Gadamer and the Body Across Dialogical Contexts

Abstract

Recently, especially in Gadamerian hermeneutics, dialogue has functioned as a philosopher's stone. The theory of dialogue informs phenomenology-"in the exchange of words, the thing meant becomes more and more present";1 philosophy of mind-"thinking is the dialogue of the soul with itself ';2 philosophy of language-"language has its true reality in dialogue";3 philosophical anthropology-(quoting Holderlin) "dialogue is what we are";4 history of philosophy-the "hermeneutical reorientation of dialectic (which had been developed by German Idealism as the speculative method) toward the art of living dialogue... represented a correction of the ideal of method";3 and, naturally, the philosophy of interpretation-"tradition is genuine partner in dialogue, and we belong to it, as does the I with the Thou."6 Dialogue is so philosophically ubiquitous that Gadamer's claim that hermeneutics' "modesty consists in the fact that for it there is no higher principle than this: holding oneself open to the conversation" looks like false modesty. Given the weight put on the power of dialogue, we need to look carefully at its nature to understand how (and if) dialogue can perform all these philosophical functions. Is dialogue a univocal phenomenon? Or are there different kinds of dialogue, perhaps sharing certain features but differing on others. Gadamer himself acknowledges that although "tradition is a genuine partner in dialogue," "a text does not speak to us in the same way as does a Thou."8 We need to understand the variety of forms dialogue can take, and the consequences and limitations of each. This essay is a small start to that larger project. I will concern myself here with "dialogues" with works of art. My conclusion is that although philosophers recently have looked to dialogue as a model for what occurs in the encounter with a work of art (as well as in the encounter with a tradition or a text), because they have failed to appreciate the role the body plays in constituting the encounter, they have failed to sufficiently distinguish the different forms of dialogue. Once one appropriately considers the role of the dialogical body, one realizes there are important differences between dialogues with other people and dialogues with works of art. Throughout this essay I will focus on Gadamer's theory of art and dialogue and, in the final part, I will evaluate whether he has an account of the body that could "flesh out" his account of dialogue. I conclude that he might, but it is not explicit in his writings; still, it may be implicit in his differentiation between what occurs in the presence of static works of arts, and what occurs in the festival-like event of theater. The first part of the essay addresses the applicability of the model of dialogue to the encounter with works of art. There are two main features that facilitate this analogy. First, in dialogue subjectivity is displaced. One enters into dialogue, but one does not control the progression of the dialogue. A genuine dialogue is a genuinely social act-it is irreducible to explanation in terms of one person's activity. Dialogue is a form of play, and in play "the real subject of the game is not the players, but the game itself."9 Gadamer claims that the give and take of dialogue operates on the model of question and answer. We are always interpreting the content of an exchange as a viable answer to a legitimate question. This turn raises new questions requiring new answers. Just as the question and the answer belong together, so do the exchanges of interlocutors. Still, it would seem that such a model would not apply to works of art, for the "interlocutor" in this case is an inert object. But how it is with artwork, and especially with the linguistic work of art? How can one speak here of a dialogical structure of understanding? The author is not present as an answering partner, nor is there an issue to be discussed as to whether it is this way or that. Rather, the text, the artwork, stands in itself. …