Dilthey and Gadamer: Two Theories of Historical Understanding Author(s): David E.

Linge Source: Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Dec., 1973), pp. 536-553 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1461732 Accessed: 07/07/2009 15:47
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RITICAL DISCUSSION
Dilthey and Gadamer
Two Theoriesof Historical Understanding
DAVID E. LINGE
O the impenetrable depths within myself," wrote Wilhelm Dilthey in

1910, "I am an historicalbeing....

The first condition for the possi-

bility of historical science lies in the fact that I am myself an historical being - that the one who studies history is the same one who makes it."l These sentences of Dilthey's give expression to the central problem of this paper, namely, the problem of the relation between historical understanding and the historicity of human existence. Most philosophers have taken the relation between these two notions to be one of mutual exclusion. The unqualified affirmation of man's historicity seems to lead directly to a relativism that makes any kind of objective knowledge impossible. Hence it is not surprising that the author of the above words is generally considered one of the fathers of historicism. Writing at the turn of the century, Dilthey was indeed one of the first thinkers to see that the result of historical scholarship - its insight into man as a creature of history- threatened to undercut the very ideal of objectivity upon which historical scholarship itself is based. In this paper, I shall examine the attempts of two thinkers -Wilhelm Dilwork out a positive relationship between and Hans-Georg Gadamer -to they the historicity of the knower and the objectivity of historical interpretation. The sharply conflicting theories of these thinkers represent two of the principal ways in which German philosophy in the twentieth century has sought to come to terms with the radical historicity of man while avoiding the pitfalls of relativism. Wilhelm Dilthey, GesammelteSchriften (14 vols.; Stuttgart:Teubner, 1959-68), volume numberfollowing.) Vol. VII, p. 278. (Hereaftercited as GS, with appropriate
DAVID E. LINGE (Ph.D., Vanderbilt University) is Assistant Professor of Religious

Studiesat The Universityof Tenneseein Knoxville. 536

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The background the problem we are to consider is the philosophicalconof viction that has become increasinglywidespread during the last one hundred years-the conviction usually referred to as "historicism"or "historicalconsciousness" The rise of what I will call the historicalconsciousnessbegan with the development of scientific historiographyduring the last century and the subsequentaccumulationof a vast body of historical knowledge covering the whole rangeof social,political,and intellectuallife. With the possible exception of its development of the natural sciences, no other contribution of the nineteenth century to our own time has been as profound as the all-pervasivehistorical awarenessit has bequeathedto us. Certainly no discipline within the humanitieshas been left untouchedby the laborsof criticalhistoricalscholarship during the past century,not only in the sense that each is cognizant of an unprecedentedmass of information,but more basically,in that each has come to adopt a historical point of view in its own methodology: each regards it an importantpart of its task to examine the ideas, problems,and texts with which it is concernedfrom the point of view of their historicalorigin and development and the varioushistoricalinfluencesupon them. The term "historicalconsciousness,"however, as it relates to this paper, signifies more than the emergenceof an essentiallyhistoricalorientationwithin the methodologyof present-dayhumanisticdisciplines. It points to an understanding of reality, to a conviction that historical understandingand historical categoriesconstitute the widest possible frameworkfor knowledge of the real. said ErnestTroeltsch,"is no longer merely one side of a consideration "History," of things or a partialsatisfactionof the desire for knowledge,but ratherthe basis of all thinking about values and norms, the means of the self-reflectionof the species regardingits nature,origins and its hopes."2 The historicalconsciousness has thus come to constitutea worldview for which any referencebeyond history to a wider framework-to absolutesor to realities not accessibleto historical thinkingand historicalinvestigation- is no longerpossible. This view of things stands in stark contrastto the sense of the meaningfulness of history which men had before the present century. Until the close of the last century,men consideredhistory intelligible and knowledge of it important only becausehistory itself was deemed to fit into a largermetaphysicalcontext. For medieval man, history was intelligible in terms of the supernatural end which God had ordainedfor it and not in terms of itself. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this supernaturalframework for history and historicalunderstandingwas more and more called into question; the meaning of history became man himself, his struggle towardsand gradualrealizationof his natural capacities and ideals. Hence the foundations of historical underund die Religionsgeschichte(Tii2ErnstTroeltsch,Die Absolutheitdes Christentums
bingen: Mohr, 1929), p. 3.

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standingat the time of the rise of historicalconsciousnessin the nineteenthcentury reflected the general confidence of bourgeois culture in man's ability to control and direct himself and his environment towards rationally envisaged goals, the validity of which transcendedthe historicallyrelative. In both the medieval and the modern view, therefore, history was considered meaningful and historical knowledge possible because the course of historical events itself was thoughtto be controlledfrom without, for the one by the economyof divine providence,for the other by universallyvalid human goods and truths. Even before the collapse of bourgeoiscultureat the time of the First World War, historical consciousnesshad begun to undermine these earlier views by qualifying in principle the range of significance historical events could have. The Germantheologian GerhardEbeling has indicatedthis consequenceof historical thinking: "The completely new thing in historical thinking," Ebeling asserts,"consistsin the fact that it relativizesall historicalthings as 'merelyhistorical'. What earlierages thoughtof as man and the world has to be understood historically,but for that reason also its validity is historically limited."3 The historicalbecomesthe merely historical. With its undertonesof skepticismand relativism,the growing historicalconsciousnessof the last one hundredyears no longer regardshistory as disclosive of anything of absolute or transcendentsignificance. At most, history discloses the creativityof man himself in his continual positing of absolutes. But this is a humanprocessof positing and is to be understoodhistorically. Criticalawarenessof the past, as Dilthey saw, inevitably preventsone from taking at face value the myriadconflicting claims to absolute knowledgethat fill the pages of history.
History does indeed know of the positing of somethingunconditionalas value, norm or good. These occureverywhere it -sometimes in a rationalconcept in of perfection,in a teleologicalsystem of the world, in a universallyvalid, tranfoundednorm of our actions. But historicalexperienceknows only scendentally the processesof positing, which are importantto it, and nothing of their universal validity. By tracing the course of development of such unconditional values,goods or norms, it notices that life has produceddifferentones and that the unconditionalpositing itself only becomespossible becausethe horizon of the age is limited.4

Historicalconsciousnessis at bottom consciousnessof the limited perspective of everyman and everyage. But what holds for other men and other ages holds for us as well. Thus it is a small step from Dilthey's observationto the most significant result of this erosion of the traditionalfoundationsof history, namely, to the insight that the mode of being of the thinker himself is radicallyhistorical. The historian is no less immersedin historythan his subjectmatter. If the claims of other men are
GerhardEbeling, Word and Faith (Philadelphia:FortressPress, 1963), p. 364. GS, VII, p. 173.

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silenced by the relativityof their perspectives,how can the historicisthope that his own claims will fare any better? Ironically,historicalconsciousnessnot only subordinates-or better, swallows up-all the timeless truths and revelations given in the past, but now, in FriedrichMeinecke'sphrase,like the snake that bites its own tail, this mode of interpretationhas devouredthe knowing subject himself.5 The final and most decisive consequenceof historical consciousness, therefore, is not its ever more refined methods of interrogatinghistory, but rather its radicalhistoricizationof man, including the modes of thought of the historicalknowerhimself. And this, of course,is the point at which the opponents of historicismcelebrate a logical victoryover their perniciousfoe, a victory foreshadowed long ago in the triumphof Socraticphilosophy over the self-refutingrelativismof Protagoras. The critics of historicismpoint out that, as soon as historicityenvelopes the the knower of history as well as the object of historicalinterpretation, founare undermined. A cleavage appearsbetween dations for objective knowledge the historicist'spresuppositions regardingthe natureof the knower himself and the ideal of objective knowledge to which he continues to pay allegiance. The opponents of historicism insist, therefore, that historicists cannot consistently maintain both their assertion of the radical historicity of the knower himself and their claim to a scientific historicalmethodologythat leads to and guarantees objectivelyvalid knowledgeof history. This logical objection has been formidable enough that most would-be historicists have felt obliged to qualify their affirmationof humanhistoricity,withdrawinginto a modest kind of metaphysics that has allowed them to salvagetheir own claim to objectivelyvalid knowledge by exempting the knower himself from the otherwise ubiquitous influence of historicity. The most prominent result of this dilemma of historicism can be historians seen in the great interest philosophers and philosophically-minded have shown in methodologicalquestionsduring the past one hundredyears. At any rate, even the brief analysisof the logic of historicismwhich we have undertaken leads one to suspectthat the concernfor scientific methodologythat dominated historicalstudies at the turn of the centurywas motivated as much by a as vague sense of self-contradiction by any desire to be like the naturalsciences. The subtle continuationby the historicist of the metaphysicaltradition he set out to overcome is nowhere more apparentthan in the method of historical he interpretation adopts. For it is preciselyby virtue of his scientific methodol- that is, by virtue of his methodologicalself-consciousness critical selfand ogy control-that the knowercomes to assumethat his own capacitiesfor judgment remain unaffected by his historicity. The question of the model of historical with which the historicistoperatesis thereforethe clearestpoint understanding at which we gain an insight into his presuppositionsregardinghis own relation to history. In the following sections of this paper I will examine the concepts
5FriedrichMeinecke,Zur Theorie und Philosophie der Geschichte (Stuttgart:K. F. Koehler,1959), p. 215.

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of historicalunderstanding that inform the work of Dilthey and Gadamer. My main interestis not in the detailsof historicalmethodology,or the explicit canons of historicalinterpretation they involve. Instead,I shall pay particularattention to the reflexive question, that is, to the question of the assumptionsthese two thinkersmake regardingthe relation betweeen historicalunderstanding and the of the knower'sown existence. historicity II Dilthey's philosophyof life standswithin the great traditionof Germanhistorical scholarshipwhich has its roots in early nineteenth-century romanticism and includes the work of such thinkers as Schleiermacher, Ranke, Droysen, and the Historical School. But it is especiallyDilthey, in a series of writings that appearedbetween 1900 and his death in 1911, who worked out the historicist implicationsof this heritage. Throughouthis writings, Dilthey posits a unique connection between life and history. "In its subject matter,"he asserts, "life is identical with history. And historyconsistsin life of all kinds in the most varyingcircumstances. History is only life viewed in terms of the continuity of mankind as a whole."6 Life is the ultimate,underlyingground of all human thought and action and the source from which the entire socio-historicalworld arises. It is the comprehensive context in which individual,personallives take place. But we can approach life only through the study of the myriad forms in which it manifests itself in the course of history. "Historymust teach us what life is; yet, because it is the course of life in time, history is dependenton life and derives its content from it."7

If we are to understandwhat Dilthey means by historicity, we must first of all considerhis concept of the organic system of consciousnessthat is at the basis of human life and all its historical manifestations. The human studies (Geisteswissenschaften)are distinct from the naturalsciences preciselybecause their mode of understanding presupposesan inner and underivedmental structure which is presentto the individualin experienceand reflectionon experience. The continuityof life that embracesboth the subjectand the objects of historical knowledge is seen in the fact that this mental structureis at the basis of the knower'sown life as well as at the basis of the phenomenahe studies. For Dilthey, the initial contact of the self with its environmentis not a passive recordingof impersonal,neutral objects and processes. Rather, immediate awarenessof our involvement in the world occurs on the level of vital interaction. Drives and instincts innatein the self run up againstthe resistance what of the is beyondit.8 Consequently, basicform of our mental structureis determined
6 GS, VII, p. 256.

GS, VII, p. 262. 8 Cf., GS, V, pp. 98-105.

7

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541

in lived experience by the reciprocity in which the self is conditioned by its environmentand responds purposefullyto it. The self's own intentionality is therefore an original element of this initial life-relation to the world. Indeed, the world is originally present in lived experience only in terms of the liferelation in which it stands. Dilthey describeshow the objective world is built up out of such preconceptualinvolvement:
. .. There is nothing that does not contain a life-relation to the I. As everything is related to it, the state of the I changes constantly according to the things and people around it. There is not a person or a thing which is only an object to me; for me it involves pressure or advancement, the goal of some striving or a restriction of my will, importance, demand for consideration, inner closeness or resistance, distance or strangeness. Through the life-relation, either transitory or permanent, these people and things bring me happiness, expand my existence or heighten my powers; or they confine the scope of my life, exercise pressure on me and drain my strength. The attributes which things thus acquire only in the life-relation to me produce resultant changes in my state. Thus, on the basis of life itself, types of behavior arise, such as objective comprehension, evaluation and the setting of purposes, with countless nuances merging into each other. In the course of life they form systematic connections which embrace and determine all activity.9

Reflection presupposeslived experience and constitutes a stabilization of what is given in it. The self thus always has a world which it "understands," albeit in a pre-reflectiveand not in a theoreticalsense, and the mental structure which develops on this pre-conceptuallevel is the basis of reflective activities. As reflection clarifies and draws elements of experience into thematic awareness, these elements alreadybelong to an organic, meaningful structureof experience. The structuralunity of the individual'sexperience is not, therefore, somehow subsequentto lived experience. Within mental life, the part exists whole which is, in some sense, only insofaras it belongs ab initio to a structural in it. This is not of course to say that the whole of the self's mental present structureis consciouslypresent in the individual experience. The structure,as the organic whole of mental life, transcendsthe particularpart. Yet it is immanent in the particular lived experience,in that the mind cannot remain within that particularbut rather,starting with it, is drawn into a process of reflection which uncoversand draws out the manifold of experienceableconnections making up the total system. Thus consciouslife is dynamicand temporal. Past and future pervade each moment of experience as memory and anticipation determinethat moment'splace within the whole of life. spontaneously In this way reflection arises spontaneouslyout of lived experience. It draws out and clarifies the meaningful patterns already present in the self's initial encounterwith the world. In each instanceof reflection,only a fragment of the comprehensivesystem of the individual'slife is actuallybrought to the9 GS, VII, pp. 131-32.

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DAVID E. LINGE

matic awareness. Nevertheless, such fragments are sufficient to exhibit that the mental structure, which Dilthey regardsas basic to man'shistoricity,is more than the mere chronological succession or flux of experiences. Even on the most primordial levels, it is organized so that units of experience take their place accordingto their significancefor the whole of the individual'slife. Such self-reflectioncan range throughoutthe entire extent of his experience. And it can be transformedfrom a more or less spontaneousday-dreaminginto a disciplined and sustainedeffort to comprehendthe meaning of his life. He singles out and accentuates moments of life which are significant;others sink away into He remembersthe key events which have shaped his careerand forgetfulness. his life goals, and the events and experiencesthat forced his subsequentrevision of those goals. Old letterstell him how things stood at some previoustime. He projects into his future, and on this basis yet other past experiencesare drawn into reflection,and the significanceof his past is again revised. This interplay of lived experienceand self-reflectionconstitutesour most intimate acquaintance with historical interpretation,and in it Dilthey discovers the key to historical understanding. There are two featuresof this kind of spontaneousreflection on life which prove to be the essentialmarksof Dilthey's concept of historicalunderstanding as such. has (1) Historicalunderstanding to do with the comprehensionof life as a part-whole structure. It attempts to grasp the parts of life in terms of their significance for the coherent and relatively self-enclosed,individual life-whole to which they belong. This individuallife-whole is progressivelyilluminatedby in as interpretation the parts of life, given to reflection,are comprehended their interrelatedness.And at the same time, the partsof life are graspedmore clearly in their significanceas the organicwhole to which they belong emerges into the view through them. Every biographeror interpreterof a text is interpreter's familiarwith the hermeneutical procedureDilthey is describing. But the individual structure that formsthe object of historicalunderstanding need not be that of a text or a personalself. It is often the structureof a group or a nation or a historicalepoch. In all these cases,the ideal of understanding remainsthe same, for in them we also encounterrelativelyclosed organic structuresin which the parts have their significance in terms of the horizon of the whole. Dilthey's own studyof the PrussianLandReform or Burckhardt's study of the Renaissance in Italy are, thereforeattempts to understandthe individualout of itself. Like the personal self, these larger units are individual and can be understoodout of themselvesbecausethey are centered in themselvesand have horizons which mark them off from what went before and what follows. "It is the task of historical analysis," Dilthey asserts,"to discoverthe climate which governs the concrete purposes,valuesand ways of thoughtof a period. Even the contrastswhich prevail there are determinedby this common background. Thus, every action,

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everythought,everycommonactivity,in short,everypartof this historicalwhole, has its significancethroughits relationto the whole of the epoch or age."10 is For Dilthey, then, the ideal of historicalunderstanding to interpretlife out of itself. The interpreterdoes not comprehendhis subject matter from some externalperspective- for instance,from the point of view of its exemplification of eternal values--nor does he criticize elements of life from his own point of view as false or delusory. Indeed,objectivity in historicalknowledge means immersingoneself in the object, in adopting its horizons,not in reducing it to a manifestationof something beyond it. It is this methodologicalorientation towardthe individualthat rescuesthe mind from the internecinewarfareof traditional worldviews, each of which lays claim to unconditionalknowledge of reality. "Everyexpression of life has a meaning insofar as it is a sign which expressessomethingthat is part of life. Life does not mean anythingother than itself. There is nothing in it that points to a meaning beyond it."ll movement (2) Secondly, historical understandinginvolves a characteristic from sensuouslygiven manifestationsof life to something not sensuouslyand directlygiven, namely,the individuallife-whole which the particularmanifestations of life presuppose. That is to say, historicalunderstanding depends upon world of sharedmeanings-what Dilthey, the existence of a historico-cultural following Hegel, calls objective spirit. "In this objective spirit,"says Dilthey, "the past is a permanentlyenduringpresent for us. Its realm extends from the to style of life and the forms of social intercourse, the systemsof purposewhich society has created for itself, to custom, law, state, religion, art, science and philosophy.... From this world of objective spirit, the self receives sustenance of from earliestchildhood. It is the medium in which the understanding other people and their expressionstakes place. For everythingin which the spirit has objectified itself contains something held in common by the I and the Thou."12 All expressions,intentionalor unintentional,from which we can gain access to and conthe individuallife structure,belong to the realm of life-manifestations stitute the point of departurefor historicalunderstanding. Actions, rudimentary expressive behavior such as gestures or facial expressions, are life-manifestabehind them. Objectivescientions which tell us somethingof the life-structure tific expressionsgain their precision and clarity precisely by being intelligible without any referenceto an individuallife-structureor set of historicalcircumstances. Yet even Newton's Principia is a life-manifestationof interest to his10GS,VII, pp. 154-55; cf. also, p. 168. These larger realities are individualsin the limited but specificsense that they also exhibit a part-wholestructure. While this may be he sufficientto justify Dilthey'sprocedure, becameawareof an ambiguityinsofaras these largerrealities,unlike personalselves, no longer have their locus in lived experience,but are only logical subjects. Cf. GS, VII, p. 282. GS, VII, p. 234; cf. also, p. 138. 1' GS,VII, p. 208.

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torical understandinginsofar as it indirectly discloses the life-structureof its authoror the mind of his age. Obviously,however, historical understandingis primarilydependent on conscious,deliberateexpressionsof experience,such as the conversation,the written document, the poetic or the visual work of art. All of these presuppose and betoken the life-world from which they spring. Indeed, such expressionsvery often disclose more about the structureof his life than their authorconsciouslyintended. Through a skillful and reflective explication of such clues to the underlyinglife-structure, interpreterof a text can the to understandthe authorbetter than the authorunderstoodhimself. Dilhope is they argues,therefore,that the task of historicalunderstanding to move from a reflective reconstructionof the horizons of these life-manifestationstowards the individuallife-whole in which they stand. These two essentialcharacteristics reveal Dilthey's model of historicalunderstanding to be one of the self-transpositionor imaginative projection of the knower into the horizon of his subjectmatter. As Dilthey sees it, the condition is for the possibilityof understanding self-transposition that both knower and as known are individual structuralsystems shaped by history. Thus the structural and as the systemof life appearsin a double capacity:as the object I understand succeeds,I in organ by which I understand. To the extent that understanding effect become the other person or a citizen of the past age. I become the other but not life-structure, in the sense of a mysticalor psychologicalmetamorphosis, and reconstructingthe life-structureof the other perby reflectively grasping son or age. Now it is my contention that all the difficulties and ambiguitiesof historicism are present in Dilthey's theory of historical understanding,and that this model- dominant,at least, implicitlyin the entire romantictraditionof philosophy and historiography leads to a profoundalienationof the knowerfrom hisassumesthat the knower is initially alienatedfrom history in that tory. Dilthey the very success of historical understandingas he conceives it depends on the knower'snegatingand overcomingthe temporaldistancethat separateshim from his object. The aim of the interpreteris to divest himself of his own particular prejudices,and thus to understandthe life-manifestationswith which he deals in terms of the life-world in which they originated. What he negates, then, is his own present as a vital extension of the past. Historical understandingis horiachievedin directproportionto the knower'sability to escapethe particular zons that, on Dilthey's own theory, are the inevitable burden of his own histhe toricity. Paradoxically, historicity of existence which Dilthey affirms imposes no real limitation on the essential universalityof understanding. Nor is history a living reality that extends into the present,qualifying our horizons as it did those of the past. It is something that is apparentlyovercome and left behind by the utilization of an effective historicalmethod. This alienationfrom history, implied in Dilthey's model of historicalunderstanding, has profound metaphysicalconsequencesfor historicism. Historical understandingliberates the knower from his own historicity; he gains a free-

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dom from the prejudicesgiven in and with the particularity his own historiof cal horizons. From his methodologically-secured position beyond history, he comes to see the relativityand the horizontalcharacter all that is human: of
The historical consciousness of the finitude of every historical phenomenon, of every human social condition and of the relativity of every kind of faith, is the last step towards the liberation of man. With it man achieves the sovereignty to enjoy every experience to the full and surrender himself to it unencumbered, as if there were no system of philosophy or faith to tie him down. Life is freed from knowledge through concepts; the mind becomes sovereign over the spider webs of dogmatic thought. Everything beautiful, everything holy, every sacrifice relived and interpreted, opens perspectives which disclose some part of reality. And equally, we accept the evil, horrible and ugly, as filling a place in the world, as containing some reality which must be justified in the system of things, something that cannot be conjured away. And in contrast to relativity, the continuity of creative forces asserts itself as the central historical fact.13

What Dilthey is offering us here is a metaphysic,and indeed, a metaphysic quite at odds with the one he imposes on the subject matter of history. In a manner reminiscentof Hegel, Dilthey is arguing that historical understanding constitutes a kind of heightened self-possession. It is life turning back upon itself and gaining a final sovereigntyover its own past forms. Historicalunderwhich precededthe historistandinggives life what the older Weltanschauungen cal consciousnesscould not: a contemplativefreedom from the prejudicesand onesidednesswhich, as Dilthey sees it, are the markof all historicallife. Thus the cogency of Dilthey's historicism founders on the question of the of knower'sown transcendence history. By virtue of historical understanding, the historicistis magicallyemancipatedfrom the very condition he assertsto be universal. This conflict, implicit in historicism,between the demandsof scientific historicalknowledge and the historicityof the knower himself is never resolved by Dilthey. At the very end of his life Dilthey only began to sense the epistemologicalconsequencesthat would be entailed in making his affirmation of historicism consistent by placing the knower too under its shadow. "The historical Weltanschauung," said, "is the liberationof the human spirit from he the final chains which naturalscience and philosophyhave not yet broken-yet where are the means for overcomingthe anarchyof convictionsthat threatento breakin? I have laboredmy entire life long on the problem.... I see the goal.
If I fall along the way, I hope my young fellow travellers, my pupils, will follow it to the end."'4 But how Dilthey envisaged the path leading to the goal is

hardto discern,nor did his studentssucceedin reachingit. Dilthey did, however, succeed in illuminating the historicityof life, even if his conception of historical knowledge proved incompatiblewith it. Thus his work leaves us with a choice between discardinghis vision of human historicity or becauseof the threat it poses to objective historical understanding, revising
3 GS,VII, pp. 290-91.
"GS, V,p. 9.

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that model of historical understandingin order to preserve what is of lasting value in his historicism. Since Dilthey's time, philosophershave been virtually unanimousin adopting the first alternative. In Gadamer's philosophy we have a concertedeffort to explore the second possibility. III It is man's situation to be present in and to understandhis world in terms of patternsof meaningthat are antecedentto reflectionand color reflectionwhen it occurs. Dilthey intended his concept of historicityto illuminatethis perspectival characterof human consciousness. But if we now recall his proposition that "the one who studies history is the same one who makes it," the full irony of his position comes to light, for historicityis exactlywhat he cannot ultimately attributeto the knower. His insight into the historicalnatureof man seems to have a purely negative value for him. we Against this background, can now turn our attentionto the new direction Gadamertakes in his reflectionson the natureof understanding. In Hans-Georg his systematicwork Truth and Method,which appearedin 1960, and in numerous essayssince that time,15Gadamerelevatesthe historicityof understanding to the level of a basic hermeneuticalprinciple and exhibits the positive role historicity actuallyplays in every human transmissionof meaning. The most immediate result of Gadamer'saffirmationof historicity is to diminish the sharp distinctionbetweenthe scientific interpretation goes on in the Geisteswissenthat schaften and the broaderprocessesof understandingthat occur everywherein humanlife without any pretenseof scientific precision. Scientific interpretation too, as a mode of human activity, is subjectto the universaland binding power of man'shistoricity. Quite explicit in Gadamer's work, therefore,is a thoroughgoing critiqueof the excessiveclaims made by Dilthey and others that methodoand logical self-consciousness criticalself-controlamountto a vehicle wherebythe knower transcendshis own historicity. Such claims reflect the Cartesianand Enlightenmentideal of the autonomoussubject who successfullyextricateshimself from the immediate entanglementsof history and the prejudicesthat come with that entanglement. For Dilthey, historical understandingoccurs only insofar as the knower breaks the immediate and formative influence of history upon him and stands over against it. Historical understandingis the action of subjectivitypurged of all prejudices. This methodologicalalienation of the knower from history is precisely the point at which Gadamerfocuses his criticism. Is it the case that the knowercan leave his immediate situation in the present by virtue of adopting an attitude?
'1 Cf. Hans-Georg Gadamer,Wahrheitund Methode:Grundzige einer philosophischen Hermeneutik(2nd ed.; Tiibingen:Mohr, 1965), and Kleine Schriften(3 vols.; Tiibingen: Mohr, 1967-72). (The formerwork will be cited as WM, the latteras KS.) A selection of essaysfrom the Kleine Schriften,translatedand edited by the present writer, will be published shortly by NorthwesternUniversity Press as Essays in PhilosophicalHerme-

neutics.

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An ideal of understanding that asks us to overcomeour own present is intelligiown historicityis an accidental ble only on the assumptionthat the interpreter's factor. But if it is an ontologicalratherthan a merely accidentaland subjective condition, then the knower'sown present situation is alreadyconstitutivelyinvolved in any actual process of understanding. For Gadamer,therefore, the knower's boundness to his present horizons and the temporal gulf separating him from his object are no longer negative factorsor impedimentsto be overcome, but rather,the productiveground of all understanding. Our prejudices do not cut us off from the past but initially open it up to us. Thus our present horizonshave a hermeneuticalsignificanceas the positive enabling condition of historicalunderstanding with human finitude. commensurate
Precisely here is the point at which the attempt at an historical hermeneutic must criticallybegin. The overcomingof prejudices the wholesaledemandof the Enlightenment -will itself turn out to be a prejudice,whose revisionalone will clear the way for an appropriate of understanding the finitude which not our dominates humanitybut just as muchour historicalconsciousness. Does only standingin traditionsactuallymean first of all being subjectto prejudicesand limited in one's freedom? Rather,is not all human existence even the most free-limited and conditionedin manyways? If that is the case, the idea of an absolutereasonis simply not a possibilityfor historicalhumanity. Reasonfor us it is only real as historical,that is, without reservation, is not itself lord but always remainsdependentupon the given in which it participates.1

Prejudice is the necessarycondition of historical understandingbecause man, as a finite being, has no direct or neutral access to history, but approachesit from his position in the present. Shapedby the past in an infinity of unexamis ined ways,the present is the "given"in which historicalunderstanding rooted, and which reason can never entirely hold at a critical distance and objectify. This is the meaning of the "hermeneutical situation"as Gadameremploys the term. The givenness of the hermeneuticalsituation can never be dissolved into of critical self-knowledgein such fashion that the prejudice-structure finite un"To be historical,"Gadamerasserts,"meansnot derstandingmight disappear. to be absorbedinto self-knowledge."17 The past can now be seen to have a trulypervasivepower in the phenomenon of understanding. Its role cannot be restrictedmerely to supplying the texts or events that make up the "objects" interpretation. As prejudiceand tradiof it also defines the ground the interpreterhimself occupies when he undertion, stands. While acknowledgingthis formative role of the past, however, Gadamer can still affirm the legitimate, if more limited, claims and aspirationsof critical scholarship. Despite the assertionsof his critics, scientific methodology receives its rightful and distinguishedplace in Gadamer'stheory.l8 Neverthe17

hostile and passionateof Gadamer's critics is the Italian legal historian,Emilio Betti, who

la WM, p. 260. WM, p. 285. s'Severalreviewershave chargedGadamer with being anti-scientific. By far the most

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less, such methodologyis no longer isolatedand set entirely in opposition to the and broader more spontaneoustransmission understanding meaning which of and goes on and always has gone on within a culture independentlyof attempts at scientific self-control.19 Gadamer's descriptionof the phenomenonof historical tries to take account of the primal interinvolvementof tradition understanding and interpretation, text and interpreter. The productivesignificance of the or knower'spresent historical situation points to the fact that the event of understanding itself - even of scientific historical understanding- stands in, continues, and adds to the continuity of traditionand the truth the tradition seeks to preserveand transmit. "The horizon of the present,"says Gadamer,"is not formedat all without the past."20 Historicalconsciousness not only influenced is the past which situates it; it takes shape in the first place only immediatelyby in and through its understanding the particularcontents of tradition which of form and have formed its objects. Thus we can find no point in historicaluneither before or after it reachesthe self-conscious, reflective level of derstanding, historicalconsciousness,at which it is independentof tradition and a concrete standing-within tradition. Critical historical scholarship actually presupposes this. We can tell where and when an ancient documentwas most likely written. But Mommsen'sHistory of Rome- a veritablemasterpieceof critical-historical situation"in which it was writmethodology-also betraysthe "hermeneutical ten and proves to be a child of its age ratherthan the productof an anonymous "knowingsubject."2' In this fashion, Gadamertries to dissolve the abstractopposition between knowledge and tradition and to call our attention to the fundamentalsense in which historical understandingis itself the bearer and continuer of tradition. This continuingstanding-withintradition- this interactionwith the past which situatesthe knower in the present- is the burden,and yet at the same time the productivereality,of our historicity. As Gadamerpoints out, Hegel had already seen this in the Phenomenologyof Spirit when he arguedthat all self-knowledge arises from a historical pre-given which he called substance.22 The task of reason, Hegel contended,is to overcome substancedialecticallyand to dissolve it into knowledge. Gadamerseems to be in agreementwith Hegel- and with Dilthey -to the extent that he too regardsthe task of philosophyto be that of gaining critical awarenessof our historicity, of the substantialityof historical
als standsin close proximityto Dilthey. Cf. Betti, Die Hermeneutik allgemeineMethodik der Geisteswissenschaften answerto these charges (Tubingen: Mohr, 1962). Gadamer's is found in his "Hermcneutik und Historismus,"which appearsas an appendix to the secondedition of WM, pp. 477-512. has in mind here such interpretive 19 Gadamer processesas the experienceof the work of art (WM, pp. 1-162) and the practicalefforts of the preacheror the jurist (WM, pp. 290-95, 307-23). Cf. also, KS, I, pp. 101-107, 119-21.
ao WM, p. 289.
1

Cf. KS, I, pp. 103, 120-21.

22Cf.Hegel, Phanomenologiedes Geistes (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1952), pp. 19ff. (Baillie translation, 80ff.), and Gadamer,WM, pp. 285-86. pp.

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interactionwhich shapes our hermeneuticalsituation. But to become aware of historicalinteractionand the immediate effect of traditionupon us does not at all lead to the negation of its influence. The errorof Hegel's philosophy,and ultimately of Dilthey's conception of historical understandingas well, is to equate these two-awareness of historical interaction and negation of its influence upon us. For Gadamer,on the other hand, reflection remainshistorical and finite, not absolute,and for this reason it cannot render the force of this of "substantiality" the past inoperative. "Reflectionon a given preunderstanding brings before me something that otherwise happens 'behind my back.' of Something- but not everything,for what I have called the consciousness historical interaction is inescapablymore being than consciousness,and being is never fully manifest."23 The consciousnessof being conditioned in no way negates the conditionedness. The reflective denial of one's own historicity out of faith in a method does not cancel the influence of that historicity any more than does the naive unawareness it. of It should be clear from this that Gadameris not offering us a normative account of historical understanding. He presents no new canon of interpretation, but ratheris seeking to describethe ontologicalcontext in which all understanding- including critical understanding transpires. This context cannot be adequately in termsof a model of historicalunderstanding dominated grasped the ideaof a method. The emphasisupon method,in fact, blursour sensitivity by to historical understandingas an event over which the interpreter does not preside. Here Gadamer'sphilosophy joins Heidegger's attack on the "subjectivism"of Western metaphysics,which has as its point of departurethe selfsecured position of the knowing subject. Understandingis an event, a movement of history itself in which neither interpreternor text can be thought of as an autonomous part. "Understandingitself," Gadamer argues, "is not to be thoughtof so much as an action of subjectivity,but as the entering into an event of transmission which past and presentare constantlymediated. This is what in must gain validity in hermeneuticaltheory, which is much too dominated by the idea of a procedure, method."24 a In sharp contrastto Dilthey's model, Gadamerregardshistoricalunderstanding not as transposition,but as translation. Even in the most careful attempts to graspthe past "asit reallywas,"understanding remainsessentiallya mediation of the past with the present. Understanding not reconstruction, integrais but tion. As translation, action belongs to and is of the mediation,the interpreter's same nature as the substanceof history which fills out the temporalgulf. For this gulf, as the continuity of heritage and tradition, is precisely a process of that "presencings," is, of mediations,throughwhich the past alreadyfunctions in and shapes the interpreter's present. Historical understandingis always a concrete fusing of horizons (Horizontsverschmeltzung). The event of understanding alters the horizons that existed beforehand. The text or events of the past
23KS, I, p. 127. '2WM, pp. 274-75.

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speakanew in the languageof the presentand answernew questions;the present is enhanced and broadenedby the fusion and the narrownessof its prejudices overcome. This concept of understandingby no means excludes attempts at critical interpretation. We can indeed become awareof our prejudicesand correct them in our effort to understand. But this correctionof prejudicesis no of longer to be regardedas the transcendence all prejudicestoward a prejudiceabsolute knowledge. It is the fact of prejudicesas such, and not of one free, permanent,inflexible set of them, that is symptomaticof our finitude and our immersionin historicalinteraction. Particular horizons,even if mobile, remain the presuppositionof historical understanding. When the reality of our historicity is taken seriously,the knower's present loses its status as a privileged position and becomes instead a fluid and relative moment, a moment which is indeed productiveand disclosive, but one that, like all others, will be overcome and fused with future horizons.
In truth the horizon of the present is conceivedin constantformationinsofar as we must all constantlytest our prejudices. The encounterwith the past and the understanding the traditionout of which we have come do not belong to of such testing as the last factor. Hence the horizon of the presentdoes not take shape at all without the past. There is just as little a horizonof the presentin itself as there are historicalhorizons which one would have to attain. Rather, is understanding alwaysa processof the fusing of such alleged horizonsexisting in themselves.... In the workingof traditionsuch fusion occursconstantly. For there old and new grow together again and again in living value without the one or the other ever being removedexplicitly.2

The event of understanding alterswhat one was- which is to say,the interpreter learnssomethingand does not remain inflexibly the same. genuinely This is a profoundlyHegelian insight. Indeed,like Dilthey, Gadamerlearns much from Hegel, but what these two thinkers learn from him measuresthe great distance between their conceptions of historical understanding. Dilthey continues the contemplativeside of Hegel's idealism insofar as the knower for him attains a final grasp of history through his reconstructiveefforts. To be sure, this absolute grasp is no longer embodied in a metaphysicalsystem, but takes place instead in the liberatinggaze of historicalconsciousnessitself. It is that makesDilthey preciselythis contemplativeideal of historicalunderstanding a victim of the very historicismhe set out to conquer:
Man, this temporalcreature,maintainsthe securityof his existence,as long as he works in time, by lifting his creationsout of the temporalflux as enduring objects. While under this illusion he createswith greaterjoy and power. Herein lies the eternal contradiction between creativeminds and the historicalconsciousness. The formernaturallytry to forget the past and to ignore the better in the future. But the latterlives in the synthesisof all times, and it perceives in all individualcreationthe accompanying relativityand transience. This conof tradictionis the silently born affliction most characteristic philosophytoday."
2S

WM, p. 289. Dilthey, GS,V, p. 364; similarly,cf. GS, VIII, p. 225.

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Gadamer's philosophyis more attunedto the empiricalor phenomenological side of Hegel's thought Not the summit of absoluteknowledge, but the moving, dialecticallife of reason finds expressionin Gadamer's philosophicalhermeneutics. Historical understanding experience,in the Hegelian sense, and not is knowledge.27 Everyexperience,as Hegel tried to show, passesover into another experience. Our efforts to understand have this same dialectical character. Genuine historical understandinginvolves a consciousnessof our historicity,of our finitude. Yet this consciousnessof historicity-of the bounds of human being- is not an achievementwhich alreadystands beyond that finitude in the infinitude of absolute knowledge. Rather, it is a radical openness for future experience,for future historicalunderstanding. Remaining within the continuity of historical interaction,the event of understandingdoes not exclude, but rathercontains,as an essentialingredientopenness for future revision and transformation,that is, for fusion with ever new horizons. Gadamerhas located the deepest point of agreement between Hegel and Heidegger and has built upon it in his own work. Heidegger has said that each event of understanding both a disclosureand a concealment. It is part of an is with the past that breaksoff in incompletenessin the present, ongoing dialogue own theory, only to be resumedagain and again. It would seem that Gadamer's like all new attempts at philosophical understanding,participates in this inof evitableinterinvolvement disclosureand concealment, thus has advantages and and disadvantages. I have indicatedthat Gadamerdoes not propose a new method or procedure for interpretation, seeks to qualify the claims made by other theories as to but what is actuallyachieved in historicalunderstanding. The advantageof Gadamer's philosophicalhermeneutics, therefore,is at the point of suggesting an ontology that more adequatelyilluminatesand supportsthe phenomenonof understanding. Gadameremphaticallyrejects the substanceontology of traditional metaphysicsand the consciousness-oriented ontology of Germanidealism. Over of against the "subjectivism" these ontologies, he tries to provide an understandingof being that can push the self-securedknowing subject from the center of hermeneutical theory and point to the deeper ontologicalcontext that embraces knower and known alike. Understandingis not to be regardedas the act of subjectivity as an adequatiointellectuset re, or a recoveryof the intention of the original author (mens auctoris). It is not a copy of an object, to be judged against an alleged meaning-in-itself. Rather, the text includes its inand is only through them. The mode of being of understanding, terpretations is extensive and episodic. It is extensive in that each act of undertherefore, standingis a moment in the life of traditionitself, of which text and interpreter are subordinateelements. It is episodic or eventful in that it constitutesan onor of going process of "presencings" "concretizations" the past in each new "The real event of understanding," Gadamersays, "goes continually as present.
" Cf. WM, pp. 439-40.

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beyond what can be brought to the understandingof the other person'swords by methodologicaleffort and critical self-control. Indeed, it goes far beyond what we ourselvescan become awareof in all this. It is true of every dialogue that through it something different comes to be."28 Gadamer's philosophicalhermeneuticspoints the way to a deeper appreciation of the actual role of tradition in all understanding, and for this reason it should be of interest to students of religion. His theory frees hermeneutics from the ideal of one canonical interpretationof what the past, in the form of text or historical event, says to us in the present. Since the hermeneutical situation is a constitutiveelement in determiningthe meaning of the text, there is no meaning of the "text-in-itself" which the correctinterpretationduplicates. But Gadamer's or theory also involves disadvantages ambiguities that may well stimulatefurtherinquiry into the natureof historicalunderstanding. Can Gadamer do away with the possibility of a canonicalinterpretation without opening himself to the charge that he deprives the past of any determinatemeaning whatsoeverand makes it, in effect, the prey of the presentsituation? The interhermeneuticsa profound descriptionof the preter may well find in Gadamer's final result of his efforts, namely,that his action itself becomes an event within the processof traditionin a way that "goesfar beyondwhat he can becomeaware of in all this." But can he make sense out of his intention to understand the and to he follows without committing himself practically the concept of a procedures simideterminatemeaning in the text itself? The problem here is remarkably lar to that encounteredin recent discussionsof contextualistor situationalethics, where a tension and ambiguity seem inevitably to exist between the concrete situation of ethical action in which the moral principle must be construedand the objective,unambiguousforce of the moral principle when stated abstractly. Like ethics, hermeneuticaltheory must account for the objectivity of the text's meaning and the creativityof the hermeneuticalsituation. It might very well would benefit at least as much from be that a theory of historicalunderstanding as it has from its fruitful contact with epistemology and dialogue with ethics linguistic analysis. is PerhapsGadamer's theory of understanding not without an answerto the question of the objectivity of the text, but that answer needs to be worked out through a careful descriptionof how the particularinterpretersin a given age actuallycome into conversationand agreementregardingtextual meaning. This conversation and agreement would have the participants'own hermeneutical situationas one essentialingredient.
What a text meansis not to be likened to a standpointwhich is immovablyand adheredto, which suggeststo the one who wishes to understand only stubbornly the question of how the other person could come to such an absurd opinion. it In this sense, understanding is most certainlynot a questionof an "historical which reconstructs origins of a text. Rather,one intends the comprehension" the to understand text itself. But that means that in the reawakeningof the
KS, I, pp. 80-81.

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own ideas are alreadyengaged. To this meaning of the text the interpreter's own horizon is determinative, also not as a special but extent, the interpreter's which one holds fast or carriesthrough,but rathermore as an opinion standpoint of and possibilitywhich cooperates the appropriation what is said in the text. in We have describedthis as a fusing of horizons. Now we recognizein it the
form of operation of the conversation in which a subject matter comes to expres-

sion which is not only mine or my author'sbut rathera commonsubjectmatter.29

However this may be, Gadamerhas given persuasiveexpressionto the positive function of human historicity as the ontological ground of the openness of the and opennessof understandpast for ever new concretizations the corresponding
ing for ever new appropriations of the past.

WM, p. 366.