Gadamer and the Transmission of History

Jerome Veith

Description

Observing that humans often deal with the past in problematic ways, Jerome Veith looks to philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer and his hermeneutics to clarify these conceptions of history and to present ways to come to terms with them. Veith fully engages Truth and Method as well as Gadamer's entire work and relationships with other German philosophers, especially Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger in this endeavor. Veith considers questions about language, ethics, cosmopolitanism, patriotism, self-identity, and the status of the humanities in the academy in this very readable application of Gadamer's philosophical practice.

Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. From Structure to Task
2. Historical Belonging as Finite Freedom
3. The Infinity of the Dialogue
4. New Critical Consciousness
5. The Bildung of Community
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Épistémologie
• Philosophie de l'esprit
• Movements
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Phenomenology

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 02 février 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253016041
• Langue: English

Extrait

Gadamer and the Transmission of History
STUDIES IN CONTINENTAL THOUGHT
John Sallis, editor
Consulting Editors
Robert Bernasconi
J. N. Mohanty
Rudolph Bernet
Mary Rawlinson
John D. Caputo
Tom Rockmore
David Carr
Calvin O. Schrag
Edward S. Casey
Reiner Sch rmann
Hubert Dreyfus
Charles E. Scott
Don Ihde
Thomas Sheehan
David Farrell Krell
Robert Sokolowski
Lenore Langsdorf
Bruce W. Wilshire
Alphonso Lingis
David Wood
William L. McBride
Gadamer and the Transmission of History
Jerome Veith
This book is a publication of
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2015 by Jerome Veith
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences - Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z 39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Veith, Jerome, 1981-
Gadamer and the transmission of history / Jerome Veith.
pages cm. - (Studies in Continental thought)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-01598-3 (cl : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-01604-1 (eb) 1. Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 1900-2002. I. Title.
B 3248. G 34 V 45 2015
193 - dc23
2014049506
1 2 3 4 5 20 19 18 17 16 15
FOR MY PARENTS
Jede Antwort bleibt nur so lange als Antwort in Kraft, dass die Frage auch bewusst bleibt.
MARTIN HEIDEGGER , Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes
I project the history of the future.
WALT WHITMAN , To a Historian
Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1 From Structure to Task
2 Historical Belonging as Finite Freedom
3 The Infinity of the Dialogue
4 New Critical Consciousness
5 The Bildung of Community
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
IN THE CONSIDERABLE TIME THIS BOOK SPENT COMING TO fruition, many people contributed to its course. I owe my initial fascination with Gadamer s ideas to James Risser, who introduced me to hermeneutics as a student and who remains an ongoing interlocutor in all matters philosophical. The core thoughts presented here took shape in my years at Boston College, during which I gained immensely from conversations with colleagues, friends, and mentors. John Sallis, Bill Richardson, and Susan Shell provided both sustaining encouragement and strengthening criticism. In many Gadamer reading groups over the years, I gleaned insights from Fred Lawrence, John Cleary, Robert Kehoe, William Britt, James Brennan, and Byron George. Through conversations with Vanessa Rumble, Jeffrey Bloechl, and Dennis Shirley, I was able to develop several tacit themes of my project. In their own ways, the following friends aided my thoughts and abetted my writing: Madeline Ashby, Kevin Berry, Paul Birney, Jon Burmeister, Neal and Tanya Deroo, Daniele DeSantis, Shane Ewegen, Emily Johnson, Ariane Kiatibian, Emmaline McCourt, Nicola Mirkovic, Paul Prociv, Erin Stackle, Laura Tomlinson.
I am grateful to the Ernest Fortin Memorial Foundation for a generous summer grant in 2011, and to the Fulbright Scholarship Board for a research grant to Freiburg in 2011-2012, during which I enjoyed a wonderfully rich environment of discussion and insight. I owe special thanks to G nter Figal and Tobias Keiling for helping sustain an atmosphere so conducive to thinking. Finally, I would like to thank the publishers Vittorio Klostermann (Frankfurt am Main) and Mohr Siebeck (T bingen) for permission to use previously published material for chapters 1 and 2 .
List of Abbreviations
WORKS BY HANS-GEORG GADAMER
BP
The Beginning of Philosophy
CPA
Century of Philosophy
HD
Hegel s Dialectic
GW
Gesammelte Werke
GW 1
Hermeneutik I: Wahrheit und Methode
GW 2
Hermeneutik II: Wahrheit und Methode, Erg nzungen
GW 3
Neuere Philosophie I: Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger
GW 4
Neuere Philosophie II: Probleme, Gestalten
GW 8
sthetik und Poetik I: Kunst als Aussage
GW 10
Hermeneutik im R ckblick
PH
Philosophical Hermeneutics
RAS
Reason in the Age of Science
TM
Truth and Method
WORKS BY G. W. F. HEGEL
IPH
Introduction to the Philosophy of History
PR
Philosophy of Right
PS
Phenomenology of Spirit
RH
Reason in History
SL
Science of Logic
WORKS BY MARTIN HEIDEGGER
BW
Basic Writings , ed. by Krell
GA
Gesamtausgabe (volume numbers listed in bibliography)
HR
The Heidegger Reader , ed. by Figal
SZ
Sein und Zeit , Niemeyer edition
WORKS BY IMMANUEL KANT
CJ
Critique of Judgment
CPR
Critique of Pure Reason
OTHER FREQUENTLY CITED VOLUMES
DH
Dimensionen des Hermeneutischen , ed. by Figal and Gander
GC
Gadamer s Century , ed. by Malpas, Arnswald, and Kertscher
HAC
Gadamer s Hermeneutics and the Art of Conversation , ed. Andrzej Wiercinski
HVO
Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other , by Risser
HW
Hermeneutische Wege , ed. by Figal, Grondin, and Schmidt
KA 27
Sein und Zeit , ed. by Rentsch
KA 30
Wahrheit und Methode , ed. by Figal
SR
The Specter of Relativism , ed. by Schmidt
Gadamer and the Transmission of History
Introduction
THE PAST IS FINISHED, SO MUCH IS CLEAR. YET IT IS DIFFICULT to determine exactly what kind of finality it possesses. Certainly it cannot be changed or undone. It stands, remains, and retains significance. Were it the case that this significance remained univocal or stable, one could not speak of multiple interpretations of the past; one could extrapolate from the facts only a bare and unchanging meaning that the past possesses. Yet somehow, while being utterly complete, the past continues to be reactivated in different ways.
In a talk delivered in Boston in 2009, 1 the German jurist and writer Bernhard Schlink discussed several ways in which the heritage of World War II has been received domestically by the various generations since its occurrence: first came an initial resistance against investigating the war s atrocities; then there was a thorough confrontation between younger and older generations; and now more recent generations react with apathy, ennui, even resentment toward remembrance of the war. They have grown weary of a standardized moralistic narrative, of visiting yet another memorial or museum, of being burdened with events that, to them, seem long past.
This latter stance, though perhaps not consciously, is a clear response to the fixed message with which remembrance has been imbued over six decades. By sweepingly dismissing this message, some attempt to liberate themselves from the responsibility and perceived burden of remembering the one sanctioned account. Yet Schlink contends that, while the past indeed cannot be mastered and given a finalized, univocal meaning, it can certainly also never be dismissed completely, as this would itself constitute an impossible finality. Instead, the way that each generation takes up or rejects its past depends on that generation s own reactions, questions, and concerns, and this precisely prevents a dismissal of the past, as it entails that history will simply become present in a different way for them.
Coming to terms with the past, gleaning meaning from it, is an apparently universal human concern. Yet it evidently means something other than ensuring remembrance through the permanent formulation of lessons, or else rejecting memory completely for an ostensible new beginning. Rather, the exercise of memory, the understanding of history, means to leave historical meaning and the significance of the past unconditioned by predetermined expectations or categories, to engage with it openly and by consciously acknowledging its role in one s present concerns. It would be inaccurate to describe this as a move from active preservation to passive acceptance, however; the process of understanding history clearly involves both. Yet to grasp this shift, and to elaborate what an open engagement with history entails, involves nothing less than a complete reconception of how humans participate in and advance history. 2
Hans-Georg Gadamer, himself a witness to the entire twentieth century s historical developments, provides just such a reconception in his philosophical hermeneutics. His magnum opus Truth and Method , with its core assertion of the historicity of understanding, attempts to describe individual interpretive experience, and thereby the movement of history in general, more adequately than philosophies based in epistemological frameworks. Gadamer analyzes our intrinsic ontological involvement with the past and underscores that tradition, or historical transmission, is something that we always stand within and continually pass along. It is a process that, because of its continuity and fluidity (especially also its linguistic register), will always generate understanding in different ways. Importantly, and contrary to many detractors of Gadamer s hermeneutics, this does not relinquish the notion of any meaning in history whatsoever, nor relegate the pursuit of truth to relativized, incommensurable subjects. Instead, it challenges us to inquire into the way that truth occurs within history and the differential space of intersubjectivity, to uncover what makes the continually different understandings of history possible to begin with, and to ask what kind of truth these interpretations amount to. As Gadamer puts it, the task of hermeneutics, seen philosophically, consists in asking what kind of understanding, what kind of scien