Hermeneutics Hermeneutik und and the Humanities Geisteswissenscha en DIALOGUES WITH | IM DIALOG MIT - LUP Hermeneutics and the Humanities.indd | Sander Pinkse Boekproductie | 01-05-12 / 14:17 | Pag. 1 Hermeneutics and the Humanities Hermeneutik und die Geisteswissenschaften Hermeneutics and the Humanities.indd | Sander Pinkse Boekproductie | 01-05-12 / 14:17 | Pag. 2 Hermeneutik und die Geisteswissenschaften im dialog mit hans-georg gadamer Hermeneutics and the Humanities.indd | Sander Pinkse Boekproductie | 01-05-12 / 14:17 | Pag. 3 Hermeneutics and the Humanities dialogues with hans-georg gadamer Edited by Madeleine Kasten, Herman Paul, Rico Sneller Leiden University Press Hermeneutics and the Humanities.indd | Sander Pinkse Boekproductie | 01-05-12 / 14:17 | Pag. 4 Cover design and lay-out: Sander Pinkse Boekproductie, Amsterdam ISBN 978 90 8728 154 0 e-ISBN 978 94 0060 072 0 (pdf) e-ISBN 978 94 0060 073 7 (ePub) NUR 730 © M.J.A. Kasten, H.J. Paul, H.W. Sneller/Leiden University Press 2012 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reser - ved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or intro- duced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Hermeneutics and the Humanities.indd | Sander Pinkse Boekproductie | 01-05-12 / 14:17 | Pag. 5 Table of contents Acknowledgments 7 Introduction 9 Herman Paul 1 Das Verstehen verstehen: Sieben Annäherungen an und Entfernungen von Hans Georg Gadamers Wahrheit und Methode 15 Jochen Hörisch 2 Should We Understand? Gadamer’s Supererogation of Hermeneutics 31 Rico Sneller 3 Der unvollkommene ‘Vorgriff auf Vollkommenheit’: Die Auseinandersetzung von Leo Strauss mit Hans-Georg Gadamer 48 Ulrike Weichert 4 Die ‘Philosophie des Gesprächs’ als Soziologie: Gadamer und das Neue Denken 68 Knut Martin Stünkel 5 The Absolute Presupposition of Language: Agamben Reading Gadamer 92 Gert-Jan van der Heiden 6 Der Spielraum reflexiver Praxis: Gadamer und die Kritische Theorie 110 Stefan Deines 7 Geschichte verstehen: Ein Dialog zwischen Gadamer und Foucault 133 Daniel Martin Feige 8 Gadamer and Philosophy of History: A Conversation Waiting to Begin 151 Herman Paul 9 Hermeneutics and the History of Political Thought 173 Reidar Maliks Hermeneutics and the Humanities.indd | Sander Pinkse Boekproductie | 01-05-12 / 14:17 | Pag. 6 6 – Hermeneutics and the Humanities z10 The Humanities as Conversation and Edification: On Rorty’s Idea of a Gadamerian Culture 186 Marc-Antoine Vallée 11 Wor(l)ds at Play: Gadamer and the Dynamics of Literary Translation 198 Madeleine Kasten 12 Surprised by Sameness: Gadamer’s Concept of ‘Recognition’ Applied to Modern Poetry 217 Bernard Micallef 13 Gadamer and the End of Art 239 Eddo Evink 14 Faith as Fusion of Horizons? 251 Mathieu Scraire 15 Gadamer and Law: Common Law and Continental Developments 268 Christopher Walshaw 16 Gadamer’s Truth and Method and Moral Case Deliberation in Clinical Ethics 287 Guy A.M. Widdershoven & Suzanne Metselaar Ausblicke 306 Madeleine Kasten & Rico Sneller Contributors 315 Index 318 Hermeneutics and the Humanities.indd | Sander Pinkse Boekproductie | 01-05-12 / 14:17 | Pag. 7 Acknowledgments The editors should like to thank all those who contributed to the con- ference at which the papers collected in this volume were presented. They are indebted to the animated group of speakers that made the conference a truly intellectually stimulating event, to Leiden University Library for hosting a reception and arranging a small but interesting exposition of Gadamer-related materials, to Ohad Ben Shimon for his artistic contribution, to David Claszen, Deneb Kozikoski, and Giel Vis- ser for their practical assistance, and to the institutions that provided generous funding: the Faculty of Humanities, the Institutes of Phi- losophy, History, Religious Studies, and Cultural Disciplines, the Lei- den University Fund, and the Leiden University Lustrum Committee. A special word of thanks is due to Jef Jacobs, Marlein van Raalte, and Gerard Visser for their contagious enthusiasm and disinterested help in various forms. The editors also express their gratitude to the edito- rial board of Leiden University Press for adding this volume to its list, to Yvonne Twisk and Inge Mennen for their unflagging cooperation, to Priya Darshini Swamy for correcting some of the chapters written by non-native English speakers, to Mihai Grigore for correcting the Ger- man epilogue, and to Christiaan Engberts for his editorial assistance. Hermeneutics and the Humanities.indd | Sander Pinkse Boekproductie | 01-05-12 / 14:17 | Pag. 8 Hermeneutics and the Humanities.indd | Sander Pinkse Boekproductie | 01-05-12 / 14:17 | Pag. 9 Introduction Herman Paul When, in 1997, Hans-Georg Gadamer was invited to look back upon his intellectual life, he devoted special attention to his teaching and lectur- ing experiences. In an almost nostalgic vein, he expatiated on the joys he had found in reading and thinking aloud with his philosophy stu- dents at Marburg, Leipzig, and Heidelberg. Likewise, he remembered with great fondness the lecture trips he had made through the United States and Canada after his retirement in 1968. The fact that, on such occasions, his audiences had usually been far more diverse than those assembled in his German seminar rooms did not seem to disturb him. To the contrary, Gadamer spoke with enthusiasm about the various groups of scholars that he had encountered during his lecture tours in North America. He had visited theology departments as well as ‘depart- ments related to language and literature, especially comparative litera- ture, departments which in the German language we sometimes refer to as the “philological disciplines”’. He even remembered thoughtful conversations with lawyers and medical doctors, all of whom, in Gad- amer’s recollection, had begun ‘to acquaint themselves with the prob- lems dealt with in hermeneutical philosophy’.1 The ease with which Gadamer crossed, or tried to cross, disciplinary boundaries between philosophy, on the one hand, and literary, histori- cal, or religious studies, on the other, should come as no surprise. ‘I believe’, he went on to explain, ‘one can say that the “Geisteswissenschaf- ten”, as we call them in German, and those disciplines which in English are labeled the “Humanities”, and those which in French are broadly called “Lettres”, have just as much inherited “Western metaphysics” as philosophy itself has.’2 Moreover, these humanities or Geisteswis- senschaften (including law and medicine) all engage in interpretative practices of the kind that lie at the heart of hermeneutic philosophy. If, following Gadamer’s definition, ‘hermeneutics is above all a prac- tice, the art of understanding and of making something understood to someone else’,3 then the humanities are thoroughly hermeneutic. Humanities scholars tirelessly practice the delicate art of trying to make sense of ancient lines of poetry, Renaissance pen drawings, medieval political theories, or the mentality of nineteenth-century British fac- Hermeneutics and the Humanities.indd | Sander Pinkse Boekproductie | 01-05-12 / 14:17 | Pag. 10 10 – Hermeneutics and the Humanities tory workers. Humanities scholars continuously study cultural artifacts in an attempt to make cultures distant in space or time ‘understood to someone else’. Wahrheit und Methode frequently draws on interpreta- tive practices such as those found in law, literature, and (art) history to elucidate the nature of hermeneutic understanding. These affinities between the humanities and Gadamer’s project help explain why Wahrheit und Methode has received quite some attention from scholars working in the humanities or Geisteswissenschaften. Ever since its appearance in 1960, the book has not merely been read by phi- losophers, but also among theologians, lawyers, literary scholars, (art) historians, and classicists. In each of these disciplinary contexts, Gad- amer’s philosophy has resonated, just as it still resonates, with ques- tions that all humanities scholars at some point have to ask themselves: What does it take to interpret a Shakespeare tragedy, given our cultural distance from early seventeenth-century London and/or the shelves of studies previously written on the Bard of Avon? What imaginative capacities are required for the interpretation of medieval religious art? Is there a difference, in terms of the interpretative work required, between historians working their ways through huge piles of twenti- eth-century administrative records and classicists trying to reconstruct an ancient world from two or three shreds of papyrus? In what sort of relationship to our subjects of study do we find ourselves if we try to challenge an existing interpretation? In whatever sense can we claim ‘truth’ or, perhaps less ambitiously, ‘plausibility’ for our interpretative proposals? Given the obvious affinities between these questions and the themes that run through Wahrheit und Methode, it is not particu- larly remarkable that the Wirkungsgeschichte of Gadamer’s hermeneu- tics has never been confined to circles of professional philosophers. Wahrheit und Methode has been a source of inspiration, discussion, and controversy throughout the humanities. This is not to say that Gadamer’s interventions have met with unani- mous appraisal. As early as 1965, the American literary scholar Eric D. Hirsch made Gadamer