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Content THE PEDAGOGY OF READING AND WRITING:
PEDAGOGICAL RESPONSES TO HANS-GEORG GADAMER'S
PHILOSOPHICAL HERMENEUTICS
by
Peter Elias Sotiriou
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(English)
December 1991
Copyright 1991 Peter Sotiriou
UMI Number: DP23161
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This dissertation, written by
PETER ELIAS SOTIRIOU
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has been presented to and accepted by The
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quirements for the degree of
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DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page No.
ABSTRACT v
PROLOGUE: PEDAGOGY AS PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY vii
PART I - READING GADAMER PEDAGOGICALLY 1
CHAPTER
1 A PEDAGOGICAL READING OF TRUTH AND
METHOD 2
A Definition of Hermeneutics 6
Understanding 19
Horizons 28
Play 32
Conversation 37
Language 42
Reading and Writing 51
Imitation 65
The Human Sciences Versus the Natural Sciences 75
Gadamer's Critics 78
2 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF READING, THE
READER, AND THE TEXT IN TRUTH AND
METHOD 83
The Significance of the Question 84
The Focus on the Question in the Human Sciences 97
The Role of Play in Hermeneutical Questioning 99
The Role of the Reader in Philosophical
Hermeneutics 105
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS (continued)
CHAPTER
2 Effective Historical Consciousness and the Reader
The I-Thou Textual Relationship
The Phronimos as Textual Interpreter
The Text as Living Tradition
3 A PEDAGOGICAL READING OF
PHILOSOPHICAL HERMENEUTICS
The Gadamerian Dialogue
Excess
The Teaching of Grammar
Commonplaces and Conventions
Vocabulary
PART n - PHILOSOPHICAL HERMENEUTICS AS
i RESPONSE TO CRITICAL AND
I PEDAGOGICAL THEORY
i
| CHAPTER
4 PHILOSOPHICAL HERMENEUTICS AS A
RESPONSE TO WOLFGANG ISER AND
STANLEY FISH
Wolfgang Iser
Stanley Fish
5 PHILOSOPHICAL HERMENEUTICS AS A
RESPONSE TO MODELS TEACHING,
E.D. HIRSCH, AND ALLAN BLOOM
The Models Approach to Composition Teaching
E.D. Hirsch
Allan Bloom
Page No.
106
110
123
139
152 ;
153
159
160
161
163 !
166
167
169
187
198
199 j
212 :
223 «
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS (continued)
Page No.
PART III - PHILOSOPHICAL HERMENEUTICS AS
READING AND WRITING PEDAGOGY 233
CHAPTER
6 MARIOLINA SALVATORI’ S PEDAGOGICAL
TRANSLATIONS OF PHILOSOPHICAL
HERMENEUTICS 234
The Dialogical Nature of Basic Reading and
Writing 235
Pedagogy: From the Periphery to the Center 250
Facts, Artifacts, and Counterfacts 261
7 A HERMENEUTIC PEDAGOGY 270
Classroom Conversation 271
The Nature of Discourse in Philosophical
Hermeneutics 274
What to Read? 275
Reading's Interconnections to Writing 280
The Essay Assignment 282
Evaluating Written Responses 283
Experiencing Reading Philosophically 286
A Focus on Language 289
Openness and Play 290
Pedagogy as Hermeneutics 292
Philosophical Hermeneutics as a Response to
Current Language Pedagogies 293
The Antecedents of a Hermeneutic Pedagogy 295
BIBLIOGRAPHY 298
ABSTRACT
Hans Georg-Gadamer's Truth and Method and his later works
provide the sources from which a hermeneutic pedagogy can be
articulated. Such a pedagogy foregrounds the event of textual
understanding in which neither the subject nor the reader assumes
ontological priority. Rather, both reader and text participate in
understanding.
In reading Gadamer pedagogically, the ontological priority of
play emerges, in which Gadamer contends that artists or interpreters are j
i
part of play's event. Such a premise is significant in a hermeneutic j
pedagogy because it calls into question those pedagogies which
foreground the subject (expressivistic and collaborative learning) and
those foregrounding the text (the pedagogies of E.D. Hirsch and Allan
Bloom).
This study explores how a hermeneutic pedagogy foregrounds a
partnership of two— teacher and student, reader and text. Gadamer
i examines this relationship in his concepts of conversation and dialogue
I
as metaphors for hermeneutical understanding. Gadamer also examines
hermeneutic understanding in his treatment of the I-Thou relationship in i
which the reader conceives of the voices of the text as a thou who has
something to say to her.
Further, Gadamer's concept of phronesis sees classroom praxis as
standing alongside hermeneutical theory, so that praxis both informs
and is informed by theory.
Finally, Mariolina Salvatori is the one compositionist who has
begun to examine the pedagogical possibilities of Gadamer's
hermeneutics. One of her essays situates Gadamerian hermeneutics in
the classroom, and she examines its pedagogical translations.
This study has four parts: Prologue: Pedagogy as Practical
Philosophy; Part I— Reading Gadamer Pedagogically; Part II—
Philosophical Hermeneutics as Response to Critical and Pedagogical
Theory; and Part III— Philosophical Hermeneutics as Pedagogical
Translation. The pedagogical notions emerging from Gadamer in the
Prologue and Part I respond to such theorists as Wolfgang Iser, Stanley
Fish, E.D. Hirsch, and Allan Bloom in Part II. In Part III, Salvatori's
responses to Gadamer are studied, and in the last chapter, the salient
features of a hermeneutic pedagogy are examined.
vi
PROLOGUE: PEDAGOGY AS PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY
In this century philosophers like Wittengenstein, Nietzsche, and
Heidegger have focused on the nature of language as it relates to the
study of philosophy. Heidegger, specifically, grounds many of his
philosophical premises upon language's relationship to being. Hans-
Georg Gadamer has extended Heidegger's notions regarding language
| into a thoroughgoing study of hermeneutics, foregrounding textual
understanding. In his major work Truth and Method, now over thirty
years old, Gadamer carefully examines his understanding of the
hermeneutical activity. It is an ambitious three-part work which
attempts to show that aesthetic, historical, legal, and theological
interpretations are grounded in similar hermeneutical activities, all
informed by their common medium— language. As a study which treats
the nature of textual interpretation, Truth and Method speaks forcefully
to teacher-theorists who foreground textual interpretation both in their
classroom activities and in their scholarly research. In many ways,
Truth and Method provides a philosophical response to those
composition programs which structure their writing activities around
the reading of texts.
For this reason, a careful reading of Truth and Method from the
perspective of the teacher-theorist can continue the dialogue that has
already begun in the following areas of composition study: how
i
i
l
I
I vii
students read texts, the ways that reading and writing about texts can be
seen as interconnected activities, and the ways that the reading of texts
can be incorporated into the writing classroom. Study in these areas has
and will continue to have fundamental implications for how composition
programs are conceived. A pedagogical translation of Gadamer’ s
hermeneutical theories begins with different premises than those of
vitalist, collaborative learning, and the bulk of the current reading-
based composition pedagogies. Much of this study will examine what
Gadamer's premises are and how they speak to these existing
pedagogies.
The first part of this study will read Gadamer carefully,
particularly Truth and Method and Philosophical Hermeneutics, to tease
out their pedagogical suggestions. The second part will examine how
these pedagogical insights speak to critical and pedagogical theory,
while the final part of this study will examine the particular ways in
which a pedagogical translation of philosophical hermeneutics allows
theorists to re-see the classroom and to begin to construct a pedagogy of
hermeneutics.
Before considering these pedagogical translations, one first needs |
to define pedagogy, and again Gadamer proves helpful. In his essay
"Hermeneutics as Practical Philosophy" from Reason in the Age of
Science. Gadamer treats the relationship between practical philosophy
and hermeneutics. Here, he uses his careful reading of Aristotle to
define practical philosophy, first noting that for Aristotle philosophy
was a science because it was a body of knowledge "using demonstration
and generating knowledge" (89).1 Gadamer then attempts to answer the
next logical question: What kind of knowledge does practical philosophy j
demonstrate and generate? Again by reading Aristotle, Gadamer finds a
| satisfactory reply. Practical philosophy studies human behavior,
particularly the choices that humans make throughout their lives. This
uniquely human activity Aristotle named prohairesis, which means
i
"'preference' or 'prior choice'" (91). Gadamer continues in this same
essay: "Knowingly preferring one thing to another and consciously
choosing among possible alternatives is the unique and specific
characteristic of human being" (91). Therefore, practical philosophy is
a scientific discipline examining the ways that human beings experience
choices.
Having defined practical philosophy generally, Gadamer then
examines the ways in which it differs from the technical sciences:
Practical philosophy, then, certainly is a 'science': a
knowledge of the universal that as such is teachable. But
it is still a science that needs certain conditions to be
fulfilled. It demands of the one learning it the same
indissoluble relationship to practice as the one teaching
it. To this extent it does have a certain proximity to the
expert knowledge proper to technique, but what :
separates it fundamentally from technical expertise is ]
that it expressly asks the question of the good too— for I
example, about the best way of life or about the best
constitution of the state. It does not merely master an
ability, like technical expertise, whose task is set by an
outside authority: by the purpose to be served by what is
being produced. (93)
ix
| Differing from technical science, practical science encourages both
j teacher and students to study the particularities of experience in order to
see what they have to say about the value of their lives, for the teacher
does not have a masterful theory regarding experience to teach her
students life’ s ultimate answers, as does the teacher in the technical
sciences who teaches theory to students that they can then apply to the
making of their product. Experience in the practical sciences is not
ever appropriated in the same way that material in the technical sciences
is mastered.
Having defined both the general and specific character of
practical philosophy, Gadamer then shows how it relates to
hermeneutics, for it is in hermeneutics that the practical philosopher
finds ways to understand texts in her discipline: "The great tradition of
practical philosophy lives on in a hermeneutics that becomes aware of
its philosophic implications" (111); that is, hermeneutics becomes the
activity which teases out the "philosophical implications" of experience.
In the way that it interprets texts, hermeneutics takes on a particular
status because its interpretation is necessarily philosophical. A bit later,
Gadamer says of hermeneutics that it "has to do with a theoretical
I
attitude toward the practice of interpretation" (112). Yet Gadamer later j
contends that for the hermeneutical interpreter, theory and praxis share j
| a particular relationship, theory only emerging in the ongoing activity
I of reading texts.
Here, pedagogy finds its relationship both to hermeneutics and to
practical philosophy. If hermeneutics is the theoretical activity of
interpreting texts in practical philosophy, then pedagogy is a similar
theoretical activity; rather than a single reader interpreting texts as is
found in a hermeneutical scene, students and teachers together are
engaged in textual interpretation in the classroom. When the teachers
and students together read texts treating human experiences rather than
t
technical or mathematical concerns, then pedagogy can be seen as an
interpretive activity subsumed under practical philosophy which
foregrounds hermeneutical activities that have particular classroom
significance. In a classroom translating philosophical hermeneutics into ;
praxis, the teacher and students engage in hermeneutical interpretation, j
while pedagogy examines the theoretical nature of these interpretive j
j classroom experiences. !
t I
| In another essay in Reason in the Age of Science. "On the Natural |
Inclination of Human Beings Toward Philosophy," Gadamer succinctly J
defines hermeneutics. This definition has particular relevance to an
understanding and definition of pedagogy. Hermeneutics, he concludes,
is "the theory and also the practice of understanding and bringing to
language the alien, the strange, and whatever has become alien" (149).
Similarly, reading and writing pedagogy can be seen as the teacher-
theorist's "theory and practice of understanding and bringing to
language" ways that students respond to texts which initially appear
"alien and strange."
.
__________________________x i _ j
The major difference between a hermeneutical encounter with a
text and a pedagogical encounter is that a pedagogical reading is
complicated by more responses because teachers and students together
read and respond to the text, rather than a single reader encountering a
text. What the hermeneutical and pedagogical encounter share is their
foregrounding of the text. The questions that both interpreters ask of
the text are the same: What does it mean? How can I explain it to
others? Given the indeterminate nature of human experience, their
answers to these questions are necessarily unfinished.
In a pedagogy that uses texts from practical philosophy, students
and teachers attempt to bring a heightened understanding to the text.
Students present their interpretations and respond to those of their peers
and teachers. The teacher's role in this pedagogical scene is more
complicated, for she must both read and interpret the text and examine
how her students are interpreting it. She encourages suggestive textual
responses from her students and finds ways for students to re-vise less
suggestive understandings. The students also learn how to appropriate
the teacher's suggestions into their own interpretations, while still
foregrounding their (rather than the teacher's) interpretation of the text.
Though the classroom complicates the hermeneutical activity, it does not
detract from hermeneutics' ultimate goal: bringing a theoretical
experience to the interpretation of texts.
Further, the material concerns of a reading and writing pedagogy
do not markedly differ from those of hermeneutics. Where in the
______________________________ xii |
hermeneutical scene, there is a text and a reader, in the pedagogical
scene there is a text and readers (students and teachers) in a classroom
setting. Given this relationship to hermeneutics and practical
philosophy, pedagogy is therefore not concerned with specific lesson
plans and the documentation or prediction of student improvement, for
practical philosophy can neither quantify experience, nor can it provide
heuristics that can be applied successfully to all situations. Exact
measurement and accurate prediction are, rather, the ken of technical
science. ]
!
Similarly, pedagogy and hermeneutics necessarily begin in praxis,!
where technical science often begins in theory. Gadamer notes: j
"Practical reasonableness, though, is the precondition for engaging in j
theory and in developing theoretical reasonableness" (The Idea of the ’
Good in Platonic and Aristotelian Philosophy 176).2 Therefore, a j
facility with the practical world, specifically a familiarity with texts and
textual activities, is necessary before a hermeneutical interpreter or
pedagogical theorist can engage successfully in theorizing in practical
philosophy. Further, a teacher-theorist needs to have an intimate
familiarity with the daily workings of the classroom (students
responding to students, students responding to texts, and teacher
responding to students and texts) before he can attempt effective
pedagogical theorizing. It is for this reason that both hermeneutics and
j pedagogy are considered activities in practical philosophy.
The situation of the teacher-theorist is a particular one. Like
Aristotle's phronimos, the ethical philosopher whom Gadamer carefully
treats in Tmth and Method, the teacher-theorist must use standards as
(not before or after) he experiences life's events, thus continually
revising these standards.3 Both the ethical philosopher and the teacher-
theorist are constantly experiencing the world outside of its purely
I
theoretical context, yet with a persistent knowledge of theory in mind. I
i
Pedagogical theory, like ethics, can help the teacher-theorist examine
the student's and teacher's experiences with texts, but it cannot provide a
method for shaping the student's and teacher’ s textual understanding.
Further, the activities that students and teachers use as they read and
evaluate texts continually serve to respond to the language theory that
attempts to describe them. To set language theory above language
praxis, like placing ethical standards above the ongoing evaluation of
human experience, is thus to ignore the unique hermeneutical situation
that theory, teaching, and learning share as teaching and learning
respond to language theory and as language theory responds to them.
An understanding of the phronimos' particular philosophical role
thus helps further explain the relationship of the hermeneutical
interpreter and the teacher-theorist to practical philosophy. Where the
phronimos inteiprets the significance of the moral event in experience,
the hermeneutical interpreter attempts to understand texts, and the
teacher-theorist attempts to understand texts as they are interpreted in
the classroom. Where the hermeneutical interpreter is engaged in a
xiv
! generally solitary activity (interpreting a text), the teacher-theorist and
| the ethical philosopher are involved in a more complicated social
I
i encounter, the phronimos theorizing in the world where moral events
are enacted, the teacher-theorist responding to textual events in the
classroom. In this sense the teacher-theorist and the ethical philosopher
are also responding to their rhetorical circumstances. Yet all are
engaged in the same activity: using a theoretical experience to
prohairesis, or the textual or ethical choices humans make, while their
concern is with the best choices (ethical or textual) that humans can
make, always keeping in mind that the 'best' is a concept that humans
continually strive for but can never ultimately achieve.
As a particular type of practical philosophy and hermeneutical
analysis, pedagogy is a study that best explains what the teacher-theorist
does and can do, as he examines his and others' classroom experiences.
While students in the classroom are engaged in interpreting texts and
responding to the textual interpretations of others, the interpretive
experiences of the teacher-theorist is more complex because, along with
selecting some or all of the texts of the classroom, she is interpreting
these texts, responding to student texts, as well as interpreting the text of
the classroom. It is this multi-dimensional interpretive activity of the
teacher that best characterizes pedagogy, setting it apart from textual
exegesis.
Though the teacher-theorist has an interpretation of the text in
question, she often withholds this 'meaning' from her students. Since
xv
she does not see her teaching as a monologue in which her textual
interpretation is simply given to her students whole, she does not ask
them to accept what she says as 'truth'. Her pedagogical task is much
more complex: to encourage her students to make "better" textual
choices and to try on 'better' readings. Therefore, the teacher-theorist
sees that textual interpretation in the classroom evolves from the
encounter which she has orchestrated: the questions she asks of her
students, the questions which students ask of each other, the responses
*
t
that emerge from these questions, and the counter-questioning which
ensues. Therefore, pedagogy does not necessarily foreground a
teacher's textual interpretations; rather its emphasis is almost always on |
the evolving interpretations of students and the ways that teachers enrich
these textual experiences.
In a pedagogical scene, teachers carry on conversations with
i
students and examine the ways that they respond in these conversations
in order to enrich their students' ways of reading. A pedagogical
conversation can involve a teacher, a text, and just one student; or a
teacher, a text, and several students. (The classroom may include one
student or more than one.) A pedagogical conversation is thus different
from a teacher's conversation with a peer. In peer conversations, j
teacher-theorists place their own interpretations at risk in order to see
them differently. In pedagogical conversations, teachers attempt to
place student interpretations as risk, usually de-emphasizing their own
readings so that students can pursue their particular dialogues with a j
j
I
xvi I
1 text. In a pedagogical conversation, the teacher's interpretation is one
among many that he can include. Teacher-theorists thus must have
several textual conversations in mind in the classroom: their own, the
one they think students are articulating, and an improved, more
enriching textual conversation that they (students and teachers together)
are working toward, as well as the teacher-theorists' own conversations
regarding the testing of various hermeneutical theories as students read
and respond to the text in question.
In exploring the pedagogical event, the teacher-theorist develops a
particular concept of the classroom. The classroom is more than the
sum of student and teacher responses to texts; rather it is a mediating
space for the teacher-theorist to philosophically examine textual
responses and to reflect upon the text of these responses.
Finally, seeing pedagogy from the perspective of the teacher-
theorist provides an additional reason why pedagogy and phronesis
(moral knowledge) share a common ground. The richness of
experience is central to the decisions that both the teacher-theorist and
phronimos make. As one continues to experience moral knowledge and
continues to read the classroom, the moral and pedagogical questions
are continually reinterpreted. The perfect classroom encounter is never
realized, just as ultimate ethical standards are never fully articulated, yet
the understanding of the classroom is enriched by the continued
responses that students bring to the teacher-theorist's questioning. This
is not to say that initiate moral philosophers and teacher-theorists may
xvii
not contribute to their fields, yet the experiences they continue to
encounter in their work provide a richness of response to their
theoretical questions. As the moral philosopher and teacher theorist
continue to examine their disciplines, they also continue to revise both
their questions and their responses— enriching them and seeing them
differently.
Pedagogy does not foreground student motivation or student
surveys regarding their attitudes toward school and learning, nor does it j
examine student protocols as they read or compose. Further, pedagogy
j does not analyze a learner's development as a reader and writer outside
j of the classroom. All of these areas of study would more accurately fall
j under the categories of learning theory and learning styles. These areas
j of learning development constitute aspects of pedagogy only when they
! are situated in the classroom and examined by the teacher-theorist.
i
A study of pedagogy as a practical philosophy thus suggests a
redefinition of theory. Theory is not a concept that one superimposes
upon experience to make it mean; rather it is necessarily part of
experience. Again, Gadamer refers to classical Greek terminology to
explain theory as it is experienced in practical philosophy. For the
ancient Greeks, Gadamer contends, theory was never something
separate which one applied to practice in order to control it:
But from the Greek standpoint, it would be impossible
to construct theories...The word does not mean, as it
does from the vantage point of a theoretic construct I
based upon self-consciousness, the distance from beings |
that allows what is to be known in an unbiased fashion
xviii
and thereby subjects it to anonymous domination.
Instead the distance proper to theoria is that of
proximity and affinity. The primitive meaning of
theoria is participation in the delegation sent to a festival
for the sake of honoring the gods...It is a genuine
sharing in an event, a real being present. Reason in the
Age of Science 17-18.
I In this sense of sharing, one can one understand the nature of theorizing
| in hermeneutics and pedagogy: reader, teacher, and student share in
j
j textual understanding. They do not impose a neutral theory which then
j allows the text to sputter forth meaning. In any activity in practical
I
j philosophy, the participation of the interpreter in articulating theory as
I
it is practiced is required.
Seen from Gadamer's classical notion of theory as participation,
1
pedagogy thus finds itself in a particular situation, wedded both to
praxis and theory. A study of pedagogy necessarily involves the
ongoing reading and re-reading of language theory as it is manifested in
the language experiences of students and teachers as they read and write
about texts. Further, it is not usually the case that a language theory is
introduced, which is then applied to the classroom; rather a teacher
more often locates, revises, or articulates a theory which seems to
explain himself and his students as they respond to a text. In this sense,
theory and praxis do not share a hierarchical relationship in which
theory informs praxis, but a co-influential or reciprocal one in which
praxis and theory respond to each other in an ongoing dialogue. At
times, a classroom language event necessitates the articulation of a
theory to explain it, yet this theory is then consistently tested and
xix
reshaped as it is interpreted in the ongoing experiences of the
classroom. At other times, a theory emerges which seems to explain a
language event, yet its premises and ramifications are often understood
and rewritten only as students and teachers respond to them in their
attempts to explain their experiences with texts. For example,
Mariolina Salvatori's understanding of application-a concept used by
Gadamer— is reseen as she situates it in the classroom.4
When pedagogy is seen in this co-influential manner, both theory
and praxis can continually be re-examined. Pedagogy can thus be
regarded as a discipline emerging from the necessary, ongoing dialogue
between classroom practice involving texts and language theory. As in
good conversation, both participants must keep the conversation going.
One can thus see pedagogy as a response to, and not an application of,
theory just as theory in practical philosophy can be read as a response
to, and not merely an application of, pedagogy.
What Gadamer says about hermeneutics as it relates to practice
and theory has relevance to an understanding of pedagogy as it
encounters classroom praxis and language theory:
The great tradition of practical philosophy lives on in a
hermeneutics that becomes aware of its philosophical
implications...In both cases we have the same mutual
application between theoretical interest and practical
action...The idea of theory is and remains the exclusion
of every interest in mere utility, whether on the part of
the individual, the group, or the society as a whole. On
j the other hand, the primacy of 'practice' is undeniable.
i
xx
Aristotle was insightful enough to acknowledge the
reciprocity between theory and practice. (Ill)
When theory and practice are seen as reciprocal activities, then practice
does not become ’ mere utility' and theory does not emerge as a neutral
concept blindly imposed upon praxis. The interest of pedagogy, then,
| lies not in the 'useful' lesson plans that teachers can copy, nor in
| language theories that can be applied to all classroom situations. Rather
| the ongoing challenge of the teacher-theorist, as it is for the phronimos
and hermeneutical interpreter, is to allow theory to respond to practice
so that both theory and practice can be understood differently.
Mariolina Salvatori also sees pedagogy as situated in this co-
influential relationship between theory and practice. She says that
pedagogy is a "'philosophical science’...a theory and practice of
knowing that makes manifest its own theory and practice by
continuously reflecting on, deconstructing, and getting to know one's
own theory and practice" (Reclaiming Pedagogy 30).5
It is this understanding of pedagogy that I am now bringing to my
reading and writing classroom. Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics
!
is allowing me to read my classroom differently. In my community
college experience, I teach adult readers and writers of various ages and
backgrounds, the majority of whom are second language learners from
a great number of cultures. These students have a strong desire to
leam, and they believe that knowing how to use the English language
will foster their learning. As students with rich experiences but limited
xxi
English facility, they are eager to express themselves and often do not
know how.
Reading, discussing, and writing about texts have consistently
served as meaningful experiences for my students. In encountering the
traditions of the texts, they are encouraged to share and reflect upon
their own. The reading and writing activities that I assign call for
student participation in the making of textual meaning. I encourage
them to respond individually and together to the texts they encounter— to
share, question, and transform their textual responses. As I continue to
study Gadamer, I see how my students' interpretive activities are in kind
no different from those he examines in Truth and Method. My students
both enrich and are enriched by my personal dialogue with
philosophical hermeneutics.
It is also this understanding of pedagogy as a theoretical activity
under practical philosophy upon which this study is based. It allows me
to read both Truth and Method. Philosophical Hermeneutics, and many
of Gadamer's later essays from a pedagogical perspective, and from
these works to derive the key pedagogical translations of philosophical
hermeneutics. These translations in turn encourage me to read reader
response theorists like Wolfgang Iser and Stanley Fish differently, to
respond to the models pedagogy as well as that of E.D. Hirsch and Allan
Bloom, and to appreciate the pedagogical translations of Gadamer's
philosophical hermeneutics that Mariolina Salvatori has already begun
to explore. In this dialogue with theorists and students, one can
i
I
I
xxii j
ultimately see the emergence of a new, hermeneutic, pedagogy whose
theoretical tenets have yet to be fully explored in the classroom.
I
FOOTNOTES (PROLOGUE)
1. Translated by Frederick G. Lawrence, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 1981.
2. Translated by Christopher P. Smith, New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University, Press, 1986.
| 3. I will examine Gadamer's understanding of phronesis in Chapter
I I L
4. See her essay "The Dialogical Nature of Basic Reading and
Writing" in Facts. Artifacts, and Counterfacts. Upper Montclair,
New Jersey: Boynton/Cook Publishers Inc., 1986, 137-166. I
will discuss Salvatori's pedagogical understanding of application
in Chapter V.
5. Patricia Donahue and Ellen Quandahl, eds., Carbondale and
Edwardsville, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press.
Salvatori's essay in entitled "Pedagogy: From the Periphery to
the Center."
PARTI
READING GADAMER PEDAGOGICALLY
CHAPTER 1
A PEDAGOGICAL READING OF TRUTH AND METHOD
Truth and Method is Hans-Georg Gadamer's phenomenological
understanding of language and interpretation— hermeneutical issues that
his teacher Martin Heidegger introduced in Being and Time but did not
thoroughly examine. In this sense, Tmth and Method is a phenomeno
logical examination of textual understanding. In Truth and Method.
Gadamer shows how a phenomenological approach to language poses a
fundamental critique of Romantic aesthetics, which begins in |
i
consciousness or with the aesthetic interpreter, and of historical theories j
which attempt to objectively understand history in order to determine j
"what actually happened." Part I of Truth and Method is therefore j
i
Gadamer's critique of Romantic aesthetics, and Part II examines and
critiques the texts of historians like Wilhelm Dilthey, theologians like
Franz Schleiermacher, and legal scholars like Emilio Betti in order to
determine how they read history and how their readings differ from his
phenomenological reading. Finally, Part III is Gadamer’ s
understanding of language— the medium by which all aesthetic,
historical, theological, and legal experiences and texts are understood.
Here Gadamer examines just how phenomenology informs language
!
I
theory-how language is an event allowing for understanding rather |
2.
than a discrete entity residing either within the human being or in the
I
world.
!
| Gadamer begins with the question of aesthetic understanding for
j two reasons. First, Gadamer sees that in the understanding of an art
| work, an interpreter is least able to use a method to locate its truth.
! Second, the performance and examination of art are most closely related
; to his understanding of play, which for Gadamer is an ontological event
that is prior to all textual understanding. In the to-and-fro movement of
I
play, that is most clearly manifested in the performing arts, Gadamer
can show how the interpreter's aesthetic 'consciousness' and the work of
art itself are subsumed in play. Gadamer can then more easily re
introduce the event of play and its ontological significance when he
examines the activities of reading and writing in Part II and the nature
of linguistic understanding in Part III.
Ultimately in studying aesthetics, history, theology, and law,
Gadamer shows that the event of understanding replaces a focus on the
subject or the object in the philosophical investigation of any of these
disciplines. Gadamer's major contribution to the development of
hermeneutical theory lies, therefore, in the broadening of its use.
Before Heidegger and Gadamer, hermeneutics served an ancillary
function in philosophy; with Gadamer, hermeneutics becomes central to
philosophical investigation, and particularly to the philosophical
j investigation of texts.
The significant concepts that Gadamer introduces in Truth and
Method are those used to present an aesthetics and historical
understanding which is based on phenomenology. A pedagogical reader
of Truth and Method thus must first see how these concepts are used to
serve Gadamer's purpose. Though pedagogy is not Gadamer's focus in
Truth and Method or in any of his other works, many of his concepts
also speak to the teacher-theorist's classroom concerns.
This chapter will thus examine the significant issues in Truth and |
Method which help explain his understanding of aesthetics, history, and
language theory, and these concepts will often also be examined as they
respond to reading and writing pedagogy. The significant concepts
which speak both to Gadamer's phenomenological concerns and to my
pedagogical focus include Gadamer's understanding of hermeneutics, his
use of understanding as it relates to textual interpretation, his concept of
horizons as they explain the event of understanding, his use of play as a
way to experience the art work and language in general, and his
foregrounding of conversation as the significant hermeneutical activity.
Further, the concepts surrounding Gadamer's focus on language as an
event also have pedagogical relevance, particularly his understanding of
imitation, reading and writing, as well as the human versus the natural
sciences.
In the process of carefully examining these Gadamerian concepts,
| one realizes how profoundly interdependent they are. That is, each
; term enriches an understanding of the others. By showing the
interconnections among Gadamer's concepts, this chapter finally serves
to summarize significant moments in Truth and Method, and it becomes
a reference point for discussions in ensuing chapters which examine
these concepts as they are used by Gadamer and other theorists in and
out of the classroom.
In Truth and Method. Gadamer persists in using the term human
sciences to explain the material that is best suited to a hermeneutical
examination. Gadamer often refers to the natural sciences, in contrast
to the human sciences, a distinction that readers of Gadamer like Joel
i
Weinsheimer consider false.1
Nonetheless, before pursuing a pedagogical examination of Truth |
and Method, it is important to consider why Gadamer consistently uses
the term human sciences, as he treats texts in aesthetics, theology,
history, law, and philosophy, and to place this term in the context of
previous hermeneutical investigations. Richard Palmer first locates the
use of this term Geisteswissenshaften in Wilhelm Dilthey (Hermeneutics
99-103) and sees that Dilthey used this concept in his attempt to
respond to Kant: "Dilthey consciously set for himself the task of writing
the 'critique of historical reason' which would lay the epistemological
foundations for the 'human studies'" (110).2 Dilthey wanted to create a
term that explained the discipline that Kant had chosen not to examine
analytically. Heidegger again employed the term Geistenwissenshaften
\ as a way to examine how his phenomenology differed from "the
scientistic tendencies of his teacher, Edmund Husserl" (106).
5
It is from Heidegger, I believe, that Gadamer appropriates this
concept, using Geistenwissenshaften to explain the hermeneutical
activity which is in contradistinction to the empirical studies in the
social sciences and to the bulk of technological research. He focuses on
the way the natural science model is often appropriated by social
scientists and researchers in the applied sciences who bring an a priori
method to their analysis and attempted control of human experience.
For Gadamer, such scientistic methods do violence to any meaningful
understanding of human behavior and thought.
A Definition of Hermeneutics
Gadamer notes that originally (especially up to the nineteenth
century) hermeneutics was seen essentially as "a canon of rules
regarding the way to handle texts," particularly biblical and legal texts
(460).3 Biblical and legal scholars were called upon to explain elements
in a text that were not immediately understood or were in dispute. The
demand for hermeneutical interpretation was greater at those times in
history when tradition was questioned. Gadamer sees this relationship
between hermeneutical interpretation and the questioning of tradition as
an ongoing historical concern. Gadamer contends: "The hermeneutical
problem only emerges clearly when there is no powerful tradition
present to absorb one's own attitude into itself and when one is aware of
i i
j confronting an alien tradition to which he has never belonged and he no
longer unquestionably accepts" ^Philosophical Hermeneutics 46).4
Gadamer sees the need for hermeneutical interpretation in
contemporary European civilization essentially because of the demise
of accepted Christian beliefs.
Therefore, Gadamer redefines hermeneutics, de-emphasizing its
methodological function and tying it closely to his conception of human
experience; for Gadamer, hermeneutics becomes "a theory of the real
experience that thinking is" (xxiv). Hermeneutical interpretation is
therefore "a universal aspect of philosophy, and not just the
methodological basis of the so-called human sciences" (433).
Later in this same section of Truth and Method. Gadamer
characterizes the nature of human thinking as one founded upon reason,
language, and speculation; specifically, "the speculative character of the
human being...is the ground of hermeneutics" (434). In so doing,
Gadamer does not relegate hermeneutics solely to the arena of scholarly
exegesis; rather, he grounds hermeneutics in the fundamental character
of being, in the human being's speculative character. Such a move
implies that all humans, by their very nature, perform hermeneutical
activities; hermeneutics is not a type of thinking reserved solely for
textual scholars. Gadamer gives to hermeneutics its broadest function
when he concludes that "everything written is, in fact, in a special way
the object of hermeneutics" (356). No longer are the Bible and legal
documents the only concern of hermeneutical scholarship— any text has ;
the potential for hermeneutical investigation. In this sense, Gadamer ;
7
| would agree that both the student reader and the talmudic scholar are
j engaged in speculative activity. A primordial human activity,
hermeneutics must be considered M an act and not a mechanical
process"— one whose "method" is experienced and not codified (168).
By broadening the scope of hermeneutics (in a sense, by
democratizing this previously intellectually elitist activity), Gadamer
invites its narrowed scholarly and aesthetic uses to be applied to daily
speculative considerations. In the first part of Truth and Method.
Gadamer focuses on the universality of the aesthetic experience:
The aesthetic experience is indifferent to whether its
object is real or not whether the scene is a stage or
whether it is real life. The aesthetic consciousness has
an unlimited sovereignty over everything. (80)
Gadamer then treats the nature of aesthetic consciousness, delineating its
relationship to truth: "Must we not also allow of aesthetic experience
what we say of perception, namely that it perceives truth, i.e., remains
related to knowledge?" (81). Gadamer treats both the notion of truth
and knowing in great detail in each of the three parts of Truth and
Method. Truth is is not a commodity immanent within the text or the
interpreter, but rather a consistently reshaped event found only in the
interpreter's encounter with language.
Gadamer suggests how art imparts its "truth" to the perceiver.
Challenging the notion that immanent in the work of art is aesthetic
truth, Gadamer affirms rather that "art is not an object that stands over
against a subject for itself" (92). For Gadamer, aesthetic perception,
.8.
and by extension, all human interpretation "has its true being in the fact
that it becomes an experience changing the person experiencing it" (92).
The ontological status that Gadamer assigns to human experience and to
meaning as event informs all of Truth and Method.
In Part I, Gadamer finally assesses the place of aesthetic
interpretation in his definition of hermeneutics, concluding that aesthetic
perception is the subject of hermeneutic interpretation, in kind no
different than linguistic interpretation. He notes: "This gives to
hermeneutical consciousness a comprehensive breadth that surpasses
i even that of aesthetic consciousness. Aesthetics has to be absorbed into
hermeneutics" (146).
For Gadamer, interpretation is uniquely human and necessarily
tied to the human being’ s equally unique language abilities. Though
biblical, legal, and aesthetic interpretations acquire different styles, all
are manifestations of what the human being innately encounters in
understanding the world.
The conclusions that Gadamer draws regarding the scope of
hermeneutics are most influenced by two German philosophers— Franz
Schleiermacher, a nineteenth century German theological scholar, and
Wilhelm Dilthey, a historical theorist of the early twentieth century.
Both of these theorists Gadamer carefully treats in Part II of his Truth
and Method. Gadamer's critique of the conclusions reached by these
theorists both suggests how he was influenced by them as well as how
his hermeneutical theory differs from theirs.
To Schleiermacher, Gadamer attributes several significant
changes to the scope of hermeneutics, noting that it was Schleiermacher
who began to broaden its concept. Understanding becomes an important
consideration in the hermeneutical process for Schleiermacher, and so
does misunderstanding. Gadamer notes: "From now on we are no
longer concerned with the difficulties and failures of understanding as
occasional, but as integral elements" (163). Gadamer’ s focus on
l prejudice as a necessary factor in interpretation has its antecedents in
i
Schleiermacher's emphasis on misunderstanding.
Further, Gadamer notes that for Schleiermacher, hermeneutical
interpretation not only had a textual significance but a psychological one
as well. Again, Gadamer sees the addition of psychological concerns as
a necessary extension to the task of the hermeneutical interpreter, for
hermeneutics also needed to consider the mind of the author as it
formulated a text's meaning. Gadamer remarks that "Schleiermacher's
particular contribution is psychological interpretation. It is within a
divinatory process, a playing of oneself within the mind of the author,
an apprehension of the 'inner origin' of the composition of the work"
i
(164). In this regard, Gadamer sees how Schleiermacher is part of
i
nineteenth century German transcendental thought. Interpretation
necessarily involved seeing the connection between the reader and
text— seeing how "all individuality is a manifestation of individual life"
(166). Though Gadamer will later show how he and Schleiermacher
begin with different ontological premises, Gadamer does suggest that in
1 0 _
employing German transcendental thinking, Schleiermacher gave |
further privilege to the hermeneutical activity, so that "the task of i
hermeneutics presents itself to him as a universal one" (167). Gadamer j
will come to the same conclusion, but for different reasons.
Gadamer also agrees with Schleiermacher in insisting on the
creative activities of the interpreter in assigning meaning to the text.
' Schleiermacher's interpreter does not just locate meaning in the text, but
| rather sees hermeneutical understanding "as the reconstructive
1 completion of the production" (169). Schleiermacher affirms that the
artist is not necessarily aware of the truth of his creation because
meaning is necessarily unconscious (170). Gadamer thus notes that it
I
l
| was Schleiermacher who posited "the superiority of the interpreter over
his object" (171). In a somewhat different fashion, Gadamer will insist
on the interpreter's role in constructing meaning in a text.
Gadamer further sees Schleiermacher's focus on language as the j
interpretive medium as an original contribution to the development of
hermeneutical theory. For Schleiermacher, and for Gadamer,
hermeneutics "is concerned with everything that is cast in language"
(172). Gadamer suggests that Schleiermacher sees language, not just as
a tool imparting truth, but as an "expressive field" or a "free creative
activity" (172). It is this notion of language as the medium for the
interpretation of texts upon which Gadamer will ground his
hermeneutical theory.
ijU
The basic critique that Gadamer brings to Schleiermacher's
hermeneutics is that it insisted on "the universal character of historical
j texts" (173). Gadamer ultimately faults Schleiermacher for his
I transcendental notion that immanent in a text and the reader is a
universal understanding of the human being which goes beyond the
historical context of the work. Such a conclusion, for Gadamer,
simplifies language's enormously complex potential to disclose textual
meanings.
Wilhelm Dilthey focuses on the hermeneutics' relationship to |
I
historical consciousness. Gadamer's hermeneutics was influenced by the
emphasis that Dilthey places on history. Where Gadamer critiques
Dilthey is in his use of the natural science model to explain history.
Gadamer sees Dilthey's work in the late nineteenth century as focusing
on both "the philosophical grounding of historical knowledge" (194)
and on "how historical experience can become a science" (195). Dilthey
wants to give historical investigations a philosophical status and at the
same time to use scientistic methodology to explain them.
What Gadamer seems to be most impressed with in Dilthey's
scholarship is his understanding of the complexity of human experience-
-the focus of his historical investigation. Gadamer suggests that though
Dilthey ultimately chose to ignore the distinction, he realized that
human facts are different from natural facts. For Dilthey the material
for history is "a living historical process and its paradigm is not the j
discovery of facts, but the strange fusion of memory and expectation |
i
t
!
i
1 2 1
into a whole that we name experience and that we acquire through
experience" (195). It is this concept of human experience that Gadamer ;
will make into a central feature of his philosophical hermeneutics and
that he will use as evidence that the human sciences are in kind different
from the natural sciences.
Dilthey further explores the nature of human experience, which
he sees cannot be separated into the illusory categories of form and
content. For Dilthey, experience "is no longer divided into an act, i.e.,
a becoming conscious, and a content, i.e., that of which one is conscious.j
It is, rather, indivisible consciousness" (196). Dilthey's concept of <
indivisible consciousness is the precursor to the ontological status that
Gadamer assigns to the linguistic event— the necessary and ongoing
encounter between the reader and the text, neither of which has an
independent ontological status.
! Where Gadamer begins to disagree with Dilthey is in his
i
i
| conclusion that historical study must focus on "historical individuals,"
! who, he considers, represent "a spiritual reality" (197). Here Gadamer
j sees Dilthey's Hegelianism, Gadamer noting that in his later works,
Dilthey replaces the term life with spirit (201) and begins to see "the
historical spirit in all things" (202). The error that Gadamer sees in
Dilthey's Hegelianism is that a finite being can never apprehend and
become one with an infinite historical consciousness. Gadamer asks of
Dilthey: "The important question remains...of how such infinite
understanding is possible for finite human nature" (205). Gadamer sees
13.
that Dilthey resolves this dilemma in his recourse to the methodology of
the natural sciences-a move that Gadamer must critique. Gadamer
faults Dilthey for succumbing to the influence of the empirical
scientistic model, enormously popular with intellectuals at the end of the
nineteenth century, and still popular today. Gadamer analyzes Dilthey's
turning toward the natural sciences in order to resolve the historical
dilemma of the finite perception of infinite consciousness in this way:
The nature of the experimental method is to rise above
the subjective fortuitousness of subjective observation
and, with its help, the knowledge of the laws of nature is
possible. Similarly, the human sciences endeavor to rise
methodologically above the subjective fortuitousness of
their own standpoint in history and above the tradition
accessible to them, and thus attain the objectivity of
historical knowledge. (208-9)
Ultimately, Dilthey was persuaded that the method of the natural
sciences could be applied to human experience in order to transcend the
"limitations" of individual understanding. Gadamer will later show how
Dilthey's move is one embraced by many social scientists today.
Gadamer argues that the scientistic method could not thoroughly
resolve Dilthey's dilemma of "how objectivity is possible in relativity
and how we are to conceive the relation of the finite to the absolute"
| (209). In invoking the natural scientistic model, Gadamer sees Dilthey
j as reducing the scope of historical investigation to "intellectual history"
j and "as a deciphering and not as an historical experience" (213). In his
! critique of Dilthey, Gadamer continues to emphasize that experience
. cannot be reduced to method. Gadamer argues:
i
i
1 . 1 4 _
Historical experience, as he means it, fundamentally is
not a procedure and does not have the anonymity of
method. It is true that one can derive general rules of
experience from it, but their methodological value is not
that of a knowledge of law under which all cases could
be clearly subsumed. Rules of experience require,
rather, the experience of their use and are, basically,
what they are only in this use...The knowledge of the
human sciences is not that of the inductive sciences, but
has quite a different objectivity in quite a different way.
(213)
!
! It is in the use of history, in the event occurring between interpreter and
| the historical moment, that rules can be derived. Methods cannot be
| applied before interpreting history. Here, Gadamer locates the central
| flaw in Dilthey's argument and thus can argue for a redefinition of the
i scope of hermeneutics in the human sciences. Gadamer does not
| discount Dilthey's contribution to the shaping of twentieth century
i hermeneutical theory and even sympathizes with the Dilthey's
! acquiescence to the logic and power of the natural science model that he
i
j found in his day. Gadamer notes that the influence of the natural
j science model on the human sciences is equally powerful today: "The
j conflict that he tried to resolve shows clearly what pressure the
methodology of modem science exerts and what our task must be:
namely, to describe more adequately the experience of the human
sciences and the objectivity they are able to achieve" (214). In this
sense, Dilthey gave to Gadamer the key question to ask in directing the
nature of his philosophical hermeneutics.
15
Both Schleiermacher and Dilthey helped shape Gadamer's
conclusions regarding the nature of hermeneutical investigation. In
Schleiermacher, Gadamer saw the broadening of the notion of
hermeneutics and the placing of a greater emphasis on the role of the
interpreter. In Dilthey, Gadamer realized the importance of historical
tradition in shaping all hermeneutical interpretation. Tradition for
Gadamer includes "institutions and life-forms as well as texts"
(Philosophical Hermeneutics 96). Gadamer also expanded Dilthey's
distinction between the nature of human experience and the data
analyzed by the natural scientist. Thus by reading both Schleiermacher
and Dilthey, Gadamer began his investigation of hermeneutical theory
by seeing the interpreter of any text as a product of his historical
tradition.
Central to Gadamer's hermeneutics is the concept of human
experience. Experience is always unpredictable and therefore can never
be methodized. It is in the individual’ s willingness to live with
unpredictability that one is able to interpret life. For Gadamer,
experience is "an event over which no one has control and which is not
even determined by particular weight of this or that argument" (316).
The experienced observer anticipates the unpredictable, Gadamer noting
i
| that "every experience worthy of name runs counter to our expectation"
| (319).
j Accepting unpredictability is central to Gadamer's perspectives on
i
! ethical behavior and all human conversation. Gadamer cites Aristotle,
i
j
16.
who saw a difference between technical knowledge (techne) and moral
knowledge (phronesis). A craftsman can effectively use a blueprint to
build his cabinet, whereas a human being can only make ethical
decisions as (not before) he experiences the event. Though he brings a
' moral sense to these experiences, he must always anticipate that
1
experience can reshape his ethical beliefs. In not allowing experience to
speak to his ethical premises, an interpreter fashions beliefs that become
become rigid and often unethical. Similarly, in human conversation,
both participants must allow the other to speak. Without this respect for
the conversational event, the conversation, like the ethical belief,
becomes rigid and dogmatic.
Further, for Gadamer, hermeneutical interpretation is grounded
on the interpreter's recognition of "human finitude" (320) and on "one's
own historically" (321). Unlike Dilthey, Gadamer does not see the
hermeneutical experience as providing insight into a universal historical
spirit; rather it allows for a continual understanding of human limitation
in apprehending the infinity of historical possibility.
Ultimately, for Gadamer, hermeneutical interpretation is
| dialectical in character, just as human conversation has a dialectical
I
j movement; that is, the interpreter "recognizes oneself in other being"
I
(310). Gadamer frequently refers to the dialectical nature of the
hermeneutical encounter as an I-Thou occurrence. For Gadamer, the
Thou is synonymous with tradition, or the beliefs of others that the
interpreter experiences. It is not a a body of knowledge that one can
ever totally control or know; "a 'Thou' is not an object, but stands in
relationship with us," constantly reshaping one's experience (321). Far
from being an object of study or material that the interpreter can
dominate, the Thou of tradition "is a genuine partner in
communication" (321). Fundamental to Gadamer's hermeneutics is the
dialogical nature of all human encounter.
Finally, Gadamer comes upon an important hermeneutical
concept in his turn away from Schleiermacher and Dilthey: effective
historical consciousness, which for Gadamer is "the highest type of
hermeneutical experience" (324). It is a consciousness of being effected
by history by always being in it and never outside of it. It is a concept
I
that I will treat thoroughly in Chapter II. Such a consciousness
examines the possibilities of what tradition has to say and is unwilling to
use a method to make tradition speak in a piecemeal fashion. The
I
effective historical consciousness finally sees tradition as a partner in a j
dialogue where the interpreter "must accept some things that are against
myself, even though there is no one else who asks this of me" (324).
The interpreter embracing an effective historical consciousness is thus
beginning from a complex and challenging intellectual and ethical
k ,
position, one that allows a 'Thou' to question the interpreter's beliefs
; because the interpreter acknowledges that in order for beliefs to be of
| any moral value, they must constantly be revised. In the activity of
I i
effective historical consciousness, Gadamer is thus presenting a
hermeneutical task that serious interpreters of tradition must continually
attempt to meet.
Gadamer clearly describes how the effective historical
consciousness differs from the traditional mindset of the natural
scientist: "The hermeneutical consciousness has its fulfillment, not in its
methodological sureness of itself, but in the same readiness for
j experience that distinguishes the experienced man by comparison with
I
I the man captivated by dogma" (325). Such an interpretive activity has
! fundamental translations both to the teacher and student of language. In
a pedagogy responding to Gadamer’s language theory, dogma and
method necessarily succumb to the ontological reality of a student and
teacher entering into a dialogue with a text.
It is this effective historical consciousness that informs Gadamer’ s
concept of philosophical hermeneutics. It is a concept that both makes
hermeneutical interpretation an essential and ongoing human activity
and serves to critique a scientistic mindset that filters all experience
through its method. The effective historical consciousness is also
closely related to Gadamer's equally fundamental concept of j
understanding. !
Understanding
i
!
Gadamer's notion of the nature of human understanding is greatly j
i ;
influenced by Martin Heidegger’ s conception of understanding,
__________________________________________________________________________ 1 9 _
particularly in his Being and Time. Closely related to Heidegger's
interpretation of understanding is his concept of Dasein which he
j defines as "the entity which each of us is himself and which includes
| inquiring as one of the possibilities of its Being" (27).5 Dasein
t
necessarily involves the human being's ongoing encounter with the
world— her questioning of it, her questioning of others, and her
questioning of her own being. Heidegger later notes that "'Dasein'
means Being-in-the-World," his hyphenated phrase suggesting the
impossibility of separating consciousness from the world, or subject
from object, in any philosophical investigation (208). For Heidegger
and Gadamer, "being-in-the world" forms the ontological ground for
their philosophy. Heidegger later locates understanding in its relation to
Dasein, concluding that "Dasein, as essentially understanding, is
proximally alongside what is understood" (207). Here Heidegger seems
to equate Dasein with understanding and places it alongside— not
before— interpretation, or "what is understood." It is the event of
Dasein which can never be separated from the interpretation of
experience. Clearly, for Heidegger, understanding has ontological
status.
In his foreword to the second edition of Truth and Method.
i ------------------------
| Gadamer asks the fundamental question that his work attempts to
| answer. Essentially, Gadamer's question concerns the nature of human
i
i understanding from a Heideggerian perspective: "Thus the following
I
! question also asks a philosophical question...How is understanding
2 0
possible?” (xviii). By understanding, Gadamer is referring to an
ontological rather than an epistemological concept, along the lines of
Heidegger's use of the term: "Heidegger’ s temporal analytics of human
existence (Dasein) has, I think, shown convincingly that understanding is
j not just one of the various possible behaviors of the subject, but the j
j mode of being of There-being itself' (xviii). It is not that the human
j being may choose to understand; rather, by virtue of being in the world,
| the human being must understand and does so unknowingly.
Gadamer further notes that human understanding— "the basic
being-in-motion of There-being"— is constituted by its "finiteness and
historicity" (xviii). As a necessary human activity, understanding must
always be constituted from the condition of the human being at each
historical moment. These are ontological givens for Gadamer which
inform all three Parts of Truth and Method.
Not just the vehicle by which conflicting interpretations of texts
are argued, understanding for Heidegger is "a movement of
transcendence, a moving beyond beginning" (230). For Heidegger and
Gadamer, understanding provides a "new intellectual freedom" because
knowledge is no longer located exclusively within the subject or the
object— positions taken by various philosophers in centuries of j
discussions (231). j
Heidegger and Gadamer both see understanding as a human j
1 i
; process which cannot be methodized— its significance lies in the fact that 1
| it "remains adapted to the object" (231). The object’ s 'throwness', or its
! projection upon the perceiver, constitutes the historical experience upon
which the perceiver's tradition is constantly redefined. The human
being finds himself in (is thrown into) experience, and he can never
assume that he will have an a priori control or total familiarity with it.
i
Werner Brock refers to throwness in this way: "But this whirl itself
reveals the 'throwness' [Geworfenheit] itself in its moving and throwing
force" (43).6 The human being is necessarily drawn into the whirl of
experience. In regard to its unpredictability, throwness is an integral
part of Dasein. There-being, or, roughly, human understanding, is thus
always necessarily enacted by tradition. This foregrounding of
tradition, without its classification as a discrete entity, will become
central to understanding how Gadamer sees the nature and relationship
of reading and writing.
Gadamer explores the complex nature of the interpreter's
response to experience, emphasizing that it is never experience which
j carries understanding within it. Rather, he contends that understanding
is based both upon "consciousness of our belonging to the world" and
the fact that the "work [that which is interpreted] belongs to our world"
(258). Gadamer thus does not treat the age-old ontological conflict
f
between subject and object as sites for truth, replacing this debate with
I the premise that the event of understanding is ontologically prior to any
j
j consideration of subject and object. Time is also necessary for
understanding, for in every transaction between experience and
interpreter, "past and present are constantly fused" (258). Gadamer
2 2
metaphorically sees this encounter leading to understanding as a horizon
that changes as experience continually reshapes the interpreter's concept
of the ever-changing whole (or horizon).
In a related sense, understanding for Gadamer is necessarily a
social phenomenon in that it always involves "a sharing of a common
meaning" (260). That is, in each case where human understanding
*
manifests itself, the interpreter and tradition engage in conversation. j
From the perspective of hermeneutics, it is the reader and the text
whose conversation results in the disclosure of meaning.
Finally, Gadamer grounds understanding, much as he grounds
hermeneutics, in its relation to history. Without the interpreter
assuming that she is finite and a product of her tradition, no
understanding can occur. In this sense, Gadamer insists that knowing
one's historical situation necessarily accompanies understanding; he thus
concludes that "understanding is, essentially, an effective historical
| relation" (267).
i
• Implicated in Gadamer's treatment of understanding is his concept
of interpretation. Gadamer is clear that interpretation is not a method
j or tool of understanding; if it is used as a tool, understanding
|
disappears. Like Dasein's relationship to understanding, interpretation i
works alongside understanding. Again, Gadamer is influenced by j
Heidegger's concept of interpretation treated in Being and Time. |
Heidegger defines interpretation in this fashion: "the working out of
possibilities projected in understanding" (189). Interpretation thus
seems to articulate the meanings of experience, to make understanding
more explicit. Like Gadamer, Heidegger does not provide a method for
interpretation; he only notes that interpretation has a prescient quality,
involving 'forehaving': "In every case this interpretation is grounded in
something we see in advance— in a foresight" (191). One thus cannot
use an interpretive method to derive understanding. As experience is
thrown upon him, the interpreter responds by attempting to understand
! it in its totality; interpretation is a linguistic manifestation of this
understanding.
Gerald Bruns provides an additional perspective on Heidegger’ s
notion of forehaving, noting "To take something as something, that is,
to interpret it, means to understand it in its being— that is, with respect
to, or in terms of, the situation in which we find ourselves with it" (The
Rhetoric of the Human Sciences 2451.7 Interpretation for Gadamer and
Heidegger is thus always contextualized, always understanding in
relationship to something else.
Gadamer does not see interpretation as a pedagogical tool (359),
but rather as a process, like understanding, that is necessarily social.
Interpretation, then, "includes the possibility of relationship with
others" (359). Gadamer insists that interpretation is not an easily
| identifiable activity; in fact, when it is successfully employed, it loses
i itself in understanding. Gadamer succinctly notes: "Thus interpretation
i
is not a means through which understanding is achieved, but it has
passed into the content of what is understood" (359). To call
interpretation a tool for understanding is therefore to distort and
simplify its much more intimate relationship to understanding. For
Gadamer, interpretation cannot simply be seen as the cause of
understanding.
Finally, Gadamer wants to broaden the conception of
interpretation, for he sees it as a powerful term both in describing
traditional learning (textual exegesis) and artistic performance. A
dancer or actor, for example, is also interpreting the object of imitation
I
I (the original choreography or the script). Thus Gadamer can conclude
that "all performance is interpretation" (362).
Interconnected with understanding and interpretation is
application, a process in understanding that Gadamer notes was
originally seen as a separate activity. Gadamer challenges this position,
noting that application can no more be methodized than can
understanding and interpretation. In the act of understanding,
interpretation and application naturally and unconsciously come into
play and disappear. Gadamer concludes that these three activities
comprise "one unified process" (275). For Gadamer, application has a
close connection to the interpreter's historical finitude. In
understanding an ancient text, for example, the reader necessarily
appropriates its meaning into her present historical situation. And each
subsequent reading of the text will therefore elicit a new meaning
because her historical situation continually changes, or the "as-
structure" of experience is always new; the text "must be understood at
2 5 _ j
every moment, in every particular situation, in a new and different
meaning" (275). Application necessarily considers the time and
occasion in which understanding occurs. In her treatment of classroom
reading and writing, Salvatori will foreground Gadamer's
understanding of application.8 j
As a feature of understanding, application serves to bridge the
gap between the reader and the text, overcoming "the alienation of
meaning that the text has undergone" (278). Gadamer further suggests
i
! that one cannot assign a sequential relationship to understanding,
i interpretation, and application. That is, application does not necessarily
occur after interpretation. To interpret a text, a reader concomitantly
locates that in it which speaks to him and concretizes it in his specific
| situation. In this sense, application makes the text one's own.
Therefore, in the act of reading, a reader uses understanding, |
interpretation, and application in order to question her traditions. |
A final, important corollary to Gadamer's notion of j
understanding is his emphasis on the necessity for misunderstanding, or j
i
prejudice. In Truth and Method Gadamer seems to use 1
misunderstanding and prejudice interchangeably. One of
Schleiermacher's contributions to the redefinition of hermeneutics, j
according to Gadamer, is the focus that he places on the perceiver's |
i
misunderstanding as a necessary and valid interpretive activity: "This is j
something fundamentally new. For from now on we are no longer j
concerned with the difficulties and failures of understanding as i
occasional, but as integral elements" (163). Gadamer assigns to
misunderstanding an even more forceful role in his hermeneutical
theory, noting that "this recognition that all understanding inevitably
involves some prejudice gives the hermeneutical problem its real thrust"
(239). For Gadamer, scientism is as much a prejudice as creationism. j
In both cases, the respective prejudices make understanding possible.
Gadamer ties prejudice, like application, to historical finitude.
The human being, Gadamer affirms, does not create history but creates j
I
his own history from it. In the following extended excerpt, Gadamer ;
equates prejudice with tradition: j
In fact history does not belong to us, but we belong to it. j
Long before we understand ourselves, through the I
process of self examination, we understand ourselves in |
a self-evident way in the family, society, and state in
which we live. TTie focus of subjectivity is a distorting
mirror. The self-awareness of the individual is only a
flickering in the closed circuits of historical life. That is
why the prejudices of the individual, far more than his
judgments, constitute the historical reality of his being.
(245)
It is history, manifested initially through family, society, and state, that
constitutes the interpreter's prejudices. Never, Gadamer suggests, can
an individual entirely sacrifice these historical givens to judgments
which are purged of all aspects of this history. For this reason,
i
Gadamer here and elsewhere in Truth and Method considers the !
"objectivity" attempted in the natural sciences as both unnatural and
impossible.
Prejudice, Gadamer continues, is also central in the activity of
understanding. Gadamer notes that when the text "addresses us," the
reader's prejudices are temporarily suspended (266). This is not to say
that one's prejudices are discarded and the text's assertions are
immediately and unquestionably accepted. Rather, one's prejudices are
confronted by the text's assertions, and they are thus "brought into play
through its [ prejudice's] being at risk" (266). In this questioning
fashion, the reader can choose to retain her prejudices, alter them, or
j discard them, only to have her prejudices be replaced by others. In the
writing classroom, specifically, it is through discussion, reading, and
writing that student's prejudices are constantly redefined.
Finally, Gadamer's treatment of prejudice allows for a re-reading
of student errors and misinterpretations. Rather than being summarily
discounted by the teacher, student misunderstandings in reading a text
must be respected, because it is through prejudices that a reader comes
i
to understand. To discount a student interpretation of a text is to
question both the value of his traditions and the basic nature of his
thinking process— in short, to discount the student's ways of reading.
Horizons
Gadamer interprets this reader-text encounter in several ways. j
One of the most suggestive versions of this event is Gadamer's notion of
horizons— present in both the reader and the text. In neither case is the j
horizon a fixed entity; rather, it is one, like understanding, that is
constantly reshaped by experience. Much like the constantly changing
event of understanding, both the historical and interpreter's horizons
are constantly transformed as new experience presents itself,
j Gadamer defines horizons in this way: "The horizon is the range
I
j of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular
I vantage point" (269). Gadamer's use of horizon is a suggestive
| metaphor, for horizons constantly change as the viewer's perspective
changes, and horizons are never the interpreter's final destination, as
they are (like a shadow) forever before the perceiver. Horizons always
include the prejudices that the interpreter brings to experience. Those
with small horizons only value what is closest to them. The reading of
texts can transform these limited horizons because that which is near is
put at risk by the text's horizons. The hermeneutical task of all readers,
then, is to allow their horizons to change in congruence with the
questions evoked by the text.
Changing one's near horizons does not necessarily imply that the
interpreter's prejudices are altered. Rather, in changing one's horizons,
1 i
I *
j the reader is only required to "understand the meaning that has been
| handed down" (270), to allow the text to speak and question the reader's
prejudices. The reader is always free to then replace the text's
prejudices with her own.
Gadamer also notes that the reader’ s horizon is never created in
isolation from experience: "it is...something into which we move and
that moves with us" (271). The interpreter's understanding of a text
j
I never results from the reader imposing an a priori historical
l
i perspective; rather understanding unfolds from the event of the
i interpreter responding to the experience. Further, tradition is not an a
t
j priori reality that the text imparts to the reader, but the result of this
| event as well.
! Gadamer also notes that it is incorrect to assume that the
i
I historical horizon is a separate entity from the perceiver's. Texts only
j take on a reality when the interpreter embraces them into his own
experience. So, paradoxically, though both horizons are necessary for
understanding, they do not exist apart. Gadamer can thus conclude that
!
"it is, in fact, a single horizon that embraces everything contained in
historical consciousness" (271).
|
The hermeneutical task that Gadamer presents to all interpreters j
is to develop a horizon that goes beyond immediate experience. Only
then can the present experience be seen differently. Gadamer concedes
that this task is demanding because what is in front of the perceiver is
always the most difficult to ignore. Gadamer states: "Hence it is
constantly necessary to inhibit the overhasty assimilation of the past to
our own expectations of meaning. Only then will we be able to listen to
the past in a way that enables it to make its own meaning heard" (272).
The reflective reader listens carefully to the questions which emerge
from her reading, especially if these questions challenge her prejudices.
This is the pedagogical task of reading and writing teachers at any level,
and particularly at the level of college reading and writing: to
orchestrate an environment which encourages students to want to go
beyond the comforting experiences of the present in order to let a text
be heard and thus allow it to present additional experiences on the
present, thereby enriching it.
Gadamer defines understanding from the perspective of fusing
horizons: "Understanding, rather, is always the fusion of these horizons
which we imagine to exist by themselves" (273). In understanding, a
reader's prejudices must therefore constantly be challenged by texts
(both ancient and recent) which present a different set of prejudices.
Gadamer notes that tradition is naturally formed and reformed in all
cultures by the fusing of past and present. In this sense, all tradition is
living and part of the same dynamic involved in an individual's i
understanding. For Gadamer, all understanding— collective and
individual— is therefore a manifestation of "the tension between the text \
I
and the present" (273). This tension and ensuing fusion of horizons is j
necessary both for the continuation of tradition and for the possibility of!
the reader's horizons to change. Toward the end of the most recent
i
edition of Truth and Method. Gadamer provides a revealing notion of
j j
tradition which further explains how textual horizons necessarily fuse: j
"Tradition is not the vindication of what has come down from the past
I
but the further creation of moral and social life; it depends on being j
; made conscious and freely carried on" (571).9 As Gadamer will fully j
explain in various sections of Truth and Method, reading and writing
are the logical manifestations of this collective and personal growth.
Just as interpretation is self-effacing, so ultimately does the fusing
of horizons disappear when one embraces the past in the present.
Gadamer sees the interpreter's conscious awareness of fusing these
horizons as another expression of the effective-historical consciousness:
i
<
| "We described the conscious act of this fusion as the task of the
effective-historical consciousness" (274). Once the individual embraces
j
the past's alienness and assimilates it into her own present, she has
attained an effective-historical consciousness— an awareness which
allows history to speak and momentarily to silence the prejudices of the
present.
It is this notion of fusing horizons that is echoed in several
rhetorical and critical theorists concerned with the reading-writing
encounter, particularly in the reading theories of Wolfgang Iser.10 In i
his treatment of fusing horizons, Gadamer presents a phenomenological
interpretation for why reading and writing are necessarily
interconnected activities.
!
Play
i
Another perspective that Gadamer uses to explain the
interpreter's relationship to experience and the reader's relationship to
! the text is his concept of play. Again, the prominent status that he
t
: 32
assigns to play suggests its importance in understanding Gadamer's
philosophical hermeneutics and its relationship to language pedagogy.
Much of what Gadamer says about play is found in the first
J
section of Truth and Method on hermeneutics and aesthetics. For it is in
the nature of play that Gadamer wants to critique an aesthetic
understanding coming solely from the interpreter. But Gadamer
quickly demonstrates that the aesthetics that he is treating is subsumed
under the larger concept of play. The central conclusion that Gadamer
draws is that the being of art "is an essential part of play as play" (104).
In the third part of Truth and Method on language, Gadamer posits that
it is play again that is the cause of linguistic understanding. Gadamer
concludes this part of his study with the affirmation that "language
games are where we as learners— and when do we cease to be that?-rise
to the understanding of the world" (446). It is play, then, that provides
both aesthetic and linguistic understanding. For Gadamer, play is
therefore the dynamus for understanding— to which both Gadamer and
Heidegger have given ontological status.
In Part I, Gadamer attempts to define play by listing its varied
i characteristics. Like understanding, play is not intentional but an
effortless event to which the participants willingly suspend their
j temporal awareness: "In each case what is intended is the to-and-fro
I
movement which is not tied to any goal which would bring it to an end"
j (93). Play is dialectical movement without telos. Though goals and
I rules are the materials of play, they willfully succumb to the play's most
3 3 _ J
important character— its "to-and-fro movement." Once players
appreciate the power of play’ s back-and-forth, or dialectical, character,
issues of winning and losing no longer serve a fundamental purpose for
them.
Further, just as the interpreter is called into understanding by
experience, so in play it is the object of the game that engages the
interpreter: "Playing is always a playing of something," (196) so that
i
the players' subjectivity disappears as they focus on the object. j
Also play is not directed toward any solution. Once the player ;
imposes a solution on the game, devises a method, the play disappears
into work. In describing what a child does when he plays ball, Gadamer
notes that "the purpose of the game is not the solution of the task, but
the ordering and shaping of the movement of the game itself (97). In
play, the event of movement negates teleological concerns. Gadamer is
not saying here that a child does not exert effort in playing ball, but that
she is drawn into play's to-and-fro-movement, of which effort is a
necessary cause. As with winning and losing, effort disappears in the
act of playing. !
Moreover, players do not have an audience in mind; even players
in spectator sports, Gadamer affirms, play for themselves. When their
t
audience becomes their conscious concern, they forfeit their role as j
I
players and become show people, pandering to the audience's response J
and not to the beckoning movement of the game.
Much as understanding is achieved through the fusion of horizons
between interpreter and tradition, creating an event which allows for
their disappearance, so does play necessitate the disappearance of the
player as subject and the rules of the game. The play itself is what
seduces the player to participate, in such a fashion that it "draws the
i latter into its area and fills him with its spirit" (98). Just as
i understanding subsumes both subject and tradition, so does play move
I
i beyond the player's more local concerns.
i For Gadamer, play is finally transformation, and its result is
j pleasure— what he simply calls "the joy of knowledge" (101). In
| treating the nature of this knowing, Gadamer focuses on the aesthetic
i
pleasure derived from dramatic performance and viewing, but his
aesthetic conclusions can be successfully applied to the joy resulting
from textual interpretation as well. In the successful reading of a text, a
conversation emerges which initiates the same to-and-fro-movement of
play. For Gadamer, this "joy of knowledge" is not derived from the
’ facts' that the interpreter amasses, but rather from the successful
conversation which she orchestrates with the voices of the text.
Play acts upon the player in the same way that understanding
influences tradition. In both instances, the unknown is disclosed.
Gadamer concludes that in play "is produced and brought to light what
otherwise is considered hidden and withdrawn" (101). Both texts and
works of art provide an infinite potential for the disclosure of truth;
| through the event of play, the truth, encountered by the reader,
j spectator, or performer and the text, shines forth. Through this
' encounter, meaning potential is inexhaustible.
I
I Gadamer’ s treatment of play and the privileged status that he
assigns to it provide an important insight into how human understanding
occurs. Play, not method, is its necessary dynamus. Imposing a goal or
method on the playful event negates its playfulness and thus blocks
understanding. One soon realizes that play is not only central to
understanding Gadamer's interpretation of spectator sports and dramatic
performances, but also of face-to-face conversation and the reading of
texts. Oral and written dialogues also engage play’ s to-and-fro
movement, as participants subtly move from the role of speaker to that
of listener. A speaker who dominates a conversation or a reader who is
too timid to respond to a text thus discourages the necessary question
and statement of dialectic to occur. It is this dialectical movement, in
kind like the relationship established in play, that orchestrates
understanding.
In a later essay, "The Play of Art," Gadamer extends his
understanding of play to the animal world as well: "Play is an
elementary phenomenon that pervades the whole of the animal world"
(The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essavs 123).1 1 He ultimately
sees the play-drive as informing the behavior of organisms as well as
human artistic and interpretive creations, seeing in play a paradoxical
! interpenetration between "exuberance and superabundance" and "the
!
I tense power of vital energy" (130).
I
! __________ 3 l6_
To experience play in a language classroom is admittedly an
i
j idealistic possibility. Students often are dominated by the inscrutable
voices of the teacher or the text. Yet one cannot deny that the
educational autobiographies of most learners involve recollections of
i profound moments when teachers and students, parents and children,
readers and texts, or peers worked together (alongside each other) in
the learning activity. It is invariably not the facts which are learned
that the learner recalls, but the relationship he established with the
! "Thou,” and an appreciation for the sense of play that this relationship
engendered, ultimately providing an insight into how knowing can be
joyful.
I
i
i
i
i
| Conversation
t
j
j An additional issue which emerges from Gadamer's treatment of
j understanding and play is his concept of conversation, which becomes
| the most suggestive metaphor to describe his hermeneutics. In this
!
| metaphor, Gadamer is able to move understanding into the linguistic
! arena which, by Part III of Truth and Method. Gadamer concedes is the
!
I
j only arena in which human understanding is encountered. Like play,
i conversation transcends subjectivity by becoming an amicable, to-and-
| fro movement.
! Central to human conversation for Gadamer is the question,
I
i which he adds is also the basis for human experience: "We cannot have
L________________________ 37_
experiences without asking questions" (325). It is the interpreter's
questions, Gadamer argues, that "open up...the being of the object"
! (326). Gadamer sees Plato's dialectic as the archetypal conversation
i which leads to understanding, for in Plato's dialogues, the question-
! answer conversation unfolds a constantly interrogated understanding of
I
t
j the issue before the partners in dialogue. For Gadamer, the authentic
| conversation involves the participants’ desire to pursue the questions
j rather than being satisfied with the answers. For questioning opens up
| the mystery of the issue; a desire only for answers simplifies the text's i
meaning potential and assumes that all arguments necessarily have an :
i
end. Gadamer's foregrounding of the question has significant j
i
j pedagogical translations, particularly regarding how students read texts j
j and the ways that their textual responses develop. Gadamer's focus on ;
i the question will be treated thoroughly in Chapter II. !
i Gadamer also sees Plato's dialogues as evidence that the metaphor i
! '
j of the conversation can effectively be applied to the nature of the j
! encounter between reader and text. Thus Gadamer can "describe the
work of hermeneutics as a conversation with the text" (331). The faith
in the other required for face-to-face conversation to occur is also the
activity that readers need to bring to texts in order to interpret them
I
richly. In reading a text, they need to formulate questions whose
answers the text reveals, only to generate further questions. By seeing
^ the hermeneutical interpretation of texts as a conversation, a reader thus
! avoids dogmatic readings. Further, Gadamer posits that by conceiving
j of reading as a conversation, texts no longer present "problems" but
I
i form questions (340). Traditional readers see problems in texts which
i
| must be resolved by their methodically locating the "solution" in the text
itself or in a method which they bring to the text. Such a position
I
stultifies the fluid relationship between text and reader that the notion of
conversation encourages. Though Gadamer admits that the conversation
involved in reading has a "specific character," (341) it nonetheless is an
activity whose origins lie in face-to-face conversation. Much j
investigation in language praxis still needs to be conducted in order to !
determine just how texts speak to readers and to articulate the j
!
conventions of textual conversations which may contrast to those of
j face-to-face conversations. Salvatori has begun to explore these
| distinctions in her classroom investigations.12
i
| The activities of face-to-face conversation and conversation with
i
the text are in kind like the structure of play that Gadamer has
1
previously treated:
...in the successful conversation they both come under
the truth of the object and are thus bound to one another
in a new community. To reach an under standing with
one's partner in a dialogue is not merely a matter of
total self- expression and the successful assertion of
one's point of view, but the transformation into a
communion, in which we do not remain what we are. ■
(341) !
Grounded in the encounter between interpreter and experience, j
i
| Gadamerian conversation cannot emanate from subjectivity but must
I focus on the change that occurs in both partners due to the to-and-fro j
movement of their dialogue. Like play, conversation has transformative
powers.
Gadamer wants to emphasize that his concept of conversation is
fundamental to all thought— both thought engendered by social
encounters and thinking to oneself. All thought, he notes, "is speaking
to oneself," or, according to Plato, it is "an inner conversation of the
soul with itself (382). For Gadamer, the question-answer format of
dialectic thus seems to be the dynamus for engendering and advancing
human thinking. A reader's prejudices necessarily change because of
the questions that emerge in conversation, and understanding is only
nourished if the reader continues to remain open to the additional
questions that the textual conversation leads to.
In his essay in the appendix to Truth and Method "To What
Extent Does Language Preform Thought?", Gadamer analyzes Plato's
equation of thought with a dialogue with one's soul. He sees this inner
dialogue as "a constant going beyond oneself and a return to oneself'
(492). The educated mind strives to go beyond its prejudices but is
quickly drawn back by them. This inner dialogue, Gadamer contends,
is an insistent reminder to the interpreter that the questions she poses
are limitless and that the prejudices she embraces are always subject to
change . It is a dialogue "which never leads anywhere and which
differentiates us from the ideal of an infinite spirit to which all that
exists and all truth is present in a single vision" (492). In a later work, :
Gadamer refers to the interpreter's dilemma as the "bad infinite" |
(Reason in the Age of Science 40),13 a concept which contrasts to the
single vision examined by Hegel. This inner dialogue is, in a sense, an
insistent critique of the Romantic affirmation of the human’ s ability to
apprehend the infinite. And though dialogue, like play, has no telos, it
provides, paradoxically, the means by which the speaker continues to
apprehend experience in its unexpected, ever-changing manifestations. I
i
Though this dialogue reminds us of our limitations, it also is the
| necessary precursor to our desire to speak to others and to let others
speak to us. And in this way, speaking to one's soul leads to our desire
i
I for understanding and truth. Gadamer describes the invitation that this
i
j inner dialogue ceaselessly provides us:
! It is this experience of language— in our education in the
midst of this interior conversation with ourselves, which
| ’
I is simultaneously the anticipation of conversation with
others and the introduction of conversation with
ourselves— that the world begins to open up and achieve
1 order in all the domains of experience. (492) i
! I
j Conversation— be it social or interior— is Gadamer's operant metaphor J
I i
i for the limitation and ensuing possibility of human understanding. In j
J i
j the metaphor of conversation, several key Gadamerian terms emerge,
| revealing their relationship to the others. To openly interrogate
j experience engenders the give-and-take movement of conversation,
which then gives rise to the event play. And it is ultimately through
play that understanding emerges and is further explored by the
i
interpreter. j
Language
The material for conversation, of course, is language, and
Gadamer sees language as the medium of understanding. For him,
language becomes the unlimited storehouse of human tradition-both in
the limited perceptions manifested in human prejudices and through the
insights which humans come upon as they transform their horizons.
Gadamer’ s central notion concerning language is that within
language, and not outside of it, lies truth, so there is no way out of
language. Rather than inhibiting one's use of language, this condition is
the cause for the continual disclosure of human understanding. In his
treatment of language in Part III of Truth and Method. Gadamer
analyzes the paradoxes of his philosophical hermeneutics.
Gadamer begins by noting that "language is not only an object of
our hands, it is the reservoir of tradition and the medium in and
through which we exist and perceive our world" (29). The human
being thus does not use language simply to express his ideas, because
these ideas inhere in (are not outside of) language. Rather than being an
instrument that the human being dominates, language both provides the
material for questioning human experience and the medium by which
this experience is understood. Ultimately, for him, language is
synonymous with experience. Neither language nor understanding is
realized outside of the event engendered by interpreter and experience,
4 2 i
so Gadamer can affirm that "we are always already at home in
language, just as much as we are in the world" (63).
Gadamer continues that though we are "at home in language," it is
simultaneously "always out beyond us" (44). That is, language is both a
familiar and alien medium, while it is by virtue of its alienness— its
"concretion of effective historical consciousness" (351)— that the hearer
or reader is presented with the hidden disclosures of tradition. Inherent
in language's dual nature— its familiarity and its alienness— is the
constant human desire for questions and answers, or for conversation.
Gadamer expresses this language paradox somewhat differently when he
notes that "all thinking is confined to language, as a limit as well as a
possibility" (127).
Seen in another way, language is infinite possibility challenging j
human finitude. If language is the inexhaustible resource for human j
tradition, then it necessarily challenges the human being to unlock its j
meanings. For Gadamer, tradition is not the expression of a culture’ s |
significant moments; rather it is the representation of what the
interpreter understands of her experience. Quite simply, tradition for
Gadamer lies within language. Though the human being can never
comprehend the totality of experience that language affords, his j
conversations with language allows its truths consistently to shine forth :
i
and thus to reshape his linguistic horizons. What Gadamer's
philosophical hermeneutics ultimately suggests is "that language knows
no tradition and never breaks down, because it holds infinite
possibilities of utterance in readiness" (239).
Gadamer sees language as the medium for the fusion of historical
and subjective horizons. How it functions in this encounter is
admittedly a puzzlement for Gadamer— "one of the most mysterious
questions that exist for man to ponder" (340). A large measure of this
mystery lies in the ambiguous position that language takes in this
encounter— as signifier (or word) and as signified (or idea). The human
being's fascination with language lies in the fact that language is
thought. When people think, Gadamer asserts, they necessarily use
language. Yet as language becomes thought, it necessarily disappears as
a word, much as interpretation and application are effaced in the
process of understanding. Though it is a mysterious process, Gadamer
can nonetheless affirm that language "is prior to everything else" (340).
Both subjectivity and objectivity are constmcts of language, while truth
is also a result of experiencing language, not an a priori reality which
uses language as its instrument.
Throughout Part III of Truth and Method. Gadamer treats
various ways of considering language as the source and the medium of
thought. It is the reservoir for tradition and uniquely related to
understanding. Further, it is always a social process, constantly seeking,
as in conversation, a bond between two people.
Language also seems to consistently limit the human being's
interpretive potential because it must always conform to its
44
conventional, schematized character, that is, to its phonological,
syntactical, and semantic characteristics. Thus, the structure of
language strives for uniformity in the face of the interpreter’ s attempt at
forging an individual voice. Nonetheless, Gadamer quickly asserts that
in spite of this conflict, language does not stifle human attempts at
thought, though it may seem so to the interpreter. For even the critique
j of language’s structure is expressed linguistically: "Hence language
forestalls any objection to its jurisdiction" (363). It thus seems to
Gadamer that within language lies its structure and the interpreter's
reason, both of which work alongside each other, so that "hermeneutical
consciousness is only participating in something that constitutes the
general relation between language and reason" (363).
Words as objects and words as thoughts work together, and they
can never be separated. Gadamer cites the translator’ s dilemma as
evidence for the inseparability of signifier from signified. Rather than
j finding in this dilemma evidence for the absence of meaning in
j language, Gadamer interprets this inseparability of word and idea as a
i
further hermeneutical task. Though a linguistic construct, reason (or
thought) nonetheless rises above the constraints of linguistic structure;
i
I therefore, "the hermeneutical experience is the corrective by means of
I which the thinking reason escapes the prison of language, and it is itself
^ constituted linguistically" (363). For Gadamer, understanding is
\
ultimately an expression of human reason rather than language, and it is
' reason that presents itself to the reader, even when a reader interprets a
i
_______________________ 45__
text in a dead language. Within the limitations of a translated text in a
dead language, a text can still speak to the reader. Though a translator
of classical Greek, for example, has never heard a speaker of the
language and can only hypothesize its rules of pronunciation, his
translation results in understanding, for himself and his readers. For
Gadamer, this is evidence for the priority of reason over (yet not
separation from) linguistic form, for one must keep in mind that it is
only through language that reason is able to speak.
In studying Aristotle on language, Gadamer focuses on his
interest in the "undogmatic freedom" that language uses to create
concepts (391). He treats Aristotle's interpretation of the relationship
between the universal and specific in which a concept or word emerges
as it encounters the flux of experience. Aristotle posits that words
originate in "what the mind sees as similar in things it encounters"
(391). The only area where Gadamer faults Aristotle in this regard is
in his limiting of this word-making capacity to the rhetorical concept of
metaphor; in so doing, Aristotle, Gadamer argues, is de-emphasizing his
original hypothesis about linguistic evolution: "its logical productivity,
the spontaneous and inventive seeking out of similarities by means of
which it is possible to order things" (392). It is the interpreter’s
"spontaneous and inventive" response to experience that is both the basis
for the vitality of any language and for the emergence of new words
and phrases. Far from a minor rhetorical concept, metaphor-making is j
j central in directing the development of any language and is tied closely
! to human understanding.
!
| Gadamer frequently refers to Aristotle's image of the army to
describe how human experience is ultimately reshaped into concepts.
In ordering his troops to cease, a military leader looks back to see if his
battalion has stopped, noting that those soldiers closest to him have
j halted completely while others, farther away, begin to follow suit. The
j question that Aristotle asks is : When can the commander say that his
battalion has stopped? Aristotle concludes that this notion of cessation is
a fluid one, read differently by each soldier's personal understanding of
the entire battalion. Similarly, for Gadamer, the meaning of a word is
not a fixed concept but constantly changes as the word presents itself in
various contexts. This Aristotelian image of the army's cessation is a
suggestive metaphor for how the universal emerges from the daily
workings of experience and, ultimately, for the necessarily fluid nature
| of any word in language. To conceive of language as a listing of fixed
i
j phrases is to destroy the very nature of its birth and development,
j In his essay in the appendix to Truth and Method "How Does j
Language Preform Thought," Gadamer again attempts to address the j
paradoxical nature of language: that it is both a fluid medium and one
that is a discloser of truth. His focus in this essay is to answer two of
his critics— the Marxist theorists who critique Gadamerian hermeneutics
for its dismissal of the ideological traps in language which ensnare its
users into repressive behaviors, and Jurgen Habermas's insistence that
i
I
! there exists a pre-linguistic consciousness. In his response to both
critiques, Gadamer uses the philosophical positions that he has detailed
in Truth and Method.
In entertaining the Marxist position, Gadamer asks whether there
exists a "primordial falsity" inherent in language and human experience
(491). Gadamer concedes to the Marxists' basic premise that language,
like society, is shaped by conventions, and it therefore can be treated as
an ideology. How, then, Gadamer asks, can language be both
schematized and fluid, or restrained and free? He solves this problem
by positing that, if language allows its user to move beyond its pre
formed structures, then, it cannot be entirely ideological. Language, he
concludes, cannot just be pre-formed ideology because "there are no
limits to the interior dialogue of the soul with itself" (493). The fact
that the human being can critique ideologies and can create new ones
from them attests to the freedom that language also affords its users.
! Interpreting experience in conversation constantly serves to transform
j ideology. In one of his later essays, "The Hermeneutics of Suspicion,"
! Gadamer treats the relationship between interpretation and experience
by way of an example:
We are always interpreting in seeing, hearing, and
receiving. In seeing, we are looking for something; we
j are just not like photographs that reflect everything
visible. A real photographer, for instance, is looking
j for the moment in which the shot would be an
j interpretation of the experience. So it is obvious that
there is a real primacy of interpretation.
(Hermeneutics: Questions and Prospects 60-1)14
48.
The second objection to Gadamer's notion of language comes
from Habermas who asserts that various pre-linguistic forms of
consciousness exist— particularly the human need to dominate others and
the drive to work (495). Gadamer concedes that language does not fully
: account for human experience, noting that such expressions as gesture,
!
laughter, and tears are states of consciousness not necessarily governed
| by language. A newborn's crying and laughter, for example, are not
generated by his understanding and use of language. Yet, Gadamer
argues, these modes of expression can only be studied linguistically: j
"All of these forms of self-representation must be taken up in the I
i
interior dialogue of the soul with itself' (496). Far from distorting the i
distinctive qualities of these non-verbal human expressions, language
seems to clarify them.
Further, Gadamer argues that even if one embraces a theoretical
position about language's enslavement, this does not allow one to move
| outside of language. Both Marxists and Habermas must still engage
language dialectically. Having attained a particular ideological insight
! does not allow the theorist to speak from a position above language.
i
| These theorists are still addressing their prejudices.
Gadamer provides additional evidence for the freedom of
language in his distinction between speaking and reciting. Language as
recitation corresponds much more to the notion of language as ideology,
a speaker copying the structure of a pre-established utterance. For
Gadamer, recitation is unnatural speech because it "knows what is
l
t
j
________________________________________ _ _ 4 9 J
coming and is closed to the sudden idea" (497). Speech is clearly a
different mode of language use: "We speak and the word goes beyond us
to consequences and ends which we had not, perhaps, conceived o f
(497). Neither do linguistic structure and thought antedate linguistic
utterance; rather thought emerges in structure, and neither is fully
formed until the utterance is complete. Then it is subject to a myriad of j
! interpretations, none of which the speaker can control or fix so that they
! conform to his ideology. For Gadamer, speaking necessarily involves
: freedom and responsibility to "run the risk of positing something and
following out the implications" (497).
Of course, Gadamer is not suggesting that Marxist or
Habermasian language theories are ill-conceived, for he would argue
that each of these theories represents one of the meanings of language.
He is simply showing that from his hermeneutical perspective, the
Marxist and Habermasian points of view do not fully explain the truths
that his understanding of language is attempting to disclose.
Gadamer concludes his essay with a definition of language which
emphasizes its liberating and discovering character:
Language is the single word whose virtuality opens up
the infinity of discourse with others and of the freedom
of 'speaking oneself and of 'allowing oneself to be
spoken.' Language is not its elaborate conventionalism,
nor the burden of pre-schematization with which it loads
us, but the generative and creative power unceasingly to
make the whole fluid. (498)
50
| Gadamer’ s focus is thus on how each individual speaker
j encounters language. He does not favor theories or language programs
i
that reduce language to its structure and conventions. Instead, linguistic
conventions should serve to articulate the speaker's experiences, not
merely to mold her expression into "clear and concise" prose.
Ultimately, for Gadamer, reading and writing provide the potential for
each language user to most articulately experience this freedom.
I i
!
j
Reading and Writing
In his treatment of reading and writing, Gadamer makes many
suggestions useful for language pedagogy. Central to Gadamer's notion
of reading and writing is his emphasis on the experience between the
reader and the text. This focus on the experience Gadamer derives
from Heidegger who sees that neither the stuff of the world nor the
human himself has ontological priority; nor do they have an existence
outside of their necessary and ongoing encounter. Yet in Heidegger,
there is some sense that it is the "stuff of the world" that provides the
| catalyst for understanding. Both Gerald Bruns and Paul Ricoeur in j
j their studies of Gadamer and Heidegger emphasize the initial priority of J
' the experience over the interpreter. In interpreting Heidegger’s
i
I conception of the relationship between subject and experience, Bruns
| notes, "that which is present takes possession of us or overtakes us and
|
i subjects us to its power" (177).15 In his analysis of Gadamer, Ricoeur
51
notes that the foregrounding of experience informs all three parts of
Gadamer's Truth and Method: his aesthetic, historical, and linguistic
theories.
In the aesthetic sphere, the experience of being seized by
the object precedes and renders possible the critical
exercise of judgement. In the historical sphere, the {
consciousness of being caused by the traditions which
precede one is what makes possible any exercise of a j
historical methodology at the level of the human and
social sciences. Finally, in the sphere of language,
which in a certain way cuts across the previous two, any
scientistic treatment of language as an instrument and
any claim to dominate the structure of the texts of our
culture by objective techniques are preceded and
rendered possible by our co-belonging to the things
which the great voices of mankind have said. (60)16
For Heidegger and Gadamer, experience becomes the material cause for i
understanding. From Ricoeur's hermeneutical perspective, texts j
provide the experience that the reader "co-belongs to." From the j
perspective of reading and writing, then, texts become the material ]
t
cause of written expression. Writing tasks without a reading impetus !
seem to go against the essential philosophical position that Heidegger |
and Gadamer make: that understanding is an ongoing encounter between |
experience (or text) and interpreter (or reader). The privileged status
which Gadamer and Ricoeur assign to textual exegesis is also a challenge
to vitalist composition pedagogies which begin with a privileging of the
subject-that is, the belief that the mysteries of experience are already
hidden in the human mind, and through introspection, they become both
i
! the impetus for, and the material of, writing.
In Truth and Method. Gadamer introduces the concept of
assimilation to explain just how a text influences its reader. A
i
fundamental process for the human organism, Gadamer asserts, is the
ongoing ability to take in experience, adapting its alien character to the
! organism's needs. Gadamer is clear that assimilation is a fundamental
activity for human survival, in fact, the fundamental survival activity of
all living organisms:
j i
j The self-preservation of what is alive takes place
j through its drawing into itself everything that is outside I
i it. Everything that is alive nourishes itself on what is I
alien to it. The fundamental fact of being alive is
assimilation. Differentiation, then, is at the same time
non-differentiation. The alien is appropriated. (227)
Key to Gadamer's concept of assimilation in regard to reading's
interconnection to writing is that as an alien experience, a text serves as
intellectual nourishment for the human being, while writing becomes
the activity by which the text is appropriated or made familiar. It is this
sense of appropriating the alien that Salvatori will explore in her essays
treating the interconnections between reading and writing, and it is a
perspective that Gadamer has not pursued.
In regard to aesthetic understanding, Gadamer further explains
what occurs when the alien is appropriated:
It is never simply a strange world of magic, of
intoxication to which the player, sculptor, or viewer is
swept away, but it is always his own world to which he
comes to belong more fully by recognizing himself
more profoundly in it. (118)
_______________________________________ 53
Creators or viewers of aesthetic objects understand these works, not
because they differ from them, but because they explain their prejudices
in ways that they had not previously considered.
Gadamer notes further that what the viewer of art "reads" is
never the same from one reading to the next. That is, the art work's
meaning changes as the conditions within which it is seen develop. The
| viewer has changed between viewings, while the art work's environment
j may also have been altered. Both conditions necessarily influence the
| tmths that emerge from viewing the work. One can apply a similar
notion regarding the alterability of meaning in the reading of a text |
whose tmths are shaped both by the reader's changing prejudices and by
the new contexts in which the reader finds the text.
Gadamer sheds much light on the reading-writing activity in his
Part II of Tmth and Method that treats the reading of literature, which
he broadly defines as any written text: "If words can be written down,
then they are literature, in the widest sense" (144).
The primary characteristic of literature, for Gadamer, is that it is
meant to be read, just as the play is meant to be performed, and the
j water color is intended to be viewed. Unlike the viewing of a live play,
| the reading of literature often occurs in interspersed fashion. Further, j
literature's meaning resides in "what it says to us," rather than on "its j
achievement of form," a central focus of the reading of pictorial art :
(145). j
Moreover, the written word for Gadamer, in contrast to purely
pictorial art works, has a privileged place as a hermeneutical process.
In reading, one necessarily translates, and through translation, the
reader unfolds the text’ s meaning. Translation becomes a central term
for Gadamer as he explores the acts of reading and writing. On the
simplest level, for Gadamer, to translate is to make a text one's own in
order to make it speak. Therefore, translation does not necessarily (in
fact, rarely) involves moving from one language to another. It more
j often involves rephrasing the text in the language of one's own
i traditions. Gadamer is quick to emphasize that this linguistic encounter
j is never a simple task:
I
The mode of being of literature has something unique
and incomparable about it. It presents a specific
problem of translation to the understanding. There is
nothing so strange and at the same time so demanding as
the written word. (145)
Gadamer emphasizes the decontextualized nature of writing— its
alienation from the living voice which is further aided by the speaker's
intonation and gestures. In "translating" the text into the reader's
world, the reader must provide the context that will allow the text to
speak to her. j
■ Ultimately, Gadamer defines the contemporary reader's j
i i
! hermeneutical task as one of translation. Throughout Truth and i
; i
: Method, he refers to the translation of texts as the operant metaphor for i
i the act of reading. The reader of a text is, in this sense, rewriting it as j
she reads. And it is the representation of the text through translation j
that is the truth of the text. Gadamer thus sees translation as the most
powerful hermeneutical activity: "The translation process contains the
whole secret of human understanding of the world and of social
i communication. Translation is an indivisible unity of implicit
i
I anticipation" (497). This is why Gadamer's notions of reading and
i writing are necessarily interconnected. In reading one must translate or
j appropriate an alien experience into one's own. In the writing, or the
i
translation, the text's truths emerge, which one can then respond to.
In regard to literature's uniqueness as a hermeneutical task,
Gadamer continues: "The written word and what partakes of it—
literature— is the intelligibility of mind transferred to the most alien
medium. Nothing is so purely the trace of the mind as writing, but also
nothing is so dependent on the understanding mind" (145). Here
j Gadamer suggests the paradox of writing— it is both the closest
! manifestation of human thought and also the most difficult to decipher.
I
Yet it is precisely within this hermeneutical task of translating the alien
medium of writing into the reader's world that understanding presents
i
itself so clearly, for it is the "understanding mind" that is most articulate
in writing. For this reason, Gadamer concludes that the educated mind
must be literate.
Ultimately, Gadamer calls the reading of texts a miracle: "In its
deciphering and interpretation a miracle takes place: the transfer of
something strange and dead into a total simultaneity and familiarity"
I
(145). Unlike "buildings, tools, the contents of graves" which "are
I _______________________________________________________________________________________ 5 .6 __I
1 _ _ _ _ _ _
i
i
I
; weather-beaten by the storms of time" (145), a text can speak to the
i
i
i reader intact, as if it were alive. It can, Gadamer notes, become "a
j pure mind" (145). Of all the hermeneutical activities available to the
<
1 human being, interpreting texts is the most powerful:
This is why the capacity to read looses and binds us. In
it time and space seem to be suspended. The man who is
able to read what has been handed down in writing
testifies and achieves the sheer presence of the past.
(145)
Unlike any other medium of understanding, reading thus places human
finitude in its clearest relationship to tradition. Reading allows for the
temporary suspension of the constraints of time and place. Thus, a
Gadamerian hermeneutics must give to the interpretation of texts a
privileged position, for it is in the act of reading (and its concomitant
act of translation) that human understanding is most profoundly
articulated.
Gadamer also treats the complicated to-and-fro movement
between text and reader that helps define the act of reading, again
relying on Heidegger’ s concept of "fore-project." Gadamer notes that
interpretation involves a studied focus on the text and a constant
awareness that events occur which weaken this focus. As a reader
begins to interpret a text, he immediately and unconsciously projects an
entire meaning shaped by the prejudices which she brings to the
reading. This ability to apprehend the whole is often the reason why
some texts immediately speak to a reader, and others do not. Heidegger
! refers to the interpreter's sense of the whole as a "fore-project" (236),
which is constantly reshaped as one continues to read. This continual
revision of the fore-project defines Gadamer's concept of textual
understanding. Gadamer’ s notion of the development of understanding,
then, assumes that any text projects a whole meaning to the reader, who
then continues to revise it. For both Heidegger and Gadamer, meaning
is not reached through the incremental understanding of its parts, but
begins as a protean whole. Heidegger’ s emphasis on grasping the whole
as the dynamus for understanding provides a philosophical grounding i
for those language theorists who begin with a top-down conception of j
language learning.17 j
Gadamer focuses on the fore-project's insistent relationship to j
text and reader: "The working out of appropriate projects, anticipatory i
in nature, to be confirmed 'by the things' themselves, is the constant task J
j
of understanding" (237). Meaning, Gadamer insists, neither resides in |
the text nor in the reader's method, but is found in this movement from ,
reader to text that confirms or denies the fore-project's truth.
A fore-project that becomes misunderstanding does not further
the shaping of the original fore-project; that is, "the only thing that
characterizes the arbitrariness of inappropriate fore-meanings is that
i
they come to nothing in the working-out" (237). Conversely, a reader
achieves textual meaning "when the fore-meanings that it
[understanding] uses are not arbitrary" (237). Ultimately, then, there is
a mechanism in Heidegger's and Gadamer's understanding of truth
which locates falsity. A reader detects an arbitrary fore-project in the
r ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- — ------------------------------------------------1
i
i
process of moving from his prejudices to those of the text. Like
understanding, misunderstanding is also an event.
Gadamer then ties this reader-text encounter to the activities of
openness and assimilation which he has treated in Part I. A reader who
understands a text's meaning opens what the text is capable of
disclosing. But this openness does not require that the text dominate the \
! reader’ s traditions. On the contrary, openness invites "the conscious
assimilation of one's own fore-images and prejudices" (238). Only by
allowing the text to engage in dialogue with the reader can the reader
realize whether her prejudices are arbitrary or worthwhile. It is the
reader's opening up of a text which allows her prejudices to be j
challenged and which then encourages a reshaping of these prejudices, j
i
Such a way of reading can transform both the reader's horizons as well
as those which are possible in the text.
Gadamer also treats textual meaning, defining the classical and
| broadening its application. Gadamer's focus is not on the classical's
! traditional associations with Greek and Roman literature and culture—
I
not on its "descriptive concept" or on its "historical reality" (256). A
text which is classical speaks beyond its age; it is "something retrieved
from the vicissitudes of changing time and its changing taste" (256). j
Further, Gadamer sees the reading of a classical work as "a
consciousness of something enduring, of significance that can last"
(256), that is, a voice that speaks to the present.
59
It is in speaking to the contemporary reader that Gadamer locates
the value of reading classical works. Classical works are not defined by
what they say about the value of a previous historical period, nor are
they classical because they spoke to previous generations. It is the
contemporary reader who is necessarily in the position of defining
whether a text is classical, or not. A Tale of Two Cities, for example*
I
1 may be a classic to a reader's parents, but it may not necessarily be so to
i the reader. What characterizes all classical works, at any stage in a
! reader's development, is their ability to show that their world can still
I
speak to the contemporary reader's. Ultimately, Gadamer does not see
classical works as being fixed in a canon, selected by scholars, but,
rather, as a much larger, eclectic body of historical texts that move in
an out of the classical canon according to the intellectual needs of their
contemporary readers. It is the contemporary reader who ultimately
sees in the reading of a classical text a significance particular to her.
Nowhere in his definition of the classical does Gadamer refer to
specific works of antiquity, though, assuredly, he would consider many
Greek and Roman texts as fulfilling the requirements of his definition.
| What Gadamer wants to emphasize in his treatment of the classical is to
locate those works which significantly challenge a reader's prejudices.
Classical texts are thus those works which introduce human questions
that provide the reader with rich questions and counter-questions.
Ultimately, classical works attest to the recurrence of significant
questions in human history; they demonstrate "an element of ultimate
6 0
| community and sharing in the world” (258). Such a notion of the
I
! classical is further evidence for Gadamer that hermeneutics should not
I
concern itself with reconstructing historical contexts in order to
interpret ancient texts. Gadamer's focus is not on establishing a
i
recognizable canon of classical works, but rather on delineating the
workings of the readers' responses to historical works that speak to
them. This concept of the classical text will be pursued further in
Chapter II.
Similarly, Gadamer's notion of linguistic tradition focuses not on
the legacy of the past but on the reader’ s response to a sense of
continuity. A tradition which does not speak to the reader is no longer
j alive. First, Gadamer notes that linguistic tradition— as written texts—
^ j
| have a privileged status over other forms of tradition because they are j
often artifacts which are intact. Gadamer insists that linguistic tradition j
i
(that is, whatever can be read from the past) does not only provide '
historical knowledge-"it is not just something that has been handed
over, to be investigated and interpreted as a remnant of the past " (351).
Like the classics, which are subsumed under it, tradition speaks directly
to its reader. The hermeneutical task is, as with reading the classics, not
to reconstruct the historical context of that particular linguistic
tradition, but to determine how the text speaks to the contemporary
I
| reader, for "every age has to understand a transmitted text in its own
i
: way" (263). As with Gadamer's concept of understanding, interpreting
; tradition is a mediating event "which speaks in the present and must be
I
i
I _____________________________________________ 61
understood...as this mediation" (293). As with the classics, textual
tradition only becomes that when it helps engender understanding in the
contemporary reader. Textual tradition is therefore not valuable for its
a priori historical knowledge, nor can it be used by scholars and teacher
to show their contemporaries the grandeur that was the past.
Tradition's only value lies in its potential to fuse the reader's and the
text's horizons, or in the sharing of truth between the text's and the
reader's prejudices. Ultimately, tradition is meaningful only if it is seen
as a living voice from the past, speaking to the contemporary reader.
Such a reader-directed notion of the classics and tradition
responds to those contemporary language theorists who see in both the
classical canon and in historical documents a priori truths which can
answer today's spiritual and intellectual questions.
Gadamer also ties the act of reading to the notions of application
and interpretation which he has previously treated. Reading, like
understanding, necessarily involves application and interpretation.
Gadamer insists that the reader must always view his understanding of a
text from his present historical moment; that is, he must always apply
the text to the present, so that "he belongs to the text that he is reading"
(304). Gadamer continues that the reader must keep in mind that his
ancestors did not read and his progeny will not read the same text in the
same way, nor will he, at another time, interpret the same text in
exactly the same fashion.
Similarly, Gadamer posits that reading and performing both are
manifestations of interpretation, noting that a critic's interpretation of a I
1
play is not fundamentally different from an actor's portrayal of a
character within the same play. Both critic and performer are
concerned with "safeguarding the correct understanding of a text against
misunderstanding" (361). Of course, by "correct understanding" j
Gadamer is here not referring to one operant interpretation of a text, j
and by "misunderstanding," he is alluding to the reader's inappropriate
fore-projects. Ultimately, Gadamer is suggesting that the reading of
plays and the performance of them are simply different modes of
achieving understanding.
For Gadamer, writing and reading are also exacting activities
because they have a specific relationship to the spoken word. Gadamer
states both in Tmth and Method and Philosophical Hermeneutics that the
meaning of written texts must "be merged again with the meaning of
speaking" (Philosophical Hermeneutics 88). In Truth and Method. j
Gadamer posits that "all writing ...requires a sort of heightening of the
inward ear" (496). In both statements, Gadamer is suggesting that
reading is a special kind of human conversation— one that can be
accurately transcribed through its alphabetic representation — and thus
its understanding can more easily be scrutinized than its evanescence in
face-to-face dialogue. Unlike Plato who faulted writing for its
vulnerability— for its potential for being misunderstood— Gadamer sees
writing as speech which is "detached from all emotional elements of
63
expression and communication" (354). Gadamer can thus ultimately
define writing as "the abstract ideality of language" (354). Here,
Gadamer sees the contextual texture of speech— with its use of gesture
and intonation-as detractors of meaning.
For Gadamer, then, the task of the reader of texts or "alienated
speech" is to make the text speak once again, to make it speak with
meaning without speech's gestures, intonation, and context. Gadamer
does not see these extra-linguistic features as necessarily facilitators of
i
j meaning: "precisely because it entirely detaches the sense of what is said
from the person saying it, the written word makes the reader, in his
understanding of it, the arbiter of its claim to truth" (356). Thus, the
written word, more than its oral antecedent, allows its truth to speak
more clearly to its reader because it is no longer hidden in the material
presence of its speaker’ s voice. Ultimately, though understanding is
dependent upon the ways a text engages the reader in conversation, it is
the reader who selects those truths which he finds worthy of reflection
as he reads the text. Therefore, when a text speaks to the reader, the j
experience is never one of alienation, but one of communion to the
possibility of meanings. i
In many ways, reading and writing provide the activities for
understanding. For Gadamer, it is always the reading (the text) which
provides the occasion for linguistic understanding, but it is the reader's
!
traditions which allow for the necessary responses to the text (the
writing) and thus complete the encounter of understanding. Firmly
64
grounded in Heideggerian philosophical premises, Gadamer's theories
1
i
j of reading and writing help explain and give further credence to certain
! reader response theories as well as to pedagogical theories which
i emphasize the interconnections between reading and writing.
Imitation
Gadamer's treatment of imitation, particularly in Part I, also
plays a role in understanding the interconnections between reading and
writing that he has suggested in his concept of translation. In artistic
imitation, or mimesis, the focus is on how a writer represents an action
or on how an artist renders an object. Literary imitation has a clearer
pedagogical intent— focusing on how writers read other writers in order
i
to "imitate" their ideas and style. Imitation is a term that is classical in I
origin and has only taken on negative connotations in this century,
i df*
j particularly because of the influence of Romantic aesthetics and
| philosophy which has encouraged introspection— looking inward to j
1 j
j discover artistic and linguistic strengths and insights. Nonetheless, '
: i
i
imitation is still a central focus of models teaching today. By
understanding how Gadamer relates imitation to his philosophical
hermeneutics, one can better determine the nature of Gadamer's critique j
of Romantic aesthetics and see the limitations of the current models i
pedagogy. For Gadamer, artistic imitation (mimesis) and the imitation
of texts, or textual interpretation, emanate from the same human
_______________________ 65_i
activity of re-presenting experience. Thus what he says about why an
actor performs, for example, also explains why a theater critic
interprets this performance, for both re-present experience.
One needs to place imitation within five key Gadamerian notions:
projection, representation, translation, assimilation, and Bildung. For
Gadamer, projection is the significant activity by which the interpreter
understands the world. Without the interpreter’ s projection of
understanding on any and all experiences in the life-world, Heidegger
and Gadamer contend that there would be no understanding. Quite
simply, projection involves what the interpreter chooses initially to 'see'
in experience; In interpreting this term, Joel Weinsheimer notes that
"understanding is projection, and what it projects are expectations that
; precede the text" (166). The interpreter reshapes his projection, or his
! fore-project of understanding, through representation, or concomitantly
I
! re-seeing the experience through his prejudices. In treating imitation,
t
j Gadamer will often use representation as its synonym, while he will
j frequently refer to mindless imitations, or failed representations, as
I copies. Representation and translation also seem to have a close
! relationship, translation becoming a special kind of representation,
treating, specifically, how an interpreter uses his own language to
understand experience. Gadamer is suggesting that projection and its
concomitant representation comprise the dynamic upon which all human
understanding is continually constituted.
Gadamer further establishes that projection is simultaneously
assimilated into the interpreter's prejudices. Gadamer has established
that assimilation is the fundamental mechanism for the survival of all
organisms. In regard to how reading becomes part of the writer's
prejudices, Gadamer notes that the function of assimilation is not as a
i "mere repetition of the text that has been handed down, but is a new
j creation of understanding" (430). In becoming assimilated into the
reader's traditions, the text that one reads becomes part of the
"understanding T" (430) of the reader, not part of "the reconstruction
of an 'I' of the original meaning" (430). In reading a text, then, the
reader's horizons are reshaped, and in this fusion of horizons, the
authors' intent is never disclosed.
Both assimilation and representation have a recognizable
relationship to Gadamer's notion of Bildung which he treats in his
introduction to Part I. For Gadamer, Bildung (roughly translated as
cultural formation) is the central activity for the interpreter's
understanding and use of culture. The interpreter projects his
; prejudices onto experience which "grows out of the inner process of
formation and cultivation and therefore remains in a constant state of
further continued Bildung" (12). Like the fusion of horizons, Bildung
is another perspective on the constant reshaping of the perceiver's
i
prejudices as he encounters tradition. Gadamer emphasizes that in
Bildung, that which the interpreter takes in, or "imitates," "becomes
completely one's own" (12). Bildung can be seen as a uniquely human
activity: the the way by which the human develops his culture and
breaks with nature. It is a constantly occurring human process by
which that interpretation is incorporated into the shaping of one's
prejudices. Central to Bildung is the notion that once the interpreter re
presents his experience, it ceases to be alien, and he can then share it
with his community. Through Bildung, a culture's experiences are not
| copied but transformed. In a sense, the act of copying is a perversion of
I
; both Bildung and assimilation. !
i i
; i
! Gadamer treats imitation, or mimesis, most thoroughly in his Part i
I which concerns hermeneutics and aesthetics. Throughout this section,
Gadamer maintains this notion of imitation as a transforming process,
not as a mirroring phenomenon. In keeping with Aristotle’ s concept of
imitation in the Poetics. Gadamer asserts that "imitation is not merely a
second version, a copy, but a recognition of the essence...When someone
!
makes an imitation, he has to leave out and heighten" (109). Far from I
being a mechanical process, imitation is active and analytical,
encountering the significance of experience. For this reason, Gadamer
can conclude that "imitation, as representation, has a clear cognitive
function" (109). Here, as elsewhere in Part I, Gadamer contrasts the
representative function of imitation with its concept as a copy
j mechanism. It is this notion of imitation as copy that is the accepted
! contemporary interpretation in many rhetorical and literary studies. As
Gadamer has shown, to see imitation as copy is to focus on a perversion
_________________________ ________________________________________________________ .6 .8 J
of its meaning and to ignore its necessary cognitive function in the
ongoing shaping of human prejudices.
In regard to an actors' or musicians' performances, Gadamer
analyzes just how imitation functions in their interpretations of a
dramatic role or a musical piece. Much of what Gadamer says about the
actor and musician on imitation can apply to the reader’s interpretation
of a text. Gadamer asserts that the successful actor and musical
performer necessarily reinterpret the previously acclaimed
representation of that work, which he defines as a model. The actor and
musical performer thus follow in the line of interpretive tradition,
never creating their performance in a vacuum: "Here there is no
random succession, a mere variety of conceptions, but rather from the
constant following of models and from a productive and changing j
i
development, there is cultivated a tradition with which every new j
attempt must come to terms" (106). For Gadamer, a model is not a
copy of the art work but a representation of it. It is this changing,
productive concept of imitation that one can apply to the task of the
scholar and critic who "imitate" previous interpretations of texts. And
it is this "re-productive" notion of interpreting what one reads that one
can then translate to the teaching of student writers, so that "the way
that he [ performer, scholar, student writer] approaches a work...is
always related in some way to models which did the same" (106). For
Gadamer, writing about texts or performing from texts involves re-
presenting experience--an activity which is different in kind from what
Gadamer refers to as "blind imitation" (106).
Gadamer then treats the issue of "correct representation,"
, concerning himself here with the truths that correct representation can
i
j disclose. He asserts that though the notion of one "correct"
i interpretation is an unrealizable goal, it is still the most compelling task |
! of representation (107), and, I would add, for the artist, scholar, and
! student writer— all of whom must argue for the correct representation
I
1 that they have understood from the text before them. In imitating a
text, Gadamer continues, the task of locating the correct representation
is not diminished simply because the text is assimilated by each
i
interpreter differently. '
i
Gadamer also sees that the act of representation is also a re- i
creative process. Interpreting texts is not creative in the same way that i
an artist creates her work, for the interpreter must follow "the lines of j
the created work" (107), not create a new work. But by following these
"lines," the interpreter "re-creates" the work in conformity with the
traditions that he brings to it.
Gadamer also sees in representation a unique sort of repetition,
not in the literal sense of mirroring the original, but in the re-creative
sense of reshaping the the art work (110). It is in this way that
; successful artists and scholars can see their work as repetitive (speaking
' to and transforming the texts which came before them), and it is in this
way that the student writer needs to see her interpretation of texts— as a
reshaping, rather than a repeating, of the text.
Gadamer also treats imitation from the visual perspective of
appearance and copy. In the mimesis of a picture, the artist is not
, copying the original but is engaged in revealing "the appearance of what
! is represented" (121). The task, then, of the artist is to disclose the new
I appearances that the original reveals in the artist's encounter with it. In
I
! fact, Gadamer notes, that without this appearance-making activity, the
1 original work does not exist. Interpretation, then, can be seen as
i ontologically prior to the art object itself.
In considering the complexity of imitation, Gadamer treats
another distinction between a copy and an image. A copy, as he will
later say about the sign, is self-negating: "It exists by itself in order to
cancel itself out" (123). When one sees a copy of the Mona Lisa, for
example, one sees the original, not the copy. An image, in contrast,
presents itself rather than the original, so it is the image that the
interpreter studies: "It is 'its' image, and not that of the mirror, that is
seen in the mirror" (123). Similarly, a plagiarized text can be seen as a
copy because it negates itself and reminds the reader of the original,
whereas an interpretive treatment of a text may bring the text to mind,
but the reader's focus is on the text's interpretation.
Gadamer moves from the picture as copy and image to the word
i
j as copy (in this case as sign) and image, so that for him "word and
: picture are not mere imitative illustrations, but allow what they
represent to be for the first time what is" (126). For Gadamer, a sign is
self-effacing, "point[ing] away from itself (135). For this reason, j
Gadamer objects to an insistence on an exact definition of a word, for
when the perceiver no longer studies a word (as a an image) but
! considers its "single meaning,” then the word becomes a sign. That is,
! the word points away from itself to its single definition.
i
! Gadamer treats verbal imitation when he discusses the nature of
i
( the literary critic's task. Though a critic is studying the work itself,
i there is a sense in cogent interpretations of texts that the critic does not
i |
fully accept the original, but reshapes it through the traditions that he i
brings to it. And in this sense, the critic discloses that which was
previously hidden in the work. Thus, "the literary critic goes
on...weaving the great tapestry of tradition which supports us" (302).
Thus for Gadamer, the verbal imitation of a text does not
necessarily encourage plagiarism. Rather, interpreting a work allows
the scholar or student writer the opportunity to "re-present" the work.
In the act of representation, truths emerge that were undisclosed in
previous textual interpretations. For Gadamer, to write about what one
reads thus becomes the fundamental hermeneutical activity.
In an early essay, "Plato and the Poets," Gadamer considers
j Plato’ s pedagogical translations of imitation in the Republic, specifically
| the consequences of envisaging imitation as appropriation versus
! imitation as copying. In the scene foregrounding imitation as
j appropriation, Gadamer notes: "What a person learns from someone’ s
72
r
i
! 'showing him how' and in the imitation therefore is not so much
(
| something which belongs to the other as something which I can
j appropriate m yself’ (Dialogue and Dialectic 63).18 A pedagogical scene
applying the notion of imitation as appropriation to a reader of texts
posits that the new encounter reshapes the individual's prejudices. Its
focus is on how the new encounter speaks to and ultimately re-presents
the individual's prejudices.
In contrast, in the pedagogical scene which considers imitation as
copying, the imitator "gives himself an alien character," which results in
"forgetfulness of oneself" (64). For Plato this forgetfulness has a
i
deleterious effect on the student, because in forsaking his traditions, the
imitator unnaturally forces on himself a new persona which conflicts
j with and temporarily silences his previous self. In copying a dangerous
| or passionate character in the Iliad, for example, Plato believes the
! student experiences emotions which can destroy his soul's equilibrium,
! and it is for this moral reason that Plato questions the blind copying of
voices emerging from an encounter with the art work. Gadamer is
reading Plato’ s notion of imitation as copying from an additional
perspective, suggesting that imitation as copying is a perversion of the
i
more fundamental process of an organism's assimilating the alien j
experience. !
Gadamer's treatment of verbal imitation as appropriation calls
into question writing pedagogies which privilege the subject (the
premise of vitalist pedagogies) because such pedagogies cannot engender |
the same event of understanding that a reader interpreting texts does. A
pedagogical translation of Gadamer's concept of imitation suggests a
i reading-based composition program— that is, a pedagogy foregrounding
i
' students interpreting texts. Moreover, this reading-writing activity is
never seen as a static process of copying from the text but one in which
the original work is "re-created."
In Gadamer's concept of imitation, one sees the ways that he uses
his other hermeneutical terms to explain this fundamental human
activity. Imitation is a classical term which Gadamer translates into his
contemporary circumstances, and it is a concept which dominates his
J thinking in many of his later essays. At the end of the Afterword to his I
j latest edition of Truth and Method. Gadamer shows the continuing
i
j importance of imitation to the evolution of his hermeneutics and the
ways that it is interconnected to the classical, representation, and play:
"In my work, I brought 'classical concepts such as 'mimesis" and
'representation' into play not in order to defend classical ideas but to
transcend the burgeois conception of the aesthetic as cultural religion"
(579). Rather than replacing theological understanding, the mimetic
experience in art points toward significant human understanding— "to
the dimension of the possible, and therefore also to the critique of
I reality" (579).
The Human Sciences Versus the Natural Sciences
The language theory that Gadamer develops and the reading and
writing that he suggests also serve to define the human sciences for him-
- disciplines that he sees have been wrongly claimed by the natural
sciences. How Gadamer defines the human and natural sciences adds a
further perspective to his concept of language as well as to his notions
of reading and writing. Moreover, an analysis of the nature of the
human sciences further explains the emphasis that Gadamer places on
understanding. Gadamer's understanding of the human sciences is an
application of Heideggerian phenomenology to epistemological
concerns. His interpretation of Heidegger's philosophical premises also
serve to critique the application of the natural science model to
explaining human experience.
Gadamer begins his definition of the human sciences by noting
that as a group of disciplines, it does not attempt to control experience;
rather, the human sciences try to describe experience in its complexity
and ambiguity. That is, these disciplines "do not seek to surpass, but to
understand the variety of experiences" (88). They are essentially open
investigations rather than disciplines driven by dogmatic assertions.
If rules exist in the human sciences, Gadamer notes, they are
always grounded in the flux of experience. Rules are thus only valid in
their use in understanding experience; they are "basically what they are
in this use" (213). Just as Gadamer has shown that understanding is an
_75_J
event, so does he see that rules in the human sciences emerge from the
event; they never serve as a priori interpretive tools. One can thus
more easily see why phronesis, Aristotle's term for practical wisdom, is
necessarily a study of ethics as it encounters and is reshaped by daily
human experience.
Therefore, in the human sciences there is no perfect method of
research. In history, for example, tradition is not a fixed concept but
one that is constantly redefined by the interpreter's contemporaneity.
Further, the human sciences do not begin with a hermeneutics of
suspicion, or doubting the validity of an experience until it can be
explained through the interpretation of data. The human scientist
assumes that what she experiences provides the possibility for the
disclosure of truth, that "the writer of a transmitted text is better
informed than we are, with our previously formed meaning" (262).
Ultimately, the human scientist begins with a fundamental belief in the
meaning-making potential of human experience.
Gadamer sees the human sciences— aesthetics, history, theology,
legal studies, and philosophy-as aligned to "moral knowledge" : "Their
object is man and what he knows of him self (280). Gadamer
emphasizes that man's self-knowledge is never that of "what exists" but
"what is not always the same as it is" (280). He finally equates moral
knowledge with the goal of Aristotle's rhetorician: to "discover the
point at which he has to act. The purpose of his knowledge is to govern
_ _ __________ 7.6_
his action" (280). For Gadamer, an educated human being experiences
the world and attempts to understand the significance of this encounter, j
i
Gadamer contends that the natural sciences assume the uncertainty
of all truth; their study "doubts everything that can be doubted, in order I
to achieve in this way the certainty of its results" (211). Where the
human sciences begin from a position of belief, the natural sciences
assume one of suspicion. Further, Gadamer notes that the natural
sciences give ontological status to the object of experience— the data of
empirical investigations. In the natural sciences, the object is the focus
of study, whereas in the human sciences the encounter between
interpreter and experience assumes a primary focus.
Just as the object is given priority in the natural sciences, so do
the words that the natural scientist uses often have separate and
identifiable meanings; they are "univocally defined" (375). To restrict a
term to one meaning, for Gadamer, is "an act of violence against
language" (375), for words in their natural setting exercise a freedom
of meaning as they move within the contexts of their use. This "range
of variation" (375), Gadamer adds, is essential. Gadamer further
suggests that the terminology of the natural sciences unsuccessfully
attempts to make the word into a sign, where words are naturally
images of concepts and therefore necessarily fluid.
Given these artificial requirements that natural scientists impose
upon language, Gadamer concludes that "the use of scientistic methods
does not suffice to guarantee truth" (446). And he is particularly
i
i
i
f
_________________________________________________________________ 77__ i
skeptical of the trend to use natural scientistic methodology to interpret j
i
human experience. In these cases, "scientistic" investigations become
"scientistic" ones. For Gadamer, language and human experience
simply cannot be compartmentalized into discrete parts whose sum
i
defines the whole.
]
In a further assessment of the methods of the natural sciences, I
i
i
Gadamer affirms that the human sciences ultimately subsume the natural I
!
J sciences, just as aesthetic scholarship is a sub-category of hermeneutical |
interpretation. In his reading of Husserl's Crisis. Gadamer sees that
Husserl grounds the "life-world" (what Gadamer interprets as human
experience) as an a priori condition to all scientistic investigation. j
Gadamer notes that this life-world "grounds all the sciences because...it >
I
precedes every science, including logic" (Philosophical Hermeneutics
190). Such a premise questions the efficacy of some contemporary
social science research, which assumes that the methods of natural
science scholarship both explain and precede human experience.
Gadamer’ s Critics i
Gadamer's hermeneutics has often been criticized for its emphasis
on tradition, for its focus on Europe's classical heritage. Yet nowhere
in either Truth and Method or in Philosophical Hermeneutics does
Gadamer insist, as have certain contemporary language theorists, that
the classics be a part of the canon of every educated person, though
__________________________________________________________________- 7 - 8 -—i
Gadamer admits that for himself Plato and Aristotle have played an
enormous role in shaping his philosophical hermeneutics. Rather, it
seems that Gadamer wants to define tradition loosely— as the unique
accumulation of prejudices that each interpreter brings to experience.
The significance that Gadamer assigns to human prejudice assumes that
for some the classical mindset does not offer the truths which it has
disclosed to him. In his Truth and Method and Philosophical
Hermeneutics. Gadamer wants to show how tradition and prejudice play j
a central role in human understanding— both in literate and oral
discourse. His concern is with textual interpretation, not with the texts
one must read.
Secondly, Gadamer's hermeneutics has been faulted for its overly
optimistic notion of the human as a willing recipient of truth. Marxist
theorists have criticized Gadamer for ignoring their position— that the
human being is dominated by false ideologies which distort his
perception of the tmth. In place of a hermeneutics of openness, Marxists
speak for a hermeneutics of suspicion. Similarly, deconstructive
theorists like Geoffrey Hartman have argued for a hermeneutics of
indeterminacy— an interpretation that locates the absence of meaning
within any reader's apprehension of truth.19 Hartman's hermeneutics is
based upon the premise that language is fundamentally a structure— an
inextricable play between signifier and signified, or absence and
presence. Gadamer counters this premise of language as structure with
his focus on language as dialectical conversation.
. 7 . 9 .
Gadamer would further likely argue that just as the language of
experience supersedes and subsumes the language of univocal
terminology, so is the hermeneutics of openness prior to the
hermeneutics of suspicion. A child, Gadamer would affirm, originally
comes to language as a player with words, often creating new words and
experimenting with her yet incomplete grasp of her language's syntax,
unashamedly producing ungrammatical utterances. A student's
'mastery' over language occurs, he would argue, after she has
experienced it in play.
Gadamer's complex philosophical concepts ultimately speak in
concert to recognize the event of human understanding, and particularly
its manifestation in writing. Though Gadamer's specific examination of
reading and writing takes up a small section of Truth and Method ("The
Borderline Position of Literature" 142-46), so many of the concepts he
treats in his magnum opus help explain this interconnected
hermeneutical activity. Reading and writing pedagogy is thus one of the
significant conversations which truthfully emerge from a reading of
Truth and Method.
FOOTNOTES (CHAPTER 1)
1. See his Gadamer's Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and
Method: New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985, 1-59.
2. Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher. Dilthev.
Heidegger, and Gadamer. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern
University Press, 1969.
3. Truth and Method. New York: Continuum, 1975.
4. Translated by David E. Linge, Berkeley, University of California
Press, 1976.
5. In Being and Time. Translated by John MacQuarrie and Edward
Robinson. New York, Harper & Brothers, 1962.
6. Existence and Being. Washington, D.C.: Regenery Gateway,
1949. These comments are found in Brock's introduction to
Heidegger's texts.
7. John S. Nelson, Allan Megill, and Donald N. McCloskey, eds.,
Madison, Wisconsin: the University of Wisconsin Press, 1987.
Bran's essay is entitled "On the Weakness of Language in the
Human Sciences."
8. See especially her "The Dialogical Nature of Basic Reading and
Writing" in Facts. Artifacts, and Counterfacts. David
Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. Upper Montclair, New
Jersey: Boynton/Cook Publishers, Inc., 1986.
9. Second revised edition. Translated by Joel Weinsheimer and
Donald G.Marshall. New York: Crossroad Publishing
Corporation, 1991.
10. See especially his The Act of Reading. Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1978.
81
11. Translated by Nicholas Walker. Robert Bemasconi, ed.,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
12. Particularly in her two essays: "The Dialogical Nature of Basic
Reading and Writing" in Facts. Artifacts, and Counterfacts and in
"Pedagogy: From the Periphery to the Center" in Reclaiming
Pedagogy. Patricia Donahue and Ellen Quandahl, eds.,
Carbondale and Edwardsville, Illinois: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1989.
13. Translated by Frederick G. Lawrence. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 1981.
14. Gary Shapiro and Alan Sica, eds., Amherst: The University of
Massachusetts Press, 1984.
15. Inventions. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982.
16. Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences. John B. Thompson, ed.
and trans., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
17. For a discussion of top-down teaching theories, see George
Dillon. Constructing Texts. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana
University Press, 1981, 6-9.
18. Translated by Christopher P. Smith. New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 1980.
19. See his Criticism in the Wilderness: The Study of Literature
Today. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 40-41.
82
CHAPTER 2
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF READING, THE READER,
AND THE TEXT IN TRUTH AND METHOD
I
Having examined the salient hermeneutical concepts in Truth and
Method, one can now more critically treat those issues in Truth and
Method that most directly speak to the materials and activity of the
classroom: the act of reading, the nature of the reader, and the text.
Many of these topics have been mentioned in Chapter I, particularly in
the section on hermeneutics: the phronimos, effective historical
consciousness, and the I-Thou relationship. When thoroughly
examined, these three concepts help explain who Gadamer's reader is
and how she reads. The priority of the question in Gadamerian
conversation was introduced in Chapter I in the section on conversation,
yet a careful study of the question is central to understanding what
Gadamer means by reading. Finally, the notion of the classical text,
introduced in the previous chapter under reading and writing, needs to
be re-examined from the perspective of the classroom: the texts teachers
select and the significance that students derive in reading these works.
In this chapter, as I attempt to tease out and examine those
Gadamerian issues that most directly speak to the classroom, I articulate
more fully the philosophical antecedents of a hermeneutic pedagogy.
83
The Significance of the Question
I
In his section in Part II entitled "The Hermeneutical Priority of
the Question," Gadamer begins by focusing on the centrality of the
question in understanding experience. For Gadamer, it is clear that the
structure of the question is implicit in all interpretation of experience:
. i
"We cannot have experiences without asking questions" (325).1 How
experience appears to the interpreter, in the ways that it seems alien to
her, necessitates the formulation of the question. As the interpreter
encounters experience, she realizes that she does not know; she
embraces "the knowledge of not knowing." (325). Rather than being
horrified at this gap, the interpreter in Gadamer's hermeneutical scene j
I
sees this uncertainty as necessary, steadily pursuing the questions that j
I
the experience discloses. j
In this section of Truth and Method. Gadamer analyzes in
thorough-going philosophical fashion the nature of the question that
experience elicits from the interpreter. First and foremost, Gadamer
contends that the interpreter's question must have sense: "It is of the
essence of the question to have sense" (326). A question of sense has
direction; that is, it helps clarify or reveal the meaning-potential of the
experience: "The emergence of the question opens up, as it were, the
being of the object" (326). By "being," of course, Gadamer is not
referring to the object’ s ultimate truth, which either the interpreter can
never perceive or which she knows is immanent within the object and
84
can ultimately be apprehended . An object's being in a phenomeno
logical sense results in the interpreter experiencing an object’ s truth,
I
j one that had not been previously disclosed to the interpreter. The
t
| question is thus instrumental in disclosing the object's being, but the
t
answer to the question never resolves the question of the object's
ultimate being.
It is this sense of being that Gadamer has in mind when he
concludes that "to ask a question means to bring it into the open. The
openness of what is in question consists in the fact that the answer is not
settled" (326). Here Gadamer introduces a term which he often uses to
explain understanding: openness. Part of its meaning is to be found in
the interpreter's response to the question, so that he can embrace and
reflect upon the multiplicity of interpretation it discloses. An
interpreter who does not open the question in this way, who imposes a
method on experience, is not asking the right question and thus cannot
elicit a truthful answer from the object. From a hermeneutical
perspective, an interpreter armed with a priori interpretive methods can
never locate textual truth and can never experience openness.
So in the formation of the question in philosophical hermeneutics,
there exists a standard of appropriateness. This is an important point to
make when treating Gadamer's hermeneutics. In a phenomenological
ontology which posits that interpreters understand experience
differently, there often emerges among its critics the argument that
philosophical hermeneutics ultimately leads to relativistic thinking. If
_____________________________________________________________ 85__ |
meaning is different, they argue, then any meaning can emerge from the
text. Gadamer here in regard to the significance of the question and in
several other sections of Truth and Method defines that which is false in
i
the hermeneutical encounter, or locates those interpretive activities j
which cannot elicit truth from the text. Therefore, Gadamer can j
conclude that in his philosophical hermeneutics, questions are either true !
or false, depending upon their ability to open the text. So "every true
question achieves this openness" (327), while a false question or "an
apparent question" (327), does not initiate a dialogue with the text. In
this sense, Gadamer considers pedagogical and rhetorical questions
apparent. The pedagogical question is "the question without a
questioner" (326) because it is aimed at the text though the questioner
already has formulated his answer. And the rhetorical question is one
"which not only has no questioner, but no object" (326), since the
questioner knows its answer and directs the question to himself rather
than to the text. In contrast, true hermeneutical questioning aims at
discovering what the text in the event of question and answer can
disclose.
Further considering the criteria for true questioning, Gadamer
i
then characterizes the bound and boundless question. Here, the question
is seen from its perspective in the interpretive horizon. The horizon, as
treated by Gadamer in Part II, is the experience that the interpreter
I
brings to the text and that which the text discloses to the interpreter. i
!
Gadamer has concluded that the text's and the interpreter's horizon are i
86
are never free-standing entities, but necessarily fuse in all textual i
understanding. A bound question, then, is one that the interpreter asks ]
|
from within his horizon as it relates to that of the text. A more familiar
way of referring to a bound question is to call it relevant, that is, a
question which speaks to the text. Conversely, a boundless question is
one which is irrelevant— formed outside of the horizon established by
the interpreter and text. Because each interpreter's encounter with a
text is unique, it results in questions which are informed by the
particular horizons of both interpreter and text.
Gadamer pursues the paradox of the bound question in that it is
both open and free: "The asking of it implies openness, but also
limitations" (327). The nature of its asking posits the opening to the
truth of the text, but not any tmth. Gadamer thus sees a false question j
as one that does not consider the unique encounter between reader and j
text. j
Gadamer continues his treatment of the bound question: "It i
implies the explicit establishing of presuppositions, in terms of which i
can be seen what still remains open" (327). The questioning activities
that Gadamer posits therefore move away from a relativistic position. j
Encouraging readers to explore the tmth possibility that a text unfolds j
for them does not suggest that any question will do, for each question is
determined by the interpreter's previous answer to the text. !
i
Having treated the true and false question as well as the bound and
boundless question, Gadamer then pursues the subtle nature of the j
distorted question, which is in kind different from both the false and
boundless:
We call it distorted rather than false because there is a
question behind it, i.e., there is an openness intended but
it does not lie in the direction which the distorted
question is pointing. (327)
Gadamer here suggests much about the nature of the relationship
between questioner and listener (a position that teachers necessarily find
themselves in as they attempt to 'understand’ their students' questions).
A distorted question has the makings of a tme one, and it is the role of i
the listener to make the necessary distinction between those questions
which are false or unbounded and those which are distorted. The nature
of the listener's counterstatement to the distorted question is of
paramount importance, for it can reroute the question in the direction
of a true one. A listener rephrasing the question for the questioner will
not help him because the question has not come from the questioner's
particular relationship to the text. The listener has the much more
subtle challenge of trying to find ways to refocus the questioner's gaze
on the text so that a true question can emerge.
Gadamer continues that a further problem concerning the
distorted question is that any genuine "answer to it is impossible" (326).
The answer to a distorted question cannot redirect the question in order j
i
to improve it; it only moves the questioner further away from opening j
the text to the possibility for meaning. ]
88
I
j
In similar fashion, answers can be distorted. Here for the first |
i
time in this section of Tmth and Method. Gadamer addresses the ;
I
opposite dialectical position. Answers also reveal the reader's j
relationship to the text, Gadamer noting: "Similarly, we say that ;
i
statements that are not exactly false, but also not right, are ’ distorted'" j
(327). As with the distorted question, distorted answers "do not j
(
correspond to any meaningful question" (327). j
i
In regard to both distorted questions and distorted answers, j
Gadamer's concept of sense serves him well. Sense is what the reader !
i
f
continues to develop in his attempt at tme questioning and answering of !
the text. With good sense, he can pursue the direction that he and the
text have taken, since "sense is always the direction of the possible
question" (327). In his treatment of sense, Gadamer suggests that it is
both an understanding that all readers bring to the text (just as they
bring their common sense to experience) and an understanding which
can be developed through continued reading experiences.
Up to this point in this subsection of Part II, Gadamer has defined j
a series of hermeneutical concepts which relate to the dialectical j
exchange, both in face-to-face conversation and in textual interpretation. !
Questions in both types of conversation are either tme or false, bound
or boundless, correct or distorted; and tme, bound, and correct
questions move to open a conversation or a text. Further, all
hermeneutical activity which leads to openness suggests sense in both
face-to-face conversation and textual dialogue. Yet nowhere can one
89
appropriate these activities as interpretive tools to successfully keep a
conversation going. As results of the event of interpretation, they exist
only within the activity and disappear as textual truth is disclosed. This
is a significant point to establish when considering any interpretive
activity that Gadamer examines in the human sciences. The concepts
Gadamer examines never can be used successfully outside of the
interpretive activity. As concepts, they have significance only as the
reader attempts to engage a text in conversation; and each time they are
used in subsequent textual encounters, their truths as interpretive
activities emerge differently. So Gadamer can conclude that "there can
be no testing or potential attitude to questioning, for questioning is not
the positing, but the testing of possibilities" (338). This is the
uniqueness and ongoing character of questioning in the human sciences.
Questions are tested in the reader's encounter with texts, but they are
never posited beforehand. To posit a question before the interpretive
event would suggest that the question had dominance over the text.
Domination over an object is one of the characteristics Gadamer assigns
to the natural, not to the human, sciences.
Having examined hermeneutical questioning, Gadamer then
extends the interpretive possibilities of the question-answer event by
placing it in the scene of dialectics. Here Gadamer presents a particular
interpretation of dialectic which conforms to his philosophical
hermeneutics. In Gadamer’ s conception of the question-answer
interchange of dialectic, it is the question which takes priority. In
9 0
philosophical hermeneutics, interpreters "must accept the priority of the
question over the answer, which is the basis of the concept of
knowledge. Knowledge always means, precisely, looking at opposites" j
(328), looking at the question embedded in the answer and the answer |
entangled in the question. Gadamer's epistemology thus assumes that j
meaning emerges in the activity of question and answer, or dialectic. i
Dialectic thus becomes the center of his epistemological activity, because
in dialectic questions and answers have a necessary relationship to each
other, neither one dominating the conversation and both contributing to
the to-and-fro movement of true conversation.
Referring to the difference between the human and the natural
sciences, Gadamer continues: "Its [human science's] superiority over
preconceived opinion consists in the fact that it is able to conceive of |
possibilities as possibilities" (328). It is the possible, not the '
demonstrable, which is ontologically prior for Gadamer. This focus on
the possible is what Gadamer is suggesting in his affirmation that
"knowledge is dialectical from the ground up" (328). Since the ground
for human understanding is the possibility (not the demonstration) of
truth, then the textual interpretation must begin with the question, not
the statement.
Dialectic is not merely the activity whereby conversation is
generated, but a central process that depicts the interpreter's relation to
his experience and (from a hermeneutical perspective) the reader's
9 1
1
I
j
relationship to the text. In any hermeneutical encounter, then, "the ;
important thing is the knowledge that one does not know" (329).
Gadamer even concludes that the "sudden idea" which generates a
new thought is structured upon the question as well. Even though
Gadamer admits that the idea is ultimately structured as an answer, not a
question, ideas "always presuppose a pointer in the direction of an area
of openness from which the idea can come, i.e., they presuppose
questions" (329). Here, Gadamer is suggesting that experience presents
to an interpreter the continual possibility of its further disclosure. And
this disclosure is only achieved by responding to the questions that the
experience can offer. Gadamer thus sees the question initiated by
experience as "a breach in the smooth front of popular opinion" (329).
i
The interpreter sees this "breach" not as an augur to confusion but as j
i
the necessary possibility for knowing. j
Ultimately, Gadamer can attribute the progress of human thinking j
to the question: "The act of questioning is that of being able to go on
asking questions, i.e.— the act of thinking" (330). Thinking, then, like
questioning has a dialectical movement.
Gadamer then moves his treatment of the question and dialectic to
the larger human activity of conversation. Ultimately, for Gadamer,
seeing the question as the dynamus of dialectic allows one to conduct "a
real conversation" (330). As with the question, Gadamer examines the
nature of successful conversations which allow for understanding. The
first characteristic of a real conversation is that the "partners to it do
92
not talk at cross purposes" (330), so it is essential for the initiator of the j
dialogue to establish "that the other person is with us" (330). With each :
assent, the partners in conversation advance to the next stage, thus open
up the topic of conversation even more. If the assent is boundless or
distorted, of course, the answer is false, and the conversation loses its
potential to open the topic of discussion.
Further, in true conversation, it is not the partner to which the
conversation is directed but the object of discussion which is
foregrounded, the common element which has brought the partners
together for conversation. Partners in conversation, then, are
"conducted by the object to which the partners in the conversation are
directed" (330). Partners in real conversation thus agree beforehand on j
the object of diligent questioning, focusing their attention away from ]
each other in order to allow the topic to disclose its meaning. In the j
hermeneutical encounter, even in the 'solitary' act of reading, it is the
text which is foregrounded; it is toward the text that questions and
answers are directed. If, for example, a reader agrees to question a text
which concerns AIDS, he cannot redirect his attention from what the
text says to his individual distaste for the subject.
Further, each participant in conversation realizes that the
responses regarding the topic or the text are opinions, and as opinions
they must be tested: "one really considers the weight of the other's
opinion" (330). And, Gadamer repeats, the only way to test opinions is
to question them, the primacy of the question again reappearing. For it
93
is the question which necessarily reminds each participant in
conversation that the opinions regarding the topic or the text are
possibilities. Questioning assures that opinions never become facts,
never impedes the questioning and the conversation from continuing:
"As against the solidity of opinions, questioning makes the object and all
its possibilities fluid" (330).
It is basically the fluid nature of questioning which makes the
hermeneutical activity an art rather than a techne, for no method
emerges from this activity which can then be imposed on all
conversations in order to locate their truth. As an art, the nature of
questioning is realized only in its continued praxis; thus, she who sees
questioning as an art "is able to prevent the suppression of questions by
the dominant opinion" (330). The artful questioner is able to see even
in the dominating opinion its fluidity as opinion, thus enabling the
conversation to continue. Once an opinion dominates a conversation, it
i
forces the partners to look at it rather than at the object of conversation, j
or the text. :
Further, partners in conversation using dialectic correctly do not
use it as a tool to prove any point (the ongoing argument Socrates had
with the Sophists). For in considering dialectic as a purely rhetorical
tool, the partner foregrounds dialectic and not the object of
conversation. Gadamer concludes:
94
It is not the art of arguing that is able to make a strong i
case out of a weak one, but the art of thinking that is
able to strengthen what is said by referring to the object.
(331) j
To either focus on the partner or the rhetorical technique is to move i
I
away from tme conversation, from its grounding as an event necessarily
occurring between interpreter and experience.
Gadamer's emphasis on the object up for discussion emerges
| again in his description of Socratic dialogue, noting: "What emerges in
its tmth is the logos, which is neither mine nor yours and hence so far
transcends the subjective opinions of the partners in the dialogue that
even the person leading the dialogue is always ignorant" (331). The
partners in tme conversation are humbled by the power of the tmths
disclosed by the common topic. Neither participant has the right to
claim these tmths as his own. Therefore, the logos of Socratic dialogue
neither exists in the topic nor in the minds of its interpreters. To focus {
i
on the tmth that unfolds, rather than on its ownership, allows the j
conversation to proceed. j
I
In Socratic dialogue, in its original spoken enactment, Gadamer j
sees a significant difference between the original dialectical encounter I
before the advent of written texts and hermeneutical interpretation:
Precisely this is what characterizes a dialogue, in
contrast with the rigid form of the statement that
demands to be set down in writing: that here language,
in the process of question and answer, giving and taking,
talking at cross purposes and seeing each other's point,
performs that communication of meaning which with
95
respect to the written tradition, is the task of
hermeneutics. (331)
i
Ultimately, what Gadamer means by conversation, either as face- i
j
to-face encounter or as hermeneutical interpretation, is a disciplined |
activity, always tied to the asking of the tme questions to the text. j
Therefore, to call reading a conversation is not to minimize its j
disciplined nature. For Gadamer, reading is not an uncontrolled |
exchange between reader and text. This more commonly accepted j
notion of conversation is to see it as less rigorous than debate or ;
I !
scientific demonstration. In contrast, Gadamer posits that tme !
t
t
conversation both subsumes debate and demonstration, that conversation j
is the significant activity by which humans understand. |
Thus though a cursory reading of Gadamer's hermeneutics :
depicts an idyllic scene in which participants amicably engage in tmth- !
1
!
seeking, it is a simplification of Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics ;
i
not to examine this scene more closely in order to see the sometimes
painfully rigorous activity that it is. To read, as Gadamer has stated in
Part III, is to engage in a miraculous activity: to make a mute, alien text j
speak to a reader in conversation. But this miracle is one which is I
achieved through discipline, and not through faith alone. Such a caution
is necessary to anyone reading Tmth and Method from a pedagogical
perspective. Though reading and writing have their antecedents in the
primordial human activity of understanding, textual understanding is a j
special kind of experience.
96
The pedagogical translations of Truth and Method are both
daunting and inviting. Gadamer demonstrates in this work that the
written word provides a barrier to interpretation; but in overcoming
this "gap," the reader encounters human thinking in its continual
transformation. This discovery makes the reading of subsequent texts
beckoning tasks.
The Focus on the Question in the Human Sciences
Gadamer extends his treatment of the question to his ongoing
concern with the nature of the human sciences. If the human sciences
are in fact separate disciplines, then they must be a studies whose
activities and texts differ in kind from those in the natural sciences.
Gadamer once again invokes the question to articulate the mode of
thinking that operates within the human sciences, concluding that "the
logic of the human sciences is, then, as appears from what we have said,
a logic of the question" (333). Somewhat later in his treatment of the
question in the human sciences, Gadamer notes of the historian and
literary critic that they "must reckon with the fundamental non-
definitiveness of the horizon in which his understanding moves" (336)
The interpretive horizon of the human scientist is thus necessarily open,
transforming. Instead of lamenting the fundamental ambiguity of the
human sciences' knowing, or instead of attempting to dominate its
changing character, the human scientist needs to embrace this
97
ambiguity as a condition for the kind of truth-seeking that human
experience can disclose.
The "logic of the question" in the human sciences has far-reaching i
implications regarding how texts in these disciplines are both read and
f
written. Not beginning with a statement that summarizes the texts !
meaning, the textual interpreter rather attempts to ask a true question of j
the text, then waits for it to provide a true answer. Rather than moving j
in an upward, unintermpted vertical direction through the text, '
discourse in the human sciences necessarily first moves horizontally,
where reader and text face each other on the same horizontal plane,
i
each asking questions of the other. If the discourse of dialectic moves at ;
all, it does so in a meandering way, directed by the nature of the |
horizontal exchange between participants in the conversation. j
Gadamer gives to the question an ontological priority in his !
philosophical hermeneutics, because, finally, it is the question which
initiates the phenomenological event of understanding. In regard to the !
question and hermeneutics, Gadamer can thus conclude: "The close j
relation that exists between question and understanding is what gives the j
i
hermeneutical experience its true dimension" (337). In regard to
textual interpretation, understanding means being able to ask tme j
questions, misunderstanding the asking of false ones. In a deceivingly j
I
i
simplistic conclusion to the central, significant role of the question in his j
philosophical hermeneutics, Gadamer can finally say: "To understand a
question means to ask it" (338).
____________________________________________________________ 98__j
The Role of Play in Hermeneutical Questioning
The question, then, is a powerful activity related to all of the
significant features of Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics,
particularly dialectic and conversation. What Gadamer has not j
considered in this section of Tmth and Method is exactly what j
i
relationship the structure of questioning— its necessarily to-and-fro- j
movement— has to the readers' understanding of the text. It is within
this to-and-fro movement that questioning must be seen as a
hermeneutical example of play.
The first issue that Gadamer considers in regard to play and the
question is how a question is structurally like a game. There is in all
dialectic, as there is in every game, a type of movement back and forth.
The boy hitting the ball against the wall in order for it to return to him
is an analogous event to the questioner asking the text a question in
order for it to return to her in the form of an answer. Also, both
questioning a text and playing ball have no telos. The game and the j
dialectical encounter end only when their participants decide to stop, not j
when the game or the text is exhausted of its potential to play with its j
participants. Further, both the game and the question are directed at an
object: at the rules that a particular game conforms to or at the text's
possibility for conversation. In either case, Gadamer can conclude that
"playing is always a playing of something" (96). Finally, in regard to i
an honest game or dialectic played truly, the participants are not
99
foregrounded; rather they succumb to the play's to-and-fro movement,
so that the true player of dialectic or of the game "experiences the game
as a reality that surpasses him" (98).
In regard to the spectator in his discussion of play in Part I,
Gadamer refers to the priority of the event of play over its participants:
The kind of being present is self-forgetfulness, and it is
the nature of the spectator to give himself to what he is
watching. Self-forgetfulness here is anything but a
primitive condition, for it arises from the attention of
the object, which is the positive act of the spectator.
(Ill)
The notion of self-forgetfulness can apply to the participant in dialectic
as well as to the player and spectator of a game. In true play, all three
are overwhelmed by the game itself. But as Gadamer contends, this
self-forgetfulness— like the asking of a question in dialectic— is not a
passive act but an attentive one. In all cases, it is the participant's
attention to the object— the text or the particular move in a game— which
leads the participants to a focus on the game itself. In this attentive
state, in this deference to the object, the participant loses himself in what
the game has to say.
Gadamer treats self-forgetfulness in a somewhat different light,
relating the condition of being at risk to the willful giving up of the self
in the play event. Again, Gadamer focuses on how play emerges from
the state of being at risk:
In fact our own prejudice is properly brought into play
through its being at risk. Only through its being given
100
full play is it able to experience the other's claim to
truth and make it possible for he himself to have full
play. (266)
By deferring to the text, even if this deference places her own
prejudices at risk, the interpreter allows for a sense of play to emerge in
the dialectical encounter. This experience of being at risk allows her to
interpret the text differently, so that the truths of the text are j
i
foregrounded, propelling the to-and-fro movement of dialectic. Only in 1
this event of interpretive play does the interpreter realize that her j
i
prejudices block play's true enactment. In play, the reader's J
i
interpretive horizons are transformed as new prejudices (the text's)
replace her old ones, but even these new prejudices (this new knowing)
are incidental to the ontological priority of play.
Frequently in Truth and Method when discussing a specific
hermeneutical activity, Gadamer will invoke play or its movement to
advance his discussion. For example, in regard to the translator’ s
dilemma when he cannot find a word in his own language that satisfies
the text's, Gadamer sees that play can provide a possible solution: "And, ,
as in conversation, when there are such unbridgeable differences, a !
compromise can sometimes be achieved in the to and fro of the j
i
dialogue" (348). The appropriate words for the translation can j
sometimes emerge incidentally as the translator comfortably moves
between his own language and that of the text.
What these two examples suggest— being at risk and the to-and-fro
movement of the translator's interpretive activities— is that play is
101
ontologically prior to truth, so that truth is always play’ s incidental
result. What this conclusion suggests is a radical critique of Western
metaphysics whose consistent telos is tmth. For Gadamer, truth is not
ultimately what the interpreter is after, but the to-and-fro movement of
play that the question elicits. In his concluding remarks on language in
Part III, Gadamer examines play's ontological priority to truth:
What we mean by tmth here can best be determined
again in the terms of our concept of play. The way in
which the weight of things that we encounter in
understanding disposes itself is itself a linguistic event, a
game with words playing around and about what is
meant. Language games are where we, as learners— and
where do we cease to be that?— rise to the understanding
of the world. It is worth recalling here what we said
about the nature of play, namely that the attitude of the
player should not be seen as an attitude of subjectivity
since it is, rather, the game itself that plays, in that it
draws the players into itself and thus itself becomes the
central subjectum of the playing. What corresponds to
this in the present case is neither play with language nor
with the contents of the experience of the world or of
tradition that speak to us, but the play of language itself,
which addresses, proposes and withdraws, asks and
fulfills itself in the answer. (446)
In this "playfully" poetic concluding sentence, Gadamer seems to be
trying to capture language at play which perennially moves back and
forth between disclosure and concealment. The self-forgetful
interpreter can enjoy (take part in) the dance and thus be continually
altered by it.
102
An important qualifier needs to be made regarding play's
relationship to truth. Though truth is one of the results of play, it is a
result which has special status, because it brings pleasure to the
interpreter. For Gadamer, play results in "the joy of knowledge" (101).
So truth becomes the ongoing incentive to re-enact play's drama in the
reading of subsequent texts. The truth that results in hermeneutical play
is particular in kind, and it is why reading for Gadamer provides
thought’ s pure trace (354) in a way that no other game can.
At the conclusion of Part III of Truth and Method. Gadamer
plays with the age-old dialectic between beauty and truth. In this case
the charmer wooing the interpreter to play is the beautiful:
When we understand a text, what is meaningful in it
charms us. It has asserted itself and charmed us before
we can come to ourselves and be in a position to test the
claim to meaning that it makes. What we encounter in
the experience of the beautiful and in understanding the
meaning of tradition has effectively something about it
of the truth of play. In understanding we are drawn
into an event of tmth and arrive, as it were, too late, if
we want to know what we ought to believe. (446)
It is the beautiful in experience which invites (seduces) the reader to
play, and it is beauty which intoxicates the interpreter so that his claim
to find tmth in the experience loses its import. In a sense, beauty
beckons the participant to play and teases him into thinking that she can
lead him to tmth; but once the game is played, the interpreter finds
beauty's tmth: that one can never know "what we ought to believe." In
the hermeneutical sense, the interpreter seeking tmth begins by asking
1 0 3
beauty a false question: What is the truth of my experience?, while in
the event of understanding he finds his true question to be: What is the
beauty of my experience? — to which beauty responds: "You are always
too late for tmth, but you may ask again." In this sense, the "event of
tmth" is never realized, but the event of play is.
Play is one of the most problematic issues in Gadamer's
philosophical hermeneutics, for it undermines Gadamer's ostensible
hermeneutical purpose in Tmth and Method— to determine the nature of
textual meaning and the events that are orchestrated in textual
interpretation. Play asks of the text whether tmth is what interpreters
are really after. And of all the terms Gadamer introduces into his
hermeneutical philosophy, it is the most unmethodical. Play is the final
orchestration of the hermeneutical event, and it takes the central
hermeneutical events of questioning, being at risk, and self-forgetfulness
to enact its being.
As an ontologically prior event to tmth, its spirit is present in all
hermeneutical interpretation and pedagogical translations, for only in
play can tmth disclose itself, and only in joy can the interpreter (student
or scholar) elect to continue the dialogue with texts.
Finally, if, as Gadamer contends, all textual understanding is an
event, not a separate reader and a text, then it is the event that must be
carefully treated in any phenomenological understanding of
interpretation. The question, then, is part of the ontologically prior
event of play’ s to-and-fro-movement. Textual interpretation is merely
i
104
one type of play, which is manifested in different ways as the
i
interpreter encounters experience.
The Role of the Reader in Philosophical Hermeneutics
i
If, as Gadamer consistently argues, reading is an event, then to j
treat only the activity and not the reader is to consider only one
perspective of this hermeneutical activity. In examining the interpreter,
as in the consideration of interpretation, Gadamer employs several
terms whose significance overlaps. Central to an understanding of the
interpreter in the scene of philosophical hermeneutics is Gadamer's
concept of effective historical consciousness, a notion which Gadamer
consistently refers to in all three parts of Truth and Method: yet like
truth and play, the meaning of effective historical consciousness is
elusive. Related to effective historical consciousness are the issues of
horizons and their fusion, the I-Thou relationship, the activities of
openness and being at risk, as well as the issue of the evaluative criteria
that the interpreter necessarily brings to any text. Finally, Gadamer’ s
notion of the reader is not unlike his careful treatment of Aristotle's
j
phronimos— the seeker of moral knowledge. What the phronimos ;
searches for to explain his ethical relationship to experience also helps j
explain how interpreters read. j
I
I
|
i
i
t
_________________________________________________________________ 1 0 5 1
Effective Historical Consciousness and the Reader
j
i
| In several sections of Part II of Truth and Method. Gadamer
j examines effective historical consciousness. He notes that such a
.
consciousness is necessary for the kind of hermeneutical interpretation !
that he envisions: "A proper hermeneutics would have to demonstrate
the effectivity of history within understanding itself. I shall refer to this
i as 'effective-history'. Understanding is, essentially, an effective-
historical relation" (267). Part of the confusion regarding this term
concerns the translation of 'effective'. Gadamer does not mean that this
type of historical consciousness is an 'effective' one in the sense that it is
fruitful; rather, he is positing a relationship between understanding and
history; that is, the experience of history necessarily effects
understanding. Without the interpreter's understanding of her finite
historical condition, there can be no understanding for Gadamer,
therefore no textual interpretation. By this move, Gadamer solves the
hermeneutical problem that he ultimately sees in Hegel’ s metaphysics:
Hegel's conclusion that an absolute consciousness and absolute
knowledge exist, and are prior to, the historical moment, so that neither
one is affected by time. Hegel can thus conclude that an interpreter can
transcend his historical limitations through an apprehension of absolute
knowledge.
In contrast, a consequence of effective history removes the
possibility for the interpreter to apprehend an infinite consciousness.
106
Rather than seeing this interpretive inability as a stumbling block to j
hermeneutics, Gadamer considers effective historical consciousness as
the condition for which all interpretation is possible. Effective
historical consciousness ultimately liberates the textual interpreter.
A bit later in this section called "The Principle of Effective-
History," Gadamer sees effective historical consciousness from a
different perspective which further clarifies his critique of Hegel. Here,
Gadamer uses the notion of application to consider the activities that the
textual interpreter necessarily uses: "Application is not the subsequent
applying to a concrete case of a given universal that we understand first
by itself, but it is the actual understanding of the universal itself that the
given text constitutes for us. Understanding proves to be a kind of
i
effect and knows itself as such" (268). For Gadamer, a universal |
principle such as Hegel’s notion of absolute knowledge can never have '
an a priori existence--that is, existing "by itself." A reader's
understanding, rather, results from her finite historical condition fusing j
with the traditions of the text. This fusion does not necessarily result in
a single universal principle (absolute knowledge), but the possibility for
several universal concepts, none of which ever exhaust the interpretive
possibilities of the text. Both the reader and the text are products of
finite consciousness, but the effect of their fusion presents infinite
interpretive possibilities. This is why an attitude of effective historical
consciousness liberates the hermeneutical activity. J
Gadamer then shows that the fusion of horizons provides the
necessary scene for effective historical consciousness to manifest itself: j
i
"The purpose of the whole account of the formation and fusion of j
horizons was intended to show the way in which the effective-historical
consciousness operates" (305). In interpreting a text, the reader brings i
i
I
to it a horizon-a nexus of prejudices-all of which allow him to j
understand his finite world. The interpreter's horizon is thus a !
constantly changing shape. Likewise, the text has the potential of a j
i
similarly developing horizon— one that manifests itself as the author's ' •
i
nexus of prejudices. The interpretive possibilities of these textual
prejudices remain mute until the interpreter brings them to life. This is
the miracle of reading that Gadamer has alluded to.
Effective historical consciousness is central for the fusion of
horizons to be enacted because the reader must assume that both her
voice and that in the text is a product of a finite consciousness, so that
neither the reader nor the text can bring a universal voice to the
conversation. If either did, a fusing of horizons could not occur
because the reader's or the text's prejudices would be silenced, since the
voice of absolute consciousness is prejudice-free. Yet understanding—
the effect of an awareness and acceptance of human finitude— can lead to
considerations of the universal, which are also kinds of prejudices in
both the reader's and the text's horizons. The answers to these universal
questions are never outside the hermeneutic circle; as such, they have an
infinite (not an absolute) potential for meaning. It is, then, the task of
108
philosophical hermeneutics to articulate through language the true
responses to the questions which experience discloses An absolute
response to these questions would thus forever silence the need for the
hermeneutical activity.
Effective historical consciousness thus encourages the reader to
respond to the hermeneutical activity humbly. The hermeneutical
interpreter's conclusions regarding the meaning potential of the textual
encounter are the same ones he draws regarding understanding life's
experiences. Gadamer can thus equate the hermeneutical experience
with life experience:
Thus experience is experience of human finitude. The
tmly experienced man is one who is aware of this, who
knows that he is neither master of time nor the future.
The experienced man knows the limitedness of all
prediction and the uncertainty of all plans. In him is
realized the truth value of experience. (320)
In order to be able to predict the future or to be able to devise plans that
control experience, one would need the use of tools that had an absolute j
I
mastery of experience. The woman of experience, who understands her |
effective-historical condition, knows that such tools can never be found.
This is the truth that an effective historical consciousness leads to. It is
i
a humbling truth in that it limits the interpretive potential of the human j
being from achieving an absolute, fixed knowledge, yet it opens the way
for the human exploration of experience.
Gadamer restates the central condition of effective historical
consciousness: "All the expectation and planning of finite beings is finite
1 0 9
and limited. Thus true experience is that of one's own historically"
(321). For Gadamer, then, historical consciousness must embrace the
human being's perpetually finite condition. By accepting his condition
in history, the interpreter can no longer see himself or the text as an
inviolate carrier of absolute truth. The reader and the text can
therefore share in the commonality of their historical condition. Such a
conclusion, though humbling, is also liberating because then the reader
can see in the voices of the text the possibility for an equal partnership
in conversation.
The I-Thou Textual Relationship
Gadamer carefully considers the nature of the reader-text
partnership, introducing the concept of the I-Thou which results from
the humbled yet liberated stance the reader takes in embracing an
effective historical consciousness. In an I-Thou relationship, the reader
never sees the text or tradition as "a process that we leam to know and
be in command through experience" (321). Given this acceptance of
what tradition has to say, Gadamer concludes that the text is "language,
i.e., it expresses itself like a 'Thou'" (321). The 'Thou' of the text "is
not an object, but stands in relationship with us" (321). Gadamer is
clear, though, that the voice of the text is not the personal voice of face-
to-face conversation. This again explains why the reader listens to the
110
text with an "inward ear," the disciplined form of listening that reading
I
exacts. I
Gadamer emphasizes the special character of the Thou in textual |
interpretation: "It would be wrong to think that this meant that what is
experienced in tradition is to be taken as the meaning of another person, '
t
who is a "Thou"’ (321). Rather, what the disciplined reader develops is
an inward ear which listens to the I of her reading voice and the Thou—
the text's voice. What she listens for is what these voices, together, have
i
to say about "a meaningful content detached from all bonds of the j
meaning individual, of an T or a 'Thou'" (321). This is why Gadamer
insists that an effective historical consciousness encourages openness, for
to listen for this "meaningful content" is to place at risk both the
prejudices of the reader and those of the text.
Yet Gadamer does not want to suggest that these voices are in any
way inhuman or detached. For the I-Thou interpretive relationship
results in human connection: "For tradition is a genuine partner in
communication, with which we have fellowship as does the T with the
'Thou'" (321).
Having characterized the peculiar nature of the I-Thou
interpretive relationship, Gadamer then discusses the "second mode of
the experience of the ’ Thou'" (322). Here he focuses on the essential
unity of the I-Thou relationship; in so doing, Gadamer treats application
and dialectic from a different hermeneutical perspective. Though the
Thou is "acknowledged as a person...the understanding of the latter is
111
still a form of self-relatedness" (322). That is why application stands ;
alongside, not after, understanding. To understand a text is at the same j
time to see how the Thou agrees or disagrees with the I of the reader, |
that is, to apply the Thou's traditions to those of the I. Further, this
ongoing activity of application or self-relatedness is achieved through
the fundamental dialectic of thought: j
i
I
This proceeds from the dialectical appearance that the I
dialectic of the 'I-Thou' relation brings with it...To I
every claim there is a counter-claim. (322).
I
In this counter-claim, Gadamer sees the interpreter’ s keen bond to the i
other: "One claims to express the other's claim and even to understand j
the other better than the other understands him self (322). This is why j
i
Gadamer maintains that dialectic is fundamental to thinking. Knowing !
can only develop through the I's revision of the Thou's claim. In this
re-vising, a new, different thought ( a new I) emerges.
Gadamer then places this I-Thou dialectical relationship into a
larger historical context, for he concludes that: "The inner historicality
of all the relations in the lives of men consists in the fact that there is a
constant struggle for mutual recognition" (323). Gadamer is clear here
that he is not emphasizing the struggle for "self" recognition. The I is
not saying to the Thou: "I want to be heard;" rather, their request is:
"We want to be heard." In any relationship between two people (and
this is the sort of relationship that Gadamer foregrounds throughout
Truth and Method). Gadamer contends, the uniqueness of their
partnership creates a new being, a way of knowing. Gadamer posits
112
that all relationships, "even the extreme forms of mastery and slavery,
are a genuine dialectical relationship" (323). He is suggesting here that
even the callous master is continually reminded in his dealings with his
slave that the slave is struggling to be recognized as a Thou. And
though he may continue to treat him as an object, he cannot deny the
struggle for recognition that characterizes his relationship to the slave.
This historical insight has important hermeneutical and
pedagogical translations. Even a timid, first-time reader of Shakespeare
or Milton, for example, manifests his responses to the text, wants it to
mean something to her, in her particular situation. Texts which barely
speak to readers can thus be seen in the light of a dialectical encounter
rather than one of hopeless silence. The I of the reader, timid though it
might be, must be recognized by the teacher as a necessary partner,
even in these initial textual encounters with these "masters" of English
literature.
Gadamer considers a third corollary to the I-Thou encounter
which relates it to openness and effective historical consciousness.
Gadamer here refers to the "openness to tradition possessed by effective
historical consciousness" as "a third, and highest, type of hermeneutical
experience" (324). Clearly for Gadamer, to be open is the most
disciplined challenge for the textual interpreter. In openness, the
interpreter experiences "the 'Thou' truly as a ’ Thou,' i.e., not to
overlook his claim and to listen to what he has to say to us" (324). The
textual interpreter who listens openly to the text respects the Thou's
1 1 3
right to speak and thus listens to him intently. Only by being open to
the Thou can the listener call himself an I.
Gadamer then shows how being open extends into the sphere of
human relationships, for he notes that "without this kind of openness to
one another there is no genuine human relationship" (324). Being open
thus suggests to the interpreter the nature of true human relationships.
It gives him a more profound understanding for the demands necessary
for tme human belonging: "Belonging together always means being able
to listen to one another" (324). In this regard, understanding never
means "surveying him [the Thou], nor does it mean that the listener
blindly do[es] what the other desires" (324). Ultimately, being open
places necessary ethical standards on the interpreter's notion of
relationship and belonging. At this highest level, hermeneutics becomes
an ethical standard.
In Part III of Tmth and Method (the section on language),
Gadamer again treats this "highest" hermeneutical activity of openness,
this time foregrounding its interpretive rather than its ethical
dimensions. In treating the nature of this activity, Gadamer begins by
emphasizing how openness relates to human sharing. The effective
historical consciousness "in which the hermeneutical experience is
perfected...knows about the openness of the meaning-event in which it
shares" (430). Just as the ethical interpreter needs to carefully listen to
what the Thou has to say, so with the textual interpreter, "it is the
content of the tradition that is the sole criterion and expresses itself in
114
language" (430). As in forming the true question, the interpreter is
directed toward the object, so in openness, it is the content that is j
foregrounded. This is the "criterion" upon which the hermeneutics of
openness is measured.
i
Gadamer makes a significant qualification here to suggest the j
nature of textual tradition: Though openness may lead to a "perfected" j
hermeneutical stance, it cannot ever provide the interpreter with an ■
understanding of the perfect or the absolute. This conclusion would j
negate the necessary temporal grounding of effective historical
consciousness and make philosophical hermeneutic's goal the same as
Hegel's: to apprehend absolute knowledge. One hears the urgency of
this distinction in Gadamer's qualifying remarks at this point:
But there is no possible consciousness— we have
repeatedly emphasized this, and it is the basis of the j
historicalness of understanding— there is no possible j
consciousness, however infinite, in which the ’ object'
that is handed down would appear in the light of
eternity. (430)
Apprehending the eternal is never the result of an effective historical
consciousness, even in the perfected activity of openness. The
ontological ground of philosophical hermeneutics is the temporality of
both the interpreter and the text. The only eternal element resides in
the possibilities of the interpretive event.
Gadamer again wants to rescue this conclusion from its possibility
as hermeneutical failure:
1 1 5
Every assimilation of tradition is historically different:
which does not mean that every one represents an |
imperfect understanding of it. Rather every one is the
experiencer of a ’ view’ of the object itself. (430)
In hermeneutical interpretation, the object (text) in its encounter with
the interpreter possesses the possibility of disclosing infinite meaning.
Heidegger refers to a similar mode of interpretation in art as the
"perspectival letting shining" (Nietzsche: The Will to Power as Art I
215 ).2
Gadamer admits that such an interpretive-ethical response to the
other is not easily realized; and in his treatment of the most perfected
hermeneutical activity— that of openness~he suggests hermeneutical
experiences that readers move toward, though never master. He
suggests that as a universal concept, openness can never be achieved,
only successively realized in its praxis. To be open is the hermeneutical
challenge of all interpreters— both basic readers and textual scholars. In
the interpretive activity, both are constantly learning to be at risk so that
their prejudices are disclosed. In their disclosure, the reader can be
more open to the voice of the Thou , and he can therefore leam from
her. Understanding and a respect for one's textual partner are what the
reader continually re-presents through the hermeneutical activity.
Positing this experience of effective historical consciousness and
the resulting I-Thou textual relationship, Gadamer can then provide
instances for when the reader is no longer interpreting hermeneutically.
Again, these examples give to the hermeneutical interpreter criteria j
i
i
116 :
upon which she can evaluate the success of her subsequent textual
interpretations.
In treating the nature of true and false prejudices, Gadamer
locates an unsound hermeneutical practice— that of the reader seeing his
prejudice, not as a prejudice, but as a judgment. In Part II of Truth and
Method (in a section just before Gadamer's extended treatment of
effective-history), Gadamer notes that the "really critical question of
hermeneutics, [is] namely of distinguishing the true prejudices by which
we understand from the false one by which we misunderstand" (266).
Gadamer continues that only by isolating one's prejudices can the reader
see the "text, as another's meaning,., isolated and valued on its own"
(266). Only then can a prejudice be identified and made distinct from a
judgment: "For so long as our mind is influenced by a prejudice, we do
not know and consider it as a judgment" (266). At this point in his
treatment of true and false prejudices, Gadamer suggests what incorrect
hermeneutical interpretation (misunderstanding) entails. It is the
unreflective act of assuming that one's judgments cannot be questioned.
Its interpretive consequences lead to the silencing of the text, for the
judgment only allows the text to speak when it conforms to the
interpreter's a priori belief.
Of course, the same distinction between prejudice and judgment
can be made by the reader as she attempts to respond to the voice of the
text which refuses to see his judgments as prejudices. This blindness on
117
the part of the Thou can thus prevent the reader (the I) from
continuing a dialogue with him.
Conversely, understanding only occurs when a reader sees his
judgment as a prejudice, when his prejudice is put at risk, so that the
text can speak and express its counter claim. It is only in experiencing
the text before him that the reader can make "the encounter with a text
from the past," which provides the "stimulus" to disclose the prejudice
behind the judgment (266).
Ultimately, a judgmental reader or judgmental text privileges her
knowledge over that of her partner, thus sustaining an arrogant attitude
toward her partner and a desire to control him. This is why Gadamer
can fault a judgmental reader or writer on ethical grounds.
Related to this notion of the reader who judges is Gadamer's
treatment of the absolutist reader in his section of Part II treating legal
hermeneutics. An absolutist perspective in any legal matter precludes
any possibility for hermeneutical interpretation: "Where the will of the
absolute ruler is above the law, hermeneutics cannot exist" (294). The
absolute ruler thus chooses to ignore the validity of the event of legal
interpretation. He has no respect for the "right sense of the law," where
'right' refers not to an absolute edict, but to the most recent result of
legal interpretation regarding a particular issue. In the case of the
absolute ruler, Gadamer continues: "There is no question of interpreting
the law in such a way that the particular case is decided justly according
to the right sense of the law" (294). In being beyond the law, the
118
absolute ruler refuses to engage in an interpretive activity that would j
place his judgments at risk. Therefore, for Gadamer, the unjust ruler
can "effect whatever seems just to him without the effort of
interpretation" (294). Hermeneutical interpretation is thus grounded
upon the interpreter's placing his judgments at risk in the encounter
with any text. Obviously, the 'interpreter' who refuses to consider the
possibility of the text to respond to his judgments can never interpret.
With his treatment of the absolute ruler, Gadamer presents a
counterpart to his open interpreter. Where the open interpreter forgets
her prejudices in listening to the text, the absolutist refuses even to
consider a text because it may challenge his judgments. Here, it seems,
Gadamer establishes the two poles to the spectrum of understanding and
misunderstanding. In varying degrees, these two positions have their
translations in pedagogical attitudes. At its extreme, the vitalist
composition pedagogy suggests that only within the writer does valid
knowledge exist (the position of the absolute mler), while a pedagogy
foregrounding reading (like Salvatori's) depicts a writer listening to a
text as the continual occasion for arriving at meanings. In Salvatori's !
i
pedagogical scene, one sees a description of Gadamer's open interpreter, j
In Part III of Tmth and Method on language, Gadamer again j
attempts to show how the interpreter's understanding of a text must
necessarily foreground the text, and further that this foregrounding is
not an arbitrary act. Here, Gadamer makes a distinction between
methodology and effort. By imposing a method on the text, the reader
119
creates an arbitrary meaning. In contrast to the imposition of an
interpretive method on the text, Gadamer suggests the results of
focusing on the text: "But this activity and this effort consist in not
interfering arbitrarily-reaching with one's own fancies for this or that
notion that happens to be to hand— with the immanent necessity of the
thought" (421). Here, Gadamer focuses on the thought's priority in
directing the interpreter's activities. By arbitrarily interfering with this
thought, by imposing one of several methods on the text, the reader
loses the thought that is proper to the reader’ s encounter with the text.
For Gadamer, what can be disclosed in the text is never its single
transcendental thought, but the possibility for thinking to emerge in the
act of reading. j
i
Gadamer concludes that 'correct' textual thinking is always
guided by the interpreter's encounter with the text. It neither emerges
through an interpreter's a priori method nor through an interpreter's ;
passive response to the text: "Thinking means unfolding the proper logic
of the thing itself" (421). The suggestive phrase here is "proper logic,"
a logic whose contour is necessarily shaped by the text-reader
I
encounter. Just as for Aristotle, poetic texts provide their audience with
"proper pleasures" (Poetics 26.7 ), different from those in rhetoric, so
in each textual encounter do texts manifest their peculiar, proper logic.
Thus to impose a specific, logical framework on the text necessarily
leads to misunderstanding. Gadamer's emphasis here on the text's
proper logic seems to be part of his ongoing criticism of interpreting
i
120
the logic of Western metaphysics in only one way and of the use of the
empirical methodology of the natural sciences on all texts. One
pedagogical translation of such a misunderstanding of method and logic
includes the teaching of heuristics which readers are trained to bring to
any text and writers to their emerging texts in order to make them
'mean'.
Further, for Gadamer, the fact that interpretation begins in
'opinion' (the probable) and not truth is a laudable, not a regrettable,
condition. Here Gadamer echoes the position that the Sophist
Protagoras took against Socrates— in validating doxa.3 Gadamer is quite
clear that philosophical hermeneutics must begin from a position of not
knowing: "This is not a regrettable distortion that affects the purity of
understanding, but the condition of its possibility which we have
characterized as the hermeneutic situation" (429). Gadamer continues
that this indeterminacy works itself out in a specific way; that is, "only
because the text calls for it does interpretation take place, and only in
the way called for" (429). In its encounter with the reader, the text, in
a sense, "calls for the question," and the reader attempts to articulate a
true one. This question initiates the dialogue of textual interpretation,
so Gadamer can conclude: "Thus the dialectic of question and answer
precedes the dialectic of interpretation" (429). Once the reader and text
have experienced a true question, then their interpretation can begin.
Therefore, an interpreter who unreflectively enters the text anywhere
will inevitably misunderstand it.
121
Ultimately, the reader that Gadamer has in mind is one who is j
fundamentally influenced by her temporality, realizing that neither j
within her nor the text is the immanence of an infinite consciousness. !
Such a realization has several interpretive consequences, for the reader |
can neither search for meaning within herself nor the text, but only in !
i
the event resulting from her encounter with the text. Further, she must '
see herself and the text as equal partners in this event, each contributing j
to the textual dialogue. This equal relationship, further, encourages an !
openness toward the text; that is, the reader encourages the text to speak •
because she believes that it has something to say. What it says may place j
her readings and traditions at risk. But in risking them, the reader j
allows the text to speak in a way that is unique to their textual J
encounter. In the text's particular response to the reader, the reader j
may ultimately re-vise her original prejudices.
I
Finally, the reader understands that entry into the text cannot
begin anywhere, but only where his prejudices and those of the text j
initiate a dialogue. A question emerges in each textual encounter which
I
is peculiar to the reader and text and which then elicits a particular set j
!
of answers and further questions. So, given the emergence of a true t
question, textual dialogue is never arbitrary. j
Gadamer's reader thus does not assume that her reading activities :
or those of the community to which she belongs are responsible for j
textual meaning (the position that Stanley Fish takes),4 nor does she i
take on a stance of timidity in the face of an inviolate, sacred text,
122
concluding that within the text resides transcendental meaning; thus only
experienced interpreters can approach it (the position of New
Criticism). In a hermeneutic pedagogy, readers are encouraged to
participate in the disclosure of textual truth, for neither the text nor the
interpretive communities are inviolate entities. Readers in a
hermeneutic pedagogy come to see that interpretation always occurs
within the setting of conversation, and it is initiated when one of its
members (as in all good conversation) is concerned about what his
partner has to say.
The Phronimos as Textual Interpreter
Phronesis is an Aristotelian notion that for Gadamer has
relevance to his notion of the textual interpreter. I have previously used
the concept of phronesis in regard to the particular discipline that is
pedagogy; Gadamer uses this classical term in relationship to the
practical situation that the interpreter finds herself in each time she
reads. A careful reading of this section of Part II ("The Hermeneutic
Relevance of Aristotle") clarifies both what Gadamer means by
interpretation in the human sciences and how he envisages the
interpreter of texts.
Gadamer begins this translation of Aristotle by positing the notion
(repeated several times in Truth and Method as Gadamer treats the
activity of reading and the reader) that "the heart of the hermeneutical
1 2 3
problem is that the same tradition must always be understood in a
different way" (278). That is, each reader responds to a text from
within a particular situation. Placing reading in a more abstract plane,
Gadamer sees the hermeneutical activity as the unique relationship
between the particular and the universal— where a universal meaning
potential lies in waiting in the text to which the reader brings a finite
(particular) understanding. Gadamer notes in this regard:
"Understanding is, then, a particular case of the application of
something universal to a particular situation" (278).
Though Gadamer concedes that for Aristotle phronesis is his
response to the particular epistemological distinctions between it,
episteme, and techne, phronesis nonetheless explains the situation of the
interpreter in philosophical hermeneutics. What joins Aristotle's j
concern with phronesis as a separate intellectual discipline and <
Gadamer's focus on the universality of hermeneutical interpretation is
that both are "concerned with reason and with knowledge not detached
from a being that is becoming, but determined by it and determinative i
of it" (278). In phronesis or moral knowledge, the phronimos must
always interpret how the particular event in experience responds to the
ethical concept. How does Hector's specific decision in battle, for
example, conform to or reshape the phronimos' accepted standards for
bravery? Similarly, the interpretive activities that a reader brings to a
text are challenged by each particular reading encounter.
Hermeneutical interpretation, like an ethical account of bravery, is
always revised in its praxis.
Both hermeneutics and ethics attempt to explain human
civilization which is envisioned by Gadamer "not simply [as] a place in
which capacities and powers work themselves out, but [where] man
becomes what he is through what he does and how he behaves" (279).
Both the ethical philosopher and the reader can direct the course of
their intellectual lives; they are not "capacities or powers," like water or
electricity, which do not experience freedom.
The ongoing task of the phronimos, then, is to "see the concrete
situation in the light of what is as asked of him in general" (279), so that
"knowledge which cannot be applied to the concrete situation remains
meaningless" (279). Examining Hector's brave deeds without some
concept of courage becomes a senseless activity. The phronimos must
always apply his general understanding of courage to the concrete
instance— his witnessing of (what seems to him to be) a courageous act.
Similarly, a reader without interpretive ways cannot read a text. If she
does not have some general sense for how textual meaning happens, then
her attempt to read will be meaningless. For the phronimos and the
reader, bravery and reading are never forever fixed terms- tools, in
Gadamer's sense, that one uses to control the concrete situation; rather
they are generalized concepts that reader and moral thinker bring to
their understanding of a particular experience.
125
Gadamer expands upon this concept of the necessarily inexact
nature of the general in phronesis: "Aristotle emphasizes that it is
impossible to have in ethics the kind of extreme exactitude that the
mathematician can achieve. Indeed it would be an error to demand that
exactitude" (279). Mathematics and ethics are different studies;
mathematics is a discipline under episteme whose ground is
demonstrable truth, while ethics is a study under phronesis which treats
all knowledge (human knowledge) that cannot be understood by
demonstration. To force upon phronesis the method of episteme is to
deny the distinct knowledge that phronesis is. Similarly, to use the
methods of scientific demonstration as ways of reading is to
misunderstand the difference in knowing between tradition and
scientific data.
Aristotle continues that one can never bring to ethical issues the
intellectual machinery of episteme. All that one can apply to ethical
study is a general idea: "What needs to be done is simply to make an
outline and by means of this sketch give some help to moral
consciousness" (279). This sketch by no means attests to the failure of
phronesis to understand its concepts. For example, the concept of
bravery is necessarily an unfixed term; giving it the univocal character
of epistemic terminology would not only fail to define bravery but
would also preclude any further investigation of it as an ethical term.
Ethical terminology is necessarily "sketchy," not because the
philosopher’ s thinking is unclear and needs a better focus, but because
126
bravery is a term whose horizon is continually unfixed. As a concept,
!
bravery cannot be measured in the same degree that a mathematician, j
for example, can fix her understanding and use of the concept of zero.
This notion of the outline that the phronimos brings to the moral j
experience has particular application to Gadamer’ s concept of textual j
interpretation. Readers in the human sciences cannot bring a detailed |
i
reading method to a text; rather they need to bring an outline to the j
!
text— their constantly re-vised notion of what reading is— with the hope !
that this textual encounter will once again re-vise this sketch. And it is
I
this revised sketch which they then bring to their subsequent encounters ]
j
with texts, only to have it questioned once again. To bring a formal ;
outline of reading to a text would either be to silence the text in terms '
|
of what it has to say about the activity of reading or to provide false i
I
answers. The human science text is different from the data to be read in i
the natural sciences, and each discipline exacts different sets of j
interpretive ways.
It is in this outline brought to the ethical experience or to the text
that the philosopher or interpreter can assist "moral consciousness to
attain clarity concerning itself (279). That is, the ethical question or i
i
textual possibility for meaning is disclosed more fully by the particular
ethical experience or the particular reading encounter. This necessary
interconnection between the ethical experience and the ethical standard,
the reading experience and the interpretive standard, results from the
particular nature of moral knowledge. Gadamer notes: "For moral
127
being...is clearly not objective knowledge, i.e., the knower is not j
standing over against a situation that he merely observes, but he is j
directly affected by what he sees. It is something he has to do” (280). \
The ethical experience and the text draw the philosopher and interpreter !
into a dialogue concerning the nature of their activity. From a
phenomenological perspective, Gadamer sees ethics and reading as
events to which its participants are drawn. I
Midway through his careful treatment of moral knowledge's |
relationship to the human sciences and the ethical philosopher's j
connection to the textual interpreter, Gadamer makes a distinction
between moral knowledge and human science. The human sciences, he
contends, are not equivalent to phronesis; rather they "stand close to
moral knowledge" because "they are 'moral sciences'" (280). Their
object is man and what he knows of himself" (280). The human
scientist understands that any text in his discipline is not fixed; rather it
is "an active being [who is]...concerned with what is not always the same
as it is, but can also be different" (280). The focus of both phronesis
and the human sciences is on that which is different in experience and
how this difference re-interprets tradition. As interpreters in the
human sciences, readers thus are drawn to texts which speak of the ways
that human experience changes, and their reading ways are as fluid as
the experience they study, their interpretative activities constantly re
presented in the texts that they encounter.
128
Having established the difference between episteme and phronesis,
Gadamer then moves his discussion to the more subtle distinction
between phronesis and techne. For techne, like phronesis, is structured
on "action governed by knowledge" (281). Gadamer's question in this
section of his study of phronesis' relationship to hermeneutics is: How is
"the knowledge of the craftsman who is able to make some specific
thing" (283) unlike the knowledge of the phronimos? The key
metaphor that Gadamer finds in Aristotle's answer to this question is the
image {eidos ). Is the blueprint or eidos that the craftsman has before
him in making the desired object the same sort of image that the
phronimos has before him as he attempts to "make himself what he is to
be" (281)? If the answer is yes, then the craftsman, phronimos, and
textual interpreter are all involved in a similar prescriptive activity.
Blueprints are faithful renderings of the object that the craftsman must
make. He follows the plans in his attempt to create a faithful rendering.
In this regard, he can use a prescriptive method which can lead to the
completion of his task.
Is the blueprint that the phronimos follows analogous? Does the
phronimos have before her a faithful eidos of what bravery is and how
to make it? Here the analogy breaks down because the phronimos
cannot "imagine " the attributes of bravery in the same way the
craftsman can "imagine" the parts of a chair. Bravery's attributes are
constantly being re-seen in the particular human experience, while the
parts of a chair are rendered to scale in the blueprint.
129
The analogy also breaks down if one compares the craftsman to
the textual interpreter. The reader, like the phronimos, does not have
an image before him of a text’ s meaning, for its possible meanings can
only unfold in the encounter with the text. If he has the way to make
i
meaning before him, he would merely need to copy it, not even engage j
in the act of reading. This is why an interpreter’ s faithful, rigid !
adherence to interpretive methods (the craftsman's blueprints) most I
often deny the possibility for textual meaning. The "image" toward
which the text-reader encounter points may thus be distorted by an a
priori blueprint for what it means.
Gadamer foregrounds this interconnection between interpreter
and experience in ethical and hermeneutical encounters: "For with
moral knowledge it is clear that experience can never be sufficient for
making right moral decisions" (282). Both the ethical philosopher and
textual interpreter need to begin with a sketch for what constitutes
human experience. They can be taught what this knowing entails, but it !
is not the same kind of knowledge learned by the craftsman who
becomes skilled in faithfully adhering to the procedures that most
i
accurately render the object from the blueprint. Moral knowing leads !
to possibility, not realizable goals.
Gadamer can thus conclude that phronesis and techne are in fact
different intellectual activities, for it is finally evident that the
phronimos "cannot make himself in the same way that he can make
something else" (282). Moral knowing, interpretation in the human
130
sciences, is "self knowledge, i.e., knowledge for oneself' (282), as :
opposed to the craftsman's technical knowledge of the object. j
Gadamer then pursues the finer distinctions which Aristotle draws j
between phronesis and techne, calling this section of the Nichomachean ,
Ethics an example of "his real genius” (283).
First, while one can learn a techne and promptly forget it, one
does not learn moral knowledge in the same way, nor can one forget it
(283). A craftsman, for example, can leam to build a chair to
specifications and then years later forget the correct procedure for
building it, necessitating his return to the original blueprints. In
contrast, one does not leam about bravery in this methodical way, nor
does one ever forget what bravery is, even if one has never been given
formal instruction in it.
The hermeneutical analogy is slightly different. A child is taught
to decode, and in the sense of reading as a decoding activity, reading can
be seen as a craft. But interestingly, one rarely hears of people
forgetting how to read, unless they suffer some sort of brain
impairment. Further, many children leam how to read without ever
being given formal instmction in the mles for decoding, just as children
leam about bravery without ever being taught it. Children who teach
themselves to read intuit reading's necessary relationship to speech,
which they also do not formally leam; like language, they see reading as
a natural meaning-making activity. As they continue to read, these
children realize that decoding is not reading’ s ultimate goal; rather the
131
real import of reading is to disclose what the text has to say. These
reading ways are never learned through formal instruction on reading
methods. Ultimately, the only techne involved in reading is decoding,
yet it does not play a major role in eliciting meaning from a text.
Gadamer then sees the phronesis-techne distinction from the
perspective of the correct: "What is right [in phronesis], for example,
cannot be fully determined independently of the situation that requires a
right action from me, whereas the eidos of what a craftsman desires to
make is fully determined by the use for which it is intended" (283).
The craftsman's goal is utility; the phronimos' telos is more subtle: a
continual appropriation of the correct as it is represented in the
particularity of experience. The telos of the phronimos has no end.
Similarly, the goal of the textual interpreter is not to faithfully render
the text's image of meaning because its image is necessarily re-presented
in the activity of reading and rereading. So the image that the textual
interpreter looks for is always beyond her reach.
In legal hermeneutics, Gadamer contends, an analogue to the
craftsman's faithful rendering of the blueprint would be "applying the
full rigor of the law” (284). Gadamer notes that in certain cases the
legal interpreter is bound to maintain a conservative approach, not
because he is mechanically obeying the letter of the law (as does the
craftsman who adheres to the blueprint's details), but because "to do
otherwise would not be right" (284). Conversely, if the interpreter
moves away from the law's strict application, "he is not diminishing it,
132
but, on the contrary, finding the better law" (284). Gadamer thus sees
that one task of the legal interpreter is to improve the law through its
application in the particular legal event. Again, Gadamer's example
from legal hermeneutics has its correlate in the interpretation of any
text. At times, one can strictly interpret a text with fruitful results, but
it is the text (like the particular legal event) which allows for such a
conservative application. Similarly, it is a dense text or the rereading of
a seemingly facile text which may call a particular interpretation into
question and encourage its re-vision.
Gadamer also sees that Aristotle's treatment of natural law as
different from human law has its analogue in the human sciences,
Gadamer positing that there is always a universal concept toward which
the interpreter is directed:
Despite all the variety expressed in moral ideas in the
most difficult times and peoples there is still in this
sphere something like the nature of the thing. This is
not to say that the nature of the thing, i.e., the ideal of
bravery, is a fixed yardstick that we could recognize
and apply by ourselves. (286)
In the discipline of moral knowledge, Gadamer is suggesting that the
phronimos always has a sense for the "nature of the thing" to which he
directs his interpretation, yet he knows these this interpretation will
never allow him to capture it nature. Nonetheless, it is a "reality"
toward which he casts his steady gaze, and as such it helps him re
present the truth that he encounters in the particular event.
133
Gadamer's position regarding textual truth is a subtle one. '
Though truth is not immanent within the text, nor is it full-blown in the j
mind of the interpreter, its outline is nonetheless an ongoing j
i
interpretive concern that emerges in the textual encounter. As such, it |
j
helps shape the reader's interpretation of each text. Such a fluid notion
of tmth, Gadamer contends, is unique to the human sciences and
necessary for its particular type of interpretation.
Gadamer also notes that as separate studies, techne and phronesis
do not encroach upon each other's interpretive territories. To apply
phronesis' fluid interpretation to technical knowledge would be just a j
fruitless as to use a "fixed yardstick" reading on texts in the human !
i
sciences. Gadamer does contend that each interpretive activity reveals a j
different kind of knowing: "When there is techne, we must leam it and
then we are able to find the right means" (286). Each discipline under i
the human sciences, Gadamer suggests, should consider where the
interpretations proper to techne and those of phronesis can be
successfully applied. In the act of writing, for example, there exist
several areas where technical knowledge is required.
Gadamer then treats the issue of means and ends as essentially
different in techne and phronesis. In techne, each step contributes to the
final rendering of the eidos; that is, techne is a goal-oriented discipline.
Phronesis concerns means in a different way, for each interpretive
move has a moral telos of its own since the eidos of the experience can
never be fully realized. In moral matters, Gadamer contends:
__________________________ 134
there is never mere consideration of expediency that
might serve the attainment of moral ends, but the
consideration of the means is itself a moral
consideration and makes specific the moral rightness of
the dominant end. (287).
This is why the movement of phronesis' discourse is so different from
that of techne. Where techne's thinking has a necessarily a priori
sequential direction, that of phronesis is dialectical— each question and
answer positing the possibility of moral insight on its own, apart from,
yet informing, the overall direction that the discourse is taking. It is not
that the discourse in the human sciences is directionless, but that its kind
of knowing foregrounds each move that the interpreter makes.
Gadamer continues his analysis of the kind of knowing that
phronesis is, here considering phronesis perceptually. Unlike techne,
phronesis "is nevertheless not a perceiving by the senses...it is not a
mere seeing but nous" (287). Phronesis deals with knowledge which
goes beyond the senses; phronesis is necessarily more abstract because it
cannot be visualized (except through metaphors). Gadamer's insight
here suggests the type of intellect that is fostered in interpreting texts in
the human sciences. Phronesis is never solely a rendering of the
physical world, but a re-presentation of concepts, none of which have
the fixed character of the physical world. In the human sciences,
hermeneutics is concerned with the fostering and development of these
concepts. It is from this premise that pedagogies interpreting texts from
the human sciences must begin. Hermeneutical interpretation and its
135
pedagogical translations are necessarily grounded in nous (the
!
intellect), not in the senses.
In a conclusion to his treatment of phronesis, Gadamer shows
how Aristotle relates understanding (sunesis ) to phronesis. Here,
Gadamer foregrounds phronesis’ hermeneutical associations: "Beside
phronesis, the virtue of thoughtful reflection, stands understanding
(sunesis, Eth Nic bk 6, ch 11)" (288). Then, Gadamer shows how
phronesis' focus on self-understanding moves to an understanding of the
other (the Thou): "It appears in the fact of concern, not about myself,
but about the other person” (288). Understanding thus foregrounds the
person (the particular event) over the universal consequences of moral '
t
knowledge: |
Once again we discover that the person with I
understanding does not know or judge as one who stands :
apart and unaffected; but rather, as one united by a I
specific bond with the other, he thinks with the other j
and undergoes the situation with him. (288).
Here understanding, as a mode of phronesis, has echoes to Gadamer’ s
treatment of the I-Thou hermeneutical relationship. The phronimos
with sunesis is not unlike the interpreter truly engaged in an I-Thou
relationship with the text, where the I allows the Thou to speak in order
to connect with and leam from her. At this point, Gadamer also shows
how the ethical dimension of sunesis is necessarily alongside its potential
as moral knowing. Without establishing a bond with the other, the
phronimos can never understand the Thou's moral dilemma and thus
will not be able to interpret the ethical insights it can disclose. Gadamer
136
has argued in a similar fashion in his treatment of the hermeneutical
activity of the I-Thou.
In one of the most thorough-going sections of Truth and Method.
Gadamer treats the relationship that exists between Aristotle’ s
phronimos and his (Gadamer’ s) textual interpreter. First, he has
explained Aristotle's necessary distinction between moral and technical
knowledge, so that moral knowing can be seen as a discipline in itself:
"Moral knowledge is really a knowledge of a special kind. It embraces
in a curious way means and ends and hence differs from technical
knowledge" (287). If the human sciences "stand close to moral
knowledge...as a ’ moral science"' (280), then hermeneutics involves a
particular kind of activity, different from that employed in episteme and ]
techne. The textual interpreter has a special relationship to texts that the j
1
scientist and craftsman do not. In a hermeneutic pedagogy, then, the i
i
teacher and student must foreground the special activity of the human 1
sciences; they cannot appropriate the activities of either the scientist or
the craftsman.
Interpreting a text in the human sciences involves a self-
understanding that is different from the understanding one derives in
scientific or technical interpretation. Gadamer notes in this regard:
The interpreter dealing with a traditional text seeks to
apply it to himself. But this does not mean that the text
is given him as something universal, that he understands
it as such and only afterwards uses it for particular
application. Rather the interpreter seeks no more than
to understand this universal thing, the text; i.e., to
137
understand what this piece of tradition says, what
constitutes the meaning and importance of the text. In
order to understand that, he must not seek to disregard
himself and his particular hermeneutical situation. He i
must relate the text to his situation, if he is to understand
at all. (289)
Like the phronimos, Gadamer's textual interpreter must treat the j
i
importance of the particular experience, and only by applying the I
i
experience to herself can she consider its significance. This is the j
necessary nature of understanding in the human sciences, involving an
ongoing dialectic between the particularity of the event and the
universal schema to which it relates. For both the phronimos and the
textual interpreter, understanding is therefore an expression of how the
particular re-vises the general, the general re-presents the particular. In
this examination of the particular and universal, both the phronimos and
the textual interpreter leam to understand themselves.
Such a scene, Gadamer suggests, is enacted in every instance of
interpretation in the human sciences— with the legal scholar interpreting
a natural law as it relates to a specific legal event, with the biblical
interpreter relating scripture to contemporary behavior, with the j
literary critic assessing the possibilities of meaning of poem, and (I j
i
would add) with the student writer encountering a text and attempting to j
I
articulate its significance. This is why Salvatori's pedagogical
translation of Gadamer into the writing classroom assumes that students
engage in critical, reflective interpretations.5 She does not place them
in this scene to show him how difficult academic work is, ultimately to
fault and alienate them, but to introduce to her students the nature of the
138
hermeneutical activity. What she finds is that her students are often
challenged and sometimes frightened by the textual activities, but many
come to realize how reading and writing are unique, self-enriching
activities. Though Salvatori does not discuss with them the nature of the
difference between the human and natural sciences, in the activities of
reading and writing, her students often come to understand textual
interpretation as an activity that is different from any other that they
have experienced. j
What Gadamer’ s careful treatment of Aristotelian phronesis j
ultimately suggests is the ground upon which all reading and writing
activities in the human sciences begin. It is neither the ground of
mathematical and logical investigation (episteme), nor that of technical
knowledge (techne). As such, the discipline of phronesis— of which
hermeneutics is its textual activity— assumes particular reading and
writing ways. They are activities which are not as easily identifiable as
those in the natural and technical sciences, yet they are the only
activities that readers can use to further the conversation in the human
sciences. In foregrounding these activities and in treating the ways
interpreters may use them, Gadamer, at least in Truth and Method,
encourages an understanding of their pedagogical possibilities.
The Text as Living Tradition
Just as Gadamer's understanding of the activity of reading
informs and is informed by his concept of the reader, so does his j
I
......................................................... 139__|
interpretation of the text meaningfully respond both to Gadamer's
reader and to his understanding of reading. Central to an understanding
of a Gadamerian text is how it is always a manifestation of tradition.
For Gadamer, tradition is simply "what has been transmitted in j
history" (250). As a manifestation of history, the text is not a separate, ;
recognizable entity outside of its encounter with the reader. What j
Gadamer says about tradition necessarily applies to the text as well: "We
always stand within tradition" (250). In reading a text, then, the reader
is always within it, not outside it as a timid, vicarious spectator or an
arrogant judge. The text invites the reader into its world to understand
its prejudices; and if the reader questions the text openly, the text's
prejudices can speak to the reader's.
In this way, the text is not a fixed hermeneutical entity; its
tradition is not dead but 'living' (251) in the sense that the reader can
awaken interpretive possibilities never previously disclosed. All texts—
ancient and contemporary-possess the same 'living' hermeneutical
potential. It is the text, then, in hermeneutical interpretation, which
allows the reader to place herself "within a process of tradition, in
which past and present are constantly fused" (258). Though the text
necessarily speaks of a past tradition, in its fusion of horizon with that
of the reader, the past becomes contemporaneous in it, awakening and
questioning the open reader’s present prejudices.
The understanding of the classical text in its relationship to the
hermeneutical activity is an important, subtle, and often misunderstood
140
issue in Truth and Method. Because Gadamer often invokes the texts of
Aristotle and Plato as those which speak to him, he has been mistakenly
criticized for wanting to preserve the classical literary tradition.6
Further, Gadamer’s notion of reading history is not necessarily a
complacent one, for a text that speaks to its reader does not always
agree with him. In fact, the center of Gadamer's reading activity is the
reader’ s experience of being at risk, allowing textual prejudice to j
respond to and perhaps reshape her own. Joel Weinsheimer makes a
i
similar point regarding Gadamer's concept of openness. Weinsheimer ,
does not see this term as necessarily positive, in that it always allows the j
i
text to agree with the reader. Rather, to question tradition suggests to |
the reader "the uncertainty of all plans and predictions, the frustration j
of all attempts to control or close off the future, and the disappointment
of all aspirations to comprehend in a single concept, however inclusive,
the infinite process of experience" (Gadamer's Hermeneutics 204-5).7
It is this assumption of the limits of understanding in which Gadamer's
activity of openness is grounded.
Ultimately, Gadamer does not bring the traditional notion of
classical texts as artifacts bearing immanent truth to Truth and Method
as does, for example, Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American
Mind where he names those texts that all educated readers must study.8
What, then, for Gadamer is a classical text? In his treatment of
the classical, Gadamer wants to dispel the notion that it necessarily
refers to a traditional historical period of intellectual greatness that the
141
interpreter wants to recapture. Given his phenomenological focus on
the event of interpretation, recapturing a historical moment is an
impossibility, and this assumption provides the basis for his critique of
historicism in Part II of Truth and Method. At base, then, that which is
classical for Gadamer does not describe the splendor of a specific
historical moment, so that it does not recapture its history. For
Gadamer, this focus on the classical's greatness as a particular historical
moment is the ancient conception:
When today we use 'classical' as an historical stylistic
concept that has a clear meaning by being set against
what came before and after, this concept has become
quite detached from the ancient one. The concept of the
classical now signifies a period of time, the period of an
historical development, but does not signify any
suprahistorical value. (255)
Gadamer has noted that historically the classical generally falls in the
middle of a civilization's or culture's development; so as a purely
historical term, it often signifies the mid-point in a culture; whereas the
ancient notion of the classical is descriptive, not normative, referring to
the significant moments in a culture's history.
Gadamer wants to add to to this historical, normative notion of
the classical as a midpoint in a culture's development the hermeneutical
significance of the classical. As a text, the classical first speaks to the
reader as a contemporary partner, then as a historical document: "The
classical is what resists historical criticism because its historical
dominion, the binding power of its validity that is preserved and handed
142
i
i
down, precedes all historical reflection and continues through it" (255). j
1
It is not that the interpreter of a text must first locate the classical text in
its historical context, but that she first responds to what the text says and
thus initially places its historical context in the background.
Though the classical is always historical in that it speaks from the
past, "it is a historical reality to which historical consciousness belongs
and is subordinate" (256). That is, one does not need to initially
recapture ancient Greece during the fourth century b.c. when the j
Phaedrus was written in order to read this text, because its historical !
i
moment is subordinate to the Phaedrus' potential to speak to its readers. !
i
A classical text is therefore timeless in that it does not need to
have its history explained beforehand: "It is a consciousness of
something enduring, of significance that cannot be lost...a kind of
timeless present that is contemporaneous with every other age" (256).
Here, Gadamer seems to be saying (at least on a first reading) that the
validity of the classical text precedes the event of interpretation. Yet a
careful interpretation of this passage reveals that it is not the text which
endures but the 'consciousness' which the text and the reader
orchestrate. The classical text, then, participates in questioning
significant human issues. That is, the classical text "says something to j
the present as if it were speaking to it" (257). In this sense, a classical j
text is timeless, but again Gadamer wants to emphasize that this quality
i.
does not transcend its effective-history: "The classical, then, is certainly
'timeless', but this timelessness is a mode of historical being" (257), and j
1 4 . 3
that is why Gadamer refers to the classical as "a kind o f [my italics]
timeless present.” j
In the Afterword to the latest edition of Truth and Method. j
Gadamer again refers to the classical text. His focus here is on how the
classical text speaks directly to the reader, and that it is in the power and
nature of this conversation that a classical text can be considered
eminent. Gadamer explains:
It is not defining some canon of content specific to the
classic that encouraged me to designate the classical as '
the basic category of effective history. Rather, I was
trying to indicate what distinguishes the work of art, and
particularly the eminent text, from other traditionary
materials open to understanding and interpretation. The
dialectic of question and answer that I elaborated is not
invalidated here but modified: the original question to
which a text must be understood as an answer has...an
originary superiority to and freedom from its origins.
This hardly means that the "classical work" is accessible
only in a hopelessly conventional way or that it
encourages a reassuringly harmonious conception of the
"universally human." Rather something "speaks" only j
when it speaks "originarily," that is, "as if it were saying
something to me in particular. This hardly means that
what speaks in this way is measured by an
suprahistorical norm. Just the reverse is true: what
speaks in this way sets the standard. (577)9
Gadamer wants to clarify what confused readers in the previous editions
of Truth and Method. In his later works, Gadamer frequently replaces
the term "classical text" with "eminent text" to emphasize that he is not
placing inordinate value on the classical tradition or its texts. What
Gadamer sees of value in experiencing an eminent text is that the reader j
j
144
is drawn into it because it speaks to him in an original, particular
manner, and that it speaks to many readers in this powerfully personal
way. It is the degree of intimacy that the reader and eminent text
experience that sets this reading experience apart from others. The
same dialectic goes on in the reading of other texts, but it is a much
more powerful, personal exchange when one reads an eminent text.
Finally, Gadamer is saying that in reading an eminent text, the reader
understands the power of application as a reading activity, and it is this
understanding of application (how the text speaks to the reader's
individual circumstances) that sets the standard for the reader as she
reads other texts and compares her reading experience to that of the
classical.
In speaking of tradition, Weinsheimer helps explain how the
classical evokes a different set of prejudices from its readers. A text
from the past, Weinsheimer notes, has a temporal distance, which
"filters out local and limited prejudices" (179).10 In this sense, the
classical text has been read by enough readers so that its "local and
limited" prejudices have been identified, yet readers continue to be
drawn to it because the text speaks of other prejudices which are less
"local and limited"— significant human questions. What distinguishes a
classical text from other texts is that after the local and limited
prejudices of these other texts have been identified and exhausted by
readers in time, no other significant prejudices emerge. This is not to
say that at some moment in their history, additional prejudices may not
145
be found in these texts as well. In contrast, a text which is classical
continues to speak to its readers because its prejudices have, as yet, not
I been exhausted. Important questions continue to emerge in its reading.
i
I What Weinsheimer says of temporal distance has relevance to an
I
I understanding of the classical text: "Temporal distance has the effect of
eliminating those temporary prejudices and of letting the character and
value of the work emerge" (179). j
Huckleberry Finn, for example, has been faulted for its racist I
1
prejudices, particularly in regard to its degrading treatment of Jim by
Huck. When today a teacher assigns this novel and students continue to
respond to it, in spite of this local prejudice, then this text is allowing its
readers to encounter its other less local prejudices. From the
perspective of philosophical hermeneutics, a teacher assigning
Huckleberry Finn to his students, then, is not encouraging them to
embrace the prejudices of Mark Twain; rather he sees this text as one
that the students will likely reread because of the penetrating human
questions which its reading poses. A work like Huckleberry Finn is not
simply a classic because a professor or academy deems it to be in this
category. Like the history of a word, whose popularity and meaning
cannot be entirely controlled by its individual user, so a text cannot
solely be considered classical because an academic or political institution
chooses it in its canon. That which is classical is also determined by its
readers who, in spite of the admonitions or recommendations of
institutions, continue to find meaning in it.
_____________________________________________ 146 |
In another sense, the classical text seems to provide the possibility
for a significant I-Thou experience, for it seems to speak of issues or
prejudices that are the most puzzling and the most challenging to the
human being: "Cultural awareness manifests an element of ultimate
community and sharing in the world out of which the classical work
speaks" (258). It is as if the Thou of the classical text keeps company
with the reader, understanding his significant life questions and sharing
in their ambiguities.
Finally, Gadamer treats the classical from the perspective of its
aesthetic reception, contending that what a classical text says always
supersedes an awareness of its beautiful form:
What is the aesthetic consciousness when compared to
the fullness of what has already addressed us--what we
call 'classical' is art? Whenever we say with an
instinctive, even if perhaps erroneous certainty...'this is
classical; it will endure,' what we are speaking of has
already performed our possibility for aesthetic
judgment. (Philosophical Hermeneutics 8 P 1
It is in the power of the classical text speaking to its reader, in its
insistence that it apply to her circumstances, that the classical can best be
understood, not in its structural harmony, which is an ancillary
characteristic of the classical.
In understanding Gadamer's treatment of the classical text, one
has a complicated interpretive task. Read cursorily, his notions
regarding the classical work suggest a hermeneutics informed by the
greatness of the classical world— a position not unlike the traditional
147
notion of the classical. Yet a careful reading shows that Gadamer's
concept of the classical is far different, related rather to his textual
i
understanding of meaning as an interpretive event. All interpretive '
\
encounters with texts speak or remain mute to varying degrees. With !
i
the classical text, the Thou speaks more powerfully and intimately, j
drawing the interpreter ever more closely to what she says. Yet her j
i
message is not that of the grandeur of a previous civilization, but the
power of human communication-of how the Thou speaks of human
concerns which are central to the I as well. In reading a classical or
eminent text, the interpreter understands more clearly than in her other
reading experiences how a text is a living tradition, not a distant,
cultural artifact.
In this sense, then, the eminent text is any text which continues to
i
speak to readers. It seems to me that Gadamer's notion of the classical
text is a fluid term. It is a schema, rather than a yardstick, which
readers keep in mind when they evaluate a text. It is ultimately the j
reader's experience with the text that determines its value. If readers j
continue to read particular texts, if these texts continue to speak |
powerfully to them, then they are, in Gadamer’ s sense, classical. |
i
The concept of an eminent text is an important one for the teacher j
who each term puzzles over what texts to assign her students. In !
I
applying Gadamer's notion of the eminent text to her teaching situation, j
she needs to ask: Which texts will have the greatest chance to speak to j
my students in an original fashion? This is a question, of course, that j
148
has no simple answers, because teachers know that students respond
differently to texts. Yet the question remains as teachers assign texts j
and as students read them throughout the term. As a way of responding j
to this puzzling challenge, teachers need to continue to have an eye and
i
ear to issues that speak to students; that is, they need to carefully listen
to what students say and continue to say about the texts they are assigned
and those they self-select.
Examined pedagogically, the classical becomes a teacher's schema
for those texts which can speak more particularly to students. Though
Gadamer posits the truth potential of all texts, he does not deny that
some texts speak more intimately than others. In another sense,
Gadamer is suggesting that all texts have something of the classical in
them; as readers compare texts (and they invariably do), the question of
I
their being classical is not one of kind but degree. i
In foregrounding reading, the reader, and the text among the
several concepts introduced in Truth and Method, an image of
Gadamer's reader discloses itself. As she encounters experience, she
questions it and accepts its essential unpredictability, realizing that the
unpredictability of experience allows her to interpret it. And she looks
to texts to help answer the questions which result from pondering this
unpredictability. Realizing that asking for life's ultimate answers leads
to false questioning, she is willing to question what texts continue to say
to her about her life. It is this image of the questioning textual
149
interpreter, effected by her finitude, that accompanies the pedagogical
theorist as he begins to articulate a hermeneutic pedagogy. j
i
t
I
I
i
I
150
FOOTNOTES (CHAPTER 2)
1. Truth and Method. New York: Continuum, 1975.
2. Nietzsche (vol. 1). David Farrell Krell, ed., San Francisco:
Harper Collins Publisher, 1991.
3. Protagoras in Plato: Collected Dialogues: Edith Hamilton and
Huntington Caims, eds., Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton 1
University Press, 1961: 308-52.
i
4. See particularly Stanley Fish’ s "How to Recognize a Poem When
You See One" in Is There a Text in This Class? Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980: 322-37.
5. See especially her "The Dialogical Nature of Basic Reading and
Writing" in Facts. Artifacts, and Counterfacts. David Batholomae
and Anthony Petrosky. Upper Montclair, New Jersey:
Boynton/Cook Publishers Inc., 1986: 137-166. I will examine
this essay in detail in Chapter VI.
6. See especially Terry Eagleton’s commentary on Gadamer in
Critical Theory: An Introduction. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1983: 72-4.
I
7. Gadamer's Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method. New i
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985. j
8. New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1987. I will examine this
work in Chapter V.
9. Second revised edition. Translated by Joel Weinsheimer and
Donald G. Marshall. New York: Crossroad Publishing
Corporation, 1991.
10. In Gadamer's Hermeneutics.
11. Translated by Donald E. Linge. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1976.
151
CHAPTER 3 |
A PEDAGOGICAL READING OF
PHILOSOPHICAL HERMENEUTICS
Philosophical Hermeneutics is a collection of essays written by
Gadamer in the sixties and seventies, after the initial publication of
i
Truth and Method in 1960. As such, these essays serve to clarify and j
elaborate upon many concepts that Gadamer explored in Truth and
Method. These essays treat a variety of philosophical issues: aesthetic,
hermeneutic, and semantic questions, as well as some of the historical
events related to the phenomenological movement in Germany.
From the perspective of pedagogy, Philosophical Hermeneutics
serves to explain in greater detail the Gadamerian dialogue, particularly
as it relates to Gadamer's notions of application and translation and to
their interrelationship— issues not fully treated in Truth and Method. j
The questions surrounding application and translation as they relate to i
understanding are significant ones for Gadamer, recurring in his later
essays and informing his later thinking. Though he carefully explored
the notion of prejudice in Truth and Method. Gadamer provides some
additional insights regarding this concept as it is experienced in
dialogue. Finally, Gadamer includes a new concept of textual excess
which treats interpretation as a surplus of meanings. This notion has
relevance to how readers, in and out of the classroom, respond to texts.
152 |
Also in Philosophical Hermeneutics Gadamer introduces some of
j the few direct comments on learning and education that are to be found
I . I
j in any of his works. He comments on the teaching of grammar, the use i
of vocabulary, and the significance of conventions and commonplaces as
they relate to his philosophical concerns. In these passages, a
pedagogical reader can explore the philosophical dimensions of these
classroom concerns.
As such, Philosophical Hermeneutics serves to question and
counter-question many significant concepts treated in Truth and ,
Method. In terms of its relationship to the pedagogical suggestions
made in Truth and Method. Philosophical Hermeneutics enriches
Gadamer’ s philosophical examination of reading and writing, ultimately
presenting an image of Gadamer's experienced reader.
I
i
The Gadamerian Dialogue
Before examining how Philosophical Hermeneutics expands upon
the concept of dialogue in Truth and Method, it is helpful to consider
just how Tmth and Method introduces a philosophical dimension to the
conception of reading. For Gadamer, reading is an encounter between
tradition (the text) and interpreter (the reader). As a form of !
experience, the text is "re-presented" by the reader, often in written
"re-creation."
153
Gadamer’s concept of dialogue can be applied to this
i
understanding of how one represents what one reads. One recalls that
in Tmth and Method. Gadamer has noted that reading is necessarily
inner speech, a "heightening of the inward ear" (Tmth and Method
i
496).1 As one speaks to another in conversation, Gadamer contends, the
thoughts of the addressee become the addresser's. As thoughts move
from addresser to addressee, this exchange can lead to play, the
dynamus of significant conversation. Gadamer refers to this "game of
giving and taking" as "the real dialogue" (57).2 When a conversation
achieves the status of a game, it manifests the characteristics of
"accident, favor, and surprise-and in the end, of buoyancy, indeed of
elevation" (57). In Gadamer's treatment of the priority of the question
in Tmth and Method. Gadamer considers how the reader opens up the
text. Here, he articulates the reader's response to textual questioning—
favor, surprise, buoyancy, and elevation. In anticipating textual
questions, Gadamer's experienced reader invites surprise.
Ultimately in the game which results in reading and speaking,
Gadamer insists that "dialogue will not be experienced as a loss of self
possession, but rather as an enrichment of our self, but without us
thereby becoming aware of ourselves" (57). Personal enrichment is an
incidental and unconscious result of the game's to-and-fro movement.
This is the paradox that Gadamer has not previously treated: as readers
read, they enrich their self-understanding without realizing that they
have been transformed.
154
In regard to dialogue Gadamer here repeats what he has
previously stated in Tmth and Method : "Every dialogue has an inner
infinity and no end" (67). In this collection of essays, though, Gadamer
adds that even though breaks in the dialogue suggest that, for the
moment, no more can be said, "every break has an intrinsic relation to
the resumption of the dialogue" (67). For Gadamer, texts not only
provide for an infinite dialogue, but there are also reasons why the
dialogue breaks off. Paradoxically, it is this rupture in conversation
which allows for it to continue.
i
Gadamer further sees the dialogical nature of speech in spiritual
terms. Here he notes that it is the spirit— good or bad— which ultimately
shapes the character of all speech, Gadamer referring to "a spirit of
obdurateness and hesitancy or a spirit of easy exchange" (66). Here,
j Gadamer admits that some conversations prevent a fluid communication
between participants. This comment helps to explain what Gadamer has
! previously noted is the text's alienation from or communion with its
reader. Both an obdurate and a speaking textual encounter are valid
hermeneutical activities. It is the "obdurate" spirit that Salvatori will
examine in texts that remain mute for her students.3 i
Gadamer adds that experienced readers who engage in reading as !
conversation bring an inherent faith to understanding. In this regard, !
Gadamer notes: "We cannot understand without wanting to understand, |
i
that is without wanting to let something be said" (101). Gadamer's j
experienced reader realizes that textual questioning will ultimately allow j
155
for "something to be said.” Gadamer returns to his concept of textual
surprise in describing this faith in understanding: "It is what I would
like to call surprise at the meaning of what is said" (101). Allowing
i
surprise to emerge from textual questioning is the schema that j
Gadamer’ s experienced reader continues to pursue.
In his later essays, Gadamer also carefully examines how a text
speaks to a reader’ s particular situation. In many of these discussions,
his focus is on theological hermeneutics. In an essay entitled "Aesthetic
and Religious Experience," Gadamer concludes that "The gospel
message is freely preferred and only becomes the good news for one |
who accepts it...That is why it must be proclaimed in such a way that it
actually reaches the person to whom it is directed" (The Relevance of
the Beautiful 148).4 In Philosophical Hermeneutics. Gadamer
frequently says that all interpretation involves a reader’ s translation of
the text in ways that apply to his particular circumstances, and he has
the paradigm of the theological interpreter in mind. In fact, this j
extended quote from "On the Problem of Self-Understanding" in his j
Philosophical Hermeneutics concerns the nature of Christian
proclamation:
The understanding of a text has not begun at all as long
as the text remains mute. But a text can begin to
speak...When it does begin to speak, however, it does
not simply speak its word, always the same, in lifeless
rigidity, but gives ever new answers to the person who
questioned it and poses ever new questions to him who
answers it. To understand a text is to come to
understand oneself in a kind of dialogue. This
______________________________________________________156__
contention is confirmed by the fact that the concrete ,
dealing with a text yields understanding only when what !
is said in the text begins to find expression in the
interpreter's own language. Interpretation belongs to
the essential unity of understanding. One must take up
into himself what is said to him in such a way that it
speaks and finds answers in the words of his own
language. (57)
For a reader, the text's essentially mute words come alive because he is
i
translating "what is said to him." This focus on the hermeneutical i
activity of application as a reader translates becomes a central concern j
for Gadamer after Truth and Method, and it is the significant '
hermeneutical activity that Salvatori explores in the classroom.5 In
Tmth and Method. Gadamer asserted that translation was central to the
hermeneutical encounter, and he often treated application as an activity
that the legal interpreter consistently encountered. Here, Gadamer
shows how translation and application work alongside each other in any
interpretive event. This is an important synthesis in the refinement of
Gadamer's hermeneutical theory.
Throughout these essays, Gadamer examines how readers
translate texts into their present experiences. To translate, he notes, is
to place oneself "in the direction of what is said...in order to carry over
what is to be said in the direction of his own saying" (68). Here, he
i
adds that translation also involves examining the unsaid of the text. j
That is, it is also the reader's explanation "of what the other person |
i
wanted to say and said in that he left much unsaid" (68). It is this gap j
between the said and the unsaid in texts that for Gadamer is not evidence j
157
for hermeneutic failure, but the necessary "space in which alone
dialogue becomes possible" (68).
Gadamer also shows how interpreters leam that their responses
are, in fact, prejudices. Again, it is through dialogue that these
realizations can occur. Gadamer has examined the significance of
prejudices in interpretation and the ways in which prejudices differ :
from judgments in Tmth and Method, but he has not fully treated how j
i
they emerge in dialogue. Here, Gadamer notes that interpreters are
often not aware of their prejudices: "they continually remain hidden and
it takes a description in oneself of the intended meaning of what one is
saying to become conscious of these prejudices as such" (92). It is thus
the co-occurring activities of translation and application which disclose
an interpreter's prejudices; they allow for " some new experience in
i
which a previous opinion reveals itself to be untenable" (92). Dialogue j
I
thus becomes the important event for interpreters understanding and j
I
transforming their prejudices.
Here Gadamer suggests that no participant in dialogue can
dislodge the other’s prejudice by simply naming it as such. A language
pedagogy responding to Gadamer's notion of prejudice would thus
consider the traditions which students bring to the text as legitimate
beginning responses and would further understand that these prejudices
can only be questioned in conversation.
Excess |
i
|
Implicit in Gadamer's treatment of readers transforming their i
prejudices is his contention that language provides a surplus of meaning, ;
!
always more than the reader at any one time can understand. This
abundance of meaning is related to Gadamer's frequent consideration of
play. In regard to play and the natural world, Gadamer has mentioned
play's "exuberance and superabundance" (Relevance of the Beautiful
130). Gadamer uses similar language when he describes the aesthetic
experience. In regard to experiencing art, Gadamer states: "The
inexhaustibility that distinguishes the language of art from all translation
into concepts rests on this excess of meaning" (102). This excess both in
experiencing an art work and in reading texts in the human sciences
complicates the act of reading, yet it is also a hermeneutical challenge.
It is language's excess that encourages readers to ponder and "play with"
what they have read. Thus, what Gadamer's experienced reader
encounters is a constantly excessive and transforming meaning.
In his treatment of dialogue and excess, Gadamer in Philosophical
Hermeneutics describes his experienced reader— one who encourages ;
textual questioning and who realizes that in questioning a text, reading's !
I
pleasure is manifested. The experienced reader has read enough to i
know that texts continue to speak differently (sometimes paradoxically), j
and he welcomes these differences, seeing them as expressions of j
i
language's superabundance. ;
I
i
______________________________________________ 159 |
The Teaching of Grammar
For Gadamer, understanding plays a major role in the
relationship of linguistic structure to the meaning of language.
Gadamer sees syntax as the unconscious characteristic of language. The
meaning of language allows its grammatical constitution to vanish
behind it, so that "the real being of language is that into which we are
taken up when we hear it— what is said" (65). The "structure, grammar, j
l
syntax of a language" (64), Gadamer continues, are issues that should be
studied by linguists, not by students learning how to read and write in a
language. Gadamer calls the exclusive teaching of grammar in language
classes "one of the peculiar perversions of the natural" (64). He
seriously doubts the efficacy of modem educators "teach[ing] grammar
and syntax in our own native language" (64); and even in foreign
language classes which attempt to teach the stmcture of particular
sentence patterns through paradigm sentences "about Caesar or Uncle ;
Carl" (65), Gadamer notes, it is the meaning of the sentence, and not its
stmcture, that these students invariably recall.
Clearly, for Gadamer, language instruction is best directed
toward a focus on meaning, not on stmcture, because meaning is
language's purpose. For Gadamer, grammar instmction is only
valuable if it enhances the student's interpretation— for example, seeing
how the sense of continuing action suggested by the use of a participial
phrase clarifies the text's meaning. But Gadamer would contend that
160
initially teaching a student writer a language's grammar is an unsound
i
practice. If the human continually locates a meaning in experience, then ;
in a language classroom, the focus should be on what a text initially says •
i
to the reader rather than on the form in which it is said. I
*
i
Commonplaces and Conventions |
I
i
Gadamer also calls into question the teacher's warning to students
to avoid using cliched language. In cliches, or "common expressions,"
Gadamer does not see "the dead remains of a linguistic usage that has
become figurative" (72). Rather, if textual interpreters study
commonplaces, Gadamer asserts, they read "the heritage of a common
spirit, and if we only understand them rightly and penetrate their covert
richness of meaning, they can make the common spirit perceivable
again" (72). In commonplaces, Gadamer sees the possibility for rich
hermeneutical investigation. In Tmth and Method Part I (19-21),
I
Gadamer examined common sense (sensis communis). In these essays,
his focus is on common expressions of a culture. For Gadamer, these
"dead" phrases were once powerfully communicative, so the
hermeneutic task is to uncover the phrase's original richness of j
meanings. A language program responding to Gadamer's notion of the j
commonplace would explore the various ways that these commonplaces !
speak to its students, and would realize that for some students a cliche '
(from the teacher's perspective) is speaking powerfully to them for the j
l
___________________________________________________________ 161 j
first time. It would ask the teacher to re-see the student use of a cliche
from its original figurative and evocative meaning.
Gadamer also treats the more general issue of linguistic
conventions, again showing their relationship to understanding. In Part
III of Tmth and Method , Gadamer examined the phonological and
syntactic conventions of the word. Here Gadamer focuses on how the
I
word's convention's affect meaning, noting that meaning in language is :
derived through the conflict between "individualization in language and
that tendency which is just as essential to language, namely, to establish
meanings by convention" (85). By conventions, Gadamer here is
referring to the structural patterns characteristic of a language (such as
the English subject-verb-object sentence pattern) as well as its semantic
constructions (the English use of "s" as a plural marker, for example). j
These sorts of conventions are ones that an English language user cannot
challenge; if he does, meaning is sacrificed. Gadamer rightly reminds
his reader: "He who speaks a private language understood by no one
else, does not speak at all" (85).
Yet, Gadamer insists that there is a need for writers to establish
the individuality of their meanings through the subtle manipulation of
these conventions. He asserts that when "conventionality has become
total in the choice of words, syntax, and in style, [it] forfeits the power
of address and evocation that comes solely with the individualization of
a language's vocabulary and of its means of communication" (86).
162
The teacher's challenge, therefore, is to serve as a mediator
between the students' use of language's individual nature and its
conventions, so that student meanings emerge which can speak to their
readers. Though many semantic and syntactic conventions cannot be
reinterpreted, the use of language which uses these conventions can. A j
language pedagogy translating Gadamer's concept of linguistic j
conventions would focus on the student's manipulation of syntactic and
semantic structures that would contribute to her meanings.
Stylistic choices are important writing decisions for Gadamer, for
they help a text to either speak or remain mute. Thus, for Gadamer
both highly conventionalized forms of discourse and idiosyncratic texts
inhibit their meanings.
j
Vocabulary j
Rather than in the intent of the writer, meanings for Gadamer
seem to reside in the word itself. He is quite clear about the power of
the word to transcend the writer's intent: "It is the right word, and not
the subjectivity of the act of meaning, that expresses its [the text's]
meaning" (80). For Gadamer, it is the word (apart from the author's j
intent, which he has shown in Truth and Method can never ultimately be j
located) that speaks to the reader. Thus, for Gadamer, a synonym is an j
invalid lexical entity. Each word has a unique possibility for disclosure:
t
i
"The thesis that one expression can be substituted for another is, if I 1
I
163 I
j view the matter correctly, contradicted by the moment of
j individualization in the speaking of language as such" (87). That is, in
its use in speaking and writing, the ostensible synonym takes on an
individuality as it responds to other words in a sentence, paragraph, or
stretch of discourse. The experienced listener or reader thus considers 1
the word as unique, not treating it merely as a sign, or a substitution for
another word.
Philosophical Hermeneutics provides an image of the experienced
Gadamer, questioning and counter-questioning the concepts he j
introduced in his magnum opus. Rather than contradicting or
drastically reassessing these concepts, Gadamer has gradually
transformed his significant positions. It is this image of Gadamer as the
experienced interpreter transforming his philosophy that one can
fruitfully bring to the current conversation about reading and writing—
both among critical and pedagogical theorists.
FOOTNOTES (CHAPTER 3)
1. New York: Continuum, 1975.
2. Philosophical Hermeneutics. Translated by David E. Linge.
Berkeley: University California Press, 1976.
3. Particularly in her "The Dialogical Nature of Basic Reading and
Writing" in Facts. Artifacts, and Counterfacts. David
Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. Upper Montclair, New
Jersey: Boynton/Cook Publishers Inc., 1986: 137-166.
4. Translated by Nicholas Walker, Robert Bemasconi, ed.,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
5. See especially her "The Dialogical Nature of Basic Reading and
Writing" in Facts. Artifacts, and Counterfacts.
I
p a r t n
PHILOSOPHICAL HERMENEUTICS AS RESPONSE TO
CRITICAL AND PEDAGOGICAL THEORY
166 ;
CHAPTER 4
PHILOSOPHICAL HERMENEUTICS AS A RESPONSE TO
WOLFGANG ISER AND STANLEY FISH
A careful reading of Truth and Method from a pedagogical
perspective helps one to re-see the ways that some critical theory has
been translated into the classroom. Two critical theorists who have
been read from a classroom perspective are Wolfgang Iser and Stanley
Fish. Mariolina Salvatori, for example, has written an early essay
"Reading and Writing a Text: Correlations Between Reading and
Writing Patterns" in which she translates Iser's notions of the blank and
the gap into an analysis of student texts.1 Further, Stanley Fish’ s focus
on interpretive literary communities has been appropriated by several
pedagogical theorists in their understanding of discourse communities
j and their students' initiation into them. Writing-across-the-curriculum
! pedagogies can also be seen as an appropriation of Fish's notion of
interpretive communities, as this pedagogy attempts to teach students to
write using the interpretive activities of specific disciplines. Finally,
even collaborative learning pedagogies have affinities with Fish's
concept of the interpretive community, since both the collaborative
group and the interpretive community are seen as the agents for
creating meaning.
I In comparing Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics to Iser’ s
reader response theories and to Fish's notion of interpretive
!
communities, one can see more clearly how Iser and Fish differ from
each other and how both of them differ from Gadamer. Though
ostensibly presenting a phenomenological interpretation of literary
reading, Iser at times in The Act of Reading foregrounds the literary
text over the interpretive event, a move that separates him from
i Gadamer's reading premises which consistently see reading as an event j
! occurring between reader and text. Conversely, in his focus on
I
| interpretive communities, Fish favors the reader over the interpretive
j event, and, further, sees the reader as part of a group rather than an
individual who derives textual meaning from a dialogical relationship
with the voices in the text. For Gadamer, it is always the individual
reader, rather then the group, who is engaged in interpretation and is
responsible for revising the interpretation of a particular text.
i
In other ways, Iser further develops Gadamer's interpretive |
concepts. In his understanding of the blank and the reader’ s wandering J
viewpoint, which is controlled by the blank, Iser provides a visual I
i
image of the reader's horizon as it merges with the text's.
Ultimately, by reading Iser and Fish from a Gadamerian
I perspective, one can more effectively evaluate the pedagogical
! translations of both Iser's and Fish's critical theories, one can see ways
j in which Iser furthers Gadamer's interpretive concepts, and one can
finally begin to understand the ways that a hermeneutic pedagogy
differs from both Iser's and Fish's interpretive concepts.
| I
j Wolfgang Iser
I
I
Wolfgang Iser's reading theory attempts to delineate the nature of
the literary reading act. His concern centers on what occurs within the
mind of the reader of literature. He notes early on in his The Act of
Reading: "Far more constructive will be an analysis of what actually \
i
happens when one is reading a text, for that is when a text begins to j
1
unfold its potential" (19).2 Here, Iser seems to be echoing Gadamer's
conception of a written text as providing several meanings. The Act of
Reading can thus be seen as not only an explanation of literary response
but also as a treatment of the psychology of reading. And though Iser
! does not focus on writing, his thorough treatment of reading provides
' many suggestions for how writing necessarily relates to it. In many
ways, Iser in The Act of Reading extends Gadamer's conception of
reading as an event, and in other ways he seems to contradict Gadamer’ s
phenomenology. It is therefore instructive to trace the ways by which j
Iser in The Act of Reading both furthers Gadamer's conceptions of j
i
reading and challenges them.
Iser begins his analysis of the reader's response to literature by
again emphasizing the power of reading: "Reading is the essential
i
precondition for the processes of literary interpretation" (20). Once he
|
i 169
establishes that reading is the central process in an aesthetic appreciation j
of literature, Iser proceeds to discuss the kind of reader he has in
mind— describing several types of readers, all of whom help delineate
the contemporary reader. He first refers to the ideal reader who is the
audience that a literary text is in theory addressed to. Of course, this
reader is a fiction, as Iser quickly points out:
The ideal reader, unlike the contemporary reader, is a j
t purely fictional being; he has no basis in reality, and it is j
i this very fact that makes him so useful: as a fictional
being, he can close the gaps that constantly appear in j
analyses of literary effects and responses. He can be i
endowed with a variety of qualities in accordance with
whatever problem he is called upon to help solve." (29) !
Iser can use this persona to explain the activities that this reader
employs to read literature successfully, in order to show more clearly
the strengths and limitations of the actual reader of literature. Where
the ideal reader can close gaps in reading, the contemporary reader
continually encounters these gaps as a challenge to his interpretation.
Calling this ideal reader the intended reader later in this chapter,
Iser proceeds to describe just what she reads. This intended reader "can
embody not only the concepts and conventions of the contemporary
public but also the desire of the author both to link up with these
concepts and to work on them" (33). The ideal or intended reader must
t
fulfill the impossible task of understanding both the public's reading
! ways as well as the author’s, which are frequently at odds. By
I
j foregrounding "concepts and conventions," Iser here suggests that there
j
! 170
are structures within the interpretive group that a literary reader must
master and that are prior to the event of reading. This is a position that
contrasts to Gadamer's consistent foregrounding of the event of reading.
Iser is careful to note that the intended reader's reading activities
! must be different from the actual reader's: "The intended reader, then,
| makes certain positions and attitudes in the text, but these are not yet
identical to the reader's role...The fictitious reader is just one of several
perspectives" (33). It is the reader who is left with the more
challenging task of reading from several perspectives: "The role of the
reader emerges from this interplay of perspectives" (33). In focusing
on the actual reader's choice of several interpretive perspectives, Iser
provides another way of explaining Gadamer's position that the text
possesses the potential for disclosing many tmths.
It is not just the perspectives that vary as the reader reads
literature, but also the necessity for the reader, not the text, to construct
meaning. Here, Iser is echoing Gadamer's assertion that though the text
is the precondition for understanding, understanding would not occur
unless the reader brought her traditions to the text. The reading act for
Iser thus involves an ongoing encounter between the world of the text
and that which the reader brings to the it. Iser introduces the notion of
'ideation' into this reader-text scene: "But since this meaning is neither a
given external reality nor a copying of an intended reader’s own world,
it is something that has to be ideated by the mind of the reader" (38).
Ideation is therefore a function of the reader's response to the text, or a
i
i
171
j result of the reader-text encounter. Like Gadamer, Iser here sees
i
j meaning not as a discrete entity but as an ongoing event between reader
and text.
Iser further notes that ideation is caused by the "structure of the
text"— a seemingly dogmatic interpretation of Gadamer’ s concept of the
fusion of horizons. Iser contends that though meaning does not inhere
in the text, a structure does, which the reader acts upon to create
meaning. Iser describes the necessary sequence in the reading-writing
act: "The structure of the text sets off a sequence of mental images
which lead to the text translating itself into the reader's consciousness"
(38). That is, the mental images are what the reader brings to the
literary text, and the combination of textual structure and these mental
images are then assimilated by the reader in the act of translation. It is
interesting to note that, like Gadamer, Iser focuses on translation as the
| key activity this text-reader encounter. Unlike Gadamer, who
i
purposely does not sequence the events necessary for reader and textual
horizons to fuse, Iser posits a temporal sequence which begins with the
text's structure. Iser's move here gives to the act of reading a set of
causal relationships that Gadamer has purposely avoided, insisting,
rather, that several events in the act of reading co-occur.
Iser then refers to the reader's knowledge, which becomes an
additional and necessary part of the reading activity: "The actual content
of these mental images will be colored by the reader's existing stock of
experience, which acts as a referential background against which the
172
unfamiliar can be conceived and processed" (38). Like Gadamer's
visual metaphor of horizons, Iser’ s "referential background" places the
reader and text in a three-dimensional setting. The unfamiliar is
foreground in the background of the known, or the "referential
background." Iser's metaphor provides another way of interpreting
Gadamer’ s fusion of horizons. What is read is compared to what the
reader already knows; and this new information, if it is significant to
the reader, is foregrounded. If not, it recedes to the background,
replaced by other new foregrounded material, which challenges the
I
reader’s ever-changing experiences. In Gadamerian terms, the
foregrounded subject is the result of the ongoing fusion of textual and
reader horizons. For Gadamer and Iser, reading is thus seen as a
dynamic activity, not a linear progression, which uninterruptedly
transmits knowledge from text to reader. 1
In his thorough treatment of the issue of foreground and !
background, Iser, in fact, quotes directly from Truth and Method in
explaining the function of horizons: "The horizon is that which includes
and embraces everything that is visible from one point" (The Act of
Reading 97).3 Iser's interpretive scene, it seems clear, originates in his
understanding of Gadamer's concept of horizons. Like Gadamer, Iser
assumes that literary meaning is consistently excessive: "The literary
{ work is not just the author's view of the world, it is itself an assembly j
! of different perspectives" (96). What Gadamer posits as the possibility j
173
for the text to disclose tmths in language, Iser translates into the
manifold perspectives in this reader-text encounter.
Further, Iser translates Gadamer's concept of texts speaking to the
reader into the aesthetic term of the 'theme' which the text reveals to the
I reader. This theme, Iser insists, never captures the literary work in its
i
entirety: "It is not possible for the reader to embrace all perspectives at
once, and so the view he is involved with at any one particular moment
| is what constitutes for him the 'theme'" (97). The theme thus becomes a
kind of perspective which literary readers locate, and it plays a
significant role in Iser's foreground/background visual metaphor for
reading, the theme becoming the foregrounded material.
Speaking much like Gadamer in his understanding of the text's
and reader's horizons, Iser suggests that the reader's horizon is that
which the reader can 'see' from her chosen vantage point (97). And he
adds to Gadamer's metaphor of textual interpretation by concluding that
this horizon is not an optional element in literary reading, for the
horizon is comprised of the reader's previous experiences, which she
necessarily brings to the reading of any literary text. Iser's theme-
horizon metaphor, like Gadamer's image of the fusion of horizons, is
central to his concept of textual interpretation: "It is a stmcture that
constitutes the basic mle for the combination of textual strategies and its !
effects are manifold" (97). Within this theme-horizon stmcture, Iser
concludes that the reader can appropriate the often alien nature of the
literary text. The theme-horizon scene is Iser's depiction of how the
I
| 174
alien is made familiar, so that an encounter between reader and text can
occur.
Iser then introduces gestalt theory to further explain how the
theme-horizon notion explains literary response. In his treatment of
i gestalt psychology, Iser sees Gadamer’ s hermeneutical conception of the
| fusion of horizons from a psychological perspective. In using gestalts to
! define the reading act, Iser wants to show how understanding can be
perceived as a nonverbal activity— the words themselves contributing to
a constantly changing 'shape' of meaning, much as Gadamer's concept
of Bildung involves constant metamorphosis: "As meaning is not
manifested in words, and the reading process cannot be mere
identification of individual linguistic signs, it follows that apprehension
of the text is dependent on gestalt groupings" (120). These groupings j
i
allow the reader to focus on a particular, coherent reading perspective— i
! one comprised of an intricate network of verbal associations which, !
together, transcend their individual linguistic representations. Iser
suggests that readers can impose varied gestalts upon the same text, each
gestalt assuming a different set of relations with the text. In a sense,
seeing reading as forming gestalt groupings is an additional metaphor
for Iser's previous notion of reading as changes in perspective. Both
images emphasize the visual rather than the verbal relationships that
j
texts create in readers. j
i
! Iser's introduction of the gestalt as a metaphor for the activity of
i
i reading contributes to an understanding of how one's ways of reading
175
are constantly transformed. Though Gadamer asserts that the fusion of
reader and textual horizons constitutes literate understanding, he does
not pursue the nature of this fusion. It is in the metaphor of the gestalt
that one sees another way in which the reader’ s horizon is constantly
reshaped by new readings. Much like his depiction of the referential
background, Iser's treatment of the gestalt helps to explain how the
reader's horizon is changed by its fusion with the text's. |
; In referring to the reader-text interaction as an event, Iser
emphasizes the continual metamorphosis of the gestalt that is created in
the act of reading:
As we read, we reach to what we ourselves have j
produced, and it is this mode of reaction that, in fact, !
enables us to experience the text as an actual event. We |
i do not grasp it like an empirical object; nor do we
compare it like a predictive fact; it owes its presence in
our minds to our own reactions, and it is these that make
us animate the meaning of the text as a reality. (129) j
I
Here, Iser provides further evidence for why the conduit metaphor of
reading is insufficient. Neither is the text an "empirical object," nor is
the reader's interpretation a series of "predictive facts." But the
reading experience is an event; and as an event, it constantly requires
the participation of both reader and text. Here, one sees clear echoes of
Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, which posits the ontological
j priority of the event of understanding, a move which questions the
j
j ontological status of both subject and object as discrete entities.
In pursuing his metaphor of reading as a gestalt, Iser further
suggests that translation is necessarily interconnected to the act of
: reading. It is in translating a text that a reader is able to reshape the
i
1 initial gestalt that he has brought to the text. In regard to the reading of
i
i difficult texts, Iser contends:
i
While we are caught up in a text, we do not at first
know what is happening to us. That is why we feel
often the need to talk about books we have read— not in
order to get some distance from them so much as to find
out just what it is we are entangled in. (131)
This is another way of explaining Gadamer's definition of thought as
interior dialogue. For Gadamer, the alien in writing must be opened by i
the question, which is a language event; and in this interrogating event,
the reader begins to unravel the nature of her entanglement with the
text. Translation thus does not serve to objectively separate the reader |
from the text; rather it is a hermeneutical activity which brings the text ,
into the reader’ s experiences. This act of unraveling textual
entanglements may lead to a major or minor reshaping of the reader's
gestalts, which she brings to the text.4
Iser further pursues this reader-writer entanglement; and again
though his focus is on the reader's response to literature, it effectively
applies to the act of reading any text: "But in the course of reading,
these experiences will also change, for the acquisition of experience is
not a matter of adding on— it is a restructuring of what we already
j
| possess...The old conditions the form of the new, and the new
| selectively restructures the old" (132). Iser replaces the conduit
metaphor for an architectural one, that of restructuring, and it echoes
Gadamer's concept of Bildung. j
i |
, Just as gestalts are a function of the reader’ s consciousness, so, j
I !
j Iser argues, are schemata structures found in the text. For Iser, it is the
I interaction between the reader’ s gestalt and the text’ s schemata that
i
■ describe how meaning is experienced in reading. Iser is clear here that
j the text controls the reader's interpretation of it, that meaning is not
; entirely what the reader chooses to make of the text: "However varied
the knowledge may be, the reader's subjective contribution is controlled
t
I by the given framework. It is as if the schema were a hollow form into
; which the reader is invited to pour his own store of knowledge" (143).
For Iser, the text therefore provides the structure for the reader's
interpretation, or gestalt. Again, reader and text are necessarily
entangled in the construction of meaning. Yet in asserting that the
function of the literary text is one of structuring understanding, Iser
here is simplifying the more purposefully enigmatic concept of fusing
horizons that Gadamer posits. For Gadamer, a reader’ s questions and
answers regarding the text’ s structure are also the result of the event of
understanding, and are therefore engendered by both text and himself.
Ultimately for Iser, the schema is not a result of understanding, but an a j
priori entity that is a precondition for textual understanding. This is a |
move that Gadamer is unwilling to make because it foregrounds textual
i
structure over what the reader brings to the textual encounter.
i
I
I
I
I
i
I
; 178
Iser then refers to the metaphors of foreground and background
to describe those elements of the reader's world which are called up and
reshaped by the text's schemata:
Since each text involves only certain dispositional facets
and never invokes the the whole system of our
orientation, the very makeup of this system will be
differently weighted according to the text we read. As
the new foregrounded theme can only be understood
through its relation to our old, background
experience...it follows that our assimilation of the alien
experience must have retroactive effect on that store of
knowledge. (155)
Here, Iser seems to be referring to Gadamer's concept of assimilation as
it affects textual interpretation, repeating Gadamer's assertion that the
assimilation of any new element alters the ever-changing fused horizon.
Again, in visualizing the textual encounter, Iser enriches one’ s
understanding of Gadamer's fusion of horizons.
Having treated the nature of the reader-text encounter, Iser
toward the end of his study more directly suggests how writing is a
concomitant response to the reading act. In this section of his study,
Iser presents terminology that has more direct translations for a
hermeneutic pedagogy. In explaining how the reading of a text affects
the reader, Iser contends : "Acts of comprehension can only be
successful to the extent that they help formulate something within us"
(158). Like Gadamer, Iser concludes that if the reader's words cannot
make the text familiar, then understanding will not occur. At the end
of this chapter, Iser suggests how the reader succeeds in incorporating
179
j this alien text into his experiences: "The incorporation of the new
requires a reformation of the old" (159). This "reformation" is not a
| copying activity, rather one of representation, in which the reader plays
I a central role.
| With the notion of the blank, Iser provides a concept for
explaining why one necessarily translates as one reads, and thus
introduces an idea that has pedagogical implications. Blanks are like the
questions that Gadamer suggests the reader necessarily creates as she j
reads a text, or the counterstatement of the statement-counterstatement !
exchange that Gadamer has defined as dialogue. In regard to the !
question, Gadamer has noted that "the sudden realization of the question
is already a breach in the smooth front of public opinion" (Truth and
Method 329).5 Just as Gadamer has shown how the breach or the
question is central to hermeneutics, so Iser notes how significant the
| blank is in the reading process— "These are all different forms of an
| indeterminate, constitutive blank which underlies all processes of
i
| interaction" (167). Referring to these blanks as gaps, Iser explains how
| key they are to textual interpretation: "Whenever the reader bridges the
| gaps, communication begins. The gaps function as a kind of pivot on
! which the whole text-reader relationship revolves" (169). Blanks are
j
i the ruptures which initiate the dialogue between reader and text. Later,
I j
| Iser notes that blanks "are the unseen joints of the text; and as they mark j
] i
! off textual and schematic perspectives from one another, they !
i simultaneously trigger acts of ideation on the reader’ s part" (183). It is j
i important to note here that Iser refers to blanks as "the unseen joints of
i
the text,"— that is, they are only seen by the reader in his particular
t
understanding of the text. A blank thus becomes the vehicle by which
j
j textual perspectives are internalized and reshaped by the reader.
I Often initiating the reader’ s questioning, blanks become the site
| for the reader to respond to the text, thus making it speak. They
| provide the occasion for inner dialogue and are the reasons why the
| reader wants to write about a text. Iser suggests these possibilities
! surrounding the blank when he contends that "the blanks created by the
i
j nonfulfilled, though expected, functions demand increased productivity
i
on the part of the reader" (210). The blank can thus be seen as the
dynamus for the reader's response to the text. In responding to the text,
the reader necessarily incorporates some aspect of the text into his
j experiences, thus reshaping them. Though Iser uses the blank to explain
i the reading of literature, it can describe the act of reading and writing,
particularly the dialogical relationship between reader and text.
Iser uses his concept of the blank to treat the difference that he
sees between exposition and narration, noting that "an expository text
does not require a great deal of ideation on the recipient's part, because
it aims to fulfill its specific intention in relation to a specific, given fact
by observing coherence in order to guarantee the intended reception"
(185). Though Iser is correct in emphasizing the greater focus of
expository texts on organization as opposed to the less obvious
stmcture of many literary works, especially post-modern ones, the
reader's encounter with blanks, I think, pertains to the reading of both
modes of discourse. Further, by naming separate modes of discourse
that readers need to be aware of, Iser is again suggesting that a
particular form of discourse resides within each text, a move that again
privileges the text over the interpretive event. Such a position runs
counter to a phenomenological approach to reading, which would study
a discourse type only if it furthered the textual dialogue.
Iser then treats first and second degree images, an issue of
literary reading that can also apply to reading in general. A first degree
!
image is the reader's initial response to the text. Second degree images
are revisions of the first response: "Second degree images come about
when the expectations aroused by the first degree images are not
i fulfilled" (87). Second degree images are simply more satisfying
responses to the original questions posed in the reader-text encounter.
In a writing sense, second degree images are a writer's revisions. From
Iser's perspective, then, one can conclude that writing and revising are
concomitant activities to reading and rereading. And from a
Gadamerian perspective, first and second degree images are similar to
translation and retranslation.
Iser then relates the function of the blank to his previous notion
of reading as foregrounding and backgrounding. Like the referential
background and its theme, the blank provides another significant way of
j visualizing the event of fusing horizons. Iser describes this visual
| metaphor of reading as the reader's wandering viewpoint, which moves
I
L
182
from its focus, or theme, to the horizon, a movement which is directed
by the reader's responses to the blanks. For Iser, what at one moment is
a focal, or theme, consideration becomes part of the global or horizon
terrain the next. The reader's task is to determine what to bring into
focus and what to keep in the background as she opens the text by
questioning. These choices rely on both the reader's preconceptions and
the difficulty of the text. In regard to the blank and this theme-horizon
reading scene, Iser notes: "The blank exercises significant control over
all the operations that occur within the referential field of the !
wandering viewpoint" (198). That is, the blank directs the location and j
I
focus of the reader's wandering viewpoint within the text's terrain. The !
key reading activity for Iser thus involves what the reader foregrounds
in questioning the text, or what blanks she sees and examines within her
interpretive horizon. This interrogating activity is ongoing in the act of
reading, determining whether "the theme of one moment becomes the
horizon against which the next segment takes on its actuality" (198).
Iser also relates the blank to Ferdinand de Saussure's
paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes of relations. Iser does not specify
!
how he is using the term "paradigmatic," so I assume that he is using
Saussure's original sense— where the paradigmatic refers to the
atemporal lexical relationships relating words with similar meanings
and sounds, and the syntagmatic identifies the syntactic relationships that |
words share in time.6 He notes that "the blank in the fictional text
appears to be a paradigmatic structure; it further consists in initiating
183
operations in the reader, the execution of which transmits the reciprocal
interaction of textual positions into consciousness" (203). Iser seems to
be saying that in reading literature, parts of the text position themselves
with other parts, and these interactions impede the narrative, or
syntagmatic, sequence.
Yet Iser also sees the necessary function of the syntagmatic axis in j
the reading of literature. Iser seems to say that though blanks defy the j
syntagmatic progression of fiction, they could not exist without this axis j
j structuring its movement. He comments in a cryptic passage: "Such
i
i
blanks function virtually as instructions, for they regulate the
connections and reciprocal influences of the segments through the
oscillating viewpoint. One may say that they organize the syntagmatic
axis of the reading" (212). Blanks, it seems, stop, then restart the text’ s
narrative line.
Later, Iser relates the blanks to both relational axes: "Thus the
function of the blanks is dual in nature: on the syntagmatic axis of
reading they constitute the links between the perspective segments of the
text; on the paradigmatic axis they constitute links between negated
norms and the reader's relation to the text" (216). "Perspective
segments of the text" refer to the parts of a reader’ s ongoing
interpretation of a text, and by "negated norms," Iser is referring to the
reader's "false starts"— her narrative anticipations that the text itself
contradicts. Clearly for Iser, then, the act of reading literature engages
i
I
184 !
both temporal and atemporal relations, and blanks seem to provide the j
i
dynamus for both.
But by referring to these linguistic structures, Iser is suggesting
that there are a priori structures which inhere within texts and readers,
again contradicting the phenomenological position that structure is an
unconscious correlate to interpretation which only becomes conscious
when it affects textual meaning.
Iser also, finally, shows how conventions are implicated in the act
i
of reading. In treating the function of conventions in literary reading,
Iser adds three related notions to this more general concept: repertoire,
strategy, and realization. It is the text, Iser initially contends, which i
contains conventions, thus once again privileging the text over the !
reader: "As far as conventions and procedures are concerned, these j
must first be established by the text" (69). Conventions are thus J
linguistic elements that one initially encounters in reading. Iser then
defines a repertoire as "the conventions necessary for the establishment
of a situation," while strategies are the 'acceptable procedures' (69).
Thus, the conventions within a literary text provide both a structure and
ways of reading. Iser further notes that 'realization' is essentially the j
blending of the effective uses of repertoire and strategy in interpreting a
literary text. By seeing literary conventions from these three
perspectives, Iser thus makes literary conventions, not just identifiable
stylistic entities, but types of reading as well. At this point, he is thus
careful not to separate reading conventions from the act of literary
185
reading itself. In regard to conventions, though, Iser does not treat the
more complex issue of the preconceptions that the reader brings to the j
text and that serve to rewrite the conventions that the text manifests. As |
with his positioning of schemata solely within the text, Iser fails to see
that the conventions (like the text's schemata) which reside "within the
work" are altered by each reader’ s prejudices.
Wolfgang Iser thus presents a thorough-going analysis of the
| nature of the literary reading act. His translation of gestalt theory to
reading literary texts, his metaphor of the referential background, and
his concept of the blank contribute to a more detailed understanding of
the fusion of horizons. Gadamer's concept of the horizon becomes a
significant metaphor for reading— the reader "sees" the horizon, but he
can neither reach it nor stop its continual movement away from him. In
his introduction of the blank and the theme, Iser shows what the reader
foregrounds within this horizon; the blank or theme can be seen as a
question opened to the reader whose answer necessarily leads to the
disclosure of yet another question. Finally, one can see the gestalt as the
reader's constantly transforming horizon, reshaped by its fusion with
the horizon of the text.
Yet in his insistence that schemata as well as paradigmatic and
syntagmatic structures reside within the text, Iser simplifies Gadamer's
i
i foregrounding of understanding as an event. For Gadamer, concepts
i
| like schemata and linguistic structures are real only in the event of
! textual understanding, never realized singly in the text or in the reader.
In this regard, The Act of Reading is a puzzling work, both clarifying
Gadamer's phenomenological perspective on reading and resisting it.
By foregrounding the text in many sections of this study, Iser ultimately
makes his reading theory text-based, making the task of the reader
(literary critic or student reader and writer) more daunting, for before
she can interpret the text, she must have knowledge of those concealed
structural elements which reside within the text. Requiring such a i
priori knowledge often discourages the inexperienced reader from j
attempting even an initial interpretation of the text before him. j
!
i
I
i
|
Stanley Fish
Though considered a reader response theorist, Stanley Fish's
interests are not in the nature of the literary reading activity as much as j
in the social forces which influence literary interpretation. His |
consistent premise is that the shared values of a community determine
literary interpretation. In a sense, Fish focuses on a particular type of j
discourse community— the community of literary readers and writers.
He suggests that budding members of this community learn its rules
through listening, reading, and writing like the literary critics who
teach them.
Echoing Iser's concept of the ideal reader, Fish refers in his Is
j There a Text in This Class? to the "informed reader" who, he claims, is
I
I "neither an abstraction, nor an actual living reader, but a hybrid— a real
reader (me) who does everything within his power to make himself
informed" (49).7 Of course, this reader is an intangible figure used by i
Fish to pursue the details of his theory. The reader, Fish argues, is a j
creation of "the method that uses him as control" (49). Here, Fish is
focusing on the literary 'method' that allows the reader to shape a
particular interpretation, in contrast to Gadamer's focus on the 'method'
which emerges from the ongoing interaction between reader and text.
Where Iser focuses on the reading act as the coalescence of internal
gestalt and external schemata and Gadamer sees reading as a fusion of
textual and reader horizons, Fish's concern is on the external
conventions which are solely responsible for the reader's interpretation j
j
of a text. In this sense, Fish has not moved away from the age-old ;
dispute between the ontological primacy of subject and object, favoring
the subject as the determiner of meaning. But unlike the Romantic
idealists who posited that the reader brings an imaginative and creative
consciousness to the text, Fish focuses on the vast and powerful
influences of the social world that the reader is a part of.
It is in the mastery, use, and critique of the literary conventions
of reading and writing that the informed reader contributes to the
changing standards of her community. For Fish, the most powerful |
activity that a human being employs is "the ability to give the world
meaning rather than to extract a meaning that is already there" (86).
And this meaning is a function of the nature of the conventional
methods that he brings to interpret the world. Elsewhere, Fish states:
188
"What I have been arguing is that meanings come already calculated, not
because of norms embedded in the language, but because language is
always perceived, from the very first, within a structure of norms.
That structure, however, is not abstract and independent but social"
(318). In Fish's interpretive system, language always explains the
reader's social understanding of experience. For Fish, the informed
reader is thus identified by the "matrix of political, cultural, and
literary determinants" of each community, which come before and
determine the nature of the mles that a speaker, reader, and writer of
that community uses. Fish has placed literary meaning-making entirely
inside the reader's use of these historical and social givens.
Fish moves his discussion from the reader to the community of
readers, positing the same premise that the aesthetics of the literary
community "are local and conventional, reflecting a collective decision
j as to what will count as literature, a decision that will be in force only
so long as a community of readers or believers...continues to abide by
it" (109). A community thus both makes new discourse conventions and
breaks old ones which no longer serve the needs of its readers and
writers. Studying literature constitutes a discipline because the
v
community says it is so, while the canon is altered as the community
dictates. Thus for Fish, the Iliad is not literature unless the community
agrees it is. Gadamer's concept of older texts which speak to some
contemporary readers is only valid for Fish if the community continues
to apply similar reading ways from one generation to the next. Fish is
189
unclear as to who comprises this community and how, specifically, the
conventions that the community agrees upon are altered.
Fish finally gives this community of literary readers a name —
i
j calling them interpretive communities: "Interpretive communities are
made up of those who share interpretive strategies not for reading (in
the conventional sense) but for writing texts, for constituting their
properties and assigning their intentions" (171). Here, Fish suggests
that it is in writing conventions that one determines the reading ways of
the interpretive community. He is further suggesting that the writing
conventions that a new member of the interpretive community acquires
are derived in large part from reading the texts of its members. As
with his treatment of the term community, Fish in Is There a Text in
This Class? does not answer the questions which arise from the use of a
term like interpretive community, that is, whether specific conventions
can be identified which all members consistently use in reading texts and
writing about texts in their community. In this way, Fish's interpretive
community is as nebulous a term as his informed reader, the members j
of this community never agreeing upon ways to read and write.
Though Fish has consistently argued that his notion of an
interpretive community has no pedagogical translations, composition
theorists have pursued the possibilities that this term offers in regard to
] explaining student reading and w ritin g .8 In many of their studies,
j theorists interested in praxis have faulted this notion when it is
i interpreted as a fixed entity. Elaine O. Lees examines how the notion of
190
interpretive communities cannot explain the diversity of opinion among
composition teachers regarding errors in a student text. Presenting her
analysis of the agreement and disagreement among composition
teachers, she concludes: "We do not see the stately minuet (all dancers
in, then all dancers out) that the ’ binary image’ or the student’ s faith in
the Society's ways or the Fishian notion of a coherent community
applying common interpretive strategies for edited American English j
!
prepare us to encounter" tReclaiming Pedagogy 150). Lees' study I
i
forces one to see the notion of interpretive community as a fluid one, in j
much the same vein as Gadamer has argued for the flexibility of
meaning in any term used in the human sciences. The implications of
this literary term is thus tested when it is used to explain a pedagogical
problem. Though one cannot pinpoint who members of this
interpretive community are, as a term it still helps explain the teacher-
student relationship in the composition classroom: most students want to
enter the teacher's linguistic community, and they are looking to their
teachers for ways to be initiated into this community of interpretive
readers and writers.
Fish's theory thus provides an interesting paradox for scholars
studying the pedagogy of reading and writing. Though he insists that his
critical theory does not allow for pedagogical responses, many
composition theorists interested in praxis find that it does. In focusing
i
\
on how Fish's concept of interpretive communities is "experienced" in I
the classroom, composition theorists have shown how incomplete it is !
I
I
I
191
when it is only seen from a theoretical perspective. Thus, though Fish
posits that the conventions used by any interpretive community exist
i
j outside the reader-text encounter, the activities that one uses as a
i
| member can more effectively be seen as coming from the event of
I reading, shaped by both the reader and text. The reader brings a social
world to the text, as Fish argues, but this understanding of society is
constantly questioned, counter-questioned, and sometimes transformed
j by the social world which the text also discloses. In many ways, Fish's
1 notion of social norms is like Gadamer's concept of tradition (texts,
<
institutions, and beliefs) which an interpreter brings to the world. What
Fish fails to examine are the social norms or traditions that the text
discloses to the reader. Interpretations do emerge from this encounter,
and interpretive communities can base their identities (tentative though
they are) upon their agreed-upon hermeneutical standards. More
t
; analysis of praxis still needs to be conducted to determine whether the
; kinds of activities that are used in various interpretive communities can
| be articulated and if their use can enhance the event of student and
teacher reading and writing.
In a later essay, "Change," Fish attempts to establish a more fluid
i
notion of interpretive communities that his previous work did not treat,
! answering critics who have found fault with a rigid notion of
interpretive community. In this essay, he concedes that the standards of
i i
the interpretive community are always subject to change, yet he j
continues to place this change squarely in the hands of the interpretive j
community, not in the interpretive event. He notes that the community
"is an engine of change, an ongoing project whose operations are at
once constrained and the means by which those constraints are altered"
i
(429).9 Further, the codes that the community uses are also subject to j
change; they are not a "set of explicit directions or prescriptive
descriptions... [instead they are] a continuous, ongoing process, rather i
t
than a set of stable elements of culture which endure through time" !
j (434). Therefore, for Fish, the interpretive ways of each academic i
! community are necessarily changed by time; thus each community is !
I
constantly revising its identity . I
Joseph Harris has provided a similar critique of the discourse
community as it is conceived by many composition theorists in his "The
Idea of Community in the Study of Writing," noting that community
often is used in composition studies as "an empty and sentimental word"
(13).10 Unlike most concepts which have their dialectical opposites
which serve to engage the term in debate, Harris contends that
community has such positive associations that it has no'"positive
opposing' term" (13). Like Fish's more fluid notion of interpretive
i
communities, Harris argues for a notion of discourse community that is I
"an always changing mix of dominant, residual, and emerging
discourses" (17). He wants to conceive of discourse communities in
which there is "a certain amount of change and struggle...not as threats
i
to its coherence but as normal activity" (20). Because Harris also sees
j that change is a necessary feature of any discourse community, he
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: 193
I
j concludes that its standards can never be rigidly defined. In his notion
i
of discourse communities, Harris seems to be suggesting that individual j
members are constantly challenging the group's accepted standards.
Though both Fish (in his later work) and Harris argue for a less
rigid notion of the interpretive or discourse community, their focus is
still on how the community shapes the reader's interpretive activities.
Both proponents of discourse and interpretive communities seem to
i alter the I-Thou text relationship that Gadamer has concluded is
essential to any textual interpretation. That is, the initiate reader
desiring entry into a community is no longer facing a 'thou' but a 'they',
or a group of (of what seem to her) all-knowing interpretive members.
As with the text-based scene which emerges from Iser's reading theory,
i
pedagogies structured on the concept of discourse communities tend to
discourage the initiate, suggesting a "me against them" mentality and
presenting to the initiate the image of a group who knows and who, by
comparison, shows him what he does not know. In contrast, a
hermeneutic pedagogy never posits more than one participant who may
know more than the initiate. Though the participant may be a member
of an academic community, he is necessarily presenting to the initiate
his representation of what this membership entails, never giving her a
group opinion. Though the language a reader understands is informed
by the language of people she identifies with, it is never identical with
i
their language. That is, the language of each social or interpretive
group is never monolithic; each reader presents his interpretation of the
194
group he belongs to or wants to be a part of. And so does the student
reader present (to the teacher and the text) her understanding of the
interpretive communities she belongs to. Further, in Gadamer's
pedagogical scene, change is a natural result of every reader’ s (both
student's and scholar's) appropriation of any text. What Gadamer
foregrounds is not a collective body which decides upon change, but an
individual reader who revises his interpretations in order to best
understand the text that he encounters.11
To read Iser and Fish from a Gadamerian perspective thus helps
to disclose the salient features of a hermeneutic pedagogy responding to
Gadamer's philosophy. A pedagogical translation of philosophical
hermeneutics consistently foregrounds the active participation of only
two members— a reader engaged in dialogue with the voice of a text, or
a teacher and student, or student and student, engaged in conversation.
This focus on a partnership of two contrasts to a pedagogical scene like
Fish's which may pit a reader against a seemingly all-knowing
interpretive group. In a hermeneutic pedagogy, reading a text provides
the continual possibility for disclosing meaning both to the initiate and
to the scholar.
I
I
i
i
195
FOOTNOTES (CHAPTER 4)
1. In College English 7 (November 1983): 657-66.
2. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978.
3. Iser is quoting from the German edition Wahrheit und Methode.
Tubingen, 1960: 286.
4. Louise Phelps in her Composition as a Human Science: !
Contributions to the Self-Understanding of a Discipline. New j
York: Oxford University Press, 1988 examines gestalt theory as j
it relates to composition studies. See her chapter "The Dance of |
Discourse" where she discusses gestalts: 151-57. j
f
i
5. New York: Continuum, 1975. j
|
6. See Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics. New I
York: McGraw-Hill, 1959, 122-27 for a discussion of !
syntagmatic and paradigmatic, or associative, structures.
7. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980.
8. Elaine O. Lees in Reclaiming Pedagogy. Patricia Donahue and
Ellen Quandahl, eds., Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL:
Southern Illinois University Press, 1989 states: "In Anti-
Foundationalism, Theory Hope and the Teaching of
Composition," Fish argues that no theory can be used as ground
on which to build a teaching methodology" (157). Fish's essay
j appears in The Current in Criticism: Essavs on the Present and
I Future of Literary Theory. Clayton Koelb and Virgil Lokke,
eds., West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1987: 65-79.
i
I 9. South Atlantic Quarterly 86 (Fall 1987): 423-44.
I ;
10. College Composition and Communication (February 19891: 11- j
! 22. i
L
196
11. Robert Scholes in his Textual Power. New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 1985 critiques Fish in ways similar to mine,
noting, "It is in fact these very differences— differences within the
reader, who is never a unified member of a single unified group"
(154) and later, "It follows from this that there must be as many
communities as there are different interpretations" (155). The
bulk of Scholes' examination of Fish is found in his chapter "Who
Cares About the Text?," 149-65.
197
CHAPTER 5
PHILOSOPHICAL HERMENEUTICS AS A RESPONSE TO
MODELS TEACHING, E.D. HIRSCH, AND ALLAN BLOOM
As has been shown in the previous chapter, Hans-Georg
Gadamer’ s Truth and Method can serve as a philosophical response to
critical theories treating reading and writing. Gadamer's text can also
speak to various pedagogical theories foregrounding the
interconnections between reading and writing. Using the philosophical
tenets set forth by Gadamer, one can more clearly respond to the
reading and writing pedagogies of Allan Bloom and E.D. Hirsch, as
well as the proponents of the models composition teaching program.
All three pedagogies treat the interconnections between reading and
writing, but begin with fundamentally different philosophical responses
than those of Gadamer.
The models approach to composition instruction is a reading-
based composition program, perhaps the oldest reading-based writing
program in the history of American college composition teaching. In
this pedagogy, the student is given a selection to read that represents a
particular rhetorical mode, then is asked to write an essay in imitation
of that rhetorical structure. Invariably when a composition teacher or
theorist introduces a discussion of reading in a composition classroom,
many will assume that the writing approach in question is some form of
models teaching. By analyzing Gadamer's notion of the necessary
interconnection between textual form and meaning and by comparing it
to the models pedagogy, which insists on the separation of form from
content, one can see how different these two approaches to reading and
writing are, and how they ultimately emerge from two distinct
philosophical premises.
E.D. Hirsch's cultural literacy program and the pedagogy that
emerges from Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind also
| foreground textual interpretation. Both programs focus on reclaiming
: some of the canon of Western tradition, either from America or
i
j Europe; and in this sense, both theorists can be seen as reinterpreters of
humanism, attempting to revive the humanist pedagogy of the past.
Moreover, both theorists attempt to teach writing by instructing their
students in their cultural tradition through the reading of the canon
which each program prescribes. Again, an analysis of what Hirsch and
Bloom mean by tradition, in contrast to the concept of living tradition
treated by Gadamer in Truth and Method, reveals disagreement
regarding the nature and pedagogical translation of this term.
! Ultimately, Hirsch and Bloom conceive of tradition from a dogmatic
| perspective, which is then echoed in the prescriptive character of their
pedagogies.
The Models Approach to Composition Teaching
The models composition pedagogy forms the substance of many
readers and rhetorics written today, and its history in America dates
199
back to the nineteenth century. These rhetorics most often begin with j
I
description, move to narration, then present the modes of cause-effect,
definition, illustration, analogy, comparison-contrast, and so on. Often
the models readers are grouped along the divisions of these rhetorical
modes; and when they are not, the editors frequently provide additional
contents pages which divide up the reading selections into these same
patterns.
Such an organization both posits the division between form and
content and suggests that form and content are discrete, identifiable
entities that can be taught in order to improve writing. Finally, the
proponents of a models approach to writing assume that form and
content are static entities that do not necessarily interact as students read
and write.
Gadamer begins with a fundamentally different premise
regarding the relationship of words to structure. For Gadamer,
linguistic form is both subsumed in textual meaning and is generally an
unconscious presence in language, appearing only on those rare
occasions when a language user is made to consider the structure of a
word or a phrase, and not its meaning, in discourse, or when a syntactic
structure blocks meaning. For Gadamer, the classical Greek mind had a
’ complete unconsciousness' (Truth and Method 365) to the study of
language as form, and for him this is still the more powerful premise ;
I
upon which to begin a treatment of language.1 Conversely, to see ;
linguistic form as "an independent object of attention" (365) (the j
200
premise upon which the bulk of syntactic scholarship in linguistics and j
the treatment of language by logical positivists begins) is to ignore the j
secondary role and unconscious character that form generally plays in !
its relationship to meaning. This premise contradicts Gadamer's !
philosophy, for a word in his hermeneutics is simultaneously object and !
i
idea. j
i
For Gadamer, both language study and history are part of the \
!
larger hermeneutical process which posits interpretation as a unitary |
event in which linguistic form and meaning can only exist in their co- i
I
presence. Any discipline in the human sciences which initially attempts
to separate the structure of its discourse from the discourse itself
negates the primordial meaning-making function of language. The
models writing pedagogy thus contradicts Gadamer's fundamental
phenomenological premise that language is an event whose structures
can only exist during the event of understanding. It is thus impossible
to speak of rhetorical modes outside of the hermeneutical activity which
uses them, first because they cease to exist outside of this activity and,
second, because they necessarily disappear during the the event of
interpretation, giving way to those moments when the reader
i
understands the text. |
i
In reviewing the literature on models teaching, I have found some [
historical explanations for this pedagogy— James Berlin's study of j
models teaching in American education and Burton Hatlen's comparison
of models teaching to Renaissance rhetorical education. Both studies
201
treat models teaching in the larger historical contexts that they are
examining. I am using much of what they say specifically to determine
how Gadamer's notion of imitation differs from that in models teaching,
and thus I do not treat many of the historical and social issues
surrounding either nineteenth century American composition teaching
or Renaissance rhetorical education, both of which are book-length
studies in their own right.
In studying the history of the models approach in American
education, one sees the influence of an empiricist philosophical
perspective. Empiricism assumes that the objective world has
ontological status and a priority over human consciousness. Because of
this focus on the object, by the nineteenth century, even psychological
phenomena came to be interpreted as discrete objects of experience.
James Berlin in his Writing Instruction in Nineteenth-Centurv American
Colleges notes that faculty psychology, which was introduced into
American educational theory and praxis through the rhetorical texts of
Hugh Blair and George Campbell, had a significant effect on American
composition teaching in the nineteenth century and into the twentieth
century (21).2 Faculty psychology, in accord with its empiricist
antecedents, assumed that human perception can be understood by
identifying its discrete modes of perception, and the pedagogy that
responded to this perspective is that discourse can be similarly divided
into identifiable patterns, "according to the faculty which is to be
addressed" (65). Berlin lists the chapters in a rhetoric by an American
202
composition teacher John Franklin Genung, Practical Elements of
Rhetoric (1885), where invention is divided up into discrete modes:
IV Invention dealing with Observed Objects:
Description
V Invention dealing with Events: Narration
VI Invention Dealing with Generalizations:
Exposition
VII Invention dealing with Truths: Argumentation
, VIII Invention dealing with Practical Issues:
| Persuasion (65)3
Genung's rhetoric assumes that each type of inventive mode can be
taught as a separate entity, and that content is not necessary in student
mastery of each mode.
Berlin further notes that the premise upon which faculty
psychology was based— that the world can be understood by dividing it
up into its parts— exerted a major influence on the way American higher I
education came to be viewed at the end of the nineteenth century: "In j
the eighties and nineties, the elective system at the new American
! university— based, itself, on a faculty psychology— divided the entire
i
academic community into discrete parts, leading to an assembly-line
conception of education" (9). Berlin's insights regarding American
educational practices in the nineteenth century support Gadamer's claim |
that scientism had an effect on shaping the research of the social scientist
of the nineteenth and twentieth century.
I The logical result of teaching composition as a collection of
identifiable modes is to give to students written examples of each— thus
the emergence of readers during the late nineteenth century using prose
203
models exemplifying each mode. Berlin suggests that John Franklin
Genung's A Study of Rhetoric in the College Course (1887) was one of
the first American college readers based upon this models approach.4
Berlin notes: "Students were to leam to write by studying literary
models, especially the informal essay, discovering their scientific
principles for themselves and then applying them to their own
; composing" (74). Genung is not concerned here with the content of the
j essays that his students read; he simply assumes that with each essay,
J students will extrapolate the appropriate structure and correctly use it in
their writing. Unlike Gadamer, who sees the whole as a constantly
changing horizon of meaning, educators like Genung contend that the
whole can easily be identified as the static sum of its parts. The models
teacher’ s goal, then, is to identify, then teach, the parts of a text, and not
focus on the text's meaning. Models teachers thus insist that students
i
I i
j study the text’s form, what Gadamer perceives as the unconscious j
J !
! correlate of language. Seen from a Gadamerian perspective, models |
; teaching is thus a misunderstanding of language's natural intent to I
I !
disclose truth. I
i
Though ostensibly this models approach is a composition program j
foregrounding reading, it insists on a peculiar type of reading and
writing. If a student today, for example, is assigned a reading which
contrasts the physical features and behavior of the two most populous
birds in North America, and then is asked to use this same compare-
contrast pattern to write an essay comparing two animals, she will likely >
fail, because she has probably not read enough compare-contrast essays
on animals to have acquired the requisite reading and writing ways to
compose a successful essay on her own. Further, this essay topic does
not assume that student interest in reading about birds or writing about
animals will have any effect on student writing. The only students who
succeed in the models pedagogy are those who have previously read
enough to have already acquired the requisite reading and writing ways
in each mode. A teacher using the models approach thus unfairly faults
his students for writing unsuccessful essays when he claims to have
taught all the parts of the rhetorical mode in question and students
seemed to have understood how to use each part. This teacher has failed
to consider that recognizing structures is not the same as incorporating
them in writing. The models approach is thus a simplistic interpretation
of how a reader imitates what he reads. Nowhere do models teachers
see imitation as a representation of the text, in which form and content
work together in disclosing textual meaning.
Two other studies have pursued the various reasons why the
models approach is unsuccessful. Burton Hatlen's essay, "Old Wine and
New Bottles: A Dialectical Encounter Between the Old Rhetoric and the
New," analyzes the classical notion of imitation (which has similarities
to Gadamer's concept of imitation as representation) and its present
misinterpretation as models teaching. And Maxine Hairston's "Using
Nonfiction Literature in the Composition Classroom" treats theoretical
reasons for seeing the models pedagogy as unsuccessful.
After summarizing the key elements of the pedagogy of classical
imitation, Hatlen traces its use in Renaissance England. In this
description of the Renaissance model, one notes how Renaissance
imitation has affinities to Gadamer's treatment of imitation as
representation. Though the Renaissance theorists saw imitation as a way
; by which their students could develop arete, or moral character, they
never gave their students rules by which textual imitation could lead to
arete. And though Gadamer does not focus on the reader's moral
development in his concept of imitation as representation, he (like his
classical predecessors) does not present a heuristic by which texts can be
successfully represented. In regard to the language pedagogy of the
English Renaissance, Hatlen notes:
1
j In the writings of Erasmus and Elyot we see the
i humanist dream of an educational system that could
! allow all the potentialities of the human creature to '
unfold fully, through imitation of perfect models. And ;
before we let ourselves sneer at this dream, we should !
remember that Humanism begat the English Public
School, and that the Public School begat the vision of a
liberal education expounded by Arnold and Newman,
and that from this vision issues whatever traces of a
humane love of learning for its own sake may still
linger in our universities. (62)5
A humanist pedagogy endured for centuries, Hatlen suggests, because it
! focused on the reading of texts as developing human intellectual and
; moral potential. Students were encouraged to develop their moral
i
| character, in part through imitating the writers they read. This premise
I
; has affinities to Gadamer’ s hermeneutics, which sees readers reshaping
their tradition through the texts they read. Where Gadamer and the j
humanists disagree is in their definition of tradition, the classical mind ;
defining tradition as the imparting of a culture’ s values and Gadamer J
i
seeing tradition as a living (therefore necessarily changeable) j
interpretive event. !
In John Milton's education, Hatlen sees the consummate success of \
the imitative literacy model: "But John Milton was perhaps the supreme
example of Imitation as a Way of Life" (63). Hatlen enumerates all of
the teaching techniques that Milton's teachers adapted from the classical
education:
Milton's education was grounded upon the Aristotelian
principle of learning through precept and
imitation...students read classical authors primarily to
find models for their own writing. Students were
expected to imitate not only the stylistic flourishes of
their models but methods of "proof and structural
arrangement" (167), and they were required to '
memorize, translate, and paraphrase texts in order to j
absorb the stylistic and structural qualities of these texts.
(63)6
What Hatlen fails to note is that Milton as a student must have read these
classical texts with great interest, even passion. They not only provided
him with stylistic and structural options, but they also gave him
powerful interpretations of the cosmos which he could compare with his
| Presbyterian Christian beliefs. Hatlen notes later that by imitating the
| classical texts, Milton could "reconceive the meaning of his own
j situation in revolutionary seventeenth century England" (63). All of
:
i
t
207 ;
Milton’ s great works respond to classical texts which, as Harold Bloom
would argue, this 'latecomer' misread.7 In this regard, Gadamer
| would see Milton as the exemplary translator, who assimilated classical
i textual tradition into his own life’s circumstances, so that what he
i
i imitated in reading was represented in his writing.
Don Paul Abbott's essay "Rhetoric and Writing in Renaissance
Europe and England," further examines the kind of education that a
student of rhetoric like Milton experienced. Along with his examination
of the moral model students found in classical writers like Cicero, he
also focuses on the kind of translation exercises the Renaissance student
completed-often a double translation requirement in which students
translated from English into Latin, then back to English (104).8 In this
j
j way, it seems, students learned how and why to use various tropes of th e 1
i
! English language and understood how translation affects and determines J
! j
textual meaning. The major difference that Abbott sees between i
Renaissance language education and composition education today is the
emphasis that the Rennaissance educator placed on speaking, as
manifested in the ultimate student activity— the oration— as opposed to
the written text that teachers foreground in language instruction today.
Abbott notes: "Reading, writing, and reciting existed as closely
! correlated activities, but writing and speaking were always the end— !
reading and textual analysis were the means to that end" (120).
It is interesting to note that for the Renaissance educator and
Gadamer, translation is the operant interpretive activity. For Gadamer,
translation is the agent for textual interpretation, while for the
Renaissance educator, translation served as the source for the eloquent
oration. Though translation served a different purpose for the
Renaissance educator than it does in Gadamer’ s hermeneutics, both
would agree that translation is not a copying activity, and that its
ultimate purpose is not to extract textual structures that students can
then apply to their writing or speaking.
It is because of this notion of imitation as structural copying that
; I
' Hatlen considers the models approach of the last thirty years in |
i
j America's composition classrooms as "a sterile and mechanical
i
' procedure" (64). He summarizes the contents of Gerald Levin’ s 1964
{
edition of Prose Models, which since 1964 has come out in nine editions j
and is still in print. It is interesting to note how similar Levin's >
program is to Genung’ s:
Levin’s text first surveys the "elements of the essay":
"THE SENTENCE," with subsections on "Parallelism,"
"Balance," "Antithesis," etc., and then "THE
PARAGRAPH," with subsections on the "Topic
Sentence," "Main and Subordinate Ideas," "Definition,"
"Division and Classification," etc.— fourteen subsections
in all, with each subsections including a brief example of
two or three, usually fairly short paragraphs, followed
by some "questions," then a writing assignment which
i asks the students to imitate the form of the paragraph or !
! paragraphs that she has read...Only now, after working
’ through the various "elements" of the essay, does
i Levin’ s book finally arrive at "THE WHOLE ESSAY,"
| where we leam of the "implicit" and "explicit" thesis,
I etc. and where the student is invited to write imitations
! of these longer units of discourse. (64)9
Hatlen's summary of Prose Models shows Levin's exclusive reliance on
form over content in teaching students to write the essay, as well as an
overriding emphasis on a part-to-whole teaching methodology, the same
critique one can make of Genung's rhetorics.
Hatlen concludes that the models approach "sees composition as
essentially mechanical, a matter of selecting certain appropriate parts
and putting them together in accordance with the 'rules' of composition"
! (65). Hatlen notes further that the essential goal of classical and
! humanist imitation was understanding "the commitments of the
! writer...[and] the values and beliefs of the audience"— issues ignored
both in Genung's and in the current models approach (65). Though
l
| Gadamer does not focus on the writer's intent, he concentrates,
j
nonetheless, on how the reader-text event leads to the reshaping of the
reader's prejudices.
In assessing the evolution of imitation pedagogy from the Greeks
to the present, it is the loss of values and beliefs that Hatlen considers its
most serious flaw:
Yet Aristotle and Milton, both of them passionately
concerned with the moral development of the human
creature, would have found these technocratic twentieth
century models of imitation impoverished, if not
positively vicious. Thus it is important to recognize that
i the rhetoric handbooks with which most of us grew up
represent, not the triumph, but the ultimate decadence of
! the Aristotelian tradition. (65)
I Hatlen sees that the models approach's most serious pedagogical flaw is
I its focus on form at the expense of meaning. Though Gadamer does not
t
I
i 210
emphasize the need to develop arete in the texts that one reads, he,
nonetheless, would agree that texts must speak to readers in order for
understanding to occur.
Maxine Hairston focuses on the act of reading to show why the
models approach is unsuccessful. She notes that students must have first
practiced writing in a particular rhetorical mode before reading about
1 how that mode can improve their writing. Hairston remarks:
1
; But after they have practiced constructing some
imaginary writing process scenarios and then find
themselves facing the same kinds of problems other
writers typically encounter, they are ready to leam
from professional examples. And they must realize that
one cannot simply lift a solution from another writer;
each writer has to adapt a particular strategy to his or
her particular rhetorical situation. (187)10
Hairston here notes the importance of the rhetorical situation in
I
! revising writing, a notion which echoes Gadamer's emphasis on the
i
interpreter's necessary temporal condition. For Gadamer and Hairston,
j interpretation is determined by the reader's unique and constantly
changing circumstances. Here also, Hairston suggests why the classical
literacy program was so successful--in the students' reading and
listening activities, they had developed rich reading and writing ways
before they were asked to write using a particular stmcture.
Thus from a theoretical and historical perspective, the models
approach is weak. First, the models pedagogy begins from an
I
, empiricist philosophical perspective that privileges the object, which is
!
ultimately perceived as static, discrete, and measurable. Such a
perspective further leads to the reification of mental phenomena and to
their treatment as data that are also discrete and measurable. Finally,
this pedagogy concludes that linguistic form and content have validity in
their separateness. As a language theory and pedagogy, models teaching
I is thus opposed to Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, which
i
contends that a focus on form and content is only realized within the
event of interpretation. Secondly, though ostensibly it appears to be in
i
I the tradition of the classical literacy program, current models teaching
I ignores the fundamental premise upon which a classical language
pedagogy was based: the discussion and reading of meaningful texts. In
contrast, the models approach simply identifies the formal features of
writing, assuming that students do not derive these features from their
understanding of the text. Models teaching posits that students can both j
i
learn these structures piecemeal from the texts they are reading and then
successfully apply them to their writing. The classical notion of j
arrangement never had this interpretation in mind, for it saw invention
and arrangement as inextricably related, much as Gadamer sees the
necessary interconnection between form and meaning in the reader's
understanding of a text.
E.D. Hirsch
j E.D. Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy has received much attention
I nationally as a sensible solution to the current 'literacy crisis'. Though
l
! 212
it has been critiqued by many literacy scholars, Cultural Literacy has
j gained in popularity among lay people, becoming what appears to the
i
i non-specialist academia’s answer to the reading and writing woes of the
| American student. Where the models pedagogy focuses on instruction
1 in linguistic form, Hirsch (and Allan Bloom) emphasize the content of
j American literacy programs. Both Hirsch and Bloom address the key
j i
, question: What should the American student be reading, and how does |
I this material influence the students' literacy development? Like the
| models teachers who have reified the various rhetorical modes, Hirsch
and Bloom conceive of content as a discrete body of texts. They present
canons of 'great books' or lists that students in the eighties and nineties
must read in order to achieve an acceptable level of cultural literacy.
Before analyzing the arguments made in Cultural Literacy, and
later those in Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, it is
instructive to compare Hirsch’ s and Bloom's conception of the terms
'tradition' and 'classical literature' with Gadamer's in order to see how
their understanding of these words translates into their respective
pedagogies.
Both Hirsch and Bloom, as will later be shown in an analysis of
their works, conceive of classical literature and tradition as fixed
concepts, descriptive terms that situate significant moments in European
I and American literature and history. Their premise is that students
(
j must know their cultural history through a reading of selected texts, or
| classics, before they can engage in any meaningful literacy experience, j
In Bloom especially, there is a sense that the past, particularly classical j
!
Greece, was more civilized than today, and his answer to improving !
today’s literacy standards is the reactionary one of returning to an
understanding and use of the classical values of Greece. For Bloom, the
values of the Classical Greeks must be revived, just as the Greeks
conceived of them, before any reasonable improvement of today's
literacy standards can be realized. Both Bloom's and Hirsch’ s
methodology is historicist, not hermeneutical; it is founded upon the i
teaching of texts that they deem are representative of their cultural |
tradition, and on locating the inherent meaning in these texts which they \
consider is in accord with the author’s intent. They are not concerned |
with the various ways that readers may interpret their textual tradition, j
The literacy canon of Hirsch and Bloom can therefore be reduced to a j
series of titles and lists that students must read from in order to become '
culturally literate. !
Gadamer has a much more fluid notion of both tradition and j
classical literature, as I have shown in Chapter II. First, for Gadamer, j
cultural tradition is not comprised of a canon of classical works that 1
students must read. Rather, tradition is the ongoing result of textual j
interpretation. Like the issues of form and content that a reader j
discovers by reading a text, so is tradition only realized in the reader's j
response to, and understanding, of a text; tradition is as fluid an entity !
as is the reader's understanding of a text. Joel Weinsheimer correctly
conceives of Gadamer's notion of tradition as the always changing
'Thou' of history that the T, or reader, must confront in face-to-face
exchange and in reading (205).11 Elsewhere, Gadamer has underscored
the inclusive nature of tradition: "Tradition encompasses institutions and
life forms as well as texts" (^Philosophical Hermeneutics 96).12
Gadamer thus sees classical literature, not as a recognizable, unchanging
canon within literary tradition, but as "a living cultural tradition"
(Truth and Method 143). The function of classical literature is not to
! "simply preserve what exists" but to provide a "model for all later
j writers" (143).
| In a later essay "Reply to My Critics," Gadamer again takes up
the issue of tradition, underscoring its changeability as it is understood
by the interpreter. He notes:
i
...the phrase "connection to tradition" means only that
the tradition is not exhausted by the heritage one knows
and is conscious of. In this way tradition cannot be
relegated to an adequate consciousness of history.
Alteration of the existing conditions is no less a form of
connection to tradition than is a defense of existing
conditions. Tradition exists only in constantly becoming
other than it is [my italics]. (288)13
In regard to tradition and the classics, Gadamer and Hirsch begin
with contradictory philosophical premises: Hirsch takes the empiricist
position that textual content is both real and imminent within the text,
I while Gadamer begins with the phenomenological assumption that
| meaning is a result of the event of understanding. Hirsch's belief in the
| reality of words as things is clearly demonstrated in the lists which he
; presents in Cultural Literacy, that comprise over a quarter of his study.
r
i
With this list of culturally literate terms, Hirsch wants to encapsulate the
American culture, then make all American children understand and
appreciate it by mastering these words. In so doing, he ignores the
central ingredient necessary for the success of his project— that all
American children want to leam these words because they feel they
identify with the culture that is represented in them. And this adherence
to a prescribed set of cultural values does not seem to be the case today;
I in fact, there seems, presently, to be no cultural consensus in America,
i
I and there likely never was. Just as Hirsch believes in the pedagogical
I
efficacy of his lists, so does he conceive of the term "American culture"
as a discrete entity that students can effortlessly take in whole. |
Gerald Graff in his Professing Literature makes a similar point ;
i
regarding the difficulty of identifying an American culture which can
be taught. In this regard, Graff provides evidence from the history of
American higher education, much as Gadamer has introduced language
theory, in order to call into question a focus on culture as a realizable,
self-enclosed pedagogical tool. Graff notes that as far back as the mid- i
nineteenth century in American colleges, professors had lost their sense
of cultural purpose. He contends that after 1875, English professors no
longer agreed upon the core values that defined the literate American,
which up until then was seemingly a thorough education in the Greco-
Roman tradition (100).14 Graff attributes this loss of cultural consensus
to the new college student population between 1875-1915-students who
I chose to enter college, not to leam about their relationship to Western j
Civilization, but to be able to earn more money. These students j
replaced a need to leam cultural values (paideia, in the Greek sense) for j
i
their desire to become economically more solvent (105). Graff refers !
J
to this period in the history of English Departments as "the loss of |
cultural common ground" (110), and notes the failed attempts of i
conservative English professors to preserve "a unified humanistic
culture which no longer existed" (113).
Graff contends that this fragmentation of cultural purpose has
been exascerbated in the curricula of English Departments since 1915.
He insists that Adler’ s and Hutchin's attempt to reintroduce the classics
at the University of Chicago in the thirties (echoed interestingly in the
current pedagogies of Hirsch and Bloom) was part of their desire to
revive classical humanism in the American college student, and Graff
notes that their program was doomed to fail: "The fact had to be faced
that it was hopeless to try to restore an earlier stage of unified i
knowledge" (165). Graff would likely concur that the same comment
can be made today about Hirsch's and Bloom's attempts at a cultural
i
revival. Graff sees the various intellectual factions of English
I Departments today as a continuation of the cultural fragmentation of the
i
nineteenth century in which "there was no longer a tacitly shared
culture in which the presuppositions of that rhetoric [general education]
were taken for granted" (172). What exists today in English ;
j Departments, Graff notes, are specialists in diverse fields of language
study who, barely able to keep abreast of the scholarship in their own
217
specialization, often are not versed in the nature of the research that
their colleagues are engaged in.
If Graffs description of American English Departments is
accurate, then today's college students will be reading, discussing, and
writing about texts that each of their professors finds culturally and
pedagogically valuable. In stark contrast to Hirsch's affirmation of
American cultural consensus, today’ s American college students,
according to Graff, do not share a common canon of texts defining their
culture.
Seen from the perspective of Graffs reading of American higher
education, Hirsch's Cultural Literacy can be seen as an unrealistic
literacy program. When he notes that the American public school's
responsibility is "to ensure our children's mastery of American literate
culture," Hirsch assumes that American literacy is comprised of a canon
that all American educators will accept (18).15 The canon that Hirsch
creates is, in the main, middle class, male, and white. In so doing,
Hirsch ignores the increasing American minority student population,
which cannot be expected to have amassed the cultural terms that their
white middle class peers may have become familiar with as children.
Though Hirsch is correct in noting that students efficiently leam
new material by activating previous, related knowledge, his notion of
how one develops literacy is simplistic. From a phenomenological
perspective, language learning involves the constant recognizing of
prejudices. Having students memorize isolated bits of information (as
Hirsch encourages them to do with his literacy lists), which students
often can only attach to poorly defined events of understanding, will not
encourage instant recall, but prompt forgetting. j
Hirsch notes that these associations "must be called up with
i
lightning speed in the course of reading and conversing...When we
encounter U.S. Grant, the primary associations must be available to us
in milliseconds: that he was an important Union general, that he became
President, that he drank" (59). There is no doubt that a student versed
! in American history would make these associations when coming across
i
I a reference to Grant. But Hirsch fails to realize that this student has
j
I developed these associations after much reading and discussion of
| related issues like the causes of the Civil War, its specific battles, the j
; i
| slavery question, and so on. It is the student's hermeneutical \
} relationship to texts which focus on Grant that encourages his instant j
| recall of detail pertaining to this historical figure. If the student had no i
l
i prior familiarity with Grant and had been told to memorize these
i primary associations, she would likely forget them, mainly because they
I
| had not naturally emerged in the student's dialogical encounter with
those texts about Grant. Hirsch has thus substituted the rich connections
made by students who engage a text dialogically with lists and
! associations. Just as Hatlen rightly sees that the models approach has
j made form a sterile and mechanical component of the classical
j pedagogy, so has Hirsch reduced the content of American culture into
l
I desultory lists of words and associations. Like the theorists of the
models approach, Hirsch has mistakenly embraced a bottom-up reading
model, in which facts are seen as antecedent to a reader's understanding
of the text's constantly reinterpreted whole.
In this regard, Hirsch has also simplified the complex encounter
between reader and text, treated by Gadamer and Iser, to the depositing
of facts, immanent in culturally significant texts, into the reader's mind.
Hirsch contends: "The single most effective step would be to shift the
reading material used in kindergarten through eighth grade to a much
stronger base in factual information and traditional lore...what is needed
are reading texts that deliberately convey what children need to know
and include a substantially higher proportion of factual narratives"
(140). Here, Hirsch is seeing reading from the conduit metaphor
perspective. A text provides facts, which are ontologically prior to the
reader's interpretation of them. Thus, by reading the text chosen by the
teacher, children receive these facts. As has been shown by Iser and
Gadamer, reading is a much more complex, interconnected encounter
than merely the amassing of factual information. As Gadamer has
suggested, facts, like concerns for linguistic form, become issues in the
act of reading only when they contribute to the reader's understanding
of a text. From a phenomenological perspective, facts, outside of the
reader's encounter with the text, do not exist.
Hirsch also denies the importance of previous experiences that
readers both necessarily bring to each text they read and are
fundamental to their understanding and transforming of it:
The question "who is to say what that content shall be?" j
must not be allowed to serve its traditional role as a
debate stopper. To suggest that it is undemocratic or
intolerant to make nationwide decisions about the
extensive school curriculum must not any longer be
allowed to end the discussion. (144)
Though Hirsch is correct in asserting that American schools have the
right and the obligation to teach their version of American culture—
especially history, government, and literature— to all American students,
this American content should not be the focus of a literacy program,
especially before the secondary school level, a period when students
I
have often not developed reading fluency. Children can only leam to
appreciate the complex and challenging event of reading if they are
allowed to select material or are presented with texts that speak to them.
Not all American students understand or enjoy reading texts whose
focus is on issues relevant to a white middle class American child. To
insist that children read 'factual narratives’ on white American culture,
at the expense of topics that engage them, is to hinder, not develop, their
reading ways. Again, because Hirsch has a simplistic notion about how
reading develops, he has created a literacy program with dogmatic
goals.
Though Hirsch's cultural literacy has not gained acceptance with
most scholars of literacy, it has become a popular answer nationwide to
the 'literacy crisis’, mainly because it is so simplistic. The layperson
wants answers to profoundly complex language issues. Hirsch’ s
program ultimately focuses on an essentially white and middle class
American literacy canon which he then insists that all public school
221
children read. Over 2000 years ago, Quintilian mentioned the
difficulty that he had in selecting the right texts for his students from
the plethora of Greek and Roman material that they could choose
from .16 The selection of today's canon is enormously more
i
| complicated. Experts in specialized fields of a discipline often, as Graff !
| has argued, cannot read all there is to know in their own field. Rather j
! than shutting out the wealth of perspectives to be found in books today,
i teachers should encourage students (especially pre-adolescents) to read
i
: along the interests that they seem to be developing. Only when reading
| is seen as a natural event leading to understanding and, ultimately, to
j play, can children begin to develop sophisticated reading ways. To
i assume that reading about General Grant will be pleasurable for every
American student is both to misunderstand the reading interests of
today's American children and do deny the textual dialogue that is
essential for understanding. A small number of American children will
become literate by reading about Grant, but they are often children who
have an interest and pride in the traditional white American culture.
Hirsch ends his text proper with a reference to Cicero, suggesting
that his program is a continuation of the Ciceronian literacy model: "I
hope that in our future debates...the participants will keep clearly in j
view the high stakes involved in their deliberations:...bringing us closer
to the Ciceronian ideal of universal public discourse” (145). In merely
alluding to Cicero, Hirsch has ignored the social and cultural factors
which allegedly allowed for universal public discourse in Cicero's Rome
222 !
_______ i
and how different these factors are from those affecting contemporary
American culture. Thus from both a historical and philosophical
perspective, Hirsch’ s Cultural Literacy opens itself up to a series of
challenges.
!
t
Allan Bloom
! Allan Bloom’ s The Closing of the American Mind is a praise of
the classical literacy canon and a plea that a language pedagogy
employing this canon be reinstituted in American schools today. In his
preface, Bloom speaks of "the privilege [he has had] of teaching the
classic text" (22).17 And in his introduction, Bloom's comments have a
distinctive Platonic tone: "But when there are no shared goals or vision
of the public good, is the social contract any longer possible?" (27).
For Bloom, the public good is a realizable entity that students must
leam to appreciate. Further, like Hirsch, words have a philosophical
reality as signs for things; in regard to the good, Bloom has a univocal
definition in mind.
Bloom also speaks from a classical perspective when he discusses
the society's need to read the great works of its culture: "Without the
great revelations, epics, and philosophies as part of our natural vision,
there is nothing to see out there, and eventually little left inside" (60).
These are the same moral values that Plato wanted the students in his
: Republic to acquire through reading and discussing the texts that he
!
i 223
selected for them. Unlike Plato, Bloom speaks as a Sophist here in
i
I asserting that many classical texts, not merely philosophical dialectic,
i
can provide for a moral education. All of these great works for Bloom
i
! are "literature in the grand style" (61). Suggested in his praise of the
I classical canon is Bloom's contention that nothing of importance has
| been written that was not stated as well or better in antiquity. The
I
I reading that Bloom suggests for his students thus has a strong historicist
i bent; to read the classics well is to be able to see the world from the
i
I philosophical eyes of Plato and Aristotle. This historicist perspective,
I
one recalls, was carefully critiqued by Gadamer in Part II of Tmth and
Method because it consistently failed to demonstrate that an interpreter
could ever locate the author's historical consciousness.
Like his predecessors, the classical Greek teachers, Bloom also
believes that students need to be exposed to these great works early on
i
in their educational careers: "I have begun to wonder whether the
i
experience of the greatest texts is not a prerequisite for a concern
throughout life for them" (62). And like the Greek and Roman
rhetoricians, Bloom insists on a reading-based composition pedagogy:
"Teachers of writing in state universities, among the noblest and most
! i
despised laborers in the academy, have told me that they cannot teach
writing to students who do not read" (65). Like the Greek and Roman
rhetors, Bloom contends that reading enriches one's moral character:
"The substance of my being has been informed by the books I learned to
care for" (245). Again, for Bloom, one develops a moral character by
i
I 224
understanding the texts of the great ethical philosophers of antiquity,
not, as Gadamer suggests, through developing one’ s phronesis by an
immersion in, and questioning of, the unpredictability of life’ s
experiences.
In terms of adding new books to the canon of the 'grand style’ ,
Bloom also presents a Platonic perspective: "Those standards are in the
first place accessible to us from the best of the past, although they must j
i
be such as to admit of the new, if it actually meets these standards" j
(252). By standards, Bloom has in mind a set of discrete, unchanging
criteria by which all texts must be carefully scrutinized. For Bloom,
the most influential works in this canon include Homer and the Bible.
Ultimately, for him, a text’ s acceptance into the canon requires that it
conform to Western thought and tradition. He notes that the model that
any new work must be compared to is "the classic, the heroic— Homer,
Plutrach" (256). By using this standard, Bloom seems to ignore equally
great works that do not meet all the criteria of Western epic heroes and
the classical, grand style. Because American high schools and colleges
have generally not assigned students the reading of texts that would
qualify as part of this grand style, the incoming college freshman,
Bloom contends, "finds a bewildering variety of departments and a
bewildering variety of courses" (338). Many courses, Bloom adds, that
the American college student takes tend "to be a pleasant diversion and a
dead end" because they do not "lead to the permanent questions," which
invariably are the same ones addressed by the great thinkers of
225
antiquity (343). Like Hirsch, Bloom has little faith that the reading
choices which students make on their own will develop their intellect or
ethical character. For Bloom, a meaningful college reading program
i
involves teachers both selecting texts for students and showing them j
! i
where in each text the great ideas are to be found. For Bloom,
therefore, the reading activity is never a dialogue, but a conduit
connecting the thoughts of the wise teacher and sacred, classical text to
{ the empty mind of the student. Bloom has no sense of reading as a
fusion of horizons, because he sees only one horizon— that established in
i
i classical antiquity, which an educated reader will in time learn to
i
1 embrace as her own.
] i
i 1
{ Praising Hutchins' and Adler's great books program (in contrast
! to Graffs critique of it), Bloom sees their canon as one solution to the ,
I ;
! 'dead end' courses facing American college students today: "Wherever
I the Great Books make up a central part of the curriculum, the students
! 1
j are excited and satisfied" (344). And for Bloom, the Great Books j
I
necessarily foster an understanding and appreciation of classical j
humanism, rather than an introduction to the methodology of the social j
i
sciences. Bloom's rejection of most social science material from his J
i
canon suggests the exclusive nature of his canonical standards: "With the j
possible exception of Weber and Freud, there are no social science j
books that can be said to be classic" (345). Ultimately, the Great Books !
program includes texts whose intellectual and aesthetic perspective is
I
classical, especially the classicism of Plato: "The books in their objective j
i
i
I
___________________________226 j
reality are still there, and we must protect and cultivate the delicate
tendrils reaching out toward them through the unfriendly soil of
j students' souls" (380). Bloom's metaphors here are telling, locating
j civilized thinking solely in the 'objective', classic texts and conceiving of
| the college student as an unwilling receiver of this knowledge: the
t
; classics are a palpable reality, for the ideas of civilization are immanent
' within them, yet the 'uncultivated' student, who does not have these
I ideas 'implanted' in his 'barren' mind, can 'starve' and 'kill' those ideas
i
which yeam to 'grow' within his soul. It is Plato, finally, that Bloom
1 asks teachers to return to in order to understand their mission:
I
I "Throughout this book I have referred to Plato's Republic, which is for
i
! me the book on education, because it really explains to me what I
i
; experience as a man and a teacher, and I have always used it to point out
J what we should not hope for as a teaching of moderation and
i
! resignation" (381). Disclosing his empiricist bias, Bloom, like Hirsch,
j asserts that it is the ideas in the great books (particularly one great
I
book), and not readers interpreting texts, that provide the impetus for
j understanding. Plato's Republic, and not the act of reading, is
i
| ontologically prior.
Bloom's literacy program could be successful if its students were
educated, as were wealthy children in classical Greece, on the great
: literary and philosophical works of their civilization. The
I
j overwhelming number of children in America today are not. If they
• are read to at all, they are acquainted with a myriad of children's
books— a few of which are mythological and provide some of the
classical material that Bloom alludes to. The unresolved issue that one
continually faces in Bloom’ s pedagogy, as well as in Hirsch's, is the
following: By making the canon exclusive, one alienates large groups
of students whose interests do not lie within the canon's stated or
inferred cultural and ethical premises.
There is an alternative approach to selecting a literacy canon for a
community of learners, one that still embraces the structure of a j
reading-based composition program; that is, to select a series of
successively more challenging texts based upon the students' interests.
These interests may very well include Greek mythology and Greek and
Roman epics, but they may also be comprised of detective stories or
Spiderman comics. The pedagogical challenge is to give children
options for selecting interesting texts that encourage them to richly
question and counterquestion what they read. Each text, in Iser’ s
terminology, would have more blanks, would pose significant questions
for students both to discuss and write about. And throughout, students
would be encouraged to express their particular understandings of the
text. !
Admittedly, the concepts of the blank as well as of understanding j
and interpretation are fluid terms, not satisfying the ’ rigorous’ j
(
requirements for terminology used in the natural sciences, yet they help :
to provide fruitful ways for discussing and developing a canon for
t
student readers. Unlike Hirsch’ s and Bloom's booklists, the lists of !
228 ;
| books that young children read should be both flexible and inclusive.
! I
j Children should to some degree be encouraged to read where their
interests lead them. When they advance to the college level, assuming
i
! they have been encouraged as children to see reading as a pleasurable
: event of understanding, they will be more apt to successfully read texts
j that do not immediately interest them. As experienced readers, they
will anticipate surprise in the texts they read.
These suggestions for rethinking the ways that Hirsch and Bloom
! conceive of a literacy canon in no way call into question composition
programs which foreground reading— one suggested in the pedagogies
of Hirsch and Bloom as well as in the hermeneutics of Gadamer. Like
the children in antiquity, today's young readers will develop their :
I
writing by improving their reading. Those children who discover the <
'special art' of reading and writing will have done so because they have j
engaged in a dialogical relationship with texts, much as the Greek j
children who advanced to schools of rhetoric invariably had a passionate
interest in the Iliad in grammar school. But if today's school children
are told to read texts that literacy authorities deem culturally edifying,
many will come to see reading as a meaningless activity— the amassing
of a series of 'culturally significant' facts— and not a dialogical
relationship between reader and text, which ultimately leads to play.
All of these programs (Hirsch’ s, Bloom's, and models
teaching) assume that reading is an essential component in a writing
pedagogy. Yet, as has been shown, their notions of reading are
*
i
229 !
| fundamentally different from Gadamer's, influenced by their varying
i philosophical premises. A hermeneutic pedagogy posits a reader's
: necessary and ongoing revision of texts. This pedagogy is examined in
| the language theory and praxis of Mariolina Salvatori, who situates
1 Gadamer’ s hermeneutics in the classroom.
FOOTNOTES (CHAPTER 5)
1. New York: Continuum, 1975.
)
2. Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University
Press, 1984.
3. Amherst, MA: J.E. Williams.
4. Boston: D.C. Heath and Co.
5. In Only Connect. Thomas Newkirk, ed. Upper Montclair, NJ: 1
Boynton/Cook Publishers, Inc., 1986: 59-86. j
6. In this excerpt, Hatlen is citing Donald Lemen Clark's John
Milton at St. Paul’ s School: A Study of Ancient Rhetoric in
: English Education. New York: Columbia University Press,
1948.
I
7. For a discussion of the concept of latecomer poets, see Harold |
Bloom's A Map of Misreading. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1975 in his chapter "The Belatedness of Strong Poetry," I
63-82. |
8. This essay is found in A Short History of Writing Instruction:
From Ancient Greece to Twentieth Century America. Davis, CA:
Hermagoras Press, 1990, 95-120.
9. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
10. In Convergences: Transactions in Reading and Writing. Bruce
T. Peterson, ed. Urbana, IL. National Council of Teachers of
English, 1986: 179-88.
! 11. Gadamer's Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method. New
i Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985.
231 !
12. Translated by David E. Linge. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1976.
13. In The Hermeneutic Tradition: From Ast to Ricoeur. Gayle
Ormiston and Alan D. Schrift, eds. Albany, NY: University of
New York Press, 1990: 273-97.
14. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
15. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987.
16. See his Institutes of Oratory, or Education of an Orator.
Translated by Rev. John Selby Watson. 2 vols., London: Bell
and Sons, 1903, 10.2.17-26. Here, Quintilian suggests which
books students should read first.
17. New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1987.
PART III
PHILOSOPHICAL HERMENEUTICS AS
READING AND WRITING PEDAGOGY
CHAPTER 6
MARIOLINA SALVATORI'S PEDAGOGICAL TRANSLATIONS OF
PHILOSOPHICAL HERMENEUTICS
In addition to the pedagogies of Hirsch and Bloom, other reading-
based composition pedagogies have emerged in the past decade; an
important theorist treating reading in a composition course is Mariolina
Salvatori, who has translated Gadamer's conception of reading and
writing into the classroom. One sees a careful reading of Gadamer in
her "The Dialogical Nature of Basic Reading and Writing," one of the
essays in Facts. Artifacts, and Counterfacts. In this essay, Salvatori
demonstrates how pedagogy can be conceived of as a philosophical
science, as she situates Gadamer's hermeneutics in the classroom. She
discloses the necessary relationship between Gadamer's concept of
understanding and the reading and writing activities that she encourages
in the classroom. Salvatori's pedagogical reading of Gadamer both
establishes a reading and writing environment which responds to
philosophical hermeneutics and extends the possibilities of the
Gadamerian notions of understanding, dialogue, and conversation by
j situating them in the classroom. In this fashion, Salvatori shows how
| pedagogy and language theory can exist alongside each other, in a
mutually reflective relationship. A second essay which also responds to
: Gadamer is "Pedagogy: From the Periphery to the Center" which
contrasts a fluid concept of reading to the static concept of reading that
she finds in theorists like Hirsch.
Finally, though Facts. Artifacts and Counterfacts is a pedagogical
translation of several critical theorists, it in several ways has a
particular Gadamerian tone. As such, this study reveals additional
pedagogical responses to Gadamer’ s philosophical hermeneutics.
The Dialogical Nature of Basic Reading and Writing
Of all of the recent reading-based language theorists, Mariolina
Salvatori has come closest to translating philosophical hermeneutics into
the language classroom. In all of her essays treating reading and
writing, Salvatori stresses the dialogical nature of reading and writing
teaching. Salvatori begins to define the characteristics of a language
pedagogy responding to Gadamer in her "The Dialogical Nature of
j Basic Reading and Writing." In this essay, she tests various Gadamerian
concepts in classroom praxis, enriching their understanding and use.
The key Gadamerian issues which Salvatori explores pedagogically (a
perspective which Gadamer has not considered) are dialogue or
j
conversation, as well as the concepts of understanding, interpretation,
and application.
The atmosphere that Salvatori attempts to establish in her reading
and writing classroom is one of conversation, where neither teacher nor
I
| student consistently dominates the conversation. The tone established in
! 235
this classroom conversation is one of discovery, both for the student and
the teacher. And in so doing, Salvatori tests the strength of this
theoretical term as it is experienced in a reading and writing setting.
In the spirit of conversation, Salvatori wants to replace the sense
of remediation with m ediation-a significant term in Gadamer’ s
hermeneutics:
The remedial approach is replaced by one of mediation
as both teachers and students leam to ask and answer
questions that make texts speak, and to speak away
silences with "voices" that mediate and remediate
understanding in continuous, enriching dialogues.
(139)1
Carefully reading Gadamer here, Salvatori sees that reading is a process
of mediation between reader and text, (and from her classroom
perspective) teacher and student. Here, she echoes Gadamer's insistence
that all reading is a fusion of reader and textual horizons. Further, she
realizes that knowledge is not a thing, but an event which enlarges the
experiences of both teacher and student. The teacher’ s monologue (a
feature of both Bloom's and Hirsch's pedagogies) is thus replaced by the
dialogue resulting in mediated learning.
To see reading and writing from this mediating position is to re-
see the nature of the reading and writing classroom; its focus is thus not
on providing basic knowledge to the student, who has not previously
'received' it, but on establishing a classroom atmosphere which fosters
j ways for students to interpret texts. Salvatori’ s challenge is thus to
! interpret just how texts, which her students read, speak or remain mute,
and, further, to investigate the ways that her student's writing speaks or
remains silent. In the process, Salvatori attempts to define the
"heightened inward ear" involved in reading and writing, an issue which
Gadamer has introduced but not treated from the encounter with the
writing classroom. She addresses the unexamined question of how
literate speech differs from the speech of face-to-face conversation.
Thus, Salvatori's classroom investigations add substance and provide
direction to Gadamer's theory.
Salvatori is quick to note that in the beginning of her course the
atmosphere, of conversation is not easily established since most of her
students "have learned to think of themselves as incapable of learning to
read, or to write, or to think" (138). Their perspective on reading and
writing is monological rather than dialogical. So at the start of the
semester, Salvatori guides her students, showing them ways to model
their own reading and writing style on ways which place responsibility
on them to make texts speak. Salvatori's pedagogical goal, much like
Gadamer's hermeneutical focus, is to make these guided responses into a
conversation "in which teachers and students continuously and
alternatively guide and invite each other" (141). Throughout her essay,
Salvatori explores the ways by which her 'remedial' students begin to
engage in and appreciate the power of conversation.
Salvatori notes that conversation as Gadamer envisions it
theoretically is not what most beginning readers and writers are used to;
for them learning is an inexorable conduit of knowledge from the all-
237
knowing and threatening teacher to their reluctant minds, the
pedagogical scene Bloom suggests. In regard to changing their
prejudice, Salvatori remarks: "Of course, this kind of discussion doesn't
just happen; on the contrary, it must be carefully prepared, though not
predetermined, and effectively guided, though not imposed" (151).
j Realizing that a traditional 'predetermined' and 'imposed' structure is
I antithetical to the establishment of genuine dialogue, Salvatori faces the
I much more challenging task of unobtrusively initiating a conversation
| with her reluctant students.
Salvatori also elaborates upon what is involved in academic
conversation; here she translates Gadamer's notion of dialectic to what
teachers and students do when they read and write. For Salvatori,
classroom dialectic becomes "questions, answers, and counterquestions"
(151). Gadamer has affirmed that the dialectic of conversation has no
end, and Salvatori has retained this same sense of dialectic in her
classroom discussion. Though questions engender answers, answers
require counterquestions because each issue to be discussed can be
treated in several ways.
As the semester progresses, Salvatori's students begin to take on
the guided role of the teacher, some closely modeling Salvatori’ s style, j
others translating it into their own conversational style. In her careful
analysis of her student Gerard’ s attempt at initiating a discussion of
Hunger of Memory. Salvatori studies the complexity of the student's
I
| response in the classroom-one that is both a dialogue with oneself and a
L
238
dialogue with the many classroom voices. She notes that initially
Gerard's guidance of the discussion is "too univocal" because he is
"absorb[ed] in his own dialogue with the text" (163). Ultimately,
Gerard responds to student comments that enhance his own dialogue.
Salvatori does not interfere with Gerard's development at this
point, not insisting that Gerard include the responses of others in his
presentation. Here, Salvatori is suggesting that Gerard first needs to be
able to respond to his own questioning of the text, to his own, inner
dialogue before he can introduce his responses into a conversation with
the classroom's many voices. Gadamer's theoretical concerns regarding
dialectic and conversation can thus best be 'experienced' in the
classroom where praxis can then re-read these concepts and, in this case,
give to the concepts of dialectic and conversation a necessary complexity
that Gadamer's language theory need not address.
Salvatori again examines Gadamer's language theory when she
treats the difference between oral discussion and written texts in this
same classroom discussion. When Richard, another participant in the
group discussing Hunger of Memory, seems stymied as he leads the
i
\ discussion, he begins to write on the board the group's oral
contributions, and in so doing, the nature of these comments changes.
This translation of oral discourse into written text first encouraged
Gerard to take over the group discussion, when up to this point, he had
i
remained silent.
239
Gadamer has noted in Tmth and Method that reading and writing >
i
i
involve a special art, but for the purposes of his study, he did not need j
to pursue the details regarding the differences between oral and written
discourse. Walter Ong has enumerated the differences between orality
and literacy and has suggested the ways that literacy has redirected the
thinking style of Western civilization, but nowhere does Ong focus on
how writing is experienced in a writing classroom.2 In this classroom
j incident between Richard and Gerard, Salvatori demonstrates that
i translating oral discussion into a written text can propel the
J conversation. Gerard seemed to need the objectified, written text in
| order to advance his inner dialogue, yet for Richard this objectification
served to silence him. Thus the classroom use of writing as a
translation of oral discussion seems to be a powerful experience for
some, silencing for others. Salvatori leaves open this issue of whether
i
writing is necessarily the means by which all academic thinking is j
advanced, suggesting that additional classroom experiences need to be j
studied to pursue this ever-complicated relationship between speaking,
writing, and the continuation of dialogue.
In her concluding remarks about Gerard, Salvatori comments
further about the dialogue that Gerard has helped initiate. Gadamer has
shown that there are two forms of dialogue that the human being
j experiences in language: a private and a public one, both of which
i
i operate in a similar manner. A private dialogue is revealed in Gerard's
1 initial response to Hunger of Memory, while a public dialogue includes
i
r
i
the responses of others in its continuation. Both private and public
dialogue employ the same pattern of question and answer, counter
question and counter-answer. But in a public dialogue, one must often
sacrifice or delay one’ s inner responses to those made by the others in
the conversation. Gerard, Salvatori suggests, is beginning to see how
public dialogue often conflicts with one's inner thoughts. He is finding
i
that using public responses only to further one's personal dialogue does
not always encourage the continuation of the classroom conversation.
Salvatori adds that Gerard's inner dialogue had encouraged a 1
public conversation which he did not know how to sustain: "The voice J
that traces his involvement in the process of discovery, occasionally
tends to silence other voices and to prevent them from questioning and
counter questioning other voices" (165). Salvatori thus introduces a j
necessary complication to the nature of the Gadamerian conversation, j
particularly as it manifests itself in her writing classroom. The teacher
wants both to encourage the development of private conversation in
student reading and writing but at the same time to allow for
conversation to successfully emerge among students discussing a text
that they have all previously read and written about. It seems that the
next phase in G erard's development as a reader and writer is to develop
textual responses which encourage public dialogue, though they may
temporarily silence his private conversation. Gerard must further come
to realize that these public conversations add a necessary dimension to
the counter questioning that he will later encounter in his private
241
] dialogues. This is a difficult task— one that seems to be constantly
I improved as one continues to read and discuss academic texts.
Salvatori ends her essay with Gerard’ s puzzlement and her own
inner conversation. Salvatori muses on how Gerard has still not
resolved his dilemma regarding how to allow both his inner dialogue
and the public dialogue that it fosters to fruitfully respond to each other.
Salvatori suggests that it will again be the classroom where she will be
j able to study just how Gerard and students like him deal with this
| dilemma.
i
Subsumed within her essay (structured as well upon the to-and-
fro movement of conversation), is Salvatori's pedagogical treatment of
understanding, interpretation, and application. As explained in Chapter
1, Gadamer concludes that these interpretive acts occur alongside each
other, all serving in the act of understanding. Like Gadamer, Salvatori
does not see these activities of reading and writing as sequentially
related, both she and Gadamer suggesting that understanding,
interpretation, and application co-occur in the acts of reading and
writing. In her pedagogical treatment of these terms, Salvatori reveals
the importance that the concept of 'significance' plays in her students'
notions of textual understanding. Significance is not an issue that
Gadamer has treated specifically in conjunction with understanding.
i Salvatori notes that for the student, assigning significance to textual
I
; material or to the 'texts' of their lives is initially a difficult task. The
i
i structure of her course, though, encourages students to refine their
!
i
i 242
abilities at assigning and articulating significance because they are
continually asked to re-see what they have previously read by reading
others texts which speak to these previous readings. Salvatori notes that
a major assignment--the autobiography— is one "they keep rereading,
reformulating, and revising as they think through the three theoretical
texts that are required readings for the second half of the term" (140).
This is the same sort of re-seeing that many theorists in Reclaiming
Pedagogy also use. Such a structuring of reading and writing
i
assignments underlines Gadamer's position that understanding, |
interpretation, and application are fluid events that are necessarily
reshaped as the reader enriches her horizon with additional texts.
Salvatori focuses on what constitutes the assigning of textual
significance when she treats student responses to various characters in j
Maya Angelou's I Know Whv the Caged Bird Sings. She states that the j
Angelou assignment "stresses for them the fact that events, characters, 1
experiences, do not possess significance or insignificance, but that the
student's act of reflexivity confers these attributes" (142). In her
understanding of significance, Salvatori enriches Gadamer's notion of
the act of reading. Significance, is not an identifiable entity in the text
(as Hirsch and Bloom would argue) but an event that emerges in critical
reading— one initiated by the text but completed by the student's reading.
Assigning significance to textual moments gives the student critical
power, yet it does not allow her to arbitrarily assign significance to any
element of her reading experience.
243
Salvatori emphasizes that the autobiography assignment is an
i
appropriate pedagogical translation of Gadamer's notion of tradition as j
it affects understanding. Gadamer has shown that textual understanding |
j
can only occur when the reader's prejudices are awakened and j
challenged. Salvatori cites an excerpt from Gadamer’ s Philosophical I
j
Hermeneutics in her inscription to this chapter: "To understand a text is
to come to understand oneself in a kind of dialogue" (137).3 The j
autobiography assignment is not merely a student's personal j
recollections but an exercise which asks the students to re-see these j
recollections through the eyes of the theoretical and narrative texts
i
treating adolescence that students have been assigned. The student's j
i
autobiography thus becomes an account of the student's traditions as
they are rewritten in those of other texts, becoming "an opportunity to
enlarge their [students'] understanding of personal experience" (144).
Throughout the course, students are encouraged to revise their
thinking in much the same way that Gadamer sees textual interpretation
as the reshaping of a reader's horizon through the ongoing fusion of
personal and textual prejudices. In regard to another student, Robin,
Salvatori comments: "She questions her questions in such a way that at
this point she fails to keep the horizon of her understanding open"
(146). Though Salvatori does not focus on Gadamer's notion of
horizons in her discussion with this student, as she watches Robin, she is
testing the pedagogical relevance of the concept of horizons, thus
244
carrying on her own private conversation with Gadamer's texts,
necessarily complicated by her reading of the classroom.
An additional function of the autobiography assignment is to
transfer the reading and writing ways that the student has learned to a
reading of their own lives and the lives of others. Gadamer makes a
similar move when he treats understanding, interpretation, and
application as primordial activities that the interpreter both uses in
evaluating experience and the reader uses in hermeneutical
interpretation. In Robin's case, the dialogue that occurred between the
text of her life and the autobiographical texts of others encouraged a re-
seeing of her relationship to her parents as a dialogue as well. Both in
analyzing her personal experiences and written texts, Robin realized the
purpose of understanding, interpretation, and application in evaluating
the significant moments of her life and those of the texts she read.
As she analyzes classroom encounters with texts, Salvatori
j realizes that it is application which appears to provide students with the
dynamus for understanding, and it is the same conclusion that Gadamer
draws in his later writings on interpretation. For Salvatori and her
students, "to know means...to apply the knowledge acquired through
reflexivity to new ideas, situations, contexts" (156). In this experience
between the reader and the text, the student begins to understand the
power of assigning significance to moments in their lives and to those of
others. Though Gadamer and Salvatori argue that understanding,
interpretation, and application work alongside each other, they both
245
conclude that application most directly leads to critical understanding of
texts.
Salvatori makes application an integral part of her students'
reading by making "sure that each successive reading assignment raises
questions that loop back to include observations made or issues raised in
previous assignments or class discussions" (153). In this way, students
come to see how applying what they have read to previous texts is a
necessary to critical reading and writing. |
I
Throughout this chapter, Salvatori posits many interconnections
between reading, writing, and discussion, all of her insights translations
of Gadamer's hermeneutical premises. Salvatori first notes that the
guided classroom discussions are in kind no different from the critical
reading and writing that her students leam to use in their private
dialogues with texts. At the beginning of the course, Salvatori notes:
"We are beginning to tell students that we expect them to view the
critical thinking in the classroom discussion as a model for the thinking
that should sustain and guide their reading and writing" (141). The
dialectical structure of question-answer-counter-question that Gadamer
has posited as a model for thinking and hermeneutical interpretation
informs both the discussion in Salvatori's classroom and the students'
reading and writing of texts in and out of the classroom.
To show how reading textual material and reading one's life are
similar critical activities, Salvatori's students read the autobiographies
of others as carefully as they read and analyze the theoretical texts on
246
j adolescence. Each student’ s autobiography is "clearly typed and bound
j
! as a book" (144), and is read and evaluated just as the other texts have j
been critically studied during the semester. For Salvatori, the act of i
reading is textual understanding; yet she interestingly reconsiders just
what constitutes a text. In her classroom, she finds that both published
books and the narratives of her students’ lives can be critically studied
in similar ways. For Salvatori, reading is therefore both understanding
textual material and understanding one’ s life when it is represented as a
written text. To expand the notion of textual understanding to include
the analysis of personal experience is a conclusion that Gadamer would
likely applaud, yet it is one that could only have been made in the
classroom where reading, writing, and discussion are foregrounded.
Ultimately Salvatori concludes that for her students,
understanding necessarily involves critically reading and writing about !
assigned texts and those texts that students create which explain their
lives. Salvatori's focus in reading her students' writing is on how
students manifest their textual understanding. This type of evaluation
suggests to the students that understanding a text is not a monological,
closed activity, while it reveals to the teacher the particular ways that
student readers have of disclosing textual understanding,
j Salvatori also incorporates misunderstanding into the process of
! textual understanding for her students, in much the same way that
j Gadamer has foregrounded misunderstanding as a necessary process in
| any hermeneutical interpretation. For Salvatori, students should be
!
I 247
encouraged to articulate their confusion before a text that refuses to
speak to them. In regard to her students' responses to a text, she
comments: "Confusion, puzzlement, and difficulty were appropriate
responses" (155). In analyzing why a text remains mute, students often
learn how they and their peers construct textual meaning, so they can
begin to identify those prejudices (either their own or the text's) which
inhibit a text from speaking.
Through these frequent guided reading and writing activities,
students, Salvatori argues, determine the necessary interconnections
between reading and writing on their own. They come to see that
reading is the initiating activity, often generating a myriad of
*
conflicting responses, and it is their writing which invariably becomes
their evidence for the evolution of their thoughts regarding the reading.
Salvatori comments: "Students see the abundance and the complexity of
thoughts that the reading process can generate and the role of writing in
stmcturing or in ordering that process" (157). It is reading which both
leads to confusion and insight, while it is writing which attempts to
articulate a coherent understanding of the reading or an explanation of
the reader's confusion.
By analyzing the textual activities that her students use, Salvatori
finds ample evidence for "Gadamer's view of reading as synonymous
with understanding" (157). Salvatori’ s pedagogical translation of
Gadamer's concept of understanding into reading thus gives evidence
for the 'special art’ of reading and writing as it is experienced in the
248
classroom. Further, by analyzing her students’ reading and writing
responses and by interpreting their works from Gadamer's
philosophical perspectives, Salvatori can show just how "the activities of
reading and writing, both in theory and practice, are mutually
supportive and ultimately inseparable" (158).
"The Dialogical Nature of Basic Reading and Writing" is an
exemplary work of pedagogical scholarship. Not a separation of
Gadamerian language theory from language praxis and not a list of
lesson plans that 'work', Salvatori's essay attempts the much more
challenging task of allowing the classroom to respond to her own
pedagogical dialogue with Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics.
Ultimately, through her guided language activities, Salvatori effectively !
i
translates Gadamer’ s hermeneutics into interpretive activities for her I
basic reading and writers, informing their responses to assigned j
readings and to the texts that they have created to explain their lives. i
Like Gadamer's hermeneutics, Salvatori's language pedagogy j
i
does not leave students with the sense that they can ever master this
special art of reading and writing. Each way of reading, she carefully
argues, leads to further interpretive questions in the unending dialogue
that Gadamer has appropriately called thinking.
249
Pedagogy: From the Periphery to the Center
Unlike her previous essay, "Pedagogy" does not critically read
student texts; rather Salvatori here uses her conception of pedagogy as a
philosophical science to critique theorists like E.D. Hirsch and G.
Wilson Knight as well as various reader response theories. Further, as
she elaborates upon the intricacies of this philosophical science,
I
j Salvatori discloses other ways that reading is interconnected to writing.
! Salvatori divides her essay into an analysis of two opposing
I
theories of reading: a text-oriented theory and a reader-oriented theory.
The text-oriented perspective of reading assumes that knowledge is
within the text (that is, knowledge is an identifiable entity) and that only
skilled readers can accurately retrieve it. In contrast, the reader-
oriented approach assumes that readers work at making texts mean, that
knowledge is not a thing but a textual activity. In this reader-oriented
approach, Salvatori provides an accurate translation of Gadamer's
hermeneutical concept of interpretation.
To critique the text-oriented reading theory, Salvatori provides
the image of the reader as always positioned outside the text. Salvatori
argues that a notion of reading which demands the exacting of
"knowledge about suggests that the one who does the reading is
j positioned outside, or at a distance from the text" (19).4 No one, not
i even the most articulate literary critic, can ever get inside the text.
Therefore, from the perspective of a text-oriented theory of reading,
readers are positioned at various distances from the text, depending
upon the nature of their critical responses. Thus, no one ever really
knows what the text means. Like a god, the text, though the source of
truth, is necessarily silent. Salvatori's hermeneutic scene reveals the
privileged role that texts play in a text-oriented theory of reading.
Using the same inside/outside metaphor for the activity of
reading, Salvatori demonstrates how a reader-oriented theory differs.
Here again she translates Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics into
pedagogy:
But let us imagine the act of reading as the opportunity for a reader to
to rethink, to return and to ask, as Gadamer suggests, the questions that j
a text might be an answer to and the questions it might have silenced, as
well as the opportunity to examine, to call into question, to modify both
one's pre-judgments about how/what one knows and about how/what
others know. This reading would require that the reader position
■ himself or herself, simultaneously and recursively, both outside and
{ within the text. (19)
Here Salvatori provides a visualization for how horizons are fused in
the hermeneutical activity. Both the text (the inside) and the reader (the
outside) need to constantly exchange positions, then return to their own,
in order for textual understanding to occur. The reader's prejudices
can only be realized (and then re-examined) if they call into question
those of the text. Understanding (rather than the text) becomes the
251
foregrounded activity, which both reader and text, together, can
I
i disclose.
| Reading Gadamer pedagogically, Salvatori concludes that this
| simultaneously and indefinitely inside/outside movement from the
reader to the text "might make it possible for reading to be more
fruitfully understood as a form of writing, and for it to be argued that
learning to read is learning to write" (20). To read a text from a
reader-oriented position assumes that the reader necessarily and
constantly uses her prejudices to read those of the text, so that the
reading of any text can only be realized in the writing. To ask a student
to locate a text’ s 'meaning' is, from a reader-oriented perspective, not a
reading but a writing task because it asks him to write his responses to
the text, disclosing his traditions, his ways of reading. In textual
interpretation, there thus seems to be no clear distinction between
reading and writing, for in reading a text one must concomitantly be
writing it. These written responses thus disclose the reader's
interpretation rather than the text’s 'meaning'.
For Salvatori, a reader-oriented notion of reading is counter to
E.D. Hirsch's conception of reading as the accumulation of background
knowledge where meaning is reduced to what inheres within the text
and writing to an approximation of this meaning. In contrast, a reader-
oriented theory necessarily sees "reading and writing as interrelated,
! self-reflexive and reciprocally illuminating activities" (20). For in a
i
j writing pedagogy which sees reading and writing as interconnected
252 |
activities, one's reading enriches one's writing, just as one's writing
advances the reading that one uses to re-see a text and to read a new
one.
Salvatori further shows that a text-oriented theory of reading
translates into a pedagogy which encourages silence in most students. In j
regard to G. Wilson Knight's text-oriented notion that literary
interpretation should constantly aim at preserving the integrity of the
art work, Salvatori responds:
One of the problems of this veneration stance is that it
disables the visionless reader from actually approaching
the text. In this pedagogical scene, the secrecy of
hermeneutics (rather, of this version of hermeneutics)
not only sets up a hermetic circle that excludes the non
initiated; it also invalidates the possibility of entering
into a dialogue with, of questioning, or formulating a
critique of both the work and its guardian's account.
(23)
A text-oriented theory of interpretation establishes a hermeneutics of
secrecy, in contrast to a reader-oriented theory that encourages a
dialogue with the text. Traditionally, literary analysis and the teaching
of literature have assumed the position of hermeneutical secrecy where
: the text can best be approached by the diligent critic. The student
reader is therefore relegated to the position of timid spectator, in awe
of, and silenced by, the teacher's interpretation. In the pedagogical
scene which emerges from this text-oriented theory, the student is seen
as a vicarious observer rather than an active participant in a dialogue |
! with the teacher/critic and the text.
I
253
In contrast to this text-oriented scene of instruction, Salvatori
argues that a reader-oriented theory of reading encourages teachers and
students to envision themselves as engaged in a similarly creative
hermeneutical activity. Their focus is on the event of reading/writing
rather than on the text's sacred, univocal meaning:
...to read a text in order to examine, to reconstruct the
process, the work in fieri, calls attention to the
experienced writer's successive phases of evolution and
discovery, and makes it possible for a teacher to read it,
as a manifestation of similar struggles with language.
Student writing can then be seen as an instantiation of
creativity, and as a subject worthy of study and
research. And a teacher's reading of student writing can
be seen as an activity that, to say the least, demands
intensity of study, critical training, challenging
questionings equal to the ones typically reserved for the
reading of those texts that the politics of our profession
anoints as status granting. (28)
To translate a reader-oriented theory of reading into a reading/writing
pedagogy has profound implications for the entire English profession.
If the literary art work is no longer the only revered focus of study, but
is complemented by the study of readers and writers engaged in
dialogues with these texts, then what one critically interprets is also
readers' (critics' and students') responses to these texts— all of whom are
engaged in the same hermeneutical activity. Though the students'
challenge is to make the literary art work speak to her, it is the equally
challenging task of the teacher to articulate how/why the texts speak or
remain mute in her understanding of student responses. Part of the
English teacher's focus thus necessarily moves from the exclusive study
254
of these Verbal icons' to the varied responses to them, some of which
are written by critics and some of which are fashioned by students. In
short, a reader-oriented theory of reading necessitates a focus on
pedagogy— on how student readers construct textual meaning as they
respond to primary texts and those which interpret them.
A reader-oriented theory of reading also calls into question much
reader response theory which focuses on correct readings or on
subjective readings rather than on the reader as meaning maker.
Salvatori comments that "at their worst, they have produced and
encouraged readings that have celebrated subjectivity and the rule-
making activity and authority of a small enclave of readers" (28).
When reader response theory seems most beneficial to students in
composition courses is when it focuses on the reader, or on her
"responsibility to construct, to reflect on, and to account for, his or her
interpretation of a text" (28). Such reader response theories, Salvatori
suggests, are often tied to "phenomenological and philosophical
antecedents" (28) and invariably see "the teaching of reading and
writing as interrelated, inseparable activities" (29). Gadamer is one of
the philosophers Salvatori has in mind.
What is significant about Salvatori's critique of certain reader
response theories is that it results from her translation of Gadamer’ s
philosophical hermeneutics into the classroom. Ultimately, pedagogy,
as Salvatori conceives of this term, can respond to critical theory. Her
pedagogical conclusions thus:
255 i
_ j
! make it imperative that we test, expand, modify, re-
theorize these theories. When by deconstructing the
very theory we are using, by exposing that theory’ s
blindness to its own gaps, its own absences, we make the
"reader" mean also readers in the classroom, students,
I 7 7
j rather than the "implied reader" or the "optimal
| reader," we place students’ works, students' mental
processes, students' texts center stage at the scene of
instruction. (29)
Salvatori's position regarding the use of pedagogy in theory making has
i
\ implications as to how language classes (literature and composition) are
j represented; that is, a reader-oriented theory of reading necessitates an
understanding and use of dialogue both in the activity of reading and in
classroom discussion. Reading a text from a dialogical perspective
suggests that both authorial voice and reader respond to each other,
while in the classroom, both teachers and students contribute to the
conversation. What the student says and writes is thus necessary for the j
dialogue to continue. j
Salvatori later refers to this dialogical relationship between
student and teacher as inquiry:
Inquiry becomes a rigorously stmctured collaborative
activity that acknowledges as it relies on the student's
productive abilities, and that calls for a visible,
stmctured change in the realignment of the teacher/
student interaction. (29)
Again, Salvatori's pedagogical conclusions call for a careful revision of
the composition and literature classroom.
Ultimately the language classroom seen from the perspective of a
! i
i reader-oriented theory of reading encourages the visualization of !
i
2 5 6
knowledge not as a thing but as a process that seeks "the unfolding,
rather than the concealing, of the drama of knowing" (307) both in the
texts that students read and in those that they write. Just as Gadamer has
referred to texts which speak in dialogical fashion to their readers, so j
does Salvatori see the scene of instruction as a drama in which writer
and reader reveal their "uncertainties, obstacles, anxieties, resolutions,
complications" (30). This is a different pedagogical scene from the
text-oriented one that sees both critic and student in awe of the
psychologically inviolate text, which need never engage in dialogue with
its readers.
Ultimately, Salvatori sees the text-oriented scene of instruction as
one that translates into "the domain of didactics" (30) which "sets up
i
models and dictates procedures that claim to make the approximation of
these models possible" (31). This is like the methodology of the natural
sciences that Gadamer has so often examined. In contrast, a reader-
oriented theory translates into the classroom as pedagogy. In a sense,
the reader in a reader-oriented theory of reading is interpreting in the
same way that a teacher reads the classroom. Both reflect on and
j
practice their ways of reading, each activity (reflection and practice) j
informing the other and revealing the profoundly complex processes j
that are reading and writing. Neither pedagogical theorist nor reader !
|
can effectively ’ dictate procedures' which will disclose understanding,
for both reading and teaching constantly re-examine their ways as they
practice them.
In "Pedagogy: From the Periphery to the Center," one sees a
coalescence of reader response theory and Gadamer’s philosophical
hermeneutics as they respond to the classroom. What emerges from this
conversation is an understanding of pedagogy as a discipline which can
both provide insights into the efficacy of classroom practice and can
i
serve to respond to reading theories which consider the reader both in |
! and out of the classroom. In her essay, Salvatori has given to the scene ;
' !
| of instruction a necessary role both in responding to and re-examining ;
j critical theory and in suggesting areas for further research in classroom !
praxis. j
j |
In both essays, Salvatori has shown how reading's j
i
interconnections to writing play a fundamental role in informing critical
' and pedagogical theory. Throughout these essays, Salvatori affirms
! that reading and writing are concomitant activities for the other. If
| reading and writing are realized in the event of textual understanding,
! what one reads is simultaneously written by the reader, or translated
| into the language of the reader’ s traditions. Seen from the perspective
| of a concomitant activity, writing may be manifested in several ways.
I At its most elementary level, writing is the responses (the blanks and the
| responses to them) that a reader constructs while reading. Many of
these responses are not often formally articulated in written form but
I provide the impetus for the reading activity to unfold. As a
concomitant activity, writing may also be revealed as oral discourse
! with others who have read the text and engage in a dialogue about it.
258
Formal writing about a text may either be represented in abbreviated
form as notes or marginal comments or as various drafts of a formal
essay response. In every case, from the inarticulated thinking to the
final draft of an essay, the text is 'written' through the prejudices of
each reader.
Though reading and writing are interconnected activities, it is
reading which initiates the dialogue. Reading opens the text to a true
i question to which the reader responds, and it is also reading which
| challenges the reader's prejudices and reshapes them through
conversation.
With the inexperienced reader and writer, questioning the text is
often overwhelming, frequently silencing her writing. But in a
pedagogy that attempts to locate texts which speak to students or that
introduces reading ways for students to use to encourage obdurate texts
to speak, a dialogue can be initiated. At first, the reader has little to
say, or has much to say but does not know how to best respond to the
text. With practice (additional reading experiences) and guidance from
the teacher, the student can learn how to respond to a text in
conversation. As the reader continues to read, her ways for carrying on
the conversation emerge, and she finds that her writing also develops
because she uses these same ways when she writes about the text.
Finally, it is her formal writing (often essay responses) which provides
her with the most articulate medium for understanding how the text is
speaking to her. In her continual maturity as a reader, she comes to
I 259
i appreciate the hermeneutical power of writing as the dynamus of textual
discovery and its necessary interconnection to reading. She often finds,
in fact, that once she writes about a text, particularly a dense one, she is
able to return to the original text to re-see it. At this point in her
hermeneutical development, it is her writing which generates the j
necessary dialogue that encourages her to reread the original text or to j
read and respond to other, related texts.
Seen from the perspective of responding to a text in order to
construct meaning, writing becomes a natural and necessary activity in
textual understanding. This is why students in composition classrooms
foregrounding reading do not frequently encounter problems with
invention; their reading generates the necessary questions and
counterquestions which provide the occasion for their writing. When
I
i the text which initiates the dialogue is absent, students must invent their
i
own. For the literate students, there are likely many texts in their j
reading experiences which they can draw from, but for the initiate
reader and writer, who may have never read an entire book before,
there often is little or nothing for them to respond to.
Seen from these perspectives, one can see why Salvatori's choice
I j
of 'interconnection1 is an appropriate metaphor for the complex j
relationship that exists between reading and writing. Reading and
writing are not only connected activities, for they are not merely bound
together. Nor can one see reader and text as solely involved in a
'transactive' encounter; a reader does not merely move 'through'
t
t
i
260
reading to arrive at writing. As interconnected activities, reading and
writing constantly and simultaneously replace each other; through this
perpetual replacement of one activity with the other is generated the
dynamus for their continuation and transformation.
More than any other pedagogical theorist, Salvatori has begun to
investigate the characteristics and implications of these reading/writing
interconnections. She has demonstrated how an understanding of these
j interconnections is the basis for a reading and writing pedagogy and,
further, how these interconnections are also part of a larger and older
hermeneutical tradition— one which reenacts the same pedagogical scene
that her students experience: readers representing the texts that they
read.
Facts, Artifacts, and Counterfacts
Facts. Artifacts, and Counterfacts delineates the basic writing
program at the University of Pittsburgh. Two essays— Bartholomae's
"Facts, Artifacts and Counterfacts" and Salvatori's "The Dialogical
Nature of Basic Reading and Writing"— are the key theoretical chapters
in this study. In these essays, Salvatori shows ways by which Gadamer
is translated into her classroom, while Bartholomae misreads Harold
Bloom in his response to the classroom setting. In the remaining
chapters, written by several teachers in the Pittsburgh program,
i
| language praxis is foregrounded, but its response to language theory is
! 261
insistently maintained, so that theory and praxis are never separated.
Because of this necessarily subtle interconnection between theory and
praxis, Facts can be seen as a pedagogical study, and one of the first of
its kind.
In Facts. Artifacts, and Counterfacts. Bartholomae and Petrosky
discuss their course— a basic writing seminar entitled "Growth and
Change in Adolescence." They have structured their writing course
around a topic which would appeal to most entering freshmen. This
seminar is based entirely upon student response to readings about this
topic, the syllabus including: Maya Angelou's I Know Whv the Caged
Bird Sings. The Catcher in the Rye. Richard Rodriguez' Hunger of
Memory. Edgar Friedenberg's The Vanishing Adolescent. Gail Sheehy’ s
Passages, and Margaret Mead’ s Coming of Age in Samoa. The readings
move from autobiographical fiction and nonfiction on adolescence to j
i
! theoretical considerations of adolescent development. Further, the texts ;
i become more challenging (in many ways, more academic) as the course
! progresses. Bartholomae and Petrosky have thus chosen texts from
i
several disciplines and ethnic perspectives, providing students with j
examples of various types of narrative and expository discourse. The J
reading requirements also include outside texts that students self-select j
and read regularly in class. Students thus write by responding to texts
chosen for them and to those they choose on their own.
These classroom assignments can be interpreted as responses to
Gadamer’ s hermeneutical premises. Gadamer has emphasized that texts
262
only disclose meaning to readers when "what is said in the text begins to
find expression in the interpreter's own language" (Philosophical
Hermeneutics 57). The Pittsburgh curriculum begins on the students'
terms, dealing with issues that they would likely want to speak to.
Further, in keeping with Gadamer's hermeneutical notion that texts
disclose an 'excess of meaning' (Philosophical Hermeneutics 102), the
Pittsburgh curriculum presents both personal and theoretical viewpoints
on the issue of adolescence, thus encouraging their students to interpret
from many points of view.
Moreover, the writing that students do in this seminar is
exclusively writing about reading— in informal reading journals where
students react to what they have read and in more formal essay
responses which engage students in responding to important issues in the
text. In regard to the reading of journals, Bartholomae and Petrosky
invite students to "tell us...what stands out for you. Then, tell us what
things in your own life you can associate with what has stood out for
you" (53). From the onset, students are directed to write about
significant aspects of what they read and to make these insights a part of
their lives' experiences. In these journal assignments, one notes their j
j
pedagogical translation of Gadamer's focus on application in all
hermeneutical encounters. That is, what is interpreted in texts must be
related to the student's circumstances,
j In similar fashion, the formal essay topics move from close
! reading of the text to an application of the text's interpretation to the
i
j
i
| 263 i
1 1
J students' lives. For example, writing assignment #8 reads: "Review
i
i
Hunger of Memory. Rodriguez’ 'intellectual autobiography', and select
a section from each chapter that in some way represents the 'heart' of
that chapter. Use the sections you've chosen to explain what you see to
be Rodriguez’ view of his development from childhood to adulthood"
(67).. In this assignment, the student is asked to locate and explain
significant moments in Rodriguez’ development— that is, to synthesize
what they have read in the entire text in order to come to some j
i understanding about the nature of development. In Assignment #23, the |
i
students' personal responses to the readings are required. In regard to j
5 students reading Margaret Mead’ s Coming of Age in Samoa. j
• Bartholomae and Petrosky ask in part: "Explain what you see to be the
I
nature of the Samoan 'conflict' among girls in adolescence...go on to
write about "coming of age" in Samoa, and "coming of age" in America
(as you can understand it from your work this term). You may
certainly write about how your understanding of the American
experience differs from Sheehy's and Friedenberg's" (85). Here
students are asked to compare various interpretations of adolescence to
their own. They are invited to agree or disagree with eminent theorists
| and even, if they choose, to attempt to form their own theory of
I
adolescence. With both types of assignments, students consistently have
a frame of reference grounded in varying responses to the texts. These
two assignments exemplify the ways that students in the Pittsburgh
curriculum develop critical readings as they engage in writing
264
assignments that invite their responses. These assignments encourage
! students to define and describe adolescence through their reading,
writing, and discussion of that topic. Further, it is interesting to note
how assignment 23 builds on several of the previous readings, so that
students are encouraged to use their developing responses to adolescence
in their writing. In these varying reading and writing activities, the
student is engaged in hermeneutical responses.
Moreover, these assignments, carefully interconnecting reading
with writing, respond to Gadamer’ s emphasis on readers constantly
being reshaped by textual tradition. In the Pittsburgh curriculum's
writing assignments, students are never far away from a text which
encourages a dialogical relationship with them; their statements and
counterstatements, questions and counterquestions consistently focus on
i
how the text is challenging their prejudices. Further, by carefully
structuring the reading and writing assignments so that students must
’ loop back' into previously read texts, the Pittsburgh curriculum
encourages students to meaningfully revise (re-see) their writing. This
notion of re-seeing texts is how hermeneutical tradition has always
conceived of revision, but one that in many classrooms becomes a
mechanical process of rewording and reordering the parts of a student
essay that the teacher (often without student consent or understanding)
finds unacceptable.
I
] As students complete their writing assignments and when it is
I appropriate to the assignment, teachers of the seminar introduce reading
ways by which students can re-state and therefore understand what they
are reading: summarizing, evaluating, synthezising. These writing
‘ activities disclose how the Pittsburgh curriculum has responded to
i
! Gadamer's focus on the importance of translation in any hermeneutical
i
! interpretation.
In similar fashion, these basic readers and writers learn rules of
grammar and usage from their own writing. Teachers assess the nature
and the patterns of errors that each student manifests, and they then
attempt to leam the 'logic' behind these errors. The Pittsburgh group
thus continues the work of Mina Shaughnessy who also saw pattern and
meaning in the errors her students made. These teachers focus much
j more on revising for ideas and show that editing for surface errors is
the last stage of the writing sequence, or, from Gadamer's perspective,
writing's unconscious manifestation. In keeping with all of the reading
and writing activities of the course, teachers of the Pittsburgh
curriculum teach editing, not merely through the memorization of
rules, but by demonstrating that even in making these errors, their
students are constructing meaning. In this regard, the comments that
; teachers make on the drafts of student essays usually focus on the
meaning that students are creating. Here, and throughout the course,
the Pittsburgh curriculum translates the phenomenological perspective
of the human being as meaning maker into the classroom.
Facts is an exemplary pedagogical study. In reading and
rereading its three parts and seven chapters, one never senses a
266 I
dichotomy between theory and praxis, And though several assignments
and lessons are discussed, they are never treated in isolation from their
theoretical antecedents. One realizes in rereading this study why its
practical aspects (its writing assignments particularly) are placed in Part
| II, and not in an appendix at the end of the book. These assignments
i
take on greater meaning as evidence for the pedagogy that emerges
mainly because Bartholomae's theoretical essay is in Part I and
Salvatori's discussion of Gadamer comes in Part in . Fitted nicely
between Bartholomae and Salvatori, these writing activities can then
more comfortably respond to, and embellish, the language theory.
Facts is its own best example for why theory and praxis must reside
alongside each other and for why language pedagogy as a discipline
necessitates an ongoing dialogue between praxis and theory. In this
unending dialogue, new assignments are bom, and language theories are
revised.
Mariolina Salvatori has translated Gadamer's hermeneutics into
pedagogy in order to reconsider the nature of the reading and writing
classroom. Salvatori thus chooses to enter into a dialogue with her
students, not as a condescending gesture, but because she finds that she
and her students are engaged in the same kind of interpretive activity~
one that involves critical responses to reading. Her understanding of the
encounter between student and teacher differs significantly from the
! monological conception of the teacher's relationship to the student and
the static approach to reading and writing that theorists like Hirsch and
Bloom have portrayed.
i
i
i
i
| FOOTNOTES (CHAPTER 6)
1. In Facts. Artifacts, and Counterfacts. David Bartholomae and
Anthony Petrosky. Upper Montclair, NJ: Boynton/Cook
Publishers, Inc., 1986.
2. See particularly his Oralitv and Literacy. London: Metheun and
j Co. Ltd., 1982: 101-16.
i
! 3. Translated by David E. Linge. Berkeley, CA: University of
i California Press, 1976.
4. In Reclaiming Pedagogy. Patricia Donahue and Ellen Quandahl,
eds., Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern University
Press, 1989.
269
CHAPTER 7
A HERMENEUTIC PEDAGOGY
To place Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics in a pedagogical
scene is to provide meaningful alternatives to current pedagogies which
are structured on subject (reader) or object (text) philosophical
perspectives. A hermeneutic pedagogy foregrounds praxis, just as
Gadamer has shown in his Truth and Method how the particular
provides the necessary, ongoing representation of the universal in all
investigations in the human sciences. As Gadamer has noted, "In both
rhetoric and hermeneutics, then, theory is subsequent to that out of
t
which it is abstracted, that is, praxis" (Philosophical Hermeneutics 21).1
But how practical is a depiction of philosophical hermeneutics in
the classroom? Gadamer has argued that specific methods or detailed
heuristics cannot advance the interpretation of texts in the human
sciences. "Do's and dont's" and detailed lesson plans would be
unfaithful pedagogical translations of Gadamer’ s philosophical
■
! hermeneutics because the ken of the human sciences is not exact
I
knowledge. Rather, what pedagogical theorists need to consider is the
philosophical experience of the classroom that Gadamer's hermeneutics
suggests, that is, to gaze steadily at the object of consideration (the
classroom) through the perspective of philosophical hermeneutics.
Though such thinking will not give teachers "ways to teach composition
270
better," it will provide them with philosophical thinking to inform
their specific composition activities. Like the schema that the
phronimos uses in to interpret the moral event, so the pedagogical
theorist has a schema of philosophical hermeneutics in mind as he fixes
his gaze on the classroom: himself, his students, and particularly the
texts they read and write,
j A hermeneutic pedagogy enacts significant aspects of Truth and
Method and Gadamer's later essays: particularly, the activity of reading,
the attitude of the reader, and the nature of the text. This enactment, in
turn, asks the teacher to reconsider the classroom conversation
i
i
hermeneutically. i
In many ways, this final chapter is a philosophical exploration of
the classroom experience examined in Salvatori's essay "The Dialogical
Nature of Basic Reading and Writing," so it will not repeat Salvatori's
activities and commentary but will philosophically respond to them. In
so doing, this final chapter allows the classroom to critically respond to
the philosophical antecedents to reading and writing examined in
Chapter 2. i
Classroom Conversation
I
Gadamer has shown how conversation is central to philosophical
hermeneutics, and so Salvatori has enacted this conversation in the
classroom. Both Gadamer and Salvatori foreground the conversation
_________________ ?ZiJ
! between two partners. Salvatori has further suggested that the teacher’ s
i
task is daunting— to listen in the din of classroom conversation to each
student.
In a hermeneutic pedagogy, as Salvatori has shown,the teacher's
task is to listen carefully to her own and to her students' questions to see
how the conversation develops. Using Gadamer's focus on the priority
of the question, the teacher identifies false questions and encourages
herself and her students to restate distorted and boundless ones. These
are not techniques which the teacher teaches her students; rather,
students leam by example, from the teacher's conversation and that of
f
other students.
In a hermeneutic pedagogy, teachers focus on conversation's
never-ending movement. Throughout his works, Gadamer emphasizes
i
that conversation is an endless dialogue, and so has Salvatori noted how
the end of one class session may suggest the rupture in conversation, but
not its end. In a hermeneutic pedagogy, the teacher continues to find
ways to validate the question that the previous class experience left
unanswered. Whenever necessary, the teacher and students direct the
questioner back to the text to examine where the question emerged and
to evaluate its truth. Further, the questioner, the students, and teacher
continually see how questions emanate from preceding answers. Once
the questioner and the classroom are satisfied with the question, then his
peers and teacher help him to see where in the text an appropriate
! answer discloses itself. In a hermeneutic pedagogy, the teacher and
272
students realize that to interrupt the questioner by providing a truer
question or an answer to it is poor practice because it distorts the
unique dialogue emerging between questioner and text.
To foreground the question in classroom conversation is not to j
systematize the questioning process; to do so would focus on the
question's "methodological usefulness, which is ultimately trivial"
j ("Reason in the Age of Science 46).2 The value that Gadamer sees in the
i
question speaks to a hermeneutic pedagogy in significant ways, the
question having "a validity (that transcends all methodological usage)
according to which question and answer are utterly entangled with one
another" (Reason in the Age of Science 46). Teachers and students
i formulating a question can neither ignore the answer which came before
nor the answer which is to follow.
Finally, in conversation, there is no sense that both partners in
dialogue always begin on an equal intellectual footing. The I-Thou
relationship, as Gadamer has suggested, requires recognition, not
i equality. In a hermeneutic pedagogy, a teacher or a student can initiate
the conversation as long as the initiator recognizes the Thou's questions
and answers. A teacher can thus wield authority in this pedagogical
scene, but it is not the traditional authority of mastery of the other;
rather it is an understanding of the thou as a partner in interpretation.
Though the student partner may not possess the textual experience of the
i i
teacher, he is united with the teacher m his attempts at understanding the |
text before them.
273
The Nature of Discourse in Philosophical Hermeneutics
The focus on the dialectic of conversation in the classroom posits i
a particular type of textual response. As Gadamer has demonstrated in |
Truth and Method, a foregrounding of the question assumes a particular
discourse, from the first question that the text discloses. If the student
interpreter begins with the question that the text discloses, then her
focus is on the truth of the question and the answer which emerges. The
student reader allows discourse to emerge from the dialectical encounter
with the text. In focusing on how students respond to the text, teachers
therefore do not foreground structure in the discussion of student
writing or that of the text which is read, though a true question might j
I
very well concern structure. j
Gadamer has repeated in Truth and Method that true dialectic is
only possible if the partners fix their gaze on the subject of discussion.
In a hermeneutic pedagogy, the subject is invariably the text. By
focusing on the text, teachers and students are open to how what the text
says informs their responses. To ask students to investigate a topic that
has not emerged from textual dialogue is to move away from the
hermeneutical encounter, so hermeneutical activities cannot be
experienced. Patricia Donahue makes the distinction between what she
terms product-based versus process-based pedagogies: "'Process'
i
continues to command the attention of the profession, as if students
write about nothing, out of nothing" (Reclaiming Pedagogy 8 1).3 On
274
the contrary, philosophical hermeneutics' focus is consistently on the
reader’ s response to the text.
How then do teachers in a hermeneutic pedagogy treat dialectical
discourse? Teachers discuss the structure of an essay schematically. In
composing their essays or in studying a text, students realize that there
is a general movement of beginning, middle, and end (tentative though
it is), and they allow the textual dialogue to direct the number and
nature of the responses that a particular stretch of discourse may have
! or the type of ending their essay may take. Schematic notions of
discourse structure help reveal the central task of the writer: to open the
text so that it discloses true questions.
|
What to Read?
i
Since reading is the focus of a hermeneutic pedagogy, then
teachers and students need to carefully consider the selections of the
texts that they read. As previously discussed in Chapter 2 in regard to
the classical text, this is a problematic area both as a feature of I
Gadamer's hermeneutics and as a an issue of a hermeneutic pedagogy. (
The goal of interpretation in this classroom is for readers to make texts
speak; yet if, as Gadamer contends, interpretation involves an individual
I-Thou relationship between reader and text, then texts will speak
differently to each reader in the classroom, so that some texts which j
speak clearly to some will remain mute for others.
275
One option for the teacher is to ask students to select those texts
which speak to them, that is, to choose all of the texts which they plan to
interpret in the course. In some ways, this option is a solution to the I
dilemma of text selection, in other ways a problem. The teacher's
ongoing task is to see how these self-selected texts speak to their
readers: if the movement from one text to the other makes the
questions that students ask the text more enriching, if the text allows the
student to see more of his judgments as prejudices, and, finally, if the
text encourages the student to return to previous texts in order to revise
his initial interpretation. Revision (both as a reading and a writing
activity) is thus an essential critical activity in a hermeneutic pedagogy.
The pedagogy in Fact. Artifacts, and Counterfacts seems to have
effected a more meaningful response regarding the selection of texts in
\
a writing course. Students may self-select some of the texts. There
seems to be the hope that in reading these self-selected texts, students
will apply to these texts those reading activities which they experienced
in the classroom. But the readings in the basic writing seminar of Facts
Artifacts, and Counterfacts is not entirely texts that students have self-
i
selected. In fact, the bulk of the texts that students discuss in class are
those assigned to them by the teachers.
This University of Pittsburgh group of teachers has thought
deeply about texts and topics which speak to their students, correctly
assuming that a topic of general interest (in Gadamer’ s sense, a
'classical' or 'eminent' human concern) will encourage reading and j
276
make the rigors of textual interpretation less daunting to students. In
their day seminar, they have chosen the topic of adolescence; in the
; evening course the issue is work. Both topics present the possibility of
speaking to a large number of their students, since the day group of
students is essentially younger teenage college students, while the
evening group tends to be adult, part-time students who work. Thus
both topics speak to versions of the particular situations that most of
these students find themselves in.
The teachers of the Pittsburgh curriculum have then selected a
series of texts which provide the possibility of speaking in various
forceful ways to these significant issues. Their syllabus is an eclectic
mixture of popular and academic material: fictional and nonfictional
narratives and academic studies on the topic. And the texts seem to
become more challenging as the semester progresses— questioning and
counter-questioning the students' prejudices.
In these seminars, there is no focus on the various rhetorical
structures which have traditionally described these texts. Rather, in
hermeneutical fashion, students read these texts and respond to them
formally and informally. Issues of whether one work is expository,
another narrative, emerge in the textual dialogue and only become
i
I questions when a treatment of structure is an issue in the text's
disclosure of meaning. Such activities successfully translate Gadamer's
emphasis on form as being the unconscious correlate of textual
277
interpretation and on his conclusion that teaching structure in
contradistinction to meaning is unnatural.
Further, the Pittsburgh group's focus on a classical topic as the
occasion for textual dialogue is a valid pedagogical translation of
phenomenology as Gadamer and Heidegger perceive it. If
interpretation necessarily involves the disclosure of a text's excesses,
and if hermeneutics allows texts to respond to these excesses, then to
interpret a series of texts responding to one compelling issue is to
provide the possibility for enriching interpretations. Thus, teachers
allow themselves and their students to gaze at the issue's being
(adolescence or work), and in so doing to open up the possibility for
the issue to disclose true questions.
Thus in a hermeneutic pedagogy, the teacher locates a compelling
topic and selects (or has students select some or all of) a series of texts
about this issue. In establishing her syllabus, she arranges the texts so
that students are encouraged to re-read texts previously assigned.
I
In the selection of these texts, the teacher also considers the
potential of each text to move from a particular to a more universal
} perspective. In the human sciences, as Gadamer has shown, texts enrich
i the reader's self-understanding, so they speak of the general issues of
life and death that each reader faces. Gadamer speaks of these general,
universal issues that all human beings are drawn to:
I am even convinced of the fact that there are no people
j who do not 'think' sometime and somewhere. That
| means there is no one who does not form general views
j
1 278
about life and death, about freedom and human living
together, about the good and about happiness. These
views generally rest upon unacknowledged biases and
short-circuited generalizations, and perhaps one can say
that in the attempts at thought and conceptual
clarifications of the "philosopher" they find their
criticism and to that extent a certain legitimation, at least
for the one who thinks further. (Reason in the Age of
Science 58)
The texts used in a hermeneutic pedagogy therefore encourage students
to reconsider these human concerns, and in so doing, perhaps, to revise
their "unacknowledged biases and short-circuited generalizations." In
these experiences, students are asked to try on the "conceptual
clarifications of the philosopher."
A description of a hermeneutic pedagogy's choice of texts is not j
to deny its highly problematic nature. Teachers never know for certain
which texts will speak to students, nor do students know which texts
they self-select will speak to them. Further in selecting a 'classical'
topic for textual interpretation, teachers are never certain that it will
have the universal appeal that in 'theory' it should have.
In the selection of texts, Gadamer's image of the phronimos has
relevance to the teacher in a hermeneutic pedagogy. The decision
!
I
regarding the canon is one of the most fluid schemata that the teacher
brings to the composition classroom. His choice may speak to some
students, will assuredly not speak to all, and may in the end speak to
very few. But even in the possibility of these texts remaining mute for
a sizable number of students, the teacher can use these student responses
as valuable experience that can then inform his ongoing theoretical
279
questions regarding the appropriate canon for his composition course.
i !
In regard to the choice of texts, the teacher-theorist in a hermeneutic
pedagogy especially sees revealing evidence why reading and writing
pedagogy is a discipline within the human sciences.
i
i
| Reading's Interconnections to Writing
The issue of reading's interconnections to writing, a topic which
has begun to be investigated by Salvatori, is central to a hermeneutic I
pedagogy. It is a pedagogical translation of philosophical hermeneutics :
i that requires the teacher-theorist to keep complex philosophical
schemata in mind, as he incorporates both Gadamer's concepts of reader
and textual horizons and their fusion with the I-Thou concept of textual
dialectic. Gadamer has shown that central to all textual understanding is
the ongoing fusion of textual horizons with those of the reader, and he
has shown that there are never two horizons in hermeneutical
interpretation but one that fuses the temporal traditions of text and
reader. Similarly, the teacher in a hermeneutic pedagogy keeps in mind
that reading and writing are never separate but concomitant activities;
i
reading is therefore always writing because the text is always already
represented in writing. This is a classroom experience which Salvatori
carefully examined in the "The Dialogic Nature of Basic Reading and
Writing."
280
Gadamer gives an example for how humans think, and it provides
a philosophical explanation why reading is interconnected to writing.
| He notes:
Let’ s take a well-known example. When I hear a tone,
the primary object of my hearing is obviously the tone.
But I am also conscious of my hearing of the tone, and
by no means only as the object of a subsequent
reflection. A concomitant reflection always
accompanies hearing. A tone is always a heard tone,
: and my hearing of the tone is always intrinsically
involved. (Philosophical Hermeneutics 123)
In a hermeneutic pedagogy, writing becomes the "concomitant
reflection", the "heard tone," of reading. There is no temporal
relationship between reading and writing; that is, reading does not
antedate writing. Rather, as concomitant activities, reading and writing
necessarily accompany each other in textual interpretation.
In this regard, the teacher in a hermeneutic pedagogy keeps this
phenomenological understanding of reading's interconnections to
writing in mind: that writing is reading’ s concomitant reflection. She
understands that by showing students ways to translate their reading
through writing about it, they are also mirroring the dialectical
stmcture of thought— that is, thinking always involves reflection on
something, and it is manifested in the to-and-fro movement between
experience and the thinker's concomitant translation of it.
The Essay Assignment
A logical consideration, then, of a classroom foregrounding
reading's interconnections to writing is the nature of the writing
responses that the teacher orchestrates. If, in fact, hermeneutical
interpretation is how one reads in the human sciences, then questioning
and counterquestioning involve an understanding of the self. One
recalls that Gadamer calls any investigation in the human sciences a
form of self-understanding. In a hermeneutic pedagogy, the questions
that students ask are necessarily open, encouraging them to reflect on \
| the gaps in the text— further questions that the text can disclose about
themselves. This is why Salvatori foregrounds application in the basic
writing seminar. In her assignments, students necessarily apply the
text's experiences to their own, and by doing so, they attempt to
understand themselves more reflectively.
Teachers and students in a hermeneutic pedagogy consider these j
gaps as necessary elements in the texts they encounter. Of course, these
gaps do not elicit univocal answers; rather readers speak different
responses. The classroom thus examines the differences in the readers'
responses to these textual gaps. Though there are no 'right' answers to
these questions, there are 'true' readings, as Gadamer has shown,
t
directed by the reader's understanding of the question. To ask, for
example, why a particular character in a narrative chooses to move
away from his parents is not to articulate the character's single
j 282 i
________________________________________ i
motivation but to have readers search throughout the text for reasons
for how their reading states the character's reason for departure. In
this classroom, students and teachers examine the significance they
assign to their textual interpretations.
The texts that students interpret in a hermeneutic pedagogy are
more often texts from the human sciences which use 'natural' language
rather than the 'artificial' language of discourse in the technical and
natural sciences. Gadamer has shown that language in its natural state is
fluid; terms are necessarily ambiguous and metaphorical, whereas the
language of the natural sciences attempts to assign univocal meanings to
its terms. Therefore, in their responses to the texts, students in a
hermeneutic pedagogy explore the ambiguity of words and phrases
rather than their univocal understanding.
Evaluating Written Responses
i
In evaluating student responses in a hermeneutic pedagogy,
teachers consider the texts their students write as evidence for how their
students disclose textual gaps. Teachers also examine how these gaps
open the text up for a student’ s further questioning. The teacher
considers the development of a student's writing as unique, not in terms
of how it approximates the accepted 'academic' voice of college
discourse. The teacher’ s gaze is on the student's explanation of the
meaning possibilities of the text, not on the a priori clarity that j
283
expository writing seemingly demands. Ambiguity is at times an
appropriate response to a text truthfully interpreted.
Further, the evaluation of student texts in a hermeneutic pedagogy
(by teachers and peers) assumes that student prejudices are manifested in
their responses to texts. In a hermeneutic pedagogy, commonplaces are
considered prejudices, not beliefs to be avoided, because evaluators of
student texts realize that to silence a reader's prejudices is to block the
possibility for a truthful dialogue.
Gadamer says more about why the commonplace is central to his
hermeneutics:
There is always a world already interpreted, already
organized in its basic relations, to which experience
steps as something new, upsetting what has led our
expectations and undergoing reorganization itself in the
upheaval...Only the support of familiar and common
understanding makes possible the venture into the alien.
(Philosophical Hermeneutics 15)
Such a philosophical perspective on the commonplace suggests a
different way of commenting on student responses. In evaluating
student texts, a teacher does not call a commonplace a cliche, yet the
teacher can ask how a particular moment in a text calls a student's
tradition into question— encouraging the student to place his
commonplace at risk. A teacher in a hermeneutic pedagogy realizes that
neither she nor the student's peers can dislodge the student’ s prejudices i
by simply discounting them. As Gadamer has shown, prejudices can
only be represented within the textual encounter. Here, he adds that it is
284
the interpreter's familiar understanding of experience which makes its
questioning and transformation possible.
Though commenting on student writing thus focuses on the
possibility of meaning in a hermeneutic pedagogy, the evaluator also
considers surface error concerns. As Facts. Artifacts, and Counterfacts
has shown, even many surface errors reveal a student's attempt at
meaning-making. And teachers in a hermeneutic pedagogy first
consider the surface error as the a way of disclosing meaning. This
makes much surface error correction a less mechanical, more fluid task
of the human sciences.
Yet other surface errors are not the ken of the human sciences but
comprise the techne of writing. As a techne— a discipline distinct from
the human sciences— these features of writing are conceived of and
t
! taught differently. These issues range from the mechanical issues of j
i j
how to start a word processor to the more complicated technical mles
of how to cite sources on a "Works Cited" page of a term paper. Here
the question-answer dialectic of textual conversation is not the
appropriate method of instruction. MLA has rules for citing sources at
the end of a paper that students can master either by reading the MLA
style sheet or by being taught them in lecture.
In a hermeneutic pedagogy, the teacher knows that he has entered
a separate discipline here and proceeds with different activities. These
technical aspects of writing are driven by rules— blueprints— that the
students need to copy into their text. In these technical instances of the
285
writing classroom, the teacher shows students how this knowledge is
different and why he teaches it to them differently.
The evaluation of student writing from these technical
perspectives follows a similarly different format, where there are clear j
right and wrong applications to a particular set of writing requirements, j
Here the teacher and student mechanically correct these errors. The j
technical aspects of student writing take up much less of the students'
time in mastering them and much less of the teacher's time in correcting
them.
In a hermeneutic pedagogy, the teacher keeps in mind the clear
philosophical distinction between phronesis and techne, so that issues
which belong to the study of phronesis are not incorrectly considered
part of writing's techne and thus evaluated inappropriately.
Experiencing Reading Philosophically
All of the above manifestations of a hermeneutic pedagogy
suggest in various ways the significance of the activity of reading in
hermeneutical interpretation. It is reading which initiates the textual
dialogue. As with every term introduced by Gadamer, reading needs to
be considered in its philosophical context, and this is why the teacher's
!
; and students' responses toward reading are necessarily philosophical.
!
In a hermeneutic pedagogy, reading is a disciplined activity, one
that is not easily appreciated and understood by all students. Yet to say
286
that reading requires intellectual discipline (nous) is not to reserve it
j solely for the hermeneutical scholar. Like the methodology of techne
and episteme, interpreting texts in the human sciences assumes that there
are recognizable and different experiences which characterize this
study’ s meanings. These are often difficult activities for students to
apply because they are necessarily fluid— that is, students are encouraged
to appropriate these reading schemata as the textual encounter requires.
For some students, the fluidity of reading in the human sciences suggests
a lack of intellectual rigor, and they often find the more exacting
interpretation of the scientist and technician more appealing. For
others, these reading ways are threatening to them because they
encourage readers to exert their own authority on the text. Yet for
others, reading in the human sciences provides a genuine encounter with
i
self-understanding. These conflicting student responses are ones that the
teacher in a hermeneutic pedagogy accepts, for the nature of
interpretation in the human sciences is particular and therefore has its
own "proper pleasure" that not all students are drawn to.4
Perhaps the most challenging aspect of reading in the human
sciences is the reader locating and listening to "the heightening of the
inward ear" (Truth and Method 496).5 The reader's task is a very
intense and easily distracted listening. Without the extralinguistic cues
; of face-to-face conversation, student readers often face a mute text. The
I
| teacher in a hermeneutic pedagogy realizes the special type of listening,
the unique conversation, that is reading, and attempts in various ways
287
(all depending on the classroom moment) to make the text less mute.
This awakening of the student’ s inward ear is rarely achieved by the
teacher showing the students where the text speaks to him but by
returning to the text with the student to examine the question the student
has asked of the text and often by attempting to help him revise it. Here
is where the teacher's authority is most keenly tested: students wanting
to accept the teacher's answer and the teacher wanting the student to
j
make the text speak for himself. In a hermeneutic pedagogy, the I-Thou
experience of human communication is keenly felt by both teacher and
student. The teacher continues to suggest to the student that he in fact
can make the text speak and that by making the text speak, the teacher
; can at last enter into conversation with him. This same I-Thou
i
experience in regard to making texts speak is also fostered by the
student's peers.
In a hermeneutic pedagogy, reading is not seen as a technical skill
of decoding. It is not in 'reciting' the text that students ever understand
it but rather in responding to it. Reading is thus an art in the human
sciences whose perfection is never achieved, but whose possibility for
critical understanding is open to all students and teachers. Those
students and teachers who are willing to explore reading's power not in
a reading manual but in its praxis will likely continue to change as
critical readers.
i 288
A Focus on Language
Just as reading plays a central role in a hermeneutic pedagogy, so
| does its medium language. For Gadamer, understanding can be
I
expressed in a myriad of ways; that is why language users are "always
already at home in language" (Philosophical Hermeneutics 63).
Language does not serve as a sign to meanings outside of it; rather all
meaning is possible because meaning is also inside language. This is the
i
1 basis for Gadamer's and Heidegger’s concept of the hermeneutic circle,
l
i as was examined in Chapter 1.
Teachers in a hermeneutic pedagogy assume the power of
language as an expressive medium. Their concern is with the ways that
students can best express their meaning through language, and they
i
j never assume that language is an impediment to their students’ thinking.
Further, teachers demonstrate in the texts students read and in those
they write how expressive a medium language is— seeing each word,
phrase, or sentence as a unique expression, not ever equated with a
! synonym.
Teachers in this classroom qualify that their understanding of
I
language's expressive character only pertains to natural language— not to 1
the artificial language of the applied and natural sciences. In these
disciplines, words have exacting definitions that contrast to the
i necessarily multivocal use of language one finds in the human sciences, j
Where the teacher of language in the human sciences encourages her j
289
|
students to play with language's ambiguity, a teacher in the natural or
applied sciences restricts language's meaning to its univocal potential.
Thus a teacher in a hermeneutic pedagogy is unable to teach his students
how to read a physics texts, how to write a laboratory report, or how to
effectively compose a technical manual. These forms of discourse are
products of a language system that restricts rather than encourages
language’ s natural tendency toward metaphorical associations.
Though a hermeneutic pedagogy embraces language's
i possibilities, the teacher in this classroom is aware that certain texts do
not lend themselves to the textual experiences of the human sciences.
Openness and Play
i
The language games that the notion of language as possibility for
meaning encourages naturally allow students to play with language, to
be open to language’ s possibility as surprising its user in the ways its
meanings are disclosed. Yet just as the selection of texts in the
classroom responding to philosophical hermeneutics is subtle and
ultimately problematic, so are the experiences of openness and play
extremely difficult for the teacher to consciously orchestrate and
sustain.
Linguistic play in the classroom is assuredly not achieved by
i
teachers exhorting their students to have fun with language, or to see
learning as a game. Gadamer is not suggesting that linguistic play is
290
orchestrated by students using commercial language games in the
classroom. In Parts I and III of Truth and Method. Gadamer has
affirmed that play is ontologically prior to the linguistic event of
understanding, and as such it manifests itself whenever true
understanding occurs. So teachers who focus on the event of linguistic
understanding will allow for the possibility of play to emerge.
The experience of play that students in true dialogue encounter
has an almost ineffable character, only hinted at in the language of
students who are immersed in thought: they are "caught up" in the
discussion," or they "forget about time" as they read an immensely
interesting book. In both expressions, there is the suggestion that the
I
participants have for a moment forgotten their temporal condition— have !
lost themselves in language's to-and-fro-movement. In an interesting
paradox to Gadamer's insistence that all hermeneutical interpretation is
informed by history, those who play in thought temporarily forget
themselves in order to appreciate the unending movement that the text
or partner in conversation initiates.
Play is a central phenomenological concept for Gadamer because
it explains his focus on the event of understanding. If understanding is
an event, then meaning is a result, rather than the goal, of
understanding. Though teachers in the human sciences cannot give to
students a yardstick or even a schema to use on texts in order to
experience play, play is an activity which in its sheer delight encourages
the student's continual search for it in face-to-face conversation and in
291
conversation with texts. Play provides the reading and writing
classroom with the most primordial justification for its existence. j
i
| Pedagogy as Hermeneutics
t
♦
»
!
A hermeneutical pedagogy provides a curious experience for the
teacher who realizes that the significant theoretical activities which she
uses to philosophically understand the classroom are the same ones she
attempts to impart to her students as they leam to read and discuss
dialectically. Both pedagogical theorist and student interpreter are like
Aristotle's phronimos as they apply theory or interpretive activities to
experience the text. Neither the theory nor the reading ever leads to a
fully satisfying pedagogical theory or to a completely successful textual |
interpretation. Yet both pedagogy and reading (like all moral
knowledge) are enriched by their continual relation to praxis.
The teacher in a hermeneutic pedagogy in this regard— as teacher
and theorist— does not find himself tom between two opposing activities:
experiencing the classroom versus understanding theory. Rather, the
pedagogy that he theorizes is continually tested in instances of student
(and his own) reading, writing, and speaking. Only by seeing both
reading and writing pedagogy and hermeneutical interpretation as
legitimate activities within the human sciences can the teacher see their
similarities and can the experience from one activity enrich the other.
292
Philosophical Hermeneutics as a Response to Current Language
Pedagogies
The details of a hermeneutic pedagogy can also place currently
practiced pedagogies into sharper focus. The salient feature of a
hermeneutic pedagogy is its steady focus on the text and its concept of
textual and classroom conversation as an intimate partnership of two.
Gadamer's hermeneutics affirms that conversation is not orchestrated by
several voices; rather it begins with the often overlooked commonplace
that one can only listen to one person (and engage in one conversation)
at a time and read one text at a time. From this perspective of a
partnership, a hermeneutic pedagogy assumes that texts are interpreted
by two partners, for only one listener, rather than a group of listeners,
is engaged in conversation with her partner at any interpretive moment.
These assumptions about human conversation and the focus on the
text are different in collaborative learning pedagogies, which encourage
a multiplicity of voices in constructing knowledge and assume that
knowledge is acquired as these voices interact and jocky for positions of
authority.6 Consensus is no longer dialectical exchange but group
compromise. Ultimately, it seems to me, in a collaborative learning
pedagogy, knowledge is often achieved not by the to-and-fro movement j
of dialectic but by the authority wielded by the more powerful speakers
over the more timid participants. Further, knowledge no longer
293
develops through personal encounter but through group decisions which
may not include the dialectical conclusions of any one of its members.
Further, in a collaborative learning pedagogy, the text no longer
plays a central role in meaning-making. Where the text in a
hermeneutic pedagogy is central, in collaborative learning pedagogies it
loses out to group decisions. At its most extreme, knowledge becomes
whatever the group says it is, in contrast to philosophical hermeneutics,
which necessarily encounters textual tradition in any response it makes.
In a hermeneutic pedagogy, past necessarily speaks to present through
readers attempting to unlock the silence of the past; in collaborative
learning pedagogies, the tradition of the present may be the only text
consulted.
Similarly, in vitalist pedagogies, the text again loses its central
role. Vitalists assume that knowledge originates from the self, not in
the self s encounter with tradition.7 Such a pedagogy thus favors those
students who have read many texts and can initiate textual dialogue by
themselves, while it penalizes those students to whom the textual
encounter is rather new or totally unfamiliar. To ask these
inexperienced readers to compose on topics that assume previous
reading is to limit their ability to speak to texts and may block their
written speech entirely.
In starting with the self, vitalists ignore the power of the reader-
text encounter to disclose meaning. A vitalist pedagogy invalidates the
dialectical structure of thought, seeing knowledge-making, not as a to-
and-fro movement between subject and tradition, but as a universe onto
itself within subjective consciousness.
A hermeneutic pedagogy thus serves to encourage dialogue
among those who are silenced by the more powerful voices in a
j collaborative learning pedagogy and among those readers who are
inexperienced questioners of texts. In its focus on a partnership of two, ;
a hermeneutic pedagogy can speak to those who are overlooked in
group decisions and who have yet to explore the possibilities of their
own thinking in making meaning.
The Antecedents of a Hermeneutic Pedagogy
I
Clearly, a hermeneutic pedagogy has its antecedents in the
| history of hermeneutics explored in Truth and Method and Gadamer’ s
i
later essays. Gadamer finds the birth of hermeneutics as a discipline in
the European Romantic period of the nineteenth century "Historically,
it is worthy of note that while rhetoric belongs to the earliest Greek
philosophy, hermeneutics came to flower in the Romantic era as a
consequence of the modem dissolution of firm bonds with tradition"
(Philosophical Hermeneutics 21). Gadamer contends that the Romantics
began to question the need to turn to tradition in order to understand j
their circumstances.
i
i
Yet it seems to me that the hermeneutical impulse antedates its
i
; more articulated expression in Romantic Europe. Hermeneutics
_____________________________________________________________295 |
emanates from a far more significant human experience— the ongoing
challenge of appropriating the alien. Gadamer's focus on hermeneutics
results from his concern with translation as a basic human event: "Thus
it was that the many-layered problem of translation became for me the
model for the linguisticality of all human behavior in the world" j
(Philosophical Hermeneutics 19). For Gadamer, to understand the
world is to translate it in language.
With the advent of literacy in Greece (at about 700 b.c.),
translation involved not only understanding the speech of others but
making familiar their written texts as well. This seems to me where a
hermeneutical pedagogy finds a significant historical antecedent— that
moment when readers began to ask what a text meant and how to
express this meaning to others. Gadamer notes: "For hermeneutics is
primarily of use where making clear to others and making clear to
oneself has been blocked" (Philosophical Hermeneutics 92).
The significance of these textual questions: What does the text
mean? How can I explain the text to others? is as central today as it was
in Classical Greece. And the answers to these questions are still ,
beckoning their interpreter to pursue the never fully disclosed horizons
of their being.
296
FOOTNOTES (CHAPTER 7)
I
i
1. Translated by David E. Linge. Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1976.
»
I
i
i 2, Translated by Frederick G. Lawrence. Cambridge, MA: MIT
i Press, 1981.
i 7
3. Patricia Donahue and Ellen Quandahl, eds. Carbondale and
Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989.
4. In his Poetics. Aristotle notes in regard to tragedy: "Not every
kind of pleasure should be required of a tragedy, but its own
proper pleasure" (1453b) in TTie Basic Works of Aristotle.
Richard McKeon, ed. New York: Random House, Inc., 1941.
| Similarly, I contend that the human and natural sciences elicit
their own proper pleasures.
5. New York: Continuum, 1975.
6. See particularly Kenneth Bmffee's "Social Construction,
Language, and the Authority of Knowledge: A Bibliographical
Essay" in College English (December 1986): 773-90. Here,
Bruffee interprets various theorists to support his understanding
of classroom collaboration. One of his conclusions is: "Students
leam better through non-competitive group work than in highly
individualized and competitive classrooms" (787).
7. The most cogent spokesperson for a vitalist pedagogy is Peter
Elbow. His Writing With Power. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1981, is a thorough examination of his vitalist
: premises.
297
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