INTRODUCTION
Following Heidegger’s hermeneutics of Dasein, Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Truth and Method
1 sheds new light on the problem of author’s intention and interpretation by calling attention to the ontological dimensions of understanding. It emphasizes the fact that interpretation is basically an experience of the truth of the text. From this ontological point of view, it claims that to approach the problem of interpretation as a problem of method is to miss the point at the outset since method is too confining an idea to capture the uni-queness of the historical experience of the truth of the text.Gadamer’s critique of the scientific ideal of objectivity in the humanities also reveals the presupposition lying behind the inten-tionalist arguments for author’s intention. For purpose of objectivity, to restrict the being of the text to author’s intention seems untenable for the primary function of meaning refers not to the mind of the author, but to the truth of the subject matter (Sache) brought to light in language. Hence, the unity of language and subject matter is the locus of truth as uncoveredness.
The ontological dimension of meaning and language provides a way for Gadamer to reject the reductionism of the intentionalists. Language is not a tool for human subjectivity, but constitutes a transcendental ground within which past and the present can have a genuine dialogue or living conversation. "Language fulfills itself and has its proper fulfillment only in the give and take of speaking, in which one word yields another, and in which the language that we bring to one another and make familiar to one another comes alive."
2Even though Gadamer emphasizes the dynamic structure of the linguistic horizons within which past meaning claims truth, his critics charge him with radical perspectivism. According to his critics, Gadamer’s hermeneutics does not provide a genuine stand-point from which the past text can be understood in its objective meaning. In their view, to take the interpreter’s perspective as the starting point is to distort the past meaning which can be understood only if one reconstructs the original horizon within which the meaning was originated.
Therefore, according to the intentionalists, author’s intention (horizon) must be the only basis for correct interpretation. Obviously, as this argument indicates, the intentionalists share the same view with perspectivists in that meaning is dependent on perspective. However, they differ from the perspectivists by contending that it is possible to suspend one’s own perspective and assume another’s. But, how is it possible to bridge the gap between two distinct and supposedly alien perspectives?
The intentionalist argument for the possibility of suspending one’s own horizon presupposes that the reality of history is not a constitutive property of human understanding and of horizon. Even though meaning is dependent on perspective, this does not mean that the human mind is historically conditioned. The human mind (individual consciousness) has a privileged (distant) standpoint with respect to the reality of history and language conventions. It transcends the boundary drawn by tradition (social consciousness).
In holding this the intentionalist arguments accept the priority of the individuality of the human being over its social character. We find the same presupposition behind the idea of method. The application of method in human sciences is based on the assumption that the object to be investigated exists essentially in its individual or atomic character.
However, this assumption reflects the paradoxical situation in the intentionalist or objectivist perspectives with respect to meaning. Their presupposition that meaning must be understood in its atomic (isolated) character affects their understanding of past meaning. If so, how is it possible to argue that one has to suspend one’s own presupposition in order to understand meaning in its objective nature?
We see another paradoxical situation in the argument for the objectivity of meaning. While arguing that meaning is dependent on the author’s subjective horizon, the intentionalists also argue that meaning is self-identical with respect to the changing contexts. Hence meaning is at the same time both a matter of consciousness and an autonomous entity at the same time. We will observe the continuation of this situation in Hirsch’s theory of interpretation. He claims that meaning is both the subject of reconstructing the original condition and open to future applications. Hirsch remarks that with his argument for application he comes close to Gadamer who contends that application is a constitutive element of meaning. However, since Hirsch still presupposes that the past can be known in itself (i.e., the application is a secondary moment in the constitution of meaning), the basic difference between them still remains.
3This study will argue that the identity of textual meaning cannot be based on the subjective stance of the author as the intentionalists claim. It aims to show that understanding of textual identity should not be separated from the experience of the truth of the text which is essentially historical. Hence, the being of the text should be viewed as the ground underlying the historical continuity of the mediations (i.e., the experiences of the truth) of the text.
In order to show this, the first chapter will discuss the problem of method and the subject-object ontology which characterizes Hirsch’s and Betti’s intentionalist arguments for author’s intention. We will claim that subject-object ontology cannot be held as the grounding of a genuine theory of interpretation since it requires the suspension of the truth-claim of the text and disregards the historicity of understanding.
The second chapter will focus primarily on the problem of the identification of meaning with intention of the author. In this context, we will criticize the genetic approach which identifies meaning with the psychological acts of the author. Then we will call attention to the problematic aspects of Wimsatt’s and Beardsley’s theory of interpretation
4 and the intentionalist theories proposed by Michaels, Knapp,5 Juhl,6 and Hirsch.7 This will try to show the reasons why they fail to demonstrate the identity of meaning and author’s intention. The discussion on Gadamer’s perspective regarding the author will follow this.The third chapter will present Wachterhauser’s and Hirsch’s critique of the unity of meaning and its significance in Gadamer.
8 We will discuss the problem of textual identity in Hirsch in its relation to perspectivism. We will then call attention to Hirsch’s distinction between meaning and significance, claiming that this distinction leads Hirsch to subjectivism and relativism. The discussion of Betti’s notion of the autonomy of the hermeneutical object and the distinction of meaning from significance will show that Betti cannot escape from subjectivism and relativism, since his theory leads to the distinction between meaning and its validity (truth) for the interpretive context.9 Then, we will try to shed light on Gadamer’s notion of textual identity in terms of the dialectic between sameness and difference. This investigation will make the point that the problem of the textual identity is basically the problem of truth of the text.Finally, the fourth chapter will examine the notion of truth in Gadamer and the historical conditions of its occurrence. In order to show the background of Gadamer’s notion of truth, attention will be paid first to the Heideggerian concept of truth as uncoveredness, as presented in Being and Time. The discussion of Gadamer’s notion of the negativity of experience will highlight the problem of the historical continuity of the mediations of the truth of the text. We will emphasize the point that the transition between the discontinuities (different interpretations) is already the experience of the historical continuity of meaning. From this perspective, we will discuss Margolis’ theory of interpretation which justifies relativism by depriving the text of its claim to truth. We will contend that Margolis’ robust relativism does not propose a transcendental ground for textual identity and reduces the event of interpretation to a mere intellectual activity. Hence his relativist theory does not solve the problem of the discontinuity of meaning.
10The argument will then be made that the historical continuity of the mediations of the text takes place in as far as the being of the text establishes a transcendental ground. Accordingly, we will call attention to the fact that different interpretations are nothing else than partners in the ongoing dialogue with the historical text. And this dialogue takes place in terms of the dialectic of question and answer. Hence the continuity of this dialogue (and the dialectic of question and answer) reflects the fact that the past and the present cannot be understood independently of each other. This is to say that the identity of the text lies in the continuity of the unity of the past and present. Hence the charge that Gadamer’s hermeneutics collapses the identity of the text to the particular interpretive context is untenable.
NOTES
1. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode: Grund-züge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik, 5
th ed. (Tübingen: J. B. Mohr, 1986). English translation, Truth and Method, 2nd rev. ed. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Crossroad, 1989). (Henceforth TM and WM, respectively.)2. Gadamer, "The Continuity of History and the Existential Moment," Philosophy Today 16, no. 3-4 (Fall 1972), pp. 238-239; see also Gadamer, "Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Metaphysics," Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 25, no. 2 (May 1994), p. 109.
3. E. D. Hirsch, "Meaning and Significance Reinterpreted," Critical Inquiry 11 (December 1984), pp. 202-215.
4. Even though Beardsley and Wimsatt propose an anti-intentionalist theory, they approach ‘meaning’ as an objective entity whose truth can be discovered once and for all. See, M. C. Beardsley, "The Authority of the Text," in Intention and Interpre-tation, ed. Gary Iseminger (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), pp. 24-40; W. K. Wimsatt, and Beardsley, "The Intentional Fallacy," in 20
th Century Literary Criticism: A Reader, ed. David Lodge (London: Longman, 1972), pp. 333-345; "The Affective Fallacy," in 20th Century Literary Criticism: A Reader, ed. David Lodge (London: Longman, 1972), pp. 345-358.5. Knapp and Michaels propose that language and intention cannot be separated. See, S. Knapp and W. B. Michaels, "Against Theory," in Against Theory, ed. W. J. T. Mitchell (Chicago: The Chicago University Press, 1985), pp. 11-30. Reprinted as abridged with the title "The Impossibility of Intentionless Meaning," in Inten-tion and Interpretation. ed. Gary Iseminger (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), pp. 51-64.
6. Juhl contends that behind the coherence of textual meaning lies author’s intention. Hence, the possibility of interpretation which is based on the coherence of textual meaning presupposes author’s intention. P. D. Juhl, Interpretation: An Essay in the Philosophy of Literary Criticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); "The Appeal to the Text: What Are We Appealing to?" The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 36, no. 3 (Spring 1978), pp. 277-287.
7. For Hirsch, the only basis of textual identity is author’s intention. See, Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967).
8. B. R. Wachterhauser, "Interpreting Texts: Objectivity or Participation?" Man and World 19 (1986), pp. 439-457.
9. According to Betti, although past meaning is grasped in its significance, meaning is not identical with its significance. Author’s intention is the basis of textual identity. See, E. Betti, "Hermeneutics as the general methodology of the Geisteswissenschaften," in Contemporary Hermeneutics, ed. J. Bleicher (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), pp. 51-94; "The Epistemological Problem of Understanding As an Aspect of the General Problem of Knowing," trans. Susan Noakes, Hermeneutics: Questions and Prospects, ed. Gary Shapiro and Alan Sica (Amherst: University of Massa-chusetts Press, 1984), pp. 25-53.
10. J. Margolis, "Interpretation at Risk," The Monist 73, no. 2 (April 1990), pp. 312-330; "Robust Relativism," in Intention and Interpretation, ed. Gary Iseminger (Philadelphia: Temple Univer-sity Press, 1992), pp. 41-50; "The Truth about Relativism," in Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation, ed. M. Crausz (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), pp. 232-255.