10.13125/CH/5433
application/pdf
2533-1825
5433
2
en
urn:nbn:it:unica-28967
Günter Figal
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Critical Hermeneutics
The Task of Hermeneutics
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch
6
Articles
2023-01-26
2022-12-20
2023-01-27
2023-01-27
17-33
1
Günter Figal
2022
10.13125/CH/5433
17
2533-1825
2
33
urn:nbn:it:unica-28967
The Task of Hermeneutics
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/article/download/5433/5365
6
Critical Hermeneutics 6(2), (2022)                  Submission date: 5 January 2023
Biannual International Journal of Philosophy        Acceptance date: 5 January 2023
http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/index            Date of publication: 27 January 2023
ISSN 2533-1825 (on line); DOI 10.13125/CH/5433




                        The Task of Hermeneutics


                                     Günter Figal




Abstract
Philosophical hermeneutics, as it was founded and elaborated by
Hans-Georg Gadamer, has been focused on the experience of under-
standing and thus has been existential. In contrast to that, I argue
for a conception of hermeneutics that is oriented to the objects of in-
terpretation and understanding and thus is “objective” in character.
Philosophical hermeneutics conceived in this way is normative in that
it sets up hermeneutical objects such as texts, images or pieces of
music as a measure for the adequacy and inadequacy of understand-
ing. What is to be interpreted and understood adequately is what I
intend to explain as the “primordial meaning” of a hermeneutical ob-
ject.
Keywords: Gadamer, hermeneutics, hermeneutical object, primordi-
al meaning


1.
Today no one could seriously doubt that hermeneutics as a conceptu-
al reflection of understanding and interpretation is an integral and
generally recognized part of philosophy. However, what kind of phi-
losophy is it? Does it smoothly fit the traditional context of philoso-
phy, and if so, in which way? Does hermeneutics bring about just a
kind of extension, or does it modify the context of philosophy?
Günter Figal, The Task of Hermeneutics




     Such questions have formed an essential aspect of philosophical
hermeneutics already at its very beginning with Gadamer’s Truth and
Method. Gadamer aims at determining the philosophical character of
hermeneutics along the lines of practical philosophy, more precisely
of ethics. As he points out in his pertinent considerations on “the
hermeneutical relevance of Aristotle” (Gadamer 1986: 317–329), eth-
ical as well as hermeneutical knowledge is essentially practice-
related. Like practical knowledge in terms of Aristotle, phronesis, un-
derstanding in terms of Gadamer is immediately relevant to the con-
duct of human life. Clarifying different possibilities of action practical
knowledge is not a merely cognitive endeavor, but an integral aspect
of action as such, and as Gadamer holds understanding likewise is an
application of the subject matter understood to the life situation of
the understanding person. For instance, understanding a traditional
text such as Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics one would understand
one’s particular life situation as a concretion of the text’s meaning.
One would understand oneself in terms of Aristotle’s text. According
to Gadamer, the claim to read and understand ‘just a text’ without
any existential effect would show an abstract and thus insufficient
understanding of understanding.
     The analogy of ethics and hermeneutics Gadamer introduces is
supposed not only to hold true for practical knowledge and under-
standing, but also for practical and hermeneutical philosophy. As
Gadamer says both are closely related to their subject matter respec-
tively and thus not merely theoretical in character. In order to charac-
terize this position between practice and theoretical reflection, Gada-
mer stresses that philosophical ethics must neither seek to replace
the ethical consciousness of everyday life nor be content to offer the-
oretical or historical elucidations. Rather its task is to foster the clari-
ty of ethical consciousness by clarifying phenomena pertinent to ethi-
cal orientation (Gadamer 1986: 318). Likewise, philosophical herme-


18
                                              Critical Hermeneutics 6(2), (2022)




neutics is supposed to not merely conceive understanding and even
less to replace it, but to elucidate understanding in its structure and
character and thus to improve the clarity of hermeneutical practice.
Taking up philosophical elucidations of understanding, one would un-
derstand more consciously than without them. According to Gadamer
the improvement of such consciousness and clarity is the task of phil-
osophical hermeneutics.
    Gadamer’s considerations concerning ethics and hermeneutics
may, at the first moment, sound plausible. However, examined more
closely they do not stand up to critical inquiry. Why should one make
better decisions after having learned something about the character
of decisions, for instance by having read the Nicomachean Ethics, and
why should philosophical clarifications of the structure of understand-
ing improve one’s ability to adequately understand a text? Stressing
that it is family background and education that provides practically
relevant knowledge of what is right and wrong, Gadamer himself
marginalizes the practical importance of philosophical ethics (322).
Why, then, should things be different as to understanding and philo-
sophical hermeneutics?
    However, Gadamer’s view on the practical importance of philo-
sophical ethics is not an adequate interpretation of Aristotle’s view. As
to practically relevant knowledge of what is right and wrong, Aristotle
is far less optimistic than Gadamer. For Aristotle ethically excellent
human beings, namely free, mature and responsible citizens are by
no means a normal case guaranteed by family background and edu-
cation. Aristotle’s painstaking investigations of the good and of the
virtues in the Nicomachean Ethics would be unnecessary if everyone
knew from the outset how to strive for the good and how to be virtu-
ous. In contrast, Aristotle regards human life as being in need of phil-
osophical clarifications because ethical orientation otherwise could not
be firm and reliable and thus no orientation at all. Philosophical ethics


                                                                             19
Günter Figal, The Task of Hermeneutics




in terms of Aristotle is normative; ethical clarifications are not only
meant as descriptions but rather as prescriptions. They prescribe how
what is good in human life is to be understood and to be realized in
conduct. And if philosophical hermeneutics is to be conceived in the
line of Aristotelian ethics, then the distinction of understanding better
or worse, as well as of interpretations better or worse must be one, if
not the most important of its issues. This normative distinction, then,
very likely is the task, at least the main task of philosophical herme-
neutics.
     Philosophical hermeneutics has such a task only if a normative
orientation of understanding is not self-evident in hermeneutical prac-
tice. Otherwise philosophical attempts to discover and clarify a crite-
rion for the distinction of understanding better or worse would be
needless. However, in which respect can philosophical hermeneutics
be normative? Not every clarification of understanding is of normative
relevance. For instance, Gadamer’s view of understanding as a mani-
festation of tradition, regardless of its plausibility or implausibility in
detail, may make an important point, but it offers no hermeneutical
norm or measure. Something understandable is not understood bet-
ter if one conceives one’s understanding as an instant of “effective
history”. In order to critically evaluate an attempt of understanding,
one must rather examine whether this particular attempt has been
more or less adequate. Such adequacy, again, can only be deter-
mined with regard to the correlate of understanding. It is the under-
standable that functions as measure for understanding.
     Gadamer does not neglect that understanding is essentially re-
lated to something understandable. However, his characterization of
the understandable is rather incidental – as if no detailed clarification
would be necessary. Furthermore, Gadamer’s characterization is quite
specific. As Gadamer holds, interpreting a text, one has no other in-
tention than to understand something general, namely the text, and


20
                                              Critical Hermeneutics 6(2), (2022)




thus to understand what tradition has to say (Gadamer 1986: 329).
According to this, tradition is concretized in texts, and texts, again,
are something “general” that has to be concretized, namely, as Gad-
amer adds, by “application”. In order to explain this assumption Gad-
amer discusses the applicative character of legal texts. And taking
such texts as hermeneutically paradigmatic Gadamer regards every
interpretation as applicative in the way judges apply a written law to
a particular case, understanding the case as a concretization of the
law. However, interpretations in general do not apply to a legal case
but to the interpreting person’s situation.
    Examined more closely this proves to be quite unconvincing.
Gadamer’s conception of texts as something general that needs con-
cretion can hardly be generalized. Poems, for instance, are not “ap-
plied” to the particular situation in which they are read and interpret-
ed but rather taken as concrete texts that need elucidation. Every
poem is an individual in character and should be read and interpreted
as such an individual. Applying a poem to one’s own situation, one
would reduce it to a general description or expression that is meant
as a kind of pattern for a reader’s self-understanding and emotional
life. Furthermore, Gadamer’s conception of understanding as applica-
tion does not even grasp the legal texts which he uses as a paradigm.
Even applicable texts such as laws, must have been understood be-
fore they can be applied because otherwise one would not know what
one is about to apply to a particular case or situation. And if such
texts are not understandable at first glance they must be interpreted.
Their interpretation, again, should be adequate because otherwise,
their application would fail. The criterion, however, whether an inter-
pretation is adequate or not, is a text as such. It is a text that inter-
pretations promise to elucidate so that examining and evaluating in-
terpretations is tantamount to clarifying in which respect and to which
extent they deliver on the promise they implicitly or explicitly are.


                                                                             21
Günter Figal, The Task of Hermeneutics




     Of course, one has to explain more in detail how texts can func-
tion as the criterion for interpreting and understanding, and accord-
ingly, how the adequacy or inadequacy of interpretations and under-
standing is to be conceived. However, if such an explanation would be
successful this would lead to a conception of philosophical hermeneu-
tics that radically differs from Gadamer’s conception. Hermeneutical
reflection would not be centered on the situation of understanding but
on the object of understanding. Philosophical hermeneutics would no
longer be existential but object-oriented or, as one could also say, ob-
jective in character (Figal 2018). As one should add hermeneutical
objects, the objects of interpretation and understanding, and thus al-
so of hermeneutical reflection, can distinctly differ from each other.
Written texts are hermeneutical objects as well as pieces of music,
images, buildings or vessels, and even linguistic statements or ex-
pressions are objective only as long as they need interpretation. Eve-
rything that is a task of hermeneutical practice is a hermeneutical ob-
ject. Accordingly, the task of objective hermeneutics is to investigate
and determine the very character of hermeneutical objectivity.


2.
The correlation of interpretations and hermeneutical objects can easi-
ly be misunderstood – as if both could be kept side by side and com-
pared with each other like portraits with portrayed persons. However,
hermeneutical objects can be experienced with interpretations only,
provided that every reading, listening, or looking at an image is in-
terpretative in character. This, however, is so. For instance, reading a
text one would be attentive to particular aspects and would make a
selection of aspects more or less interesting, one would very likely
rely on aspects well known in order to grasp others that seem alien,
and one would distinguish between aspects important and those one
would regard as marginal. Nevertheless, interpretations are essential-


22
                                              Critical Hermeneutics 6(2), (2022)




ly related to something that can be identified as the particular object
an interpretation is about; otherwise, interpretations would be con-
structions. However, the identification of interpretations and construc-
tions is a mistake; everything interpretable can be interpreted other-
wise and thus is shared with other interpretations as a particular ba-
sis preceding every interpretative attempt, whereas the objects of
construction come to being with their construction so that every con-
struction constitutes its own object. In contrast, interpretations need
objects, the very existence of which is independent of interpretations.
A printed text is the same regardless of whether it is read and inter-
preted; an image does not exist only when it is viewed, and a piece
of music can be identified as the same in all even reasonably good
performances.
    The mutual dependency and independency of interpretations and
their objects just sketched is not symmetrical. It cannot be symmet-
rical because texts and interpretations are essentially different. Texts
are more or less stable entities, whereas interpretations are activities.
Though interpretations can become manifest as texts, they originate
as text-related activities, and accordingly, an interpretation written
down should be understood as an offer to read and interpret a text in
terms of the written interpretation. However, such an offer is not
strictly binding; interpretations can also function as occasions for new
interpretations by which they are modified or even rejected. In con-
trast, a text that can be interpreted is an object and also, what may
at the first moment sound somewhat unusual, a space for the activity
of interpretation. Though one refers to text when interpreting it, as a
reader one also moves inside it – just like in a building which is an
object of contemplation as well as a particular space that allows con-
templators the experience of different possibilities of viewing. Moving
around in a text one would explore the context of meaning that it of-




                                                                             23
Günter Figal, The Task of Hermeneutics




fers from different perspectives offered by the text itself. Thus one
would discover determinate aspects as well as aspects of ambiguity.
     Being able to move around in the space of a text is tantamount
to understanding it – just as one would understand a play in discover-
ing how it should and can be played. It was Gadamer who was first to
discover the paradigmatic relevance of play for hermeneutical reflec-
tion (Gadamer 1986: 107–139). However, Gadamer regards a play
primarily as playing and playing, again, as an actuality by which a
play, determining players in what they do, realizes itself. Playing for
Gadamer is the pure self-representation (reines Sichselbstdarstellen)
of a play (111). Because Gadamer identifies playing with the play he
neglects that every playing is only a particular realization of a play
and can be such a realization only because every play is a space of
playing. Playing, one would intuitively view an ensemble of possibili-
ties that can be realized, though not all at once. For instance, playing
chess one could move a particular chess piece but also another one,
and one could move a chess piece one way or the other. In any case,
however, one would move within the limited space of the play, and
thereby one would hardly view all possibilities a play offers. One
would grasp particular possibilities, and one would be able to do so,
because the elements of a play are defined as limited possibilities. For
instance, chess pieces are determined by the limited ways they can
be moved. However, the limited possibilities that the pieces as such
are belong to the open and thereby indeterminate space of the play,
in which particular possibilities of playing can be discovered. The lim-
ited possibilities of chess pieces are determined in advance, for in-
stance those of a chess bishop insofar as this piece can only be
moved diagonally. However, one is free as to how to move a chess
bishop in a particular situation of a particular game. Realizing both
the determinacy of the chess pieces and the openness of possibilities
to move them, one would discover that and how one could do some-


24
                                              Critical Hermeneutics 6(2), (2022)




thing with them. Understanding essentially is such a discovery. Un-
derstanding one discovers that one can do something with something
within a space of limited as well as unlimited possibilities.
    The foregoing characterization of understanding is conceivably
broadly defined. Included are both practical as well as theoretical
specifications of understanding, even the understanding of useful
things such as tools. From a hermeneutical point of view, however,
the reasonable usage of tools is not very revealing, because under-
standing, in this case, is determined by the context in which using a
tool makes sense. Knowing the context for using a tool, for instance,
on which material and to which aim it is to be used, one easily would
be able, after some exercise, to use a tool adequately and thus to
understand it. Understanding texts, however, is different, in that
alone that texts, even if they belong to a context are contexts in
themselves, i.e. objectively appearing spaces of interpretation and
understanding. In order to understand a text, one has to engage in
the space of possibilities that it is, and there is no binding rule for
that. A text does not prescribe how to interpret it – just as a land-
scape does not prescribe how to explore it. Engaging in a text not at
least means to experience it in itself and to discover its inherent pos-
sibilities of meaning. Such an experience is only possible if it is not
dominated by one’s own subjective view. In order to live up to a text,
one has to desist from one’s own beliefs, interests and intentions.
Certainly, such subjective predeterminations are not illegitimate.
However, they do not conduce to understanding a text.
    After these considerations the issue of hermeneutic normativity
can be taken up and provisionally determined. Supposed that a text
can be adequately understood only if one engages in the text in itself,
then one has to avoid everything that could impair such an under-
standing. One’s own beliefs, interests and intention then must be
suspended. Though one will hardly be able to abolish them one can


                                                                             25
Günter Figal, The Task of Hermeneutics




desist from them – just as one can desist from individual preferences
in order to make a decision that comes up to objective needs and
thus is rational.
     However, not only individual predeterminations such as beliefs,
interests, and intentions can prevent from understanding a text ade-
quately, but also presuppositions of the kind Gadamer calls “prejudic-
es”. Such presuppositions are structurally problematical because they
prescribe a text’s meaning and thus impede free access to the text.
Guided by a presupposition of a text’s meaning the following interpre-
tation very likely will confirm the meaning that has been presupposed
and thus overwrite the text. Admittedly Gadamer stresses that an ini-
tial projection of a text’s meaning can be revised and corrected and
also that such a projection proves to be in need of correction when-
ever a text resists an interpretation guided by a presupposed mean-
ing. As Gadamer adds, in this case, one should not cling to one’s pre-
supposition (Gadamer 1986: 273).
     That may seem plausible, but is not easily achieved. How should
one abandon a presupposition after it has been made? If, as Gadamer
holds, understanding is necessarily led by a presupposition or projec-
tion of a text’s meaning, one could only abandon a particular presup-
position by replacing it with another one and then interpret the text
until the adequate presupposition has been found. However, will one
thus ever find an “adequate” presupposition? It must be one that
does not resist the text interpreted but discloses this text as a con-
sistent whole. However, having projected such a whole one cannot be
sure to have understood a text and not a presupposition that com-
pletely has overwritten the text.
     Why at all, then, should one read and interpret texts guided by
presuppositions? Gadamer would very likely respond to this question
by stating that every understanding aims at grasping the meaning of
a text as a whole, and that a text can only be grasped as a whole on


26
                                              Critical Hermeneutics 6(2), (2022)




the basis of projection. However, though a text in fact is a whole,
readers and interpreters cannot grasp it because they move within it.
The wholeness of text appears to readers and interpreters as the lim-
ited space that includes all aspects belonging to it. Reading and inter-
preting a text one can refer to such aspects only and thus realize
them as possibilities of meaning belonging to a text. In contrast, the
text as a whole is beyond interpretation. Only extraneously could one
determine such a whole by summing up what “a whole text” is about.
    Such summaries are not per se illegitimate; they can even be
clarifying. However, they are problematic insofar as they are not
backed by interpretations, and they turn out to be pseudo-
clarifications as soon as they prove not to be backed by interpreta-
tions at all. Such is the case with seeming attempts of clarification
that have the character of, to say it with a term coined by Paul Ric-
oeur, exercise of suspicion (exercice de soupçon) (Ricoeur 1965: 30–
46; cf. Figal 2010). Such attempts pretend to clarify a text by disclos-
ing a meaning hidden to normal readers as the true meaning of the
text. Obviously, exercises of suspicion are no interpretations. In con-
trast to interpretations, they – mostly implicitly – refuse to engage in
a text because, provided that the true meaning of a text is hidden,
such engaging is regarded as insignificant and superfluous. However,
there is no need to go as far as representatives of the exercise of
suspicion such as Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. Already every orienta-
tion on presuppositions that are supposed to disclose a text as a
whole very likely goes along with biases and thus falls short of inter-
pretation and understanding.
    This, however, holds true only if interpretation and understand-
ing are able to truly disclose texts and other hermeneutical objects so
that such objects truly can be experienced. Or, to put it differently, for
object-orientated interpretations to be possible there must be an
original and immediate hermeneutical experience, which also would


                                                                             27
Günter Figal, The Task of Hermeneutics




allow insight in possible or factual interferences of interpretations.
Such immediate experience would disclose the interpretable and
thereby also the very possibility of interpretation.
     In order to further explain such an experience one should think
of the first reading of a text that has not yet been really understood,
but also does not appear as completely incomprehensible. In this
case, a text is a kind of promise; it promises that one could under-
stand it, provided one would engage in it and develop an interpreta-
tion. At the first moment, preceding every interpretation, such a text
is potentially understandable; it is something understandable in the
mode of possibility. Accordingly, such a text must have a meaning
that, though recognizable, cannot be grasped – a meaning in the
mode of possibility. A text then would appear as consistent, but its
consistency could not be definitely determined. It would appear as to
be understood in different ways and thus as ambiguous.
     The meaning of a text in the mode of possibility can be called its
primordial meaning. In contrast to the meaning as it has become ex-
plicit by an interpretation, the primordial meaning of a text immedi-
ately “addresses” readers, motivating them to read closely in order to
find out how a text can be understood. Furthermore, critical revisions
and corrections of interpretations are only possible in reference to the
primordial meaning of a text. The assumption that a text also could
be read and interpreted differently cannot be founded in an interpre-
tation one is about to revise and just as little in other interpretations.
Why should one consider alternative interpretations, if not because
one has experienced a meaning that, as one thinks, can be interpret-
ed better so that a revised or even new interpretation, possibly a
more differentiated one, is more adequate?
     Such revisions and corrections of interpretations should not be
confused with attempts to “adapt” interpretations to texts interpreted
in order to make them “more similar” to the texts. Such similarity is


28
                                              Critical Hermeneutics 6(2), (2022)




impossible, because interpretations are not a kind of depictions, but
explorations within the space that a text essentially is. Though some
interpretations can be more differentiated than others, no interpreta-
tion can perfectly match a text so that a text could be reduced to its
perfect interpretation. The primordial meaning of a text exceeds all
meaning made explicit by interpretations.
    The character of primordial meaning can be understood particu-
larly well using the example of artworks. Though a poem or a piece of
music, an image, a vessel or a building may appear especially con-
sistent, one would not be able to grasp its consistency by reducing it
to a cause or an order principle. The consistency of artworks cannot
be reconstructed; it is ambiguous, and with another experience,
maybe after some time, it would very likely appear differently, as a
different constellation of its moments. Artworks essentially are reali-
zations of primordial meaning and as such they particularly challenge
interpretation and understanding.
    However, artworks not only are eminently in need of interpreta-
tion and understanding. They also favor interpretation and under-
standing allowing both to be most purely what they are. With no oth-
er hermeneutical objects, one would experience such clearly that in-
terpretations miss their objects if one is not engaged in them but
dominated by one’s beliefs, interests or intentions, or if one attempts
to “project” their meaning in order to grasp them as a meaningful
whole. Such determinations from the outside slip on artworks; their
meaning is beyond determination and can only be experienced “aes-
thetically”, in such a way that one views artworks, listens to them or
reads them without neglecting the sound of their language. Interpre-
tations of artworks can only be adequate if they are founded on aes-
thetical experience.
    Interpreting artworks, one would also make an experience par-
ticularly clear of the essential plurality of interpretations. Nothing in-


                                                                             29
Günter Figal, The Task of Hermeneutics




terpretable can only be interpreted in a single way, and this is be-
cause interpretations refer to the primordial meaning of their objects.
Though the diversity of interpretations always includes that of differ-
ent interpretative perspectives and that of different possibilities of
formulating interpretations in language, they objectively differ from
each other in that they bring out different aspects of their object’s
primordial meaning. Different interpretations have discovered differ-
ent possibilities of this meaning, and by recognizing that as an inter-
preter one would realize that every interpretation is only one particu-
lar possibility among others. Only if and because different interpreta-
tions refer to the same text they can complement or correct each
other. Or they can just coexist in their diversity.
     In that different interpretations of a text refer to the same also a
measure is given for their relations to each other. As to these rela-
tions, neither indifference nor competition aiming at supremacy would
be adequate. If one would not care about other interpretations, one
would miss a chance to revise one’s own interpretation and would fur-
thermore neglect that every interpretation belongs to the context of
others and is designed for a dialogue with at least some of them.
Such dialogues should be led by the intention to discover as clearly as
possible a text in its complexity. On the other hand, seeking for su-
premacy one would pursue one’s own interests and not engage in a
text so that one’s statements miss, at least to a certain degree, the
very character of interpretation.
     Furthermore, interpreters should reflect the essential ambiguity
of primordial meaning and thereby realize that definite interpretative
solutions are not in any case desirable. Ambiguous passages of a text
should not, in any case, be regarded as to be unraveled like a riddle.
     Designating ambiguities without any intention to reduce them to
a definite meaning, one could rather indicate that one has adequately
understood the ambiguity of a text. As to the interpretation of poems,


30
                                               Critical Hermeneutics 6(2), (2022)




the insistence on definite clarity would even indicate misunderstand-
ing.
       In any case, however, an interpretation should be recognized as
one among others that are devoted to the same text. Interpretations
are not agonizing claims in dispute with each other, but different pos-
sibilities of presenting a text that, instead of manifesting themselves
as assertions of their particular discovery, should stand back in favor
of the text.
       Interpretations thus putting themselves at the service of the in-
terpretable would be related to each other indirectly; contributing to
a shared subject matter they would meet in the space of a text. How-
ever, all hermeneutical relations are indirect in such a way. If a con-
versation between two persons is not a dispute but is led by the will-
ingness to understand, the persons involved would primarily refer to
the subject matter in question and not let their particular understand-
ing dominate. Those who only allow their own understanding to apply
have already endangered or lost the possibility of shared understand-
ing and neglected the very character of hermeneutical objects. Such
objects demand shared understanding because they can be under-
stood in different ways. Subject matters of interpretation and under-
standing as such have a primordial meaning, and accordingly, the es-
sential characteristics applying to the interpretation of texts also ap-
ply to dialogues. Seeking understanding one has already been in a
space of possibilities that must be recognized in their diversity in or-
der to recognize the particular understanding of others. For the sake
of shared understanding the space of possible understanding, namely
the primordial meaning, should be kept open.
       If the generalization just sketched is plausible, the norm of every
hermeneutical practice can be determined as a special form of objec-
tivity. Special is this form in that the objects in question are no mat-
ters of fact to be stated in propositions. In contrast to propositions,


                                                                              31
Günter Figal, The Task of Hermeneutics




interpretations or other expressions of understanding cannot be veri-
fied or falsified. Because the subject matter of understanding is a
space of possibilities such expressions also are possibilities; they are
objectively possible or impossible. Nevertheless, interpretations can
be true – not in that they would assert a true matter of fact and, in
relation to it, could be verified. They can be true in that they eluci-
date a hermeneutical object in a way so evident that they allow un-
derstanding and even motivate further interpretation and understand-
ing. Interpretations are not predicative but deictic.
     An essential task of objective philosophical hermeneutics then
would be to clarify the particular and normative objectivity of inter-
pretation and understanding. This is a specific task. It is philosophi-
cally unique because the subject matter of hermeneutics is exclusive-
ly hermeneutical. Nevertheless, philosophical hermeneutics as a phil-
osophical endeavor is not isolated. The clarification of a specific her-
meneutical objectivity is also of epistemological significance, and the
hermeneutical claim of a specific norm of objectivity also is relevant
to ethics. This indicates that philosophical hermeneutics does not rad-
ically change philosophy in its entirety. However, with hermeneutics,
some prominent philosophical concepts have been enlarged and mod-
ified. Likely the most momentous of such modifications is that inter-
pretation and understanding should be regarded as genuine forms of
object-related cognition and that accordingly, objectivity can no long-
er be reduced to a character of propositions or even of scientific con-
ceptions. Objectivity is also a character of cultural, or as one can also
say, of hermeneutical life.




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References
Figal, G. (2010). Verstehen, Verdacht, Kritik. In Id., Verstehensfragen. Studien zur
phänomenologisch-hermeneutischen Philosophie. Tübingen: J. C. Mohr, 211–222.
Figal, G. (2018). Gegenständlichkeit. Das Hermeneutische und die Philosophie. Se-
cond, revised edition. Tübingen [2006]; tr. en.: Objectivity: The Hermeneutical and
Philosophy. Trans. by Theodore George. Albany (NY): State University of New York
Press, 2010.
Gadamer, H.-G. (1986). Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen
Hermeneutik. Hermeneutik I, Gesammelte Werke 1. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 317–
329.
Ricoeur, P. (1965). De l’interprétation. Essai sur Freud. Paris: Seuil.




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