If we are trying to understand a historical pheno-menon from the historical distance that is charact-eristic of our hermeneutical situation, we are always already affected by history. It determines in advance both what seems to us worth inquiring about and what will appear as an object of investi-gation.222

 

From this perspective, ‘significance’ is nothing but the appear-ance of the historical continuity of the effect (Wirkungsgeschichte) of a textual meaning.223 In this continuity, meaning and its effect remain inseparable because the effect is nothing else than the text’s claim to truth according to the different conditions within which it is understood. Therefore, in Gadamer’s eye, the separation of meaning from its significance makes the meaning irrelevant for the changing horizons. It cuts off the way by which the interpreter can draw the valid meaning (truth) of the text for his situation.

Nevertheless, Gadamer’s insistence on the unity of meaning and significance was seen by some of his critics as a threat to textual identity. In this context, Wachterhauser asks: if a text’s meaning only arises from its significance for our historical and linguistic perspective, how can we avoid the conclusion that there is no way to account for a text’s identity?224 According to Wachterhauser, Gadamer ultimately fails to present us with a convincing account of a text’s identity which somehow underlies all its many varied historically influenced interpretations.225

The idea underlying Wachterhauser’s critique of Gadamer is this: Gadamer does not show where to locate the principle of identity or continuity though he claims that meaning exists in the many different acts of interpretation. There is nothing about textual meaning which precludes mutually exclusive interpretations of the ‘same’ text arising over the course of its Wirkungsgeschichte. "Nor does," continues Wachterhauser, "there seem to be anything like a ‘core’ of textual meaning or a fixed and stable ‘essence’ of the text which guarantees continuity between varying interpretations of the text."226

The unity of meaning and significance in Gadamer becomes a subject for Hirsch’s critique of Gadamer on the problem of textual identity. According to Hirsch, this unity can reflect only the fact that the text is "determinate at any given point in time,"227 and this implies that a text means something only for the particular interpreter. It cannot provide the principle for determining which interpretation is "more nearly right."228 From this he concludes that in Gadamer’s hermeneutic, a text means whatever we take it to mean.229

In Hirsch’s view, Gadamer’s introduction of the concept of ‘tradition’ in order to avoid this nihilistic conclusion still does not solve the problem. For ‘tradition’ implies that the changing ‘sub-stance’ of a text is "determined by the wide spread cultural effects and manifestations it has passed through, and that this wider signifi-cance is commonly understood and accepted within any present culture."230

Thus, Hirsch says, Gadamer’s concept of tradition leads to the conclusion that the interpretation of the reader who follows the path of tradition is more nearly right than the interpretation of the reader who leaves this path. However, since the concept of tradition lacks hierarchical structure, or a "papal-like authority," it cannot in fact save the day.231 It is merely the history of how a text has been interpreted. Moreover, since every new interpretation belongs to the tradition and alters it, tradition is a changing concept. Hence it can-not function as a stable, normative concept.

According to Hirsch, neither can Gadamer’s concept of ‘repetition’ show the basis of textual identity. Though, on the one hand, Gadamer argues that the meaning of a text is identifiable and repeatable, on the other, he refuses to take the word ‘repetition’ in the sense of referring back to the originating moment in which a text was said or written.232 For Hirsch this means that repetition is not really a repetition, nor the identity really an identity. Hence, we have a self-contradiction.233

Gadamer, in Hirsch’s view, should acknowledge that his concept of the historicity of understanding is an argument not only against communication between historical eras but also against every written communication. For it is merely arbitrary to hold that "a meaning fifty years old is ontologically alien while one three years or three minutes old is not."234 From this perspective, to accept the possibility of communication within a relatively brief period while denying it between different eras is the naïve abstraction of Gada-mer’s historicism, the assumption that any brief period in the past or present has a kind of homogeneity. Against Gadamer’s historicism, Hirsch argues that we know that even though there are always some shared elements in a culture which constitute its very substance, "all men in a culture do not share the same general perspective on life."235

Hence, according to Hirsch, Gadamer’s concept of the fusion of horizons (Horizontenverschmelzung) cannot explain textual identity as long as one holds the Gadamerian concept of the unity of meaning and significance. Gadamer argues that the real meaning of a text as it addresses itself to an interpreter is always co-determined by the historical situation of the interpreter. Hence textual meaning arises neither wholly in the interpreter’s own horizon nor wholly in that of the author. It is rather the product of a fusion between these two.236

Nevertheless, "how can an interpreter," asks Hirsch, "fuse two perspectives — his own and that of the text — unless he has somehow appropriated the original perspective and amalgamated it with his own?"237 Moreover, if the interpreter is bound by his own historical horizon how can one talk about the fusion of horizons? If the fusion is accepted, it should be admitted also that one "can break out of his own perspective."238

Hirsch proposes the "resolution of Gadamer’s contradictions" by arguing that the fusion always involves two processes that are in themselves separate and distinct no matter how entangled they may be in a given instance of understanding.239 The first process is the interpreter’s act of construing and understanding a textual meaning. This act of construing is prior to everything else.240 The second process is the interpreter’s discovery of a way to relate this construed meaning to himself. In this second moment, the interpreter recasts the construed meaning in his own idiom.241 Thus this recasting could be called a fusion of horizons.242

We may set against this [Gadamerian] principle of historicity the principle of historicality, which asserts that a historical event, that is to say, an original communicative intent, can determine forever the permanent, unchanging features of meaning. The doctrine of historicality has a different scope from that of historicity. Gadamer’s historicity implies that meaning must change over time; but historicality maintains that meaning can stay the same if we choose to regard meaning as a histo-rically determinate object. Historicality concedes that we can, if we prefer, treat meaning in a Gadamerian way, but it assumes that no necessity compels either choice. Historicality, in thus denying the quasi-metaphysical claims of historicity, simply makes the claim that a meaning can be stable only if it has been stabilized by a historical intention.243

 

We remarked above that Hirsch appeals to Husserlian inten-tionalism in order to show that the consciousness’ being directed to the identity of the object is the basis of the identification of meaning with authorial intention. For Hirsch, this implies that the identity of the intentional object can be grasped only through the author’s perspective (horizon).244 Thus meaning refers to how the im-personal identity of the object is given in the personal perspective of the author.

Nevertheless, Hirsch concedes that since the identity refers to the ‘sharable’ character of the object,245 the author’s horizon within which the identity is given must also be sharable.246 However, from whence comes the legitimacy of concluding from the former argument (that the identity of an object is the basis of its sharability) the second argument that author’s horizon must be also sharable? Hirsch’s argument would seem to fall into a vicious circle when he argues that meaning (the identity of the intentional object) can be grasped only from the author’s horizon? For, while the sharableness of the horizon is based on the sharableness of the identity of the object, in the next step, the identity of the object can be grasped only if the horizon can be grasped.

It seems that Hirsch appropriates the Husserlian theory of intentionalism as one sided when he argues that "Like any other intentional object, it [meaning] is in principle reproducible."247 By intentional object, Hirsch understands the mental object which is "self-identical over against a plurality of mental acts."248 Thus he perceives three distinguishable aspects of the act of understanding an object. "First, there is the object as perceived by me; second, there is the act by which I perceive the object; and finally, there is (for physical things) the object which exists independently of my perceptual act."249

However, from the fact that the mental object remains self-identical over and against the many different acts which ‘intend’ it, he concludes that verbal meaning has a supra-personal character. "It is not an intentional object for simply one person, but for many—potentially for all persons. Verbal meaning is, by definition, that aspect of a speaker’s ‘intention’ which under linguistic conven-tions, may be shared by others."250 Hirsch thinks that if an object can remain identical against the plurality of the mental acts it must also be identical against the plurality of persons.

Nevertheless, we should note that in the former case there is only one horizon while in the latter case there are multiple horizons. Though what is identical for the former case reveals itself to have the same identity for the latter case, the ‘ways’ or ‘aspects’ within which this identity reveals itself are different for each horizon. This is because no aspect can represent the total being (the identity) of the object in itself even if the aspect is nothing other than the object itself.251 In this case, does this not mean that to insist on the author’s horizon is to restrict the identity of the object to its one aspect (as Hirsch does), and thereby to ignore the distinction "between the ‘object which is intended’ and the ‘object as it is intended"?252

It seems that Hirsch ignores this distinction because he wants to save the determinacy of meaning by identifying it with the author’s intention and distinguishing it from ‘subject matter.’ He insists that "if we do not make and preserve the distinction between a man’s meaning and his subject matter, we cannot distinguish between true and false, better and worse meanings."253 Even though for Hirsch subject matter is the object which is intended,254 interestingly enough he also argues that it is "in practice entirely relative to the knowledge or presumed knowledge of the critic."255 Hence, he argues both in favor of the position that the object which is intended (i.e., the subject matter) has a supra-personal identity, and against it when he later deprives it of its determinacy. This is a self-contradiction.

Hirsch believes that only by identifying meaning with the object as it is intended is it possible to reconstruct meaning in every different condition and save it from the distorting effect of the interpreter’s own perspective. The interpreter’s own perspective can be distorting if he falls victim to "the fallacy of the inscrutable past,"256 which happens when one assumes that "the perspective-ridden meanings of the past are irremediably alien to us."

This assumption reflects itself in the approach that we should ignore such alien reality as irrelevant to our concerns and construct instead a usable past out of our own perspective.257 According to Hirsch, behind this assumption lies the presupposition that the pre-sent-day perspective is homogeneous, which he calls the ‘histori-cistic fallacy.’ 258

The common point underlying these fallacies, Hirsch tells us, is the conviction that meaning is something ‘out there’ to be approached from different points of view. Rather it is "not there for the critic in any sense until he has construed it."259 He continues:

Whatever a critic’s approach may be, it must necessarily follow upon his understanding. An approach must be subsequent to a construing of what the written symbols mean. Nor is a construc-tion of meaning something that is altered by different critical approaches. It is not a physical object that shows different configurations when viewed from different positions. Meaning is an object that exists only by virtue of a single, privileged, precritical approach. No matter how much critics may differ in critical approach, they must understand a text through the same precritical approach if they are to understand it at all.260

 

Accordingly, the contention that the interpreter’s alien perspective distorts meaning is but an evasion since it is "impossible to distort something that cannot even exist by means of an alien perspective."261

Hirsch asserts that if perspectivism (the theory that meaning is not independent of perspective, i.e., that interpretation depends on the standpoint of the interpreter)262 is to be consistent with itself, it has to accept the intentionalist idea that verbal meaning exists only by virtue of the author’s perspective which gives its existence. Hence, every act of interpretation involves at least two perspectives, that of the author and that of the interpreter.263 The perspectives are entertained both at once, "as in normal binocular vision. Far from being an extraordinary or illusory feat, this entertaining of two perspectives at once is the ground of all human intercourse, and a universal fact of speech which the linguists have called ‘the doubling of personality.’ "264

Readers of this essay [Faulty Perspectives]—emphatically those who are disagreeing with my argument—are here and now practicing both interpretation and criticism, are entertaining two perspectives at once. For, my meaning exists and is construed only from my perspective, while the simultaneous criticism of that meaning implies a different perspective. The empirical actuality of this double perspective, universal in verbal intercourse, calls in doubt a basic premise of hermeneutical relativism and, with it, most of the presently fashionable forms of cognitive atheism. 265

 

Hirsch borrows the phrase corrigible schemata from Piaget in order to show that "unlike one’s unalterable or inescapable pre-understanding [perspective] in Heidegger’s account of the hermeneutical circle, a schema [intentional object] can be radically altered and corrected."266 A schema sets up a range of predictions or expectations, which, if fulfilled, confirm the schema, but, if not, cause us to revise it.267

It seems that the revisible or changeable character of the schema signifies the alteration not only in the interpreter’s own horizon (value system) but also in his guess about the author’s horizon. In Hirsch’s view, this reflects the possibility of an objective knowledge on textual meaning (identity), i.e., the possibility of adopting two different perspectives at the same time. Hirsch believes that because of this possibility we can resolve some of the disagreements in hermeneutics, "particularly certain disagreements involving the concept of historicity."268 According to him, the disagreements between the interpreters are not on the meaning of the text but on the significance they give to that meaning.269 Meaning is a self-identical schema whose boundaries are deter-mined by an originating speech event, while significance is a relationship drawn between that self-identical meaning and anything else.270

It seems that behind this distinction lies the presupposition that although the two horizons, (i.e., that of author and that of interpreter) are basically alien to each other, nonetheless somehow the inter-preter can relate the author’s meaning to his own without distorting its identity. Hence, for Hirsch, significance must be the act of overcoming the distance between the alien horizons. However, since "the significance of textual meaning has no foundation and no objectivity unless meaning itself is unchanging,"271 there is no total overcoming of this distinction. This implies that the meaning which the interpreter is trying to relate to his own horizon remains in its own distinct (isolated) realm. If this is the case, what is it that the interpreter relates to his own horizon?

We can put the same problem in a different way: If the meaning, as Hirsch argues, "exists only by virtue of the perspective which gives it existence"272 how is it possible to carry, or integrate, it into other perspectives and to sustain its existence in them? According to this argument, the meaning, (logically speaking), once detached from its own horizon, must lose its existence since there is no medium which can sustain it. We saw above that Hirsch insists on the alien or distinct characters of the author’s and the inter-preter’s horizon. And, as noticed, he does not provide any medium between them. Therefore, what he asks of the interpreter is to leap over the abyss between the two horizons.

However, Hirsch seems to believe that meaning can exist when carried to different contexts. He argues that "In fact, if we could not distinguish a content of consciousness from its contexts, we could not know any object at all in the world. The context in which something is known is always a different context on a different occasion."273 In this case, does he not have to accept that meaning becomes like an object to be approached from different perspectives and hence has its autonomy, i.e., that it can exist independent of its author’s horizon?

Although Hirsch makes some important revisions to his approach, and in fact partially disregards the author’s will (or par-ticular intention) in the definition of meaning,274 he still accepts the originating moment as the constitutive element of textual identity.275 This is to say that he does not stop at the author’s mind, but goes back to the historical and linguistic conditions where the author willed to actualize some meaning. The point of this new approach is this: if meaning is to be open to future applications, then the horizon which provides it with a borderline (identity) should be broadened. The wider the scope of the historical horizon of the original meaning, the broader can the meaning be applied in the future. Thus Hirsch starts to entertain two new terms in his theory: the "future-directedness" and "provisionality" of intention.

Hirsch notes that "A future-directed intention is an explicit plan with areas of inexplicitness."276 Accordingly, a future-directed intention could be conceived as an instrument or tool constructed for a broadly established application. Its purpose could embrace an indefinite number of future applications that no human being could foresee in any precise detail. "A claw hammer is intended to pound in and pull out nails. That purpose is fulfilled whether the nails are iron or brass, threepenny or tenpenny, headed or headless."277 This is to say, any future intention necessarily comprises a degree of variability for its future-fulfillments.

According to Hirsch, the indefinite number of future applica-tions does not require any change in the identity of the original inten-tion, because every new application is but a concrete "exempli-fication" of the meaning-concept (universal).278 Hence, the true extension of a literary intention is not restricted to its original exemplary element. As can be recalled, Hirsch previously was accepting authorial intention as the medium between universal concept (language) and particular object. In this new position, Hirsch does not limit meaning only to the historical (particular) object of the authorial intention, but also allows the possible (future) particular objects to be subsumed under the same universal concept, as long as they fall within the borders implied by the original meaning.279 Hirsch notes that with this approach he comes closer to Gadamer. While previously he held that the diverse future applica-tions of meaning, each being different, must belong to the domain of significance, now he accepts that certain present applications of a text may belong to its meaning rather than to its significance.280

It seems that Hirsch adopts medieval allegorical interpretation as the basis of his theory. Therefore, as mentioned before, the referentiality of meaning is not restricted to the original historical possibilities, but goes beyond it by remaining true to the past.281 Hence, according to Hirsch, past meaning must be stretched into the present and future as long as the interpreter is able to go behind the literal content (authorial intention) by following the implications hidden therein. Thus, this transformation of the literal content (authorial intention) into the allegorical one is not a distortion, but an extension of the border of the meaning. In other words, he seems to say that past meaning is both stable, since the interpreter has to understand first how the (original) author applied it to his own historical situation, and unstable, because the author did not intend to restrict his meaning to his own condition. This is clear when Hirsch argues that "Historical intention itself invites up-to-dateness."282

From this perspective, the authorial intention seems to be a stable point or center around which the interpretations (historical applications) establish an increasingly expanding circle. The circle is established in three steps. First, the interpreter should go to the historical origin of a meaning; second, he should abstract the univer-sal concept from the particular meaning; third, he should apply it to his own situation.283 Therefore, what Hirsch calls the ‘provisiona-lity’ of meaning is nothing else than the extraction of the universal concept from the authorial intention, and the ‘futurality’ of meaning, the act of bringing it to the present. Hence, Hirsch seems to dis-tinguish the general intention (purpose) of the author from his particular intention.284

If this is the case, then when accepting the particular intention as one of the (historical) applications of the general intention (uni-versal concept),285 he implicitly admits that the relation between the general and the particular intention is in fact nothing other than the relation between the end (goal) and the means (tool). However, how is it possible to abstract (differentiate) the author’s general purpose (goal) from his particular intention (tool)? Where is the criterion for differentiating them?

Like Hirsch, Betti distinguishes meaning from significance (application) on the basis of the autonomy (identity) of authorial in-tention. According to Betti, "wherever we come into contact with meaning-full forms (sinnhaltige Formen)286 through which an other mind addresses us, we find our interpretive powers stirring to get to know the meaning contained within these forms."287 The meaning-full form should be viewed by all means in the wider sense of an objectivation of mind.288 Hence, interpretation as the procedure of bringing something to understanding is a triadic process. The active and thinking mind of the interpreter can come into contact, not immediately, but only through the mediation of these meaning-full forms in which an objectivated mind confronts the interpreter as an unalterably other being. Accordingly, understanding is the re-cognition and re-construction of a meaning.289

Nevertheless, Betti, following Schleiermacher, grounds the possibility of reconstruction of the mind that is known through the forms of its objectivations on the basis of a shared humanity. He believes that only on this basis is it possible for the interpreter to invert the creative process by retracing the steps from the opposite direction and by re-thinking them in his inner self. Thus the interpreter’s task is to recreate the meaning from within himself (i.e., to integrate it into his own horizon) and to objectify it at the same time.290

their own logic of development, their intended connections, and in their necessity, coherence and conclusiveness; they should be judged in relation to the standards immanent in their original intention: the intention, that is, which the created forms should correspond to from the point of view of the author and his formative impulse in the course of the creative process; it follows that they must not be judged in terms of their suitability for any other external purpose that may seem relevant to the interpreter.291

 

Nevertheless, Betti does not argue that total objectivation is possible. Since the recognition or the reconstruction of the past meaning requires the active participation of the interpreter, the task of interpretation can never be regarded as finished and completed. This entails that "no interpretation, however convincing it may seem at first, can force itself upon mankind as the definitive one."292

How is it possible, then, to integrate actively the past meaning into one’s intellectual horizon and to re-cognize it (meaning) in its unalterable otherness at the same time? Betti seems to argue that even though meaning is grasped in its significance for us, there remains an objective moment by which meaning is differentiated from its significance. In this case, significance does not follow the mere reconstruction of authorial meaning as a secondary phase (as Hirsch argues), but must establish a unity with it (meaning), which is differentiated within itself. For Betti, this internal differentiation must allow the interpreter to contemplate the historical meaning in its otherness and to enjoy its significance for his horizon.293

It now becomes clear how Betti applies the Schleiermacherian notion of discontinuity (the unsurpassable otherness of the indivi-dual) within continuity (common nature, shared humanity) to his distinction (discontinuity) between meaning and significance within the unity (continuity) of an interpretation. Thus what he calls the autonomy of the object must be the basis of the internal differen-tiation within this unity. Betti fears that if one identifies meaning with its significance, the dialogue that should occur between the inter-preter and the mind objectivated in his sources would fail completely and turn into a mere monologue since textual meaning would lose its autonomy and be affected by the prejudices of the interpreter.294

In his view, a real dialogue with the text is possible only if the partner is represented as the unchangeable mind of an Other. Only in this way can what the other mind says be known to us and exist independently of our prejudices. The main point here is that even if the present furthers and stimulates the interest in understanding, "it has no place in the transposition of the ‘subjective stance.’ 295 The present cannot mediate the past meaning. Out of this we can conclude that in Betti’s view, the primary purpose of the dialogue must be only to ‘understand’ the other mind, but not to come to an ‘agreement’ with it.

Gadamer believes that the genuine dialogue (true inter-pretation) between the past and the present takes place when we are truly aware of the unity of meaning and significance. The distinction between meaning and significance is based on the subject-object dichotomy and ignores the ontological structure of understanding. According to Gadamer, since understanding is always an event and the basic characteristic of this event is its finitude, i.e., temporality (thus the ‘essence’ of Dasein is its historicity),296"it is enough to say that we understand in a different way, if we understand at all."297 If this is the case, how can he bring together the difference of understanding and the oneness of the text or work?

Gadamer argues that it is a mistake to make the endless multiplicity of the different understandings "a denial of the un-shakable identity of the work."298 In his view, the artwork is a cha-llenge for our understanding because over and over again it evades all our interpretations and puts up an invincible resistance to being transformed into the identity of the concept.299 If this is the case, even though the identity of the text is constructed in a dialogue between the text and interpretation300 it is, at the same time, both immanent and transcendent with respect to interpretation.

Precisely because of its immanent and transcendent character, some critics see a close affinity between Gadamer’s approach to textual identity and the Husserlian concept of ‘identity within manifold.’ In a contribution to the Gadamerian notion of identity, Sokolowski notes that "the identity needs the manifold to be and to appear, but the identity never becomes simply one member of the manifold of appearances" (italics mine).301 Accordingly, although a thing itself can appear as the same thing again in a new appearance, it can never be isolated from its modes of appearance. Hence, even if each interpretation intensifies the being of the text, text and interpretation never coincide. 302

Like Sokolowski, Wachterhauser too tries to show the affinities between Gadamer’s and Husserl’s perspectives with respect to identity. However, he calls attention also to the difference between them by remarking that while in Husserl’s thought per-ception always involves spatial Abschattungen (which are of the same object for all perceivers, as constituted by the transcendental ego), in Gadamer’s thought these Abschattungen are historical and cultural, thus "the only sense of the ‘whole’ text we can have is one which is constituted subjectively by the historical ego."303

In Wachterhauser’s reading of Gadamer, the being of the text disappears in the being of the interpretation and thus the otherness of the text is covered up by the otherness of the interpretation. From this perspective, the dialogue between the text (past) and inter-pretation (present) is destroyed in subsuming the past under the present. However, does this reading do justice to Gadamer’s approach to identity? When arguing that "whoever understands must understand differently if he wants to understand at all,"304 does Gadamer in fact reduce the identity of the text to the difference of understanding? What is the meaning of ‘difference’ in this argu-ment? Does it refer to the absence of identity and thus reveal the self-contradiction in the argument, as Hirsch contends?305

When we look at Gadamer’s argument based on his other contention that understanding is essentially dialogical, we realize that the process of interpretation is not in fact from the present to the past but from the past to the present, since every interpretation presupposes that the text has a claim to truth, i.e., that the text has something to say. In this context, Gadamer notes that "to understand it [literature] does not mean primarily to reason one’s way back into the past, but to have a present involvement in what is said."306 This is to say that every text is turned toward others (i.e., future situations).307 He puts it thus: "To be sure, everything that is fixed in writing refers back to what was originally said, but it must equally as much look forward; for all that is said is always already directed toward understanding and includes the other."308

Precisely because of the need of avoiding both this kind of relativism and the metaphysics of presence, Gadamer accepts that the present is already open toward the past by finding a way to let the historical text speak to itself. What Gadamer means is this: the present does not stand over against the past (text) as something which first reflects the otherness (difference) of the past to itself (like the disagreement between the partners), but as something which tries to come to an agreement with it.309 Owing to this fact, the text "presents itself only in connection with interpretation and from the point of view of interpretation."310 Nevertheless, since "the standpoint that is beyond any standpoint, a standpoint from which we could conceive its [text’s] true identity, is a pure illusion,"311 the otherness of the text reveals itself also as insurpassable. Therefore, there is no total penetration into the otherness of the other.

We should note that ‘otherness’ in Gadamer’s thought does not mean alienation, as subject-object ontology assumes, but refers to the inexhaustible potentiality of the other. Hence, though Gadamer accepts with Hegel that in the experience of being involved with someone or with a text, there is "a potentiality of being other" [Andersseins], he disagrees with Hegel, who accepts the total overcoming the otherness of the other in the further process, be-cause he (Gadamer) argues that this potentiality "lies beyond every coming to agreement for being other."312 In this context, Gadamer remarks also 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."313

Therefore, Gadamer rejects the monistic position which seeks to find the identity of the text in the total agreement of the interpretation with the text314 by ignoring the infinite potentiality of the otherness of each side. Hence we realize that the problem of textual identity cannot be understood without considering how the otherness of the past and present come to an agreement without being overcome totally by the other side (i.e., the problem of the concrete universal). We saw above that whenever the otherness between the past and the present is assumed to be known prior to their interrelation, (which presupposes the subject-object schema), the contradiction of taking ‘the alien as the familiar’ arises. As Gadamer shows, this is due to accepting a standpoint which is be-yond any standpoint.

When taking the dialectic between ‘familiarity’ and ‘other-ness’ of the text as his starting point, Gadamer seems to appeal to Heidegger’s identity-thesis. Heidegger understands identity as the relation of belonging together.315 As Stambaugh puts it, "what is new about this understanding of identity as a relation is that the relation first determines the manner of being of what is to be related and the how of this relation."316 According to Heidegger, since man and Being belong together,

Being is present to man neither incidentally nor only on rare occasions. Being is present and abides only as it concerns man through the claim it makes on him. For it is man, open toward Being, who alone lets Being arrive as presence. Such becoming present needs the openness of a clearing, and by this need remains appropriated to human being. This does not at all mean that Being is posited first and only by man. On the contrary, the following becomes clear: Man and Being are appropriated to each other. They belong to each other. From this belonging to each other, which has not been thought out more closely, man and Being have first received those determinations of essence by which man and being are grasped metaphysically.317

 

It seems that Heidegger’s notion of ‘belongingness’ takes the form of the dialectic between familiarity and strangeness, according to Gadamer. This dialectic reveals the fact that there is an indissoluble tension between the interpreter and the text. The text never presents itself in its total being, nor does it remain in its total strangeness. Like the interplay between light and darkness, familia-rity and strangeness presuppose each other. In this context, Gadamer remarks: "Hermeneutics must start from the position that a person seeking to understand something has a bond to the subject matter that comes into language through the traditionary text and has, or acquires, a connection with the tradition from which the text speaks."318 Precisely because of this connection (familiarity), it is possible to turn toward the original manifestations of the text.319 From this perspective, the infinite potentiality of the otherness of the text stays in its coveredness (strangeness) behind its uncoveredness (familiarity) through tradition. This tension between familiarity and strangeness reflects itself as the text’s belonging to a tradition and its being distanciated from the interpreter. "The true locus of hermeneutics is this in-between."320

We accept the fact that the subject presents different aspects of itself at different times or from different standpoints. We accept the fact that these aspects do not simply cancel one another out as research proceeds, but are like mutually exclusive conditions that exist by themselves and combine only in us. Our historical consciousness is always filled with the variety of voices in which the echo of the past is heard. Only in the multifariousness of such voices does it exist: this constitutes the nature of the tradition in which we want to share and have a part.321

 

Since the text "speaks to us in terms of the significance of its contents"322 and since "the subject matter appears truly significant only when it is properly portrayed for us,"323 tradition is not a neutral conveyor of the variety of voices but the place where the mutual mediation of past and present takes place.