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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx

Gadamer, conversation, public reason « Previous | |Next »
September 10, 2003

This is a review of a collection of feminist interpretations of Hans-Georg Gadamer.
Gadamer1.jpg
You can sense the dogmatic feminism in there: ie. feminism is the unquestioned touchstone by which everything is measured. Since Gadamer was blind to gender and power, had little awareness of the body and was patriarchical to boot, so he has nothing to offer feminism. If you get past the politics of Gadamer being hostile to feminist values, then Gadamer has some fruitful ideas that those working within the humanities can 'play around with' to trangress the beyond the thoughtforms of modernity. It is the ideas that are important.

When Gadamer is approached from an American postmodern perspective (the emphasis is on rupture and alterity) his hermeneutics of trust is contrasted with a hermeneutics of suspicion. Gadamer is seen to over-emphasize harmony, consensus and unity due to his reliance on Hegel. Gadamer is a conservative modern.

I'd always interpreted Hegel to be a philosopher of difference myself, but then I guess it all depends on your account of difference. From this Hegelian perspective (dialectical) you can read Gadamer's hermeneutics as an opening up to postmodernity. Instead of the 'either hermeneutics or postmodernism', you can have hermeneutics and postmodernity

Gadamer's idea of dialogic consensus is that it requires us to take into account the positions of others when discussing an issue, or a particular subject matter with them. we are obliged to deal with their objections, considerations and counter-examples. We then see the worth of their considerations, approaches and understanding of the matter at hand; and begin to incorporate/integrate these into our account as well as defend ourselves against specific criticisms. So we are open to both the possibility of their being better options, and to our own perspectives and knowledge being open to modification from the vantage point of another participant working from a different perspective. To put it in Heidegger's terms language opens a world to us rather than closing us into a situation.

Gadamer is reworking Hegel. The process of coming to agreement---the reciprocal integration of the initially opposing views and opinions----in philosophical conversations is our old friend the process of sublation---or cancellation and preservation-----with the spin of absolute knowledge. The emphasis on continuity refers to the conversation continuing and flowing with the conventions of a dialogic rationality---what Hegel would call a bad infinity.

You can use Hegel against Hegel. Adorno did it all the time. It's a neat trick. Gives you plenty of ready made fire power.

Hence the recognition of cultural and historical plurality does not necessarily imply scepticism towards reason. What philosophical conversations implies is a conception of truth conceived as aletheia, that is, "unconcealment" or a disclosing insight gained through reading (interpretation) and discussion rather than in the text.

Some of the feminist philosophers in the book under review recoil from Gadamer's conservatism, which is to be found in his rehabilitation of authority, prejudice, and tradition. Yet there is a radical undercurrent. Gadamer's dialogic reason is a different form of public reason to the instrumental economic reason that is hegemonic in the world of public policy. The hegemony of instrumental reason over practical deliberation leads to an increase in social irrationality, which is initially expressed in the way the dogmatic economists dismiss their critics and the populist expression of suffering from the negative consequences of their economic reforms.

Another critical aspect of Gadamer is that his dialogic rationality opens up the diversity of public reason. What comes to mind here is the way that an interpretive legal reason is a form of dialogic rationality and a form of practical reasoning (phronesis). This highlights the matter of judging or evaluating in practical deliberation within the tension between past and present, the various meanings of the legislation, the recognition of changed circumstances, and understanding the law that is already in force.

We can now turn to those conservative categories of tradition, prejudice and authority. For Gadamer we always understand from within a tradition. The way the legal system goes about interpreting the law in historical time highlights the way that a tradition changes and determines itself from within. Within this process the interpreter's of a legal text bring their prejudices to the text, with these prejudices ranging from biases to presuppositions. The modification of these prejudices through ongoing dialogue can then be seen as an educative process. (Bildung)

We can also give an account of authority in terms of public law. One way to highlight law as authority is the legal positivism. Now I am naive about legal positivism as I am not a legal philosopher. I more or less intuitively connect legal positivism to Hobbes and Bentham as I know little about the work of H.L.A. Hart. I have not read The Concept of Law.

As I understand legal positivism, it presupposes that the system of public law is a form of social order that has its roots in the patterns of command and obedience of the Parliament as sovereign that are backed by force. This coercive face of public law is modified by the law-applying judicial system (the courts). I have assumed that the normative element in public law, which is embodied in the categories of authority, rights, obligations, is reduced to power of command and obedience of the political system. This is probably not a satisfactory account of legal positivism, but it suffices to indicate the need to work with some conception of authority. You need the category of authority to help make sense of the political.

So Gadamer's hermeneutics is fruitful in terms of public reason. How to show the fruitfulness? One way is push hermeneutics a bit further by making it do a bit of work on public reason through bringing it to bear on legal positivism.

The hermeneutical background is why I have difficulty with classic analytic texts in legal theory, such as the work of the legal positivist H.L.A Hart mentioned on Lawrence Solum's great Legal Theory blog.

As I understand it legal postivism holds that the law just is. It is in the sense that it is a social fact. This divorces public law from the merits as law. So what grounds the authority of public law? It cannot be simply power in a liberal society due to that society being premised on free subjects. Hart provides an answer. The Stanford Encyclopedia says that:


"For Hart, the authority of law is social. The ultimate criterion of validity in a legal system is neither a legal norm nor a presupposed norm, but a social rule that exists only because it is actually practiced. Law ultimately rests on custom: customs about who shall have the authority to decide disputes, what they shall treat as binding reasons for decision, i.e. as sources of law, and how customs may be changed."

Law is the customary social rules of the economic/political system.

My initial problem with this---along with many others---is that the connection between ethics and law is sundered with the concentration on the facticity of law. The sundering is misleading because the legislature does frame the rules that are embodied in legisation because the rules are seen to be good or worthwhile in some sense. Thus the recently passed "Environment Heritage Legislation Amendment Bill (no 1) 2002 was concerned with a heritage regime that would list matters of national and heritage significance in a National Heritage List in order to grant them some form of protection. Ethics is interwoven the rules.

Secondly, the facticity of the law as rules is blind to the law as public reason. The process of negotiating the various amendments of the Heritage legislation in the Senate was done in terms of appeals to various ethical principles about the nation and national identity. It was also done through extensive moral and political argument to reach some sort of consensus or agreement. The daily practices of the Senate and the judgements of the High Court embody a dialogic conception of understanding that is not captured by public law as rules.

My third concern is that the facticity of law does not allow for process of interpretation and understanding in relation to legal texts in the legislature and the judiciary system. This legal hermeneutics can be understood as an attempt to 'make explicit' the structure of the particular situatedness of us already being 'in' the world '(as Australians) along with' that which is to be understood (ie. heritage). The Senators and High Court judges are interpreters. This process of interpertation is made explict with interpretation of the Constitution both as a historical text and applying it to situations that the framers never considered.

These three concerns about legal positivism shows that Gadamer's hermeneutics incorporates a genuinely deconstructive strategy. That strategy can be understood as part of a tradition of a philosophical critique of the metaphysics of modernity. Yet Gadamer offers something more than deconstruction. His reworking of the Greeks (Plato and Aristotle), Hegel and Heidegger enables him to put some in place once the deconstruction has enabled us to stand in a clearing. If you follow the pathway of 'putting something in place' then you criss-crosses some interesting trails in cyberspace.

One is an opening to a legal hermeneutics, which argues that law is best understood as an interpretation of the political practices of liberal society. Thus, Ronald Dworkin holds that in deciding a legal case, judges decide in accord with the interpretation of the society's institutions and legal texts that best fits and justifies the society's history and practices.

Another opening is this. Very interesting Lawrence, very interesting.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:36 PM | | Comments (4)
Comments

Comments

Gary:

Thanks for this discussion and being sensitive to more of the possibilities in Gadamer. Currently I've formed a philosophy reading group and we've taken up Rawls Theory of Justice. I've just discovered his later piece on public reason which interests me greatly as a student of rhetoric and sometime Gadamer scholar whose grad student created a Gadamer website in US. I'm thnkful to have hit upon your piece and am interested in the connect, or disconnect between phronesis and public reason as Rawls views it.

George,

glad to be of help. I do think that your explorations will prove to be very fruitful.

I've only made tentative links between rhetoric, conversation and public reason. My experience of working in the Australian Senate highlighted the usefulness of Gadamer and Rawls.

The ethos of the Senate is one of a public reason in the form of debate, dialogue, agreement, and rhetoric.

It is also works with an ethical public reason as it is concerned with making Australia a better place for citizens. That ethical reason can be a utilitarian one,but it is also a form of phronesis.

Gadamer is very important for understanding political life. Do you know the url of the Gadamer website? I would like to explore it.

If you want you can use philosophy.com to develop a virtual dimension to your reading group. It would be nice to share your reading and discussion with others.

Gary:

www.svcc.il.us/academics/classes/gadamer/gadamer.htm is the Gadamer website. It comes up first when I google Gadamer.

I am very intrigued by you reference to the usefulnes-relevance of rawls and Gadamer to your experience in the senate. Have you written about this? If so, I'd appreciate some references. One of our challenges in this mixed group is to fight our way through Rawls's abstractions. We sense their relevance, but need more leads. Any you might provide would be most welcome.

George,
thanks for the link to the Gadamer website..

I haven't published anything other than what is on philosophy.com I was too busy working from 7.30 am to 11.30 pm

Gadmer never connected his philosophical hermeneutics to political life as far as I know.

I've done three things:
Understood Rawls conception of public reason locatred within democratic political institutions and civil society as counter to the instrumental reason of the market.

interpreted Rawls conception of public reason as Gadamer's conversation based on interpretation of texts, presupposing prejudice and bias as pre-judgements, working within political traditions (eg., liberalism or conservatism)

understood the rhetoric of the Senate debates around amending legislation (texts) and changing public policy (texts) as an concrete example of what Gadamer means by a conversation (an exchange between conversational partners that seeks agreement about some matter at issue (the fusion of horizons).

Interpreted the political aspect of this (taking place in liberal political institutions) in terms of a conception of deliberative democracy.

That's where I've got stuck. Looking at the trajectory I can see that I used Gadamer to give public reason the historically conditioned character and to locate it within our historical situatedness.

Where I would move to next would to focus on the way dialogue leads to understanding in politics; on the ethical nature of public reason re deliberation; deliberation as a form of practical reasoning that includes reasoning and rhetoric.