Epistemology of Hans Gadamer in Truth and Method - Article Example

A Critique of the Epistemology of Hans Gadamer in Truth and Method The study of philosophy has been in practice ever since mankind learned the art of asking questions. The assiduous search for truth and for an absolute, however baffling they are for all their worth, together with man’s endless passion for establishing rationales that underpin events, actions and cognitions, collaboratively inspired seminal thinkers from different epochs to undertake mammoth epistemological projects. The analogy of doctrines, in most cases, has propelled further inquiries into the roots of quandaries. Truth is one such doctrine which, notwithstanding its overwhelming ambiguity and teleological inconclusiveness, has continued to evoke interests among philosophers, scientists, artists and scholars. This paper is going to critically discuss the theology of truth propounded by eminent German philosopher Hans Gadamer in his most definitive work Truth and Method. Epistemological studies have always maintained an ideological distance from scientific understanding of truth. What natural sciences offer as legitimate grounding for the analysis of various phenomena occurring in the periphery of reason and logic are often challenged in philosophy of human sciences. In Truth and Method, Hans Gadamer makes the critical attempt at furthering the investigation procedures into the realms of truth begotten from experiences rather than from mere scientific researches. Historical studies play an important role in this regard as history itself is a legitimate verifier of meta-scientific philosophies. There is also a conflict between erstwhile philosophical schools of thought and the modern ones in terms of interpretation. The mere experience of something is far more rewarding than acknowledging the ideas behind that experience – if this statement is to be followed, it would be quite clear that philosophy of truth is deeply inbred in the way it is understood. Gadamer argues that hermeneutics is very much an integral component of philosophical studies. His discursive framework is akin to Heidegger’s theory on hermeneutics which addresses how meanings are interpreted through linguistic means (Moran, 2000, p. 248). As opposed to the prevailing hermeneutical beliefs, Gadamer exposits the notion that a textual context is essentially time-bound and encapsulated by the consciousness of objectivity within a historically accomplished spatial-temporal frame (Allen & Springsted, 1992). Mantzavinos (2005) argues that the process of understanding is greatly complicated by the fact that knowledge is not, in philosophical terms, a means to its own end (p. 9). In other words, what an individual knows by himself (the subjective entity) is not adequate to gain an insight into another person’s mind. This is because a fundamental shift in perspective is bound to occur when a person tries to interpret beyond his/her subjective reach. Since Gadamer’s philosophy is based on the dilemma encountered in the objectivity of natural sciences and the subjectivity of moral or human sciences, it is imperative to understand that what Gadamer tries to demonstrate is quite similar to the construct of phenomenology. Social aspects of human perception are at best didactic. In Truth and Method, Gadamer maintains that our innermost beliefs do not comply with the study of effects and anticipations as validated by social sciences. Hence, it is the human sciences or theologies of truth that can be successfully related to the mental freedom and the freedom of choice. Speaking of regularity, Gadamer purports a crucial analogy that defies the certitude of predictions. Even if predictions can be successfully made and supported with outcomes, there lies a profound mystery about the mind that predicts (Gadamer et al., 2004, p. 4). To put it differently, taking a decision on the basis of generic understanding about something may lead to taking the correct decision, but it does not automatically imply that human cognition is capable of untangling all the subtle linkages that are involved with the decision making process and its righteousness. So the paradox about cognition remains woefully short of attaining any kind of desired objectives. Research on para-cognitive attitudes may provide an important phenomenologist dimension to Gadamer’s core philosophies. It might be noted here that the phenomenologist school of thought is also complemented by the physicalism theory, especially in the study of para-cognitive attitudes. It would be interesting to casting a monist glance at how the self-will and its fulfillments are seamlessly connected with one another with respect to cognitional selectivity. In relation with what Gadamer regards as the intrinsic confusion lying at the very heart of understanding, Persson (2006) exemplifies the working rationale of pleasure in human psyche: “…if one confuses the idea that pleasure is always consequential upon the (believed) fulfillment of one’s desires, with the idea that pleasure can be the object of desire, one may slide to the hedonist thesis that the object of desire must ultimately be pleasure, that other things we obviously desire are only means to pleasure” (p. 17). Now this chain of thought has a significant bearing on the methodologies by which truth is analyzed both within and beyond the frames of relative experiences. Allen & Springsted (1992) opine that human consciousness is such that it cannot be reduced to any kind of ontological units that can function independently without overlapping with one another (p. 141). What they mean is that an action like thinking is conscious per se, i. e., an individual knows if he/she is thinking or not. Hence, there is ample evidence to corroborate that the expression of a thought conceived is generally dissociated from the objective context of thinking. If I am aware of the fact that I can distinguish an anaconda from a white tiger cub, I must be also aware that this differentiation made by me is nothing but an application of my inner thought process into words or linguistic variants. The interpretation of each word will be specific to the context in which it is spoken or referred to. It would be meaningless to call a piece of pastel work a water cannon, for both have their distinct features that are cognitively connected to the human capacity for realistic understanding. This realistic understanding, albeit a vague projection of hermeneutics, nevertheless elicits pragmatic responses from the brain. Stating that, moral sciences do not consider cerebral operatives to be the main tool for their inquiries. The seminal Greek thinker Plato put forward the notion that traditional or classical concepts of philosophy strive to draw the simple borderline between how far humans can think and to what extent that thinking is legitimized by actions of the world (Lawn, 2006, pp. 59-60). This brings us back to the aforementioned dichotomy of analogies in terms of the stretch of understanding and the disenabled purview of the same. Subjectivity and the notion of prejudice are two of the most important doctrines Gadamer elaborates in Truth and Method. The very basis of hermeneutic argument induces a subjectively biased viewpoint of individual experiences. Unlike the prevailing negative implications of prejudice, Gadamer sees it as an opportunity to introduce positive traits to prejudiced worldviews. Considering subjective prejudice as a pre-judgmental metric, he lets his philosophy transcend the linear and restricted movements of thought. The hierarchical aspects of hermeneutics initiate a twofold way of inquiry – what we understand by what we observe, and what we observe when we understand the true nature of something. This true nature may have a negative connotation, but it still is a metaphysical concept involved in Gadamer’s projection of truth. Gadamer identifies the functional inadequacy of methodologies in typifying truth in accordance with all the preexisting determinants such as individual longing for finding reason and rationale; data evaluation and attaching credibility to it; and causal relationships. But instead of utterly dismissing all kinds of methodological pursuits, he rather introduces an inductive method which is “free from all metaphysical assumptions and remains perfectly independent of how one conceives of the phenomena that one is observing” (Gadamer et al., 2004, p. 4). The genesis of Gadamer’s hermeneutics theory is intellectually rooted in biblical passages and many other ancient texts of literary values (Kearney, 1994, p. 240). Since then this epistemological discipline has been in practice in a number of areas including the legal system, art and literature and linguistics, its evolution has always been very dynamic and intriguing. It deals with the core principles of interpretation and how they can be implemented in actual situations. As mentioned earlier, there are two distinct aspects of hermeneutics. One has to grapple both the meaning and the intended meaning or ‘reading between the lines’, so to speak. This type of layered assessment system instantly necessitates ethnic as well as temporal understanding about the localized effects of mental states. Gadamer suggests that a considerable degree of experimental probing needs to be made into the realms of mental states, so that scientific knowledge becomes more objectified to its proponents. He refers to the space-bound effectiveness of truth as a causative and not as a well defined set of scientific rules. In fact drawing any kind of phenomenological explanations of truth immediately obfuscates Gadamer’s principles. What Heidegger does in Being and Time is an act of affiliation with theories and their corresponding methodologies. But unlike his predecessor, Gadamer does not regard methodologies to be an integral part of his investigation (Holub, 1991, p. 53). He rather views the task of understanding as a universal one, independent of any kind of preset normative conditions under which interactive relations become constrained. As Kennedy & Selden (1995) argues, “He is interested in explaining understanding as such, not in its relationship to a particular discipline, but conceived as the essence of our being-in-the-world” (p. 263). Gadamer in Truth and Method critiques Kant’s hypothesis on the principles of judgment. Here again, the conflict between subjectivity and objectivity surfaces from philosophical perspectives, undermining the universal essence of a full-proof theory. What Kant wants to underscore is that judgment is entirely a matter of an observer’s taste which is not influenced in any way by the thing which is being judged or commented upon. But Gadamer challenges this very notion and goes on arguing if any such objective angle is at all possible. He vehemently opposes the idea that concrete statistical support should be deemed adequate for the generalization of Kant’s theory. In case of the aesthetics of judgment, one would be tempted to make a disjunctive specification which is not based on any kind of empirical universality (Gadamer et al., 2004, p. 37). There are no general laws as such in the worldview of moral sciences that would suffice validating in each and every instance of subjective approval of making judgments. What is standard according to one parameter may or may not be accepted under another. This is precisely the point that emerges out of Gadamer’s arguments. In fact Kant’s epistemological theses pertaining to ethics, social philosophy, political philosophy, and the philosophy of religion have been reevaluated an umpteen number of times by modern thinkers, but without much considerable progression that would contribute to the exploration of any fresh, never-been-thought motive. The period of Kant’s work may offer a lead to more lucid comprehension of his theories. Kant worked at a time when the value of enlightenment was given much priority over modernistic approaches to subjectivity. Enlightenment was perceived to be a social phenomenon having a paradigmatic bearing on the cumulative wisdom of a given society (Rossi, 2005, p. 1). The cultural practices of Prussia during Kant were typified by certain characteristics that may not be relevant in universal contexts. Hence, the historical facets of hermeneutics are, to a great extent, sought by Gadamer for the sake of discursive analysis. Pressler & Dasilva (1996) argue that Gadamer’s magnum opus Truth and Method is an organic continuation of Wilhelm Dilthey’s essays on the historical method. The effective historical consciousness spoken of by Gadamer is quite significant from research perspectives. He maintains that Dilthey’s hypothesis is expandable by the exclusion of narrator from the context of narration (p. 158). Now coming back to Gadamer, it is quite obvious that he projects the very idea stating that author’s actual intentions should be interpreted furthermore by eliminating the subjective viewpoint of the author. …it seems to me that the problem of application, of which we had to remind the critic, also characterizes the more complicated situation of historical understanding. All appearances seem to be against this, it is true, for historical understanding seems to fall entirely short of the traditionary text’s claim to applicability. We have seen that history does not regard a text in terms of the text’s intention but in terms of its own characteristic and different intention – i.e., as a historical source – using it to understand what the text did not at all intend to say but we nevertheless find expressed in it (Gadamer et al., 2004, pp. 334-5). It is quite clear from the passage that there is often a sub-textual reference to what is said in a particular piece of written work. The dichotomy of perception may rest in the author’s representation of the work and the subsequent critiques made by the experts or the readers. This dichotomy is bequeathed to the hermeneutic school of thought for carrying out further interpretations of the text. Now the crucial question is how is history or tradition related to hermeneutic studies? To find an answer to this question, we need to first of all understand how traditional epistemology is shaped by empirical evidences. In many ways, the philosophy of sociology is a composite idea that culminates into being the most profound of all theologies. It becomes a self-enabled interpretational tool by which most aspects of historical legacies are supported and justified. Since the any passage of history is drawn on and supplemented by its preceding and succeeding epochs respectively, textual interpretation entails an obvious correlation with reiterated models of written documentations of Holy Scriptures and other types of secular as well as regional treaties (Mueller-Vollmer, 1988, p. 2). But at the same time, isolated distribution of historical events makes it difficult to establish any continuous flow of thought that is seamlessly programmatic. This dissociation problematizes any philosophic attempt to find a totalistic meaning into texts (Crook, 1991, p. 102). While the study of classical philosophy is aligned with the task of attaining truth through tried and tested methods of knowledge retrieval, Gadamer’s hermeneutics differ fundamentally. As argued by Rorty et al. (2008), the basis of Classical epistemology propounded by noted thinkers belonging to Platonic and Kantian schools of thought talked about essence of human experience. Now the methodology of finding an essence in experience is subjective per se. In other words, when a philosopher tries to look for essential attributes in mankind’s existence, he/she is instantly labeled as a system operating within a classified framework of investigation. This framework, albeit a proven one, is unbeknownst to the preconditions of the neutral parameters of natural sciences. On the other hand, Gadamer’s philosophy is highly polemic in its discourse in that hermeneutics do not involve any kind of methodological tools for arriving at the truth. The phenomenological pluralism of hermeneutics is in its own right a teleological device analogous to the truthful narration of science. The epistemological parity is intrinsic in hermeneutic phenomenon, but without the self-conscious methodologies (p. 358). To cite an example, a person’s awareness of philosophy is an implicit reference to the Classical modes of knowledge. We know things and we develop our consciousness from what is known. This is the essence of Classical epistemology. On the contrary, hermeneutic phenomenon denies the validity of what we know or what can be known. An outside and significantly distant connection may be established here with the analogy of solipsism. The solipsistic school of thought tends to take an inward look for the sake of acquiring self-knowledge, for the borderline of human knowledge is non-stretchable beyond a certain auxiliary scope. This is precisely what Gadamer stresses on in Truth and Method. Echoing the arguments of Rorty et al., Wachterhauser (1986) critiques Gadamer’s philosophy in a forceful and intelligible manner. Every instance of our experience accumulation is not guided in any way by our theoretic familiarity of that particular experience. It is as if we learn as we go along the philosophically trodden territories of actions, thoughts and events. Laws of natural sciences are almost always verified on empiric groundings. But the conditions that would substantiate these empiric groundings cannot be set apart from scientific knowledge gained from natural sciences. Quite clearly, this claim allows us to ponder over uncharted horizons of natural sciences and its traditional exegesis. The communicative aspect of information is ever changeable with change in contexts, time and access points (p. 219). Speaking on the problem of espousing a particular method to solve the puzzle of truth, Gadamer refers to the logic of phenomena as they occur in various realms of life. Natural science according to him creates the biggest moot point, which is resolved by hermeneutics explanations. Systematic correlations of historical events are never addressed in totality by investigations made by natural sciences. Moreover, isolated instances do not provide any generic proof to embody universal predictability either. So the basic objective of hermeneutics is to comprehend how the abstractions of physical phenomena are what they are. Grasping this goal is quite problematic since it requires an extreme form of objectivity to move outside the framework of subjective yardsticks representing ontological priories that are transferrable to concrete knowledge (Gadamer et al., 2004, p. 4). The transcending components of art and how they add to the overall appreciation of the same have been discussed at length by Gadamer. He refers to Hamann’s discretion in aesthetic representation of art through non-aesthetic means based on human perspective to look at a work of art from outside the ambits of science. Gadamer questions the purpose that underlines the initiation of aesthetic experiences and further deepens his prognostication that non-materialistic creations such as a person’s tacit knowledge or behavior cannot be fully assessed by scientific paradigms unless those are viewed from a multiply realizable standpoint. Again, the perplexing aspect of this analogy is that an appeal to purely external senses is never adequate to penetrate the deep seated cognitive layers of meaning and interpretation. The vision of art in particular is cognitive by definition and yet, it generates an equated provision for meta-physical rendition. In relation with perceptible knowledge, Gadamer argues that even response to stimuli, which is nothing but a regular psychological process, is a conceptual cul-de-sac in terms of core hermeneutics. Logical derivatives of such processes can never be fully sensed through knowledge acquisition nor can they be transmuted into spontaneous impulses. Perception poses a major obstacle in the path of unbiased understanding. The practical nature of experiences, according to Gadamer’s line of reasoning, is not tantamount to their realistic forms. Consciousness is an extended part of realism, but the same attribute does not suffice as a visionary metrics that would enable a person to acknowledge more than is there to be acknowledged. Quite notably, Gadamer defends his arguments by citing the example of a picture and how we tend to comprehend the meaning of it. Whenever a picture is given to us, we discern it from its readability. Our brain recognizes its various colors and patterns before connecting them with what is being fed into our experiential knowledge storage. This can be validated by natural sciences. But what natural sciences fail to validate is when we are given with a trick picture or photo illusions. It is quite common to have been misled into believing something is there in such pictures whereas in reality there is nothing to be seen. This apparent discordance results in from faulty understanding born of twisting perceptions. Another potent example is music. No science can term music as a concrete and tangible form that can be reasoned indisputably. This is because mere understanding of a particular musical tone is invariably differentiated from appreciation of the same. We need to have knowledge to understand the cogency and constituting elements of art. But having these two attributes, which equate to having conscious faculties of mind, does not necessarily compel us to appreciate the ‘understood’. Getting the meaning of something does not always leave any qualitative imprint on our sense of tastes and preferences (Gadamer et al., 2004, pp. 78-79). To sum the paper up, it can be inferred that Gadamer’s works on hermeneutics have assisted not just modern philosophers, but also the practitioners from other theoretic as well as applied academic disciplines. Linguistics and computer programming are two academic disciplines wherein Gadamer’s hypotheses, notwithstanding their polemic nature, are widely applied. There is very little doubt that his findings, which could easily have been enmeshed in earlier spectrums of philosophical quandaries, led to massive upsurges in the world of thinking and reasoning. Theories pertaining to the dissociation of content from the contexts in which the former is used have revolutionized the art of conversation in various circumstances and under a broad span of linguistic operatives. His theory on the grossly interpretational nature of understanding has opened up numerous prospective avenues for further researches as undertaken social scientists, analysts and counselors worldwide. 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