In the process of shifting my research from political philosophy to hermeneutics, as I will be over the next few weeks, I thought I’d publish a post on Jürgen Habermas’s objections to Gadamer’s conclusions in Truth and Method, particularly as they apply to politics. One should never transition too quickly.

Gadamer (1997)

The title of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s magnum opus, Truth and Method, captures the essence of his project. This title discloses Gadamer’s central contention that truth and method are not equivalent. For Gadamer, the modern view that only by adopting and using an appropriate method may one reach truth in both the natural and social sciences is mistaken. It is this (what others would call ‘scientistic’) view of truth-as-method that Gadamer sets out to describe and attack in Truth and Method. In place of emphasis on a method for reaching truth, in Truth and Method Gadamer sets out a program for a hermeneutics or ‘method’ of interpretative understanding of the ‘other’ — be that other a tradition, cultural group, a text, what have you.

Although Habermas and Gadamer share a loathing for instrumental reason — that form of reasoning associated with modernity, technology and science (including the ‘dismal science’ of economics) — Habermas objects to Gadamer’s hermeneutics. Gadamer defends the role of prejudice or pre-judgement in interpretive understanding, as will be clarified in what follows. Habermas argues, however, that Gadamer’s defence of prejudgements goes beyond recognising that prejudgements are vital for understanding the other to further conclude that prejudgements are based on knowledge. For Habermas, from the fact that understanding the other requires understanding that other’s and one’s own history and traditions — that other’s and one’s own prejudgements — it does not follow that those prejudgements qualify as knowledge.

Habermas argues that to hold that prejudgements are a form of knowledge is to hold that authority or tradition is a source of knowledge. What Habermas aims to demonstrate through his own work, however, is that traditions can contain what he calls ‘systematically distorted communication’, a type of communication that falls short of an ideal of how communication should function and produces a response that is somehow tainted. This less-than-ideal type of communication can reinforce relations of domination. Accordingly, Habermas argues that systematically distorted communication precludes any necessary relationship between the prejudgements inherited from a tradition and knowledge, and that insofar as a tradition reproduces relations of domination the prejudgements upon which it depends are illegitimate.

Gadamer’s criticism of modern scientific method in Truth and Method forms part of his larger criticism of the Enlightenment (1975, p. 310). Gadamer argues that the Enlightenment project to free individuals from authority through the application of reason resulted in the negative connotation today associated with the term ‘prejudice’ (1997, pp. 270-72). To Enlightenment thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, prejudice or pre-judgement implies an illegitimate deference to authority (1995 [1784], p. 1). The deference is illegitimate because the judgement is made before a test of reason can be applied. This Enlightenment scepticism towards authority, Gadamer contends, led to the separation of authority and reason. It forced legitimate authority to be compatible with reason, and all truth claims to be subjected to a rationally approved method. Consequently, all tradition became, ipso facto, illegitimate and all truth became scientific truth.

To understand Gadamer’s critique of the Enlightenment it is necessary to understand that, for Gadamer, answering questions of truth is not the exclusive preserve of epistemology or theory of knowledge. For Gadamer, questions of truth are foremost questions of being — ontological questions — with importance for how a person lives his or her life. Knowing the truth is not a matter of applying a sufficiently stringent method; rather, it is a matter of understanding what it means to exist. Understanding or Verstehen, in the sense it is used by Gadamer, means the ‘coming to an understanding’ between two people in the sense of an earnest agreement or consensus. The term can also apply to the self in one’s relations with art through interpretation, for example (Weinsheimer & Marshall 1988, pp. xvi-xvii). Gadamer adopts this notion of understanding from Martin Heidegger, who views it as the only way in which humans authentically exist (Gorner 2000, p. 141). Echoing Heidegger, Gadamer states, ‘If Verstehen is the basic moment of human in-der-Welt-sein [being-in-the-world], then the human sciences are nearer to human self-understanding than are the natural sciences’ (1979, p. 106). Gadamer claims that interpretive understanding precedes all other modes of understanding and, as such, its valid application is not limited to the social sciences (Mendelson 1979, p. 52). However, he further contends that the hermeneutist’s task is not

…to develop a procedure of understanding, but to clarify the conditions in which understanding takes place … these conditions do not amount to a “procedure” or method … rather they must be given.
(Gadamer 1997, p. 295)

The hermeneutist’s focus therefore remains on the primordial conditions of understanding. Unlike the natural scientist, the hermeneutist is not concerned to devise a formal method through which to remove the influence of the observer as far as possible from the evidential procedure that forms the basis of knowledge claims. In essence, the hermeneutist is not concerned with being ‘objective’.

To return to Gadamer’s critique of the Enlightenment, Gadamer further argues that, contrary to the assertions of Enlightenment thinkers, we must strip ‘prejudice’ of its negative connotation. There are legitimate prejudices (préjugés légitimes), Gadamer contends (1997, pp. 270, 277). He states, ‘Actually, prejudice means a judgement that is rendered before all the elements that determine a situation have been finally examined’ (1997, p. 270). What Enlightenment thinkers are guilty of, he argues, is misconstruing negative instances of prejudice (he uses the example of a legal precedent that adversely affects the outcome of a case for the defendant) as proof of the illegitimacy of prejudices per se. Gadamer claims that the Enlightenment project to unseat prejudice constitutes a ‘prejudice against prejudices’, and is, therefore, a self-refuting position (1997, p. 272). Instead of rejecting prejudgements, Gadamer defends them as the ontological fore-structures necessary for authentic interaction with history. He contends that, because we are historically and linguistically constituted beings, understanding is not possible unless it is based in prejudgements inherited from traditional authorities. This is particularly the case with language (1976, pp. 59-68), but also with other traditional authorities — custom, culture, religion, law, art, politics, philosophy and morality.

Habermas is sympathetic to Gadamer’s insight into understanding, his critique of the scientistic reduction of truth to method and its fixation on objectivity. However, Habermas argues that ‘Gadamer fails to recognize the power of reflection that unfolds in Verstehen’(1988, p. 168). He elucidates his objection as follows:

What is substantial in what is historically given … does not remain untouched by the fact that it is taken up into reflection … Gadamer’s prejudice in favor of the legitimacy of prejudices … validated by tradition is in conflict with the power of reflection, which proves itself in its ability to reject the claim of traditions. Substantiality disintegrates in reflection, because the latter not only confirms but also breaks dogmatic forces. Authority and knowledge do not converge.
(Habermas 1988, pp. 169-70)

The point that Habermas makes is that Gadamer, in his project to offer interpretive understanding (verstehen) as an alternative basis for truth, attempts to set himself too far from the critical attitude of the Enlightenment. Consequently, Gadamer fails to recognise (or refuses to permit) that reflection on our prejudgements, and therefore on authority, may entail critical reflection (Gorner 2000, p. 173).

Habermas emphasises the possibility that reflection is sometimes critical reflection because critical reflection provides the basis for realising that traditional authorities may be based on domination or force. Gadamer’s rejoinder, however, is that just because an authority depends on domination for its power, it does not follow that the subject has unknowingly accepted the domination (1997, p. 279). Habermas, however, argues that knowingly accepting an authority implies willing acceptance and, therefore, eradicates the need for domination. Authorities only rely on domination, Habermas contends, when they are unwillingly accepted or when ignorance of domination is the basis for willing acceptance. Knowledge of domination therefore precludes willing acceptance of domination (Habermas 1988, p. 170).

Habermas argues that Gadamer’s failure to recognise the power of critical reflection is but one aspect of the greater failure to realise the limits of his hermeneutics (1986, p. 302). Habermas couches this criticism of Gadamer’s hermeneutics in linguistic terms; however, one can legitimately extrapolate Habermas’s political criticism from his linguistic criticism when one considers that Gadamer emphasises that language is the basis of all understanding (Gadamer 1986, p. 282; 1997, pp. 383-405). For Gadamer, all thought, all interpretation, takes place in language; this constitutes the ‘linguisticality’ of our being. As Gadamer states, echoing Aristotle, ‘man is a being who possesses language’ (1976, p. 60).

We use language to translate the language of other horizons and as a means of communication within our horizon. Gadamer’s hermeneutics works on the assumption that the coherence of the language specific to any horizon is sufficient proof of its legitimacy. For Gadamer, this coherence further serves as proof of the legitimacy of the horizon’s linguistic tradition. Habermas’s criticism of this view of language, however, is that coherence does not imply legitimacy. For Habermas, the possibility exists that what appears to be coherent speech may in fact be ‘systematically distorted’ speech (1986, p. 302). In cases of communication — that is, using language within our horizon to communicate with others — Habermas defines this as systematically distorted communication.

Habermas’s criticism of Gadamer’s hermeneutics is that there are instances of coherent communication that are also instances of systematically distorted communication. As an example, consider a dialogue between two people from the same language horizon. A systematic distortion occurs when the interests of a party not participating in the dialogue sets the limits of the language that can be used in the dialogue. The language set by the extraneous party therefore limits the possible outcomes of the dialogue. The problem is that the systematic distortion is not always recognisable. The interlocutors may be engaged in coherent communication unaware of the presence of the systematic distortion. Habermas defines what takes place in such instances as ‘pseudocommunication’ (1986, p. 302). Habermas contends that the presence of such unrecognised systematic distortions means that although the communication is coherent it is not legitimate. The problem for Gadamer’s hermeneutics, as Habermas understands it (1986, p. 316), is that traditional authorities may act in a similar fashion to the extraneous party in pseudocommunication. The interlocutors are engaged in coherent communication unaware that the interests of the traditional authority limit their discourse. If Gadamer takes coherent communication to be sufficient for legitimate communication, then he also accepts that pseudocommunication, if it exists, is legitimate. The limit of Gadamer’s hermeneutics, therefore, is that it is powerless to shed light on systematic distortions in language.

The solution Habermas advocates, echoing the Enlightenment tradition, is a

…critically self-aware hermeneutics … so that truth can be guaranteed only by that consensus which might be reached under the idealized conditions to be found in unrestrained and dominance-free communication.
(Habermas 1986, p. 314)

The call for a critically self-aware hermeneutics is grounded in Habermas’s most damaging criticism of Gadamer. In Truth and Method Gadamer sets out to show that knowledge derived from the application of method does not exhaust the set of legitimate claims to truth. He argues that the knowledge gained through interpretive understanding — a ‘natural capability’ that all people possess (Gadamer 1986, p. 276) — has an equally legitimate claim as truth. However, as Habermas shows by revealing the phenomenon of pseudocommunication, Gadamer may have established hermeneutics as another basis for knowledge, but its abject failure to account for systematically distorted communication means that it cannot provide a complete account of knowledge (West 1996, pp. 73-4).

Translated back into the language of politics, Habermas’s claim is that Gadamer’s hermeneutics cannot account for ideology — the ‘systematic distortion’ in politics. The position Habermas is criticising is stated by Gadamer thus:

Admittedly, it is primarily persons that have authority; but the authority of persons is ultimately based not on the subjection and abdication of reason but on an act of acknowledgement and knowledge—the knowledge, namely, that the other is superior to oneself in judgement and insight and that for this reason his judgement takes precedence—i.e., it has precedence over one’s own.
(Gadamer 1997, p. 279)

Habermas’s example of pseudocommunication shows that it is possible that the subject believes they have freely acknowledged an authority when, in fact, the authority may have set the limits of the acknowledgeable. In such a case, pseudocommunication consists of ideology at play in coherent social relations in the service of existing authority. Pseudocommunication is therefore synonymous with false consciousness (Habermas 1986, pp. 302-03). As an alternative to Gadamer’s hermeneutics, a critically self-aware hermeneutics, Habermas claims, would offer subjects the chance to use critical reflection to emancipate themselves from the self-serving authorities that limit their freedom. However, in Gadamer’s defence, his philosophical hermeneutics offers the opportunity for questioning the authority of tradition without needing to adopt, as Habermas does, the Enlightenment antithesis between authority and reason — that is, without all legitimate authority having to first be subjected to the test of reason (Gadamer 1986, pp. 285, 288).

Gadamer argues that tradition, far from being something that happens to us, is something in which we participate. The preservation and perpetuation of tradition does not happen by itself; it is the product of people affirming, embracing and cultivating what they inherit (Gadamer 1997, p. 281). The opportunity for questioning tradition arises when our participation in our tradition is informed by our interactions with other traditions — during the ‘fusion of horizons’. The opportunity for questioning our tradition takes the form of a questioning of our pre-judgements during such interactions. Although our pre-judgements are constitutive of our being, in our encounters with other horizons they are put at risk (Bernstein 1982, p. 827). As Gadamer clarifies,

Every encounter with others … means the “suspension” of one’s own prejudices, whether this involves another person through whom one learns one’s own nature and limits, or an encounter with a work of art … or a text: always something more is demanded than to “understand the other,” that is to seek and acknowledge the immanent coherence contained within the meaning-claim of the other. A further invitation is always implied. Like an infinite idea, what is also implied is a transcendental demand for coherence in which the ideal of truth is located. But this requires a readiness to recognize the other as potentially right and to let him or it prevail against me.
(Gadamer 1979, p. 108)

What here becomes apparent is Gadamer’s view that, although we cannot escape our prejudgements, through the dialogical interaction with other horizons the possibility arises for understanding ourselves — our prejudgements, our tradition — as mistaken. Thus if our horizon is based on domination, it is not a fixed relation of domination. The possibility exists that we will realise it as such. But this realisation can only come about through a dialogical interaction with others, in that step beyond the comfort of coherence to the unfamiliar ground requiring interpretive understanding.

In concluding, Gadamer offers his philosophical hermeneutics as a new way of knowing. By revealing Verstehen as the primordial mode of knowing, he shows that the natural sciences do not exhaust the set of legitimate claims to truth. Habermas contends, however, that Gadamer’s hermeneutics fails to account for the possibility of pseudocommunication: communication in which the interlocutors are unaware of relations of domination because the communication coheres. Politically, Gadamer’s hermeneutics cannot account for the influence of ideology. However, as Gadamer argues, tradition is not an agent; it does not preserve and perpetuate itself. Accordingly, it is not fixed. It is in the moments when our tradition interacts with another that our prejudgements are at risk — when we may discover that our prejudgements were wrong. To interact with other traditions is thus to amend the future.

Entry by Dylan Nickelson
Last updated on December 24, 2009