Hermeneutics Between Gadamer and Heidegger

Abstract

How does Gadamer's hermeneutics stand in relation to the work of Heidegger? The answer to this question does not appear to be complicated in the least, since Gadamer himself, in a number of his texts, has been quite explicit about the connection of his own work with that of Heidegger.1 According to these texts, Gadamer sees himself united with Heidegger in a generalized way in taking over Heidegger's ontological determination of understanding found in the analytic of Dasein. From Gadamer's perspective, both he and Heidegger take hermeneutics to be a hermeneutics of existence, or, to be more precise using Heidegger's language from the early 1920's. a hermeneutics of facticity, of factical life caught in the act of interpreting itself. Hermeneutics is a matter of fetching life back to itself-a return to what is there (Da)2-from its own decline. Throughout his writings, Gadamer never abandons this notion of hermeneutics.3 The issue then that seemingly divides Gadamer from Heidegger-and here I follow Gadamer's remarks at the outset of "Text and Interpretation"-would seem to pertain to Heidegger's Kehre where, for Heidegger, the question of Being shifts from an attempt to articulate the meaning of Being that remains tied to the sphere of transcendental reflection to the history of the forgetfulness of Being and with it a confrontation with the language of metaphysics. This shift to the history of the forgetfulness of Being is tantamount to a shift to a thinking of Being itself, which Gadamer explicitly draws back from.4 But let us consider this issue more carefully and not assume that the difference between Gadamer and Heidegger is so evident. In point of fact Gadamer has also said that the focus on the concept of historically effected consciousness (Wirkungsgeschichtliches BewuBstein) gave the appearance that he remained captive to the standpoint of the early Heidegger, but actually his intention was to adhere to the line of questioning of the later Heidegger and to make it available in a new way.5 This first complication in stating what unites and divides Gadamer and Heidegger is easy to explain. Gadamer does indeed follow Heidegger into his later thinking in part because he reads the hermeneutics of facticity in such a way that it is not something that the later Heidegger ever abandoned. According to Gadamer, the way into the turn was, of course, the movement of thinking away from a transcendental mode of questioning, but this by itself does not constitute a break from Heidegger's initial question and the corresponding thematic for the question. The way into the turn can be seen as a subtle shift within the analysis of Dasein. For the later Heidegger Being as a whole "could not be read from Dasein as the place of understanding of Being." But this is not to say that Dasein is no longer exemplary. According to Gadamer: "For the rekindling of the question of Being it was the "there" of human existence, the Da of Da.sein, that was of essential importance, not so much the priority of the Being of Dasein.26 In this reading of Heidegger, the matter of thinking in the turn is simply the thought of the "there" as the scene of an event and not primarily as the site of an activity of Dasein. Along the way, of course, Heidegger had to resist being led astray that would follow from any accommodation to the language of metaphysics. In the context of this resistance Heidegger not only renounced the transcendental self-apprehension of his fundamental ontology, but engaged the work of Holderlin, which among other things aided Heidegger in conceiving a work of art as a genuine coming-topass of truth. Such a happening of truth, always understood in terms of the ontological constitutive function of earth, constitutes the "there" of the work: a self-situating presence, setting itself entirely outside ourselves. But being set outside ourselves does not mean that the human is unrelated to this happening; on the contrary, Gadamer tells us, somewhat in the language of the hermeneutics of facticity, that in this happening of the "there" the order of Being and life is not "washed away" but is given back to the one who stands in relation to Being. …