History, reflection, and self-determination: Critiquing the Enlightenment and Hegel

Abstract

In developing a notion of the world-disclosive truth of art, Gadamer repeatedly points out that his intention is not only to overcome aesthetic consciousness and articulate an ontological account of art, but also to “develop from this starting point a conception of knowledge and of truth that corresponds to the whole of our hermeneutic experience” ( TM , xxiii; WM , 3). Hence the question emerges of how the problems of Gadamer's account of art – most notably the tension between the reflective-dialogical approach he sketches in his encounter with Kant and Plato and a more passive model of play and self-forgetfulness – affect his understanding of hermeneutic rationality. In contrast to his writing on art and aesthetic experience, Gadamer's discussion of hermeneutic rationality has received ample attention within the Anglo-American and European traditions alike. From within an Anglo-American context, Richard Rorty, John McDowell, and Robert Brandom have appealed to Gadamer's attempt at overcoming a problematic Cartesian paradigm in philosophy by emphasizing our situatedness within a linguistically and historically mediated world. From within a European discourse, Jurgen Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel have celebrated Gadamer's turn towards a communication-oriented, dialogical paradigm. Yet some critics, especially within the German tradition, have worried that Gadamer, given his interest in the world-disclosive truth of art, ends up defending a position that, in the words of Ernst Tugendhat, lets “an ontologically inflated conception of art [become] a substitute for the question of the justification of norms,” and that he, as a consequence, ends up advocating “an ideal of receptivity as against a critical, methodological approach,” thereby forsaking the enlightenment ideals of reflection and autonomy.