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June 8, 2005
Gadamer, Part II
Several months ago I noted a connection that I saw between some ethical ideas involving honesty and Hans-Georg Gadamer's concept of "play" in Truth and Method. Gadamer, it turns out, is interested in describing the process of human understanding not as it "should" be, but as it actually is (i.e., ontologically). Hermeneutics, the interpretation of texts -- or language, or art, or whatever -- is, in Gadamer's exposition, not a process or a method aiming at some "perfect" or "absolutely valid" interpretation, but rather forms the ontological mode of understanding itself.
This is opposed to the Romantics, who saw all interpretation and understanding as aiming at some transcendental truth. A critique of transcendental or absolute truth is not, of course, uniquely Gadamer's, although his critique is especially lucid and powerful. But what makes Truth and Method so audaciously appealing to me is that while he rejects absolutes, he refuses to abandon the concept of truth per se. Ultimately, he rejects not absolutes so much as the pretension that one can find and verify absolutes: that is, Gadamer rejects method. To paraphrase the title, Gadamer's project is Truth Beyond Method.
He finds this claim to truth, which is, I should add, the very claim to truth of the humanities, art, music, literature, and messy human (as opposed to formal mathematical) language, in the ontology of understanding, which comes from his insightful analysis of play:
All playing is a being-played. The attraction of a game, the fascination it exerts, consists precisely in the fact that the game masters the players. Even in the case of games in which one tries to perform tasks that one has set oneself, there is a risk that they will not "work," "succeed," or "succeed again," which is the attraction of the game. Whoever "tries" is in fact the one who is tried. The real subject of the game (this is shown in precisely those experiences in which there is only a single player) is not the player but instead the game itself. What holds the player in its spell, draws him into play, and keeps him there is the game itself. (106)
The experience of a game thus exists in the space between the players. Such, Gadamer argues, is the nature of human experience in general. Our experiences unfold in shared historical time and against the background of tradition, and are as limited by that context as players are by the rules of the game. Detached subjectivity -- that is, the position from which one can study objects distinct from oneself -- is impossible.
But truth is not impossible. This very process of understanding, dictated to us ontologically, "happens to us over and above," Gadamer argues, "our wanting and doing," and reaches a claim to truth. How? Because all understanding happens in conversation. Like play, understanding happens in the space between people, or between a person and history (or time), and that implies conversation. In order to have a conversation, the dialogue must be approached openly, and honestly. Thus I return to the ethical connection I saw in April. Honesty itself, earnestness, guarantees a claim to truth through conversation and dialogue. There are many possible conversations, and many possible truths, but each can separately be evaluated as truth or not-truth, based on how closely it comes to the ontological structure of understanding.
I recall something I wrote in August 2003:
All human life is musical by nature. To live is to balance art, structure, passion, restraint, melody, counterpoint, consonance, and dissonance into a single sublime whole. What is now gains meaning through its relation to a whole work of life, stretching as it does through some finite section of time. This is my response to those who say that any part or any act of life is intrinsically meaningless: of course it is; it expresses itself.
I was myself grappling with the same problem of meaning. Gadamer is more eloquent and thorough, especially considering that my own concern did not extend to reaching a claim to truth or understanding with others, but only to reaching an understanding about the meaning of my own life in relation to itself and in relation to my own history. Nevertheless, the juxtaposition should explain why I find Truth and Method so deeply exciting.
I return again to that sentence I found so striking (and which has been hanging around on my facebook profile for quite a while):
Someone who can perceive the comedy and tragedy of life can resist the temptation to think in terms of purposes, which conceals the game that is played with us.
This is a reminder to live for now, not for some future end or purpose. Only by living in the moment and in the experience of now can one embrace the game of life and the play back and forth of the liquid nature of understanding. If you do not thus play life, life will play you. And when life hurts:
Même qu'on se comprend moins, peut-être on comprend plus. [September 2003]
Posted by David Richmond at June 8, 2005 3:05 AM EDT
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