Anthropologie Und Geschichte

Anthropologie und Geschichte

Studien zu Wilhelm Dilthey aus Anlass seines 100. Todestages

Herausgegeben von Giuseppe D'Anna, Helmut Johach und Eric S. Nelson

Konigshausen & Neumann l Editorischer Beirat:

Giuseppe Cacciatore Rudolf A. Makkreel Frithjof Rodi

Gedruckt mit freundlicher Untersti.itzung der Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, Koln

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet tiber http:/I dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar.

©Verlag Konigshausen & Neumann GmbH, Wurzburg 2013 Gedruckt auf saurefreiem, alterungsbestandigem Papier Umschlag: skh-softics I coverart Umschlagabbildung, Frontispiz: Verwendete Fotos: Archiv der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin Bindung: Zinn- Die Buchbinder GmbH, Kleinluder Alle Rechte vorbehalten Dieses Werk, einschlie!llich aller seiner Teile, ist urheberrechtlich geschiitzt. Jede Verwertung aullerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulassig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere fur Vervielfaltigungen, Ubersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Printed in Germany ISBN 978-3-8260-5111-1 www.koenigshausen-neumann.de www.buchhandel.de www.buchkatalog.de Inhal tsverzeichnis

Vorwort/Foreword/Premessa ...... 9

Frithjof Rodi Zur Einfi.ihrung ...... 15

Ernst Wolfgang Orth Wilhelm Dilthey und die Gegenwart des Geistes ...... 33

Fulvia Tessitore Leben und Geschichte- von Dilthey her gesehen ...... 43

Giuseppe Cacciatore Das Wesen der Philosophie: Die Bestimmung des philosophischen Wissens zwischen Geschichtsstrukturen und Lebenszusammenhangen ...... 53

Giuseppe Cantillo »Die Gemeinsamkeit menschlichen Wesens«. Das geistige Leben bei Wilhelm Dilthey zwischen Psychologie und Geschichte ...... 73

KarlAcham Denkformen und Lebensformen. Uberlegungen zu Diltheys Weltanschauungslehre ...... 93 jean-Claude Gens Die vorgeschichtliche Verwandtschaft zwischen den Menschen als Boden der interkulturellen Verstandigung bei Dilthey und Merleau-Ponty ...... 115

RudolfA. Makkreel The Anthropolocical Import of Dilthey's System of Ethics ...... 127

5 Eric S. Nelson Between Nature and Spirit: Naturalism and Anti-Naturalism in Dilthey ...... 141

Gudrun Kuhne-Bertram Wilhelm Diltheys anthropologisch fundierte Theorie des Wissens ...... 161

Maria Nazare de Camargo Pacheco Amaral Philosophie im Dienste der Padagogik? Geschichte und »Anthropologie des Geistes« ...... 175

Giovanni Ciriello Con Dilthey oltre Dilthey: I presupposti metodologici dell' antropologia in Herman Nohl...... 199

David Carr Erlebnis and History ...... 215

Helmut Johach Dilthey, Simmel und die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie ...... 225

Karl-Heinz Lembeck Geschichte und Erinnerung. Dilthey und die gegenwartige Debatte ..... 243

Giovanni Matteucci Das anthropologische Geflecht von Erlebnis-Ausdruck-Verstehen als Destrukturierung der »Innenwelt« bei Dilthey (und Wittgenstein) ...... 257

Gunter Scholtz Menschliche Natur und Religionsentwicklung in der Sicht Diltheys ..... 275

Francesco Donadio Religione e religiosid in Wilhelm Dilthey ...... 291

Mario Lombardo Meta-fisica, comunione di destini, speranza. Elementi antropologici della filosofia di Dilthey ...... 317 Kristin Gjesdal Enlightenment, History, and the Anthropological Turn: The Hermeneutical Challenge of Dilthey's Schleiermacher Studies ...... 323

Stefano Poggi Dilthey und die romantische Psychologie ...... 355

Giancarlo Magnano San Lio Philologie, Anthropologie und Geschichte: Dilthey und U sener...... 369

Alfredo Marini Dilthey e Heidegger: uso metodologico-categoriale e uso ontologico-esistenziale del concetto di tempo ...... 387

] ean Grondin Homo Hermeneuticus. Zum Menschenbild Gadamers ...... 405

Yoshito Takahashi Nishida und Dilthey ...... 417

Ulrich Dierse Diltheys Be griff der Kultur und seine Implikationen ...... 429

Massimo M ezzanzanica Menschliche Natur und Unergriindlichkeit. Plessners und Diltheys geschichtlicher Erfahrungsbegriff ...... 443

]as de Mul Understanding Nature. Dilthey, Plessner and Biohermeneutics ...... 459

Hans- Ulrich Lessing Zur Bedeutung Wilhelm Diltheys fur Helmuth Plessners philosophische Anthropologie ...... 4 79

Verzeichnis der Autorinnen und Autoren ...... 495

Personenregister ...... 499

7 Enlightenment, History, and the Anthropological Turn The Hermeneutical Challenge of Dilthey's Schleiermacher Studies

Kristin Gjesdal

Within the rich and wide-spanning work of Wilhelm Dilthey, a special place should be assigned to his 1860 study of Friedrich Schleiermacher and the beginning of modern hermeneutics. 1 In his interaction with Schleiermacher, the hermeneutic tradition, and the general outlook of Enlightenment and Kantian Idealism, the young Dilthey carves out the theoretical basis for his own position. The Schleiermacher study is at one and the same time a genealogy, a systematic account of hermeneutics, and it is an exercise in interpretation. As such, it offers a unique point of entry into Dilthey's thought. From within the hermeneutic tradition, however, Dilthey's reading I of Schleiermacher has been somewhat discredited. Dilthey has been accused of defending a position that lingers between »romanticism and posi- tivism.«2 Further, Dilthey allegedly reads Schleiermacher through the lens of his own (Dilthey's) interest in questions of methodology and ascribes to Schleiermacher a hermeneutic model that is based on aesthetic-psychological individuality. 3

See Wilhelm Dilthey, Schleiermacher's Hermeneutical System in Relation to Earlier Protestant Hermeneutics, trans. Theodore Nordenhaug in Hermeneutics and the Study of History, Selected Works, vol. IV, ed. Rudolf A. Makkreel and Frithjof Rodi (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1996), 33-229. Further references to this work will be abbreviated SHS. 2 The expression is Hans-Georg Gadamer's. See Wilhelm Dilthey nach 150 ]ahren (Zwischen Romantik und Positivismus. Ein Diskussionsbeitrag), in Ernst Wolf- gang Orth (ed.), Dilthey und die Philosophie der Gegenwart. Freiburg: Karl Alber, 1985, 157-182. 3 See Heinz Kimmerle's >Vorwort<, in Friedrich Schleiermacher, Hermeneutik. Nach den Handschriften, ed. Heinz Kimmerle (Carl Winter Universitatsverlag: Heidel- berg, 1974), 5. The charge was reiterated by Gadamer when he was accused of having misread Schleiermacher. On facing Manfred Frank's critique of his reading, Gadamer suggested that he had followed along the lines of Dilthey's reception. See Gadamer, >Afterword,< Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (Continuum: New York, 1994), 564--566. See also Manfred Frank, Das individuelle Allgemeine. Textstrukturierung und Textinterpretation nach Schleier- macher (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1985).

333 Kristin Gjesdal

Such a reading of Dilthey's Schleiermacher study rests on a faulty basis. It fails to acknowledge that Dilthey situates Schleiermacher's work squarely within the framework of Enlightenment philosophy and its commitment to the self-determination of reason in and through the ongoing process of reflection and critique. This is particularly clear in his placing of Schleier- macher - thus also the beginning of modern hermeneutic - within the seemingly impossible intersection of Fichte's transcendental philosophy, on the one hand, and the empirical-historical turn initiated by Herder, on the other. Dilthey's situating of Schleiermacher in the intersection between Fichte and Herder allows him to see modern hermeneutics - its hopes, promises, self-understanding, and, ultimately, its future- as a fundamental contribution to the historical-anthropological account of human reason and existence, a perspective that is often lost in current Schleier- macher scholarship as well as more general discussions of hermeneutics.4 While it could indeed be argued that Dilthey's reading of Fichte and Herder sacrifices too much to have Schleiermacher's contribution appear unique and original, his 1860 study still offers a convincing account of the rationale, aims, and objectives of modern philosophy of interpretation. By tracing the enlightenment roots and aspirations of modern hermeneutics, Dilthey demonstrates - ahead of his time - what hermeneutics leaves behind in the ontological turn that was later advocated by Heidegger and Gadamer.5 I develop this argument by, first, discussing Dilthey's account of Schleiermacher's philosophical credentials (section one). I look at Dilthey's retrieval of Schleiermacher's indebtedness to Fichte (section two), then move on to his engagement with Schleiermacher's critique of the Fichtean system of science (section three) and his turn, in this context, to Herder's anthropological philosophy (section four). Finally, I conclude by briefly addressing the historical and systematic relevance of Dilthey' s work (section five).

4 An important exception is Gunter Scholtz, Ethik und Hermeneutik. Schleier- machers Grundlegung der Geisteswissenschaften (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995), see in particular 65-147. See also Christian Berner, La Philosophie de Schleiermacher. Hermeneutique, dialectique, ethique (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1995), 170-265. 5 As Gadamer makes it clear, »We will no longer be able to view the rise of hermeneutics as Dilthey, following Schleiermacher, presented it. Rather, we must retrace Dilthey's steps and look out for goals other than those of Dilthey's historical self- consciousness.« (Truth and Method, 173) 1. From Philology to Philosophy

According to Dilthey, modern hermeneutics begins with Schleiermacher's theory of interpretation. However, on the face of it, Dilthey's study fo- cuses more on Schleiermacher's relationship to the tradition than on why we should read Schleiermacher today. Yet, Dilthey's work does not aspire to a historicizing understanding of hermeneutics. By discussing Schleier- macher's place in the tradition, Dilthey, all the same, hones in on the systematic questions at the core of Schleiermacher's work. In this context, Dilthey is not only interested in how Schleiermacher relates to tradition, but also what tradition Schleiermacher's work should be situated within in the first place. Schleiermacher lectured on hermeneutics in the period between 1805 and 1833 and left behind notes and manuscripts that have later been published in a number of different editions. 6 When Schleiermacher, in his hermeneutics lectures, deals with the tradition, he discusses the contributions of Ast, Wolf, and Ernesti. 7 Dilthey approaches this issue from a different angle. 8 Even though he does indeed reference the philological tradition, he is more interested in fleshing out and weighing the philosophical ballast of Schleiermacher's hermeneutics. While Dilthey's discussion of the early philological tradition is presented under the quasi-teleological heading >Hermeneutics Before Schleiermacher<, the following chapter, >The Origins of Schleiermacher's Hermeneutics<, begins with a study of >Fichte and The Origin of the Mode of Thought that Transformed Her-

6 The different editions of the hermeneutics lectures include the following: First, Schleiermacher's student Friedrich Lucke published Hermeneutik und Kritik mit besonderer Beziehung auf das Neue Testament (Samtliche Werke, Berlin 1835, vol. 7, Div. 3). This is the edition that was known to Dilthey. The second critical edition, edited by Heinz Kimmerle in 1959, appeared as Hermeneutik nach den Hand- schriften. Finally Manfred Frank, on the basis of Lucke's edition, published the ex- panded H ermeneutik und Kritik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1977). Further references to the hermeneutics lectures will be to the English translation: Friedrich Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics and Criticism and Other Writings, ed. and transl. Andrew Bowie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 7 Also later historians, such as Joachim Wach, place Schleiermacher primarily within the tradition of philological hermeneutics. See Joachim Wach, Das Verstehen: Grundziige einer Geschichte der hermeneutischen Theorie im 19. ]ahrhundert. 3 vols. (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1926-1933). Further, this applies to Szondi's discussion in Peter Szondi, Introduction to Literary Hermeneutics, trans. Martha Woodmansee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1995), 94-135. 8 That is, he seems to accept Schleiermacher's conclusion that the philological tradition rests on little but >>a collection of observations« and, as a consequence, involves no reflected account of the problems of interpretation and fails to >>fulfill any scientific demands« (Hermeneutics and Criticism, 6).

335 Kristin Gjesdal meneutics< and continues with a discussion of the historical orientation of Herder and von Humboldt (SHS 100). This approach of Dilthey gives rise to a number of questions. Why does Dilthey emphasize the philosophical tradition over against philological hermeneutics? And, furthermore, how can Dilthey possibly claim that Schleiermacher combines - meaningfully and originally combines - the resources of transcendental philosophy with the historical-empirical approach represented by Herder? These questions are key to Dilthey's fas- 1 cination with Schleiermacher, and any attempt at understanding the early hermeneutic thought of Dilthey will have to come to terms with the no- I; tion, contradictory as it may sound, of modern hermeneutics growing out ' of the intersection between Fichtean transcendental philosophy and Herderian historicism. Only by understanding what Dilthey seeks to achieve by situating Schleiermacher's work in between Fichte and Herder is it possible to see why he foregrounds Schleiermacher's reworking of eighteenth-century philosophy rather than his indebtedness to the philological tradition of the same period.

2. The Commitments of Transcendental Idealism

According to Dilthey - and this was a relatively uncontroversial point at the time -Kant's critical philosophy paves the ground for German Ideal- ism in all its shapes and permutations. In his words, contributions as different as »Schleiermacher's system of dogmatics and Hegel's philosophy are both based on it.« (SHS 95) 9 Dilthey also follows the later Idealists in arguing that Kant had left his system incomplete. That is, Kant had left German Idealism with a promise - a grounding of the mind-world relation in the synthetic unity of transcendental apperception- yet his system suffered from fundamental flaws, such as the bifurcation of reason into a theoretical and a practical component and the apparent dualism between the thing-in-itself and appearances. Fichte set himself the task of over- coming these dualisms. Nonetheless, he emphasizes that this must be done from within the framework of Kantian idealism. 10 The project was

9 Unlike Gadamer, Dilthey does not assume a fundamental break between philosophical romanticism and Hegel. Just as his reading of Schleiermacher serves to bring philosophical romanticism closer to a Hegelian point of view, so his reading of the young Hegel brings Hegelianism closer to romanticism. For Gadamer's staging of an opposition between Schleiermacher and Hegel, see Truth and Method, 164-169. 10 Hence Fichte insists that his »system is nothing other than the Kantian.« J.G. Fichte, The Science of Knowledge, ed. and transl. Peter Heath and John Lachs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 4. (I 420). successful to the extent that Fichte's philosophy was generally perceived as the completion of Kant's work. 11 This has repercussions for Dilthey's understanding of Schleiermacher. Even though Schleiermacher's system is Kantian in its orientation, Dilthey argues that »as we trace the roots of Schleiermacher's hermeneutics, we are led back to Fichte's Science of Knowledge.« (SHS 100) What, then, does Schleiermacher take over from Fichte? Dilthey's discussion of this point is dense and difficult to follow. Yet it is possible to identify three major points that prove crucial to his argument. Dilthey is interested in (a) the transcendental ambitions of Schleiermacher's philosophy, (b) his emphasis on the historicity of the human being, and, finally, (c) his effort to synthesize the transcendental and the historical approaches in a hermeneutics that, eventually, points beyond the framework of Fichtean philosophy. A bit more will have to be said about each of these points. (a) In Fichte's work, philosophy, when done right, takes the form of a science of knowledge, a Wissenschaftslehre, that is but an inquiry into the very conditions of possibility for knowledge as such. This, in turn, is con- trasted to dogmatism, which, from the critical-speculative point of view, proves to be »no philosophy at all, but merely an impotent claim and as- surance«.12 Critical philosophy - idealism, as Fichte calls it - is tanta- mount to science, and science, in turn, is identified with philosophy itself.13 Yet, in spite of his talk about a science of knowledge, the key to Fichte's idealism is the distinction, initially drawn by Kant, between philosophy as a prolegomenon to science, on the one hand, and the ( empirical) pursuits of science, on the other.14 The attempt at providing a transcendental ground for science, i.e., at tracing the minimal conditions of possibility for objective judgment, rests with this distinction. Hence Kant established epistemology as a discipline that is based on- and, at the same time, demonstrates the possibility of - synthetic a priori judgment and, concomitantly, as one whose validity depends on a constitutive gap between the aspirations of philosophy (being oriented towards the condi-

11 Hegel, for example, writes that the Fichtean system is »the Kantian philosophy in its completion, and, as we must specially notice, it is set forth in a more logical way.« Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. 3, trans. E.S. Haldane and F.H. Simson (University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln, Nebraska, 1995), 479. 12 Fichte, The Science of Knowledge, 19 (I 438). 13 Fichte, The Science of Knowledge, 19 (I 439), see also 48 (I 474). 14 As Kant puts it, his Critique is »a treatise on the method, not a system of the science itself. But at the same time it marks out the whole plan of the science, both as regards its limit and as regards its entire internal structure.« Kant, Critique of Pure I i Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London: MacMillan Press, 1993), B xxii. I I l 337 Kristin Gjesdal

tions of possibility for validity) and those of actual science. 15 Fichte radi- calizes this point, viewing it as key not only to epistemology, but, indeed, to philosophy as such. It is the aim of philosophy to uncover an unconditioned first principle, and this principle, in turn, is found, along the lines of the Kantian apperception, in the I's reflective relation to itself as spon- taneously self-positing. 16 According to Dilthey, Schleiermacher adopts Fichte's notion of philosophy as a science of knowledge. Schleiermacher insists that hermeneutics cannot be a collection of guidelines for correct interpretation. It is, rather, a fundamental philosophical reflection on the conditions of possibility for human understanding and communicability at large. Just as Kant had led the possibility of objectivity in science back to the possibility for synthetic a priori judgment, just as Fichte had led the conditions of possibility for critical philosophy back to its capacity for providing a transcendental account of the spontaneous power of the self-positing I, Schleier- macher's hermeneutics is a treatise on how language enables as well as limits understanding. 17 As such, it is a philosophical and not a philological contribution.18

15 Kant himself addresses this gap in the first preface to the third Critique. Here he writes that although the critique of pure reason »COntains a philosophical inquiry into the possibility of [rational cognitionJ, it does not belong to a system of philosophy as part of it, but outlines and examines the very idea of such a system in the first place.« >First Introduction,< Critique of judgment 195. This lack of fit between the transcendental and empirical levels of analysis opens, in turn, the possibility that nature, >>as regards its merely empirical laws,« is still >>contingent as far as we can see.« >Introduction,< Critique of judgment, 183. Hence judgment must assume the principle of the formal purposiveness of nature, which, in turn, proves the principle of reflective (aesthetic) judgment. The quotes are taken from Kant, Critique of judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987). For a discussion of this point, see Henry E. Allison, Kant's Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 37-39. See also Gerd Buchdahl, Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969), 651-653 and Rachel Zuckert, Kant on Beauty and Biology: An Interpretation of the Critique of Judgment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). For a broader discussion of the hermeneutic implications on Kant's third Critique, see Rudolf A. Makkreel, Imagination and Interpretation in Kant: The Hermeneutical Import of the Critique of Judgment (Chicago: Univer- sity of Chicago Press, 1990). 16 Fichte, The Science of Knowledge, 62-71 (I 491-500). 17 Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics and Criticism, 7-11. 18 Schleiermacher, however, defines hermeneutics as a philological discipline (Herme- neutics and Criticism, 3), yet admits, in the 1809-1810 lecture, that hermeneutics is >>not built upon philology, but instead there is a changing relationship between it and philology, which makes the borders between them hard to determine.« (Her- meneutics and Criticism, 228) (b) Against the general backdrop of transcendental philosophy, Dilthey hones in on Schleiermacher's turn towards Fichte's notion of the 1. 19 In Dilthey's words, to suggest that »Fichte's system is the culmination of subjective idealism« is simply to suggest that he understands the mind- world relationship in terms of the »spontaneous, productive subject.« (SHS 100) However, in Schleiermacher's work, the notion of spontaneity is embedded within a larger, linguistic turn. According to Schleiermacher, language is the proper subject matter of hermeneutics. Language, furthermore, cannot be accounted for in terms of static, structural analysis, nor be reduced to the semantic resources at hand at a given point of time. Language is organically developing, and its development is not based on grammatical rules and semantic conventions per se, but led back to the spontaneity inherent to the application of these shared linguistic resources. As applied, language, by definition, bears the mark of the individual language-user, as he or she is situated within a given cultural or historical context. Language is productive, not reproductive, and, as such, it leaves room for individual expressivity and play.20 This has ramifications for hermeneutics. If language is productive and hermeneutics, in turn, is about the interpretation of linguistic expression, it cannot be understood as a collection of rules. Rule-oriented hermeneutics is based on a static or mechanical view of language. It fails to account for language in its organic and dynamic function; it fails to account for the semantic and grammatical openness that enables the individual to leave an imprint on his or her language and thus opens up the possibility that expression is also self- expression. Schleiermacher, by contrast, seeks to grasp, philosophically, the very nature of linguistic meaning as realized in and through individual and historically mediated expressions. In Dilthey's words: »the unique- ness of the scientific form of Schleiermacher's hermeneutics consist precisely in fusing a theory of reproduction with a theory of production.« (SHS 116) (c) Dilthey emphasizes how the transcendental commitments of the Wissenschaftslehre, i.e., Fichte's understanding of philosophy as a science, funnels into and shapes Schleiermacher's notion of hermeneutics. Yet,

19 From Hegel and onwards, romantic philosophy is seen as promoting a hyperbolic notion of creative subjectivity, one that is ultimately rooted in a misreading of Kant and Fichte. Dilthey, too, views Fichte as a philosopher of subjectivity and traces the Fichtean notion of subjectivity back to the capacity for transcendental self-reflection. However, unlike Hegel (and later Gadamer), Dilthey does not deem Schleiermacher's hermeneutic appropriation a misunderstanding of Kant and Fichte. 20 Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics and Criticism, 32. Schleiermacher refers to >>play« in his discussion of poetry. See for example Ibid., 19.

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Schleiermacher's hermeneutics is rooted in a model of language as historical. How, then, can hermeneutics maintain the »scientific« commitments of the Wissenschaftslehre and, all the same, account for language as it develops and changes in history? To the extent that we can gain knowledge of the process of understanding and interpretation, this rests with the a priori conditions of possibility for intersubjective communication. These conditions are led back to the speaking I, the I that realizes language as concrete, historical, and cultural - in a word: language as used. The way in which language is molded through individual and collective use changes over time and across cultures. The fact that language is characterized by an intrinsic spontaneity, enabling self-expression as well as expression of a given, cultural framework, however, remains the same. Even though the individual interpreter seeks to gain knowledge about a particular text in its historical and cultural context, hermeneutics, as a philosophical science, seeks knowledge about the constitutive nature of language that, at one and the same time, necessitates and enables interpretation. In this way, hermeneutics emerges as a transcendental discipline; it covers the linguistic structure of experience and communication (across languages and traditions), not the a posteriori experiential content voiced in this or that particular expression.21 It does so by focusing on the dialectical relationship between the universal resources of language and the individual application of these resources. 22 Schleiermacher's hermeneutics does not provide concrete interpretative rules or guidelines, but spells out the general conditions of language, as it enables and mediates communicative expression.23 From his point of view, the philological tradition in hermeneutics emerges as pre-critical. The problem is not only that it lacks knowledge about language and interpretation, but also that it misunderstands what can be turned into a subject of philosophical knowledge. Hermeneutics cannot, a priori, estab-

21 Nonetheless, Schleiermacher's general theory has ramifications for the way in which particular texts are interpreted, for example, the way in which he reads the testaments as reflective of their respective author( s) and the context in which they were written. See Hermeneutics and Criticism, 74, 80-89. 22 See Hermeneutics and Criticism, e.g., 8, 94-95. 23 A helpful analogy might be Hegel's account of recognition. Hegel offers no practical manual for gaining recognition, but a universal, philosophical account of what recognition is. Gadamer, who reads Schleiermacher's work as a quasi-positivist manual of interpretation (he is guilty of »methodological abstraction« Truth and Method, 197), does not question Hegel's philosophical account. See >Hegel's Dia- lectics of Self-Consciousness< in Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hegel's Dialectics: Five Hermeneutical Studies, trans. P. Christopher Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), 54-75. lish guidelines that will ensure successful interpretation in each particular case. To suggest that it can, would go against the nature of language as used and expressive. It is precisely because language, in Schleiermacher's account, is realized in concreto, because linguistic meaning manifests itself in a culturally and historically changing way, that hermeneutics cannot give positive guidelines for interpretation in the individual case, but must seek to map the general conditions of possibility for understanding. The critical or transcendental approach does not tell the interpreter what to do, but theorizes what the actual, hermeneutical practices must presup- pose in order to be meaningful in the first place (i.e., the conditions of possibility for interpretation). This - the emphasis on the transcendental commitments, the historical-developmental turn, and the effort to combine these - is key to Dilthey's understanding of modern hermeneutics. By going over Schleier- macher's indebtedness to Fichte, Dilthey does not simply offer an account (or parts thereof) of the historical origins of hermeneutics, but also seeks to identify the scope and ambition of post-Kantian philosophy of interpretation. However, with the turn to the concrete, historical dimension of language, Schleiermacher, on Dilthey's reading, can no longer stay within the framework of Fichte's philosophy proper. Or, rather, he finds that in order to realize the insights of Fichtean philosophy, Schleier- macher needs to transcend the boundaries of idealism and look to other, alternative models of human reasoning and understanding. In Dilthey' s view, Schleiermacher finds such a model in the work of Herder.

3. Criticizing Transcendental Philosophy

According to Dilthey, Schleiermacher's historical-philological standpoint was »closely related to [Fichte's] system.« (SHS 102) As he would put it, Fichte »had proceeded from the absolute spontaneity of the L« (SHS 102) For Fichte, the I is not a thing or a substance, but an act or a capacity.24 Schleiermacher pulls this in the direction of a capacity for self-expression. Only expressivity explains the self-relation at the heart of the individual I: through its symbolic expression, the I externalizes itself and, mediated by language, it thus appears as itself for itself.25

24 >>The act in question is simply the concept of the self, and the concept of the self is the concept of this act; both are exactly the same.« (Fichte, The Science of Knowl- edge, 35, I 460) 25 Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics and Criticism, 9. Or, in the more deliberate Fichtean language of Doctrine of Goods (final version), Schleiermacher writes: >>As an organ of reason each person posits himself and the nature he has been able to unite with

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If Schleiermacher, in this way, draws on the resources of the Wissenschaft- slehre, he is not, for that reason, uncritical of Fichte. Yet he is not, like Schelling and Hegel, primarily concerned about Fichte's lack of an adequate notion of the non-I, a subject-limiting world.26 As rendered by Dilthey, Schleiermacher's worry, rather, is that Fichte's notion of the spontaneous I is itself too abstract. Fichte's notion of the I allows for no dimension of individuality. Schleiermacher finds that »for the Fichtean I, all other intellects existed only as pure material for the actualization of an immanent, moral law.« (SHS 104) Individuality, in his view, is not pre- established (along a model of Leibnizian monads), but takes shape in and through interaction with others. Individuality and expressivity are thus closely connected: Individuality, for Schleiermacher, is only possible in a world in which the I expresses something to somebodyP According to Dilthey, it is Schleiermacher's achievement to point out that Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre failed to provide a philosophically fulfilling account of individuality or of intersubjectivity (for Schleiermacher, the two are ultimately woven together). This, it seems, is an objection that is at least as grave as the Schelling-Hegel worry concerning Fichtean subjectivism. For, in Schleiermacher's view, the fact that Fichte overlooks the plurality of individuals and, relatedly, the intersubjective dialectics through which individuality takes shape, indicates that he fails to account for the multitude of points of view through which the world presents itself. Furthermore- though Dilthey does not make this explicit- this ultimately betrays the lack of an adequate notion of language, the medium through which the I expresses itself and through which intersubjectivity is realized.

reason as a self-contained whole. Each person- himself reason- posits himself as a [mere] part, forming a single whole together with all the others.« Friedrich Schleiermacher, Lectures on Philosophical Ethics, ed. Robert B. Louden, trans. Louise Adey Hush (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 195. 26 In Dilthey's words, »The essence of this [Fichte's] system consists in raising all givenness, all beings, into something active, or more precisely, into the active I. This givenness or reality is not sought for >out there< in the world. For Fichte there is no >out there<. Rather, the >out there< exists only for consciousness itself, and the task is to account for it solely as a modification in and of consciousness [... ] [The intellect] is an act, and absolutely nothing more; we should not even call it an active something, for this expression refers to something subsistent in which activity in- heres« (SHS 100). 27 In Speeches, this is led back to a »bond of consciousness« through which the individual »recognizes all others as clearly as himself and perfectly comprehends all individual manifestations of humanity«. Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, ed. and trans. Richard Crouter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1992), 80-81. Language, we have seen, is the area of Schleiermacher's hermeneutics. Furthermore, it is the medium through which the world presents itself to finite beings of our kind. When Schleiermacher surveys the landscape of contemporary thought he is, in other words, looking for a model that can help him articulate the constitutive nature of language as well as the dialectical relationship between the expressive I and its other. According to Dilthey, Herder's philosophy fits the bill. Herder offers a notion of individuality that is mediated in and through language. Further, Herder realizes how the emphasis on individuality necessitates a hermeneutic model that is not based on pre-established rules of interpretation, but involves a capacity to divine, guess, or feel one's way into the particular point of view that is articulated by a given text or other symbolic expression.28 In Dilthey's understanding, it is only with the aid of Herder that Schleiermacher turns from being a follower of Fichte to developing his own, original position: an attempt to critically transform idealism into a philosophy that centers around the problem of understanding. This transformation does not happen with Schleiermacher simply adding a Herderian twist to Fichte's critical philosophy (as if such a maneuver were possible). Rather, his turn to Herder grows out of the deep-seated, intrinsic problems of Fichtean idealism itself and must thus involve a fundamental transformation of the transcendental program.

3. Individuality, Culture, and History: The Turn to Herder

So far, we have seen that Schleiermacher, in Dilthey's account, turns to Herder in order to overcome the limitations of Fichtean idealism. We have not, however, asked what part of Herder's philosophy would be most conducive to Schleiermacher's hermeneutics. In this context, Dilthey emphasizes two closely related aspects of Herder's work: (a) The ethical-political commitment baked into his notion of individuality and (b) his notion of divination, as it is closely related to the idea of Bildung or education in and through culture. Each of these points calls for a closer exammat10n. (a) In the 1860 essay, Dilthey does not do much to clarify the general philosophical backdrop against which Herder shapes his thought: that of French-German classicism. Nor does he delve into a more detailed analy-

28 In this context, it is important to see how the turn to individuality is in line with the transcendental commitments discussed above. Schleiermacher's philosophical hermeneutics does not seek to analyze the expressions of a particular individual or group of such, but addresses the general conditions of possibility for understanding (of individual expressions).

343 t l Kristin Gjesdal sis of Herder's notion of individuality, as it develops against the broader anthropological thrust of his early work.29 Dilthey takes it for granted that the reader is familiar with the general background and conceptual keystones of Herder's contribution. From Hegel and onwards, Schleiermacher has been taken to represent a romantic paradigm in which spontaneous subjectivity is cut off from the intersubjective sphere of culture, tradition, and history: every human being is sparked by genius and, so to speak, constitutes itself by breaking with tradition.30 Herder offers a different model of individuality - even if this notion of individuality, too, occurs in the context of his writings on art (though these texts date back to the mid 17 60s, i.e., 25 years before the publication of the Critique ofjudgment). Here individuality is seen, first, as an integral dimension of all symbolic expression. Sec- ond, individuality is not conceived as opposed to a broader tradition or culture, but as a capacity to articulate the concerns, sensibilities, and val- ues of a historically changing society. Third and finally, the notion of individuality does not harbor a model of subjectivism, but is brought in so as to balance the orientation towards aesthetic rules that Herder took to characterize the paradigm of classicism.31 In Herder's work, individuality is never free-standing or isolated, but refers to the way in which a given language-user or artist moulds the avail- able cultural and historical resources so as to express a certain world-view or feeling of life. This worldview or Lebensgefuhl is not private or subjective. Herder's discussion of Shakespeare clarifies this point. In Herder's view, Shakespeare articulates the rising modernity of his own culture. The point is not - and this is important - that Shakespeare possesses a unique set of psychological abilities that allows him to create individual works or tragedl.es that represent a break with the larger, Elizabethan culture, but

29 See Johann Gottfried Herder, Philosophical Writings, ed. and trans. Michael N. Forster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 3-33. See also Michael N. Forster, Herder and the Birth of Modern Anthropology, in After Herder: Philoso- phy of Language in the German Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 199-244. 3° For a discussion of Hegel's critique, see Otto Poggeler, Hegels Kritik der Roman- tik. Bonn: Friedrich Wilhelms-Universitat, 1956 (Dissertation). Gadamer repeats Hegel's polemical reading of philosophical romanticism in Truth and Method, 58- 60. I discuss the Hegelian-Gadamerian reading of romantic philosophy in Gadamer and the Legacy of German Idealism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 48-81. 31 See Johann Gottfried Herder, Shakespeare, trans. Gregory Moore (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008). that he has a unique ability- and, indeed, responsibility- to reflect on and possibly also change the cultural horizon of which he was a part. 32 Dilthey takes this Herderian point to be of crucial importance to Schleiermacher. In alignment with Herder, Schleiermacher's theory circles around two central notions: the individual (the unique outlook of a particular person implied in her response to her culture and historical context) and the identical (that which is shared between the individual and her tradition and culture). These notions, in turn, are brought in to com- pensate for the flaws in Fichte's philosophy. According to Dilthey, the Fichtean I is forced to see other individuals as mere material for its own actualization. (SHS 104) For Schleiermacher, by contrast, »other intellects are a necessary complement to individuality, pointing beyond the limits of this idea to the idea of humanity.« (SHS 104) The idea of humanity, in turn, can only appear in a »Cosmos of individualities.« (SHS 104) Like Herder, Schleiermacher sees the human being as intrinsically social and linguistic in nature: its nature is only realized through culture. In Dilthey's view, Schleiermacher's turn to the interplay between the individual and the identical- the human being expressing itself and its unique point of view against a background of shared experiences and linguistic resources- is reflective of the young Herder's notion of humanity. Dilthey emphasizes how hermeneutics, for Schleiermacher, is not a technical »method« for understanding. It is, rather, a philosophy that il- luminates the dialectics of intersubjectivity that rests at the heart of human society. At stake is no manual for »Correct« interpretation, but a philosophical contribution that revolves around a theory of man as a social, expressive, and historical being. In Dilthey's reading, Schleiermacher's work represents, with a term borrowed from Herder, nothing less than an anthropological turn in understanding.33 (b) Next, Dilthey discusses the upshot of this anthropological turn for Schleiermacher's theory of interpretation. If hermeneutics involves the study of human being (understood through the lens of the individual and the identical, i.e., as expressive of a given, historical culture), and if every human being represents a unique mediation of a shared horizon and, as such, carries the capacity to voice his or her outlook in an individual way, then the process of understanding cannot be explained in light of general rules or methodological guidelines. In Dilthey' s view, it is

32 For a fuller discussion of this point, see my Reading Shakespeare; Reading Moder- nity, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, vol. 9, no. 3-2004, 17-33. 33 Herder discusses the anthropological turn in >How Philosophy Can Become More Universal and Useful for the Benefit of the People< (1765), in Philosophical Writ- ings, 29.

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Schleiermacher's merit to realize that hermeneutics is an art-it is, in the language of the time, technical rather than merely mechanicaP4 Under- standing is not a mechanical procedure, but requires judgment and imagination: an ability to see the world through the eyes of an other. Again this aspect of Schleiermacher's philosophy is traced back to Herder, more precisely Herder's notion of divination. Although Dilthey takes the notion of »divination« to be crucial to Herder and Schleiermacher, he offers no definition of the term. Nor does he provide an account of Schleiermacher's connection to Herder. Did Schleiermacher read Herder's work? And, if so, was there a particular text in which he was interested? Again, the reader is left with a number of questions and forced to pursue the answers on her own. In Herder's work, the reference to divination initially appears in an early text on Thomas Abbt. According to Herder, Abbt proved a particularly sensitive and capable reader and, through his writings as well as his hermeneutic practice, laid »the foundation for a history of the sciences and of the human understanding.«35 Abbt's interpretative and philosophical skills are held forth as something a successful hermeneutic model should be able theoretically to account for. In Herder's view, Abbt's interpretative skills must be understood in terms of his capacity to guess or divine how the world is viewed by an other, to see the world, as it were, from another point of view. This, for Herder, is »the holiest.«36 Only such a capacity offers a possibility to critically assess and expand the limits of the interpreter's own horizon and thus further a transformative process of education in culture (Bildung). In this context, »divination« emerges as an aesthetic concept. Yet it is not »aesthetic« because it appeals to art or aesthetic creation (in the narrow meaning of the term). Divination, rather, is linked to a capacity for feeling (juhlen, which, in turn, opens for einfiihlen). The point of view of the other, reflecting his or her prepredicative horizon, is an intuition and, as such, cannot be fully represented by conceptual resources. Nor can it be explained by a procedure that departs from general rules or determina- tive judgment. The outlook of another individual is itself expressive of a »sensibility that grasps the whole in feeling, but finds itself incapable of reproducing it intelligibly, and which, accordingly, must settle for arous- ing a reproductive, emotional frame of mind in the reader.« (SHS 90) Un- derstanding thus requires an ability, on behalf of the interpreter, to cap-

34 In the Critique of judgment, Kant, leaning on the Greek understanding of techne, defines the technical as that which requires art as opposed to a merely mechanical following of rules. Critique of Judgment, >First Introduction<, 200. 35 Herder, Philosophical Writings, 173. 36 Herder, Philosophical Writings, 174. ture the outlook of the text as a whole. Furthermore, what is at stake in this intuition is not an effort to grasp something inner or hidden, e.g., the psychological source of the utterance, but to see humanity as reflected in a singular expression. Just as Schleiermacher is critical of Fichte, he does, according to Dilthey, also seek to improve the resources of Herder's hermeneutics. In Dilthey' s account, the hermeneutic resources of Herder's work can only be realized by going beyond Herder's own framework so as to develop a systematic, philosophical account of interpretation. Through his notion of divination, Herder glimpsed the profound relation between individuality and humanity. Yet he did not properly develop this insight. That is, as Dilthey reads him, Herder did not see that hermeneutic feeling must be matched with a capacity to treat it as a guess or a preliminary hypothesis that, in turn, requires confirmation through historical-philological work. Dilthey explains that only »when the later [divinationJ [is J combined with the constructive method in philosophy, this congenial sensitivity of

i I Herder would become the basis for a sound method of interpretation and ; 37 genuinely scientific hermeneutics.« (SHS 90) The potential of the young II', Herder's work, the original yet somewhat underdeveloped insights it har- bors, is only fully realized, a good 40 years later, in the work of Friedrich Schleiermacher.

4. The Hermeneutic Limitations of Dilthey's Reading

According to Dilthey, Schleiermacher revises the contributions of Fichte and Herder so as to make the two positions not only minimally compati- ble but, indeed, philosophically complementary. He does so by working out the intrinsic, hermeneutic potential they contain. In preserving what is worth keeping from Fichte and Herder, Schleiermacher develops his own position. By going over the Fichte-Herder connection in Schleier- macher's work, Dilthey's study provides a novel and important reading of Schleiermacher and the beginnings of modern hermeneutics - a reading 38 which still represents a helpful corrective to Gadamer's narrative - and also, by implication, an account of the challenges and ambitions to which later hermeneutics ought to own up. Before we get that far, however, one question needs to be asked. Given that Dilthey's essay, his engagement with early nineteenth-century philosophy, is not simply theorizing the

37 I discuss this point in section iv. 38 For a full discussion of this point, see my >Aesthetic and Political Humanism: Gadamer on Herder, Schleiermacher, and the Origins of Modern Hermeneutics<, History of Philosophy Quarterly, vol. 24, no. 3-2007, 275-297.

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Kristin Gjesdal conditions of possibility for hermeneutics but also rooted in actual, interpretative work, the following question emerges: If Dilthey, by his reading, sheds novel light on Schleiermacher's work and ambitions, how, then, does it fare with regard to Fichte and Herder? In spelling out the Fichte-Schleiermacher connection, Dilthey fo- cuses on the transcendental aspirations of Fichte's science of knowledge and the way in which Schleiermacher, against this background, is able to articulate a universal hermeneutic model. However, according to Dilthey, Fichte's account of transcendental philosophy is held back by his abstract notion of subjectivity. Fichte, however, does not overlook the problem of individuality. Rather, he discusses the distinction between selfhood and individuality, suggesting (along the lines that Schleiermacher would later adopt) that individuality depends on the I-thou relationship. 39 In Fichte's view, this relationship is only possible because there is a self who is able to relate to another self in the first place. 40 Hence the difference between Schleiermacher and Fichte is not that Schleiermacher operates with a notion of individuality and Fichte does not, but that Schleiermacher, unlike Fichte, questions the most fundamental idea of post-Kantian idealism, namely that of an unconditioned, transcendental I upon which the very condition of possibility for experience as well as philosophy hinges. 41 The consequence of this is that individuality, as mediated through the I-thou relationship, represents a privileged point of access to subjectivity as such. Further, much has happened in Fichte scholarship since Dilthey's time. Fichte has been credited for his philosophy of recognition - i.e., his notion of intersubjectivity - as it anticipates and lays the ground for Hegel. 42 Moreover, there has been an interest in Fichte's own turn to a notion of Bildung. 43 To some extent, Dilthey recognizes these features of

39 This discussion, however, remains anchored in Fichte's view that »selfhood and individuality are very different concepts, and the element of composition in the latter is very plain to see.« The Science of KnmDledge, 74 (I 504). 40 As Gunter Zoller points out, >>Fichte's choice of the nominalized pronoun of the first-person singular is [ ... ] meant to [... ] articulate the ground of individual minds in some generic, supraindividual conception of reason.« Gunter Zoller, Fichte's Transcendental Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 57. 41 This is clear in Schleiermacher's discussion of absolute dependence. As Schleier- macher puts it, >>in every self-consciousness there are two elements, which we might call respectively a self-caused element (ein Sichselbstsetzen) and a non-self- caused element (ein Sichselbstnichtsogesetzthaben) .« Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, ed. H.R. Mackintosh and J.S. Stewart, trans. D.M. Bailie et al. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999), 13. 42 See Allen W. Wood, Hegel's Ethical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991 ), 78. 43 As developed in for example Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Addresses to the German Na- tion, ed. and trans. Gregory Moore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Fichte's philosophy and in this way challenges the reigning, Hegelian critique of the Wissenschaftslehre as a piece of philosophical subjectivism. His point is not to claim that Schleiermacher, in introducing a notion of intersubjectivity and thus an opening for a hermeneutic perspective, breaks with Fichte, but, rather, that he spells out an aspect of Fichte's philosophy that had, so far, been underdeveloped. He thus suggests that »if the principle of individuality arose from [Schleiermacher's J ethical form of subjective idealism, there was already an impetus toward it in Fichte's phi- ! losophy itself.« (SHS 102) Dilthey in this context refers to On the Voca- '! tion of the Scholar: »Man exists; he is unconditioned; he is, accordingly, his r own end. But he also is something. His end can thus only be: to be what !t., ' he is, >simply because he is it<.« (SHS 103) For Fichte, the I is not a given .p entity but an activity; it is constantly presented with the task of realizing ' itself. Understood as the capacity for spontaneity rather than a substance, the identity of the I with itself, the very ground of subjectivity, rests in the I becoming itself. As Dilthey quotes Fichte, »I am it because I make myself it.« (SHS 103) In spelling out the genesis of modern hermeneutics, Dilthey must have been one of the first to see that Fichte's philosophy gestures in the direction of a theory of intersubjective recognition and a notion of the I as becoming itself through an ongoing process of Bildung. Schleiermacher's original contribution, Dilthey contends, is to bring out the hermeneutic potential of this model, to recast Fichte's notion of subjectivity as linguistic individuality, i.e., a process that allows for the situating of the I within a concrete cultural and historical context and to see its development as pending on its being able to express itself within and be part of a larger cultural-symbolic world. 44 In Dilthey's view, Schleiermacher thus adopts Fichte's philosophy in a way that reflects Fichte's own reading of Kant: Just as Fichte had taken himself to bring to light the promises of Kant's philosophy, so Schleiermacher brings out the hermeneutic promise implicit in Fichte's work. Dilthey's deeper motiva- tion is in other words to show how Schleiermacher, in developing a universal hermeneutics, makes use of the resources of transcendental philosophy, i.e., that his philosophy, in Fichte's idiom, is critical and not dogmatic. Yet Dilthey is, it seems, torn between the wish, on the one

2008), 22-47. See also Fichte, Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar's Vocation, Early Philosophical Writings, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale (Ithaca: Cornell Uni- versity Press, 1988), 144-185. 44 Dilthey significantly goes beyond the more narrow context of the hermeneutics manuscript to point out that in Schleiermacher's work, >>the I becomes individuality, and subjectivity of origin becomes that of content.« (SHS 103) In Schleier- macher's work, the I is taken to realize itself, along the lines sketched out by Fichte, through the deed, yet this deed is itself socially and historically mediated. (SHS 103-104)

349 Kristin Gjesdal I ' hand, to pay justice to Fichte's work and, on the other, to emphasize the originality of Schleiermacher' s contribution. How, then, about Schleiermacher's indebtedness to Herder? Dil- they's discussion of Herder is in some respects fundamentally different from his discussion of Fichte. As far as Fichte goes, the subjectivist threat of his work had already been pointed out by Schelling and Hegel. In this context, Dilthey's contribution is twofold. First, Dilthey does not worry about Fichte's alleged loss of the world, but points out that the science of knowledge underemphasizes individuality. Second he emphasizes that Fichte himself provides the resources to overcome the potential subjectivism of his theory. Hence Dilthey's picture is far more complex than that of Fichte's immediate successors. In the case of Herder, by contrast, there is no line of reception against which Dilthey can sharpen his arguments. In fact, it is Dilthey's achievement to bring Herder's hermeneutic potential to attention in the first place. 45 Yet, again, Dilthey' s argument remains somewhat underdeveloped. Moreover, his lack of textual references and the general scope of his observations make it difficult to fully grasp the radical implications of his claim. Divination and individuality are notions that belong within the framework of Herder's early work. The reference to humanity as a »Cos- mos of individualities«, by contrast, seems to resonate better with the perspective developed in Jdeen. It is an open question (and one that would transcend the framework of this paper) whether the early Herder's historical-empirical perspective can, without further ado, be unified with the teleological aspirations that saturate his work in the 1780s. 46 Again Dilthey's eagerness to emphasize Schleiermacher's originality seems to trump the desire to pay justice to the hermeneutic tenors of Herder's work. This impression gains further weight upon considering Dilthey's suggestion that only Schleiermacher balances the appeal to an intuitive-hypothetical approach (divination) with a historical-philological approach. This claim is plain wrong. Right from his early work, Herder

45 More recently, Herder's contribution to hermeneutics has been emphasized by Hans Dietrich Irmscher, who argues that his work represents an early version of Gadamerian philosophy. See Hans Dietrich Irmscher, Grundziige der Hermeneutik Herders, Schaumburger Studien, Heft 33 (Bi.ickeburg: Grimme, 1973), 17-57. I discuss this point of view in Literature, Prejudice, Historicity: The Hermeneutic Im- portance of Herder's Shakespeare Studies in Michael N. Forster and Klaus Vieweg (eds.), Die Aktualitat der Romantik (Berlin: LIT Verlag: forthcoming). For an overview of Herder's hermeneutics, see Michael N. Forster, Herder's Philosophy of Language, Interpretation, and Translation: Three Fundamental Principles, in After Herder, 55-91. 46 For a discussion of this point, see Frederick C. Beiser, The German Historicist Tra- dition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 148-167. sketches a dual approach to hermeneutics. On the one hand, he appeals to the notion of divination; on the other, he also emphasizes that the imagination must remain a »sister of truth«, i.e., of historical objectivity. 47 One could even suggest that it is precisely because Herder himself has come so far in articulating a hermeneutic turn in philosophy that Dilthey is able to emphasize Schleiermacher's indebtedness to his work. And precisely because Herder has already developed a hermeneutic consciousness, it would have been helpful to see Dilthey reflect more on the details of the relationship between Herder's and Schleiermacher's philosophies and clarify it with reference to concrete works, as well as actual, intellectual encounters between the two. Dilthey turns to Fichte and Herder so as to give his analysis of Schleiermacher systematic depth and historical perspective - and to emphasize how Schleiermacher, even within the framework of late Enlight- enment philosophy and idealism, proves a voice whose originality and relevance remains undisputed.48 Yet his aim is not only to provide a novel reading of Fichte, Herder, and Schleiermacher, but, also, through an account of the historical beginnings of modern hermeneutics, to lay out its systematic-philosophical possibilities. To the extent that Dilthey' s en- deavor is judged by these ambitions, it is indeed successful. Through his reading of the Fichte-Schleiermacher connection, Dilthey is able to illuminate how early nineteenth-century hermeneutics is grounded in the idea of subjectivity understood as a capacity for spontaneity as realized by a particular individual in a given historical-cultural context. Against the background of Fichte's philosophy, Schleiermacher initiates an expressive turn in Idealism. However, by analyzing Schleier- macher's critique of Fichte, Dilthey, in a second step, is able to show how this turn to the expressive I does not incur an abstract notion of subjectivism, but a deep-seated ethical obligation, that of the I-you relationship, which ultimately rests at the heart of Schleiermacher's social philosophy. The implications of this move should not be underestimated. If Schleier- macher is the one with whom hermeneutics turns modern, then modern hermeneutics is, from the very beginning, driven by a commitment to human plurality and individual diversity. By analyzing Schleiermacher's

47 Herder, On Thomas Abbt's Writings, Philosophical Writings, 175. 48 This, however, is not to say that Dilthey is uncritical of Schleiermacher. Indeed, Dilthey, in a letter from 1860, presents himself as a critic of Schleiermacher, yet praises him for having established universal hermeneutics. What appears to be most problematic for Dilthey, though, is the notion of Keimentschluss. See Rudolf A. Makkreel, Dilthey: Philosopher of the Human Sciences (Princeton: Princeton Uni- versity Press, 1975), 267-272. For Dilthey's remark, see Der Junge Dilthey. Ein Lebensbild in Briefen und Tagebuchern, 1852-1970, ed. Clara Misch (Stuttgart: B.G. Teubner, 1960), 103.

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affinity with Herder, Dilthey is able to give this ethical-anthropological turn a more concrete content: Schleiermacher is presented as a philosopher who seeks to enlighten the Enlightenment by situating human reason within a concrete historical, cultural, and anthropological context.

5. Concluding Remarks

At this point we are in a position to assess the implications of Dilthey's reading of Schleiermacher, his eagerness to situate him within a philosophical and not simply a philological context. This is not, as is sometimes assumed, because hermeneutics, as a theory of textual understanding, now emerges as a universal discipline, i.e., that it covers all texts and discourse rather than simply old or knotty manuscripts, be they of interest to classi- cists, historians, or students of religion. Rather, Schleiermacher's connection with Fichte and Herder allows Dilthey to rearticulate the agenda of hermeneutics. In Dilthey's reading, Schleiermacher does not simply in- quire into the best or most correct ways of understanding a given text or set of such. Rather, his question is that of a broader, philosophical anthropology: What is a human being? He answers this question by reference to a linguistically and historically mediated culture that serves as a backdrop for the individual as well as depending on it for dynamic re- newal. Schleiermacher, for Dilthey, counts as the father of modern hermeneutics precisely because he, in this way, fundamentally reshapes the question of hermeneutics in light of philosophical anthropology- and, by the same token, shows that the driving concerns of philosophical anthropology can, by the end of the day, only be answered by reference to hermeneutics. In Dilthey's reading, Schleiermacher's hermeneutics is not only one of aesthetic production and reproduction, but also a model that emphasizes the diversity of worldviews and the capacity of reason to grow and develop by expanding its horizon in and through the encounters with the outlook of others. At stake is not, as in Gadamer, the self-appropriation of the tradition through the spontaneous, Spiel-like realization of the truth or meaning-content of classical texts or works of art,49 but a critical- reflective procedure through which reason, in the encounter with other individuals, cultures, and periods, seeks to purge itself of prejudices so as to gain a richer understanding of the human condition. Hence, Dilthey's reading of modern hermeneutics offers an alternative, a systematically more complex and historically more adequate picture, to Gadamer's idea

49 I discuss this aspect of Gadamer's hermeneutics in Gadamer and the Legacy of German Idealism, 104-113. that hermeneutics either takes the course of an aesthetic-positivist philosophy of interpretation (which he, wrongly, ascribes, to Schleiermacher and Dilthey), or it follows his own ontological turn and insistence on the understanding being but a sublime happening of tradition. 50 Although Dilthey's 1860 essay discusses the origins of hermeneutics in Schleiermacher and his critical adoption of Fichte and Herder, it is not primarily a study in the history of hermeneutics. It is, rather, a study that, by going over the beginnings of modern hermeneutics, also marks the stakes for its future. As such it has retained its relevance. Or, to put it dif- ferently: Just as Schleiermacher's contribution poses a genuine philosophical challenge to Dilthey, so Dilthey's study, within the field of Schleiermacher scholarship more narrowly speaking as well as hermeneutics in a broader sense, presents a significant challenge to twenty-first century philosophers in their effort to show how hermeneutics can meaningfully contribute to the rapidly changing landscape of contemporary thought.

50 As Gadamer puts it, »understanding [... ] does not consist in a technical virtuosity of >understanding< everything written. Rather, it is a genuine experience (Erfah- rung) - i.e., an encounter with something that asserts itself as truth.« Truth and Method, 489. Hence, Gadamer adds, >>it is well founded for us to use the same concept of play for the hermeneutical phenomenon as for the experience of the beautiful. When we understand a text, what is meaningful in it captivates us just as the beautiful captivates us. It has asserted itself and captivated us before we can come to ourselves and be in a position to test the claim to meaning that it makes [... ] In understanding we are drawn into an event of truth and arrive, as it were, too late, if we want to know what we are supposed to believe.« Truth and Method, 490.

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