On The Universality Of Gadamer's Hermeneutics

The embodiments of the Universality of Gadamer's hermeneutics are mainly in his view of understanding and view of language.As a matter of fact, the process of the development of hermeneutics is of the view of understanding. Schleiermacher and Dilthey think that understanding is the basis of text interpretation and the method of human science, which makes their hermeneutics a kind of methodology. Heidegger and Gadamer argue that understanding is a way of existing. Concretely speaking, it is finite. Understanding man and understood object are historical and always in "situation". The course of understanding is of "fusion of horizons" and "self-understanding", and is a temporal one. So understanding is event and a sort of practical activity in which as the component of understanding "application" has important significance. Justifying understanding occurs in the tangible lived world (Lebenswelt) and has no reliable universal rules. The practicality of understanding claims that hermeneutics is concerned with Lebenswelt, and therefore it is universal.Understanding as practical activity is a kind of communicating and intersubjective activity between understanding man and understood object, and is conversation. Gadamer depicts it as the model of question and answer. Conversation is a way of inquiry. It is on the way all along, whose process is constantly transcending and transforming, and is of meaning presenting continuously;what accompanies it and takes place in it is "rhetorical rationality", in fact phronesis. Meaning can present continuously because of understood object always being in the tension between presence and concealment. Inquiring meaning is the nature of thinking. Not only do we think the present, but also think the absent. To speak like monologue is not thinking. The model of "problem-solving" has presupposed the inquired reality being present forever. Problem exists in the realm of appearance opposite to reality. The inquiry is a controllable activity that subject with timeless epistemic faculty deals with inert object. Conversation is opposite to it, and is a process of "recontextualization" which makes the potential meaning be realized. It is more essential than the model of "problem-solving". We can find the model of conversation in T.S.Kuhn's theory of paradigm andK.R.Popper's evolution of knowledge. The result of what conversation inquires is knowledge that is different from the past "rational knowledge" which is of reality itself and the acquisition of which is guaranteed by the activity of subject. But Kant said that subject could not know thing-in-itself, but only the world which subject constructed. The knowledge which we acquire through conversation is the "liberal knowledge" extricated from the fetter of noumenon.Conversation shows that understanding is linguistic activity. There is a conspicuous "turn of language" in Gadamer's hermeneutics. His views on language are opposite to instrumentalism of language. It is inevitable that the latter gets into predicament during its development. First, language as instrument leads itself to wane;second, there is a contradiction between the legitimate expression and philosophical mission. Gadamer holds that language is universal. It is a central point (Mitte) where "I" and world meet, and a medium through which consciousness relates to beings. It is identical to world, thought and thing basically. It is not instrumental monologue but event. Being that can be understood is language and nothing can not be expressed by language. We call it "coming into language" ( Zur- Sprache- Kommen ) that thing presents itself in language. This does not mean that there are thing-in-itself and what it presents. The way in which a thing presents itself is part of its own being. Therefore everything contains a distinction between its being and the way in which it presents itself, but this is a distinction that is really not a distinction at all. Understanding belongs to the being of that which is understood. This bridges the dichotomy of the objective and the subjective which is the metaphysical premise of instrumentalism of language and the model of "problem- solving". Thereby we follow that the universality of Gadamer's hermeneutics can be ultimately summed up to his views on language.