The Socratic Paradigm of Objectivity

Abstract

Vattimo’s conception of philosophical hermeneutics departs from the assumption that hermeneutics has become the koinē of the contemporary (Western) world, i.e. that there is a broad-ranging but implicit cultural and academic consensus that every experience of understanding has an interpretive character. He calls this consciousness of interpretation a hermeneutical koinē, because he regards it to be philosophically expressed in the tradition of hermeneutics, especially in Gadamer’s theory of understanding and language in Truth and Method. However, he thinks that our consciousness of interpretation in general, and Gadamer’s theory in particular, itself falls victim to a problematic, metaphysical interpretation if we attempt to ground it in a meta-theory through transcendental reflection. Vattimo avoids this transcendental interpretation of philosophical hermeneutics in his own conception, which I have suggested can be understood as Nietzschean historicism. He claims that our consciousness of interpretation is a result of the gradual weakening of our conception of the structures of reality in metaphysical terms – in other words, as a result of the gradual unfolding of nihilism – but he also emphasises that this account of the provenance of hermeneutics is itself only an interpretation. As we have seen, Vattimo cannot help but become entangled in paradox while putting forward his conception of hermeneutics. Furthermore, his conception does not help us to grasp why the basic idea of hermeneutics seems to have a legitimate grip on us, why it has indeed become something of a koinē. Since it rightly rejects the idea of a transcendental meta-theory, it cannot provide a grounding justification for our consciousness of interpretation. Further, its own alternative, the constructivist account of hermeneutics, is deprived of its explanatory power by being termed ‘only an interpretation’. If we look to Vattimo to clarify our confusion about the status of our consciousness of interpretation or its philosophical expression (i.e. Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics), all he can offer in response is an enacted scepticism. As has become clear, this answer reduces our intuition that our attempts at understanding are constrained by the subject matter to a ‘necessary illusion’, in the Nietzschean sense.