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University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository Philosophy ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations Summer 7-29-2019 From Deconstruction to Rehabilitation: Heidegger, Gadamer, and Modernity David Liakos Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/phil_etds Part of the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Liakos, David. "From Deconstruction to Rehabilitation: Heidegger, Gadamer, and Modernity." (2019). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/phil_etds/39 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Philosophy ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. i David Liakos Candidate Philosophy Department This dissertation is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication: Approved by the Dissertation Committee: Iain Thomson , Chairperson Mary Domski Ann Murphy Theodore George ii FROM DECONSTRUCTION TO REHABILITATION: HEIDEGGER, GADAMER, AND MODERNITY by David Liakos B.A., Philosophy, Connecticut College, 2012 M.A., Philosophy, University of New Mexico, 2017 DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Philosophy The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico July, 2019 iii To Genevieve and Francis J. McNamara, and Kathleen and Gregory Liakos ****** “The pleasure of abiding. The pleasure of insistence, of persistence. The pleasure of obligation, the pleasure of dependency. The pleasures of ordinary devotion. The pleasure of recognizing that one may have to undergo the same realizations, write the same notes in the margin, return to the same themes in one’s work, relearn the same emotional truths, write the same book over and over again—not because one is stupid or obstinate or incapable of change, but because such revisitations constitute a life.” — Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts, 112 “The greater part of what we have is not a burden to be carried or an incubus to be thrown off, but an inheritance to be enjoyed.” — Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, 113 iv Acknowledgments In one of his reflections on the poet, Gadamer quotes Hölderlin’s moving expression of thankful gratitude before the expanse of the divine and of nature: “Who wants to thank before he receives, / And give an answer, before he has heard?” (quoted in EPH 106/GW9 242) As a good Gadamerian, I believe that the most essential part of what we receive and hear is the past that shapes us and that provides us with our point of orientation. My own past has been shaped first of all by my family, and now, in submitting my dissertation, it is time for me to thank them. I dedicate this dissertation, then, to my grandparents, Genevieve and Francis J. McNamara, and to my parents, Kathleen and Gregory Liakos. Their love, support, and encouragement means more to me than words can say, and without them, I could not have written this dissertation. The same goes for my wonderful sister, Madeline Liakos, who has been here the whole way. Feedback and encouragement have come from scholars like John Arthos, Kelly Becker, John Bova, Alexander Crist, Steven DeLay, Andrew Fuyarchuk, Karsten Harries, Steven Haug, Daniel Lindquist, Greg Lynch, Jeff Malpas, Kathryn McKnight, Ian Moore, Cynthia Nielsen, Joachim Oberst, Claude Romano, Lawrence Schmidt, Richard Sharpe, Robert Stolorow, Kristi Sweet, and Larry Vogel. I have been blessed with many friends in Albuquerque and elsewhere who have made my life joyful, including Jordan Bancroft, Will Barnes, Jim Bodington, Graham Bounds, Nick Clements, Duncan Cordry, Yuri Di Liberto, Ben Dulong, Bill Gannon, Cara Greene, Matt Huss, Charles Kalm, Marcel Lebow, Brian Liwo, Elizabeth McNamara Liwo, Cody Lutz, Bobby McKinley, Chris McNamara, Jason Merriam, Hank Messinger, Lalita Moskowitz, Kylie Musolf, Connor Pagett, Mariah Partida, Justin Pearce, Rajesh Reddy, Brendan Rome, Mike Russo, Tom v Satriale, Ian Scanlan, and Joseph Spencer. Haley Burke, whose love and questioning have nurtured this project, deserves special mention. My dissertation committee has been enormously supportive. Mary Domski has been a mentor and friend to me ever since I decided to attend UNM. Ted George exemplifies many hermeneutical and dialogical virtues, and he has contributed greatly to the shape of this project. Ann Murphy has always been probing but kind in her questions. My chair, Iain Thomson, has generously encouraged my work for many years, and has pushed and improved my thinking and writing in so many ways. I hope this project offers what Gadamer calls a fusion of horizons—on which more later—with all these family members, teachers, and friends. I have read portions and drafts of this dissertation to audiences at meetings of the North American Society for Philosophical Hermeneutics, the North Texas Philosophical Association, and the Southwest Seminar in Continental Philosophy. Part of Chapter 2 is forthcoming in Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy. The writing of this dissertation was supported by a Russell J. and Dorothy S. Bilinski Fellowship in the Humanities from the Bilinski Educational Foundation. vi From Deconstruction to Rehabilitation: Heidegger, Gadamer, and Modernity by David Liakos B.A., Philosophy, Connecticut College, 2012 M.A., Philosophy, University of New Mexico, 2017 PhD, Philosophy, University of New Mexico, 2019 Abstract This dissertation is a study of the problem of modernity, formulated as the following multivalent question: How should we understand the scope, character, and limitations of our historical age? The study approaches this question from the point of view of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer. We will, first, clarify how Heidegger and Gadamer think about modernity, thereby shedding light on their widely misunderstood intellectual relationship; and, next, uncover and defend a distinctively Gadamerian response to modernity as a viable argument, and as potentially more coherent and hopeful than Heidegger’s answer to the problem of the modern age. In the first part, I present my reading of how these figures think about modernity. I outline Heidegger’s deconstruction of the modern age, that is, his main critique of modernity and his account of the movement into a postmodern future. Next, I motivate a contrast between Heidegger’s vision of modernity and Gadamer’s. Contrary to numerous misreadings, Gadamer proceeds along his own path of thinking, one that crucially begins with Heidegger but goes its own direction by advancing past the shortcomings of Heidegger’s thinking of modernity. The next part outlines my interpretation of Gadamer’s post-Heideggerian response to the modern age, arguing that he accomplishes this task by rediscovering what vii remains most true and meaningful in the guiding metaphors of the modern age, while criticizing the pernicious elements of modernity’s bequest to the present. First, I reconstruct and defend Gadamer’s rehabilitation of modernity’s guiding epistemic metaphors, namely, transcendental thought, humanism, experience, objectivity, and curiosity, against the backdrop of his critique of other elements of modernity’s epistemic regimes. Next, I make the same type of argument with regard to guiding ocular metaphors of infinity, perspective, and mirroring. A speculative Conclusion, on the political implications of Gadamer’s differences from Heidegger, suggests that the Gadamerian rehabilitation of modernity successfully engenders a more genuinely hopeful response to modernity than Heidegger provides. This short Conclusion again makes the case for Gadamer’s appreciable advancement beyond Heidegger. viii Table of Contents Introduction: From Modernity to Postmodernity and Back Again ............................. 1 §0.1: The problem of the modern age ...................................................................................... 2 §0.2: Modernity in light of Heidegger and Gadamer ............................................................. 8 §0.3. Summary of the dissertation .......................................................................................... 19 Part I: From Heidegger to Gadamer: Preface ............................................................. 21 Chapter One: Heidegger’s Deconstruction of Modernity ........................................... 22 §1.1: Methods of historical confrontation .............................................................................. 24 §1.1.1: Deconstruction ......................................................................................................... 24 §1.1.2: History of being ....................................................................................................... 28 §1.2: Theory of modernity ....................................................................................................... 33 §1.2.1: Periodization ............................................................................................................ 33 §1.2.2: Subject/object dichotomy ....................................................................................... 37 §1.2.3: Modern natural science .......................................................................................... 40 §1.2.4: Transformation of truth ......................................................................................... 46 §1.2.5: The rise of aesthetics ..............................................................................................
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