10.13125/CH/4957
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2533-1825
4957
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urn:nbn:it:unica-27784
Vinicio Busacchi
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Critical Hermeneutics
Editors' Introduction
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch
5
Articles
2021-10-21
2021-10-21
2021-10-22
2021-10-22
I-VI
1
Vinicio Busacchi
2021/10/21
10.13125/CH/4957
I
2533-1825
1
VI
urn:nbn:it:unica-27784
Editors' Introduction
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/article/download/4957/4934
5
Critical Hermeneutics, 5 (2021)
Biannual International Journal of Philosophy
http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/index
ISSN 2533-1825 (on line); DOI 10.13125/CH/4957




                            Editors’ Introduction



Emilio Betti was not only one of the greatest Romanists and jurists of
the contemporary era, but he was also a historian and philosopher.
      As a legal scholar, his writings on the great themes of legal his-
tory and on the philosophers who have dealt with them certainly de-
serve reconsideration and critical evaluation. In addition, Betti’s anal-
ysis of the role of jurists and their prudential deserves attention.
These include analyses and reflections on the different eras of Roman
history, both during the Republic and in subsequent eras, which are
still of absolute relevance today. In particular, it is the debate on
pandectics and the importance of the critique of European pandectics
that marks an epochal shift in the study of law. Betti was an eminent
scholar of law, who studied it in all its forms, always studying law
from a historical and dynamic perspective, and had been a teacher
not only of Roman law, but of various legal disciplines, and above all
of subjects that had the current law as its object, in particular con-
temporary law.
      From a philosophical point of view, Betti’s hermeneutics can be
considered an alternative to Rudolf Bultmann and Hans-Georg Gada-
mer’s approaches whom he regarded as subjectivists, although it is
necessary to underlie the strong relationship between Betti and
Dilthey’s thought, and also Gadamer’s, who are continuously cited in
the Teoria generale dell’interpretazione (General Theory of Interpre-
tation). For Betti, they represented a constant point of reference. Bet-
ti, in fact, in the wake of Dilthey, did not fully adhere to German his-
toricism, and the central point is represented, as it is for Dilthey, by
the critique of historical reason; and for this reason Betti did not give
Editors’ Introduction




great importance to the study of the systematic profiles of juridical
thought and to the connections of doctrinal elaboration with living
law.
       For Betti, it is very important to recognise an objective character
to legal interpretation, which manifests itself through the connections
of jurists’ evaluations with real life. Jurists, by their knowledge of the
world through their direct experiences and through the connections
between their statements and real life, can reach an important level
of knowledge, which can become an exemplary model of the same
philosophy. Intending and interpreting constituted for Betti, as it did
for Dilthey, the central point of hermeneutical philosophy, and it is for
this reason that the contrast with Gadamer, who Betti cited continu-
ously, quoting passages from the works and a letter from Gadamer
himself, does not constitute, as some interpreters want, an element
so important that it can be placed at the centre of a controversy
which is not in fact fundamental.
       As Jean Grondin underlines,


       On    a   souvent   voulu       voir   dans   l’herméneutique      pré-
       heideggérienne une méthodologie des sciences humaines. Si
       l’idée    remonte   bien    à    la    fin   du   XIXe   siècle,   cette
       méthodologie herméneutique des sciences humaines n’a
       vraiment été élaborée de façon systématique qu’après
       Heidegger et en réaction à sa conception ontologique de
       l’interprétation, par le juriste italien Emilio Betti1.


       In the various attempts to organise the different addresses of
twentieth-century hermeneutics, Betti’s philosophical research on


1
  Grondin, J. (1990). L’herméneutique comme science rigoureuse selon Emilio Betti
(1890-1968). Archives de Philosophie, 53(2): 177–198.



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                                                       Critical Hermeneutics, 5 (2021)




interpretation has therefore always had – and not wholly inaccurately
– a particular position. J. Bleicher considers Betti the paradigmatic
reference     of   the        methodological    address      of    contemporary
hermeneutics, as opposed to Heidegger, Gadamer, Bultmann, Fuchs
and Ebeling’s ontological address, to Apel, Habermas, Lorenzer and
Sandkühler’s       critical      approach,      and     to     Paul       Ricoeur’s
phenomenological-hermeneutical approach2.
     Betti concentrated mainly on the study of legal dogmatic from a
historical   and   scientific     perspective   of    interpretation,      strongly
rejecting the universalisation of hermeneutical thought both in an
ontological and “existentialist” sense (he would certainly have
rejected the idea of interpretation as productive contemporary koinè).
Simultaneously, however, his scientific and philosophical research
covers another aspect of interest and concern – worthy of clarification
and further study –, that is the concern and interest on humanism.
This concern and interest is clearly reflected in the legal knowledge
itself which, according to Betti must be characterised by the need to
pursue objectives in a practical sense, not scholastic doctrines or
political ideologies.
     Indeed, Betti can be considered as the main contemporary
exponent of that “veritative hermeneutics” which never ceases to
pursue the “truth” of interpretation, coming to formulation in the
famous Teoria generale dell’interpretazione a series of principles and
methods      capable     of     opening   interpretation     to    understanding
“interpretandum”, that is the “object” of interpretation consisting, in
Betti’s opinion, of all those “representative forms” which are the
products of the spirit of man in history. Moreover, Gadamer himself,
often opposed to Betti, in a report given in 1960 to the “Deutsche


2
  See Bleicher, J. (1980). Contemporary Hermeneutics: Hermeneutics as Method,
Philosophy and Critique. London-Boston-Henley: Routledge and P. Kegan.



                                                                                   III
Editors’ Introduction




Kongress für Philosophie”, titled: Die Natur der Sprache und die
Sprache der Dinge, published later in the second edition of Truth and
Method, marks a notable difference between the “nature of the thing”
and the “language of the objects”, stating similarly to Betti, that the
Sachlichkeit, or the “concreteness”, assumes a role of command in
front of the person, as it needs to be recognised and to be interpreted
in its intimate and real constitution.       What Gadamer himself calls
“objectivity”, in the jurist Betti it is coloured by the Roman juridical
concept of res, which indicates a relational relationship not only
between the interpreter and the thing, but also between the
interpreter and all the horizon of interpretations of res which is
concretely represented by the historical doctrinal and jurisprudential
tradition, which is not therefore available to the discretion of the
singular      interpreter.   Hence   Betti   emphasises    the   need    for
hermeneutics to respect the otherness and truth of the “object” of
interpretation.
      It is in this sense that he strived to remain faithful to the tasks of
a historical and evaluative conception of interpretation, one which is
able to question itself, with the necessary critical detachment, both
from the conflicting interests of the protagonists of political and
economic life, as well as from those of parties to individual juridical
disputes. Betti considers the educational moment to be essential,
because from such the dynamic meaning of the experiences that the
jurist makes in evaluating real phenomena is so derived, and thus
better use the hermeneutic and evaluative paths.
      In conjunction with the reflection on the placement of Betti’s
work in the contemporary legal and philosophical panorama, and on
the characteristics of its hermeneutics as a methodology for the
human and social sciences, we can ask ourselves what are the key
references and constitutive characteristics of Betti’s Humanism, how




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                                               Critical Hermeneutics, 5 (2021)




is it understood and applied today in both the legal and philosophical
fields, and what perspectives it opens up.
    The papers collected in this issue and delivered by the editors to
the reader offer a significant contribution to the rethinking and
updating of Emilio Betti’s work along the aforementioned thematic
lines. This is a contribution made even more ‘significant’ due to the
variety of disciplinary expertise of the authors who have contributed
to it – a variety which reflects the breadth, depth and importance of
the lesson of this great contemporary jurist and thinker.




                                                       Angelo A. Cervati
                                                            Gaspare Mura
                                                         Vinicio Busacchi




                                                                            V
Editors’ Introduction




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