Article/Publication Details
Views: 4618

IN DEFENCE OF GADAMER'S NOTION OF UNDERSTANDING IN THE CONTEXT OF IDEOLOGICAL CRITIQUE

Abstract
The article attempts to defend and advance the project of Gadamer's hermeneutics of trust given that today the notion of understanding is inextricably tied to the view of tradition, discourse and language as inevitably contaminated by ideological distortions by supplementing it with Foucault's critical insights. The common ground between Foucault and Gadamer is that both thinkers militate against the notion of understanding as a process guided by universal criteria of rationality (in particular against Habermas' notion of non-distorted communication) maintaining instead that individuals are inextricably embedded within a particular tradition. Foucault, we maintain, is extremely important for Gadamer in that he develops a mode of critical relationship towards the tradition but precisely understood as a dynamic within the tradition itself, renegotiating and expanding the space of personal freedom; this process, no doubt, being guided by engaged individual perspective and self-understanding without any recourse to an Archimedean point of view outside of any tradition. In doing so Foucault is able to provide a much needed method of immanent critique of ideological distortions (potentially always present in the tradition, discourse or language) that remains faithful to the basic tenants of Gadamer's hermeneutic outlook. We consider a model that schematically demonstrates how such immanent critique can be carried out. We take Gadamer's notion of understanding as realised in an open and charitable dialogue and internalise this dialogue within a single subject taking place between two distinct perspectives: a critical Foucauldian perspective on the one hand, and the immediate self-undertstanding of situated subjectivity on the other. This internal dialogue should enable the subject to maintain a critical distance with respect to aspects of oneself that are a product of social practices and conditions (as demanded by critics of Gadamer), yet remaining within the space of Gadamerian dialogical understanding situated in the first-person ontology.

Key words
Philosophical hermeneutics, hermeneutics of trust, hermeneutics of suspicion, under- standing, dialogue, prejudices, ideology.

References

• Akhutin, A.V. (2010). Kriticheskii analiz otnosheniya «poznaniya sebya» i «zaboty o sebe» u pozdnego M. Fuko [Critical analysis of the relationship between “knowledge of oneself” and “care of the self” in late Foucault]. In S.S. Khoruzhii (Ed.), Fonar' Diogena. Proekt sinergiinoi antropologii v sovremennom gumanitarnom kontekste [Diogenes' Lantern. The project of synergetic anthropology in the context of contemporary humanities] (240-272). Moscow: Progress. (in Russian).
• Dreyfus, H. L., & Rabinow, P. (1983). Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Fuko, M. (2006). Etika zaboty o sebe kak praktika svobody [Ethics of the Care of the Self as a Practice of Freedom]. In V. P. Bol'shakov (Ed.), Intellektualy i vlast' [Intellectuals and power] (241-270). Moscow: Praksis. (in Russian).
• Fuko, M. (2007). Germenevtika sub'ekta. Kurs lektsii, prochitannykh v Kollezh de Frans v 1981– 1982 uchebnomu godu [Hermeneutics of the subject. The 1981–1982 College de France lecture course]. St. Petersburg: Nauka. (in Russian).
• Fuko, M. (2008). O nachale germenevtiki sebya [On the origins of the hermenetucs of the self]. Logos, (2), 65–95. (in Russian).
• Gadamer, H.-G. (1975). Hermeneutics and the Social Sciences. Cultural Hermeneutics, (2), 307– 316.
• Gadamer, H.-G. (1986). The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Gadamer, Kh.-G. (1988). Istina i metod [Truth and method]. Moscow: Progress. (in Russian).
• Gadamer, Kh.-G. (1999). Tekst i interpretatsiya [Text and interpretation]. In V. Shtegmaier, Kh. Frank, B. V. Markov (Eds.), Germenevtika i dekonstruktsiya [Hermeneutics and deconstruction] (202-242). St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg State University Press. (in Russian).
• Habermas, J. (1977). A review of Gadamer's Truth and Method. In F. R. Dallmayr & T.A. McCarthy (Eds.), Understanding and Social Inquiry (335-363). Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
• Habermas, J. (1987). Theory of Communicative Action: Volume Two. Liveworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason. Cambrige: Polity.
• Kelly, M. (1995). Gadamer, Foucault and Habermas on Ethical Critique. In L. K. Schmidt (Ed.), The Specter of Relativism: Truth, Dialogue and Phronesis in Philosophical Hermeneutics (224-235). Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
• Khaidegger, M. (2006). Bytie i vremya [Being and Time]. St. Petersburg: Nauka. (in Russian).
• Kögler, H. H. (1999). The Power of Dialogue: Critical Hermeneutics After Gadamer and Foucault. Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Luxon, N. (2008). Ethics and Subjectivity: Practices of Self-Governance in the Late Lectures of Michel Foucault. Political Theory, 36 (3), 377–402.
• Mikhel', D. V. (1999). Mishel' Fuko v strategiyakh sub'ektivatsii: ot «Istorii bezumiya» do «Zaboty o sebe»: Materialy lektsionnykh kursov 1996–1998 godov [Michel Foucault in the strategies of subjectivation: from “The History of Madness” to “The care of the self”: the materials of 1996- 1998 lecture courses]. Saratov: Publishing house of the Volga affiliated branch of the Russian training center. (in Russian).
• Pogonyailo, A. G. (2007). Mishel' Fuko. Istoriya sub'ektivnosti [Michel Foucault. The history of subjectivity]. In Germenevtika sub'ekta. Kurs lektsii, prochitannykh v Kollezh de Frans v 1981– 1982 uchebnomu godu [Hermeneutics of the subject. The 1981–1982 College de France lecture course] (597-662). St. Petersburg: Nauka. (in Russian).
• Rabinow, P. (Ed.). (1984). The Foucault Reader. New York: Pantheon Books.
• Warnke, G. (2002). Hermeneutics, Ethics, and Politics. In R. Dostal (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer (79-101). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Zuckert, C. H. (2002). Hermeneutics in Practice: Gadamer on Ancient Philosophy. In R. Dostal (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer (201-224). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.