Gadamer's argument on truth has both a negative and a positive aspect. *Negative: Truth and Method is critical of not only the methodologism and scientism underlying the hermeneutics of Dilthey and the phenomenology of Husserl, but also the twentieth century proclivity for positivism and/or naturalism. *Positive: Yet in his move to put science “in its place,” so to speak, one finds a positive attempt to reinvigorate our appreciation of art, showing not only how it speaks truth but also how it serves as the paragon of truth. He argues not only that meaningful knowledge sought by the humanities is irreducible to that of the natural sciences, but that there is deeper, richer truth that exceeds scientific method. [2]
Historical reconstruction of the world to which a work of art belongs may be a method of understanding the work’s purpose or meaning. However, Gadamer criticizes this approach to interpretation as an attempt to recover a meaning which no longer exists. Gadamer explains that our understanding of the purpose and meaning of art is always influenced by our own historical situation. To try to experience a work of art as it was originally experienced is a futile effort to place ourselves in the past and is an attempt to deny the influence of our present historical situation upon our own understanding of purpose and meaning. [1] Gadamer also argues that any form of understanding is, to some degree, self-understanding. When we discover the true meaning of art we also learn what we are capable of understanding. ... preconceptions and prejudgments of the meaning of language and of the manner in which it is to be interpreted may actually hinder or mislead us in interpreting its meaning. Thus, in order to be able to understand the meaning of language, we may need to be able to determine which of our preconceptions make understanding possible, and which of our preconceptions hinder our understanding or lead to our misunderstanding. Historicism asserts that interpretation of the meaning of events is possible through a method of discovering their effective history. Gadamer criticizes historicism as a methodological approach to understanding, and argues that historicism produces many misleading prejudgments about how discourse is to be interpreted. ... Gadamer maintains that while historical consciousness observes the horizon of the past, hermeneutic consciousness merges the horizons of the past and present. Thus, hermeneutic consciousness has an open horizon. Hermeneutic consciousness has a horizon which is in motion, and which changes as our consciousness of the present merges with our consciousness of the past. Gadamer also explains that while aesthetic consciousness is limited by its subjectivity, and historical consciousness is limited by its relativity, hermeneutic consciousness transcends the limits of a methodological approach to interpretation. Hermeneutic consciousness is concerned with the concept of universal history, including the history of its own understanding. [1] Gadamer’s statement in his “Afterword” to Truth and Method: “what I described as a fusion of horizons was the form in which this unity [of the meaning of a work and its effect] actualizes itself, which does not allow the interpreter to speak of an original meaning of the work without acknowledging that, in understanding it, the interpreter’s own meaning enters in as well. . . Working out the historical horizon of a text is always already a fusion of horizons” (576, 577). Acknowledging that one can only access the viewpoint of another from within one’s own horizon is not a totalitarian effort to defend a mono-culture but a humble admission that one never can access directly the other’s perspective. Neither an imposed nor feigned sameness is the starting place; if they were there would be no work for understanding to do. Ascriptions of a mono-horizon belong to historicist positions that fail to note the complex nature of horizons that always, at least potentially, grant provisions for us moving beyond them. Gadamer’s account of horizon emphatically maintains that only where one is open to new horizons emerging—and hence difference—can one claim to understand. It falls to the work of the historical consciousness, which Gadamer seeks to undermine, to defend such a mono-cultural and reified picture of history and tradition. Hence, Gadamer’s theory is not forced to assume either a mono-cultural view of tradition or to posit mono-culture as the telos of understanding. Putting it in a slightly different way: difference is the occasion for—not an impediment to—understanding. [2] (+if he argues for a Truth instead of the truths which have already been claimed, what is his solution to this asserted objectivity?)
Fusion of horizons: Against historicism, Gadamer argues that the ability of a contemporary interpreter to understand a text of the past does not presuppose two entirely distinct, reified horizons. It is the work of understanding to expose the unity to what at first glance is taken to be two distinct horizons, that is, past and present. Hence the “fusion” of horizons that signifies understanding. [2]
If Gadamer’s hermeneutics can be called “dialectic” it is in the sense that Gadamer affirms that understanding is inseparable from dialogue and is marked by a constant and productive “chorismatic” [“chorismos” (the separation between the sensual and transcendent realms)] tension between these two realms (Barthold). [2] We could see that the play of dialogue indicates the central motif of Gadamer’s notion of truth: “To reach an understanding in a dialogue is not merely a matter of putting oneself forward and successfully asserting one’s own point of view, but being transformed into a communion in which we do not remain what we were” (379). The intertwined nature of dialectic and dialogue, combined with dialogue’s connection to solidarity, reflects what Gadamer meant when he referred to his philosophical hermeneutics as “dialectical ethics” (“Gadamer on Gadamer”, 15). [2] There [is no need to] worry that we are somehow trapped inside language. Instead, Gadamer stresses the open and on-going nature of understanding that manifests itself in two ways. First, as we have seen, one is to remain open toward the other in order to keep the conversation going. Second, Gadamer stresses the openness on the part of language, which is never a restrictive, non-porous boundary, but a productive limit that makes possible the continual creation of new words and worlds. [2] In this section, Gadamer proclaims his famous utterance, “Being that can be understood is language” (474). This claim means neither that everything is language nor that all Being is reducible to language. Language, Gadamer tells us towards the end of this section, is a type of presentation, a coming-into-being, that reveals the unity of beauty (that is, what we desire) and truth (what speaks to and changes us). Language, in other words, makes visible both truth and beauty. In this way, language reflects the hermeneutic experience in terms of being captivated by beauty and changed by truth, a truth that is irreducible to scientific method. [2] The interpretation of a text does not require us to abandon all of our preconceptions of its meaning, but to be aware of them and to discover how they contribute to our understanding of the text or to our misunderstanding of the text. The hermeneutical experience also requires us to recognize that the extent of our understanding may change over a period of time, and that our interpretations of meaning are always situated within a hermeneutical tradition. [1] Gadamer criticizes Schleiermacher for defining hermeneutics as an art or technique of interpretation. Gadamer is also critical of Schleiermacher’s concern with the psychological interpretation of language, and rejects the argument that an important method of understanding the meaning of spoken or written language is to try to reconstruct the original intentions of the speaker or writer. [1] The task of hermeneutics may not be to reject all preconceptions of meaning, but to recognize that some of these preconceptions may be conditions of understanding. [1] According to Gadamer, language is a medium of hermeneutic experience and is a vehicle of our understanding of the world. The universal aspect of hermeneutics as a realm of philosophical inquiry is that language is the being of everything which can be understood. Hermeneutics is not merely a method of interpretation, but is an ontological relationship between an interpreter and a language which is to be interpreted. [1]
"Before Gadamer, hermeneutics (attempting to emulate the natural sciences) sought to determine the truth of texts with reference to a meaning that was the same at all places and at all times. However, Gadamer recognised that our necessary situatedness meant, not just that such a transcendental meaning was beyond us, but it did not ask the correct question—what were the conditions of interpretation? ... Most importantly however, to not recognise our initial throwness in which our traditions shape our understanding (our ‘effective historical consciousness) is to demonstrate what Gadamer referred to as Enlightenment thinking’s ‘prejudice toward prejudice’." [3]
[1] http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/gadamer.html
[2] https://www.iep.utm.edu/gadamer/
[3] http://criticallegalthinking.com/2016/06/17/hans-georg-gadamer-hermeneutics/