Abstract
This dissertation aims to interpret Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics as conservatism. Although a view of Gadamer as a conservatist in a broad sense has been disseminated especially due to Habermas’s criticism, the meaning of conservatism in this critique would be different from the one developed by conservative thinkers such as Burke and Oakeshott. Thus, the first part of the study, after distinguishing reflective conservatism from natural conservatism, proposes a definition of conservatism in a genuine sense. Namely, drawing on Anthony Quinton, I define conservatism by the view of human finitude and three principles: traditionalism, political scepticism, and organicism. The second part discusses how Gadamer, in his magnum opus Truth and Method, regards a human being as a finite existence from historical, aesthetic, and linguistic perspectives. Third part explores the three principles of conservatism in Gadamer’s philosophy. Concerning traditionalism, his rehabilitation of prejudice, authority, and tradition will be examined. Gadamer’s political scepticism can be observed in his primacy of practice and phronesis over technical knowledge. Finally, I shall argue Gadamer’s organicism from his view of society and his concept of solidarity. After trying to rebut some potential criticism in the fourth part, I conclude.
Table of Contents
Introduction. 1
- A Definition of Conservatism.. 4
1.1 Habermas's Criticism.. 4
1.2 Two Senses of Conservatism.. 5
1.3 A Definition of Conservatism.. 6
1.4 What is Not Conservatism?. 8
- The Finitude of Human Nature. 11
2.1 Historical Finitude. 11
2.2 Aesthetical Finitude. 14
2.3 Linguistic Finitude. 17
- Gadamer’s Traditionalism Political Scepticism, and Organicism.. 22
3.1 Gadamer’s Traditionalism.. 22
3.2 Gadamer’s Political Scepticism.. 27
3.3 Gadamer’s Organicism.. 31
- Potential Objections. 36
4.1 Gadamer’s Identification. 36
4.2 Criticism of Burke?. 37
4.3 Description or Prescription?. 38
Conclusion. 40
References. 42
Interpreting Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics as Conservatism
Introduction
Hans-George Gadamer, who is prominent in his contribution to hermeneutics, has been recently reviewed amongst political theorists. Although Gadamer does not directly formulate political philosophy nor deal with political issues, his philosophical hermeneutics is, as he defiantly proclaims, not ‘a methodology of the human sciences, but an attempt to understand what the human sciences truly are (2013, p. xxii). For this reason, many political theorists have been exploring the theoretical foundation in Gadamer’s philosophy. For instance, Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre, who are categorised into communitarian, refer to Gadamer and receive philosophical inheritances from Gadamer (MacIntyre, 2002; Taylor, 2002). In the field of feminism, Gadamer’s hermeneutics has been investigated from both positive and negative viewpoints (Code, 2003; Demirezen, 2018; Warnke 2017; 2002b). Moreover, more specific topics including political judgment (Beiner, 1983), political authority (Duke, 2014), and democratic theory (Walhof, 2016) has been also examined from Gadamer’s viewpoint. Such a circumstance where Gadamer has received various attentions from political theorists tells us the importance of Gadamer’s philosophy and simultaneously uncovers the possibility of interpreting his hermeneutics as political philosophy.
The aim of this dissertation is to interpret Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics as one of the contentious and relatively less explored political philosophy: conservatism. One might think that this claim is neither unique nor innovative because some people have already regarded, though in a pejorative sense, Gadamer as a conservative. In his magnum opus Truth and Method, Gadamer rehabilitates the concepts of prejudice, authority, and tradition and incorporates them into his philosophical hermeneutics. While these concepts, according to Gadamer, have a crucial role in the act of understanding, they have been considered as relevant terms of conservatism as well. Conservatism is, roughly, a political thought according to which one should avoid radical changes made by abstract reason and attach importance to tradition, history, and authority. Because of these overlapping elements, Gadamer is derogatorily called a conservative by his opponents, especially by Jürgen Habermas, and this interpretation has been disseminated. However, the purpose of this dissertation is not to interpret Gadamer as a conservative thinker in Habermas’s sense.
In contrast to Habermas’s labelling, some scholars seek to defend Gadamer’s philosophy. Nevertheless, this defence has one thing in common with Habermas’s criticism; namely, it attempts to protect Gadamer’s philosophy by arguing that Gadamer is not a conservatist. For example, Scheibler (2000, p. 1) reveals that his attempts are to correct and overcome the received view of Gadamer’s conservatism vis-à-vis Habermas. Lawrence (1982) explains, in the translator’s introduction of Gadamer’s work, that it is wrong simply to reduce Gadamer’s thoughts to a conservative ideology. Georgia Warnke (1987, pp.134-8) also deals with Gadamer’s conservatism in a pejorative sense and argues that his conservative stance does not seem to follow. What is at stake is that these scholars also take the meaning of conservatism as the one in Habermas’s sense, i.e., uncritical and reactionary thinking or maintenance of the status quo. However, this definition seems to be a straw-man and different from the political philosophy established by conservative intellectuals like Edmund Burke and Michael Oakeshott. Conservatism in a genuine sense has more profound implications. This dissertation challenges the Habermas’s view of Gadamer as a conservatist and endeavours to reconsider Gadamer’s philosophy in terms of conservatism in a more sophisticated sense. In other words, the aim of this dissertation is to locate Gadamer between his exponents mentioned above and Habermas. [1]
My discussion is composed of four parts. The first part discusses the problem of the conservatism in Habermas’s sense and provides a definition of conservatism. The problem of Habermas’s definition of conservatism is that he does not distinguish conservatism between natural and reflective. After presenting the two senses of conservatism, I shall provide a definition of conservatism by following Anthony Quinton’s definition. According to Quinton (1978), conservatism is defined by a view of human nature and three principles: human finitude, traditionalism, political scepticism, and organicism. The second part aims to confirm that Gadamer views a human being as finite existence. Considering that the arguments in Truth and Method are divided into that of art, history, and language, I also separate the concept of finiteness into aesthetic, historical, and linguistic finitude and further discuss these concepts. By doing so, it can be argued that the finiteness of human nature has a central, not subordinate, role in Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics and thus that Gadamer regards men as essentially finite even in his political philosophy. The third part explores the three principles of conservatism. Concerning traditionalism, his rehabilitation of prejudice, authority, and tradition will be examined. Gadamer’s political scepticism can be found in his primacy of practice and practical philosophy. Finally, I shall argue Gadamer’s organicism from his view of society and his concept of solidarity. After trying to rebut some of the potential criticisms in the fourth part, I conclude the dissertation.
1. A Definition of Conservatism
The purpose of this part is to define the meaning of conservatism. After assessing the meaning of conservatism which was provided and disseminated by Habermas’s criticism of Gadamer, I distinguish reflective conservatism from natural conservatism. Then, by drawing on Anthony Quinton, our definition of conservatism is proposed. Finally, to eschew misleading, some caveats for the definition will be added.
1.1 Habermas's Criticism
Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics might be encapsulated by the claim that our act of understanding requires prejudice, authority, and tradition. Gadamer sets out the conditions of understanding meaning, including artworks, history, and texts, in the traditions to which interpreters belong and in the authority that works within those traditions. People have, whether good or bad, their own prejudices, and thus they cannot make interpretation from a neutral or objective viewpoint. If one believes that he or she can understand something without any prejudice, then it can be argued that they rely on the prejudice that they should avoid any prejudices and should make judgements from an unbiased perspective.
The prevailing interpretation of Gadamer as conservative was created by Habermas’s vehement opposition to such an argument. The debate between Habermas and Gadamer was ignited by Habermas’s review of Truth and Method. In this review, Habermas agrees with Gadamer’s criticism of scientific objectivism, and thus both thinkers share this point. However, Habermas points out that ‘Gadamer is motivated by the conservatism of that first generation, by the impulse of a Burke that has not yet been turned against the rationalism of the eighteenth century’ (1990, p. 236). Regarding a Gadamer’s conservative disposition, Habermas issues a fierce denunciation of the deficiency of rational reflection in the philosophical hermeneutics. Namely, Habermas questions, if we always perform the act of interpretation depending on traditions, what mechanism enables us to keep a critical distance from these traditions. The understanding made within a certain tradition might make people fall into a malicious circular structure that is obviously barbarous, and people would not able to evade the dogmatic structure. Therefore, Habermas (1990, p. 237) argues that ‘Gadamer’s prejudice for the rights of prejudices certified by tradition denies the power of reflection’. According to Habermas, relying on prejudice and authority leads us to pay insufficient attention to the need for critical reflection, and then tradition works as a dogmatic ideology, by which we end up merely maintaining the status quo.
1.2 Two Senses of Conservatism
While we shall argue how Gadamer responds to Habermas’s criticism in the following sections, the focal point in this part is to assess whether conservatism can be defined as the maintenance of the status quo as Habermas claims. At this point, it is often argued that distinguishing conservatism between the broad and narrow sense is important (Mannheim et al, 1986; Hamilton, 2016; Cecil, 1912). Conservatism in a broad sense simply refers to as a clinging to old ways. This kind of conservatism merely means a general psychological state of affairs, which is closely tied with the fear of change. It follows that this conservatism has existed even among primitive people and has been seen in almost all societies. Hugh Cecil (1912) calls this sort of conservatism ‘natural conservatism’[2]. In contrast, conservatism in a narrow sense has salient differences from natural conservatism. Firstly, conservatism in a narrow sense is a modern occurrence that is historically and sociologically determined, and this sort of political conservatism has an ‘objective’ spiritual contexture, not a mere psychological disposition (Mannheim et al, 1986, pp. 72-4). ‘Objective’ here does not mean that its spiritual structure universally or timelessly exists. Rather, the structure is objective in the sense that it extends beyond the subjectivity of the particular individual though it is nevertheless temporal and changing in history.
The second point that distinguishes between the two types of conservatism is whether they are self-conscious of their action, which is to conserve. As Hamilton (2016) argues, conservatism in a broad sense (natural conservatism) is unconscious of their own conservative conduct. It merely tries to maintain the status quo due to the fear of losing what they have. On the other hand, conservatism in a narrow sense preserves tradition, convention, and custom in a self-conscious manner that enables us to ruminate over that to which we belong. In other words, conservatism in a narrow sense is aware of their being conservative, which does not imply that conservatism is to accept and maintain the past in a blind way.[3] Hunt (2002) also points out, by comparing Burke with Kant and Habermas, that Burke is a peculiarly self-conscious and reflective conservative. Given the Burke’s (1987, p. 19) epitomised statement that ‘[a] state without the meaning of some change is without the means of its conservation’, it can be argued that his intention is far from the maintenance of the status quo. Therefore, in so far as it refers to narrow conservatism and involves awareness, conservatism is neither uncritical nor a dogmatic ideology in Habermas’s sense. To make the differences clear, I employ this distinction between natural conservatism and reflective conservatism and try to categorise Gadamer’s philosophy into the latter type of conservatism.
1.3 A Definition of Conservatism
Anthony Quinton (1978) argues that conservatism can be based on a view of human nature and three principles that are derived from its view. Namely, conservative thinkers, first of all, share a common view of human nature: the finitude (or imperfection) of man.[4] This refers to the assumption that the ability of man is not infinite or perfect but finite. Such a view is exemplified by following Burke’s statement:
The nature of man is intricate; the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity; and, therefore, no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man’s nature or to the quality of affairs. (Burke, 1987, p. 54)
This concept of finitude, according to Quinton, has both moral (religious) and intellectual senses, and he points out that although these two types of imperfection can be conceptually divided, both kinds of imperfection can be found in a single conservative thinker. Furthermore, he asserts that because the intellectual imperfection is more significant for conservatism than the moral one, religious belief, especially Christianity, is not a necessary condition for conservatism.
From this fundamental perspective of human nature, Quinton (1978, pp. 16–23) holds, the three conservative principles can be deduced. These three principles correspond respectively with the nature of political action, political society, and political knowledge. The first principle, which is concerned with how one politically acts, is traditionalism. This principle is expressed in the demand of the accumulated practical wisdom of the community such as traditions, customs, and institutions. Conservatives assume that political behaviour cannot be shaped without dependence on tradition, and thus they legitimate gradual alteration instead of radical changes, which would undermine such tradition. In other words, since conservatives believe that individuals are finite, their political action entails historically bequeathed wisdom and institutions which have stood the test of time.
The second principle, political scepticism, refers to what kind of knowledge is important in politics. This principle signifies political wisdom is not to be found in theoretical speculations but in the historically accumulated social experience that the community shares (Quinton, 1978, p. 16-7). For instance, Burke argued in his Reflections on the revolution in France:
The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori … The science of government being therefore so practical in itself and intended for such practical purposes ― a matter which requires experiences, and even more experience than any person can gain in his whole life, however sagacious and observing he may be ― it is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society, or on building it up again without having models and patterns of approved utility before his eyes. (1987, pp. 53–4)
It can be argued that conservatism assigns great importance not to the knowledge that is derived from abstract theories but to the practical knowledge that is applied in concrete situations and gained from multiple experiences. This principle is also based on the doubt of the intellectual capacity of individuals, that is the imperfection of them.
The third principle is that of organicism, which regards society as ‘a unitary, natural growth, an organized, living whole, not a mechanical aggregate’ (Quinton, 1978, p. 16). Namely, conservatists do not believe that society is an aggregation of atomic and autonomous individuals. Instead, they take society as a given; they believe that man is a social being in the Aristotelian sense. For conservatists, society is a complex organisation and the institutions of society are ‘not external, disposable devices, of interest to men only by reason of the individual purposes they serve; they are rather, constitutive of the social identity of men’ (Quinton, 1978, p.16). Thus, shared values and common culture are also taken as essential to the maintenance of the social cohesion. Such a view of society, importantly, is not equal to a desire for a primitive society in that conservatism admits to ‘second nature’. Quinton (1978, p. 57) sees Burke’s organicism in the following part:
[The legislators in the ancient republics] had to do with men, and they were obliged to study human nature. They had to do with citizens, and they were obliged to study the effects of those habits which are communicated by the circumstances of civil life. They were sensible that the operation of this second nature on the first produced a new combination; and thence arose many diversities amongst men, according to their birth, their education, their professions, the periods of their lives, their residence in towns or in the country, their several ways of acquiring and of fixing property, and according to the quality of property itself ― all which rendered them as it were so many different species of animals. (Burke, 1987, p. 162)
In short, organicism refers to the idea that society is, instead of a mechanical aggregation of atomic individuals, a living organisation as second nature and that man, who is embedded in such a society, is a social being. Organicism is also brought about from the assertion that individuals are finite and fallible.
1.4 What is Not Conservatism?
In order to avoid misleading, three caveats should be added to the definition of conservatism. First, it is important to distinguish between ‘conservative’ and ‘Conservative’. As Emily Jones (2017, p. 15) says, ‘conservative’ is used to indicate an intellectual tradition, and ‘Conservative’ is employed to indicate party political affiliation. This dissertation also employs the distinction of ‘C/conservative’ and endeavours to locate Gadamer’s philosophy in the intellectual vein of ‘conservative’. This caveat is significant because in recent decades, Conservative has been disconnected from conservative and some tension can be seen between them ( Johnson, Garnett and Walker, 2016, p. 1). Roger Scruton (2001, p. 5) also points out that ‘the Conservative Party has often acted in a way with which conservative may find little sympathy’.
The second caveat, which is related to the first one, is that conservatism is indifferent to the right-wing radicalism of Margaret Thatcher or contemporary American neoconservatism (Hamilton, 2016). These ideologies, which are characterised by their market-liberal policies, are frequently confused with conservatism, but our discussion distinguishes them and focuses on not neoconservatism but conservatism that we have discussed above.[5]
Finally, for the sake of space, I do not delve into the contentious question of whether conservatism can be defined or not, but a brief remark about this point should be added. It is often argued that conservatism, which is opposed to abstract theories, is not a political philosophy or theory which has general and objective principles but rather a disposition or an attitude. For instance, Michael Oakeshott (1991) discusses conservatism as a disposition.[6] Quinton (1978, pp. 12-3) claims that, while conservatism seems to have the apparent paradox as a theory prohibiting theories, the kind of theory that conservatism proscribes differs from the kind that it exemplified.[7] I agree with Quinton’s claim, but he does not seem to offer a detailed account of the difference. Mannheim’s argument, which is discussed above, that conservatism is not a psychological disposition but an ‘objective’ and spiritual contexture would be relevant for this contention, but this might also be unclear.
Regarding this contention, John Searle’s (2010) argument about two senses of objectivity would be helpful to resolve such a paradox. According to Searle, social facts in human society, which he calls institutional facts, differ from the facts which physics and chemistry observe and analyse. Searle (2010, pp.17–8) explains this difference by adding to the traditional dichotomy between objective and subjective the distinction between an epistemic sense and an ontologic sense. The ontologic distinction seems more familiar for us; for example, pain is ontologically subjective because it exists within the experiences of human subjects. Contrary to this, the sun, mountains, rivers, and so forth, are ontologically objective (and thus universal) in the sense that they are independent of subjective experiences. In addition to this distinction, Searle introduces an epistemic distinction. For instance, “Walter Scot was born in 1771” is epistemically objective in the sense that it is not a mere personal opinion. On the other hand, “Walter Scot is more interesting than Thomas Carlyle” is epistemically subjective in the sense that it implies a person’s attitude or opinion. Considering Searle’s argument, it can be argued that while conservatism excludes ontologic objectivity, it does not deny epistemic objectivity. In other words, conservatism can be defined as an epistemically objective political theory or philosophy which denounces ontologic objectivity at least in human society.[8] In this sense, it would be better to deal with conservatism as not just a disposition but a political philosophy (or theory).[9]
2. The Finitude of Human Nature
The aim of this part is to confirm that Gadamer’s view of human finitude conforms to conservatism’s view and that his philosophical hermeneutics can be placed on the concept of ‘finitude’. As we have discussed, conservative thinkers regard human nature as imperfect and finite. Conservatists are conservative for the precise reason that they believe that men are finite and that society is more complicated than they believe, not that they fear changes nor are eager to maintain the status quo. Thus, the task here is to make sure that the term ‘finitude’ has a central and crucial role in Gadamer’s philosophy.
It seems that finitude has not received as much attention among scholars as other appealing terms in Gadamer’s philosophy, such as ‘fusion of horizons’. Some scholars, however, have discussed the importance of the term ‘finitude’ in Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. For instance, James Risser (1997, p. 119) argues that ‘hermeneutics is a hermeneutics of existence as a hermeneutics of finitude’. This dissertation basically follows his analysis, which sheds light on linguistic finitude, but Gadamer’s argument of finitude is not confined to linguistic finitude, which is discussed in part 3 of Truth and Method. Instead, Gadamer shows his idea of finitude in his analysis of both aesthetic and historical experience as well. Thus, our discussion, by distinguishing finitude between aesthetic, historical, and linguistic, affirms that finiteness has a crucial role not only in the domain of language but also in the experience of history and art.[10] In other words, by showing that we can reach the notion of finitude from the three different domains of art, history, and language, which corresponds with part 1,2, and 3 of Truth and Method, we can confirm the centrality of finitude in Gadamer’s philosophy.
2.1 Historical Finitude
Before discussing finitude, taking a look at the meaning of infinitude, which is the anti-theme of finitude, will be helpful for grasping what Gadamer problematised. What Gadamer has in mind regarding infinity is what he admits to Hegel, that is, ‘the absolute mediation of history and truth’ (Gadamer, 2013, p. 350). In Part 2 of Truth and Method, Gadamer elucidates and criticises traditional hermeneutics that has developed from Schleiermacher to Dilthey, and he gives it the following overview:
Everywhere the claim of hermeneutics [from Schleiermacher to Dilthey] seems capable of being met only in the infinity of knowledge, in the thoughtful fusion of the whole of tradition with the present. We see it based on the ideal of perfect enlightenment, on the complete limitedness of our historical horizon, on the abolition of our finiteness in the infinity of knowledge, in short, on the omnipresence of the historically knowing spirit. (Gadamer, 2013, pp. 350–1)
According to Gadamer, previous hermeneutics, including the historical school and romantic hermeneutics, still retains a remnant of Hegel’s ‘infinity of knowledge’, which implies that our speculation can completely mediate between the past and present.[11] This thought can be found in the ideal of the Enlightenment, which is oriented towards eradicating all prejudices and in the historical school’s assumption that an interpreter can detach the past from the present, in which its interpreter himself is situated, and observe its past from an Archimedean point. In other words, this way of understanding history requires historians to observe things in a scientifically objective manner, by which subjects are detached from objects. Concerning this historical school’s ideal, Gadamer holds that its art of understanding history is to observe historical phenomena from the perspective of God, which is infinite existence. By doing so, an interpreter assumes that he could relate its own finite and limited knowledge to an absolute and divine spirit, ‘to which things are known in their perfection’ (Gadamer, 2013, p. 214).
Against such an idea of historical infinity, Gadamer emphasises the relevance of historical finiteness: the finitude that is experienced through facing and understanding history. Historical finitude denotes the impossibility to achieve the absolute mediation of history and truth because of one’s own historicity. Gadamer argues that it is impossible to observe historical events from the eyes of God: from the outside of the world to which one belongs. This is because an interpreter himself is embedded in the history that he tries to understand and because he cannot eliminate its historical influences. Historicity implies one’s disposition and consciousness effected by the past. As Gadamer holds, instead of forgetting its own historicity,
[r]eal historical thinking must take account of its own historicity. Only then will it cease to chase the phantom of a historical object that is the object of progressive research, and learn to view the object as the counterpart of itself and hence understand both. The true historical object is not an object at all, but the unity of the one and the other, a relationship that constitutes both the reality of history and the reality of historical understanding. (Gadamer, 2013, p. 310)
Historians, who are embedded in history, are unavoidably influenced by various things from the past, including not only practical things like habits, customs, and conventions but also theoretical things, like the way of observing, thinking, and setting problems. What philosophical hermeneutics necessitates, compared with previous hermeneutics, is to grasp not the historicity of objects but the historicity of the act of understanding per se, and Gadamer calls it ‘effect of history’ (2013, p. 310). This term is generally used for research on literature, which aims to investigate the historical effect of certain work that has been produced since the work was written. Gadamer employs it for describing the act of understanding history and argues that an interpreter, when understanding history, cannot help considering the effect of history since a historical event happens.
Here Gadamer articulates ‘historically effected consciousness’ (2013, p. 312) and incorporates it into his philosophical hermeneutics. Historically effected consciousness signifies ‘consciousness of the hermeneutical situation’ (2013, p. 312), and this ‘situation’ implies the situation in which an interpreter finds himself with regard to the tradition that he is trying to understand. What matters here is that interpreters cannot reflect on the whole of the effect of history. They cannot get out from the effect of history and are always involved within the ‘situation’. Therefore, one is unable to comprehend the whole of history. Whether they are conscious of the situation or not, they always live in the effect of history, and thus interpretations are made with historically effective consciousness. Gadamer says:
on the whole the power of effective history does not depend on its being recognised this, precisely, is the power of history over finite human consciousness, namely that it prevails even where faith in method leads one to deny one's own historicity. … That we should become completely aware of effective history is just as hybrid a statement as when Hegel speaks of absolute knowledge (2013, p. 312).
Even if one is not conscious of the effect of history in a reflective way, those who stand on their present perspective are influenced by the effective history. However much effort is made to avoid the effect of history, the historicity of an interpreter and the act of understanding as itself will never be eradicated. In this sense, it can be said that people are historically finite.
2.2 Aesthetical Finitude
Gadamer highlights the importance of human finitude in the realm of art as well. For Gadamer, the experience of art includes its interpretation, and hence it is one of the hermeneutic phenomena. The purpose of discussing art is to defend the experience of truth that comes to us through understanding artwork and to develop a conception of knowledge and of truth that corresponds to the whole of our hermeneutics experience (Gadamer, 2013, p. xxii). Gadamer holds that art is not a matter of a personal amusement or individual preference but a significant point of access to fundamental truths about the world and what it is to be human.
According to Gadamer (2013, pp. 3–41), previous aesthetics, especially Kant and German Idealism, distorted the way of experiencing truth in art. Gadamer holds that experience of art before the eighteenth century was deeply related to sensus communis, which was a common sense based on social virtues. Thus, whether some work was beautiful was not contingent on personal preference but germane to values in a society. This implies that the experience of art had a moral and political connotation. Yet after that, Gadamer holds that the notion of sensus communis was penetrated, but in being emptied of all political connotation it lost its genuine critical importance; sensus communis was understood as a purely theoretical faculty, that is theoretical judgement. Gadamer calls this distortion the subjectivisation of aesthetics and criticises it. In addition to this criticism, Gadamer again problematizes the absolute mediation between subject and object that was formulated by Hegel for the purpose of overcoming the subjectivisation of aesthetics. Gadamer says;
If speculative idealism sought to overcome the aesthetic subjectivism and agnosticism based on Kant by elevating itself to the standpoint of infinite knowledge, then, … this gnostic self-redemption of finitude involved art’s being superseded by philosophy. We, instead, will have to hold firmly to the standpoint of finiteness (2013, p. 90).
It is obvious that even in the realm of art Gadamer regards the absolute mediation of truth as a problem and seeks to overcome it.
Now we have to delve into aesthetic finitude, which can be referred to as finiteness experienced through the experience of artworks. It can be argued that aesthetic finitude occurs through the experience of ‘the tragic’. Gadamer (2013, p. 130) emphasizes that something tragic is a phenomenon basic to the aesthetics in general. Here it should be noted that the tragic does not exist only in tragedy, the tragic artwork only in a narrow sense. Rather, the tragic means one of the features characteristic of tragedy, thus we can find the tragic in something extra-aesthetics, even in life.
Gadamer explains how the tragic is connected to finitude by referring to Aristotle’s analysis of the effect of the tragic. Regarding the tragic, there are three crucial points. First, in Aristotle’s argument of the tragic, he takes its effect on the spectator into consideration. For Gadamer, the experience of art cannot be understood from the distinction between subject and object; art cannot be interpreted without considering the existence of spectators. ‘Thus the spectator’s distance from the drama is not arbitrary posture, but the essential relation whose ground lies in play’s unity of meaning’ (Gadamer, 2013, p. 131). Secondly, those who experience the tragic feel ‘tragic pensiveness’ (Gadamer, 2013, p. 132), which does not merely refer to one’s inner state like fear, misery, or pain. Tragic pensiveness implies a kind of relief and resolution, in which pain and pleasure are uniquely mixed. Therefore, thirdly, Gadamer holds that the tragic is involved with a kind of affirmation and explains the object of this affirmation as below;
What does the spectator affirm here? .... What is experienced in such an excess of tragic suffering is something truly common. The spectator recognizes himself and his own finiteness in the face of the power of fate. (Gadamer, 2013, p. 133)
According to Gadamer, the tragic that is constituted between object and spectator made us not merely frightened but able to recognise ourselves and affirm our finiteness. This is why the tragic and finitude are essentially germane.
As I mentioned, aesthetic finitude is experienced through the tragic, but how is this kind of finitude different from the historical finitude? Essentially, historical finitude is a kind of limitation from the past, whereas aesthetic finitude is involved with our ability towards the future. Yet to clarify it, it is necessary to argue what Gadamer exactly mean by the notion of ‘experience’. What Gadamer sees as the essence of ‘experience’ is ‘[t]he fact that experience is valid so long as it is not contradicted by new experience’ (Gadamer, 2013, pp. 358–9). We, on the one hand, experience something that is already known and strengthens our expectation, knowledge, and theory, but on the other hand, it is also likely to experience that which is opposite to our expectation and makes us correct our bias. Gadamer considers the latter type of experience as a genuine experience and says that if a new experience of something occurs to us, this means that hitherto we have not seen the thing in a correct way and now know it better. Gadamer takes the importance of ‘a fundamental negativity’(Gadamer, 2013, p. 364) of genuine experience not from Hegelian dialects but from Greek tragedy. Interpreting Aeschylus's formula ‘learning through suffering’ as an insight into the limitation of humanity and in the absoluteness of the barrier that distinguishes man from the divine, Gadamer argues that
experience is experience of human finitude. the truly experienced person is one who has taken this to heart, who knows that he is master neither of time nor future. The experienced man knows that all foresight is limited and all plans uncertain. (Gadamer, 2013, p. 365)
Finitude caused by the experience of the tragic uncovers ‘the limits of the power and the self-knowledge of his planning reason’ (Gadamer, 2013, p. 365). It can be argued that aesthetic finitude signifies that our reason cannot predict what will happen in the future.
I would like to emphasise Gadamer’s argument about aesthetic finitude has similarity to the concept of the sublime that Burke provided in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757). Although many scholars have underestimated the importance of the idea of the sublime to Burke’s political philosophy,[12] it would uncover how Burke considered human nature. Burke (1998) separates the sublime from the beautiful and argues sentiment of the sublime is essential to human beings. He illustrates the sublime by using the concepts of pleasure and pain; whilst pleasure concerns the beautiful, the sublime occurs when the pain that we felt is removed. He calls the pleasure after pain as ‘delight’ and claims that such delight is the nature of the sublime. This argument overlaps with Gadamer’s idea of ‘tragic pensiveness’ as I mentioned previously.
What is more important regarding Burke’s notion of the sublime is that, as Vanessa Ryan (2001) puts it, it is different from the sublime formulated by Kant. Burke’s sublime has been taken just as a stepping stone to Kant’s sublime and hence considered less important than Kantian sublime. However, whereas Kant holds that the sublime allows us to intuit our rational capacity, Burke's version of the sublime involves a critique of reason. In other words, ‘[t]he fundamental difference between Burke and Kant is that while Kant's transcendent sublime allows us to recognize our limitlessness, Burke's physiological sublime presents us with our limitedness’ (Ryan, 2001, p. 279). Stephen White (2002) also argues that whereas Kant’s sublime puts its primary emphasis on our participation in the infinite, Burke’s sublime reveals human finitude, limitedness, and imperfection. For this reason, aesthetic finitude, or Burkean sublime is, though little attention has been paid, an integral part of conservatism as well.
2.3 Linguistic Finitude
Let us move on to linguistic finiteness. Again, we start our argument of linguistic finitude by confirming what Gadamer objects to with respect to the realm of language. The main target of Gadamer's criticism in the language theory of Truth and Method is what is called the instrumentalist theory of language, according to which language is a handy tool and something we construct in order to communicate and differentiate. This view assumes that we previously recognise things in front of us and then give them words as if we would label them as, for instance, ‘paper’, ‘letters’ and ‘books’. In this way, the instrumentalist view of language posits that language is a system of sing which is invented for the purpose of designating things as ‘paper’, ‘letters’ and ‘books’. The word "paper" is ‘a copy constructed and judged in terms of the original, the things themselves’(Gadamer, 2013, p. 426). Moreover, this view supposes that because language is an unambiguous system, each word has its ‘right’ meaning, and Gadamer calls this premise ‘an absolute perfection of the word’ (Gadamer, 2013, p. 428). Gadamer argues that such instrumentalist ideas can be seen in a ‘characteristica universalis’, which was formed by Leibniz, and discusses it in the following way;
The ideal of language that Leibniz is pursuing is a ‘language’ of reason: an ‘analysis notionum’ which, starting from ‘first’ concepts, would develop the whole system of true concepts and so be a copy of the universe of beings, just as is the divine reason. In this way, the world ― conceived as the calculation of God, who works out the best among all the possibilities of being ― would be recalculated by human reason. (Gadamer, 2013, p. 434)
From this, Gadamer holds that, in the instrumentalism of language, language is conceived as an absolute and unambiguous system of sings that is created by perfect reason. Gadamer, who assumes that man is finite, seeks to rebut and overcome this view.
It is important to acknowledge Gadamer’s view of how language is related to thought. In the instrumentalist theory, thought presupposes language because they believe that language is invented by men. However, if this idea of the relationship between language and thought were accurate, it would give rise to the notion of pure thought, which means a wordless thought that comes into one’s mind without any identifiable linguistic form. Gadamer regards the nature of language in the opposite way; he supposes that language proceeds thought. He highlights the importance of Humboldt’s insight on the nature of language, according to which language is a worldview, and argues that;
Language is not just one of man’s possessions in the world; rather, on it depends the fact that man has a world at all. The world as world exists for man as for no other creature that is in the world … Not only is the world world only insofar as fact that the fact the world is presented in it. Thus, language is originally human means at the same time that man’s being-in-the-world is primordially linguistic (Gadamer, 2013, p. 459).
It is obvious from the above quote that Gadamer holds that people do not possess language, but the language constitutes our perspective of the world and we are thrown into such a linguistic world. In addition, he asserts this, in his celebrated phrase, ‘Being that can be understood is language (Gadamer, 2013, p. 490). For Gadamer, language is not just a tool for thought, but rather thought is based on language; it is no exaggeration to say that language possesses us and our thought. This is the way in which Gadamer considers the relationship between language and thought.
Then we have to see Gadamer’s argument as to what the features of language as itself are. Gadamer argues that the nature of language is ‘speculative’ in the correct sense. To be speculative usually describes being theoretical, logical, and free from personal experience owing to the power of reason, but when Gadamer uses the word ‘speculative’, he intends to represent something different. Gadamer argues that the ‘speculative’ structure of language pertains to the case where an image appears in a mirror and takes an account of it by using the example of ‘the castle in the lake’(Gadamer, 2013, p.481). Here, ‘the castle in the lake’ is just an image, not ‘the castle per se’. Yet they are essentially connected; an ‘appearance’ that is not its actual thing allows the thing to appear by means of a mirror image. What matters here is that a mirror image cannot reflect the thing in a perfect way. As Gadamer supposes:
a thought is speculative if the relationship it asserts is not conceived as a quality unambiguously assigned to a subject, a property to a given thing, but must be thought of as a mirroring, in which the reflection is nothing but the pure appearance of what is reflected, just as the one is the one of the other, and the other is the other of the one (2013, p. 482).
Language has the same speculative structure as a mirror does; in describing something in words, what is expressed by the words is just an appearance or one-side of the actual thing. Language is limited in the sense that it is impossible to articulate the whole of the actual thing at once. For Gadamer, being ‘speculative’ implies such a linguistic limitation.
Linguistic finitude can be clarified by considering both the relationship between language and thought on the one hand and the structure of language on the other hand. Namely, linguistic finiteness denotes that man, whose thought is linguistic, is finite precisely because the nature of language is the speculative and limited structure. As we discussed, language is not a tool, but it has a decisive role in our way of thinking, which means that language presupposes thought. Additionally, language always has its limitation in the sense that it is not able to reach a perfect description of the actual thing at once. Therefore, the nature of man is linguistically finite.
It should be stated that in arguing that, for Gadamer, language is speculative or limited, it does mean neither that language activity is futile nor that we should stay within insidious quietism; rather, for the precise reason that language is speculative and limited, language is always necessitated to create further words in order to compensate for its own limitation. For Gadamer, language must be perpetual and processual formulation. He points out:
[t]hrough its one-sideness it puts too much emphasis on one side of the thing, so that something else has to be said to restore balance. As philosophical dialectic presents the whole truth by superseding all partial propositions, bringing contradictions to a head and overcoming them, so also, hermeneutics has the task of revealing a totality of meaning in all its relations (Gadamer, 2013, p. 487).
When describing (or interpreting in the context above) something, it is often the case where one has to articulate just a part of it and omit its many elements. Nevertheless, the act of understanding endeavours to accumulate multiple interpretations by perpetual partial interpretations. To say language is speculative, on the one hand, illustrates that language cannot grasp the actual thing at once, but on the other hand, it also implies that language is oriented towards the infinity of what is not said.
Linguistic finitude, thus, should be understood with the infinity of linguistic activity. The actual essence of a linguistic faculty is ‘to be able to make infinite use of finite means’ (Gadamer, 2013, p. 457). Here we can find the feature of linguistic finitude, according to which language is required to develop in an infinite way by virtue of linguistic finiteness. Gadamer says:
All human speaking is finite in such a way that there is laid up within it an infinity of meaning to be explicated and laid out. That is why the hermeneutical phenomenon also can be illustrated only in light of the fundamental finitude of being, which is wholly verbal in character (Gadamer, 2013, p. 474).
Accordingly, hermeneutical behaviour has to be shaped infinitely because of the speculative and limited structure of language, in which language cannot comprehend the actual thing at once. This also means that such a hermeneutical endeavour is different from Hegelian dialectic in that it will not be completed as absolute knowledge. Linguistic finitude must not be detached from the infinity of hermeneutic activity.[13]
As we have discussed so far, Gadamer’s emphasis on the finiteness of man can be seen in the light of the historical, aesthetic, and linguistic, and thus this implies the centrality of finitude in Gadamer’s philosophy. This insight is not confined to Gadamer’s Truth and Method but can also be found in his other works. For instance, in the Praise of Theory, he argues:
One crucial idea runs through both the so-called human sciences and “practical philosophy:” in both, the fundamentally finite constitution of man takes on a decisive role with respect to the infinite task of knowing … So someone can strive for what he wants and try to bring it about through his actions, but he must always find his ground in the givens of our finite Dasein (Gadamer, 1998, p. 58).
When referring to practical philosophy, Gadamer is conscious of both hermeneutics and politics in Aristotle's sense. Hence, the finiteness of man is not confined to the argument of hermeneutics but can be expanded to political philosophy.
3. Gadamer’s Traditionalism Political Scepticism, and Organicism
To say that Gadamer regards human nature as finite does not necessarily mean that Gadamer’s political philosophy is conservatism in the sense that I mentioned before. For example, Chris Lawn (2006, pp. 132–3) argues that Gadamer’s insight on the fallibility of human affairs is akin to John Stuart Mill’s thought in the On Liberty and thus concludes that Gadamer is a liberalist, rather than a conservatist. However, insofar as the concepts of finitude, imperfection, and fallibility are also integral to conservatism, as we have argued, it would be unreasonable to categorise Gadamer into liberalists or conservatists only for the reason that Gadamer assumes the finitude of men.[14] To say that Gadamer is a conservative thinker, we have to delve into the three principles of conservatism: traditionalism, political scepticism, and organicism in the given sense.
3.1 Gadamer’s Traditionalism
Our aim here is to clarify Gadamer’s traditionalism by analysing the concepts: prejudice, authority, and tradition. Traditionalism, as we discussed, denotes the idea that political action requires tradition, customs, institutions, and so forth. Conservatives assume that because man is finite, political behaviour entails historically bequeathed wisdom and institutions which have stood the test of time. This principle, on the flip side, shows that conservatism avoids making recourse to radical changes by abstract reason and seeks to carry out politics by gradual adjustment of something that is already existing. Gadamer argues that hermeneutical practice is made possible by depending on the tradition which we are belonging to, and he thus tries to rehabilitate these concepts that have been severely distorted by the attack of the Enlightenment. Provided Gadamer considers hermeneutics as a practical philosophy by following Aristotle, it can be argued that the indispensability of tradition for practical philosophy is true even for political philosophy; the structure of Gadamer’s hermeneutics works within that of politics as well. Therefore, to confirm Gadamer’s argument as to why prejudice, authority, and tradition are needed for hermeneutics also means to confirm Gadamer’s traditionalism.
In order to legitimatise his philosophical hermeneutics, Gadamer at first attempts to re-establish the validity of prejudice as antecedent conditions, which enable us to understand. According to Gadamer, prejudice ‘means a judgement that is rendered before all the elements that determine a situation have been finally examined’ (2013, p. 283). Therefore, although it would be possible to evaluate the prejudice, whether negatively or positively, by relying on the interpretation that would be made later, it does not mean that prejudice per se always has a bad connotation. The negative connotation of prejudice is only derivative, and thus prejudice ‘certainly does not necessarily mean a false judgement, but part of the idea is that it can have either a positive or a negative value’ (Gadamer, 2013, p. 283).
Gadamer argues that the general belief that prejudice should be eliminated was prevailed by the thoughts of the Enlightenment. Especially in its criticism of religion, the meaning of prejudice was discredited and confined simply to the sense of an ‘unfounded judgement’ (Gadamer, 2013, p. 283), and he argues that:
[t]he only thing that gives a judgement dignity is its having a basis, a methodological justification (and not the fact that it may actually be correct). For the Enlightenment the absence of such a basis does not mean that there might be other kinds of certainty, but rather that the judgement has no foundation in the things themselves ― i.e., that it is ‘unfolded’. This conclusion follows only in the spirit of rationalism. It is the reason for discrediting prejudices and the reason scientific knowledge claims to exclude them completely (Gadamer, 2013, pp. 283-4).
However, the attempts of the Enlightenment to overcome all prejudices by the absolute reason is, as Gadamer claims, impossible. This is because, as I mentioned, the consciousness of finite man is historically effected, which implies that he is thrown into history as an aggregation of prejudices and thus always and already belongs to it. To put it another way, all human existence, even the freest, belong to prejudices, and the Enlightenment’s attempts to overcome the whole of prejudices, as Gadamer ironically says, fall into ‘the prejudice against prejudice’ (2013, p. 283).
It is important to emphasise that Gadamer does not mean to reject the role of any kinds of reason; rather, he highlights the importance of practical reason. He asserts that, on the one hand, the idea of absolute reason distorted the way to an appropriate understanding of the finiteness and blurred the correct sense of prejudice. Yet this does not follow that any reason is unnecessary. According to Gadamer, ‘[r]eason exists for us only in concrete, historical terms ― i.e., it is not its own master but remains constantly dependent on the given circumstances in which it operates’ (2013, p. 288), and this sort of reason is called practical reason. As Hunt (2002, p. 123) puts it, the meaning of Gadamer’s practical reason differs from Kantian practical reason. Gadamer holds, following Aristotle, that practical reason is not a matter of applying abstract principles to particular practical problems but of articulating the knowledge of the concrete circumstance attained by the actions of successful moral and political practitioners. Concerning practical reason, we shall discuss this more deeply in terms of Gadamer’s political scepticism.
Such rehabilitation of prejudice confronts a question: what is the ground of the legitimacy of prejudices? In order to answer this question, Gadamer shed light on the concept of ‘authority’. He endeavours to find the legitimacy of prejudice in a different way from which the Enlightenment had and to vindicate prejudice in terms of ‘authority’, rather than abstract, absolute, and universal reason. To do so, again, Gadamer re-evaluates the concept of authority through criticising the Enlightenment’s attack; he argues that ‘[b]ased on the Enlightenment conception of reason and freedom, the conception authority could be viewed as diametrically opposed to reason and freedom; to be, in fact, blind obedience … But this is not the essence of authority’ (Gadamer, 2013, p. 291). Instead, for Gadamer, authority denotes ‘an act of acknowledgement and knowledge ー the knowledge, namely, that the other is superior to oneself in judgement and insight and that for this reason his judgement takes precedence ― i.e., it has priority over one’s own’ (2013, p. 291). Namely, the essence of authority is to acknowledge the judgements which are already shared with others. As Gadamer holds, this fact
…is connected with the fact that authority cannot be bestowed but is earned, and must be earned if someone is to lay claim to it. It rests on acknowledgements and hence on an act of reason itself which, aware of its own limitations, trusts to the better insight of others (Gadamer, 2013, p. 291).
It is obvious that the meaning of the reason, which Gadamer employs here, differs from that of the Enlightenment because he emphasises the awareness of ‘its own limitation’. Instead, to acknowledge is an act of historical and practical reason, which is employed within concrete situations. In short, authority is to acknowledge that the other is superior to oneself in judgement and insight, and this sense of authority is not necessarily repugnant to historical and practical reason. By this rehabilitation of authority, Gadamer claims that hermeneutical (and hence political) behaviour requires to acknowledge as authority the legitimacy of prejudices that were made by others in the past.
Although authority emerges in a variety of forms such as a person and an institution, it is ‘tradition’ that Gadamer places the highest value on as one of the forms of authority. According to Gadamer (2013, p. 292), tradition can be interpreted as a form of authority that becomes anonymous, compared with a particular person or institution, because it has been passed down. Furthermore, Gadamer says ‘our finite historical being is marked by the fact that the authority of what has been handed down to ― and not just what is clearly grounded ― always has power over our attitudes and behaviour’ (2013, p. 292). In other words, ‘tradition has a justification that lies beyond rational grounding and in large measure determines our institutions and attitudes’ (Gadamer, 2013, p. 292).
Additionally, Gadamer emphasises the fact that we are ‘belonging’ to tradition, and here we can find Gadamer’s traditionalism. As Gadamer explains:
[T]he meaning of ‘belonging’ ― i.e., the element of tradition in our historical-hermeneutical activity ― is fulfilled in the commonality of fundamental, enabling prejudices. Hermeneutics must start from the position that a person seeking to understand something has a bond to the subject matter that comes into language through the traditionary text and has, or acquires, a connection with the tradition from which the text speaks (Gadamer, 2013, p. 306).
Hermeneutics must begin from the fact that those who seek to understand are connected tradition. Gadamer argues that ‘one of the conditions of understanding in the human science is belonging to tradition’ and that ‘[t]his condition is clearly not so much limiting condition as one that makes understanding possible’ (Gadamer, 2013, p. 338). Accordingly, it can be concluded that for Gadamer, prejudice and tradition as an authority is the indispensable condition for hermeneutical practice, and thus political actions.[15]
One might think that Gadamer’s traditionalism is still vulnerable to Habermas’s critique, according to which Gadamer’s hermeneutics lacks reflective and critical elements and hence falls into just maintenance of the status quo. Although our aim is not to participate in the debate between Gadamer and Habermas, Warnke’s analysis (2002a) is helpful to both defend Gadamer and interpret his hermeneutics as reflective conservatism. According to her, Gadamer’s ethics and politics have two features: Aristotelian and Kantian dimensions. Admittedly, too much emphasis on the former might not be able to exit from the circular understanding. However, Gadamer also highlights the significance of being sensitive to otherness in a certain tradition and aware of one’s own bias. For instance, Gadamer argues:
A person trying to understand something will not resign himself from the start to relying on his own accidental fore-meaning, ignoring as consistently and stubbornly as possible the actual meaning of the text until the latter becomes so persistently audible that it breaks through what the interpreter imagines it to be. Rather, a person trying to understand a text is prepared for it to tell him something. That is why a hermeneutically trained consciousness must be, from the start, sensitive to the text’s alterity. But this kind of sensitivity involves neither “neutrality” with respect to content nor the extinction of one’s self, but the foregrounding and appropriation of one’s own fore-meanings and prejudices. The important thing is to be aware of one’s own bias, so that the text can present itself in all its otherness and thus assert its own truth against one’s own fore-meanings. (Gadamer, 2013, pp. 281–2)
Warnke argues that such openness to otherness enables him to constitute the moral experience of the “thou” and thus provide a critical form of ethical reflection (2002a, p. 91).[16] What matters to our argument is that Gadamer also stresses the significance ‘to be aware of one’s own bias’; as I mentioned before, awareness and consciousness of prejudice, convention, and tradition to which one belongs can distinguish reflective conservatism from natural conservatism. For this reason, it can be argued that Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics has affinities to not natural conservatism but reflective conservatism.
Finally, it should be remembered that even regarding tradition, it is not diametrically opposed to reason. As Gadamer puts it:
It seems to me, however, that there is no such unconditional antithesis between tradition and reason. … Even the most genuine and pure tradition does not persist because of the inertia of what once existed. It needs to be affirmed, embraced, cultivated. It is, essentially, preservation, and it is active in all historical change. But preservation is an act of reason, though an inconspicuous one (Gadamer, 2013, p. 293).
If we rely on the reason in the Enlightenment’s sense, which pursues a path to overcome any tradition, the dichotomy between reason and tradition might be right. However, Gadamer does not presume such reason; rather, the reason which is required for hermeneutics and politics is the practical reason. In this point, we can seek for Gadamer’s political scepticism.
3.2 Gadamer’s Political Scepticism
As we discussed, the second principle of conservatism is political scepticism, according to which, in politics, practical knowledge is more significant than abstract knowledge. Conservatism assigns great importance not to the knowledge that is derived from abstract theories but to the practical knowledge that is applied in concrete situations and gained from multiple experiences. Since man is imperfect and finite, his power of abstract reason is less reliable for conservatives. For this reason, conservative thinkers highlight the significance of practical knowledge, experience, and customs, which are gained and accumulated through the long history of the community.
In the previous argument about Gadamer’s traditionalism, I mentioned that his intention to rehabilitate tradition was not to negate the power of all sorts of reason. Instead, in Gadamer’s view, traditionalism requires practical reason, because authority is not to blindly follow the other but to acknowledge that the other is superior to oneself in judgement and insight, and because to acknowledge is involved with practical reason.
Gadamer’s political scepticism begins with his critique of the dichotomy between theory and practice in modern science. Theory generally means a set of statements that provide a description of some aspects of the world, and practice is commonly understood as an application of theories. Additionally, it is assumed that modern science is basically related to theories, and hence practice is regarded as that which is opposed to science. In Gadamer’s view, however, such a dichotomy cannot be seen in ancient Greece, especially Aristotle's philosophy.
According to Gadamer (1982, p. 90), the original meaning of practice cannot be defined as opposition or application to theory. He understands practice as a way of life that is involved with reason, which is defined as practical reason, to make choices concerning what is good. More precisely, practice means ‘the actuation of life (energeia) of anything alive, to which corresponds a life, a way of life, a life that is led in a certain way (bios)’ (Gadamer, 1982, p. 90). Gadamer, following Aristotle’s concept ‘energeia’, intends to describe practice as a teleological movement in which each creature previously has its own end (telos), or the good, and acts in various concrete situations to accomplish the end given by nature. Additionally, as Gadamer points out, such a practice as energeia can be seen in animals, but there are decisive differences between the animal and human being. First, the practice for human being is involved with ‘prohairesis’, which means preference and prior choice, whereas the practice for other animals is the sheer natural component within a mode of behaviour. Importantly, this difference implies that as long as a human being has the space of prior choice, his practice will elicit the unavoidability of probability, imperfection, and diversity, which are contrary to mathematical rigidity or uniformity. Secondly, practice for man presumes polis. ’The free choice decision takes its bearings by the order of preferences guiding one’s life conduct’ (Gadamer, 1982, p. 91), and the order of the guiding preferences is rendered by a political community to which one belongs. Therefore, the good for human being is accomplished within a particular community which provides him or her with the order. Gadamer interprets the meaning of practice as such a broad sense and hence claims that practice was repugnant to neither theory (theoria) nor science.
In Gadamer’s view, the modern separation between theory and practice corresponds with the distinction between poiesis and praxis, or between techne and phronesis. Regarding techne and phronesis (practical knowledge), Gadamer argues:
Practical knowledge which recognizes the feasible in concrete situations in life does not allow for perfection in the same way as does expertise in techne. Techne is teachable and learnable, and its performance is manifestly independent of the moral and political qualities of human beings. Yet, the practical knowledge and reason which man employs to guide and illuminate life situations are not thus independent. Surely, we recognize here that general knowledge, within certain limits is applied to concrete cases. (Gadamer, 1992, p. 171).
Whereas techne denotes the learnable and teachable knowledge for the reason that it is indifferent to concrete situations, phronesis essentially requires particular and actual contexts and, hence, is not able to be taught and learned like techne (technical knowledge). Furthermore, techne is ‘an art, skill, craftsmanship - a science capable of perfectibility’ (Gadamer, 1992, p. 170), whilst phronesis is imperfect in the sense that it needs to be repeatedly transposed into the concrete situation.
Gadamer, following such a classification, considers hermeneutics as practice (praxis) and sees the same structure between them. Both have three identical points. First, as we have discussed, the act of understanding presupposes particular prejudice and tradition, which implies that interpretation is also made within concrete situations. Because of historically effected consciousness, an interpreter cannot be detached from his particular standpoint, or ‘horizon’. As practice always necessitates concrete situations, interpretation necessarily happens within a horizon to which an interpreter belongs. Secondly, hermeneutics is also imperfect in the sense that it will never achieve a definitive interpretation. As Gadamer argues, ‘[i]nterpretation is always on the way’ (1982, p. 105). This means, as I discussed in terms of linguistic finitude, the act of understanding requires the efforts to accumulate multiple interpretations by perpetual partial interpretations since language can describe only one side of things. Thirdly, Gadamer supposes that both practice and hermeneutics are ‘adventure[s]’ (Gadamer, 1982, p. 109), which implies both acts are directed towards the future. Namely, as practice is understood as the actuation of life (energeia) and a teleological movement towards each end, understanding also implies a continuous processual movement towards ‘a broadened and deepened self-understanding’ (Gadamer, 1982, p. 111). For this reason, Gadamer maintains that ‘where it is successful, understanding means a growth in inner awareness, which as a new experience enters into the texture of our own mental experience’ (Gadamer, 1982, p. 109). It is this third point that enables one to constitute the moral experience of the “thou” and hence, render practice and understanding reflective. Gadamer (1982, p. 111) asserts, from these points, that hermeneutics is identical to practical philosophy.
It is clear from the following passage that Gadamer argues that practical knowledge is more important than theoretical and technical knowledge in politics, and moral science as well:
For the knowledge of a supposed physicist of society might make possible a technology of society, but it would not guarantee a wise choice, on the part of the social physicist, from among the technological possibilities open to him. Aristotle devoted much thought to this problem and decided to call it practical knowledge, which concerns itself with concrete situations a different kind of knowledge. This is no hollow irrationalism to which he gives expressions. Rather, he identifies the clarity of reason which, in a practical political matter, is always able to discern the feasible in a given situation. (Gadamer, 1992, pp. 171–2)
For Gadamer, like Aristotle, politics is germane to practice, where practical knowledge and reason should be employed. This view has an affinity, especially with Michael Oakeshott’s criticism of Rationalism in politics. Oakeshott describes rational politics, in which technical knowledge exercises a predominant influence over practical knowledge, as ‘the politics of perfection’, and points out that political rationalism would be dangerous to society (1991, pp. 5–42). Both thinkers hold that political knowledge is neither theoretical nor technical knowledge but practical knowledge and, in other words, both contain the principle of political scepticism.[17]
Gadamer explains this reason for the superiority of phronesis in politics by using the metaphor of ‘piloting’. In Gadamer’s view, modern politics is led by the mode of ‘planning’ (or ‘making’), in which expertise employs scientific and technical knowledge for the purpose of rational and perfect administration. The politics of planning is derived from the technical, scientific, and mathematical calculation and thus assumes fixed and unchangeable situations like the world of physics; however, in fact ‘[p]olitics presupposes the changeability of conditions’ (Gadamer, 1992, p. 160). Then Gadamer suggests that we should substitute the model of piloting for the model of planning. ‘Piloting’ implies ‘the maintenance of equilibrium, which oscillates in a precisely set amplitude, and guidance, that is, the selection of a direction which is possible within the oscillating equilibrium’ (Gadamer, 1992, p. 174). Even if a policy is successful in a certain country, it does not necessarily follow that its policy will obtain the same result in other countries because the context in which the policy is formulated varies from country to country. Besides, politics will never reach its completion as if a plan were completed. For these reasons, politics always requires the need to consider concrete situations and carefully balance the needs of citizens. Namely, to pursue the equilibrium between the two opposite extremes, that is the middle course, is one of the most integral virtues in politics.[18]
3.3 Gadamer’s Organicism
The third principle of conservatism is organicism; it denotes to the view of society according to which society is an organic whole, or a living entity as second nature, rather than a mechanical collection of atomic individuals. This implies that society is a given entity and, thus, that man, who is situated in such a society, is intrinsically regarded as a social being. Moreover, conservatives assume that society is a resource of social norms, which is vital to the sustenance of the community, in the sense that shared and common values are embedded in society. What it implies by ‘second nature’ is that organicism is not a desire to return to a natural and primitive society but rather it requires consistent choices of the actions within a society.
Gadamer's dependence on Aristotelian practical philosophy makes it easier to find his organicism. As I discussed before, practice can be defined as the actuation of life, or energeia, and human practice is different from other animal’s one because it necessitates prohairesis (prior choice) and because it presumes polis. This second reason implies that the practice for human beings always requires a social institution, which is not an object of their choice but a resource of the order of prior choices guiding their life. Even if one believes that he or she would be free from that which they belong to, their practice always requires a social institution. The same is true for theory insofar as theory is understood as theoria, which, according to Gadamer, did not contradict with practice (praxis). Thus Gadamer states:
Everyone should be aware that a theoretical person, who has devoted his life to pure knowledge, also depends upon the social situation and political praxis. Society itself first provides for that distance which is required of us as our professional task. It would be insane to believe that the life devoted to theory would ever be independent of the political and social life and its constraints. The myth of the ivory tower where theoretical people live is an unreal fantasy. We all stand in the middle of the social system. (Gadamer, 1992, p. 221)
Moreover, he says:
At any rate, rationality is not only to be understood in terms of the rationality of means with respect to a pregiven purpose. It is precisely the pregiveness of our ends, the whole build-up of the common purposive directions of our social existence, that underpins the practical rationality that is confirmed in its critical appropriation of the norm of social conduct that determines us. (Gadamer, 1982, p. 165)
From the arguments presented above, it is obvious that Gadamer thinks that society as a pregiven entity gives us our ends and that human being is a social existence, which means he or she is always in the middle of the social system. However, it is still unclear whether Gadamer regards society as ‘organic’, ‘living’, and ‘second nature’.
Though Gadamer does not make a detailed account of his view of society in Truth and Method, it is possible to find some parts of it in his philosophical hermeneutics. Provided that organicism describes the features of where political action is carried out, his view of society will be revealed in his argument as to where acts of understanding are performed. This is because, as we have seen so far, his hermeneutics has the parallel structure to that of politics and practical philosophy.[19] Concerning where we understand, Gadamer argues that ‘[l]ong before we understand ourselves through the process of self-examination, we understand ourselves in a self-evident way in the family, society, and state in which we live in’ (2013, p. 289). Interpreters are thrown into and situated in that to which they belong, and they are influenced by prejudice, authority, and tradition. As long as one is not able to eschew prejudices, which stem from society, it is reasonable to say that interpretation occurs within a community such as the family, society, and state, and hence, such a community is an indispensable element to the act of understanding.
It is important to state that even if interpretation presupposes a society in which one lives, it does not necessarily follow that interpretation is always something familiar to us. That the act of understanding happens in a society means, on the one hand, interpretation surely requires ‘the commonality that binds to us’ (Gadamer, 2013, p. 305). Gadamer calls this commonality ‘fore-conception of completeness’ (2013, p. 305), which is a formal condition of all understanding and ‘the constant transcendent expectations of meaning that proceed from the relation to the truth of what is being said’ (2013, p. 305). For instance, in receiving a letter, the recipient considers as true what the letter says and is not trying to be doubtful about the content, at the outset at least. This is also true when one tries to decipher traditionary texts. We seek to interpret traditionary texts with the fore-conception of completeness, which stems from a familiar society. On the other hand, however, Gadamer argues that interpretation is involved with unfamiliarity to traditionary texts as well and calls this ‘temporal distance’. Namely, there is a historical distance between the interpreter and the traditionary text (or its author). What matters here is that temporal distance does not prevent an interpreter from understanding a text. Rather, ‘[t]ime is no longer primarily a gulf to be bridged because it separates; it is actually the supportive ground of events in which the presented is rooted’ (Gadamer, 2013, p. 308). Gadamer explains the reason for this as follows:
Often temporal distance can solve question of critique in hermeneutics, namely how to distinguish the true prejudices, by which we understand, from the false ones, by which we misunderstand. Hence, the hermeneutically trained mind will also include historical consciousness. It will make conscious the prejudices governing our own understanding, so that the text, as another’s meaning, can be isolated and valued on its own. Foregrounding (abheben) a prejudice clearly requires suspending its validity for us. … We now know what [the condition of hermeneutics] requires, namely the fundamental suspension of our prejudices. (Gadamer, 2013, pp. 309–10)
Temporal distance admittedly generates unfamiliarity to a text, but this also signifies the possibility to notice our own prejudices and enables us to understand better. In this sense, concerning the question of where understanding happens, Gadamer will answer ‘[t]t is in the play between the traditionary text’s strangeness and familiarity to us, between being a historically intended, distanced object and belonging to a tradition. The true locus of hermeneutics of this in-between’ (2013, p. 306).
Here we can see Gadamer’s view of society as a ‘living’ organisation. While hermeneutic work needs the commonality, which provides interpreters with fore-conception of completeness, it does not conclude that interpretation within a society perpetually stays the same. It is also involved with temporal distance, which makes it possible to suspend one’s own prejudices, and this element can, along with the commonality, lead to a different interpretation. More precisely, it is not possible to make a completely same interpretation because an interpreter has his or her particular horizon. As Gadamer put it, ‘we understand in a different way, if we understand at all’ (2013, p. 307). Furthermore, such a new interpretation will presumably be denied in the future for the reason that the interpreter cannot completely overcome his or her prejudice and totally comprehend a text. Thus, interpretations last without an ending point insofar as men’s finiteness never lead us to make an absolute interpretation. In this way, human beings continuously accumulate their fortune of interpretations of practices, which constitute social norms and hence society itself as second nature. Society will never stay natural or primitive,[20] and thus Gadamer asserts the ‘commonality is constantly being formed in our relation to tradition’ (2013, p. 305).
Gadamer’s view of society can be seen more clearly in his concept of ‘solidarity’, which is deepened in his post-Truth and Method writings. Gadamer supposes (1982, p. 83) that humans are being overwhelmed by bureaucratisation, rationalisation, and technology and atomised by the pursuit of personal economic profits. Nevertheless, there exists a commonality that can foster unity of society, which he calls ‘solidarity’. There are two features in Gadamer’s solidarity; the first point is that, in Gadamer’s view, solidarity is concealed. He argues that ‘even in the greatest dissolution of traditional forms, mores, and customs the degree to which things held in common still determine everyone is concealed’ (Gadamer, 1982, p. 82). It is important to note that, as Warnke (1987, pp. 57–8) points out, Gadamer regards, following Heidegger, truth as aletheia; it denotes unconcealment, that is the disclosing or bringing of what was previously hidden or occluded into the open. Therefore, in stating that solidarity is concealed, Gadamer does not intend that solidarity is already worthless or invalid. Instead, when Gadamer says ‘[t]he point is that genuine solidarity, authentic community, should be realized’ (1982, p. 80), Gadamer’s claim is that solidarity actually exists in society though it is neither inventible nor scientifically observable, and it is necessary to disclose it or make it unconcealed. The second hallmark of solidarity is, as Walhof (2016, p. 111) notes, it is based on the particular, rather than the universal. As Gadamer says ‘[p]ractice is conducting oneself and acting in solidarity (1982, p. 87), solidarity is uncovered by practical acts, and thus it is related to concrete and particular situations and communities. In other words, Gadamer does not appeal to universal notions of solidarity which is based on such as rationality and humanity; rather, his solidarity is linked to particular things that strengthen the social cohesion of specific groups of people.
These two features of solidarity also help us understand why society is a living entity. According to Gadamer, solidarity based on the particular has its facticity and thus really exist in a society. At the same time, however, such a solidarity would be concealed because it appears in concrete situations that continue to change. For this reason, those who are living in society need to constantly render it unconcealed and understand it in a different way, and this kind of solidarity that is understood differently will always differ from that in the past. It is in this sense that society will never stay natural, rather continuously transform.
4. Potential Objections
This section addresses several potential criticisms to my argument that Gadamer is conservatism. So far, I have attempted to reconstruct Gadamer’s philosophy as conservatism by discussing four contentions: human finitude, traditionalism, political scepticism, and organicism. Before concluding, I will try to rebut three potential oppositions.
4.1 Gadamer’s Identification
First potential criticism comes from the fact that Gadamer has always identified himself as a liberal democratic. In a 1986 interview, Gadamer was asked his political stance and answered ’I must say I never thought of myself as a conservative … I have always been a liberal from early times to today, and I have always voted for the FDP’ (1992, p. 140). One might think that insofar as Gadamer himself denied being a conservatist, my argument is unreasonable.
However, it is obvious from Gadamer’s account that the meaning of a conservative signifies ‘Conservative’. As I have noted as a caveat of my definition of conservatism, Conservative and conservative have to be distinguished since the Conservative Party does not necessarily depend on conservatism. Considering Burke was a member of the Whigs, it is wrong to confuse conservatism as a political philosophy with the Conservative Party’s ideology. I pointed out that my aim was to interpret Gadamer as a conservatist in the intellectual sense, not to establish Gadamer’s political affiliations.
Moreover, it can be said that my attempt is allowed by Gadamer himself. Previous hermeneutics, which Gadamer criticises, attempts to understand a text by following the author’s intention. However, this is impossible because an interpreter is historically finite, which means that he or she is always historically effected by previous interpretations of the text. An interpreter can understand a text only from the perspective or horizon that he or she belongs to. For this reason, Gadamer says:
an author does not need to know the real meaning of what he has written; and hence the interpreter can, and must, often understand more than he … Not just occasionally but always, the meaning of a text goes beyond its author. (Gadamer, 2013, p. 307)
In this way, since Gadamer’s texts go beyond his intention, my interpretation is not forbidden either.
4.2 Criticism of Burke?
The second possible objection concerns traditionalism. In rehabilitating the concepts of prejudice, authority, and tradition from the Enlightenment’s devaluation, Gadamer admits that romanticism’s thoughts and ideas contributed to its rehabilitation, and at this point, Gadamer (2013, p. 285) refers to Burke as one of the contributors to recovering the concept of prejudice. However, the romantic (and Burkean) attempt was still insufficient for Gadamer because at least Gadamer understands it romanticism’s endeavour was to simply reverse the Enlightenment’s criteria of value. Namely, the Enlightenment believed in the perfectibility of reason whereas romanticism overestimated that of tradition (and prejudice). Gadamer calls such belief in perfect tradition ‘traditionalism’ and denounces it. According to Gadamer, there is no such conflict between reason and tradition; rather, tradition has to function with reason insofar as reason is understood as the practical reason. From this point, one might say that Gadamer’s rehabilitation of tradition differs from Burke’s (and thus conservatism’s) traditionalism.[21]
However, this seems to reflect Gadamer’s bad prejudice, at least with respect to Burke’s rehabilitation. Though often misunderstood, Burke does not refute reason at all in his denunciation of the Enlightenment. In his defence of prejudice, for instance, Burke attaches importance to ‘the prejudice, with the reason involved’ whilst he censured the ‘naked reason’ (Burke, 1987, p. 76). It is clear that Burke does not consider that reason is repugnant to prejudice; instead, he admits the role of practical reason and claims not to throw away just prejudice and tradition. In other words, he does not intend to oppose prejudice to all kinds of reason, but merely the reason of the isolated individual who believes himself or herself to be detached from the tradition of his or her society.
4.3 Description or Prescription?
The third potential objection is also related to Gadamer’s traditionalism, especially the concept of prejudice, and it pertains to whether his notion of prejudice contains a prescriptive aspect or not. Prejudice, in a descriptive sense, denotes the unavoidable role of pre-judgment in making understanding and judgement. Burke’s account of prejudice, however, pertains to not only such a descriptive aspect but also to a normative outlook. For instance, Burke (1987, p. 76) rephrases the concept of prejudice as ‘latent wisdom’ or ‘the general bank and capital of nations and ages’, which imply the fund of experiences and knowledge that we ought to utilise as legitimate knowledge. As Burke asserts ‘[p]rejudice renders a man’s virtue his habit’ (1987, p. 76), thus, Burkean prejudice includes both prescriptive and descriptive aspects. Contrary to this, Gadamer’s claim is that his philosophical hermeneutics, including his concept of prejudice, does not contain any prescriptive sides. As Gadamer put it:
Fundamentally, I am not proposing a method; I am describing what is the case. That it is as I describe it cannot, I think, be seriously questioned … I consider the only scientific thing is to recognize what is, instead of starting from what ought to be or could be. Hence I am trying to go beyond the concept of method held by modern science (which retains its limited justification) and to envisage in a fundamentally universal way what always happens. (2013, p. 534)
In his self-understanding, his philosophical hermeneutics focuses on descriptively articulating what is happening when one understands, and it ‘is [only] “normative” to the degree that it aims to replace a bad philosophy with a better one’ (Gadamer, 1990, p. 282). In short, the problem is that, whereas Burkean prejudice contains both prescriptive and descriptive, Gadamer’s prejudice, in his own understanding, aims only to describe what actually occurs in understanding.
In light of this contention, Ryan Holston (2014) persuasively argues against Gadamer’s self-interpretation and points out Gadamerian prejudice corresponds with the Burkean one. In Holston’s analysis, first of all, Gadamer’s hermeneutics deals with the question of how we ought to engage with the past. In addition to this, Gadamer, too, regards prejudice as pre-knowledge of the good, which is linked to phronesis, or practical knowledge; namely, he takes prior human experiences as a critical guide for seeking out what is good. In this argument, Gadamer unconsciously implies that one should rely on traditional and practical knowledge for hermeneutics and politics[22]. Thus, Holston concludes that, despite his self-interpretation, Gadamer’s concept of prejudice has the prescriptive aspect in the same way as Burkean one does. [23]
Conclusion
Regarding the consequence of the French Revolution, Gadamer makes a comment in the Reason in the Age of Science. In Gadamer’s view, after the historical event, the common tradition, which had been taken for granted, started to lose its validity, and people began to deal with it as the object of historical knowledge. It was the time when a philosophical, not methodological, hermeneutics should have appeared so that it would enable men to decipher the world and cross the abyss of historical consciousness in a self-conscious manner (Gadamer, 1982, pp. 97–8). Such an impulse would converge with Burke’s impetus for criticising the revolution, which is later regarded as the starting point of modern political conservatism. Although Habermas and other scholars might have oversimplified the meaning of conservatism, there is still a possibility to interpret Gadamer as a conservatist insofar it is defined as reflective conservatism, which contains self-awareness of being conservative.
The view of a human being as finite and the three conservative principles can be found in Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics as well. Gadamer holds that human is finite existence primarily because he has historically effected consciousness and is embedded in history to which he belongs. Moreover, because of the speculative structure of language, by which one can describe only one-side of things as themselves, one’s mind, which is deeply connected to language, is also limited. In addition to this, the experience of the tragic makes unconcealed the truth of finitude. The historical, linguistic, and aesthetic finiteness has a central role in Gadamer’s philosophy. The rehabilitation of prejudice, authority, and tradition corresponds with the traditionalism of conservatism, and Gadamer sees them as the condition for hermeneutics. His primacy of the concept of practice not only explains why his hermeneutics can be regarded as political philosophy but also reveals his political scepticism. For Gadamer, politics is not the ambit of planning by technical knowledge, or techne, but piloting or the maintenance of equilibrium between two extreme forces by phronesis. Finally, Gadamer also has organicism in term of a view of society and holds that society is given, ethical, and living entity. Gadamer’s analysis of the concept of solidarity also strengthens his organicism. In conclusion, Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics can be interpreted as conservatism.
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[1] Christopher Smith’s (1991) book may be the sole exception. He attempts to show how Gadamer’s hermeneutics can be extended to ethics and claims, in his conclusion titled ‘Gadamerian Conservatism’, that because Gadamer’s philosophy is congruent with Burke’s idea of prudence, Gadamer can be conceived of as a conservatist, not a reactionary. I agree with this conclusion, but to say that Gadamer is a conservatist just for the reason of the congruence of prudence (practical knowledge) might be a hasty conclusion. Accordingly, I try to expand this argument by delving into not only prudence but also human nature and other conservatism’s principles, which I will argue.
[2] Although Mannheim (1986) calls conservatism in a broad sense ‘traditionalism’, I would like to use ‘natural conservatism’ because I shall use the term of traditionalism as one of the conservatism’s principles in our following discussion. It should be noted that the meaning of traditionalism, which we discuss later, is different from the one that Mannheim provides here.
[3] Frederic Beiser also argues that although conservatism in German always existed, after the French Revolution, it became ‘a much more self-conscious and coherent movement’ (1992, p. 281).
[4] More recently, Mark Garnett, in the introduction of Conservative Moments, provided a definition of conservatism as ‘an aversion towards radical change, reflecting a belief in the imperfection of human nature’ (2018, p. 21). Though he also emphasises the finitude of human nature, this, as he notes, might be broad. This is probably because the purpose of the definition is to provide an inclusive definition which enables other scholars to discuss conservatism across both historical and geographical boundaries.
[5] For the sake of space, although we do not discuss how different conservatism and neoconservatism (or neoliberalism) are, O’Hara (2011) insightfully argues how conservatism is distinct from neoconservatism and neoliberalism.
[6] However, significantly, Oakeshott does not deny that it is possible to elicit general principles from what is recognised to be conservatism (1991, p. 407).
[7] Ian Gilmour (1978, p. 121) also argues that although conservatism is not a system of ideas, it does have a theoretical basis.
[8] Yet, of course, whether Searle’s argument can be applied to not only institutional facts but also political philosophy is open to discussion.
[9] Recently, James Alexander (2015) has offered a ‘dialectical definition’ of conservatism which he believes goes beyond ‘dispositional’ definitions. This is a insightful and convincing suggestion, but I did not adopted it because it would not be suitable for our purpose of reconstructing Gadamer’s philosophy as conservatism.
[10] This does not mean that Risser neglects historical finitude, but he does not seem to examine it in an explicit way. In order to move smoothly to our later argument about traditionalism, I would like to employ this distinction.
[11] Of course, as Pippin (2002) argues, we can see not only differences but also similarities between Hegel and Gadamer.
[12] For instance, O’Gorman (1973, p. 18) argues that it is futile to look for any seeds of political thought in Burke’s early works. However, as Gadamer argues (2013, pp. 3–39), the concept of taste in the eighteenth century, which was the subject of the Philosophical Enquiry, was a matter of sunsus communis and hence included the moral and political connotations.
[13] For this reason, although one might think that Gadamer’s finitude have an affinity for the concept of incommensurability, which Alasdair MacIntyre (1981) notably developed, but they are different. As Beiner (2014) puts it, Gadamer emphasises the significance of overcoming seemingly incommensurable divisions through infinite and endless linguistic activities, especially thorough dialogue with the Other, which means that Gadamer does not deny the possibility to fuse different and not-easy-to-commensurate horizons.
[14] Moreover, it might not reasonable to put Gadamer's finitude in the same category with Mill’s fallibility. Whereas finitude (and imperfection) imply being intrinsically limited, being fallible literally concerns a possibility to make a mistake. The latter concept seems to be relatively loose in the sense that it still has a chance of being perfect.
[15] Gadamer’s thought that the hermeneutical structure is parallel to the political structure even in terms of tradition can be seen in the following sentence: ‘What makes classical ethics superior to modern moral philosophy is that it grounds the transition from ethics to “politics,” the art of right legislation, on the indispensability of tradition’(Gadamer, 2013, pp. 292–3). The meaning of ‘politics’ here is that in which politics and ethics are indivisibly united, that is Aristotle’s sense of politics.
[16] It might not plausible to describe Gadamer’s emphasis on openness as ‘Kantian’ since, as Gadamer holds in the passage above, its openness does not contain ‘neutrality’. Rather, its openness is involved with the particular or that which is based on historical finitude.
[17] Of course, there is a difference between Gadamer and Oakeshott in terms of practice (practical knowledge). For instance, as Neill (2014, pp. 416–425) puts it, Oakeshott does not completely deny the possibility to understand human conduct in a scientific and theoretical way, whilst Gadamer believes that all understanding is intrinsically practical. Yet this divergence does not mean to deny both thinker’s political scepticism; rather it might be able to argue that Gadamer’s political scepticism is stronger than Oakeshott’s one.
[18] Lauren Barthold (2016) describes Gadamer’s equilibrium as the position of human beings between finitude and the desire for infinitude and sees its relevance for Gadamer's philosophy.
[19] Although one might think that Gadamer emphasised only the temporality of understanding, such as the historicity of understanding, Jeff Malpas (2016) explores the topological character of understanding in Gadamer’s hermeneutics.
[20] Gadamer (2013, p. 287) also criticises the concept of “organic society”, whose origin can be perhaps found in Rousseau, and argues that this is the case of romantic reversal of the Enlightenment and just an illusory political theory.
[21] James Schmidt’s (1996, pp.16-20) interpretation of the relationship between Gadamer and Burke can be seen as one of the examples.
[22] Steven Paul Cauchon (2016) also points out that Gadamer’s hermeneutics needs to be prescriptive insofar as it claims to require openness to other.
[23] Anders Odenstedt (2017) argues that not only Gadamer’s concept of prejudice but also the whole of his philosophical hermeneutics has some prescriptive overtones.
