10.13125/CH/5453
application/pdf
2533-1825
5453
2
en
urn:nbn:it:unica-28974
Theodore D. George
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Critical Hermeneutics
Is Hermeneutics Realistic?
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch
6
Articles
2023-01-26
2023-01-24
2023-01-27
2023-01-27
191-210
1
Theodore D. George
2022
10.13125/CH/5453
191
2533-1825
2
210
urn:nbn:it:unica-28974
Is Hermeneutics Realistic?
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/article/download/5453/5358
6
Critical Hermeneutics 6(2), (2022)               Submission date: 22 January 2023
Biannual International Journal of Philosophy     Acceptance date: 22 January 2023
http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/index         Date of publication: 23 January 2023
ISSN 2533-1825 (on line); DOI 10.13125/CH/5453




                       Is Hermeneutics Realistic?
      On the Normative Orientation toward Plurality


                                Theodore D. George


Abstract
Significant proponents of both postmodern and realistic hermeneutics
suggest that our efforts to understand are better when they involve a
plurality of interpretative perspectives. The author of this essay ar-
gues, however, that a realist approach can provide a more persuasive
reason for this orientation toward plurality. Postmodern approaches in
hermeneutics suggest that we should pursue a plurality of interpreta-
tions to help us break free from the influence of reductive interpreta-
tions inherited from the past. Yet, this normative orientation runs the
risk of a proliferation of interpretations that leaves us in hermeneuti-
cal isolation from one another. A realistic hermeneutics, by contrast,
suggests that we should pursue a plurality of interpretations because
the matters of mutual concern to us are, in and of their own reality,
plural. This realistic reason to pursue a plurality of interpretations
does not silo us from one another but, on the contrary, reminds us of
the need for conversation that allows us to address our shared world
of matters of mutual concern.
Keywords: hermeneutics, postmodern approach, realistic approach,
plurality


Scholars observe that the broad impact of interest in ‘new’ and ‘spec-
ulative’ realism across the discipline of philosophy has also led to a
rift in hermeneutics between ‘postmodern’ and ‘realistic’ approaches
Theodore George, Is Hermeneutics Realistic?




to interpretive experience1. While this rift in hermeneutics warrants
attention along several lines, the focus of this essay will be to consid-
er a normative dimension of this rift. Significant proponents of both
postmodern and realistic hermeneutics suggest that understanding is
better when it involves a plurality of interpretations. Yet, as I wish to
show, a realistic approach can provide a more persuasive reason for
this normative orientation toward plurality. We are familiar with the
postmodern claim that interpreters should pursue a plurality of inter-
pretative perspectives, roughly, because this will help us to break free
from the hold of other, more reductive interpretations that we have
inherited from tradition. In such a postmodern hermeneutics, howev-
er, the normative orientation runs the risk of leading to a proliferation
of interpretative perspectives so divergent from one another that they
threated to divest us of any shared world whatsoever.
      In a hermeneutics oriented by realistic concerns, by contrast,
things are otherwise. There, as I shall argue, the concern is not pri-
marily that interpreters should pursue a plurality of interpretive per-
spectives because this will help us break the hold of reductive preju-
dices of the past. Rather, in realistic hermeneutics, the hold of reduc-
tive interpretations inherited from the past can be broken if we rec-
ognize that interpretations should bring into focus the plural character
of the matters themselves. On this realistic approach, interpretations
bring into focus a plurality of perspectives on a matter, but each per-
spective is nevertheless made possible through reference to the reali-
ty of that matter itself. In view of this, our pursuit of a plurality of
interpretations does not silo us in interpretations that have little to do
with one another, but, on the contrary, grant us access to a shared
world with points of reference in matters themselves.


1
  This rift has been discussed, for example, by Gianni Vattimo (Vattimo 2017), Gün-
ter Figal (Figal 2010). For a summary of the difference between postmodern and
realistic hermeneutics see George 2021: sections 7 and 8.4.



192
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1. Postmodern Hermeneutics and Plurality
Postmodern hermeneutics is influenced by the normative orientation
of postmodernism toward plurality. While postmodernism has been
described in different manners, within philosophy Jean François Lyo-
tard’s approach has been especially definitive. In his Postmodern
Condition, Lyotard identifies postmodernism with an “incredulity to-
ward metanarratives” (Lyotard 1993: xxiv). By ‘metanarratives’, he
has in mind broader narratives that are told in order to give legitima-
cy to discourses of modern sciences – for example, stories meant to
show that we should trust in the power of science to contribute to the
betterment of society. Postmodernism, then, is an incredulity toward
these stories. Such incredulity might take hold, say, when we become
exposed to discourses about nuclear war or environmentalism that
take the legitimating punch out of stories celebrating nuclear physics
because it has led to the betterment of society through the produc-
tion of a new and inexpensive energy source. Lyotard believes that
once such incredulity toward metanarratives takes hold, there is no
going back, so that what remains for us in our times now is to discern
how we should best respond to this new, postmodern condition. He
believes that the greatest danger of the postmodern condition is that
without   the    legitimation   formerly   provided   by    metanarratives,
knowledge will become commodified and access to it will become re-
stricted (14).
    Yet, Lyotard observes that in consequence of our incredulity to-
ward metanarratives, our power to create stories is also freed from
its former servitude to the legitimation of modern science. According-
ly, he believes that we should resist the reduction of knowledge to an
information commodity through the production of narratives that pro-
liferate an irreducible multiplicity of meanings, and with them, an ir-
reducible multiplicity of standards of value. Indeed, in a celebrated


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Theodore George, Is Hermeneutics Realistic?




passage from his Just Gaming, Lyotard associates this postmodern
normative orientation toward plurality with justice itself, arguing that
we should affirm the proliferation of a “multiplicity of justices”, that is,
narratives about what justice means. This affirmation of the multiplic-
ity of justices, however, really amounts to a (paradoxically universal-
istic) normative commitment to the “justice of multiplicity” (Lyotard
and Thébaud 1996: 100).
      Several philosophers associated with hermeneutics have been in-
fluenced by the spirit, if not the letter, of Lyotard’s postmodern nor-
mative orientation toward plurality (see Vattimo 1989; Caputo: 1987,
2018). One of the most familiar is Gianni Vattimo, and the postmod-
ern influence on hermeneutics is recognizable in his celebrated con-
ception of ‘weak thought’ (see Vattimo 1988). By weak thought, he
has in mind thought in the form of interpretations that incrementally
weaken the hold that reductive interpretations inherited from the past
continue to have over us. Whereas Lyotard believes that postmodern-
ism is defined by incredulity toward metanarratives, Vattimo, for his
part, remains concerned that interpretations inherited from tradition
can continue to have an effect. Building on Heidegger and Nietzsche,
he argues that interpretations inherited from the tradition of Western
metaphysics continue to influence us, often tacitly and obliquely
shaping a broad sweep of our beliefs, values and practices. In this, he
emphasizes how such interpretations inherited from Western meta-
physics can lead to a fatalistic complacency. Writing of traditional
Western metaphysical conceptions of truth, for example, he states,
“When you pick apart” the kind of “knowledge of the rational order of
the world” that such conceptions of truth reveal, “at the core of it you
uncover an enormous metaphysical reverence for the necessity that
transcends us: things are like that, they can’t not be like that, and I
may as well be content because I have to be content” (Vattimo 2010:
96). For Vattimo, interpretations inherited from the tradition of West-


194
                                              Critical Hermeneutics 6(2), (2022)




ern metaphysics may purport to concern the truth about things, but,
in effect, they function to stultify us.
     Against this backdrop, Vattimo argues that the normative orien-
tation of interpretation is not to understand the world as it is, but, on
the contrary, to engage in weak thought, or, the production of a plu-
rality of interpretations that help us to chip away at the complacency
to which reductive interpretations inherited from Western metaphys-
ics continue to lead. As he puts it,


     contrary to the letter of Marx’s famous phrase about philos-
     ophers who only interpret the world […] it is precisely by in-
     terpreting the world – and not by pretending to describe it
     in its given ‘objectivity’ – that one contributes to its trans-
     formation” (see Vattimo and Zabala 2014: 102).


   While Vattimo’s allusion to Marx’s celebrated Theses on Feuerbach
suggests a revolutionary intention, he nevertheless argues that weak
thought actually proceeds as a slow, incremental turning, or recovery
(Verwindung) from the influence of interpretations inherited from the
tradition of Western metaphysics. Ironically, Vattimo argues that this
process of recovery may be understood as progress toward complete
nihilism. Of course, in the interpretations we have inherited from
Western metaphysics, belief in God, the laws of nature, or being were
typically held up in opposition to the dangers of nihilism. But, for
Vattimo, such Western-metaphysical beliefs are themselves the dan-
ger, so that progress toward complete nihilism is really nothing else
than progress toward our emancipation.
   Vattimo’s postmodern hermeneutics, then, suggests that the rea-
son we should pursue a plurality of interpretations is to help us break
free from the stultification produced by the reductive interpretations
that we have inherited from the tradition of Western metaphysics. In


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Theodore George, Is Hermeneutics Realistic?




this, what we should do is pursue a plurality of interpretations help us
get over the pretense that our interpretations concern matters that
are creations of God, that have a nature, or belong to being – in
short, that our interpretations refer to anything like a fixed reality.
      Yet, the character of Vattimo’s normative orientation toward a plu-
rality of interpretations leaves us to wonder what will be left of any
shared world of interpretations as we progress toward complete nihil-
ism. What, we may ask, might remain of a shared world of interpre-
tations as we recover from the shared (albeit stultifying) world given
by interpretations inherited from the tradition of Western metaphys-
ics, or, for that matter, as we recover from the pretense of a shared
world based in reality? Indeed, we may come to wonder whether
Vattimo’s vision of our recovery from Western metaphysics might, at
the same time, introduce the risk of a different malady, a fragmen-
tary proliferation of interpretations that leave us with fewer and fewer
matters of mutual concern.


2. Realistic plurality
Recent interest in ‘new’ and ‘speculative’ realisms has proved to be
an inspiration for several philosophers to develop a hermeneutics ori-
ented by realistic concerns2. These realistic approaches, like post-
modern hermeneutics, suggest that our efforts to understand require
us to pursue a plurality of interpretive perspectives. Yet, in realistic
hermeneutics, there is a different reason for this normative orienta-
tion. Postmodern approaches, as we have seen, suggest that we
should pursue a plurality of interpretations in order to break free from
the hold of reductive interpretations that we have inherited from tra-
dition. In realistic hermeneutics, by contrast, our efforts to under-


2
  Philosophers associated with hermeneutics who have been found an impetus in
‘new’ and ‘speculative’ realisms include Günter Figal, Anton Koch, Tobias Keiling, as
well as Get-Jan van der Heiden, and others.



196
                                             Critical Hermeneutics 6(2), (2022)




stand require us to pursue a plurality of interpretations because the
matters we are interpreting themselves present us with a plurality of
possible meanings. Here, we need a plurality of interpretations be-
cause the matters we are concerned about are more complicated
than any one interpretation (or even any finite number of interpreta-
tions) can fully get at.
     Günter Figal, a current proponent of a realistic hermeneutics, ob-
serves that this realistic-hermeneutical reason for a normative orien-
tation toward plurality is anticipated in Gadamer’s philosophical her-
meneutics. It is true, as Figal observes in his Objectivity: The Herme-
neutical and Philosophy, that Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics
has received acclaim foremost for his celebration of plurality. Gada-
mer’s philosophical hermeneutics is celebrated for the claim that our
efforts to understand comprise an ‘infinite conversation. no less than
for his stress on motifs such as openness, listening, and play. In this,
Gadamer has received acclaim for aspects of his hermeneutics that
seem most compatible with postmodern sensibilities. Yet, less appre-
ciated is that Gadamer provides what seems to be a realistic reason
for his normative orientation toward plurality. Gadamer, after all,
maintains that our efforts to understand present an infinite task, and
that interpretive experience has to remain open, precisely because
our efforts to understand should remain sachlich, that is, salient or
substantive, and thus remain focused on the matters themselves (see
Figal 2010).
     In Truth and Method and elsewhere, Gadamer clarifies how his
normative orientation toward plurality derives from concern for the
matters themselves in connection with what he calls a hermeneutical
“conversation” (Gadamer 2013: 401 ff). Gadamer’s conception of a
hermeneutical conversation may be understood as a conversation in a
restricted sense. Generally, a conversation is a phenomenon that in-
volves interlocutors who listen and speak to one another in turns,


                                                                           197
Theodore George, Is Hermeneutics Realistic?




whether for the sake of their mutual (or respectively different) practi-
cal interests, for the sake of conviviality, or some other reason. But,
more narrowly, a hermeneutical conversation is a conversation for the
sake of genuinely understanding something of mutual concern to the
interlocutors. In this more restricted sense, Gadamer believes that a
conversation is an event that takes place, paradigmatically, between
two persons, though, as we know, he famously maintains that this
paradigm applies to the hermeneutical situation of text interpretation
– for him, text interpretation is a ‘conversation’ between interpreter
and text. In hermeneutical conversation, however, interlocutors do
not primarily listen and speak in turns to further pregiven practical
interests or for the sake of conviviality. Rather, in hermeneutical con-
versation, interlocutors listen and speak to one another for the sake
of learning the truth about a matter of mutual concern. In hermeneu-
tical conversation, the point, then, is to understand the matter as it
truly is.
      Gadamer emphasizes that when hermeneutical conversation suc-
ceeds, interlocutors also come to learn something about themselves,
thus achieving new self-understanding. Interlocutors achieve such
self-understanding in that their efforts to understand a matter can
lead them to recognize prejudices which have allowed them to mis-
understand that matter in important regards before they began to
converse about it. As interlocutors come to recognize these prejudic-
es, they can come to understand themselves differently, and perhaps
even to grow or change. Of course, the pursuit of such self-
understanding is a lifelong project, and interlocutors are never fin-
ished with discovering their own prejudices. Yet, even in this, a con-
versation leads interlocutors to new self-understanding only thanks to
their mutual concern to understand a matter as it truly is. In herme-
neutical conversation, self-understanding is an indirect consequence,
not the express purpose, of the interlocutors’ listening and speaking


198
                                              Critical Hermeneutics 6(2), (2022)




to one other. The express purpose is to understand a matter as it tru-
ly is.
     Gadamer’s conception of hermeneutical conversation brings into
focus that the truth of a matter appears not as something self-
evident but rather as something that is able to come into question.
After all, a hermeneutical conversation can only begin once interlocu-
tors recognize that the truth of the matter of mutual concern to them
is no longer obvious. Gadamer suggests that a matter is defined by
the fact that interlocutors can dispute what it truly is. In this, he
draws a connection between his hermeneutical notion of a matter, or
Sache, and the Latin notion of causa, a term used historically in the
context of Roman law. In his essay, “The Nature of Things and the
Language of Things”, he explains:


     the meaning of the German Sache is permeated above all by
     what is called causa, that is, the disputed ‘matter’ under
     consideration. Originally, it was the thing that was placed in
     the middle between disputing parties because a decision still
     had to be rendered regarding it (Gadamer 1977: 71).


     When Gadamer says that a hermeneutical conversation is about
a matter, he means that it is about something which can and, for
whatever reason, has come to be contested. Moreover, as the histori-
cal example of a legal case makes clear, a matter is not a simple enti-
ty but, instead, an affair or event, the determination of which re-
quires that we pay attention to a complex interplay of relevant prob-
lems, judgments, and consequences.
     Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics seems, then, to suggest
that in our efforts to understand, what allows our interpretations to
fall into dispute, what allows for a plurality of interpretations that can
lead to such a dispute dispute, is ultimately nothing else than the


                                                                            199
Theodore George, Is Hermeneutics Realistic?




character of the matters themselves. Certainly, in hermeneutical con-
versation, interlocutors may fall into dispute about the truth of a mat-
ter of their mutual concern because of the different traditions to
which they belong, the different life-contexts of the experiences they
have had, or the different contexts of experience they have had with
that matter in the past. But, what distinguishes a hermeneutics as
realistic is the idea that these differences are only able to make a dif-
ference because the matter is available to be experienced differently
through these different contexts in the first place. Yes, different con-
texts of experience can lead us to understand a matter as it truly is in
different manners. But, more originally, such a plurality of interpreta-
tions is made available by possibilities of being interpreted that al-
ready belong to the matter.
      In hermeneutical conversation, then, the truth of a matter comes
into dispute – not, however, simply because of the different contexts
of experience that interlocutors contribute to their efforts to under-
stand. Rather, they have been able to form different contexts of expe-
rience about the matter of mutual concern to them because the mat-
ter is itself many-sided, complex, and intricate.
      Figal, in his own contributions to a realistic hermeneutics, main-
tains that Gadamer’s realistic-hermeneutical reason for his normative
orientation toward plurality remains too understated, however. Figal
argues that Gadamer’s understatement is due to the fact that he re-
mains too indebted to his mentor Heidegger’s claim that understand-
ing has the sense of an ‘enactment’ of human existence (see, for ex.,
Figal 2010: 66–77). Figal reminds us that Gadamer, building on
Heidegger, maintains that understanding, grasped as a fulfilment of
interpretive experience, comprises an enactment of human existence.
As    we    have     seen,     Gadamer        understanding   results   in   self-
understanding as a consequence of our express purpose of interpre-
tating what a matter truly is. But, for Gadamer, following Heidegger,


200
                                                      Critical Hermeneutics 6(2), (2022)




our express purpose to interpret matters is itself oriented by our
care, or worry, for our own existence3.
        Figal, for his part, attempts to remedy Gadamer’s understate-
ment by placing stress on the fact that in comprising an enactment of
our existence, understanding always involves a sense of ‘reference’ to
matters themselves (see Figal 2010: 66–77; see also Figal 2014: 15–
20, esp., 19). As Figal argues, Gadamer is quite right that all off our
efforts to understand a matter is oriented by our care, or worry, for
our own existence. But, Gadamer’s emphasis on the fact that our ef-
forts to understand are therefore an enactment of our existence al-
ways refer us to something. Our efforts to understand are oriented by
our care, or worries, to work out the terms of our existence, but
these depend originally on what we wish to understand in the first
place, the matters themselves. As Gadamer recognizes but does not
emphasize adequely enough, our efforts to work out the terms of our
existence always work on and work through something; indeed,
something else, something not circumscribed by either our worries or
those of our interlocutor. Thus, interpretive experience is more than
an enactment of our existence, this enactment itself always refers us
to matters beyond us.
        Figal’s criticism of Gadamer, then, is that in his philosophical
hermeneutics, our interpretive experience of the being of something
from tradition does not ultimately have a referential sense. Now, it is
true that the occurrence, or movement, of hermeneutical experience
is initiated when something from tradition first appears as questiona-
ble to us. But, Gadamer characterizes this experience of questiona-
bleness not primarily as a question about a matter that stands on its
own; instead, he conceives of such questioning as the initial moment
of the enactment of tradition. The occurrence, or movement, of inter-


3
    Indeed, it is precisely this conception of understanding as an enactment of human



                                                                                    201
Theodore George, Is Hermeneutics Realistic?




pretive experience is an enactment of tradition precisely as the
transmission of the being of something from the tradition in its truth
through linguistic experiences such as those of conversation or text
interpretation. Figal writes,


      Heidegger, and, following him, also Gadamer, conceive of
      things exclusively on the basis of movement; for them,
      there is nothing that eludes, respectively, the movement of
      Dasein and the occurrence of inheriting something form the
      past. The attempt to distance oneself from the enactment of
      Dasein or from the occurrence of inheriting something from
      the past must itself accordingly be seen to belong to the en-
      actment or occurrence (Figal 2010: 17).


      Gadamer, despite his insistence that interpretive experience
should remain focused on the matters themselves, reduces our her-
meneutic distantiation from a matter to nothing more than a moment
of the enactment of understanding.
      Figal, for his part, maintains that our efforts to understand
should demand a plurality of interpretations precisely because inter-
pretive experience has a sense of reference to the matters them-
selves. For Figal, such a reference to a matter is to be grasped as a
“possibility of its reality” (ib.). When we successfully refer to some-
thing, the reference is not first of all a contribution of the subject,
but, instead, the realization of a possibility of the matter itself. Thus,
following Figal, we can say that when we successfully refer to a mat-
ter, that matter is really there in the reference, as a possibility or
mode of its reality, and that the matter has thus proved really to have
been available for the reference made to it (see Figal 2014: 17).


existence for which Gadamer finds a model in Aristotle’s practical philosophy.



202
                                             Critical Hermeneutics 6(2), (2022)




    But, because reference is to a possibility, it is bound up with a
plurality of other possible references. Our interpretive experience of a
matter can accordingly be grasped as a “complex play of possibilities
of reference and of possibilities of being there directly or indirectly”
(Figal 2015: 3). So, in our interpretive experience, the matter that
our interpretation is about is there in references and is available for
references; but this matter is nevertheless there in reference only
ever incompletely, in aspects. Or, if we are permitted to supplement
Figal’s terminology with another term that originates with Husserl: a
matter is there in reference, but incompletely, in ‘profiles’ (Ab-
schattungen). In such interpretive experience, the ‘complex play’ it-
self cannot be reduced to a fully determined unity. Figal writes,


    one refers to something, and this – the something – is in a
    certain manner there, as it can also be there in other
    references or as it can only be there in this reference. The
    play in its entirety is inexhaustible; with every Sache and
    Sachverhalt it is different and just as much so with every
    possibility of reference, which, however negligible, differs
    from other possibilities (ib.).


    A matter is there in our references to them; and, this is
confirmed by the fact that the matter also appears in other
references. But, by the same token, however, this matter itself always
exceeds its being there in any one or in even any nexus of
references.


3. Plurality, realistically
Postmodern and realistic hermeneutics suggest that our efforts to
understand should demand of us a plurality of interpretations. But, as
we have seen, the two approaches provide very different reasons for


                                                                           203
Theodore George, Is Hermeneutics Realistic?




this normative orientation. In postmodern hermeneutics, the reason
to pursue a plurality of interpretations is to help us break free from
reductive interpretations that we have inherited from the past. In a
realistic hermeneutics, by contrast, the reason that our efforts to
understand require a plurality of interpretations is that the matters
themselves present a plurality of perspectives. It speaks in favor of
the postmodern ‘should’ that it reminds us always to resist, subvert,
revise, and otherwise break apart reductive interpretations we have
inherited from the past. But, the realistic ‘should’ teaches that the
demand for plurality originates not from our interpretive practices
alone. Quite to the contrary, the realistic ‘should’ reminds us that in
our efforts to understand, the matters themselves hold more
possibilities than can be counted – not only to resist or subvert
interpretations we have inherited from the past, but also to interpret
our way to a shared future that brings us closer to the matters of
mutual concern to us.
      The difference in these postmodern and realistic reasons to
pursue a plurality of interpretations is, I believe, of real consequence.
In    postmodern       hermeneutics,          the   pursuit    of    a   plurality   of
interpretations that helps us break free from reductive interpretations
inherited from the past is, at the same time, a break from the
univocity, even hegemony, that can result from such reductivism. The
postmodern normative orientation toward plurality helps us to throw
off any one-size-fits-all interpretation that has been passed down to
us. But, this postmodern normative orientation toward plurality may
therefore also run the risk of separating us from one another, leaving
us siloed in interpretations that have little or nothing to do with each
other.
      In a realistic hermeneutics, too, the normative orientation
toward     plurality    will   also   help     us   break     free   from   reductive
interpretations inherited from the past – not because we produce new


204
                                                     Critical Hermeneutics 6(2), (2022)




interpretations that break apart old, reductive ones, but rather
because of our interpretive attention to the matters themselves. In
such a realistic approach, however, the normative orientation toward
plurality does not lead us to be stranded in isolated interpretive silos.
It leaves us there together, facing matters of mutual concern, though
without adequate hermeneutical resources, since we cannot yet
understand the matters and will never be able to produce a plurality
of interpretations large enough fully to understand them. In a realistic
hermeneutics, the consequence of the normative orientation toward
plurality is that by the time interlocutors enter into hermeneutical
conversation, they have already stumbled into something that
matters to both of them; that despite all interpretations inherited
from the past, they are not quite sure what it is or what to do about
it; and that their best hope is not to isolate themselves from one
another through an insistence on divergent interpretive perspectives,
but rather to work together to interpret the matter as much as
possible as it truly is.
       The consequences of the difference between postmodern and
realistic reasons to pursue plurality can be clarified by concrete
examples of interpretive practice. A case in point is a recent account
given by Graham McCaffrey, a scholar and practitioner of nursing
whose research is heavily influenced by hermeneutics. McCaffrey
does     not   identify    himself   with      the   program        of   a   realistic
hermeneutics,      but     his   sensitivity    to   issues    of    interpretation
nevertheless help me to draw out the consequences of the difference
between postmodern and realistic approaches pursuits of plurality. In
his recent book, Nursing and Humanities, he recounts an encounter
with (what I would see as a decidedly postmodern) phrase, ‘multiple
realities’. He writes:




                                                                                   205
Theodore George, Is Hermeneutics Realistic?




      It is a phrase I sometimes hear from graduate students try-
      ing to grapple with different points of view that look and
      sound irreconcilable […]. But it is a phrase I discourage be-
      cause it does suggest we can all live in our own separate
      worlds, somehow getting by respecting each other’s reality
      when in fact we have to contend and cooperate within one
      real world in its materiality (McCaffrey 2020: 53).


      In McCaffrey’s experience of the phrase ‘multiple realities’ among
his students, we find – despite the appearance of the word ‘reality’ –
the consequence of a decidedly postmodern normative orientation
toward plurality. For Vattimo, we recall, our pursuit of interpretive
plurality is not about a matter, but about our efforts to break free
from reductive interpretations inherited from the past. With McCaf-
frey’s experience of ‘multiple realities’, we find a position like
Vattimo’s treated as doctrine: since the plurality of interpretations
are, after all, all that there are; and since, after all, there could not
be any distinction between interpretations and reality anyway, why
not then simply identify the plurality of interpretations as realities in
the first place?
      Yet, as McCaffrey’s observations make clear, there is a danger in
this consequence of postmodern orientation toward plurality. With the
postmodern normative orientation toward plurality, we run the risk
that what our interpretations are supposed to be about, the matters
of mutual concern to us, will dwindle from being a matter under dis-
pute to becoming a matter merely of indifference, something that no
longer serves as a common point of reference for our different inter-
pretive approaches. In a realistic hermeneutics, the normative orien-
tation toward plurality reminds us that when we find ourselves con-
fronted by a matter that leads us into a dispute, it is not enough to
retreat from the dispute into our own perspective, or to retreat simply


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in the name of conflict avoidance, using the excuse that we all simply
have our own different, and in this case divergent, interpretations of
things. In a realistic hermeneutics, the normative orientation toward
plurality brings into focus that even in our divergent, contested, and
conflictual interpretive experiences, we are nevertheless bound to one
another by something. We are not, of course, bound by the possibility
that we will achieve a univocal interpretation, but, instead, by our
orientation toward the reality of our mutual, if interpretively complex,
points of reference: the matters themselves.


4. The person of experience, revisited
In all of hermeneutics, perhaps the most iconic image of the norms
that orient our efforts to understand is found in Gadamer’s invocation
of what he calls the ‘person of experience’. In his Truth and Method,
we recall, Gadamer maintains that the interpretive experience of
truth is distinctive because it contributes to our education (Bildung).
Yet, as Gadamer makes clear, this education amounts neither to a
cultivation of skills nor to a process of formation that helps us to con-
form to a pregiven ideal of the human being. Rather, as becomes evi-
dent from Gadamer’s approach, this is an education that principally
serves to ready us always to become – more educated through fur-
ther interpretive experiences. Thus, to become educated is nothing
else than to become a person of experience, and, as Gadamer main-
tains, the hallmark of this person is to have become ‘radically un-
dogmatic’. He writes,


    The experienced person proves to be […] someone who is
    radically undogmatic; who, because of the many experienc-
    es he has had and the knowledge he has drawn from them,
    is particularly well equipped to have new experiences and to
    learn from them. The dialectic of experience has its proper


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Theodore George, Is Hermeneutics Realistic?




      fulfillment not in definite knowledge but in the openness to
      experience that is made possible by experience itself (Gad-
      amer 2013: 364).


      In hermeneutics, to become educated through interpretive expe-
rience is not to become knowledgeable, or at least, not in the sense
of accumulating definitive knowledge or expertise. Rather, it is to
achieve a radical openness to new experience.
      What, however, counts as radically undogmatic, and what consti-
tutes such radical openness? It is not difficult to imagine how a pro-
ponent of postmodern hermeneutics might interpret Gadamer’s image
of the person of experience. From this postmodern perspective, per-
sons of experience are radically open, in that they have experience of
many interpretations, and, thereby, have become ready to produce
new interpretations that break free from the old, reductive interpreta-
tions they have inherited from the past. What a realistic hermeneutics
suggests, by contrast, is that persons of experience become radically
open though their many experiences of the matters themselves, and,
accordingly, through their experience of reality. The wisdom of expe-
rience is not simply that we must always be ready to interpret again
and anew. More originally, the wisdom of experience is that even as
we belong to the world, and even as we find ourselves confronted al-
ways and again by matters themselves, our interpretation will never
be an equal to these matters in their reality. On the one hand, we
find ourselves entrusted to the world, to matters of concern in their
reality, and, because we are thus entrusted, also dependent on and
vulnerable to them. Yet, on the other hand, we time and again find
ourselves forced to admit that this reality we trust in and depend on
is itself ambiguous, impossible to understand or manage definitively.




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