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Heidegger and the Hermeneutic Turn 175 Heidegger and the hermeneutic tum III DAVID COUZENS HOY background of traditional hermeneutics as well as of Cartesian and Kantian philosophy. 6 Heidegger and the hermeneutic THE METAHERMENEUTIC TURN IN PHILOSOPHY'S tum SELF-CONCEPTION Hans-Georg Gadamer, who in Truth and Method (1960) was the first philosopher to develop Heidegger's account of interpretation into a general hermeneutics, defines hermeneutics as the philosophical en­ terprise for which the central question is, How is understanding possible?' This formulation is a reasonably straightforward way to The closing decades of this century have been marked by a wide­ characterize the hermeneutic philosophy that Gadamer himself has ranging, multidisciplinary exploration of the theory of interpreta­ contributed to twentieth-century thought. However, before Heideg­ tion and its practical implications. To speak of a revolution in the ger, or to anyone who has not read Heidegger, the question would be history of thought is perhaps too grand, but certainly there has been misleading, since hermeneutics might thereby seem to be merely a general movement that can be called the "hermeneutic turn." This one branch of philosophy, the one that analyzes the phenomenon of turn has taken various forms, including poststructuralist cultural understanding in contrast to other human activities such as knowl­ studies, deconstructive literary studies, interpretive anthropology edge or language. Hermeneutic philosophers before Heidegger did and social science, and critical legal studies. Of course, the specific think of understanding in this way, and they therefore distinguished turns taken in each of these fields are reactions to older ways of disciplines that could acquire knowledge in an objective way, as in practicing each discipline. But in each case the emphasis on interpre­ the natural sciences, from those that could not give lawlike explana­ tation is used as an antidote, usually to objectivistic conceptions of tions but instead offered interpretations, as in the humanities (or the discipline's methods. However, none of these particular turns Geisteswissenschaften). would have been imaginable without a dramatic change earlier in So classified, since the humanistic disciplines like history, law, this century, the change brought about in philosophy by Martin literary and cultural studies (and perhaps philosophy itself) rarely or Heidegger in 1927 in Being and Time. Heidegger's hermeneutic turn never give explanations emulating the causal laws of natural sci­ is taken most explicitly in Sections 31 and 32 of that book, where ence, they seem to be poor cousins in the family of knowledge. One Heidegger makes interpretive understanding the central mode of defense of these Geisteswissenschaften is to claim a separate status human existence (or Dasein). for them and to take them as examples of a distinct cognitive opera­ In 1927 Heidegger himself could not have foreseen the diverse tion called understanding. This move, which ran through traditional effects of his theory on later thought, and in the final section of this hermeneutics from Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) to Wil­ essay I will describe his influence on the hermeneutic and decon­ helm Dilthey (1833-1911), has a weakness in that it seems to leave structive philosophies that emerged in the latter half of the century. understanding as a derivative and deficient subspecies of knowledge. But at the time Heidegger did see his account of understanding as a A central part of Heidegger's legacy comes from his strikingly revolutionary break from the traditional philosophical emphasis on different conception of hermeneutics. Heidegger's analysis of Dasein problems about knowledge and on the dichotomy between subjectiv­ as being-in-the-world changes our understanding of understanding ity and objectivity. To explain this break I will begin by working from a derivative phenomenon to the central feature, the keystone, through the details of Heidegger's account of understanding and in­ of human experience. As Gadamer remarks, "Heidegger's temporal terpretation in Being and Time, situating this material against the analytics of Dasein has, I think, shown convincingly that under- IlO THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO HEIDEGGER Heidegger and the hermeneutic tum 173 standing is not just one of the various possible behaviors of the tinguished humanistic understanding and interpretation from the subject but the mode of being of Dasein itself ... and hence em­ lawlike explanations of the natural sciences, and it thus put itself in braces the whole of its experience of the world. "2 When understand­ a weak position when the metaquestion was raised, What is the ing becomes the central phenomenon for philosophy, hermeneutics status of the knowledge claimed by hermeneutic philosophy itself? is no longer conceived of as simply one minor branch of philosophy. Is hermeneutic philosophy itself the one right explanation, or is it Instead, philosophy itself becomes hermeneutic. Or at least one can only one possible interpretation? Obviously, hermeneutics is not now speak of a distinctively hermeneutic approach to philosophy in itself giving causal explanations, so it appears to be at best only one contrast to the traditional approach running from Descartes through possible interpretation, not the definitive explanation, of human Kant to Husser!' This traditional approach conceived of the human inquiry and existence. Traditional hermeneutics, and Dilthey espe­ being as a "subject," a knower disengaged from the world and from cially, was thus plagued by the threat of relativism, particularly by practical activity in the world. the relativism of its own philosophical status. Heidegger's hermeneutic tum is more radical than earlier philoso­ Now Heidegger too will want to say that Being and Time is an phy, then, in that it avoids the traditional model of the subject as the interpretation. But because he has a deeper conception of what un­ knower standing over against what is to be known, the objective derstanding is, he will have a different conception of interpretation, world. His hermeneutic tum shows both that the mentalisticvocabu­ and a different account of how interpretation arises from understand­ laryof the subject-object model is not the onlypossible startingpoint ing. What he means by understanding is not simply one form of for philosophy and that this vocabulary is derivative from the more cognition among others, but our most basic ability to live in and basicstartingpointwhereDaseinandworldare coterminousin under­ cope skillfully with our world. Of course, this ability must take into standing. Heidegger conceives of Dasein and world as forming a cir­ account that the ways in which features of the world show up are cle, and he thus extends the traditional hermeneutic circle between a constantly changing, and this constant change requires us to form text and its reading down to the most primordial level of human particular interpretations. As our projects and needs change, we will existence. Traditionally the paradigm for the hermeneutic circle is change our interpretations. For instance, sometimes we must inter­ the reading of a text, where the parts cannot be interpretedwithout an pret ourselves as students, sometimes as family members, some­ understanding of the whole, but the whole cannot be grasped without times as consumers, and perhaps sometimes as philosophers. Yet an understandingof the parts. As I shall explain, inHeidegger's deeper Heidegger suggests that all these interpretations presuppose a pri­ conception of the hermeneutic circle as a feature of human existence mary understanding of the world that runs through them. Our shift ingeneral, the relation of knowledge and understandingis oneneither from one interpretation to another at the appropriate moment is a of antagonism nor of indifference, but one in which the legitimate sign that we do understand the world. So a change in interpretation task of achieving knowledge is a subspecies of the more general phe­ is not necessarily a sign of lack of understanding, since in these cases nomenon of human understanding. the change of interpretation shows that we can cope with the vari­ Heidegger begins his radicalization of the hermeneutic tum in ous demands the world places on us. Section 3I of Being and Time by distinguishing his conception of Heidegger is describing the "primary understanding" that runs understanding from a different conception of how a philosopher through our various ways of existing in and interpreting the world. might be interested in analyzing understanding: " 'Understanding' What is the status, then, of this philosophical activity of descrip­ in the sense of one possible kind of cognizing among others (as tion? The philosophical description is itself an interpretation, but it distinguished, for instance, from 'explaining') must, like explaining, is on a plane different from the interpretations that flow naturally be Interpreted as an existential derivative of that primary under­ from our everyday ways of coping with the world. Heidegger thus standing which is one of the constituents of the Being of the 'there' distinguishes between Auslegung and Interpretierung. Auslegung, in general" (BT 182). Traditional, pre-Heideggerian hermeneutics dis- the standard translation of which is "interpretation" with a lower- 174 THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO HEIDEGGER Heidegger and the hermeneutic turn 175 case "i," includes the everyday phenomena of ordinary skills like "derivations" are
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