MARTIN HEIDEGGER (1889-1976)

If Schleiermacher devoted his attention on the question concerning the possibility of a universal hermeneutics, and if Dilthey focused on the question concerning the epistemological foundation of hermeneutics, the German phenomenologist Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was preoccupied with the question concerning the ontological foundation of hermeneutics, and was determined to prove that ultimately human understanding and existence are themselves hermeneutic. With such a project, Heidegger subsequently radicalized Dilthey's efforts of grounding the Geisteswissenschaften on hermeneutics by claiming that even the Naturwissenschaften, as an outcome of human understanding, are also grounded on hermeneutics. By combining Kierkegaardian and Nietzschean strains of existentialism with Husserlian phenomenology, this controversial, but extremely influential, contemporary thinker formulated his own distinctive hermeneutic theory in his celebrated work Sein und Zeit (Being and Time).

Heidegger's Circular Ontology

John Caputo, in his essay Retrieval and the Circular Being of Dasein, invites our attention to the circular motif in Sein und Zeit. He claims that there are three main circles in this dense and very difficult philosophical work: namely, the ontological circle, that demonstrated the circular nature of human existence; the hermeneutic circle, that proved the circular nature of human understanding; and the strategic circle, that applied the very same circular hermeneutics in investigating the question on the meaning of human existence.

In establishing the first circle-that is the ontological circle-Heidegger appropriated a religious theme present in Plato's mystical Pythagoreanism and in Kierkegaard's Christian philosophy: the idea of man's fallen nature. In Plato's philosophical anthropology, man is thought to be originally part of the Eternal One. But his birth into his earthly and material existence tainted, and made him forget about, his divine past. This is Plato's idea of man's fallen nature, and redemption for him can be attained by an anamnhsis (anamnesis), meaning, a recollection of the past.

As a Christian thinker, the Danish philosopher and theologian Soren Aabye Kierkegaard's (1813-1855) also believed that human nature is fallen. But his notion of redemption is radically opposite with that of Plato's backward moving anamnesis, for Kierkegaard thinks that Christian redemption can only be achieved by a spiraling movement towards the future, a Gjentagelse or repetition. Whereas Plato thought that eternity is essentially situated in the past, Kierkegaard believes that eternity is in the future.

Heidegger practically synthesized these two similar themes with diametrically opposed movements in his inquiry into the meaning of human existence. Like Plato and Kierkegaard, Heidegger also framed his investigation taking time as his backdrop. The past, the primeval and the originary concern of man is his care for the future, or his futuristic projection to actualize his possibilities. But the present, with all its hassles and other everyday concerns, tranquilizes this original concern for the future. Man subsequently forgets his futuristic projection, conforms to the worries, pleasantries and trivialities of the present, and go for the easy way. For Heidegger, falling means falling from the past as well as falling from the future. By losing his hold on the past and the future, man will start to drift into a life that is devoid of direction and meaning, but is filled with disillusionment, anxiety, and restlessness. This is what Heidegger meant when he claims that man has a fallen nature. Man, sooner or later, will lose his individuality and disappears into the same herd that was much detested by Nietzsche. If man has to search for his authentic existence, he has to retrieve his primeval and originary concern from his forgotten past. But such retrieval will only start to happen when man comes face to face with the idea of his own death as his ultimately real possibility. An authentic contemplation of his own death will forcefully remind him of his own individuality and the finiteness of his existence. This shock will make him retrieve his original concern and move on with his futuristic projection.

If redemption has a backward movement for Plato, and a forward movement for Kierkegaard, it has a circular movement for Heidegger. Here, redemption means Wiederholung, or retrieval, of the past's futuristic concern.

Heidegger's Circular Hermeneutics

Heidegger argues that since the Being of man is circular, his mode of understanding also is circular. This leads us, then, to Sein und Zeit's second circle, the hermeneutic circle. Here, Heidegger returns to the idea of man's fallen nature. Since man is falling and drifting away from his authentic being, the concepts that he sees are also concepts that are falling and drifting away from their authentic meanings. One of the hallmarks of man's fallen nature is his tendency to take the easy way, which in the sphere of understanding creates the tendency to passively accept the commonplace and superficial meaning of any given phenomenon. In relation to the fallen man, therefore, phenomena are also fallen in the sense that they are encrusted with inauthentic meanings. There are two basic ways in which phenomena can be hidden. Heidegger says: "In the first place, a phenomenon can be covered up in the sense that it is still quite undiscovered. It is neither known nor unknown. Moreover, a phenomenon can be buried over." The second type of being hidden refers to a phenomenon that has already been discovered but is being encrusted again with inauthentic meaning to the point of distortion. The second type of being hidden is the predominant form of covering, at the same time the more dangerous one for the reason of its being deceptive, misleading and stubborn.

With encrusted phenomena, interpretation has to commence by clearing the distorting crusts. Interpretation, in this sense, had to be violent. The violent procedures of Abbau, or Destruktion, are intented to shake loose and dismantle the crusts in order to retrieve the more originary meaning of a given phenomenon.ⁱ For Heidegger, this is phenomenology, based on the Greek idea of apojanesqai ta jaiomena (apophainesthai ta phainomena), meaning "to let that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself." At this point Heidegger still appears faithful to the phenomenological method established by his mentor Edmund Husserl (1855-1938). But a systematic bifurcation occurred that demarcated what was Husserlian and what eventually becomes distinctively Heideggerian. Heidegger could not accept the Husserlian requirement of Einklamerung, the bracketing of all subjectivities of the interpreter's life-world. In fact, Heidegger denied the possibility of such a transcendental procedure, and demonstrated instead that understanding and hermeneutics is mediated by the very same subjectivities of the interpreter's life-world.

For Heidegger Verstehen (understanding), which is primarily pragmatic, existential and non-methodic, is the starting point of Auslegung (interpretation). Auslegung is the Ausarbeitung (working out) of Verstehen. Verstehen and Auslegung, therefore, are different only in terms of quantitative degree. Qualitatively speaking, the two operations are the same. Both Verstehen and Auslegung proceed like fishing with nets, where the phenomenon is the fish and the net is the fore-structures of understanding. Just as the fisherman has to cast his net to get a catch, the subject also has to cast the fore-structures of his understanding over a phenomenon in order to capture its meaning. It is the casting (movement from the subject) and the capturing (movement towards the subject) that create the circular hermeneutic pattern.

For Heidegger, understanding has three forestructures: Vor-habe (fore-having), Vor-sicht (foresight), and Vor-griff (fore-grasping). Vor-habe, or fore-having, refers to the act of possessing in advance the holistic idea of the phenomenon under investigation including the system to which such a phenomenon belongs. It has something to do with the possession of a sweeping overview of the phenomenon. Graphically, we may represent the scope of Vor-habe with the outer circle of the configuration below.

Vor-sicht, or foresight, refers to act of seeing in advance the general schema of the phenomenon under investigation. Graphically, we may represent its scope with the inner circle of the configuration above. The difference between Vor-habe and Vor-sicht lies in the expanse of their focus. Whereas Vor-habe is concerned with the phenomenon and its circumscribing system, Vor-sicht is immediately concerend with the phenomenon itself. Lastly, Vor-griff, or fore-grasping, is the act of having in advance an articulated system of concepts useful in the capturing the details of the phenomenon under investigation. Graphically, we may represent its scope with the grids inside the inner circle of the configuration above. The difference between Vor-griff and Vor-sicht again lies in the expanse of their focus. Whereas Vor-sicht is concerned with the holistic idea, Vor-griff is concerned with the details.

Since Verstehen and Auslegung are qualitatively the same, both of them take these fore-structures as their starting point. Once cast, these forestructures will constitute the horizon, that will be filled later on by the phenomenon. The crucial difference between Verstehen and Auslegung is the fact that the latter involves a conscious accumulation of the hermeneutic forestructures.

Heidegger's third circle, the strategic circle, refers to his own application of the very same hermeneutic circle to unearth the mystery of human existence.

EMILIO BETTI�S OBJECTION

The integration of the objective and the subjective in the dialectical loop of Heidegger's hermeneutic circle was diagnosed by the modernist theologian and romanticist philosopher Emilio Betti (1890-1968) as eventually a subjective project. Though Betti accepted Heidegger's radical finding that human understanding must be an interplay of life-worlds, the former sees that such a process would ultimately neglect the total otherness as well as the autonomous logic of the text. The hermeneutic circle can only perceive the sameness of the other, and can be blind to the otherness of the other. In his work Allgemeine Auslegungslehre als Methodik der Geisteswissenschaften (Hermeneutics as the General Methodology of the Geisteswissenschaften), Betti wrote that Heidegger's circle is capable of "deriving only what is meaningful or reasonable to oneself and missing what is different and specific in the other or, as the case may be, bracketing it as a presumed myth."

EMILIO BETTI�S OBJECTION

With Heidegger's casting of the fore-structures of understanding and the capturing of a phenomenon's meaning, a circular pattern is formed. The German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (born 1900) gives this pattern a further turn, finally plotting the multiple loops of dialectical hermeneutics. Heidegger had a powerful influence on Gadamer. In the latter's essay Reflections on my Philosophical Journey, Gadamer admits: "writing remained a torment for me. I had the terrible feeling that Heidegger was standing behind me and looking over my shoulder." From Heidegger, he got his foundational idea that human understanding is historical. But his adherence to Heidegger's hermeneutic circle made him another target of Betti's objection that is founded on the radical difference between subjectivism and objectivism. But Gadamer, in his work Wahrheit und Methode (Truth and Method), eludes this objection, by pointing out that Betti's perceived distinction between subjectivism and objectivism is unwarranted. He claims that objectivism, Betti's ideal, is a double- faced stand. At one angle it appears to profess humility at the face of the object, and proclaims that it is the object that is the measure of truth. But at another angle it is pure human arrogance, as it struggles to secure the subject to become the ultimate locus and arbiter of truth. Gadamer explains that objectivism is in fact based on an extremely subjective conception of human understanding, which presumes that the human mind can objectively grasp the real. In this sense, objectivism is just a pretext of subjectivism.

By deconstructing the ideological moorings beneath the subjectivist-objectivist opposition, Gadamer is left with the more obvious tension between the subject and the object, or between the I and the other. Consequently, he also tried to disable this tension this time not by deconstructing its moorings but by constructing an entirely new model of the relationship between the subject and the object, of the I and the other, through the idea of interpretation as a game. Gadamer argues that in playing a game, a player ceases to stand outside the game for he is totally and wholly participating in such a game. Consequently, he says in the same essay

For when one plays a game, the game itself is never a mere object; rather, it exists in and for those who play it, even if one is only participating as 'spectator'. In this context, I think, the inappropriateness of the concept of a 'subject' and an 'object' is evident.

In a game, the player loses the status of a subject just as the game loses the status of an object as they swirl into the dialectical logic of a play. This is for Gadamer the model that should be followed by the process of interpretation.

In Wahrheit und Methode Gadamer's greatest opponent is not Betti's objectivism but the Enlightenment's greatest prejudice: the prejudice against prejudice itself. What was originally a word that meant pre-judgment was transformed during the Enlightenment into a word that carries the most pejorative of connotations. Collectively speaking, prejudices are embodied in culture,ⁱⁱ sensus communis,ⁱⁱⁱ judgment and taste. These humanist concepts are the essential parts of a body of practical knowledge that we inherit from tradition whose function is to make us understand and act in a given situation, to decide what is good or bad, and what is beautiful or not beautiful. These are the practical ideals of a community. But with the emergence of the Enlightenment's obsession for the for the scientific, the objective and the theoretical these humanist concepts of culture, sensus communis, judgment and taste were all seen as too subjective and were consequently anathematized. In the field of hermeneutics, this Enlightenment's prejudice against prejudice finds its fullest articulation in Husserl's methodic bracketing of all prejudices. But like his old master Heidegger, Gadamer sees the futility of such a Husserlian operation, and argues instead for the necessity of prejudice in human understanding and interpretation.

Not all prejudices, however, are useful. Gadamer makes a distinction between a blind prejudice, and an enabling prejudice. Yet he gives no foolproof set of rules in determining what particular type a given prejudice is. To know whether any given prejudice is blind or enabling can never be established by any mono-logical reflection, but only through the dialectical logic of the game. Gadamer's conception of the Heideggerian hermeneutic circle is precisely the process of sorting out the enabling prejudices from the blind ones.

What constitutes as the fore-structures of understanding for Heidegger, is what Gadamer calls the horizon. For him horizon means the set of given knowledge and prejudices that always circumscribes the subject, forming the starting point of human understanding. But unlike Heidegger, Gadamer is emphasizing the mutability and revisable nature of this horizon. This is the precise moment when Gadamer plots a second loop, as well as the other succeeding loops, over the Heideggerian hermeneutic circle, when he claims that a horizon can change by an exposure to other horizons. His model of the interaction between two subjective horizons is that of a dialogue. The aim of this dialogue is an eventual Horizontverschmelzung, or fusion of horizons, of two subjects as they accomplish through a common language a sharing of their prejudices.

Gadamerian hermeneutics is modeled after this same dialogue, and is aimed towards the same Horizontverschmelzung. But an obvious question confronts us at this point: how can we talk of a dialogue between a subject-that is, the reader or the interpreter-and an object-that is the text? How can a dialogue ensue between a person and a non-person? In the essay Reflections on my Philosophical Journey, Gadamer rhetorically raised this same question in the following manner?

But how is it with the artwork, and especially with the linguistic work of art? How can one speak here of a dialogical structure of understanding? The author is not present as an answering partner, nor is there an issue to be discussed as to whether it is this way or that. Rather, the text, the artwork, stands in itself.

He insists that interpretation is indeed a dialogue, though dialogue here must be taken in a somewhat nuanced fashion. Between the subject/interpreter and an object/text, the dialogue takes place during the process of reading. When the former, with his/her given horizon, approaches the latter, and its given horizon, the former can reflect on his/her own horizon and be able to attain a critical level of self-consciousness. Along the process of struggle over meaning, the subject/interpreter may repeatedly transcend and modify his own horizon while simultaneously pulling the object/text from its initial horizon until some sort of a Horizontverschmelzung is achieved. In Wahrheit und Methode, Gadamer says:

He projects before himself a meaning for the text as a whole as soon as some initial meaning emerges in the text. Again, the latter emerges only because he is reading the text with particular expectations in regard to a certain meaning. The working-out of this fore-project, which is constantly revised in terms of what emerges as he penetrates into the meaning, is understanding what is there.

Thus, Gadamer is clear that the hermeneutic circle does not consist of a single loop, as suggested by Heidegger, but a number of loops until the fullest possible fusion is achieved.

With Gadamer's dialogue and Horizontverschmelzung, the temporal and cultural distances, which were perceived as dangerous epistemological precipices by both Schleiermacher and Dilthey, would no longer appear destructive to human understanding and interpretation. On the contrary, they are now seen as constructive to human understanding and interpretation. Cultural and temporal distances in effect can function as filters that discriminate the classical and the enduring prejudices from the mass of time-bound, and culturally idiosyncratic prejudices of any given text. With this, Gadamer liberated the text from its bondage to the authorial intention and declared it fully autonomous. In the field of historical investigation this Gadamerian stance over the Romanticist epistemological precipices is what is termed as effective-historical consciousness. In Wahrheit und Methode, he clarifies this concept:

If we are trying to understand a historical phenomenon from the historical distance that is characteristic of our hermeneutical situation, we are always subject to the effects of effective-history. It determines in advance both what seems to us worth enquiring about and what will appear as an object of investigation, and we more or less forget half of what is really there...

The highly nationalistic trend in current Filipino historiography-a historiography that is busily engaged with the re-interpretation of history from our own perspective and from the point of view of our current problems and concerns, a historiography aptly labelled by Renato Constantino as partisan scholarship-finds its epistemological foundation and justification from this same concept of effective-historical consciousness.

Gadamer's notion of dialogue was actually modeled after the Hegelian dialectical movement of thesis-antithesis-synthesis. But there is a glaring difference between Gadamerian dialogue and Hegelian dialectics. For Hegel, dialectics is ultimately the plot-structure of his grand narrative that culminates with the attainment of the most sublime truth, the absolute spirit. But Gadamer opted to banish the Hegelian truth at the end of his dialogue. The ironies of the title Wahrheit und Methode unveil themselves at this point.^iv First, the key word Warheit seems to promise truth, as we ordinarily understand truth to be. But Gadamer's notion of truth is radically different from that of Hegel's idea encapsulated in the phrase das Wahr ist das Ganz (truth is the whole), and much more from the classical idea embodied in the defintion adequatio intellectus rei (conformity of the mind with the thing). His idea of truth is basically Heideggerian. He says: "what man needs is not only a persistent asking of ultimate questions, but the sense of what is feasible, what is possible, what is correct, here and now!" His truth is always existential, the truth of the here and now. He even thinks that capturing the Hegelian, or the classical, truth, or the pretension of capturing such truth can be dangerous for humanity. Gadamer cited that science's obsession for such truth is transforming science into a total technocracy, heralding "the 'cosmic night' of the forgetfulness of being."^v

Second, the key word Methode seems to promise a method, as we ordinarily understand method to be. Surprisingly, the work does not deliver any method at all. Gadamer is determined to detach understanding and interpretation from the Enlightenment's obsession for the objective and the theoretical, that presupposes a rigorous and mathematical methodology. Ultimately the search for truth, in the Gadamerian sense, is not methodic endeavor but an inter-subjective as well as practical project. In this sense, understanding and interpretation resemble Aristotle's epistemological idea of (((((((s (phronesis), which Gadamer defines, in his work Philosophical Hermeneutics, as "a knowledge within the concrete situation of existence." Phronesis is Aristotle's practical science that is intimately connected with moral judgment. Similar to moral judgment, interpretive judgment can happen only during the same moment of interpretation, and outside this concrete and existential moment interpretive judgment is nothing but an empty schema. Both phronesis and interpretation are things that do not possess the teachability of scientific methodology, but can only be exercised and perfected in praxis. "This implies," Gadamer says, in his the essay Reflections on my Philosophical Journey, "an inner link with ethos." Moral judgment, understanding and interpretation are an ethos, a way of life. Just as moral judgment can be achieved and perfected in a morally upright life, understanding and interpretation can be achieved and perfected in life devoted to understanding and interpretation. Hermeneutics, in this sense, is closer to art than to science, and closer to the art of life itself than to any other art. In the end, Wahrheit und Methode declares that Wahrheit can never be captured by any Methode, capturing the Gadamerian Warheit is reserved for the phronetic act of dialogue.

Gadamer's hermeneutic philosophy ultimately is not a method, but a pathway of experience. It is the cure against objectivism's arrogance. Its doctrine of humility does not consist of proclaiming that it is the object that is the measure of truth, but of acknowledging the subject's inherent epistemological and horizonal limitations and of opening the subject's horizon to conversation. "This means, however," says Gadamer in the same essay, "constantly recognizing in advance the possibility that your partner is right, even recognizing the possible superiority of your partner." Indeed, hermeneutics is a way of life.