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A New Defense of Gadamer's Hermeneutics

Author(s): David Weberman
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Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Jan., 2000), pp. 45-65
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Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
Vol. LX, No. 1, January 2000

A New Defense of Gadamer's

Hermeneutics
DAVID WEBERMAN
Georgia State University

This paper re-examines the central thesis of Gadamer's hermeneuticsthat objectivity is

not a suitable ideal for understandinga text, historical event, or cultural phenomenon
because there exists no one correct interpretation of such phenomena. Because
Gadamer fails to make clear the grounds for this claim, this paper considers three
possible arguments.The first, predominantin the literatureon Gadamer,is built on the
premise that we cannot surpass our historically situated prejudgments.The paper rejects
this argumentas insufficient. Similarly, the paper rejects a second argumentconcerning
the heuristics of understanding.The paper then articulates a third argument that the
object of understandingchanges accordingto the conditions in which it is grasped. The
paper appeals to the notion of relational properties to make sense of this claim and to
defend the position against two objections: i) that it conflates meaning and significance,
and ii) that it is saddled with an indefensiblerelativism.

Gadamer's theory of philosophical hermeneutics amounts to a sustained

argumentfor a view that one might call "anti-objectivism"or "interpretive
pluralism."' This view holds that in understandinga text, historical event,
culturalphenomenon or perhapsanything at all, objectivity is not a suitable
ideal because there does not exist any one correct interpretation of the
phenomenonunderinvestigation.2In Gadamer'swords, "understandingis not
merely a reproductivebut always a productive activity as well" (G 280; E
296); it is a "fusion of horizons" of the past and present, objective and
subjective (G 289; E 306). At the same time, Gadamerwants to steer clear of
an "anything-goes"relativism. In other words, in Gadamer's view, under-
standing is a process that invites and even demands a pluralityof interpreta-
tions, but not at the expense of giving up criteria that distinguish right ones
from wrong ones.

1
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode: Grundziige einer philosophischen
Hermeneutik, 4th ed. (Tiibingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1975, originally 1960). Translated as
Truth and Method, 2nd ed., by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York:
Crossroad, 1990). "G" and "E" refer to the German and English editions respectively. I
have modified some of the translatedpassages.
2 The sense of "objectivity"at issue here is roughly this: An interpretationis objective to
the extent that it is not shapedby the historicalsituatednessof the interpreter.

A NEW DEFENSEOF GADAMER'S HERMENEUTICS 45

 Intriguingas this view is, what exactly are Gadamer'sgroundsfor denying
the existence of a uniquely correct interpretationof a text, object, or event?
And how can pluralismescape relativism?Because I believe that Gadamer's
writings are ambiguouson both questions, I begin by looking at the rationale
underlying Gadamer's anti-objectivism. Gadamer sometimes suggests that
objectivity is not possible because an inquirer'sprejudices or prejudgments
(Vorurteile) are ultimately inescapable.I will show that this premise, though
perhaps true, is simply too weak to establish Gadamer's conclusion. A
second argumentthatprejudgmentsare necessaryfor any access to the histori-
cal object also fails to substantiate Gadamer's anti-objectivism. Finally, a
third, more promising argumentcenters on the claim that objectivity is not
possible because the object of understandingis not determinate,but rather
constitutedanew by each act of understanding.3 This is an ambitiouspremise,
but one that Gadamerleaves vague and incomplete. My goal in this paper is
to provide a fuller justification for the third argument and thereby defend
Gadamer'sposition. I do so by reformulatingthis thirdargumentin terms of
relationalproperties so as to establishthatthe knower's situatednessplays, as
Gadamerhimself insists, a positive, constitutiverole in the process of under-
standing.A majoradvantageof this account is that it offers an explanationof
how pluralism can recognize criteria for determiningcorrect interpretations
and thereby avoid a perniciousrelativism. I should mention at the outset that
my intention here is not merely to defend Gadamerbut also to support,gen-
erally, the anti-objectivist, interpretivepluralist position. For this reason I
will sometimes, especially later on, departfrom Gadamer'sown vocabulary
and argumentativestrategies.

I. The unsurpassability of prejudgments

Gadamer'stheoryconcernsthe natureof "understanding" (Verstehen)-a con-
cept central to attempts in German philosophy since Dilthey to expand a
narrow conception of knowledge based on the model of giving cause-effect
explanations.Borrowingfrom Heidegger,Gadamerarguesthatunderstanding,
essentially historical and groundedin human "facticity,"is always a kind of
"self-understanding."Furthermore,it is "theprimordialontological character
of human life itself' (G 246; E 259f.), not so much a deviation from objec-
tive scientific knowledge as its necessary foundation.What defines the act or
event of understandingfor both Heidegger and Gadameris that it has a fore-
structure,i.e., that when we understandsomething, we do so in a way that is
shaped by a set of priorcommitmentsto a way of life, a linguistic/conceptual
scheme and specific expectations about the object of understanding.4It is

3 When I speak of the "object of understanding,"I do not mean a physical object, but that
toward which our understandingis directed,be it a text, artwork,historicalevent, etc.
4 See Heidegger's three-tiered fore-structureof understanding(Vorhabe, Vorsicht, Vor-
griff), in Sein und Zeit, 15th ed. (Ttbingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1979), p. 150. For

46 DAVID WEBERMAN
these background commitments that Gadamer has in mind when he talks
about tradition,prejudgments(Vorurteile), and the "essential prejudgment-
ladenness (Vorurteilshaftigkeit)of all understanding"(G 254; E 270).5 What
Gadamer means by prejudgments is not so much a set of explicitly held
beliefs that are in place prior to the act of understanding,but ratheran often
inexplicit set of practicaland theoreticalprecommitments(Voreingenommen-
heiten), shaped in large part by cultural traditions, that determine how we
experiencewhatwe experience.
Why is all understanding laden with the prejudgments or historically
specific precommitmentsof the knower?The idea here seems to be a simple
one. Try as we might to leave behind these precommitments in order to
follow the guidelines of reason sub specie aeternitatis, we cannot. Gadamer
writes:
[T]he idea of an absolute reason is not a possibility for historicalhumanity.Reason exists for us
only in concrete, historical terms-i.e., it is not its own master but always remains dependent
on the given circumstancesin which it participates....In fact history does not belong to us; we
belong to it.... The individual's self-reflection is only a flickering in the closed circuits of
historical life. (G 260f.; E 276)

Gadamer'sclaim here is for the historicityof reason. Avoiding the looseness

of the term "reason"we might reformulatehis point in this way: Gadameris
insisting on the historicity of all acts of understandingand all knowledge-
claims including both first-orderbeliefs about the world as well as second-
order beliefs about epistemic principles governing what kinds of beliefs are
acceptableor unacceptable.7For Gadamer,first-orderand second-orderbeliefs

explication, see Hubert Dreyfus, "Holism and Hermeneutics" in Hermeneutics and

Praxis, ed. RobertHollinger (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1985), pp. 227-
47.
5 I translate "Vorurteil" as "prejudgment"rather than "prejudice"-a rectification of the
translation as well as Gadamer's own word-choice since "Vorurteil," like "prejudice"
has pejorative connotations at odds with Gadamer's argument. Gadamer's point really
concerns "prejudgments" ("Vor-urteile," with hyphen), i.e., practical and theoretical
precommitments (Voreingenommnenheiten, see note 6 below), not "prejudices," i.e.,
judgments involving unfair,one-sided or discriminatorytypes of thinking.
6 Thus: "-... prejudgments(Vorurteile), in the literal sense of the word, constitute the initial
directedness (die vorgdngige Gerichtetheit) of our whole ability to experience. Prejudg-
ments are precommitments(Voreingenommenheiten)of our openness to the world. They
are precisely conditions for our experiencing anything-for the fact that what we
encounter says something to us." See "Die Universalitit des hermeneutischenProblems"
in Hans-GeorgGadamer,Kleine Schriften I (Tubingen:J. C. B Mohr, 1967), pp. 101-12,
here p. 106. English translation: "The Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem" in
Philosophical Hermeneutics, ed. David E. Linge (Berkeley: University of California,
1976), pp. 3-17, here p. 9.
7 On the relevance of the distinction between first-order and second-order beliefs to
Gadamer's position, see Charles Larmore,"Tradition,Objectivity and Hermeneutics"in
Hermeneutics and Modern Philosophy, ed. Brice R. Wachterhauser (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1986), pp. 147-67, here pp. 149-53.

A NEW DEFENSEOF GADAMER'S HERMENEUTICS 47

are historicalbecause of the limitationsof self-reflection.While knowers may
be in a position, at least in principle, to examine and reject many of their
prejudgments,they can never be in a position to critically examine, let alone
reject, all of them. This is so for two reasons. First, as the Americanpragma-
tists and thinkers such as Neurath have also argued, critical scrutinizing is
always a piecemeal affair.We always hold certainbeliefs constantwhile ques-
tioning others. Second, and more importantfrom Gadamer'spoint of view,
many precommitments are such that we are not able to see them from an
independent standpoint.As Gadamersays, traditionoften "has"us, i.e., we
belong to it and cannot divorce ourselves from (all of) it at will.8
In short, we cannot have an absolutely objective understanding of an
object due to the truthof the following premise:

Premise 1: We cannot overcome the historical specificity and

parochialityof (all) our epistemic and practicalprecommitments.

This premise is one that many philosopherswould regardas true. It does not,
however, entail Gadamer'sconclusion that there does not exist any uniquely
correct understandingand hence that objectivity is not a suitable ideal for
humanunderstanding.This is so for the simple reason that even if objectivity
in the form of a total break with historically specific precommitmentsis an
impossibility, one might still hold that it is a suitable regulative ideal for
understanding,i.e., an ideal that permits not realization,but at least approxi-
mation.9It is quite true that the ineliminabilityof serious differences among
interpreters'prejudgmentsmay lead to irreconcilable,substantivedifferences
about what ought to, in a given case, count as an objective interpretation.
But even so, such differences aboutthe actualrealizationof objectivity might
well coexist with a consensus about objectivity as an appropriatemeta-
theoreticalideal.
One might recall here that Gadamerholds that his theory aims to describe
what we "alwaysalready"do wheneverwe understand,not prescribewhat we
ought to do, and hence is not about ideals at all (G 483f.; E 512).1'' Still,

8 Larmore discusses the first reason, but fails to notice the second. See Larmore,
"Tradition,Objectivity and Hermeneutics,"pp. 149, 151.
Larmore makes this point in "Tradition, Objectivity and Hermeneutics," p. 151:
"Although we must recognize that the ideal that at least epistemologically we can com-
pletely neutralize the force of traditionby subjecting all of our beliefs to critical exami-
nation will not be realized, we do not thereby have reason to discard that ideal as one
worth pursuingas far as possible."
1 Gadamer does not consistently abstain from making prescriptions since he puts forth
ideals such as the anticipationof truthand completeness. For a convincing argumentthat
Gadamer cannot abstain from prescriptionswithout making his own theory irrelevantor
incoherent, see Lawrence Hinman, "Quid Facti or Quid Juris? The FundamentalAmbi-
guity of Gadamer'sUnderstandingof Hermeneutics,"Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research 40 (1980): 512-35.

48 DAVID WEBERMAN
even if Gadamer'stheorywere regardedas having no prescriptiveforce what-
ever (which is not very plausible), this fact would still not disarm the criti-
cism. For an objectivist could still maintainthat what we are doing whenever
we seek truly to understandsomething is trying to approximate an under-
standingof the object free of all prejudgmentsand precommitments.Striving
for objectivity, one might argue, is a core feature or even a necessary and
constitutive condition of any genuine act of understanding.I conclude then
that the impossibility of overcoming historical situatedness does not itself
entail that objectivity does not or cannot serve as an ideal. It fails to establish
Gadamer'santi-objectivism.

II. Prejudgments as giving access

Objectivity can continue to serve as a suitable regulative ideal until it can be
shown thatprejudgmentsand traditionare not always obstacles to understand-
ing, but that they have, as Gadamersays, a "positive"and "constructive"role
in the accomplishmentof understanding(G 251, 255, 267; E 266, 270, 283).
In what sense or on what groundscould the precommitmentsone has priorto
encounteringa given object or phenomenonplay a constructiverole in one's
understanding of that object? Gadamer must answer this question if his
hermeneuticsis to have any bite against objectivism. While his pathbreaking
discussions of tradition, temporal distance and Wirkungsgeschichte are all
intended to answer this question by showing the constructiveness of pre-
judgment, in the end they seem to come down to two basic premises. Here I
will present and examine Premise 2 and explain why it is also too weak to
support Gadamer's conclusion. The rest of the paper will be devoted to the
crucial Premise 3.
There is evidence for the second premise at various points in Gadamer's
work, most explicitly perhaps,in the following two passages:
The anticipationof meaning that governs our understandingof a text is not an act of subjectiv-
ity, but proceeds from the commonality (Gerneinsamkeit)that binds us to the tradition.(G 277;
E 293)

[T]he meaning of "belonging"(Zugehlirigkeit)[to tradition].. is embodied by the commonality

of fundamental,enabling prejudgments.Hermeneuticsmust start from the position in which a
person who seeks to understand something has a bond to (ist verbunden mit) the subject
matter...and has, or comes to acquire, a connection (Anschluss) with the traditionfrom which
the text speaks. (G 279; E 295)

The idea is that we can understandonly that with which we can, in some
measure, empathize and we can only empathize with that with which we
share, to some extent, a common backgroundof meaningfulness (consisting
of practices, linguistic structures,concepts, beliefs, values, etc.). This is an

A NEW DEFENSE OF GADAMER'S HERMENEUTICS 49

idea that owes much to Dilthey's concept of Verstehen."1That is, despite
Gadamer's criticisms of what he perceives to be Dilthey's methodological
dualism (concerning the naturaland the human sciences) and his objectivist
goal of reconstructing meaning, Gadamer is very much committed to the
Diltheyan view that understandingpresupposescommonality.Let us call this
the access thesis and formulateit as follows:

Premise 2: Our historicallyspecific precommitmentsare a necessary

condition for having access to any understandingof an object insofar
as they share with the object a backgroundof meaningfulness that
makes the object intelligible in the first place.

Without commonality there can be no true understanding.Imagine trying to

understanda cultural or historical phenomenon, say, Chinese opera or the
actions of Japanese soldiers in World War II, without having any sense of
their aesthetic or ethical values. Only to the degree that a knower shares a tra-
dition with the object of understandingor can "identify,"in some sense, with
the persons involved, will the knower be able to understandmuch of any-
thing. Understanding requires translatabilityand translatabilityrequires a
shared background of meaningfulness (or in Gadamer's language: pre-
judgmentsand tradition).
I want to argue that while premise 2 is true (thoughits exact truthand full
implications merit further examination), it is also too weak to establish
Gadamer's conclusion. An objectivist could concede that a common back-
groundof meaningfulnessmay be necessary for making sense of an object of
understanding, especially for grasping all its nuances. But the objectivist
could go on to argue that this common backgroundof meaningfulness is a
heuristic device that must eventually be isolated and subjected to impartial
scrutiny. In other words, the process of understandinghuman phenomena
might be thought to have two stages. The first stage consists in sharing (or
insofar as one does not share,in appropriating)a set of background(practical,
conceptual, value-related)precommitments.The second stage consists in tak-
ing distance or working oneself free from the operativeprecommitmentsand,
in general, approximatingthe ideal of an unbiased, objective stance towards
those very precommitments.It is the superimpositionof distanced impartial-
ity onto a sharedbackgroundof meaningfulnessthatmakes for a sensitive yet

See, e.g., Wilhelm Dilthey, GesammelteSchriften,vol. 7 (Leipzig/Berlin:Teubner, 1933),

p. 191 and p. 230: "Diese Selbigkeit des Geistes...in der Totalitat des Geistes und der
Universalgeschichte macht das Zusammenwirkender verschiedenen Leistungen in den
Geisteswissenschaften moglich. Das Subjekt des Wissens ist hier eins mit seinem
Gegenstand, und dieser ist auf allen Stufen seiner Objektivation derselbe....Die erste
Bedingung fur die Moglichkeit der Geschichtswissenschaftliegt darin, dass ich selbst ein
geschichtliches Wesen bin, dass der, der die Geschichte erforscht, derselbe ist, der die
Geschichte macht."

50 DAVID WEBERMAN
balancedunderstandingand thatprovidesthe ideal for the one correctinterpre-
tation for which inquirersstrive. If this argumentis correct,then Premise 2 is
compatible with objectivism and the denial of interpretivepluralism. It also
fails to give Gadamerwhat he wants.

III. The indeterminacy (underdeterminedness)

of the object of understanding
Given the limitations of the access thesis, is there some furtherreason for
thinking that the inquirer's precommitmentsplay a constitutive role in the
act of understanding?Thereis indeed, accordingto Gadamer,because without
precommitmentsthere would be no object to understand.This bold and seem-
ingly counterintuitiveidea is suggested by the following passages:

[I]n the human sciences.. .the theme and object of research are first constituted by the
motivation of the inquiry. Historical research is thus carried along by the historical movement
of life itself and cannot be understoodteleologically in terms of the object of research.Such an
"object in itself" clearly does not exist at all. While the object of the naturalsciences can be
ideally described as what would be known in a complete (vollendete) knowledge of nature, it
is meaningless to speak of a complete knowledge of history, and precisely for this reason we
cannot makes sense of talk of an "object in itself' toward which historical research is directed.
(G 269: E 284f., emphasis added)

Truly historical thinking must take account of its own historicity. Only then will it cease to
chase after the phantom of a historical object,...but rather learn to see the object as the
counterpartof itself and thus to see both. The true historical object is not an object at all, but
the unity of the one and the other. (G 283; E 299, emphasis in original)12

[T]he horizon of the present cannot be formed without the past. There is no more an isolated
horizon of the present in itself than there are historical horizons which have to be acquired.
Rather, understandingis always the.fusion of these horizonsputatively existing by themselves.
(G 289; E 306; emphasis in original, bold type-face added)'3

So, for Gadamer,the object of historical research, whether an event such

as the Russian Revolution, a text or an artwork,is a kind of "phantom."By
this, of course, he cannot mean that such events or objects are simply
illusory. What he must mean is that they do not exist wholly or in them-
selves apartfrom the inquirer.This view is not a rehearsalof Kantian tran-
scendental idealism. Gadamer's point is that the object does not exist

12 See also the reference in Gadamer's earlier "Wahrheitin den Geisteswissenschaften"

(1953), Kleine Schriften I, p. 42, to the "phantomof a truthremoved from the standpoint
of the knower" ("das Phantom einer vom Standort des Erkennenden abgel~isten
Wahrheit").
13 That the subject's horizon exists in itself only putatively is relatedto Gadamer'sview that
understandingis not really an act carriedout by a subject. See G 274; 277; E 290, 293. I
will not comment furtheron this claim except to say that the subject's belonging to a tra-
dition does not, as Gadamersometimes implies, obviate all talk of the subject.

A NEW DEFENSEOF GADAMER'S HERMENEUTICS 51

independentlyof the specific, historically situated inquirer.14This yields the
indeterminacy(or underdeterminedness) thesis:

Premise 3: The object of understandingis indeterminate(or under-

determined);it is constituted in part by the horizon of the specific
historically situated knower and changes according to what that
horizon is.'5

It should be clear that, if true, premise 3, unlike premises 1 and 2, does in

fact entail interpretivepluralismand secure Gadamer'sconclusion since only
premise 3 denies that there is one unchangingobject to be understood.But is
it true and on what possible grounds?
Gadamerdoes not lay out the steps supportingthe claim contained in the
above passages and re-formulatedas premise 3. But there is a decisive clue in
the first passage just quoted when he writes that the object of inquiry in the
human or historicalsciences does not, in principle, admit of complete knowl-
edge. We find the reasoning behind this claim for incompleteness in
Gadamer'sdiscussionof "temporaldistance."

The importantthing is to recognize temporaldistance as a positive and productivecondition. It

is not a yawning abyss but is filled with the continuity of custom and tradition,in the light of
which everything handed down presents itself to us. Here it is not too much to speak of the
genuine productivity of the course of events enabling understanding....Temporal distance
obviously means something other than the extinction of our interest in the object. It is what first
lets the true meaning of the object fully emerge. The discovery of the true meaning of a text or
a work of art is never finished; it is in fact an infinite process.. New sources of understanding
are continually emerging that reveal unsuspectedelements of meaning. (G 281f.; E 297f.)16

Gadamer is saying that the object of understanding(at least as concerns

human phenomena) is incomplete because it, or its "meaning,"is revealed
differently as a result of subsequentevents that brings about different points
of view. Before offering some illustrationsof this claim, let me briefly point
to a theorist from a different philosophical tradition who makes a similar
claim.
In Analytical Philosophy of History (1965), Arthur C. Danto writing
specifically about the nature of historical knowledge also adopts the
14 Besides, Gadamer(like Heidegger) repudiatesany Kantian noumenal realm. See G 423;
E 447 where Gadamerasserts that although all that we have are specific, historically sit-
uated world-views, such world-views do not constitute a "relativization"of the "world"
since the "world""is not differentfrom the views in which it presents itself."
15 In both premise 1 and premise 3 all understandingof objects is shaped by the inquirer's
horizon. But in premise 1, this fact is due to an epistemic failing (our inability to leave our
historical situatednessbehind). In premise 3, it is due to an ontological incompleteness or
underdeterminednessof the object of understanding.
16 See also G 355; E 373: "Historicaltraditioncan be understoodonly as something always
in the process of being defined by the course of events..-it is the course of events that
brings out new aspects of meaning in historical material."

52 DAVID WEBERMAN
incompleteness thesis: "Completelyto describe an event is to locate it in all
the right stories, and this we cannot do. We cannot do it because we are tem-
porally provincial with regard to the future.""7Danto's reasoning is as
follows: Historians ineluctably make use of what Danto calls narrativesen-
tences, i.e., sentences thatdescribeone event by referringto one or more later
events, e.g. the sentence "The Thirty Years War began in 1618." Danto cor-
rectly infers that because of the indispensability of narrative sentences to
historical understanding,historianscan never, even in principle, give a com-
plete descriptionof past events since this would presupposeknowledge of all
relevant later events. Danto's position is not quite as strong as Gadamer's.
While Danto insists on the incompleteness of any possible description or
account of historical objects or events, Gadamer is committed to the
incompleteness of the objects and events themselves."8In either case, that
later events and later points of view always bring out new aspects of the
object of understandingleads both thinkers to the idea of incompleteness.
Incompleteness exists because the object of understandingconstantly comes
to have differentrelationalpropertiesfrom those thatit formerlyhad.
Consider, an artworksuch as a Cubist painting by Picasso or Braque, a
text such as the American Constitution, or a historical event such as the
Russian Revolution. Ourunderstandingof these "objects"is quite differentin
virtue of the temporaldistance that separatesus from them. The importance
of temporaldistance here consists not in any alleged growth in impartiality,
but in the way in which more recent events have broughtout new aspects of
or "retrodetermined" the earlierphenomena.In the case of cubism, there is, of
course, the subsequentdevelopment of increasingly abstractpainting. In the
case of the American Constitution,there is the two-hundredyear history of
new issues and cases as well as a continuing traditionof judicial interpreta-
tion and precedent relating to the Constitution's original provisions. In the
case of the Russian Revolution, there is the occurrenceof Stalinist totalitari-
anism, eventual economic stagnation and finally the collapse of Soviet
Communism. The point is that the Cubist paintings, the Constitution and
the Russian Revolution not only appear in a very different light, but have
come to have different relational properties as a result. They have become
phenomenathat bear certainnew (causal and non-causal)relations to objects
and events that came after them. It is in this sense that the object of under-
standing can never be completely grasped.As Danto expresses it, the object

17 ArthurC. Danto, Analytical Philosophy of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1965), p. 142. This book has been reissued with some new essays as Narration and
Knowledge (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985). JurgenHabermaswas the one
who first called attention to the partial convergence of Gadamer's hermeneutics and
Danto's argument in Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften (Frankfurta. M.: Suhrkamp,
1970), pp. 267-74.
18 Yet see the discussion and extension of Danto's argumentin my paper, "The Nonfixity of
the HistoricalPast"in Review of Metaphysicsvol. 50 (June 1997): 749-68.

A NEW DEFENSEOF GADAMER'S HERMENEUTICS 53

can never (until the end of time) be located in all the right stories. In
Gadamer's terms, the object itself is "constantly being formed" ("in
bestdndiger Bildung begriffen")(G 277; E 293). Now if the object or event
grows or changes over time, this means that there is no single, enduring
correct or objective understandingof it. But to say that the object always
changes over time and is, as a result, never determinate is not to say that
everything about the object changes. Some of its propertiesare indeed fixed
(see Part VI). For this reason, it might be less misleading to talk about
underdeterminedness ratherthanfull-blownindeterminacy.

IV. Relational properties as the ground for

underdeterminedness
As mentioned earlier, there is a certain obscurity surroundingGadamer's
incompleteness thesis. I believe that this thesis can be better articulatedand
defended if we construe it as the thesis that the object of understandingis
constituted, in part, by its relational properties. To this end, I turn now to
three tasks. First, I will define the crucial notions of intrinsic and relational
properties.Second, I will arguefor the ontological status of relationalproper-
ties. Third, I will explain why relationalpropertiesresult not only from tem-
poral distance,but from othernontemporalkinds of distanceas well.
Objects, whether artworks,texts, artifacts or natural-kinds,have proper-
ties. So do events. We can divide such propertiesinto two types: intrinsicand
extrinsic or relational. Intrinsicpropertiesare those propertiesthat an object
or event has "in virtue of the way that thing itself, and nothing else, is," such
as shape, size, chemical composition or having red hair. Extrinsic or
relational properties are those properties of an object or event that depend
wholly or partly on something other than that thing, such as being an uncle,
living next door to a judge, being loved by Joe or having a red-haired
brother.'9What are the implications of this distinction for Gadamer's anti-
objectivism? To begin with, it allows us to formulate more precisely
Gadamer'spoint about temporaldistance:A given object or event changes as
time passes because it comes to have new relational properties. Hence,
temporal distance from past events enables (or obliges) us to recognize in
those events what might be called their delayed relationalproperties.It is the
existence of these ever-changing,ever-new delayed relationalpropertiesthat
provides (partof) the validationfor Gadamer'sclaim for the positive contribu-
tion made by the historicalspecificity of the knower. (I say "partof' because,
as we will see, temporalor delayed relationalpropertiesare not the only kind
of relationalpropertiesthatunderlieGadamer'sincompletenessthesis.)

19 See David Lewis, "Extrinsic Properties," Philosophical Studies 44 (1983): 197-200.

Gadamer,of course, does not employ terms such as "relationalproperties."Yet there is a
hint of this idea in Gadamer'swritings, e.g., when he writes that "[i]n this in-betweenness
(In diesernZwischen) lies the true locus of hermeneutics"(G 279; E 295).

54 DAVID WEBERMAN
 Now one might well wonder whether relational properties have the
constitutive role I ascribe to them. A skeptic might contend that relational
propertiesare not ontological propertiesof the object at all, but only episte-
mological items that merely introduce changes in the ways we describe an
ontologically determinateobject. On this view, when a later historical event
leads us to see an earlierhistoricalevent differently,it is only our description
of the earlier event that changes, not the earlier event itself. In effect, this
position denies the ontological reality of relationalproperties.It is mistaken
for the following reason. It is true that our descriptions of earlier events
change as a result of later events. Yet it is not just our descriptions that
change. Relationalpropertiesare not featuresof our descriptivepredilections,
but of the events themselves. Consider that our descriptions sometimes
change because we have changed and sometimes change because the object's
relationalpropertieshave changedand thereis an importantdifferencebetween
these two types of changes. For example, if a person describes the Russian
Revolution differentlybecause she has undergonea political conversion, this
descriptive change is a result of a change in that person's epistemic or attitu-
dinal makeup and not in the event itself. If, however, a person describes the
Russian Revolution differentlybecause the Revolution has come to bear new
relations to new events, then it is not the person that has changed but the
Revolution, insofar as it now has new relationalproperties(e.g., the property
of having led to a 70-year failed alternativeto capitalism). For this reason,
relationalpropertiesmust be regardedas ontologically real; though they may
lead to new descriptions, they are not merely changes in the epistemic
makeupor descriptiveactivities of persons.
This brings me to the third question: Are the only relational properties
that account for the incompletenessof the object of understandingits delayed
relationalproperties?Or might not the object of understandingbe incomplete
due to non-temporalrelationalpropertiesas well? What I have in mind here
are relational propertiesthat derive from the distance between the object of
understandingand the vantagepoint of the interpreterdistinguishednot by its
temporal, but by its cultural specificity. This point certainly goes beyond
Danto's specifically temporal argument as well as the main emphasis in
Gadamer's presentation of his theory. Yet I think that it is implicit in
Gadamer'stheorynonetheless.
Truthand Method does indeed focus on the temporalaxis. Thus, its pre-
occupation with Uberlieferung(traditionor more literally "whatit is handed
down to us") and its formative role and with the temporal distance from
which we look back upon it. Gadamerhas little to say about the distance or
separationoperativein crossculturalor even interpersonalunderstanding.Why
is this so? I would suggest that Gadamer's own interests and especially his
cultural backgroundaccounts for this limitation. Gadameris working from
within a culturally unified German or Europeanhigh culture (more unified

A NEW DEFENSEOF GADAMER'S HERMENEUTICS 55

when Truth and Method appearedin 1960 than today) and one that is, for
better or worse, stronglybackward-lookingor tradition-oriented.However, if
the object of understandingwere incomplete and multiply interpretableonly
in virtue of the temporaldistance between interpreterand object, this would
mean that at any one point in time, there would be just one correctinterpreta-
tion. That is, once temporal differences are factored out, objectivity would
still be a suitable regulative ideal. Yet Gadamernowhere suggests anything
like this sort of position. His interpretivepluralism does not regardthe fact
that we always understanddifferentlyto be a consequence of temporaldiffer-
ences or prejudgmentsof hindsight alone. Not only do substantialtemporal
differences always involve culturaldifferences,but the fundamentalinsight of
the "fore-structure of understanding" borrowedby Gadamerfrom Heidegger,is
not limited to or primarilyconcerned with the precommitmentsbased solely
on temporal perspectives and the delayed relational properties they reveal.
Gadamer'stheory (like Heidegger's) claims legitimacy and a constitutiverole
for precommitmentsin general, whether owing to temporal or cultural (and
perhapseven biographical)factors.
What this means is that the object of understandingis underdetermined
because its relationalpropertieschange accordingto the temporaland cultural
vantage point of the knower. If it is true that King Lear is a different object
for a 20th-centuryreaderthanfor a 17th-centuryreaderbecause of its delayed
relational properties, it seems no less true that the same play is a different
object for differentreadersat the same historical instantbecause of the differ-
ent relational propertiesKing Lear has as a result of its relation to different
cultural points of view.2"1The code of honor of a JapaneseSamuraiwarrior,
for example, will have different relational properties when understood in
relation to a culture with a high sense of honor of its own than in relation to
a more utilitarianculture. Or, as one historianhas recently shown, the nature
of the American Revolution takes on a very different shape (less egalitarian
and, in certain respects, less emancipatory)when brought into relation not
with the revolutions of France, China, or Russia, but with revolutions in the
Caribbeanand Latin America.2'There may be importanttheoretical differ-
ences between temporalor delayed relationalproperties,on the one hand, and
relational properties that depend on cultural distance. Paying attention to
certain of the object's culturally relational propertiesmay be more optional
than paying attention to its delayed relational properties since many of the
delayed propertiesare causally related in a way that the culturallyrelational
properties are not.22But the importantpoint here is that Gadamer's claim,

20 None of this, as I argue in PartVI below, entails an anything-goes relativism.

21 See Lester D. Langley, The Americas in the Age of Revolution, 1750-1850 (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1996).
22 There is another importance difference. In crosscultural understanding, tradition or
Wirkungsgeschichtewill not play the same role. In backward-lookingunderstanding,the

56 DAVID WEBERMAN
that the object of understandingis not complete or in itself but in a state of
constantly being formed, should best be understoodin terms of the object's
changingrelationalproperties,both temporaland nontemporal.

V. Meaning or significance?
I come now to an importantobjection to Gadamer's interpretivepluralism
and to my reconstruction of that position. In an early, widely discussed
response to Gadamer's work, E. D. Hirsch argues that Gadamerfails to pay
attention to the difference between a work's meaning and its significance.
While the significance of a work does indeed shift, its meaning remains
entirely stable.23Or to reformulateHirsch's criticism in terms of my recon-
structionof Gadamer,the changing relationalpropertiesof objects of under-
standing show only that the significance of the object is in flux, not its
meaning.
Hirsch lays out his basic idea in this manner:
It is not the meaning of the text which changes, but its significance... .This distinction is too
often ignored. Meaning is that which is representedby a text; it is what the authormeant by his
use of a particularsign sequence; it is what the signs represent.Significance, on the other hand,
names a relationship between that meaning and a person, or a conception, or a situation, or
indeed anything imaginable.... Significance always implies a relationship, and one constant,
unchanging pole of that relationship is what the text means.... Significance always entails a
relationshipbetween what is in a man's verbal meaning and what is outside it....24

Hirschgoes on to say thatthe differencebetween meaningand significance

brings with it a difference between two tasks or aims, interpretationand criti-
cism: "Significance is the proper object of criticism, not of interpretation,
whose exclusive object is verbalmeaning."25
Two features of Hirsch's theory should be noted here. First, unlike
Gadamer,Hirsch is concerned not with understandingin general, but only
with our understandingof (literary)texts. What Hirsch would say about our

object we are trying to understandis partof the very traditionthat has formed us-hence,
the phenomenonof Wirkungsgeschichte.In crossculturalunderstanding,however, though
we have been formed by our tradition,the object of understandingbelongs to a different
tradition.Thus, the double effect of Wirkungsgeschichtedoes not come into play.
23 E. D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967).
Hirsch regards Gadamer's theory as an instance of what he calls "radical historicism"
(pp. 42, 254ff.).
24 Hirsch, Validityin Interpretation,pp. 8, 63.
25 Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation,p. 57. As Hirsch notes (p. 210) Philip August Boeckh
makes this same distinction in his Enzyklopddie und Methodologie der philologischen
Wissenschaften (1877): "[W]e distinguish interpretationand criticism as separate but
essential elements... [C]riticism is.. that philological performance through which an
object becomes understoodnot by itself nor for its own sake, but for the establishmentof
a relation and a reference to something else, so that the recognition of this relation is
itself the end in view." In The Hermeneutics Reader, ed. Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (New
York: Continuum,1994), pp. 133, 142.

A NEW DEFENSEOF GADAMER'S HERMENEUTICS 57

understandingof historicalevents is unclear.Perhaps,he would maintainthat
the meaning of a historical event is fixed by its intrinsicproperties,while its
significance shifts with its relations to other events. For present purposes, I
will assume that this would be a natural extension of Hirsch's objection.
Second, Hirsch interprets the stable meaning of a text to consist in the
author's intention. It is importantto point out that the stable meaning of a
text might be construeddifferently:not in terms of authorialintention, but in
terms of the intrinsic propertiesof the text. This is a view that is sometimes
called formalism.26So the idea that a text's meaning is stable and separate
from its relationalpropertiesmight be defended in at least two ways: either
by thinking of the stability of its meaning as fixed by the author's intention
or by its formal, intrinsicproperties,whateverexactly these may be. In either
case, however, if Hirsch is right about the basic distinction, then Gadamer's
anti-objectivist, interpretivepluralism goes down with its conflation of the
interpretation of fixed meaning and criticism's interest in shifting
significance.
Now, how can I defend Gadameragainst Hirsch's point about the differ-
ence between meaning and significance, when my reconstructionof Gadamer
relies on the distinction between relational properties and something fixed
(intrinsic properties or authorial intent) that Hirsch makes the basis of his
attack? I will argue that although the distinction between relational and
intrinsicis correctand essential to makingsense of Gadamer,Hirsch is wrong
to think that the object of understanding-the object that we seek to under-
stand and eventually do understand(when our efforts are successful)-is the
object shorn of all its relational properties. In other words, significance or
relationalpropertiesare always operativein and constitutiveof our encounter
with thatwhich we seek to understand.27
What, then, is the object of understandingor interpretation?Is it, should it
or can it ever be strippedof its relationalproperties?Or are these relational
propertiesintegralto it? I begin with the case of a (single-authored)text and
the two views of the text that see its meaning as fixed non-relationallyby i)
the author'sintention(Hirsch's view) and ii) its intrinsicproperties.

26 Hirsch refers to this view, which he rejects, as "semantic autonomism."It says that "It
does not matterwhat an authormeans-only what his text says." See Hirsch, Validity in
Interpretation,p. 10ff.
27 One might answer Hirsch differently by showing that the distinction between meaning
and significance collapses in the face of interpreters' epistemic inability to keep the
object's relational properties from affecting their understandingof the object's meaning
(whether author's intention or intrinsic properties). But this argument fails for the same
reason that Premise 1 failed. Although it may be that interpreters'historical situatedness
prevents them from working free from significance so as to construe an object's pure
meaning, one might still try to approximate,as far as possible, the ideal of meaning free
of significance.

58 DAVID WEBERMAN
 The question of authorialintention has been much discussed. Part of the
debate turns on what is meant by intention, whether something like an inner
mental event or, as Hirsch regardsit, an item that is objective and shareable
(following Husserl's argument about the ideality of meaning in Logical
Investigations). Particulardifficulties attachto either conception of authorial
intention, but both are susceptible to the following criticisms. First, anti-
individualisttheories of mind have shown thatthe identificationof something
like an intentionwill depend on certainfacts aboutthe environmentalcontext
in which that intention is situated. So intentions already involve context.
Second, and more important,it seems altogetherodd to think that the mean-
ing and uniqueness of a work is identical with and exhaustedby the author's
intention. There are (at least) two reasons for thinking that there is more to
the text than what the authorintends.First, as Gadamerwrites,
What expression expresses is not merely what is supposed to be expressed in it-what is meant
by it-but primarilywhat is also expressed by the words without its being intended-i.e., what
the expression, as it were, "betrays".(G 318; E 335f.)

One need not be a Freudianor Marxistto believe thattherecan be much more

in an utteranceor expression than what a person had in mind. Individualsare
not always the best judges of their own expressive and verbal behavior. The
second reason has to do not with the author's activity, but with the reader's
activity and motivation. Why do we try to understandwhat we try to under-
stand? Why do we read Shakespeareor Max Weber? Is it really in order to
reconstructtheir psychology, their thought or their will? Or is it not much
more a matter of trying to understandthe subject-matterthat they address,
i.e., "the Whips and Scornes of Time" (Hamlet) or the influence of religion
on social structures?In most cases a wish to reconstructintention remains
ancillaryto understandingthe subject-matter.When I read and teach Foucault,
I am interestedin what he intendedto say (and what the text says) in order to
understandbetter the subject-matteraddressed. Gadamer makes this point
repeatedly.He states that understandingis always a matterof "coming to an
understandingabout something"(G 168; E 180; emphasisadded)and that "the
hermeneutic task automatically turns into a problematic about the subject-
matter(eine sachliche Fragestellung)"(G 253; E 269).28

28 Gadamer puts the point in this way (G 280; E 296): "Every age has to understand a
transmittedtext in its own way, for the text belongs to the whole traditionin which it takes
a subject-matter oriented (sachliche) interest." When Georgia Warnke, in Gadamler:
Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987) p. 25,
writes that: "Gadamer'scriticism of a historical intentionalismis.. .that we remain histori-
cally situated even where we are concerned with an agent's intentions, and our descrip-
tion of those intentions will therefore representno more than one perspective on them,"
she misses the deeper reasons for Gadamer's rejection of authorial intentionalism: it is
not our ineluctable prejudgmentsthat make intentionalismwrong but our abiding interest
in the subject-matter("die verbindlicheAllgemeinheit")(G 281: E 297).

A NEW DEFENSEOF GADAMER'S HERMENEUTICS 59

 This point is especially evident in the case of legal texts. Consider the
debate concerning the interpretation of the U. S. Constitution. Recent
"originalintent"theorists such as formerAttorneyGeneralEdwin Meese and
Judge Robert Bork have arguedthat the provisions of the Constitutionmean
only what the authorsof the Constitutionintended. On this view, later inter-
pretations of the Constitution and later events in history (though they may
stand in obvious relation to the Constitution)should have no bearing on the
way we now interpretthe Constitution.Many prominentlegal scholars have
criticized this position. For one thing, it is not clear that the framers of the
Constitution intended their intention to be the sole determinant of its
meaning. For another, it is often impossible to determine what the framers
had in mind, either for practicalreasons (they are gone and documentationis
lacking) or in principle(where new technologies requireinterpretationsnever
envisioned by the framers).29My argumentfor the centrality of relational
properties presents an argumentagainst "original intent" that is even more
crucial: The theory of original intent fails to see that the meaning of a text
(especially a legal document) is not a thing apartfrom its relation to things
outside of it (and its author's mind). A similar view was once expressed by
former Justice William J. Brennan,Jr.:
We current Justices read the Constitution in the only way that we can: as Twentieth-Century
Americans. We look to the history of the time of framing and to the intervening history of
interpretation.But the ultimate question must be, what do the words of the text mean in our
time? For the genius of the Constitutionrests not in any static meaning it might have had in a
world that is dead and gone, but in the adaptabilityof its great principles to cope with current
problems and current needs. What the constitutional fundamentals meant to the wisdom of
other times cannot be their measureto the vision of our time.30

While it may be interesting and possible, to some extent, to reconstruct

an author'sintention,the object of understandingis not limited to antiquarian
interests.The text always exceeds the author'sdesigns.31

29
See H. Jefferson Powell, "The Original Understandingof Original Intent," pp. 53-115
and Paul Brest, "The Misconceived Quest for the Original Understanding,"pp. 227-62 in
Interpreting the Constitution: The Debate over Original Intent, ed. Jack N. Rakove
(Boston: NortheasternUniversity Press, 1990).
30 See William J. Brennan, Jr. "The Constitution of the United States: Contemporary
Ratification" in Interpreting the Constitution, pp. 23-34, here p. 27. For more on this
debate, see Cass Sunstein, The Partial Constitution(Cambridge:HarvardUniversity Press,
1993), Chapter4.
31 In a later article, Hirsch comes somewhat closer to the Gadamerianview. In "Meaning
and Significance Reinterpreted,"Critical Inquiry 11 (1984), pp. 202-25, he writes that:
"If we adhere to the principle that meaning is the aspect of interpretationwhich remains
the same, while significance is what changes, we now find that we must take a more gen-
erous and capacious view of what remains the same. We cannot limit meaning to what
was within an original event.... So the first amendmentI must make in my original expla-
nation of the distinction between meaning and significance is to reject my earlier claim
that future applications of meaning, each being different, must belong to the domain of

60 DAVID WEBERMAN
 Consider now the formalist (or semantic autonomistview) that the mean-
ing and uniqueness of a text consists in its intrinsic properties. Here too
similar problems arise. In orderto identify a text's properties(e.g. the mean-
ings of the words and their interrelations)social and linguistic context must
be broughtin. Intrinsicpropertiesare never really wholly intrinsicin the first
place. Second, our intereststypically concern more thanjust a text's intrinsic
properties.Even if it is possible, to some extent, to perform a kind of phe-
nomenological reductionin which we bracketout the ways in which the text
bears relationsto things outside itself in orderto focus exclusively on a text's
intrinsic properties,to do so is to engage in an activity quite different from
the more common and more naturalways in which we understand.What we
usually understand(or strive to understand)when we understandthe meaning
and uniqueness of a text is not the text divorced from but illuminated by its
relations to what lies outside of it.
Let me turn now from texts to historical events. Here the opponent of
Gadamer's view might argue that the historical event consists solely in its
intrinsic properties,i.e., the propertiesit has in virtue of its being what it is
and not in virtue of the relations it bears to events outside of it (especially,
pace Gadamer,events that come after it). But the anti-relationalistposition
seems even weakerhere. Restrictingour understandingof events (and actions)
to intrinsicpropertieswould make it impossible to refer to events in many of
the ways that we typically do. Consider the following examples. We could
not understanda shooting as a killing if the victim were to die some time
after the shooting because the killing involves a relation between the shoot-
ing and anotherevent, the subsequentdeath of the victim. Nor would we be
able to understandthe bombing of Pearl Harboras the immediate cause of
U.S. militaryinvolvement in World War II because this understandingof the
bombing involves relatingit to later events.32
If my argumentis correct,what we understandwhen we understand(texts,
events, etc.) are objects in terms of their intrinsic and relational properties.
To stay with Hirsch's vocabulary, the meaning and uniqueness of the phe-
nomenon of interpretationis always (notwithstanding certain specialized
efforts at grasping intentions and supposedly formal properties) bound up
with its significance. And because relational propertiesvary for the reasons
discussed above, the object of understandingis never once and for all deter-
mined.

significance. This was wrong, because different applications do not necessarily lie out-
side the boundaries of meaning. If you think of your beloved in reading Shakespeare's
sonnet, while I think of mine, that does not make the meaning of the sonnet different for
us, assuming that both understand(as of course we do) that the text's meaning is not lim-
ited to any particularexemplificationbut ratherembraces many, many exemplifications."
(p. 210) Still Hirsch's concession here is restrictedto the relevance of different applica-
tions only insofar as they are in accordancewith the author'sintentions.
32 For a fuller version of this argument,see my "The Nonfixity of the Historical Past."

A NEW DEFENSEOF GADAMER'S HERMENEUTICS 61

 VI. Circumventing pernicious relativism
Does anti-objectivismor interpretivepluralismentail an anarchicrelativism
unable to distinguish right from wrong or better from worse interpretations?
One might think that if the object of understandingis unstablethen it can no
longer serve as a standardfor validity in interpretation.If so, then perhaps
everything is up for grabs. Following this line of reasoning, several com-
mentators have concluded that, whether he admits it or not, Gadamer is
squarely in the camp of thorough-going relativists.33Yet Gadamer clearly
does want to distinguish better from worse and right from wrong interpreta-
tions and thus avoid a perniciousrelativism.34But can he do so or does inter-
pretive pluralismprecludethe availabilityof criteriafor validity in interpreta-
tion? Many of Gadamer'santi-relativistcritics assume that pluralismentails
pernicious relativism. I will argue that their reasoning on this point is falla-
cious. On the other hand, certain of Gadamer'sdefenders hold that there is a
viable middle position between objectivism and relativism but fail to specify
the nature of the criteria for validity available to such a middle position. I
will argue that what makes this middle position viable is the constraintspro-
vided by the fixed intrinsic and shifting, though not arbitrary,relational
propertiesof the object at issue.
First, let me expose the fallacy in the argument that pluralism entails
anarchic relativism. Consider the following passage from E. D. Hirsch as
representativeof this argument:
If a meaning can change its identity and in fact does, then we have no norm for judging
whether we are encountering the real meaning in a changed form or some spurious meaning
that is pretending to be the one we seek. Once it is admitted that a meaning can change its
characteristics, then there is no way of finding the true Cinderella among all the contenders.
There is no dependableglass slipper we can use as a test, since the old slipper will no longer fit
the new Cinderella.35

33 See Larmorepp. 148, 154, where he speaks of the "historicalrelativism that Gadamerin
fact embraces" and that "for Gadamerthe only alternativeto objectivism, or the pursuit
of objectivity, is relativism."See also Hirsch pp. 42, 249. On a point closely relatedto the
worry about relativism, see Habermas'sargumentthat Gadamer'shermeneuticsis bound
to traditionin a way that makes critical distance unlikely if not impossible in his essays in
Hermeneutikand Ideologiekritik,Karl-OttoApel et. al., eds. (Frankfurta. M.: Suhrkamp,
1977).
34 For Gadamer'sinsistence on distinguishinglegitimate from illegitimate prejudgmentsand
interpretationssee G 252, 279, 282, 336; E 267, 295, 298f., 353. For his rejection of
anarchic relativism see "Wahrheit in den Geisteswissenschaften" in Hans-Georg
Gadamer,Kleine SchriftenI: Philosophie Hermeneutik(Tfibingen:J.C.B. Mohr, 1967), p.
42: "But what takes the place [of objectivity] is not a vapid relativism. It is not at all ran-
dom or arbitrarywhat we ourselves are and what we are able to hear from the past." See
also G 90; E 95, where Gadamer rejects as an "untenable hermeneutic nihilism"
Valery's assertion "Mes vers ont le sens qu'on leur prete."
35 Hirsch, Validityin Interpretation,p. 46.

62 DAVID WEBERMAN
Hirsch is right that once we acknowledge that something changes its charac-
teristics, then there is no way to find the true Cinderella,i.e., the one true and
unchangingCinderella.But why should we assume that there is an unchang-
ing Cinderella to begin with? Perhaps Cinderella changes, but this hardly
means, as Hirsch claims, that we no longer have a means for judging whether
we have found Cinderella.The mistake in this argumentis in the following
inference:

Premise: X (or the meaning of X) changes, i.e., is not the same at

different times, places and when presented from different perspec-
tives.

Conclusion:Therecan be no standardor normfor deciding whethera

given representationor interpretationof X is corrector not.

The problem is that the conclusion itself is ambiguous. If the conclusion

says there can be no standardfor judging the correctnessof the interpretation
of X without specifying the time, place and circumstancesunder which X is
presented, then the conclusion follows. However, once we specify the time,
place and/orconditions in which X appears,then there is a standardfor judg-
ing the correctnessof an interpretation,namely, whetherthe interpretationof
X conforms to X presented under the conditions specified. Thus, the sound
and loudness of a piano changes accordingto the conditions underwhich the
piano is heardbut this, of course, does not mean that once the conditions are
specified, there is no standardor norm for judging its sound or loudness. The
same goes for texts, historicalevents, etc.
This compatibilityof change and standardsfor correctnessbrings us to the
pluralistmiddle position between objectivism and relativism. David Couzens
Hoy has described this Gadamerianposition as contextualist. In contrast to
subjectivisticrelativism in which interpretationis made valid by the happen-
stance of an interpreter's preferences,contextualismis the view that

interpretationis dependentupon, or "relativeto" the circumstancesin which it occurs-that is,

to its context (particularframeworks or sets of interpretiveconcepts including methods). For
contextualism, rationalreflection and dispute do no stop with the interpreter'spersonal prefer-
ences. On the contrary, although the choice of the context.. is underdeterminedby the evi-
dence, justifying reasons for the appropriatenessof that context rather than alternative ones
can and should be given. ...Gadamer's version of contextualismthus holds that the interpretive
understandingis conditioned by preunderstandings(Vorverstdndnisse)arising out of the situa-
tion of the interpreter.36

The conclusion that Hoy wants to reach is, I believe, the right one. Yet his
account does not make sufficientlyprecisejust what it is that keeps contextu-

36 David Couzens Hoy, The Critical Circle: Literature, History and Philosophical
Hermeneutics (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1982), p. 69f.

A NEW DEFENSEOF GADAMER'S HERMENEUTICS 63

alism from being just a respectabledisguise for subjectivisticrelativism. Is it
just the fact thatinterpreterscan appealto the priorexistence of a background
framework,methodor set of preunderstandings? Why is the choice of these or
those frameworks,methods or sets of preunderstandingsany differentfrom a
personal preference? Is it because one could offer "justifying reasons" for
them? But couldn't one offer justifying reasons for one's preferences?In any
case, there must be something to the reasons used to justify one's framework
or preunderstandings.What is the nature of such reasons? Without further
argument,these circumstancesand preunderstandings might well appearevery
bit as subjectiveor conventionalas an interpreter'scasual preferences.37
This is why we need the idea of relational(and intrinsic) properties.The
existence of intrinsic properties ensures that those interpretationsthat get
these propertieswrong will be incorrectinterpretations.Though we may be
unable to reconstructthese propertiesin a manneruninfluencedby our own
historicity, we can at least endeavor to approximatesuch a reconstruction.
The fixed intrinsic properties constitute one central source for rational
constraintson validity in interpretation.3Yet, as I have argued,the object of
understandingis more thanjust the sum-totalof its fixed intrinsicproperties;
to it belong, like its secondary properties, its relational properties as well.
And even though they depend on the specific conditions under which an
object is presented, they are not at the whim of the interpreter,but inter-
subjectively verifiable.The fact that the Russian Revolution of 1917 eventu-
ally led to the collapse of the Soviet state is a relationalpropertythat is there
for all to see, not a matterof subjective preferenceor whim. The same goes
for other relationalproperties.Whetherthey obtain (or are known to obtain)
is relative to the interpreter'sposition, but not simply up to the interpreter.
So, contraryto the views of Hirsch and other objectivists, we should see that
historicism need not be anarchic. Although relational properties make for
multiple interpretations,both intrinsic and relationalpropertiesconstrainthe
possible range of such multiplicityand accountfor the indispensabilityof the
ideals of a certain impartiality and fidelity to the act of interpretation,
hermeneuticallyunderstood.

37 This decisionism about the backgroundset of beliefs is the weakness in the interpretive
pluralism espoused by Stanley Fish in his famous "Is There a Text in This Class?" in Is
Therea Textin This Class? (Cambridge,Massachusetts:HarvardUniversity Press, 1980).
38 The fixity of intrinsic properties explains how Gadamercan maintain that "it is equally
possible that an interpretermisses the point entirely." See Hans-Georg Gadamer,"Reply
to Stanley Rosen," in The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadarner,Lewis Edwin Hahn, ed.
(Chicago: Open Court, 1997), p. 221. It also explains how he can hold that there is some-
thing self-same that underliesmultiple interpretations.See G 375; E 398 "[T]o understand
a text always means to apply it to ourselves and to know that, even if it must always be
understoodin different ways, it is still the same text presentingitself to us in these differ-
ent ways."

64 DAVID WEBERMAN
 VII. Conclusion
I have arguedthatGadamer'santi-objectivisticinterpretivepluralismprovides
a solid account of the historicityof understandingas long as we understandit
to rest on a thesis aboutthe underdeterminednessof the object of understand-
ing. Interestingly enough, Gadamer's contention that understanding is a
"fusion of horizons"and thatthe object is a sort of phantomconverges in cer-
tain respects with the view made famous by Wilfrid Sellars that the percep-
tually Given is a sort of myth. Both hermeneuticistsand followers of Sellars
hold that the knower plays an ineluctable and constitutive role in the forma-
tion of the object. Both camps also hold that abandoningbelief in the Given
or the phantom object does not entail a relativism (or idealism) that denies
the existence of an extra-mentalreality.39In this new defense of Gadamer's
hermeneutics, the category of relational properties of the object of under-
standing both explains the non-fixed nature of the object and its multiple
interpretationsand helps to underwritethe criteriagoverning the validity and
nonarbitrariness of such interpretations.*

39 See John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University
Press, 1994) for someone who explicitly recognizes the convergence of Gadamer's
"fusion of horizons"with his own post-Sellarsianway of thinking.
For discussion and comments on an earlier draft, I would like to thank Claudia Card,
Charles Guignon, Eric Idsvoog, Sabina Knight, Francis Schrag, Marcus Singer and an
anonymous referee of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

A NEW DEFENSEOF GADAMER'S HERMENEUTICS 65