The Conversation That Never Happened (Gadamer/D errida) Author(s): Richard J. Bernstein Source: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 61, No. 3 (Mar., 2008), pp. 577-603 Published by: Philosophy Education Society Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20130978 . Accessed: 22/05/2014 11:13 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Philosophy Education Society Inc.is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Review of Metaphysics. http://www.jstor.org
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8/12/2019 Gadamer and Derrida (Conversation That Never Ha[[Ened)
The Conversation That Never Happened (Gadamer/Derrida)Author(s): Richard J. BernsteinSource: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 61, No. 3 (Mar., 2008), pp. 577-603Published by: Philosophy Education Society Inc.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
.
Philosophy Education Society Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The
Review of Metaphysics.
http://www.jstor.org
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1981, but there is no evidence that they ever really had a real dia
logue.7
Iwant to imagine the conversation that might have taken place.
Or more accurately, Iwant to explore some of the key differences and
points of contact between Gadamer and Derrida. I hope to show that
they stand in a productive tension with each other; they "supplement"
each other. To characterize their complex relationship, I employ a
metaphor from Benjamin and Adorno that I have used before, that of a
constellation: "a juxtaposed rather than integrated cluster of changing
elements that resists reduction to a common denominator, essential
core, or generative first principle."8 I accept the Gadamerian principle
that we never fully escape from our own prejudgments or prejudices
when seeking to understand and interpret.9 Although Derrida doesn't
phrase the issue this way, I believe he would affirm this Gadamerian
thesis for very different reasons. We risk these prejudgments in the
event of understanding, and of course, even with our best efforts we
may misunderstand and misinterpret. This is an unavoidable risk.
Before turning directlyto
theencounter
that I wantto
stage, Iwould like to cite one more text to set mise-en-sc?ne. In September
2001, Derrida was awarded the distinguished Adorno Prize given by
the city of Frankfurt. Derrida delivered an extraordinarily insightful
and moving speech that not only dealt with Derrida's affinity and in
debtedness to Adorno, but also addressed the larger issue of the
7Jean Grondin describes the subsequent meetings between Gadamer
and Derrida in his Hans-Georg Gadamer: A Biography, trans. Joel Weinsheimer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 324-8. When Gadamer died
on March 13, 2002, Derrida published an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (March 28, 2002) entitled, "Wie recht er hatte Mein Cicerone
Hans-Georg Gadamer." Grondin comments: "Breaking a public silence of
over twenty years since their first encounter back in 1981, Jacques Derrida,who had recently received the honor of being named a guest professor (forthe year 2003) in the newly endowed Gadamer Chair in the University of
Heidelberg, also let himself be heard"; Grondin, Gadamer, 338. After the
1981 encounter, Gadamer was frequently asked about Derrida and decon
struction. See his interviews in Richard Kearney, ed., Debates in Continental
Philosophy: Conversations with Contemporary Thinkers (New York:Fordham University Press, 2004); and Hans-Georg Gadamer, Gadamer in
Conversation: Refections and Commentary, trans, and ed. Richard E.
Palmer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).81 have used the metaphor of constellation inmy book, The New Con
stellation: The Ethical-Political Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), 8-9.9Although I speak of understanding and interpretation, I agree with Ga
damer that all understanding involves interpretation. All understanding de
mands highlighting, and to highlight is to interpret.
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the structure of question and answer. The first condition of the art of
conversation is ensuring that the other person is with us."13 Actually
the phrase "to conduct a dialogue" ismisleading; it ismore accurate to
say that we?the partners?participate in, or fall into, a dialogue or
conversation.14 Gadamer consistently seeks to undermine the legacy
of a Cartesianism that assigns ontological and epistemological pri
macy to individual subjects. This is already evident in his phenomeno
logical description of the concept of play where he tells us that there
is the primacy of play over the subjectivity or consciousness of the
players. "Play clearly represents an order in which the to-and-fro motion of play follows of itself."15 In the play of dialogue, the dialogue it
self has its own rhythm, its own to-and-fro movement that carries
along the partners. This means that in a conversation one must "allow
oneself to be conducted by the subject matter [Sache] to which the
partners in the dialogue are oriented."16 This subject matter guides
the dynamics of question and answer. Drawing on his interpretation
of the Platonic dialogues where dialectic is closely related to dialogue,
Gadamer tells us: "Dialectic consists not in trying to discover the
weakness of what is said, but in bringing out its real strength. It is not
the art of arguing (which can make a strong case out of a weak one)
but the art of thinking (which can strengthen objections by referring
to the subject matter)."17 This is the feature of dialectic that Gadamer
seeks to integrate into his understanding of dialogue. But how are
these reflections on conversation and dialogue related to hermeneu
tics?
13Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd revised edition, trans.
Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1997), 367.14
Gadamer emphasizes this sense of participation when he writes: "We
say that we 'conduct' a conversation, but the more genuine a conversation is,the less its conduct lies within the will of either partner. Thus a genuine con
versation is never the one that we wanted to conduct. Rather, it is generallymore correct to say that we fall into conversation, or even that we become in
volved in it. The way one word follows another, with the conversation takingit own twists and reaching its own conclusion, may well be conducted in
some way, but the partners conversing are far less the leaders of it than theled.... All this shows that a conversation has a spirit of its own, and that lan
guage in which it is conducted bears its own truth within it?i.e., that it al
lows something to 'emerge' which henceforth exists"; ibid., 383.15
Ibid., 104.16
Ibid., 367.17
Ibid.
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What characterizes a dialogue, in contrast with the rigid form of state
ments that demand to be set down inwriting, is precisely this: that in dialogue spoken language?in the process of question and answer, givingand taking, talking at cross purposes and seeing each other's point?
performs the communication of meaning that, with respect to the writ
ten tradition, is the task of hermeneutics. Hence it ismore than a meta
phor; it is amemory of what originally was the case, to describe the task
of hermeneutics as entering into dialogue with the text_When it is in
terpreted, written tradition is brought back out of alienation inwhich it
finds itself and into the living present of conversation, which is always
fundamentally realized in question and answer.18
There are two points that Iwant to emphasize about Gadamer's reflections on conversation, dialogue, and hermeneutics. First, Gada
mer insists that his project is a philosophical one (not methodologi
cal). He wants to answer the question?to put it into Kantian terms?
how is understanding possible? And following Heidegger he declares:
Heidegger's temporal analytics of Dasein has, I think, shown convinc
ingly that understanding is not just one of the various possible behav
iors of the subject but the mode of being of Dasein itself. It is in this
sense that the term "hermeneutics" has been used here. It denotes the
basic being-in-motion of Dasein that constitutes its finitude and historicity, and hence embraces the whole experience of its experience of
the world.19
But there is a tension between this claim about the primacy and uni
versality of understanding and the idealized (normative) description
of conversation and dialogue. If understanding presupposes the kind
of dialogue that Gadamer describes then it certainly is not universal,
but rare indeed?and perhaps, as Derrida might suggest, impossible.
No such conversation ordialogue
tookplace
between Gadamer and
Derrida. One might even question whether we find examples of such
dialogues in Gadamer's beloved Platonic dialogues. Are the partners
in these dialogues really open to each other and are they guided by the
subject matter developed in the conversation? Is there really a recip
rocal relation between Socrates and his interlocutors? More often
than not the Platonic dialogues seem to be studies where the partici
pants misunderstand and misinterpret each other.
Second, when Gadamer tells us that it ismore than a metaphor to
describe the task of hermeneutics as entering into a dialogue with a
text, we cannot gloss over the fact there is a fundamental difference
18Ibid., 368.
19Ibid., xxx.
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between engaging in conversation with a living person who has the ca
pacity to respond to us and a conversation with a written text. Gada
mer acknowledges this but he doesn't think that this difference alters
the description of understanding as a conversation with a text.
It is true that a text does not speak to us in the same way as does a Thou.
We who are attempting to understand must ourselves make it speak.But we found that this kind of understanding, "making the text speak,"is not an arbitrary procedure that we undertake on our own initiative
but that, as a question, it is related to the answer that is expected in the
text. Anticipating an answer itself presupposes that the questioner is
partof the tradition and
regardshimself as addressed
byit.20
Here we touch the heart of Gadamer's ontological hermeneutics.
Understanding is a conversation or dialogue with texts?texts that
speak to us, texts that pose questions to us and to which we pose
questions. In the to-and-fro movement of our dialogue with texts, a
text answers the questions that we pose. This iswhy the meaning of a
text is not something that is somehow intrinsic to a text and merely
has to be discovered. Understanding is a happening inwhich meaning
emerges in and through our dialogical encounter with texts. The task
of the interpreter as a partner in the conversation with texts is to "re
awaken" the text's meaning. "Thus it is perfectly legitimate to speak
of a hermeneutical conversation. . . .The text brings a subject matter
[Sache] into language, but that it does so is ultimately the achievement
of the interpreter. Both have a share in it."21 What takes place in un
derstanding is a fusion of horizons of the partners (whether this is an
other person or a text).
20Ibid., 377. Note how Gadamer both acknowledges and downplays the
significance of the difference between a living dialogue between persons and
the dialogue with a written text. When he compares the conversation be
tween persons with the hermeneutical task of understanding texts, he writes:
"This is not to say, of course, that the hermeneutic situation in regard to texts
is exactly the same as that between two people in conversation. Texts are
'enduringly fixed expressions of life' that are to be understood; and that
means that one partner in the hermeneutical conversation, the text, speaks
only through the other partner, the interpreter. Only through him are thewritten marks changed back into meaning. Nevertheless, in being changedback by understanding, the subject matter of which the text speaks itself
finds expression. It is like a real conversation in that the common subjectmatter is what binds the two partners, the text and the interpreter, to each
other," ibid., 387-8.21
Ibid., 388.
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horizon or paradigm. Kuhn likened this to a "conversion"25 experi
ence. But Gadamer categorically rejects this picture of incommensu
rable horizons. He is in basic agreement with Donald Davidson who
has forcefully challenged the very idea of the incommensurability of
conceptual schemes.26 Our finite historical horizons are not barriers
to understanding; they are the very condition for the possibility of un
derstanding. The hermeneutical task is to enlarge and expand our fi
nite horizons through the encounter with the texts and traditions that
we seek to understand.27 "In a tradition this process of fusion is con
tinually going on, for there old andnew are
always combining into
something of living value, without either being explicitly foregrounded
from the other."28 Although there are no barriers to understanding,
nevertheless understanding is always limited; the meaning of a text
can never be exhausted. Gadamer, in a famous sentence, tells us that
"Being which can be understood is language," and he says this implies
"that which is can never be completely understood. . . .This is the
hermeneutical dimension in which Being 'manifests itself."29
25Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: Uni
versity of Chicago Press, 1996), 159.26
See Donald Davidson, "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme," in
Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Claredon Press, 2001),183-98. See also my discussions of incommensurability in "Incommensura
bility and Otherness Revisited," in The New Constellation, 57-78; and inBe
yond Objectivism and Relativism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1983), 79-108.27
Itmight seem that the very idea of the fusion of horizons presupposes
that there are distinct horizons to be fused. But Gadamer denies that thereare distinct fixed horizons. He raises the question: "If, however there is no
such thing as these distinct horizons, why do we speak of the fusion of hori
zons and not simply of the formation of one horizon, whose bounds are set in
the depths of tradition?" Gadamer, Truth and Method, 306. Gadamer's an
swer to his own question is subtle. In seeking to understand a tradition, we
"project a historical horizon." "Projecting a historical horizon, then, is onlyone phase in the process of understanding; it does not become solidified into
the self-alienation of a past consciousness, but is overtaken by our own
present horizon of understanding. In the process of understanding, a real fus
ing of horizons occurs?which means that as the historical horizon is pro
jected, it is simultaneously superseded," ibid., 306-7. Consequently, in understanding a text, we interpreters, as partners in the hermeneutical
conversation, must also "project a horizon" for the text?we speak for the
text. This projected horizon is, however, superseded in the fusion that takes
place.
28Ibid., 306.29
Gadamer, "Text and Interpretation," 25.
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Gadamer accepts the Heideggerian claim that "'Being' does not unfold
totally in its self-manifestation, but rather withholds itself and with
draws with the same primordiality with which itmanifests itself."30
We are now in a position to understand the two questions that
Gadamer poses in "Text and Interpretation."
First, How do the communality of meaning [Gemeinsamkeit des
Sinnes], which is built up in conversation, and the impenetrability of
the otherness of the other mediate each other? Second, What, in the fi
nal analysis, is linguisticality [Sprachlichkeit]? Is it a bridge or a bar
rier? Is it a bridge built of things that are the same for each self over
which one communicates with the other the flowing stream of other
ness? Or is it a barrier that limits our self-abandonment and that cuts us
off from the possibility of ever completely expressing ourselves and
communicating with others?31
One may think that Gadamer's answer to the question: "Is it a bridge
or a barrier?" is clearly that it is bridge and not a barrier. All the paths
that he pursues in his discussions of play, dialogue, and the fusions of
horizons lead us to the realization that we have the capacity from our
limited finite historical horizons to reach out and understand what ini
tially strikes us as different, alien, and other. This is the dominant
theme in Gadamer's hermeneutics. But ifwe fully appreciate what it
means to be a finite historical creature shaped by living traditions,
then we must also realize that it is impossible?ontologically impossi
ble?to speak about a complete and final understanding. Positively
stated, there can be no finality to the conversation that we are. But if
by a "barrier" we mean a "limit," then there are limits to all under
standing. Furthermore, it is through the encounter with the other that
we enlarge our own horizon and come to a deeper self-understanding.
We never completely penetrate the otherness of the other. To think
that we can do this is to be guilty of logocentrism?and Gadamer cat
egorically rejects this.32 But neither do we stand mute or dumb before
30Ibid.
31Ibid., 27.
32Gadamer emphatically says: "A limitation of the Greek models of
thought can be detected here, one that was persuasively pointed out by theOld Testament, Saint Paul, Luther, and their modern reinterpreters. It is a di
mension of dialogue that still does not come into conceptual consciousness
even with the celebrated discovery of Socratic dialogue as the basic form of
thought.. . .
[T]he true depth of the dialogical principle first enters philo
sophical consciousness in the twilight of metaphysics, in the epoch of Ger
man romanticism, and then is rehabilitated in our century in opposition to
the subjective bias that characterized idealism." Gadamer, "Text and Inter
pretation," 27. Gadamer is summarizing his argument about the limitations
of Greek logos that he develops in detail in Part Three of Truth and Method.
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different roles: interpreter and spokesperson for the text that I am in
terpreting.46
The aporiae located above are also relevant to the way in which
Gadamer characterizes the fusion of horizons. The very idea of a fu
sion of horizons seems to suggest there are at least two horizons that
need to be fused?the horizon of the person seeking to understand
and the horizon of the text, the work of art or the historical tradition
that we seek to understand. But Gadamer tells us that this is not quite
accurate when he asserts that there are no distinct horizons. What
thenam
I talking about when I speak of the fusion of horizons? Once
again, we detect an asymmetry and not a reciprocal relation. When
Gadamer discusses the "historicity of understanding" he tells us that I
project a "historical horizon." It is I, the interpreter, who does this; it
is Iwho project. So how do Iknow that the horizon that Iproject is in
fact the horizon of the text? Can't I be mistaken? According to Gada
mer, I certainly can be mistaken. Otherwise there would be no dia
logue with the text from which I learn about my mistaken interpreta
tions. How do I find out if I am mistaken when it is Iwho speak for
the text? Gadamer tells us: "In the process of understanding, a real
fusing of horizons occurs?which means that as the historical horizon
is projected, it is simultaneously superseded."47 It begins to look as if
the text itself drops out of this fusion. Why? Because I, the inter
preter, from within my own limited horizon, project the horizon for
the text that I am seeking to understand, and this projected horizon is
"simultaneously superseded." The fusion here is not between my ho
rizon and the horizon of the text, but between my horizon and the ho
rizon that I project on behalf of the text.
46The difficulty here can be generalized. Gadamer's understanding of
hermeneutics requires that we acknowledge two fundamental principles.Texts exercise constraints. They bind and guide us. The constraints of texts
are compatible with the openness of understanding and interpretation in the
sense that a text is always potentially open to new and different interpreta
tions. Unless the text exercised some constraint itwould not even make
sense to speak of understanding or interpreting the text. But Gadamer does
not really explain how the text itself constrains the interpreter when it is theinterpreter who must speak for the text. Once this is acknowledged then the
possibility arises that the interpreter may misspeak for the text. It is not then
the text that constrains, but the text as understood and interpreted that con
strains. The aporia here, according to Derrida, is that Gadamer affirms that
the text does and does not constrain us.47
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 307-8.
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