction, one construction cannot be a basis for testing another. For instance, Hirsch argues that the discipline of interpretation is based not on a methodology of construction, but on a logic of validation. Although we cannot be sure that our interpretive guesses are correct, "we know that they can be correct and that the goal of interpretation as a discipline is constantly to increase the probability that they are correct. . . . [Objectivity] lies in our capacity to say on firm principles, ‘Yes, that answer is valid’ or ‘No, it is not.’’’80 Thus, the logic of validation in Hirsch depends on our ability to see the evidences as relevant to the meaning (type or class) which was already constructed.81 In this case, to see something as evidence is to see it as meaningful and relevant to the meaning constructed before. Thus, since the relevance and meaning of evidence comes from the meaning (intention) to which it refers, it is already interpretive. This means that as long as it is confirmed by the meaning it refers to, it can be accepted as relevant evidence. Hence, evidence itself is a part of imaginative construction (guess).

Hirsch might object and say that evidence is not a matter of construction, rather it speaks by itself. In this case, he has to acknowledge that the meaning of evidence is autonomous, i.e., independent of the mind of the author, which would be a self-con-tradiction in Hirsch’s theory.82 Stated more clearly, since evidence itself is a part of language (i.e., under the linguistic convention to which it belongs) it can legitimately represent more than one complex of meaning. Thus, it needs to be determined by a con-sciousness like an author’s intention. If this is the case, it should be objectively constructed by the interpreter.

Hence, the subject-object ontology creates a dilemma which cannot be solved within any objectivistic framework. The dilemma is this: If one starts an investigation from the distinction (distance) between subject and object, one has to save this distinction (distance) because only through this distance one can secure an object from the distorting effect of subjectivity. However, as long as one keeps this distance (or alienation), this means that one cannot be familiar enough to recognize one’s object in its proper nature. Therefore, while claiming to secure the ‘object,’ objectivity prevents the inquirer from recognizing its nature or truth.83

Consequently, the objectivism which grounds the idea of objectivity on a subject-object ontology creates a false dichotomy between the object and its truth. From this perspective, the alter-native between truth and method seems to be not suggested by Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics as Ricoeur argued,84 but rather created by the presupposed subject-object scheme behind the idea of method in objectivism.

It should be noted that for Gadamer method has to be accepted just in order to avoid mistakes.85 However, he also adds that "the hermeneutic interest of the philosopher begins properly when error has been successfully avoided,"86 i.e., when method completes its function. Hence, when Gadamer argues that hermeneutical truth transcends methodological activity87 he does not seem to set up truth and method as diametrically opposite, i.e., each as an alternative to the other. Rather, in the light of his argument for methods in order to avoid mistakes, we can say that in Gadamer method is neither a condition (or originating point) of hermeneutical inquiry nor is hermeneutical truth the result of it. In other words, truth cannot be mediated by method.

If this is the case, method can function only on the ontological basis of inquiry. Therefore, it does take its legitimacy from the hermeneutical approach, not vice versa. This is another way of saying that method is accepted when it is employed for herme-neutical distanciation and not for methodological distanciation. As we saw above, methodological distanciation (subject-object dicho-tomy) is considered by objectivists as the very condition and the possibility of objective interpretation. Thus, distanciation in this sense is the source of alienation between object and subject which hermeneutical "interpretation intends to overcome."88 On the con-trary, the hermeneutical distanciation is a condition for recognizing the ‘other’ in its otherness so that the interpreter finds himself in the tension of familiarity and strangeness which is the possibility of someone’s awareness of his own prejudices.89

The otherness of the other plays a key role in understanding the relevance of distanciation in Gadamer’s hermeneutics in the sense that truth becomes visible only through the otherness of the other. However, ‘otherness’ does not refer here to the ‘other’ itself like an individual consciousness, as traditional, such as the Schleier-macherian hermeneutics accepted,90 but to ‘what [the] other says’. Therefore, otherness is both one’s recognition of the limit of one’s consciousness and the basis of overcoming this limit. In other words, hermeneutical distanciation as the otherness of the other is the way in which the interpreter elevates himself to the reflective know-ledge,91 i.e., to self-knowledge by recognizing himself in the truth of the text. Thus, even though distanciation in this way occurs on the ground of familiarity (truth), it refers also to the resisting (or challenging) power of truth—the ontological condition of reflective thinking in Gadamer—to the assimilating character of consciousness (i.e., prejudices). Therefore, truth is not like the object to be assimilated by desire in Hegel.92 Nor is it an object of mere con-templation, or staring, as objectivism assumes, nor a construction (or product) of consciousness as in the case of radical subjectivism.

Therefore, Gadamer seems to consider hermeneutical distan-ciation not as a distance between subject and object, but, rather, as a space opened up by truth itself when it reveals itself in its dialectical movement.93 The dialectical movement of truth is recognized by the fact that truth is both the most familiar and the strangest at one and the same time. It is the most familiar because consciousness can be what it is in it, or, as Heidegger puts it, "Dasein is ‘in the truth’."94 It is the strangest in the sense that being is more than consciousness of it, that is, "that which is can never be completely understood."95

The art of interpretation or hermeneutics, then, makes use of the most diverse methods, but it is not itself a method. Still less is the theory of this art, philosophical hermeneutics, a method. Whatever might be intended by this expression, "the herme-neutical method," I do not know. All methods of interpretation belong to hermeneutics and either play a role or can be brought into play when it comes to interpreting works of art, such as poems. The task of philosophical hermeneutics is to clarify how this can occur.96

 

Accordingly, Gadamer’s different approach to method and objectivity seems to be sourced from the view point of his tran-scendental question, "how is understanding possible." Here, he tries to eliminate ‘subjective activity’ as the power of constructing ‘meaning.’ As we saw above, as long as interpretive activity does not start from the truth of the object, the object will be subject to construction by subjective activity. Gadamer claims that this approach leads to an absolute mastery over being, which is the basic characteristic of modern subjectivism. "[B]eing is not experienced where," Gadamer continues, "something can be constructed by us and is to that extent conceived; it is experienced where what is happening can merely be understood."97

Therefore, the task of Gadamer’s hermeneutical project is to approach the object first, not in its alienation (difference), but in its familiarity (truth), i.e., not as a matter of construction but as something which "happens to us over and above our wanting and doing."98 Gadamer emphasizes this point in its whole weight by saying also that the object of interpretation is first grasped as something which has a claim to truth, i.e, something to say. Hence, the transcendental question aims at uncovering the basis upon which the inquirer has already been familiar with the truth of his object. Thus, in Gadamer, the ontological character of hermeneutical investigation transcends the subject-object scheme by focusing on the question of how subject and object originally belong to each other, namely, the same world.99 "Understanding," says , "is never a subjective relation to a given ‘object’ but to the history of its effect; in other words, understanding belongs to the being of that which is understood."100 It seems that Gadamer here appropriates Heide-gger’s basic insight that understanding is an "existential," i.e., Dasein’s mode of being and his interpretation of this mode of being "in terms of time."101 Therefore, it takes the form of pheno-menological hermeneutics102 which accepts time and historicity as the mode of being common to both subject and object as Heidegger has already shown its direction in Sein und Zeit (Being and Time).103

Criticizing Gadamer’s perspective, Hirsch maintains that the new hermeneutics Gadamer offers "to replace the tradition of Schleiermacher, Humboldt, Droysen, Boeckh, Steinthal, Dilthey and Simmel may be more destructive in its implications than Gadamer has reckoned."104 According to Hirsch, Gadamer’s theory of hermeneutics belongs to a "skepticism" regarding historical know-ledge since it accepts the essence of understanding as radically historical. This means that reconstructing "the original circumstances, like all restoration, is a futile undertaking in view of the historicity of our being. What is reconstructed, a life brought back from the lost past, is not the original."105 Therefore, Gadamer’s denying the possibility of reproducing the original meaning of a text (author’s meaning) and thus his displacing the ‘author’ as the criterion of valid interpretation,106 in Hirsch’s view, is to reject the identity of meaning and the only compelling normative principle that could lend the validity to an interpretation."107