Beyond Interpretation:c 'lrāfr ffid r

Tbe Meaning of Hermeneuticsfor PhiĮosophy

GIANNI VATTIMO

Translated by David Webb

Polity Press

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a*G * GJ tSlinglish translation copyright @ Polity Press 1997

First published as ()ļtre Į'interpretazionecopyright @ 1994 GiLrs. Ī.aterza and Figli S.p.A., Roma-Bari.

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In tnemory of Gianpiero CauagĮiā

Contents

Preface

L The Nihilistic Vocation of Hermeneutics2 Science3 Ethics4 Religion5 Art

APPENDICES

1. The Truth of Hermeneutics2 The Reconstruction of Rationality

NoresIndex

IX

1,

152842s8

7597

1,1,2

1.23

Ū-aļ

1ļ

PrefaceQ.Ęfr fiil*r r

This book is prompted by a cerrain unease. In contemporaryphilosophy, hermeneutics has begun to acquire an 'ecumenical'form so vague and generic that, in my view, ir is losing much ofits meaning. In particular, it is becoming increasingly difficult tosay what significance hermeneutics has for the problems of whichphilosophy has traditionally spoken: problems such as those ofscience, ethics, religion and art. Trying ro shed light on theseborderline problems, as they might be called, leads us ro rethinkthe 'originary' meaning of hermeneutics that, as I have attemptedto make clear in chapter 1, is to be found in its'nihilistic vocation'.Eļsewhere in recent years I have spoken in this respect of 'weakthought'. The reflections presenred here should serve - in lieu of aĮarger work (arrnounced previously as The Game of Interpreta-tion, and then, which at present I consider its definitive title, asontoĮogy of Actuality) - also to dispel various equivocalities thathave accumulated around the meaning of that theoretical pro-posal, above all due to the notion of weakness having been takenin too narrow and literaļ a Sense' At botrom, the same equivocali-ties are attached to nihilisrn, though on a plane vasrer in propor-tion to weight of the terlĪl'S historical associations' The itineraryfollowed in these five chapters, whose schematic and progran-r-matic tone I readily acknowledge, leads in a direction thar mightbe seen as scandalous, in that it 'twists' weakness and nihilisminto a sense totally differerit to the usuaļ: and above all, because it

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Preface

ends somelrow in the arms of theology - aļbeit in ways that donot bring it into contact with any ,orthādoxy, '

'

- Tļrese pages therefore contain a number of significant newdepartures (for me) regarding hermeneuti.., *.rĖthought andnihilism that will, I hope, at Įeast contribute to calling

"Įt".rtio.,back to the problem, as the subtitļe says, of the .tieaning ofhermeneutics for philosophy. I am pleased ro have been able topresent these reflections in the series of 'Lezioni ltaliane, organizedby the sigma-Tau Foundation a.d the Laterza publishinglHouse(to whom I am very grateful), not only in view of the soleĻnity ofthe occasion, but also because the cycle of lessons were hosted atthe University of Bologna by Umberto Eco, an oļd frierrd who hasalso been a kind of oĮd comrade or vice-maestro in the schooĮ ofLuigi Pareyson in which we both were rrained and of which, albeirin different ways' our work bears deep signs of influence. In theweek in which these papers were pr"."rrt.ā, Eco came in rny eyesto assume a 'magisterial' role both in himself and in his capacityas representative of the school to which it felt as though f *...presenting myself f9r .a comprehensive examination of myposition. All this has little, ir is true, to do with rhe ,thing itself,; irecall it only because it might explain, and justify, the Įhematicand programmaric tone that *"y s."- to be a limitation of thebook. To Eco and to aļļ those who participated in the discussionsin Bologna (raising several of the poirt. thįt c"me together in thenotes) I extend my warmest thanks and acknowleāgement. By1ay of a response to a number of problems arisinĮ fro- th.discussions, as well as to broaden my argumentation on variouspoints, there is an appendix containing two essays previouslypublished in the annuaļ journal that I ediį for the saÄe įublishinģhous.e- (in Filosofia '88 and FiĮosofia'91 respectively). Finally, Īwould like to say thank you to my frierrds anā collabļrators LucaBagetto, Luca D'Isanto and Giuseppe lannantuono for theirintelligent help in the final preparation įf thi, book.

1

Th e I\Įih ilisti c V o cationof Hermeneutics

The hypothesis of the mid-eighties that hermeneutics had becomea Sort of lzoinė or common idiom of 'Western culture, and notonly of phiĮosophy, Seems yet to have been refuted.l This may ofcourse be due, at ļeast in part, to its being a weak hypothesis thatdoes not affirm a great many precise shared philosophical beliefs,but rather describes an overall climate, a general sensibility, orsimply a kind of presupposition that everyone feels more or lessobliged to take into account. In this very generic sense, whichbears no more precise definition, not only are Heidegger, Gada-mer, Ricoeur and Pareyson hermeneutic thinkers, but so areHabermas arrd Apel, Rorty and Charļes Taylor, Jacques Derridaand Emmanuel Levinas. What links these writers is not a commonthesis but rather what'Wittgenstein (another hermeneutic thinkerin the broad sense intended here) called a family resemblance; or,more modestly still, a sense of family, a common atmosphere.

'Ųfithout developing this observation any further here (whichwould in any case be both impossible and unnecessary), I take itas a point of departure because the pervasiveness of hermeneuticsseems to have come about at the expense of a dilution of itsoriginal philosophical meaning. It is hard to see how hermeneuticsdefined so broadly as to include writers as different amongthemselves as those mentioned above could have 'consequences':it ends up as Something innocuous, worthless even. I aļso set asidethe question, that could be debated at length, of whether it is

G.V.

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2 The Nihilistic Vocation of Hermeneutics

legitimate in philosophy to lead a dreory as vague and pervasiveas hermeneutics lras become in our hypothesis back to itļ authen-tic, originaļ and essential meaning. Theories do nclt have patentsor brand names' still ļess theories such as tlre one we are sįeakingof here which was.^born precisely, and this is not to say a greardeal, in order to affirm the rights of interpretation. Ani yet it isquite legitimate for those referring to a scLool, tlreory oĪ clĮrrentof.thinking to rry to preserve aspecrs of irs meaning that theybelieve to be irnportant, characteristic or decisive -itĖ' ,".p.ct toproblems that are widely debated and dear to them' (In aį case,the rights of transļation comprise the freedom to ,į.onrr.u.,

"given de facto historicaļ form _ a work, or a philosophy - referringback as rigorously as possible to its internrl l"gäliĮy, to whaįPareyson calļs the 'forming form';z the freedom oĪ inierpretaticlnis_anything but arbitrary and brings with it risk and responsi-bility') There is no attempt here to rediscover authenti.Įy, ,oaffirm a right excļusive to rhe name or the brand, or to correspondas faithfully as possible to the original intenrion of the author. Itis simply a matrer of r-rot _hastening to lay aside a patrimony ofideas that - on the basis of a particular deįermination of what wehave found there _ looks as though it couĮd be more fruitful thanit is at present.

If, as good hermeneuticians, we go on to admit that therę areno facts, but only irrterpretations, tĒen what we are proposing isprecisely an interpretation of the philosclphical meaninģ of Ėe._meneutics - not, however, one opposed to a.othe, ap".i-fi. int.r_pretation that might underlie the general hermenįutjc koįnė.Rather, our interpretation infers from the extent of the currentpopularity of hermeneutics i, its various forms that it can appearso acceptable, urbane and harmless only because it lacks pĻīto.-ophical precision.

\ hat then do we calļ hermeneutics and how do we identify its(in my view consritutive) nihilistic vocarion? For ease of exposi-tion, yet (as we shall see) also for more substantial theorįticalIeaSonS, we shaļļ define hermeneutics as that philosophy devel-oped along the Heidegger-Gadamer axis. Tlie series oi piobl.m.and soļutions eļaborated by these authors comprise all aspects oftwentieth-century hermeneutics and the different paths täk.n byit. Heidegger and Gadamer, in other words, ,r. nnį the only great

The NihiĮistic Vocation of Hermeneutics

figures of twentieth-century hermeneutics (alongside them onewould have at least to place Pareyson and Ricoeur), and nor dothey constitute a unitary theoreticaļ block in which the essentialprinciples of this philosophy may be found. To speak of axes andseries, with all the vagueness this brings (corresponding, albeit inmore rigorous terms, to the vague sense assumed by hermeneuticsin becoming koinė), means recognizing that these authors repre-sent the poles of a tension, the extreme limits of a picture inwhich, nearer to one or the other, all the authors generallyincļuded in this current are to be found' So if one cannot say thathermeneutics is Heidegger and Gadamer, taking these authors asits defining limits is nonetheless a good way ro picture it. Seenthus, hermeneutics reveaļs its constitutive characteristics: those ofontology and Sprachlichkeit, linguisticality. In spite of all theemphasis that Heidegger places on language, especially in the larerphase of his thought, he regards interpretation primariĮy from thepoint of view of the meaning of Being: in spite of all the empĮrasisthat Gadamer places on ontology, interpretation is thought pri-marily from the point of view of language. Although somethingof a simplification, the same conclusion is reached whether onetakes seriously Habermas's felicitous remark rhat Gadamer'urbanized the Heideggerian province', or whether, making senseof this expression, one notes that certain themes which are centralto Heidegger, such as distancing oneself from metaphysics as theforgetting of Being, seem in Gadamer to have disappeared com-pletely. Looking for a similar thesis in Gadamer, one finds onlythe critique of scientism and modern methodoĮogism from which,on the basis of the truth of the experience of art, Truth andMetbod defends a notion of truth broader than (and perhapsantithetical to) that delimited by scientific method.3 As wiļlbecome clear later, the intention here is not to return to Heideggerin a reversal of the Gadamerian urbanization. On the contrary,there is a decisive need to urbanize Heidegger's thought in manysenses (to the point of its encounter with Rorty's neo-pragmatism).But such urbanization will be truly successful only if one does norforget the specifically Heideggerian ontological aspec of thediscourse.

If, keeping these general introductory indications in mind, weare to make progress towards the definition before us - of

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4 The NihiĮistic Vocation of Hermenewtics

hermeneutics aS a ph-ilosophicaļ orientation that is today verywidespread and for tlris very reason somewļrat ill_defined, andthat we propose ro view primarily with regarcl ," ,i. il;egger_Gadamer arc - we should probabiy begin with rhe sense to whichthe term hermeneuti.. o. th. th.o.į of īnterp.etrtiun ir.įtiļlļudes.Whereas, up to a certain point in ih. hi.,o.y of r,rrop."n įuļ,u.",the word hermeneuti.. *ā. always accompanied by an adiective _biblical, juridical, literary o, .u"r, sinrply ;.;;;;l l i.'.äilį-p".-ary thought it has'begun to appear in it."own right' fi,lļ ir rn,only because the idea has p..*il.d that the tl,.orĮ or inĮĮrpr.rr-tion cannot be otherwi.. įhrn general, without-ĮpįįiriiĮ n.ra.and territories (or at bottom 'Ļply non_specialized), but alsobecause it is hermeneutics itseļf thaį lįst touch with a lirnitecļ andspecific fieļd of phenomena _ as though

"lo,rgriā. *i.rĮ..ori*activity there were another sector of a" differeit kinā oiĮ.tiuity,such as scientific knowledge. This can be seen clearly in Gaāamer,sTruth and Method, whic.h explicitly takes as its point of J"įrr,r."the problem of the truth of tho.. for.. of knowļedg., lir.. ,l,.human. sciences, that are not reducibļe ," pįįiriiĮ].įi.ntin.method, and ends by consrructing a general theory of interpreta_tion in which it coincides with wery"possible h.'*; ._*Į.i.r,."of the worļd.

It is probably this transition that we shourd bear i. mind inorder to understand what we are talking about *į"; *Į .p."r. "rhermeneutics' The generarization of the notion of interpretationto the point where it coincides with th" u.rį.r;.;;.r;"of th.world is in fact the result of a transfor-rrio, io rt.-Ļry *"conceive of truth that characterizes hermeneuti cs as koinē andwhich lays the basis for'those general philo..phi;i,JonĮĮ....r,

that we are seeking to ilļustratĮ here.Not only, to.stay with the title of Truth and Method, is theretruth outside the confines of scientific method, but there is noexperience of truth that is not interpretative. While this tįesis isshared by all those who espous" h.r-.,r.utics, and is even *ia.tyaccepted by the grearer parr of twentieth-century thought (ir is thevery meaning of the ko'inė), its irnplications for the .oi."|iion ofBeing are less generally recognized. To reformuļate ;; p.o-gramme in this book, this is the birthplace of that "rįr.i... "rhermeneutics which borders on and ofte, breaches the bounds of

Tbe Nihilistic Vocation of Hermeneutics s

vacuity and obviousness, in such a way aS to Seem aļm<lst adeliberate attempt to exorcize the significance of hermeneutics forphilosophy.a

That each experience of truth is an experience of interpretationis almost a truism in today's cuļture. As a thesis, it represents theoutcome not only of early twentieth-century existentiaļism, butalso of earlier neo-Kantianism, phenomenology and even of neo-positivist and analytic thought. If propositions may be verified orfaļsified by the conformity or otherwise of statements to states ofthings, this is only possible, in Heideggerian rerms, because bothStatement and thing are in a reļation originally made possible byan 'opening' that is not itself the object of a description that canbe verified or falsified other than by placing it within an openingthat is 'superior', more original etc. I will not recast this thįsis inthe language of phenomenology, anaĮytic philosophy, \Wittgen-stein (one would obviously have to refer here to the \ /ittgenstein-ian thesis that the reasonableness of language is foundedįn rulesthat in turn refer to a form of life, rather than to a correspondenceof a.y kind) or Kuhnia' epistemology.s If there is a significantdisparity between those who more or less explicitly sha.e u.tunderstanding of the experience of truth as lnt.rpr.trtive incharacter, it is exemplified in the difference berween existentialisrnand neo-Kantianism. one can in fact regard - still with Heidegger- every experience of truth as an interpretative articularion of apre-understanding in which we all find ourselves by virtue of thevery fact of existing as Being-in-the-world, and yet maintain thattļre pre-understanding be Structural and constitutive of ourhumanity as such, of a reason rhe same for aļl (like the forms ofthe Kantian transcendental a priori). A careful reading of the firstvolume of Cassirer's The PhiĮosophy of Symbolic Forms (whichcame out in 1923 and is dedicated to language) would reveal clearparallels between the neo-Kantian approach and that of herme-neutics, marking the differences and, in my view, the whollyunsustainabļe character of the transcendentalist position.6

This is, I am sure, evidence enough of how far the idea of a ļinkor 'identity' between truth and interpretarion has spread through-out twentieth-cenrury thought. It is perhaps a sign that thisthought shares in a Kantian formation; and this refere.rce to theKantian heritage itself reveals, in Cassirer for example, that the

coherence of hernreneutics with its own Source wiļl be at risk ifthe recognition of truth as.int..įrĻjon understands this to meanthat it is provisionaļ and a..tinäā toĮir.olu. in a final restorationof conformity - for example ir, , t.*, .orrforming and transparentdescription of the Structure of .yÄbolizing activity. Cassirer,sreproof to Hegel ill The Phi.ĮosophĻ 'f šy;L"'Į*;o)'/r'El_' ,t'^, l.',allowed himseļf to be le! b-i täiiĮa'.yrnuotĮātion ,o ptr..absoļute spirit at the summit or'rri' p-r'irosophy _ holds in a certainSense for Cassirer himself. For Ēr_ r".trting an evolutio.r"ryconception of s}'mboli.c f9rm1^thrt äp.n. teleälogicaīty Ļro ,l,.'perfe*' symborism of scienrific conieptuariry, he reveals whatremains' even today, tļe true probleā of the hermeneuri c koinė:that of coming

',dically ,o ,..į. įiį'r' the historicity and finitudeof pre-understanding, with HeiJeg gĮĮ;Į cr*orfenheit.\X/hat reduces h

i s th e wh o l į ;,illT;:; i nil d,*:ffi ,,:ll' ,,",i;xTJHĮä;

to be a finally truā descriprio" oi įįį (permanent) ,interpretativesrructure' of human existence. The contradictory character of thiscļaim must be raken seriously andĮ_rigorous reflection on thehistoricity of hermer-',eutics, in both įnses of the genitive, devel-oped on the basis of it. Herm.rr"rti.. i. not only a rheory of thehistoricity (horizons) of truth: ir l."it..ti

""rĮärĻii, ĮĮto.l.rttruth. It cannot think of it'"tf *Įrrįhįsically ;;;ļ.r,p,io,, ufone ob,ective Structure of existen..Įri,ong., <lthers, but only asthe response to a sending, ,o *r'rį rrjä.gg., calls Ge-Sc hick' Thereasons for preferring ā h.r-.r'.urį_.o.rception of truth to ametaphysical one lie in the hi.to.į"īl. gacy of which we venturean interpretation and to.which *. įi". a response. The examplewhich See,,ls to me rnost ilļumi.rrinĮ i* an argument of this kindis Nietzsche's announcement of theĮeath of God, which is not aY^y of expressing. a metaphysical įįh".ir, poetically and in'images'. Nietzsche is not ,rylnģ;; .;y ir,"į"cJJjffiä fļ.ru..*',|"u: finally realized tt",u,"ģ".ti"Įiy r-,. does not exist, or thatreality is such that he is excļudeā įr.Ä'i,. Nietzsche cannot makea sraremenr like this, at reast not if we are to read him in line with-l:

,n.orr, of .interpretation; ,tr.."

".. no facts, only interpreta_rlons, and of course this too is an lnterpretation . . .8 Theannouncement of the death of God is truly ,.';,;;;;;.-Įnr. or,ln our rerms, an acknowledgement of a course of events in which

The NihiĮistic Vocation of Hermeneutics The Nihilistic Vocation of Hermeneutics 7

we are implicated and that we do not describe objectively, butinterpret speculatively as concluding in the recognition that Godis rro Įonger necessary. The hermeneutic complexity of all this

consists in the fact that God is not necessary, is revealed as a

superfluous lie (a lie precisely because superfluous) by virtue ofthe transformations wrought in our individual and social existenceby our very belief in him' Nietzsche's reasoning is welĮ known:humanity needed the God of metaphysics in order to organize a

social existence that was ordered, secure and not continualĮyexposed to the threats of nature - conquered by the constructionof a social hierarchy - and of internal drives, tamed by a

religiously sanctioned morality. But today this work of reassur-

ance is, if only relatively speaking, complete and we ļive in a

formal and ordered social world, in which science and technologyare available to rid our stay in the world of the terror thatbelonged to primitive man. God seems too extreme, barbaric andexcessive a hypothesis. And, moreover, the God that has served as

this principle of stability and reassurance is also the one that hasalways forbidden the lie; so it is to obey him that the faithful haveforsworn even that lie which he is himself: it is the faithfuĮ thathave killed God . . .

Who could present this complex, giddy argument as a poeticStatetnent of the (metaphysical) non-existęnce of God? Even if onesees that in the end the faithful 'kill' God in the recognition thathe is a lie, and therefore that he 'is not there', along with him theyalso negate the vaļue of truth, which is, irr Nietzsche's view, simplyanother name for God. The 'true world' that becomes a fable (as

the title of a weĮl-known chapter of the Ttuilight of the IdoĮs hasit) in no sense gives way to a more profound and reliable truth; itgives way to a play of interpretations that is presented philosoph-ically, in its turn, as no more than an interpretation.

The reference to Nietzsche's announcement draws us closer tothe theme of nihilism. If hermeneutics, as the philosophical theoryof the interpretative character of every experience of truth, is lucidabout itself as no more than an interpretation, will it not finditself inevitably caught up in the nihilistic logic of Nietzsche'shermeneutics? This 'logic' may be encapsulated in the statementthat there can be no recognition of the essentially interpretativecharactei of the experience of the true without the death of God

The Nibiļistic Vocation of Hermeneutics The NihiĮistic Vocation of Hermeneutics

tative character of every experience of truth comes to light, alongwith the historicity of the openings within which all that is true

may be given) seem, however, to lead only to what one might callhermeneutics as the metatheory of the play of interpretations. The

further step for which the thesis proposed here calls is that ofasking whether such a metatheory is not bound to undertake a

more radicaĮ recognition of its own historicity, its own formalcharacter as interpretation, eliminating the final metaphysicalequivocality that stands as a threat to it and which is apt to makeof it a purely relativistic philosophy of cultural multiplicity.

'We have seen, in brief, that philosophy arrives at a recognitionof the interpretative 'essence' of truth by way of a generalization,above all in contemporary thinking, of the Kantian thematic ofthe transcendentaļ function of reason, with the vital additionalingredient of the existentiaĮist 'discovery' of the finitude of Dasein'If these theses are not to be presented as a metaphysical discoveryof the true objective structure of human existence, on what basisare they to be defended? My earlier reference to Nietzsche'sannouncement of the death of God already points to what seemsthe only possible ānswer to this question: the 'proof' that herme-neutics offers of its own theory is itself a history, both in the sense

of res gestde and in the sense of historia rerurn gestarum, andperhaps also in the sense of 'fable' or myth, in that it presentsitseļf as an interpretation (whose claim to validity is such as willeven present itself as a competing interpretation that belies it) andnot as an objective description of the facts. To carry forward thisdiscourse, sketched here only in outline, one needs to shed lighton the fact that neither Kantianism nor, above all, the existentialistdiscovery of the finiteness of the horizons within which theexperience of truth is co:rstituted, can be separated from that seriesof events which in Nietzschean terms is calļed the history ofnihilisrn, or else simply modernity. It is all too easy to object thatseeking to 'prove' hermeneutics by an appeal to evidence as broad,general and vague as the nihilistic history of modernity riskshaving no persuasive value whatsoever, given the generic characterof the ideas in play. In reply, I will iust say that the appeal tomodernity, or to the (same) history of nihilism, is no more vagueor arbitrary than, let's say, the empiricist reference to immediateexperiencel or the phenomenological reference ro the Lebensweh:

and without the fabling of the world or, which amounrs to rhesame thing, of Being. In short, it seems impossible to prove thetruth of hermeneutics other than by presenting it as the responseto a history of Being interpreted as the occurrence of nihilism.

In fact if herrneneutics is not accepted as a comfortabļe meta-theory of the universality of interpretative phenomena, as a sortof view from nowhere of the perennial conflict, oi play, ofinterpretations' the (only, I believe) alternative is to tĖink thephilosophy of inrerpreration as the final stage in a series of evenrs(theories, vast sociaļ and cultural transformations' technologiesand scientific 'discoveries'), as the conclusion of a history we Īe.lunable to tell (interpret) except in the terms of nihiļism that wefind for the first time in Nietzsche.

If hermeneurics were only the discovery of the fact that therea.re different perspectives on the 'world', or on Being, the concep-tion of truth as the objective mirroring of how things are (in tĖiscase, of rhe fact that there are multiple perspectivĮs) would beconfirmed, whereas it is actually .ebumeJ by the philosophy ofinterpretation. In this framework, to accept hermeneuti.. ,,

"ninterpretation and not aS a metaphysicāl description would,strictly speaking, amount to no more than

^ -rtt.. of taste;indeed not even that, for it would be a case not of choosing buisimply of registering a state of mind that remained as wīollyinexplicable to oneself as to others (precisely because intractabļeto argumenr).

- The arguments for a hermeneuric theory of truth are weilknown: the proposal that truth as .orr".pondence is secondary,and that that there must be an opening prior to the verificatįon orfaļsification of any proposition; th. ...oįrrition (existentialist, andbefore that Nietzschean, but in certain Į.p..t. also positivist: cf.spencer) of the finitude, and thus historicity and coirtinge.cy ofprimary truth; the claim that the subject is not the bearĻ of theKa'tian a priori, but the heir to a finite-historical language thatmakes possible and conditions the access of the subjeĮt tä itselfand to the world.

These steps, linked by the reflection of modern hermeneuticsupon the problematic of the human sciences (for it is precisely atthe point.where experimental science and the con."prio' of trurhconnected to method run up against their limits thaį the interpre-

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10 The NihiĮistic Vocation of Hermeneutics

or even than grounding the meaning of propositions on factsabout atomic strĮļcture gathered by the SenSeS. on the contrary,one could argue for the philosophical vaĮidity of hermeneuticsalongside other philosophies by showing that all these kinds ofsupposedly direct evidence do no more rhan neglect, set hurriedlyaside or faiļ to address with sufficient radīcality their own'historicity' and therefore their own links with the history ofnihilism and that of modernity. It is rrue up to a point that allphilosophies, if not explicitly 'onrologies of actualiiy, (which is,however, probably the case ar least for post-H.g.iir., philoso-phies, as Habermas has observede), are always ,".porrr.. tocontingent questions. Thus, for example, Kantian tranicendentalphilosophy was born as a response on the one hand to the need tosecure a foundation for the universal validity of knowledgematured in the course of the modern scientific revolution, a.rd ānthe other hand to the need for a defence of the 'reasons of thesoul' no less profoundly linked to this same scientific revolution.Or again, the origins of hermeneutics, as Dilthey has shown, areprofoundly linked to religious, social and political problems aris-ing from the Protestant Reformation. Finally, twentieth-cenruryexistentialism and the crisis of neo-Kantianism are not intelligiblĮoutside of the historicaļ frame characterized by the earliest signsof nrass society (already detected by Nietzsche in tlre second of įheuntimely Meditations, and earlier still in Kierkegaard's individ-ualism), the birth of cultural anthropology and the crisis in thefoundation of the sciences. can we take all these (limited andrough) examples of the historico-cultural links of philosophy aschance points of convergence that have made possiĖle the āiscov-ery of permanent structural truths? From thā point of view ofhermeneutics, on accounr of that within it which is irreducible tometaphysics undersrood as a universally valid description of per-manent structures, one cannot see things in these terms. Herme-neutics, if it wishes to be consistent with irs own rejection ofmetaphysics, cannor but present itself as the most persuasive phil-osophical interpretation of a situation or ,epoch;, and thereby,necessarily, of a provenance. unable to offer any structural evi-dence in order to justify itseļf rationally' it can argue for its ownvalidity only on the basis of a process rhat, in its view, 'logically,prepares a certain outcome. In this sense, hermeneutics presents

The Nihilistic Vocation of Hermeneutics 11

itself as a philosophy of rnodernity (in both subjective and objec-

rive senses of the genitive) and even professes to be the philosophyof modernity; its truth may be wholly summed up in the claim tobe the most persuasive philosophical interpretation of that courseof events of which it feels itself to be the outcome. Historicism,tĻen? Yes, if one means that the only valid form of argument infavour of the truth of hermeneutics is a certain interpretation ofrhe events of modernity - for which one must then assume

responsibility, both against other competing interpretations andagainst the historiographical objectivism that rnistrusts all suchepochal categories while yet taking for granted a naively objectiv-istic conception of historiography (the events of modernity are so

varied and manifold that one cannot speak of them in such generalterms) and referring everything to one specialism or another,beginning with its own, which is itself accepted as beyond dispute.Not a deterministic historicism, though. The arguments that her-meneutics offers to support its own interpretation of rnodernityare aware of being 'only' interpretations; not because they believethere exists outside of thernselves a true reality that could be readotherwise, but rather because they admit to being unable toappeal, in support of their own validity, to any immediate objec-tive evidence whatsoever. Their value lies in being able to establisha coherent picture we can share while waiting for others to pro-pose a more plausible alternative.

However, it seems that aļl this has still not led us to the nihilisticvocation of hermeneutics that, in our hypothesis, was to providethe basis for a more precise and distinctive deļineatiorr of theconsequences for the traditional problems of philosophy. Yet ifone reflects on what the 'hermeneutic' outcome of modernity(which hermeneutics must take on board as an indispensablecondition for its own 'truth') signifies for the most traditionalproblem of philosophy, that of the meaning of Being, the connec-tion between the philosophy of interpretation and nihilism (in thesense the term has in Nietzsche and also beyond) is hard to deny.'Ų lrat becomes of Being in a thinkirrg aware that it cannot identifytruth with the clbjectivity of objects estabļished by (allegedly)direct experience or by positive-scientific method? In the firstplace, orre wilļ at the very least have to speak of Being not interms of an object or state of affairs, but in terms of 'evenr', as

---F

1.2 The Nihiļistic Vocation of Hermenewtics The NihiĮistic Vocation of Hermeneutics 1.3

will sirnply draw attention to a few points in order to clarify thisthesis. It is worth noting, however, that this thesis is not widelyshared in the current Heideggerian literature. It is rather thecharacteristic theme of what I propose to call the Heideggerianļeft: not primariĮy in a politicaĮ sense, obviously, but in a Sense

that alludes to the use of the terms right and left in the Hegelianschool. Right, in the case of Heidegger, denotes an interpretationof his overcoming of metaphysics as an effort, in spite of every-thing, somehow to prepare a 'return of Being', perhaps in theform of an apophasic, negative, mystical ontology; left denotesthe reading that I propose of the history of Being as the srory of a'Įong goodbye', of an interminable weakening of Being. In thiscase, the overcoming of Being is understood only as a recollectionof the oblivion of Being, never as making Being present again, noreven as a term that always lies beyond every formulation. Thereasons for preferring the leftist reading of Heidegger - a reading,moreover, which he himself did not choose - may be summed upby the intention to remain faithful, even beyond the letter of histexts, to the ontological difference, that is, to avoiding theidentification of Being with a being. Now, if one thinks, followingthe rightist interpretation, that Being can (return' to speak to usbeyond the oblivion into which it had faĮlen, or if one believesthat it continues always to elude us just because it transcends thecapacity of our intellect and our language, as in the case ofapophasic theology - in all these cases it seems that one continuesto identify Being with a being. The imporrance arrributed byHeidegger to the notion of, and the very expression, 'metaphysicsas the history of Being' points rarher in the direction of aconception of Being in which the ontological difference arisesprecisely in the giving of Being as suspension and withdrawal.Not for nothing is the supreme oblivion of Being that accordingto which it is thought as presence. It is not a matter, therefore, ofremembering Being by making it present again or by hoping for itto make itself present again, but of remembering the oblivion; inour terms, of recognizing the link between the interpretativeessence of truth and nihilisrn. Naturally, not even nihilism mustbe understood metaphysically, as it would be were one to think ofit as a story in which, ultimately, in an nth version of presence asthe presēnce of nothing, Being is no longer' And, in the end,

Heidegger says. Indeed, according to Derrida - whose premisses,a.nd perhaps this explains his posit1on, are more phe.,o*Įnologicaithan.onticologico-existential _ one must no lorģ., .p."k oį BĮingat all' I shaļl not discuss this view at length hšre.,u'The įoint isthat the decision ,? .iop. speaking of BeĪng Seems to i"Äply anunconscious metaphysicaļ claim; as if o.rį *... ,o ..rd- ,h.Nietzschean announcement of the death of God as on , pl".r.with an announcement of his non-existence. No longe*p.äki.rgof Being is justified either as the attitude that correspĮnds'best toa 'reality' that excļudes it and in which there is no Beir'g, or as therecognition of the fulfiļment of Being in the history of Ä. cuļture.But then this history must be told, iiis the very history of nįhilisma.S the -provenance of hermen.uįi.. and as'it. p.iu"Į guidingthread for the 'solution' of the traditionaļ problemš or įutJ.opt ylIn the absence of this srory, the unconscioLs metaphysi."l p..rup-position stays in place. It is this unconsciou., iÄpii.it, .-in,".r-tional metaphysical presupposition that

"*pl"i.r. ,h" ,įp.r.".,..

of reļativistic irrationalism that some critiįs detect in'Derrida,sdeconstructionism. If it is not the story of the historį or (r .dissoļution of) Being, deconstruction seems to be an enļemble ofconceptual performances [in English in the original] entrusted tothe sheer artistic flair ĮgeniaĮi ] ;{ the deconstructor.

If our hypothesis stands, hermeneutics is legitimated as anarrative of modernity, that is, of its own provenance; andmoreover it is also,.indeed above all, a narrativį of the meaningof Being. Not only because it is in connecrion with the reintrod-uction of this rheme in Heidegger that the basis of the .o,r,..por-ary philosophy of interpretation is laid. It is not by chance thattoday's hermeneutic philosophy is born in HeideggĮ., tt," įt ito.-opher whose stated intention was to rethink the m"eänlnį ār'n.ing,or at Įeast.the question of its obļivion. Before HeidegĮer, į. *.have aļready observed, Nietzsche hacl placed tt

" tnĮoi! of j.,r".-

pretation and nihilism in reļation with one another. For irĮietzsche,nihilism signified the 'devaluation of the highest vaļues, ,nį t .real world's becorning a fable. There are no Ī".ts, only irrrĮ.į..r"-tions; and this too is an interpretation. But in wįat ļense s'houļdone speak of nihiļism in reļation to Heideggerian hermerreutics?'Ų7ithout.offerirrg

a systematic reconstructiJn"here (in part i-h"u.carried this out elsewhere,tl and in part it remains,o t. done), I

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14 Tbe NihįĮistic Vocation of Hermeneutics

nihilism roo is an interpretation, and not a description, of a srateof rhings.In truth, to conclude at ļeast provisionally this first approach toour^rheme, if we concede that't.uth

c on fi rm u ti į" ", r, įiā;;; ;' ; i' ; ";,':o'. j,T:l":::1J*j :iĪlwithin the horizon of a prior op.r''ing, not transcendentaļ butinherited, must we 'logicaily; p.;;; to the point of nihiļism?The transition is thrt Īļlu.t."ril"b;;{.id.gg".,. Į.r,*'t"ay

"rwork - yet which in the vague t'"rrr1"r"url c koinė that character-ized our poinr of departure is clearly ,rot n"grt.d, but sirnply oftennor fully thematizeā and elabo.rĮa.'lr 9n.. .3n speak Įi ming(and one must, in order not ," iįrr-į.r"ittingly bacĖ into objectiv-isitic metaphysics), it must b. .;;į;';; the leveļ of those inheritedopenings (Heidegger also says: inīnįrrg., which is the house ofBeing)' within *Ēi.h orr.in, -rn,'il-rl*ry. already fhrown asinto its provenance' TJris,

"b;";;ii,'Į ,r,. L,ir,liil."'';äing ofhermeneutics. If we do ,ror ,hi.k''r , the transition from themeraphysics of Dresenc: ,:"rh: "n,otoĮį of p.ou.,rrnįį'i.Įi'.....,but the

"u'nt of Beirrg itselį tt'. inaįiiion of a ,destiny,, therr thetendency to weakening _ which i;;^;'Ļ. sure, only s ch on thebasis of the metaohriĮ"1 .rĮį9;..čr;.."nce, of fulļness _ thatthis course manifĖsts is the truīh ļf Ni.tr..he,s nihilism, tlre verymeaning of tlre death' of God, or ,įį dissolution of trutļr asincontrovertible and 'objective' įr.*."ļĮ, unriļ now philosophershave seen fit ro describe'rhe ;";r.r;;; rhe moment has arrivedto interpret it.

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To regard hermeneutics as a philosophy that cor-responds (posi-tively as the 'logical' outcome, and not just as a polemicalcounterpoint) to the becoming of nihilism and thereby of modern-ity means above all distancing oneself from the attitude thathermeneutic thinkers have so far held towards the positive sci-ences, the Naturwissenschaften. ln fact, its vocation for nihilisrnhaving been acknowledged, to open this survey of the conse-quences of hermeneutics with the question of its conception of thenatural sciences is already to initiate this change. The decision isby no means a neutral one, dictated solely by the desire to take abroad view of the traditional questions of philosophy from theperspective of hermeneutics. True, at first sight, all one is doing isreviving the problematic of the difference between the Natur- andGeisteswissenschaften that marked the historicism of the latenineteenth century to which contemporary hermeneutics is linked.But this hermeneutics has itself ever rnore firmly refused toreconsider that distinction (on the basis of the argumenr that itwas still inspired, in Dilthey, by a submission before the method-ological model of the natural sciences), putting it aside in favourof a theory of interpretation constructed primarily in reference toaesthetic experience. Of all the ways in which truth occurs or, aswe rnight say, of all the different types of inaugural event of Beingdescribed by Heidegger in an important passage from 'The Originof the \7ork of Art', to which he never returned, there is none

16 Science

that could be identified with the birth of a new scientific hypothe-:ir (for e>13mple, the

. Copernica, revolution). In addition to'setting itself in the work', t_he text includes

"Ā"'g.i'rį,Įäys thattruth occurs: 'the act that founds , įotiti.rt State . . . the nearnessof that which is not simply , b.l.,g, ,t the being įr,"Į^į',,ort oralļ . . . the essenrial .r.rifiį" . . thĮ *i"r...,. įrĮ_-.,*;;,'which,3: ,l. thinking of Being, names Beinģ rn tts question-worthiness.,1Yet in the foļlowing lines it goes on io ."y explicitly that .scienceis.not an original happeninįof trrth, urĮ ,triuįĮ-Į,.'.rt,iu",ionof a domain of trutlr äl."ra"y op".,.Į (cf. also the Addendum atthe end of the essay), more oĪ i"''_ rl," s-ame point as Heideggermakes jn 'What l'

Ģ1ttrą Thinking? where he writes that thesciences 'are not thinking'.2 And whJn Gadamer dedicates the firstpart of Trutb and Method to the retrievar "f

th; ;il;il; of thetruth of art he does nothing-more, ,, iįr., from this point of view,than follow the lead giveniy rr.iāįgį* who, f.om';ll ,h; *"y,in which the essav. fĮom.Ho,ļztaį äĮ...ibes truth ". oĮĮu..ing,and which did noį include scie-nģ]nlĻ., went on to consider, inall his works, only art ,rd po.try. F* h.r*.n.r;;; įĮ'Į" i,ru.recalled, truth is not p.imärily the .Įr,fo.-iį įi-ļr]ĻĮ"., ,othing, but the opening *i,hi., *Ļi.i-,įÄy conformity or deformitycan come about' The opening is not a stable, į*.Į.rra.nr"tstructure of reason, but a legaį, the finite-historical ,įįį*.rn...,sch.ickung, destiny, provenance of conditions of possibirity thatHeidegger sees incarnated in ,

" įi'ā.i.rr .ānālriJ*'är n'r,ur"tlanguages. The occurrence of the historico-li.,gui.ti. oį"iiĮ, ,nr,make possible the experience of truth as the verification ofstatements is given in poetry and, more problematicrliy, in'"., lngeneral. In theory, it- is .aLo giu.n in other .ways,, listed byHeidegger in the text cited, brt io *l,iįį, after the essay of 1936,he never returned.

, Thjs Heideggerian legacy marks subsequenr hermeneutics in adecisive way, and i. probrĻly ...pon.iut. ;.; ;ļ; ;;;'iÄ'prį"rir-ing attitude towards ih. positiv. ;.1.;;;;, to the rimits of which Ishall return shortly, -but

ultima"ry p.į"ps also for the ļack ofrecognition of whatl have proposĮdįo .rll the nihilistic vocationof the philosophy .f,1.111iirr',i.r. nį įhi. I *.u, that, drawingprimarily on aesthetic exįerienc., h.r..n.utics further advancesthe polemical assertion oithe , ;.i;."y of the human sciences ro

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the naturaļ sciences found throughout the humanist tradition ofphilosophy; ,:'{.ļ" so doing, it cļoses off the path to a recognitionof its own nihilistic vocation, remaining mofeover linkeā to avision of science and of aesthetic .*p.ii.n.. itself that is stiļļmetaPhYsical.

Let us try to clarify this ensemble of transitions. science doesnot think, according to Heidegger and Gadamer (but it wouļd behard to find an explicitly different position i., otĻer hermeneuti-cians such as Ricoeur or Pareyson), because it is not an originarysite of the occurrence of truth. Truth as the opening är , Įhorizorrs within which alļ that is true or false in thĖ prop"ositionalsense can be given has nonetheless always already o..u.i"d, giu.nthat our every act and conscious thought is mräe possible Ēy it;yet not being a transcendental structuie (for th. ,ä.ons alreadynoted, that is it is not stable and given once and for all, like theobjects it makes accessible), nor ahistorical, it i. .o*ething thatoccurs, though not on account of a deliberate act. The moäel forthis occurrence is the creation of the work of art, which thetradition, at least in moderniry, is united in regardi;g ,; radicalnewness, and for which reason it speaks o*f g"rrlu.

".rd ofinspiration by 'nature'. But if one does not wish tā hark back torhe Romantic tradition,.an example of what Heid"gge, hrs inmind when speaking of the occurrence of truth .", ,ļ.äi. ...n inKLrhnian paradigms, which Seem to be far -or. -rnįeable'objects', even for Someone unwilling to re-aclopt a roÄanticposition. It is hard ro say (though I lend to believe it myself)whether Kuhnian paradigms, which are not 'instituted' įn th.basis of a correction of the errors of the preceding p"rrāig.,

"r.not themselves inspired by, or at least assimilable tä,'th. Ro'mrnti.a.esthetic of the genius, or even the Heideggerian'.on..piio., ofthe openings of truth..Tesrimony in favour Jr"r . t"n.i t į'poil,..i.may be found i"

-r!.. distinction, put forward by iforiy i,Philosophy and the Mirror of Natui",ä between hermĮneutics anclepistemology, where epistemology denotes that thoug i į i.t,tĪoves within existing and accepted paradigms, doing rihnt Kuhncalļs 'normal science' (that is, iį solvįs proĒl.Ä. ,..ärJingto ,h.rules of the existing paradigm), wheieas hermeneutics" is theencounter with a new paradigm - an encounter that in Rorty isvery similar (or simply identical) in character to the experience of

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18 ScienceScience 19

arr as the opening of truth described by Heidegger and Gadamer.Rorty rejects rhe Di]tlrey"n di.tirįtion between the natural andhuman sciences, and dįs "", Į-piiįirly rule out the possibilitythat a 'hermeneutic' encount.. with a new paradigm might occureven within the doma.in of the positive sciencesl thus his aestheticmodel does not lead to ,h. h;;;i.ti. .onĮį;il that bycontrast we See in Gadamer. Nonethet.r., iį-i.-uinĮ urr.t.r.whether the encount;1 wjth "

n.* įrrudigm nray truly be thoughtof as 'scientific work,, r.. ."lį '',i".r.

seems to imply an activepresentation and solution of problems that pīr;;. i;"fi'r]-Ļ on theside of epistemology. Yet this is ,ī.-r.rru,, why Heidegger andGadamer beļieve that science 'ao.._'į, think,: given its character-istic attention to merhodologi."Ī- į.Į..arr".,-įhĮ"oriį^Į".riur.form it can take seems to be.-thrt'of normal science, whereas arevolutionary science would be dlfficuļt to distinguish from poeticcreation' More recently, Rorty hr, .įok.n .i];;;;iri..., ,,order lo indicate 'o*.iĖing Lį. ;h; ii.titrtion of new įaradigms(new systems of metaphu.r fo, a*įritirg the world) in terms tlratare substantially aestĒetic.a Even ,įĮĮįn.. that Popper attributedto metaphysics as a pointer towards ,r.* puth. for science couļdle1h1 s align itself with a ui"r' riį.įįį.,

Evidently, in spite of Rorty's .-piį;; rejection of the traditionaldistinction b.t*į.n th. hu-"n_"r,ä nrrrral sciences, he tooregards hermeneutics as ultimrr.tį_Įt'r." cterized' by way of anaesthetic rnodeļ' Not even hurnanisĻ'Į .".ognition of the superior-ity of the human sciences i. ro.Į,g,r_io"Rorry, for if, as h. .*įli.ltlyobserves, what is irnportant i"? h;;'is tļrat the ,conversation

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.up upp.".ing more vitaļly importantthan those who r.so]v" th. .ijal.; Ļl;il; existing paradigrns.'Ų,lrat folļows will clarify ,t . '.r'ļ.'in which the privilege givenby hermeneurics ro ,.rth.ti. .;p;r].iJ'ancr the consequenr, ofrenmerely implicit, devaluation

"i ,į; ;.1rral sciences vis-ä-vis thehttman sciences coincides .'i'r., iļ. lĮ'į.rlrp. at ollce the causeatld consequence of)'an incapuciĮ/ro gTr.p įhe nihilisti.-n-,-.rningof the philosophy of rnrerpreration.It seems i, fact thrt ir.r-en.rti.., even now, is exclusively

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concerned with relating the work of scientific specialists and theircomplex categorial strucrures back to the Lebenswelt, to rhe pre-c^rcgoria| lifeworld within which, above all, the new openings oftruth occur in historico-natural language . . . This, ultimateĻ, isone of the senses of hermeneutics as koinė; and in fact it is Ļereon this terrain that it meers Rortian pragmatism and far moregenerally speaking the tradition of linguistic analysis inauguratedby the later \X/ittgenstein, rhe theory of communicative action,communitarianism, the multiculturalism of the anthropologists,and above all the various Įegacies of phenomenology anā existen-tialism. Hermęneutics has probably been able to estabļish itself asthe koinė only because philosophical movements of the last fewdecades have registered renewed interesr in the motivations behindexistentialism, phenomenology and early twentieth-c entury KuĮ-turkritik in general, which have themselves now achieved ä fr..hrelevance of their own by virtue of the growing intensiry of theproblems posed by the relation, in brief, between science andsociety. Does the popularity enjoyed, roughly since the end of thesixties (but this needs clarification), by an expression such as 'thecommunity of researchers' have anything to do with the rediscov-ery of the work of Peirce,6 or indeed more directly with the'sociological' circumstances of American scientific research whichwas, during the years of the Vietnam war, deeply involved withmilitary commissions? This argument could, I believe, be used toexplain the attention received by a work like that of ThomasKuhn, which corresponds to a rnore pronounced, if not completelynew, awareness of the 'historicity' of science.T Again,- theseobservations confirm that, as I have suggested, the concern withdrawing the domain of science's categorial exposition back to thelifeworld is, also in the ethico-political sensĮ, one of the goodreasons that underpin the privilege accorded by hermeneutics tothe human sciences: the fate of democracy is at stake here. sinceonly if there is a rationality of the Lebenswelt thar can draw backto irself, interpret and up ro a point unify the plurality oflanguages, ends and autonomou. uālu. SyStemS that Įupport thescie.tific and technical worlds, will a society be possibie rhat isnot given over entirely to the power of specialists and technicians,and in which citizens may lrave the lasr word in major coļlectivedecisions.

20 Science

In any case'-atrd aside frorn aļļ these good ethico-political

;:::ilįrTjii.l ''"'o to propose. is thai į-r,Į.*.,.utics isid e a l i s t i c, į. il1i':'.iffi :i ;:;:: iį?,,r:"J.ffi ;.* ;:į *: *:municative _

":l:*;ii-",r.iāsiĮrl probl.-atic of thę Lebens-ruelt' it risks betraying its o*r' p..-irses' or at least not ĮĮu.lopingthem to their fuiles, ,r,.į..iii"i ļĮr"nrirt,, ",'{ "y ultimately

;TĮ:3ļ; jfffil:'e itself r'"į"""g"eral and oiįįi-, Įt,,iui,,iįĮt seems that herrneneutics can avoid this risk by adopting rheSrrong and normarive sense attributed-t. ;h. ;;r.įo; .i Lebens-weĮt' lifeworld, b.y' Hab..mas il;h; lheory of CämmunicatiueA cti on' A l ifeworļd i' rn. Įnii..' ļr'Įrįa. . rtr*.,'t iĮä' iĮ' Įu rry a^ycommunication, that must Sefve ,';į.

.background to the variousrypes of ,special,

:".^,:l ,t -į9 ,l the life.of a society, and bythis is lneant straregic.action (whic'h comprises science), acrionaccording to norms ā"a .*prĮr.i;;';;;"r. But by whar right doesthe lifeworļd as a whole 'r;į;";;;;;jĻ ". ,h. normative*horizonwithin which each domal"

"i ļļ.Įi'u.rion *ur, nnĮ'iĮ Ļrr.. _without any undue 'colonizatiĀ1-;;'. by another u. ,bor" ,llof the ļifeworld as a. whoļel rį. ""]r.ative significance of thisidea (as I have argued

"t."urr,"..įir:'.Ļ to depend wholly on rhefact that the discuįsive.and alrlįeiĮ"i'ļharacter of the tifĻo.td _as the supportinr horizon ;i;äil.e _ is in fact specific toĪWestern culture''nd p'.hrp.";';r;;ie.'transparerr, .ĮlrĻuni,yof modern scientists äļon".'rÄ.r" **19 b.e nāthing wrong withthis' if Habermas t',a'.*įii.i;;'ilä,zed the releālogy iĻplicitin this aspect of his.rl.".';_; rĮ'iļ., Husserļ did whĮn, in theCrisis, he maintain.a trr.r'r'frJ;;;;."rlir, which firsr appeared inGreece' and which a"i.,i".ĮJ , 'Į".i",,"n of Europ.än .ul,ur.,is a guiding vaļue that'h.ra. rįrir,."*i'ļl. of.hu.nrniiy;, how.u..,for a number of good *r'"Ä Ė;#;;r. does not subscribe toany such rationalist hisroricis;; :;;;;

o81t9o wouļd finJįroblematic' l' moreover' phenomenol-

Habermas, ir will rightly.be said, is hardry a .crassic, exampreof hermeneutic phirosJphf." *-*;;l;"r. probiems arise evenfor a hermeneutic ruthä, ilr.. crĮ"ÄĮ.]'r, t.r., in the absence ofan orrto,ogical radicalirrrion,

'.įlrį;Į;.the .history

of Being,, ofcertain suggestions that, while p.įĮ3rii' his work, he deįļines

Science 21.

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fully to'develop \X/hat Habermas today calļs the 'lifeworĮd'was,in Truth and Method_ and in subsequenr works by Gadamer (seeReason in the Age of scie.n.ce11), the /ogos as a shared rationaiitywhich exists in the naturaĮ language of a community and which ismade up of a vocabulary, a 8rammar and above all a textuaļtradition bearing tļre contents that come to establish the originalopening of truth within which the community lives. whereasHabermas staves off relativism from his lifeworld by attributingto it, albeit rather surreptitiously, a transcendental and norm"tivestructure that is in fact modelled on western modernity, Gadameravoids this metaphysical trap, without falling back into relativism,by theorizing the indefinite opening of historical horizons, theirunļimited susceptibility to interpretation. one thereby a..ives ata, irnplicit 'humanist' conclusion: the task of thinking, if one isnot to remain bound by the terms of specialist lanģuages andfactional vaļues (with all that this implīes, ,ot l.rJ fĮ* th"etlrico-political point of view), is not ānly that of drawing theparticuĮar languages back to the /ogos-language of the communityand harmonizing them with it (above all, ethically), but also thatof broadening the horizon of the lifeworļd to ji..ou". an evergreater number of links with other worļds and cultures, withwhich it is in principle always able to communicate - thisprimarily, of course, with cultural worlds from which, albeitdistantly, the ļifeworld arises by way of a deep associatiļn withthe literary, artistic and phiĮosophical tradition'

Although distinct,. Gadamer's position raises the same questionsas those presented by the normative import of the ideä of theļifeworld in Habermas. In both cases the need arises for a moreexplicit historicity. In Habermas this need originates with therecognition rhat the normative features of the lifeworld are linkedto the historical becoming of a particular ļifeworld, that ofŅ7estern society, and yet are circulatĖd by *"y of the transcenden-taļ structure of every possible lifeworld. Thiļ amounts to sayingthat Habermas, speaking from within a well-defined tradition, aspecific lifeworld, believes he is speaking 'from nowhere,, fromthe usual universal, panoramic o. m"trph}sical point of vieĻ. Yeteven Gadamer, who has a far more acute awareness of thehistoricity of every opening of truth, seems ro want to treat thetradition as if it \Ä/ere an abstract term within which all ,positions,

23

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22 Science

must obviously lie, but which we refuse to determine in specificterms, thereby refusing to situate orrļ"tr.. within it.Does this tradition,Ļhi.h i. įį;ī;irg ļiį';irį.'irgrr-lr,gurg.and to which thinking l' ."]r.aĮĮ ...po.,a by drawing back to itall specialisms, ,.gioÄļ u"lr,..*;j;. T"ny ,nin.iļĪ lrnruu*..in which the social.world i;;;;;rt.d, h"oį ;_;ä* beyondits mere globalness?- By analoį;;;;. could invoke h..i, th".i.put forward bv Karļ ļ;{r";h.i';; i"'' t1r't9s, and ĮJtopia' at thepoint wher" hĮ

'e'm. to ground the freedoĻ fr",, i;;;j;gy thatdistinguishes the bourg*į_il;i;t'url 1t"kirg the place here ofLukācs's proletariat) ä, irr.'}rįr"li*r his essentially historical(historiographist)' r".-rįi.'-.;;;;.;'him acutel y

^i^r, of therelativity of alļ th"o.i"ļ,ii_;.i;;;;į;suspension of full assen; j1ä";;{lą TĮ,?jj :?'Įn,Tui,iJwhatsoever' Moreover, as Į thinĖ l. ļįo*n by a certain theoreticaļinconclusiveness on'r'. pr.i__oi";į."l"-.nology (from whichsome' like Enzo Pr.i, .,nä.g" y ,,iļĮai.g it to .Miarxist histori-;tl hll. ;jff ::.,"

ttle rZ u e nļ,o: " i- ry p;.Į^uy

". a.,p' ļĮ-ethi ng

;.il;;;;ffi:':.-;l'lil.";o':.;:ĮT*į:1;*;į.ĻĪ*įl*suspended (the epochi

". " aįn"i-,iĮ"rĮtirud.l;.

I shaļļ not refer here,to '"*Į;;jJ

existentiaļist ,decisionism,,which may well haveĮeen r-p?"rĮ'įrponsible f* hi.;;akingwith phenomenology- Instead, f .irriĮ** attention ,o ,h" fr.,ll:l^:oolr,enough]' n"..n*.,i,į;';;Į", simply aS an up-to-dateverslon of the Lebens elt themati. tyįi.rriyĮļ.Ä, ?ļ äĮo,r, ,r,those limitations *t l.h, in"il;į'^i,, .nrį. ;;.;; r"oĮil."or,,ilx,::Į:,;:1'fJ T;:*',į. į ļJn.; ;i', ., Jį,Ļ,,r ; u.;'

iĮ "*"vocation, ,l'" t'u-ll:'_ "f a., recognitio:

"{ it. o*,'"'nįili.ti.against the naturaļ j^||St nrivileging of, the human .įi."ļ..

".SuppoIt,r,. r,,-,,]įTT:; i:ļ"ff."i,Ī:ffi;,* :įį ;x;sciences over the naturaļ ,.i..,į., _'i;;;..'., well this attitude maybe justified by the n::9 19 p;;;"r;;'rr"*-.,rrrrion of ļife intoįTili"il' ļljol|',|''t "r Ą.ļ,"*l".;r,. r,,,ĮĮ

"iĮ;;"..* -įT:jj*fi ;,}ffi

t"Tf :::trl.LJ,1..,il: j;:*:r::run;j

Rarher, it is precisely in rhe recognitiori of itself as cor_

Science

responding to a historical situation determined essentially by theexperimental natural sciences that hermeneutics rediscovers itsown nihilistic vocation. This decisive meaning of the sciences isthat in relation to which the existentialist reflection first arises,nor only in Heidegger, but also in Husserl's philosophy of theLebenswelt and subsequent phenomenoĮogy. Early twentieth-century existentialism, and more generally the whoĮe culture ofthe historical avant-garde in which is expressed what Bloch, inone of his earliest works, calļed the 'spirit of utopia''13 is a

response to the world of incipient total organization shaped byrhe sciences and the technologies they made possible. The reduc-tiorr of the categorial to the Lebensuelt, which is stiļl the sense ofthe hermerreutic koinė today, and for which, as I have repeatedlyrrnderlined, there are good reasons, remains, however, boundto this moment of the history of twentieth-century culture. Eventhe demonization of the mass media - the high point of the techno-logtzatic>n of the world - by Adorno and the Frankfurt school ingeneral is only a varianr of the spiritual attitude marked by theKuļturkritiĮ< of the beginning of the century. However, thisattitude rernains no more than a humanist response to moderntechno-science inspired by a philosophy that, while it has seen rhelimits of metaphysical objectivism (which thinks Being on themodeļ of beings and thus on the model of the object verifiedexperimentally by science and at once manipulated and manipul-able by technology), does nor manage to see clearly that theovercoming of metaphysics requires a more radical recognition ofits own historicity. Science and technology are, from this point ofview, contingent 'contents' of a horizon that opens in the natural/ogos-language of historic humanities. But this /ogos is still treatedas a stable structure, precisely as the 'lifeworld', or at least interms of a generic historicity that seems simply to coincide withthe 'constitutive' finitude of human existence.la

It is from Heidegger and the transirion from the first to thesecond phase of his philosophy that we learn in which direction athinking more decisively committed to the recognition of irs ownhistorically q,alified characrer can and must move. This transitio.is for example evident in the fact that, whereas in Being and Time'tļre' worļd is stiļl in every instance phrased in the singular (manis Dasein, and thereby Being-in-the-world), in the essay ,The

lfi''lti:l '

iiii

24 Science

::ll:)::

,:lit1,

ļia':,ij

Origin of the Work of Arr, (1,936) it becomes ,a, world. In theenrire second phase of his work (which is not , ,.u;;;;i of thepremis.ses of Being.and Time,lrut their developmen, in "

Įi...,iononly glimpsed i, that book), Heidegger strives ro undersrand northe (objective, metaphysical) ,r.rärĮr., of "*lrt*įį,-- u, ,t-,.meaning (of the history) of Being, as it is deterrninįd in thecompleted epoch of metaphy.i., IĖrt is moderniry; ;h; age ofscience and technology' once the transition from tlre worļd as acommol' Structure of l)asein to worļds as historical oį*ing, ofBeing has been accomprished, the premisses of a different attitudetowards science are also set forth, no longer (;" i;";;fĮ.,.e ofthe LebensweĮt against coļonization by

".p.į;ii; J'.rr.. .rknowledge and thį application. nf _į.h.ology,

but an aftentive-neSS to the transformations that scienc" äa ,.JrrJĮgy, aSdeterminant factors in modernity, 'b.i,rg; io ,h;';";;-,ngäiu.'rrr.\X/hat I said earļier about herÄeneut'ics (in th. firįi .i'"pt..1,namely that ir can. .be pfov91, only insofar as it cor_responds tomodernity, is wholly applicable to i-t.id.gį;Ä ;ir;;.ffiy.i.rtthirrking. It is above ,tī.ln ti. .y.. ,t"iĮhe legitimati# of thetruth' of a theory cannot b. sought in the evidenJe oĪ, įrĮuna, ora stable Structure. If a post-metJphysical rhi"įi;;l;,-uiiĮä..iur.,for H-eidegger, it can orrly have ir, ļouį. in a different occurrencethan Being itself; and thĮ history

"rĖĮi,'g i. ;.ā;;i;rlĮ, "'r.*a'll, a history of techno-science. it l. ,g"i,rrt this b".kģlnrira , r,the passage from Identity a1ļ Differe7)ce^on-the 'first oppressingfla.sh of Ereignis'in the worļd .f ;į,. Ge-SteĮĮ makes ,.nrā.,, A.,dthis is the meaning-.of. an essay ļikį 'the ; ;i;h; WorļdPicture.',16 which is,"I believe, " ;y;;ongly tuf,e., to b" ,rothi.,gmore than the exoression of a huma,ist, anti_scientifi. ,ni,ln , .final analysis, anti-mod;; il;;r-r.' rr... we come across rhealternative between what I hļve calleJ l.ft ,nā "įr'iHjĮĮįr.r,anism. Vhile the rightist reading may well p."";iļ';; H;;;;;*..,.selįunderstanding, it does no, .Įo-įrr. ,.*r. such as those citedabove wļri9h point out a different porĖ, ān. in line with the overaļlsense of his polemic against -"trpīy.i.s as the thinking orpresence' This other.path _ opened Ėui.nn, actually travelled byHeidegger - carr (and must, in my view) b" foļļo;;;1 -."ori"* ,rrthe attendanr risks ,rd i..poÄibilitiļs. For at its end lies aconsideration of modern ,.l"n." as rlre principal

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nihilistic transformation of the meaning of Being; that is, as a

positive step towards a worļd in which there are no facts, onlyinterpretations. In 'The Age of the World Picture', however, incontrast to the hermeneutic privileging of the human sciences it issignificant that Heidegger situates even these sciences entirely inthe gerreral category of planned and 'consoļidating' research thatdominates modern techno-scientific knowledge. In science as

research planned and industriously applied to single regions ofbeings, metaphysics is articulated in its most complete form: rheworļd must be drawn back to a general System of causes andeffects, to a potentially totalizing image that the scientific subjectalways has at her or his disposal. The being that has become anobject of representation 'incurs in a certain manner a loss ofBeing'.lz All this happens not onļy, in overĮy abstract terms,because it is in modernity that metaphysics - the thinking ofobjectification - unfolds its originary essence (already fully presentin tļre Platonic doctrine of ideas as the representabļe structure ofBeing); this accompļishment occurs (although it is probably not amatter of a distinct origin: Heidegger does not think of Christian-ity as an event external to the history of metaphysics) by way ofthe liberation of modern man from divine authority, whichHeidegger pictures for the most part according to the currenthistoriographical models (inclLrding Hegel's Phenomenology). Thereductiorr of the world to images, to a System of 'serviceabļe'causal links, is not only a matter of theoretical reason. It is a wayof assuring oneself of reality and of one's own fate within it. Andwhen man rebels against divine authority, the practicaļ essence ofrepresentation itself becomes more explicit and the assurancenrust become absolute' The will to įo*.. that sustains theobjectifying thought of meraphysics becomes more explicit inmodernity, partly as a result of secularization. However, this is adecisive step on the path of nihilism. For in becoming represenra-tion,' as we have aĮready seen, the being loses its Being 'in a certainmanner'. But this loss becomes radical when the image of theworld, openly displaying its practical dominative character, mul-tiplies into contrasting images in conflict with each other. It is thisconflict that sets in train a massive enlargement of the systems ofcaļculation arrd prediction, to the point where this movement tothe extremes of calculability leads to a general incalculability: the

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26 Science

age of tlre world picture gives way ,o-!h: cļissolutiorr of this irnagein a Babel of conflictirrg Ļ"g..; l,-,J'1*;irt-, tlris strLrggle of worldviews the modern ,g. Ā.rt .;.į;r;. thā p"rt .r irļ iiiiįĮ.y that isthe most decisive ""d p'oĮ,ubį. il -"., capable of ĮnĮuring,.,,Heidegger's text is srrewn with i.dications that keep us fromrcading this description of ."d;;;;"i;;j;; ,.i ,::T invectiveand an invitation tā , hyputh;;į;l';;,''.rsion. Th" lnĮil.rlabilitycasts a sclrt of shadow oįer a.lļ things, the shadow of the ļoss ofBeirlg' 'In truth,. however, ,h. .ho'do* i. ,

..,.l,riį.į,' ,r-,org,,tnperretrable, testimony to ih. .onį"įl.a .,rirJ"įäi.iiĮii.,,, .rr,i.shadow' however,_points to .o..,hį else, which it Į denied tous today to know.,2o

The reļation of.hermeneutics to modern techno-science breaksy-,ttr atļ metaphysicaļ and h;;;;Įso.irtion. when hermeneu-tIcS' takirrg scietrce seriously ""_

ļ*'d"r..minant factor in theconfiguration of Being. in .noį..ir]rr] *r".p. the essential nihiļisticmeaning of science *t,i.t' i' ,, įt.,Į'.l-. time constiturive of itsowrr destiny' The worļd "' , ĮĮ"iict of interpretations ancįrrothirrg more is ļ1ot an. irnage or t . *ļ.td that has to be defendeda gainst the realisrr* nd_ poJitiri.-

_įi'Įl.,rce. It į

"-aĮrr_š.ience,heir and completion or',".r"pi-,įĮiJ., Į", turns the world into aplace where there are no (l',g.;' i;:tr, o,-,ly interpretations. Įt isnot a tlatter, for hermeneuricĮ, of setring ri-;r. į'. ĮĮiļnri.-, ofresisting the triumoh -of

sciencį'""a"i.ļrr".logy in the name of ahumanist culture" of ,r ;ģ -"o

?ļ, ,rr. ,lifeworld, against

;:|;ļil:l:ro,äl,nr,rnd totJl oigr;iro,i,,n. The .critique that

Y ::]9 l.,l",. j,

i r ilįril:',J;,Į. ;:ii,; Ļ jļ;,r,,.,:i: :l,:i **nihilistic meaning ",rd ,o"i"į"..j; ;;'as a guiding thread forjudgements, choiįs u,'d ,h. Įrį;;r;Ļ of individual and collec-rive ļife' What, if not nihili.-

".;;jr;Įi..oļuriur-, of tļre ,principleo-,f realiry', is. the approacrr of ..i.;.; lo situarions in which thei:: ;ĮlĮ"JiJe,oa

scientifi. hyp"rh;.ir"", th. ,pp..il-Į",än or "scientistu..lnį,",r',',':į'."'rT;:.l,"#H'jil:'j,',','J:]':m:,;::

that the caļcuļatiorr of o,ri .;;;;ä lļo,-,fir-r, that of

",rāth..,are we still dealing,*]:h : liu"J Į*į..ience, with ,"Į"Įr'i'gHusserl in his Crlsis įn thc European-{rį"nrrrwoulcļ cal. Įebens-eļtlįch?zl Technicians guided Ė, '.i"į" have trarrsformed the

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world of objects into a system in which it is increasingly difficultto distingLrish the satisfaction of natural 'needs' from the superflu-ous response to induced desires; and is this not another sign of thecorrosive effect that science and technology exerts on every'principĮe of reality' ?

If hermeneutics takes its own anti-metaphysical clrientation andnihilistic vocation seriously and encourages us to read modernityin this scnse, it will undoubtedly appear far more problematic andless neutral than its emergence as a koinė ļed r-rs to believe; but itwilļ be able to make a less vague contribution to the understandir-rgof what in truth, as Heidegger would say, remains to-be-thought.

illļļrä.;11.ģ]

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Ethics

when, in the world of nihilisrn, the fight berween rhe 'weak' andrhe 'strong' is laid bare in its elements and no longer masked bymeraphysical and consolatory lies, it is the moderate that areultirnately destined to triumph, 'those who do not require anyextreme articles of faith; those who not only concede but love afair amount of accidents and nonsense'.l Leaving aside the philol-ogicaI problems raised by the wiļļ to power in Nietzsche, itsanrbiguity ļies above all in the difficulty of squaring it withnihilism, another of the great 'key-words' of the mature Nietzsche.It is perhaps not by chance that he speaks a great deal in the noresfrom his final period of the will to power as arr, and of the artistas one who experiments and in so doing transcends the intereststied to the struggle for existence: a figure far distant from thestrong subject that many interpreters - basing their readings onother texts by Nietzsche - have wished to identify with theįjbermensch. There is no strict relation between rrihiļism andvioļence. In fact, even if one cannot attribute this to Nietzsche,one of the effects of nihilism may well be to undermine the reasonsby which violence is justified and nourished. And if one considersthe original motives behind the Heideggerian 'revolution' againsrrnetaphysics (which takes up many components of the artistic andphilosophical avant-garde of the early rwenrierh cenrury, weldingthem into a philosophically rigorous and productive system), onecan justifiably clairn that they are erhical (or ethico-political) incharacter rather than theoretical, and that they rejecr metaphysics- the thinking of Being as presence and objectivity - insofar asthey see it above all as a violenr thinking. It would in fact be hardto irnagine that Heidegger, in posing the problem of the meaningof Being afresh in Being andTime, was seeking a truer and moreadequate representation of Being than that inherited from mera-physics. One must nor forger that, although the distance frommetaphysics is developed above all in his later works, the critiqueof the idea of truth as rhe conformity of a proposition to howthings are, and thus of each truth as an adequate description of agiven, is already clearly formuļated in Being and Time' But if orrecannot refer back to rhe demand for a more objectively adequateconception, the need to rerhink the meaning of Being mightreasonably be explained as an expression of the existentialistmood of the earĮy twentieth century. The theoretical motivation

29

1J

Ethics

Recognizing the nihilistic implications of herme.eutics seems roliberate us from ,r'. s*.r;iĮr'äiĮ"rrrilosophy of cuļture thatcontinually osci,ates "b"r*..n

..triiuir- and rranscencrentaristmeraphysics (depending o" *h.,į*iĮn. la.,rrifies the lrorizon ofļnterpretation with the ļifeworļd undįrstood as a particular cul-ture or as a universaļ normativ. ..r".įį.. point). rį lį ,l.ļ opensthe way ro a conception of ,h; ;;;l;."s a conflicr of interprera_tions that Seenls dangerously .to..įo ,n. Nietzschean celebrationof the wiļļ to po*".' Whut'th.-nī jiiį o,'rotogy of hermeneutics

Ļ:Į*,::,i,ärl'say' is not SO -;;h,,il;;.;i älion as

,, Jth i,,g .;,h". : ".ii'.I:?,iĮil."lxi"lT,:i.,,l;t.;įįį[for interpretations to emerge th"t ur.Įo compelling as to įrecipi-tate vioļence and struggl. i",, , ;;;; sense of th. word? If weallow ourselves to f:ļĪ;; ;t. ;ilä:i nihiļisrn rhat we Seem tohave picked out aS ,r'. ou".r-..į,i"Ä-.;r. of hermeneutics, it willbe hard not to

""-"_q: ,r,r, "'rįiig

',h" ,nr..o.etative essence ofall truth explicit entails , p.ofounj -ļain.rtlon in the kind ofpractical relation one' has ," *r'įr l' ,rĮį. rn. interpretations thatlead to violent struggle ,..įr,ļ-" Įr'riä ,., recognize themseļvesas such - and which, as in the ,."aįi.i, regard other interpreta-tiorrs simply as fra,udule"r r.ĮĻr.;:ä.. Nietzsche, th. pĻiļor-opher of the will tcl power' saw

-this. In a famo,,. när. on'European nihiļism' r'on' ,iJ 'r**..'"r 1887, he mused that

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Ethics

of existentialisnr. (Kierkegaarcl's intoļerance of Hegelian rationaļ-ism' the revoļt or 1ļe'9-|ilclsophy ;iļii. against p;;iil;;i. science)reflected above alļ diffiden.į ro. *.,r, Įra uägu"l'.ĮoĮ.irrr, i'the war years' to elnerge as a worļd.o.f

.totaļ organization (asAdorno would larcr desĮribe itt "nd

which .";;;;;ough itwere a kind of fully realizea.-"tįr,y.ical system.ī;orĻĮia.gg.r,such a world represented th. trirÄph. of the objectifying andcalculating amituāe aS. an expreJi;;i rr," ,rĮi"pĮr'rlĮ"T',.ra.r.,to identify Beļng ,with wĖat i.- pi...nt and controļlable. Inconsequence either human existence becomes unthinkabļe in terms

:l.'i:iir1 ;įiĮ : "' b.,; J ;;;; Ä p u,. presence, ca lc ula bili tįHermeneurt.r,

i-orl .our of Heidegger,s polernic againsr mera_physics, remains to this day a,frrrrii,rg motivatecl primarily byethicaļ corrsiderationr. After'Hįij.gr"r, ancļ with points of depar-ture that are different from lļ ,,ii?r'ļ", beirrg too far removedfrom them, Levinas a,d Adorno f_,r". ,f." taLrghr us to mistrustnretaphysics' in view less of it, įh.or.tical failings than of itsviolence; either because, as Adorno thinks, ir. ā"ļ;'.jainĮ',nr.r.r,itr essetrces and the. universal ln.ļirr.. Jt to accept, in the name ofthe universal, that inclividuais Į į."Ļor.a undārfoot; or because,as Levinas thinks, the clernana įr,ļi'Being be grasped as thecondition for encountering ,rr. įi"gr. existent opens ih. *ry tothe same aberrations. Hä*.u.., _Īi-lļ

perhaps to Heidegger,srejection of simoļe presence as the esseirtiaļ Įlr.r.r.r-ļ} Beirigthat clne n''u" ubnuį.all refer, Į*-Į. grourrd the rejection ofmetaphysics (given that the.e ;. ;.;. doubt as ro whetherAdorno's and Levinas' reasons ,.rry-'rr.ra - rhe tho,ght of rheuniversal has not always ,"a ,.įĮļļr.ity glu.n way to violenceand oppression), and roi " a.n,'i,i*"äi',rr" violence in terms thatdo not themselves repeat. nretaphysics in their ,rrn.]'oi'Į piecewith the 'etļrical' motivations ,Ė;;;; ,nd .nu.t be attributed tothe Heidegger of Being and Ti)e'-ĮĻ'rub..qrent Heideggerian

jļ'^'*Ļ of metaphysi.s ās th. obļirltn Įr n.ing and the iaJrr'tifi.a-ttott of Being with the givenne., of ,į.'object irr the incontroverti-biĮity of presence can i-egitimrrĮrr'rr. .äd as the most clistinctivephilosophical outcome oĪ th. ,*"rrJ.rrr-ĮelltĮļry rejection of meta-||rsics as a thinkirrg. of violen.;.^i;;; iot įr.."rre the universaļnecessarily ļeacįs to the vioļatio, .į ;h; rights of the individuaļ

įi

Ethics

fhat metaphysics must be overcome; indeed, the rnetaphysiciansthemseļves are in a good position to Say that the very rights of theindividual have often been defended precisely in the name ofmetaphysical grounds - for example in the doctrine of naturaļright. Rather, it is as a thinking of the inconrrovertible presenceof Being - as the uļtimate foundation before which one can onlyfalļ silent and, perhaps, feel acļmiration _ that rnetaphysics is aviolent thinking: the fourrdation, if it is given in incontrovertibļeevidence that no Įonger admits further enquiry, is like an authoritythat keeps things quiet and takes controļ without explanation. Itis here that we find the root of the inclination of metaphysics tothat type of viclļerrce against the individual that so often accom-panies it and that so preoccupied Adorno and Levinas. I believe(and one could try ro demonstrate this with a more detaileddiscussion of the idea of violence in the history of thinking) thatthe suppressive authority of the foundation given 'in presence,may be the only possible way to define violence without recourseto metaphysical ideas ļike essence, nature and the structure ofBeing.

That thinking foundations - metaphysical foundationalisrn - isindeed a violent thinking is not an objective 'given' that may itselfbe proved beyond doubt (thereby contradicting irself). Įt is what'e n-lerges' from the narration-interpretation of the history ofrnetaphysics, which brings us ro the implications noted by Adornoand Levinas, Heidegger's vision of metaphysics as the premissfrom which scientism and the total organizatton of society logi-cally follow, and the Nietzschean idea according to which foun-datiorraļ thinking is a kind of excessive reaction to a state ofinsecurity that is no longer ours.3

If these are the ethicaļ demands that inspire hermeneutics in itsoriginal form in Heidegger, nor only in part but comprehensively,how does the philosophy of interpretarior-r of today cor-respond?And according to our hypothesis here, what difference does alĪore open acknowledgement of the nihilistic irnplications make?Į shalļ show that, above all in this dornain of ethics, the acknowl-edgernent of the ,ihilistic vocarion of ethics is decisive i, riddinghermeneutics of the vagueness with which it is increasinglyassociated, and which reveals its 'fall back' into metaphysics.

\We l-rave already seen the ethicaļ positions linked to hermeneu-

w:"

il

32 Ė,thicsEthics

interpretative character of our experience of the world also entails

a clear ethical directive; to respect the rights of the interlocutor,which implicitly I cannot fail to recognize as equal to mine as a

speaking subiect. As we know, on this basis Apel formulates theprinciple of an unlimited community of communication, toĻhi.h, by way of a complex but for the most part convincing lineof argument, he traces back (in the manner of a Kantian categori-cal imperative) the fundamental norms of morality (even the duryto avoid war or to further the survival of one's neighbour is

referred back to the duty to guarantee the possibility of an'unļimited' communication, in which interlocutors genuinely havethe same rights6).

The normative significance of the theory of communicativeacion developed by Habermas, mentioned above, is couched insimilar terms, although with ļess emphasis on the use of languageand a marked concern for the defence of the lifeworld as a milieuthat makes possible and sustains the various forms of action. Sinceall action aspires to its own specific rationality, which is intelligibleonly in terms of the defence of its validity to other subjects, to actaccording to reason, and therefore ethically, means to makeexplicit this implicit 'argumentativity' and, above all, to keep itspossibility alive by preserving and developing in the lifeworļd theconditions of a communication that is not opāque, that is notimpeded by inequalities, ideological obscurantism, deļiberate dis-tortions or structures of domination.

The objections that can be put, and that have been put, to thisethics of communication from the point of view of hermeneuticsstress its ideaļistic and therefore subjectivistic and potenriallysolipsistic implications' Can one cultivate the ideaļ of an absolutetransparency of communication whiļe remaining faithful tcl thebasic conditions, namely the interpretative character, of everyexperience of truth? The ideal of transparency, of the eliminationof every opacity in communication, seems to be perilously close(at least from the theoretical point of view) to the conception oftruth as obiectivity determined by a 'neutral' subject modeļled onthe form of 'metaphysical' subiectivity incamated most recently inthe ideaļ of the modern scientist. Seen in these terms, the theoryof communicative action might look ļike a glaring example of thecoļonization of the lifeworld by a specific form of action, the

33tics' both by their aurhors ancr by cur-renr opinion, begin to takeshape in the preceding di..uļ.ī.r'o-itt. relarion betwĮen herme-neutics and the .*p".irr.ntrl ..i.nįį. of nature.. This is probablynot accidental: insofar as it is not a metaphysical tĒeory ofimpera ti ves ded uced f.o- rtrr.įįres a 1d "rr.;'.; J,";;, i,.,r".pr.r" -tion itself, and thus a response to an histori.il;;;;i'ļiuing orBeing, a hermeneutic ethics *iliį;;" above aļl to addiess thatregion of existerrce which, h".. toāry, decisively determines theman-Being relation:-namely, scien." ,nd -od.in iĮĮi..rogy. ehermeneutic ethics, if such.a įr,i"g'ļ"i.", will therefor._Ė. notr,ing

:'l"^:lh'n ', response .r trr,rr.i.Į ,"'įrr. man-Being relation as itts conhgured in the epoch of cÄplet"a -.t"įffi.ļ,'rr,u, ,r, ,'the epoch of the world pictu

The ethical resDonses put forward irr the hermeneuti c koįnē tothe moderr, .o.,hgr."įiä" t.i'rrrĮ'Ļ""-

"ing relation may becharacterized in three ways; there is an ethics-or ..-*r"i.ation,an erhics of redescription "nd ," .rti.. of continuity. with thefirst we associate

-thį nr-.r-";"Ė;;.r-as and Apel, wirh thesecond rhe name of Rorty "rrd

rvlth the rhird that of Gadamer.The names of Apel ,rd Habįr.". *rr.. it immediately clearwhat is lleant bv an ethics of .;;-;;i."rio,-,; " įĮJĮii rĮ, ap.r,it is clear that rhe experience of truth is conditioned by ourreļation to.a larrguag" Įhrt l. ,,-įnį. the medium in which wework and that in which *. ou.rįtr.Jį*i.t.o \ hatever its histori-cal particularitv mayĮ",

"u"įī",'rrr; carries within it a kind ofineluctable u""tion fo. .crmÄu"iä,i8r. In this regard, Apel cites\ 7ittgenstein and his idea ,l,rr;ā". Įr',by .;.;;ji;'^.;;'įu.., th" -o.,,.bir_1l!-.oļ1' a. language game

req u ires the user to d.,,Ėi;,;; ;;;;:ir,..j,|Tf ļ",,ļ*:,:"mruļes and then as one who r.irļ*lįįįÄ., Bu, this implies that theone who observes the ruļes i. ..r;";;ļe for this obsįrvarrce: andthe responsibilitv is a responsibility ,o-įo..on" else, to the ideaļinterļclcutor.who, even if į"ry rr'r"rj.ļĮtr.r.. subject taken as theinstitutor of rules, features į ;;";;inĮĮ"n." of language use. Toprėcis Apel, there can be no ."pĮ.i"nĮĮ ot th" world without theuse of language, ,n.9 "u"., ,r.'"il;;;uage (excepting the mostextleme performative contr.adiction) iĻplies a responsibility tclan interlocufor. even if

. only id;;i;' ,Į'...p"., the rules of thelinguistic grn-,.. a..o.di,įīi, 'rh;;.;;*nition

of the linguistic-

34

lĪ- '

ti

.ii

ll. Ethics Ethics

redescriptions as an ethical proposal, there is nothing in his texts

to prohibit this reading.e In fact it seems entirely permissible to

take it in this way, as one of the paths open to hermeneutics (in

its general Sense aS koinė) when it seeks to respond to the question

of ethįcs' other not insignificant reasons aļso encourage uS to read

Rorty's theory like this; the ethics that one can draw fromFoucault's mature writings is very similar to the theory of redes-

criptions: as Deleuze has written, for him 'the struggle forsubjectivity manifests itself as the right to difference, variationand metamorphosis'. Moreover, Foucault in all probability offersa fresh reading of the Nietzschean idea of the conflict of interpre-tations. It seems that to some extent both Rorty and Foucault,like Nietzsche before them, adopt the principļe that if in the age

of nihilism there is still a duty that we can recognize as coherent,it is nclt that of respecting the table of existing values, but that ofinventing new tables of values, new lifestyles, new systems ofmetaphors for speaking of the world and of our own experience.In each of these cases, it is as though interpretation were conceivedļess as a means to understanding than as an activity in which thesubjectivity of the interpreter is implicated - to which aspect,moreover, special emphasis should be given. That knowledge oftruth is an interpretation means that truth is never neutral, butalways distinguished in relation to a historical moment, a person-ality or a particular individual history. Hermeneutics - as aninterpretative activity and as a philosophical theory - must guardagainst treating these personal aspects of the experience of thetrĮļe aS provisiorral and accidentaļ moments to be overtaken in thedirection of the transparency spoken of by Apel and Habermas.An extreme version of the position expressed today by Rorty maybe seen in the idea of 'conspiracy' that Klossowski places at thecentre of his readirrg of Nietzsche.10 Aļthough tied in the mostcomplex terms to the idea of the eternal return as a selectivethought, the Klossowskian conspiracy is a typical aestheticistreading of the ethical conseque nces of Nietzschean nihilisrn,wļrose features may also be distinguisļred in Rorty's redescrip-tions. Even so, Klossowski's conspiracy cannot pave the way foran established paradigm and never wishes to do so: it remains aredescription that, insofar as it responds to the selective principleof the eternal return, by definition does not for"rnd any stability

35

scientific-descriptive, s.urreptitiously adopted as a model. Shouļcļpreserving the ļifeworļd in its irreducibiiity and ir. įįnįilu., ^.

ususraining h.rizon nor arso mean defencling it f..; ;h;;;mandsof .total-transparency? It is less a matter of Įejecting ,h" prļ.,i.nt-political conclusions of Apel's and Habermasį;Į".;;J'thrn ofasking whether one can sha.e its theoretical bases and above aļlwhether these bases do not rurn out to b. unduly-il.rgrl;.ed bythe generally acceptable nature of those concrusions. And the.aļso at the level of the practical-political conctu.ionļ,_Įļ., ,t'.idea of a non-opaque communication not imply ,t l.uļt the riskof makirrg necessary a cate*Ory of experts 1p.ih"p. -"-bįr. of

"centraļ commitree o, "., "..Ī.riasticaļ Ļi.."..īy; *ho a..ia" whichcommunications are to be considered dirto.t.d or,-in'ii" .rra,what are the true interests of the masses? As far as hermeneutics

and.the inspiration most proper to it are concerned, the theses ofApel and Habermas lconsideied here in view of whai thev hru. incommon) bring us face to face with. ,t'" p.out"* oi'aĮ.iairrgwhether or not the philosophy of i.,t..pi.t"tiā. ..rrrį a"..contain the ideal of a.totally Įrrn.pur.rrt communication: which,it seetns, it does not, if one Įonside., th"t the whoļe of hermeneu-rics after Schleierrnacher has if anything been buiļt around anawareness of the impossibility of conceivlrg the i,r,Į.į*iiu. n.,as an identificarion with the object, or more generally the other,to be interpreted.T

. In Rorty's .,h"9ry. of redescriprion one finds an almost symmet_rical reversaļ of the ethics įlf .orn*unication'8 As we haveremarked in earļier. c.hapters, Rorty begins r--_Įn'lĮ., ofhermeleutics that, whiļe it does not Ļr-,orĻ ..1.., ,t .-iĮ.ri'or unidentification with the other to be interpretecr (give, that thedefinitive outcome of the hermeneutic encounter is an empatheticsharing of paradigms and forms of rife), insisrs rather on differ-ence' In order that the conversation continue - a, aim that do.snot in facf seem to be grounded in Rorty (urrless p".rrrį. i,' ,vitalism) _ it is n.....āry that the pn.i,r"., of th. gä*. ofconrtnunication can reciprocally offer one another not .r"nĻ urri-ations withirr a shared paradigrn, but also

"ncļ oĮrou. utr į.Jpo.ut,fo:' *. 'redescriptio,-,' įf o,r.Į.lį and of the *".ia-rrrrrĮiĮir.ty

calļ for a hernreneutic, and not mereļy episten-rologi.rī, ļpp.ļr.rr'Whiļe it is true that Rorty is caref,'i ,rä, ,o frame lris theorv of

36 Ethics Ė'thics

signposted by the recovery, only partially disguised, of a philos-ophy of the creative genius. To be sure, it is no longer legitimizedby somehow having its roots in nature and the mysterious rules ofnature, but it is at least implicitly justified by a vitalistic ceļ-ebration of creativity which remains the only way to explain whyit is irnportant that 'the conversation continne'.1'5

The only ethics that appears to be coherent with the anrimeta-physical inspiration of hermeneutics is perhaps that formulated inrhe years following the publication of Truth and Method by HansGeorg Gadamer, whose name is moreover linked to a whoļemovement for the 'rehabilitation of practicaĮ philosophy'.16 Thepre-eminence of Gadamer's position among the different erhicsinspired by the phiĮosophy of interpretation (or that commonlypass for hermeneutic ethics) is due moreover ro rhe fact that histheory seems able to encompass the motives and demands voicedand unilaterally affirmed in the ethics of communicatior-r and inthose of redescription. Gadamerian ethics is wholly an affirmationof the value of dialogue, even if it does not beļieve that dialoguehas to be modeļled on an ideal of transparency that' in the end,wor"rļd render it inessential. And as for the novelty of redescrip-tions, one can say that it is made into a feature of everyiļļterpretative act, which as an 'application' to the present situ-ation of the inherited textual legacy (laws, religious messages,works of art, historical documents) constitutes authentic, and theonly conceivable (increment in), Being. However, the accenr hereis placed on continuity. Furthermore, Truth and Method defendsthe truth of the experience of art on rhe basis of a critique ofaestheticism and aesthetic consciousness, whose features can beseen precisely in the discontinuity and the ahistorical temporalsingularity so beautifully represented in the figure of Kierkegaard'sDon Giovanni. The historicity of the Kierkegaardian ethical stageis in all likelihood the point of reference thar most helps one rounderstand the meaning of Gadamer's hermeneutic ethics. LikeKierkegaard, the author to which Gadamer so clearly refers hereis Hegel. The moral task is, for him, to realize something likeHegel's ethical life; the integration of everyone's single experiencesinto a continuity of individual existence thar can only be sustainedon the basis of belonging to a historical community which, as wehave aļready said, ļives in language. The community' for its part,

5/

whatsoever' It preserves the minority character that must, it seems,be attributed to the a,tiStic g.nirr'.nd th" .prr.; ..i,äirrlon".y.But even for Rorty, *hrt .o,int. i' įropo.ing new redescriptionsis.ultimately the poetic o. ,"uoļutiāįr'ry n,o.rr..rt _ in Kuhn,S Setlseof revolutionarv science _ far *or. ,hrn any capacity for foundinghistorical .on..",.n"rs and continuitv. r 1

It is alļ too easy _ although probĮbty aļso correct, given rhar itseems to concern two diametrically opposed *"y;;f ".,,;āį.rr"na-ing' the meaning of hermenerri.. 1 iļ ob..ru. that if Habermasand Apel placed excļusive .*įt ".lļ perhaps *;;"ii;;;lly, ontransparency as themeaning ,nā obj.ĮtĻe or in,.rįr.*ioĮ, no.r,(or Klossowski, or FoucaulĮ), in .onn..tion with his anti-founda-tionaļist formation, .*.lu.ivĮly Į.|lu.ir., tt'. i...Jįįiuitiry orthe redescriptions t9 any kinä of iontinuity.,z \Mhat is vaļuedSeems here to be identi,ed with th. n"*, įhe unhea.J oį the'stroke of genius' _ precisely ,r.. į".iĮ of tlie R";;;;adition;and the more it i' u*".e

"f i;' ";;-plete

unfoundecļness andunfoundability, the more highly ;t i.ĻĮtu.a (rhį ir;il;Ä.ia.r*.,and Ni etzsche, uni ted by diit är rrrįirĮrrįlil#;#ä.'.äp,i on.of themselves and of th. *orra,-"rį Ļļ.r , t.Įr'rįį,, į.ĮrĮĮ, *rr.,as a Niežschean expr9s.si91 hrļ it, kno*. that he i. ontf" po.,,just a clowtr"3)' As with Hr ..-".lĮ; ;;j ;;;i;J ,;;Įnden_talism, here too we have q1ffi.rl,r-;.cognizing the inspirarionbehind hermeneutic.s, especially th. įonui.tion that interpietationi s the artic ul ati on of soÄe_thinģ ;ā.,;;;;;;' ; j';h ;";;"J

rr:..r.r..to a call whose solļrce, in HeidĮggeriįn ,.r-r, lies in the historico-destinal thrownness in whi.h"bįļ"j, i, ļocatecl. Neither the'redescriptions' offered by lļriĖ;;t*s like Heidegger andNietzsche nor those of artiļts ilr.. pįīļ, are really ironicaļ irr theway that Rorty imagines. lhilo.oįhĮ.s cļaim to ,found,

theirtheses in some *ru; b"ut ,h._."g.;Į'.Į.oun,.red in the work ofeven the -o.t innorative artistsl-rla'*-t,i.t, srr.s1ąįn5 the legitimacyclf their work and the assertio; 'h;;

ii Įr. u"tu. for others, is notpurely and simply the artists' f"itt., ir-, tĮ"mselves, a cornplete andwholly arbitrary assumption of toraļ responsibil ity'la If the stiļļmetaplrysical, and th.rįfore non-t..-įneutic, character of theethics of unļimited communication manifested itseļf in the reaffir-mation of a transcendentaļ .r.u.rrrį of reason _ taken fronr factand adopted as a norļĪ _ here the ."rrį to metaphysics is clearly

*fįiļj

äi.i

ä

38 Ethics

:#:-:T.11:^*_:,",';d a1d isolated in a point of space or a

'-:':T l,.ļ,::::, Lj\.

'lh:.horizon, ;; il;;;Įi' "#;].ä,:

tnlsiil;,ln:;:q::i.: of individu"t-.*įĮrĮnces in the horizons that:,::1-t"

them is never conclud.d. Intįrį..trtir i - i t., *y

-

; ;;;;ffi Tx lllil; -liį'i:1T'ätr3*: n ,l;: ::commensurability ofcuļtures.

Etbics

rest with the Hegelian ideal of conciliation with the totality), as to

the related need to appropriate one's own historicity. On thisbasis, it becomes clear not only that the ideal of continuity is

historically situated (for example it is linked to eighteenth- and

nineteenth-century classicism and its background), but also that,

if the ideal is acknowledged, the continuity in which it is a case ofintegrating oneself is the continuity of a history whose meaningwe must put ourselves at risk to determine. It seems impossible todefine the meaning of the history of modernity, or of the epoch ofBeing to which hermeneutics must respond, otherwise than as

nihiļism. The hermeneutic ethic of continuity is therefore the callto place single experiences within a network of connections thatseem to us to be oriented towards the dissolution of Being, andthereby towards the reduction of the authority of presence. Thearguments required - in line with the Habermasian version ofhermeneutic ethics as the ethics of communication - in order toidentify and defend to others the moral preferability of one choice,or in Rorty's case one system of redescription, over another arenot entrusted to a general (transcendental, panoramic) capacityfor integration into the continuity of any particular tradition,community or social fabric. It is here and now that ethics expressesitself as an imperative of continuity - with the proviso that itappeals to a specific sense of the here and now, and moreparticularly to an interpretative hypothesis about the meaning (ofthe history) of Being, which it regards as oriented towards aprogressive weakening in the authority of presence.r8

Might it not be easier to argue against the fundamentalismsand communitarianisms reappearing all across the late-modernworld from the point of view of nihilism rather than from that ofHabermas, Rorty or even Gadamer? It is not by chance that thisissue should have presented itself here, almost spontaneously. Forit may be that the epoch of the end of metaphysics to which theethics of hermeneutics means to cor-respond is distinguished notonly by the dissolution of the principle of reality inįo the Babel ofinterpretations and the phantasmagoria of the technologicalworld, but also and indelibly by the dissolution of fundamental-isms of every kind; it is not hard to see them as neurotic defencesof identity and belonging in reaction to the indefinite widening ofhorizons'entailed by the culmination of the epoch of the world

39

Not only i. 9rd1T:r,s _

posirion the. most characteristicallyhermeneutic in the ,field of įįĀiįļ,"

", he has also contributedmore rhan anyone :1.: ,: th. popui"rization of hermeneutics andits becoming a koinė. 'o. ,Ėiļ'uį., ..".orr, and without anypolemical intenr (indeed, follo*ingiti..path opened by him), it ison the theses of Gadame. th"t thį'nit,ltl.,i. raāicalizatioH we wishto propose here must be performed. It is

" -r;;;;iĮ.Įlopingwhar we have already not.d- wiJ ,.gura to science and theLebensweĮt, adding to this, t'o-įr.., -a further .onriaĮrrrion;namely, that the idea of a' Äorality āļ , . infinite recompositionof continuity (almost a kind of

'wJdening and .u.. įr.*.d

il:'fi :ffilįL""lin:. ļ-ene utic,ci rcl e ) ...Ļ.,;,įk ;";. eivi ng

;.";il,.,,ļl,l',.,-.",ff ffi :{*,ffi į jf ?,::t,TĻillįlas such, would be the gooi. A. I h;;.- tried to .hor-.or. fullyelsewhere,,7 this amounts to a recovery of the cļassicist ideal(dominant in Hegel) of an ,.įrr,.rįr*thics as the harmoniousconciliation of the singular (o. ,lr.

-Įngular experience' or thesingular historicaļ community) in a *h;.;į;''-ry'ir*.' urru"only insofar as it is an articuįated and open presence. \ ouļd thisbe so far removed from ,h";;;;;;;vertibility of metaphysicalfoundations that are, fo, h".*.nį;;j;; ," be broken down as theroot of vioļence and of th. fo.g.ninį oi r.i.,glA reorientation of th' stÄ..

"? Ļ. .tĒi.. of continuity tonihilism is necessarv precisely i, o.d.. įļ avoid a ,i.il"r-.lĮ thrt'here too, would .rrräit

'" b;,.ry;i; tr,. .p..ifi. stimuli behindhermeneurics and, at the :"#;il;,'it. tr".,.formarion into ageneral and excessively weak philo'āįiry.of culture. i" Į"".ir.i.",let us try once more to delinäre ,t įĮiir...nce it makes to ethicsif the nihilistic vocation "f h;r-.;;uii., i. taken up expricitly.one thing is certain: the theorįtiįli l.Įi,i. acy of our attempt iSlinked as much to the. need to ...;;;; p.sitively to the originalanti-metaphysical inspiration (*h,.ī;;"ns here that one cannot

40 Ė,tbics

pi*ure. \x/ithout a clear appropriation of its own nihilistic v.ca_rion, hermeneuric .ethics-can only respond to this situation by

seeking to contain it, as if it were essentially a matter oīāĮi"nainga kernel of values that are under threat

"nd in.*o.rbīįāĮ.tin.a

1o. be swepr ?w^y.This, on close inspection, is the r.no., th.Stimmung, of hermeneutic humanism's attiįude towards thetechno-scientific society.- However, Heidegge. rr"r-rrrįr'i'u. rt

",modern te.chnology is the direct .onr.qr"n.e of platonic meta_physics. This does not mean' aS Some bĮli.ue, ,h"; ...p;;sibilityfor. the degeneration in our humanity caused by science andtechnology nrust be traced back to Piato. st"nal"g- r"iįii,, ,t","course of the history of metaphysics, moder,' t..hro-Į.iĮr,Įį, *irr,all that.it implies for the liie'of tįe individurl

"r'd oi ,o.l",y,nonetheļess displays a. certain logic, a guiding thread to whicļrone can appeal in order to teļl what ,goes,

"nd *hrt ,does notgo'. Instead of reacting to the dissolution of rhe principļe ofreality by attempting to recuperate a ."n." of iā.';i;y il;:i;.;-ing that are at once reassuiing a.d punitive, it is a mafter ofgrasping riihilism as a chanc, 1h eĻdish in ,r'" o.'Įii"r1 .remancipation.To reveal the worrd as a conflict of interpretations also means,however, to recognize ourseļves as heirs to a tradition of theweakening of the Strong Structures of Being

-in^

""Į.r"nĮra "rexpel:ience - heirs, and therefore relations, ä"ught..r, Ėrįrrr.*and friends of those to whose calrs we must now cor-respond.Thinking that no longer understands it..ri nį-įr'Į .Į.-"ri-iĮ"Įacceptance of an objective authoritarian foundation ,,iirr-Į.".r.pa new sense of responsibility as ready and able, lit.ra y, torespond to others whom, insofar as it is nor founded on theeternal Structure of Being, it knows to be its 'provenanc e, '-Amįcau:r.:tds, s.ed magis amicus Plato' perhaps. Is į chance that Somephilosophers (beyond suspjcion oispirituali.-1 .į."t ioJrļ,"

"uo',a principle of charity?ļ9 But will this not be .i-ply įo ,1nįou.,another eternal 'metaphysical' value to replace įĖrt of truth?More probably, we shaļl rediscover no more than a worcl withinthe same nihiļistic tradition, a word that has b..,-, .įokĮnĻurr'or-ļ_,,1llu.ty

and that'is perhaps the most decisive ",ron tho.. įhi.hpnįlosophy should reappropriate, through loyalty to its ownprovenance. This is nof an obscure

"nā nrÄinou. illįrio,,, ,

Ethics 41,

rhetoricaļ ornament of discourse. The rrext step in the explorationof the meaning of hermener"rtics for philosophy must be to come

to terms with the religious tradition, beginning with that ofĪWestern Europe.

īļ:

1ilļj$ļ.

įllįiitiiļj,,ļ,i:).iill,

iįi1i

4

ReĮigion 43

cļear that in order to become a general theory of interpretation(and of existence as interpretation) hermeneutics must cease to beidentified with a series of rules for the comprehension of a specialcategory of texts, in the face of which it is never more than a puretechnique, subordinate and instrumental, whose significancedepends entirely on the weight attributed to the text itself. Fromthe point of view of hermeneutics taken exclusively as an instru-ment of biblical exegesis, the truth of existence is primarily therevealed history of creation-sin-redemption, and only because ofthis is it irnportant to understand, via interpretation, the word ofGod entrusted to us in the scriptures. This framework seems ropreclude the birth of a nihilistic thesis like that, apparentlycharacteristic of hermeneutics in the philosophical sense, accord-ing to which there are no facts, only interpretarions.

The link between hermeneutics and the emancipation fromdogma (or, if one prefers, the step rowards a consideration of thesacred text as a text amongst others) seems in any case fairlyobvious if one thinks of the importance for the modern reading ofthe Bible of rhe rationalistic atrirude epitomized by the TractatustbeoĮogico-politicus of Spinoza. And moreover, it is clearly prefig-ured by more ancient literary hermeneurics (I am thinking here ofthe allegorical interpretation of deeds of the Homeric heroes,reflected in Greek philosophy as rhe need ro save the divine fromthe irrationality of myth2). In short, modern hermeneutics isdeveloped against a srrong rationalistic background, albeit notalways as extreme and explicit as that of Spinoza, and it thereforeSeerrts quite naturaļ to share Dilthey's view of it as an aspect ofthe gerreral tĪovement of secularization characteristic of modern-ity. This makes it hard to explain the 'rediscovery' of the Christianreligious tradition that we seemed to detect in the conclusion ofthe discourse on hermeneutic ethics and on the 'principle ofcharity'.

Dilthey's schema places hermeneutics in a context that, inGadamer's words, can only be defined as 'historiographicalenlightenment'.3 It is precisely the difficulties inherent in thisperspective - which is still deeply marked by the reference ro rhenatural sciences as an unquestioned methodological model, inspite of all their differences - that explain the essential incomplete-ness of Dilthey's theory and many of his writings on rhe matter.

ReĮigionW

As the nihilisitic imprications of its own premisses are deveroped,hermeneutic. en.orįt.rs charity ,nJ ļo rediscovers its own ļinkswith the 'western religious ,.ralrion. This is no accidenr. It issimply another, probably ,.or. .rāi.al, way of experiencing itsown concrete historicity, its belonging to modernity'_ or'Į.rr'rp.a way thar this may be radicarizei.."t.osp..riuery arong the rinesfollowed earlier by ihe ,"fl..uįnĮ" JĮn.. and ethics.Hermeneutics belongs to moderniryirl".rnu.h as the grounds ofits 'truth' (there

"..."? f":r}'."rį i,'iĮ.pretations) may only be setforth on the basis of the n'lnr."it_*įh'ln nihili.m of the principleof reality which it regards ". .h"rįįį"ristic of modernity. Butmodernity is the child of tt. w..r.." āįl;;. ;ilä; įu.

"rtas the secuļarization of thi. t.rditlįn'_ L ...-, that hermeneuticshas not only been a consequence of mocrern securarization (as aphilosophy born out of tĖ. ai..otriį,' of the metaphysics ofobjectiviry), but was,rl:.o ,, p;;;; co,rributory factor; forthe breakdown of catholic. uni,y il;;;p. *; į;;;iir'iJĮn..ay. t', ne\y way of reading įh;_Bįļ; based on the Lutherarr

:;:':ji,Ī-:f,.::']!:_:" "lone'l but ut.ā'ļnd p".hrį,-, """ ļrr yįIļc rarlonallst exe*eses set in train by Spinclza. vzh.n DilthĮy, inhts essay on 'The origilrs of HermenĖlttics', speaks (irr connectiolrwith Baur) of the 1īberation ."i Į"į'is from dogma,,1 he isreferring to whar is for him , f*d;;;;far element i, die rise ofmodern hermeneutics. After oirtr'.y, r'Į .y"rā-ir_rĄ' i;;;;*.,

44 ReligionReĮigion 45

Heidegger's subsequent ontological radicalization of the reļationbetween temporality "na ,t į''t Įtori.ity of existence allowedhermeneutics to free itseļf from ,ir. įĮ.a..

"i,r,ir'-ĮiīĮdologi.almodeļ' From the point of ui.* ,ri"a. p...iur. t'|'ĖĮla.**..,.existential analvtic, significantly "i'Įl. Ė;; ;l'""'"f'äjd"-..,.hermeneuti.., tĻ. įi.r;.r ;_;;a...r, i, in.t.rā ,r," ĮĮro.y orthe imposition of a scientific įār.ļp,i.. of truth, and thus thehistory of the progressive affirmatiorigf

the enrightenment; but it"ļ'o '.h:.

history āf ' p.o..* "į"Įrri.h our awareness of theessentially interDretative characte, oi'.u.ry consciousness of truthhas been lost. TĻe a.".r"p-Į"i";i;;;-.r.utics has followed, fora certain time and in cįrtain ..rįįįr., the af,rmation of theEnlightenment: in _Schleierma.r,.."įĮ ., at least in Gadamer,sview' conceived of int.rp..t"ti.; ; an identification with theobject to be understood, äna .oįįirr - terms of objective fidelity);and in Dilthey (who s^oug į -"ļļrĮrmine a method able toguarantee a still scientific kind of validity). i"il;;į.oļu.dcontradictions and wholesale ināā.į".i.s of theories such asthese, and above aļl the ;;"il;ä'existence of hermeneuticpositions that are more faithfur įį-l,

i rred uc i bļ e' iä " Ļ,i ". * i.,Į.l ng i äĮ j Į::::.j,ffi .:I1T.";finds the bases of the ,t,.o.y oi_t Ļn,Įi.u,i. truth in the Hegelian

li::j^:* ex-perience .r -"*i"rļ"Įļļr, both support a view ofnermeneutrcs not as part of th.e Enlightenment project, but ratheras a kind of minor trend that 'r?uiu.. into -oaį.

-įrltr..,drawing its vigour from HeidĮ;;;r";;;, before that, from pheno-menology and the meditations;iC.;;; yorck.

This is not the occasion ,o ...į".Įrį.t the whole of this process'which is described by. cud"-.rffi;];;; Ä;;r.rtä ..įį', t,n.second) of Truth an'd Methoa- lį .įįį'be recalled only because,once again as in the case of the thĀes -addressed

-in'pĮ.aingchapters, it is in Gadamer th"t *į .ļĮ'ä"a the bases of ä pāsribl.standard hermeneutic theory

", ,h. ;;;;_l". ;;;i;i# ] jĮ ,r,",is built along lines tt,r, "..'Ė;;ijbthe matica l ly "*.J" b; ];;# "ilil

f įTil,",,l", j,j,l, ji..JļGadamer ļimself (though ..inĮ..yį'bn th. basis of this (let merepeat' often imolicit) standara , .o.v, rr"r.*r.Jii..'Ļ}Įr."r-ļ::'lf .': a thinkinļ ,l,į įĮ.ri';'#ä towards religion' in thattts critique of the idea of ,.u,h ".'uJi" r. .."rļ."iįr'ilĻ...

proposition and thing undermines the rationalist, empiricist, pos-itivist and even idealist and Marxist_negations of įhe įossibiiiį ofreligious experience. It may not offer any positiv. ä.gu..r.rt torecom.mend a religious vision of life, i, t-hat it contaiis nothingresembling the preambuĮa fidei of the scholastic tradition, but itcertainly dissolves the bases of the principal

"rgu-..,Į. thrtphilosophy has offered in favour of atheism.

Aļl this seems somewhat vague and general. In the case of theproblem of religion, as in that of the relātion with modern sciencewith which we began, contemporary hermeneutics seems to beonly, or above all, a theory that frees reason from its sravery tothe scientistic ideal of objectiviry, only to pave the way to aphilosophy of culture whose limits (and meaning) cannot urti-mately be determined. Having dissolved the m.t"pĻsicai ideal ofruth as conformity, primarily thanks to HeideggĮr,'herm.n.utic,lends fresh plausibility to religion and even *į"h, įuite indepen-dently. of any Hegelian-style historicist justifiĮatior' 1rhrt wouldtreat them as necessary stages of the development of i.rson, nowovercome but with their essential content įreserved). FroÄ thisperspec.tive, one might weļl see a further sign of the įervasivenessof the hermeneutic koinė.in the widespr.rā ,'.. in Į..nt-įnitor_ophically minded journalism (primariĻ in ltaly, but not Įr.lu-sively soa) of terms and ideas belonging.to the Ļythologicaļ andreligious tradition of the \ est that hāue b..n

"*t.a.ted fä- th.i,

original context without any theoretical justification whatsoever.It is probably a matter of a cultural tendency arising from thelegacy of thinkers such as Franz Rosenzweig o, w"l,.i Be.rj"mi,who are deeply rooted in the Hebraic tradĮion, without .r'tir.lylacking (at least in the case of the former) a clear i.pur.. tosystematicity. This is somerimes legitimated by an implicitassumption of the necessiry. for philosophy to .nt.i i.,to diairguewith poetry, which might then ierve as an intermediary berweenreligious myth and rational thought in a fashion welr k.,o*n ,othe history of 'Western culture ānd perhaps (see the foliowingcha.pter) more -significant than one mighi b.li.ue, .u.r, įo, unihilistic radicalization of hermeneutics. Anothe, ,Įr.o, for thediffusion of mythologico-poetico-religious terminology in currenrphilosophical prose may be found in įhe significance äįtr.h.J to

"model oi repertory of figures, like that developed by psychoanar-

46 ReĮigion

ysis. In irs Jungian form, ir speaks explicitly of polytheisms _ andit is precisely of polytheism that those tļreorie' Ļhich defend thevalue of the hurnan sciences-often speak, moreover in , ,Į,*" u..ycļose to hermeneutics understooā as philosoplry įr

-įutrr...o

Finally, it seems likely that the hermįneuti._ .iitiqr. of theobjectivist ideal of truth leads to the recognition of the essentiallymetaphorical character of.every l"nguugĮ, thereby ;r.,iiįĻg tļr.rejection of arry proposal to reduce Ä.trphoriĮri .rį..r.io,r.(myth' poerry etc.) to 'proper' discourse characteriz.i by th.philosophic al Įogos (a positiān that one meets explicitly in ,her-meneutic' authors like paul Ricoeur and Jacques Derrida).

But all this, with varying degrees of .Įn'įl.*ity arrd .ichness of'associations', uĮtimately amounts (and hį." *. do ,'ot ,hi.kT?yi"g to the 'proper') to trearing hermeneutics as a ,negarive,philosophy, in a sense perhaps distJntly reļated to the SchelliĻgian,that is, to a thinking thāt liberat", tl-,. ,pori,iu.;-_Ļct

ofrnythological,- religious and poeric cļiscourses from the obstacļesof the ratiorraļistic ideal of truth ,s objectivity.

Yet, once again, is this liberation in its turn the (metaphysical)recognition that reality is plural, thar there

"..' _rny ways,irreducibļe to one anoth.er,.oi-saying the true, without there beingany supreme case by which rhey are legitimated and placed i. ahierarchy? Two expressions__archetypicaĪ of the prriī.įJpiri.rr

""areligious tradition of the \Xr"rt "ļį-,o

forth: tlre 'o-

Jn-'īig|,utolpollacb's (Being is said in many ways) of Aristotļe, ,.,Į th.'multifariarn multisque rnodis oii.n loqu.ns Deus patribus inprophetis' of St Paul7 _ displaced (or, to be precise, Ā"irįilĮrir.a1outside of their context, wlrich in tļre first case is provided by theAristotelian idea of substattce, and in the second'uy

"ī.y_.u.n,(the incarnation of the son of God) corrferring -.rni,-,į'o,, th.many precedi.g and succeeding events. In some way, it is"betwee.these two extlemes that theįroblem unfolds "", ā''r/Įr ,r.,.relation of hermeneutics to the religious tradition, but aįso of itsphilosophical meanirrg as a wholĮ. But is " ,Į.ou..y of theAristoteļian conception of the plurivocity of Being, ,. ,.",r-,, to b.underway in today's herme,reuįic Įzoinē, actuallyĮossible wirhoutthe keel of substa,ce - thus without a rrierarchy, without a ,firstby analogy' (a 'proper' meaning), without a supreme rnetaphysicalcase? The meaning of nihiļistic ontology that we or. ,rįi'nį h.r.

ReĮigion 47

to discern in hermeneutics is rather the outcome of a 'contamina-rion' of Aristotelian pluralism by Pauline 'historicism'. For Aris-totelian ontological pluralism, even denuded of its reference tosubstance, remains a objectivistic-metaphysical thesis (the Being issaid in many ways because, and only because, it is in many ways- irreducible to be sure, yet nonetheless articulated as one in thesole descriptive proposition that 'reflecrs' them in their pluraliry),that is, as we have argued above, ultimately untenable from ahermeneutic perspective. To avoid the contradiction, it wouldseem necessary to place the same affirmation of the plurivocity ofBeing - or, in our terms, of the interpretative character of everyexperience of truth - in the framework of a history of Being(interpreted) as a history of the weakening of its strong structures.In this way, rhe plurality of meanings of Being are given in aframework akin to that marked out by St Paul.

Is it just a matter of analogy, of a metaphorical slippage again,justified on the basis of rhe emancipation of metaphor from theslavery of the proper that hermeneutics in fact promores? Fromsuch a perspective, the meeting between hermeneutic ethics andthe 'principle of charity' would be no more than a feature of thisslippage; merely another appeal by philosophical prose to reļi-gious-poetic images made possible by the emancipation of thoughtfrom the ideal of objectivity. But here one is faced with yer anorherconfiguration of the contradictory character of hermeneutics takenin the broad and vague sense of the koinė. For in theorizing itsown constitutive historicity, can hermeneutics state that it thinksthis historicity on the basis of a modeļ that it recognizes asbelonging to its own history arrd that it rronetheļess freely adoptsas an avaiļable corrceptual tool that may be used 'without conse-quences' and without any particular responsibility? Can onespeak, in short, of angels, the divine trinity, incarnation andredernption, without posing the problem of what relation we areto assume to the 'dogmatic' sense that these terms have had in thetradition that has transmitted them to us?

The issue here is this. Contrary to the Diltheyan idea (comrnonamongst Enlightenrnent conceptiorrs of modernity) that tlre deveļ-Opnļent of hermeneutics as 'general philosophy' foļlowed itsemancipation from the dogmatism in which it was bound as atechnique in the service of bibļicaļ exegesis, it is a matter of

48 Religion

recognizing that it can rediscover its own authentic meaning asnihilistic ontology only if it recovers its substantial link, at source,with the Judaeo-Christian tradition as the constitutive įradition ofthe r fest. In other words: modern hermeneutic philosophy is bornin Eutope not only because here there is a re gion oi įh. boukthat focuses attention on the phenomenon of interpretation, butalso because this religion has at its base the idea of tĖe incarnationof God, which it conceives as kenosis, as abasement and, in ourtranslation, as weakening.

- The emphasis Įaid _ not accidentally _ on the incarnation askenosis also resolves the problem thaį arises when Aristoteļianplurivocity, which follows necessarily from the reference to a basisin substance (and which one does not erude by grounding theplurivocity, no less metaphysically, in t'he struciužl multipĪicityof Being), is replaced by the 'prophetic' plurivocity of St Pauļ.Here too, it seems, there remains a founding moment that, as inthe Hegelian idea of the Aufbebung (the diaĪectical overcoĻing1,at once conserves and suppresses the truth of the prophecies.From a Hegelian perspective like this, Jesus christ dii not provethe proplrets wĪong; he revealed their true sense while at the sametime exposing their limits, rendering them inessential and obsoļete:their truth was such only because it was realized in his ļife andreveaļed irr his teaching. Once again, God and Jesus Christ arethought here in the light of an idea of truth äs the objectivearticulation of evidence that) aS it becomes definitive, ,ļ.rd"r,interpretation superfluous. Note that in rhe history of th. churchthis schema operates, more or less covertly, in an essentiallydisciplinary manner (I am thinking primarily,'but not exclusivelį,of the Catholic church): the rerrelātio., .o*.how concluded withthe coming of Christ, the scriptural canon was fuļfiļled, and theinterpretation of the sacred texts became ultimately th. .on.".ngnly 9f the Pope and the cardinals. But alongsid. thi. dogmatic-disciplinarian view of the revelation, which ,.Į*. in the ..,"d to bediscredited by its profound indebtedness ro objectivistic metaphys-ics-,- the history of Christianity is traversed by anothe. *īollydifferent thread that one might weļļ call Joacirimist, for it wasJoachim of the Fļowers who spoke of a third age in the historiesof humanity and of salvation, namely, the .Jign of the spirit(following after that of the Father in the old T.sām..'t, and that

ReĮigion 49

of the Son), in which the 'spiritual' sense of the scriptures isincreasingly in evidence, with charity taking the place of discipline.Rather than foļlowing Joachim, however,8 it is a matter here oftaking kenosis seriously. Against this very broadly Joachimisttradition, one can set the pages where Schleiermacher dreams of areligion in which everyone can be the author of their own Bible;eor those of NovaĮis, in which a re-evaluation of the 'aesthetic'aspects of religiosity (the images, the Madonna, the rituaĮs) runsalongside the same dream of a Christianity that is no longerdogmatic or disciplinarian.lo Only the alliance berween theEnlightenment rigour of anti-religious rationalism and the disci-plinary rigour of the churches has in generaĮ confined theseperspectives to the margins of the history of modern thought, asthough they were reducible to an attempt to identify religion witha generic religious attitude, at once 'natural', aesthetic and senti-mental - against which should be set rhe 'true' essence of religionas the experience of an encounter with a God that is 'whollyother' and that as such threatens neither the integral fabric of rheEnlightenment dream of rationalism nor the disciplinary radical-ism, closed to any kind of secularization, imposed by the dogma-tisms of the churches.

To recognize the place of hermeneutics within the religioustradition of the \West (not only insofar as this tradition, foundedas it is on scriptural revelation, encourages thinking to recognizethe centrality of interpretation; nor only because, in liberatingthinking from the myth of objectivity, hermeneutics aĮļows themany religious myths of humanity to be heard; but in substantialterms of the links between nihilistic ontology and the kenosis ofGod) is also to encounter problems like these concerning thereinterpretation of the meaning of Christianiry within our ownculture. If one discovers that hermeneutics is closely related todogmatic Christianity, neither the meaning of hermeneutics northat of dogmatics will be left intact.

As regards the latter, to which we can refer here only brieflysince it is not our principal therne, the relation with hermeneuricsproduces a critical rethinking of its disciplinary character: thenihilistic 'drift' that hermeneutics reads in the 'myth' of incarna-tion and crucifixion does not cease with the conclusion of Jesus'stime on earth, but continues with the descent of the Holy Spirit

50 Religion

and with the interpretation of this reveļation by tlre community ofbeļievers. Accordirrg to the lirre that, with no prerence ro plrilol-ogical accuracy, I propose to caļl here Joachimist, the ,,.nni,rg ofscripture in the age opened by tlre descent of the Holy Sįiritbecomes- increasingly 'spiritual' a,d thereby less bound to therigour of dogmaric definitions and strict clisciplinarian observance.It is not difficult ro see how this can serve as a basis for a readingof various conflicts that, in the past and perhaps above all of late]have set the comnrunity (or communities; of Ėelievers agairrst theeccļesiastical hierarchy (above aļl in the Catholic chĮrch), onspecific points of erhics and also, broadly speaking, of dogmatics(for example, on the question of women priests, whicĖ is notsimply a moral issue): for the most part, tįr" ...i".irstical hier-archy defends the 'authentic' meaninį of the Christian messagea.gainst what it regards as secuļarizing and modish interpretationsthat are altogerher too s.ft and coirciriarory. Mor. o, ress thesame things were said many times agai,st the religious attitude ofSchļeierrrracher and Novalis.

But wilļ the same secularization not be rather a ,drift, inscribedpositively in the destiny of kenosis? As regarcls the meaning ofdogmatic christianity, it is ro rhis question ,"h", the recognition ofa 'substantiaļ' reļation with hermeÄeutics ultimately leaās. Mo.e-over, this movemeļ't is helped along by Rerrė Girarļ's theories onvioļence and the sacredl1 - even if he does rrot himseļf push themas far as rhese conclusions (and at bo*om it is not cleaiwhy not).Girard, we recaļl here in the briefest of terms, sees the ,i"tu."lreligions as founded on a victirn-based .on."ptiu.r of the sacred:when serious conflicts break out withiri the cļrnmunity, the wayto heal them is to concentrate on a single (sacrificial) Į.rp.gu",the violence that would otherwise be u.leashed against .u".y,rn..since tlre scapegoat functions effectivery to ,edr-,cJrhe viole.ce, itassumes a sacral and divine character. The meaning of the oldand New Testaments, however, is to reveal the falsĮhood of thesacred as violent and natural. Jesus, most especially, comes to beput to death not because he is tļre perfect victim,'rs has alwaysbee. understood, but because he is the bearer of u -..rrge tooradically in contrast witļi the deepest (sacral and victim_Ēased)convictions of all the 'naturaļ' religions. The extraordinary char-acter of his revelarion (the sacred is not sacrificial vi.lence, Gocl is

ReĮigion 51

Love) demonstrates' amongst other things, that he couļd not be

only human.Girard, as I have said, does not seek to extend liis thesis into a

genuine theory of secularization as the authentic destiny ofChristianity (and not as irs abandonment and negation). Yet thereare good reasons for such an extension. To begin with the historyof European modernity, it would be too naive and schematic toconceive of it as an emancipation from the Christian tradition, forin many respects - from capitalist economics (in Max Weber'sfamous thesis) to the transformation of despotism into democraticconstitutional states, to the general 'humanization' of interper-sonal relations (yes, precisely that humanitarianism that Nietzscheso despised, and that more recently Foucault has understood asno more than a sophisticated way of affirming a wide-reachingdisciplinary structure in society) - one cannot think of ir otherwisethan as an 'application', albeit not literal, perhaps distorted, ofthe Christian (and before that Judaic) legacy. Aside from thepositions that refute the very idea of modernity as secularization(such as Blumenberg's") _ and which SeeffĮ untenable to us byvirtue of the fact that they do not give sufficient consideration tothe historical roots of modernity in the ancient and medievaltradition * the objections that in general, above all by believers,are raised against this vision of the secuļarization as a destiny'proper' to Christianity concern the possibility of establishing acriterion that permits the distirrctiorr of secuĮarization fromphenomena that confine themseĮves tO applying the Christiantradirion, often in a distorted fashion, yet which are themseļvesoutside or indeed in opposition to it. Yet it is precisely here thatone should rediscover the 'principle of charity' which, perhaps notby accident, constitutes the point of convergence between nihilistichermeneutics and the religious tradition of the West. Seculariza-tion has no 'objective' ļimit: the Augustinian 'ama et fac quod vis'hoļds even for the interpretation of the scriptures. For dogmaticChristianity (that is, the substance of New Testament revelation),recognition of its relatior-r with nihilistic hermeneutics means theemergence of charity as the single most decisive factor of theevangelical message.

But none of this - the consequences of the 'reļation' seen fromthe side of dogrnatics, what becomes of the faith of a believing

52 ReĮigion

christian who also 'berieves' in the radical version of hermeneuticswe have put forward _.,r. o1, p.l*iprl .on.;;;;;. i;;; *ithouraiming at a 'panoramic' visiän ;i;ry kind (hermeneutics andscience, hermeneutics and^ethi.r, hį.Ļ.r'..utics and religion, etc.)'j!': "

to clarify th.e -significa"į" ļ7įrr. philosophy of īnterpreta-tlon' once l i berated from metaphysical, Äi*"rļĮräl,-ior' rr., inr.in*the relation betw;:1 nhir".įpr,i'J"a religion. In view of the neednot to faļl back into. metap_hy.i.rl " ;.ii*ir-, i lor'.rĮa ,rr",this reļation could. take , "ī'...-i"l."į., or a pure anā simple re-legitimation of religious ;r,h' ";he

ba.i. of Aristotle ,s to onĮėghetai pollach s ,.p".rt"d -'but Ėy what right? - from thefundamental referencį to ,ubrt"n."j, Į. or a recāgnition of mythand religion as necessary stages in a development of reasontowards its own maturiry įH.sj"r, historlcism).In place of these two'kinds"oi;"Ėi"., we are looking here todetermine another, which ,rr.". Įä* seriously, as it riere, thebelonging of hermeneutics to ,.oa"rni,y, conceived above all asthe secularization of the ."rigioĮ.Įräi,iā" .r,rr. vr".r. ilJ*.u".,when the idea of secularäi;;';;''...sidered in relation tohermeneutics, it has seemed to ,, fr. more difficuļt to arrive at aunivocal definition of it than i. .ā-Ļļnly believed: paradoxicallyin fact' hermeneutics,. whose r"ī,gįįļ"Ļent origins are demythol-ogizing and rationalistic i, i..pĪ."r-., lerds-in .o-näoo.".ythinking to rhe dissolution ār itĮ

"Į.y ;il_;i Jil,..il:lįthi. i.the meaning of the radical a"-rįįinĮjtion worked !y Ni"'rrĮ.n.,.1and to the 'rehabilitarion, "r,i'yii''".ä;;i ;. Ulį,.]jĪļii,

', ,,this paradox that _,if on9 y..: i; .1.. ,tr. whole argument ofthis chapter so far in strictry togr."'t-u;.. - draws our aftentionback to the most intimate

"i..-l:;;;;Į"r*..n hermeneutics andthe Christian rradition: nihiļism i. too*u.l, ,'ike, kenosls for oneto See this likeness as simply , .įirįla"nce' an association ofideas' 'We are led to the l,ypĮ Į.į i ],

"...neutics itself, as aphilosophy with certain on,otoģi.rl ĮļĮ-ir.ents, is the fruit ofsecularization as the renewal, n"u..rlį"'roplication, ""a-i.i.rp..-tation of the substance of tĖe cr,rl.rl"n- revelation, and pre-eminently the dogma of the i.įr.""įiĮ" of God. l, įr'iJ'Įry, irone's understandins of how

""a įįyĮermeneutics cannot be aphilosophy well dis"oos.J r;;;;.;:Ļi9, is based solely on themeaning of the Aristotelian to on tigrrrtai poĮĮach6s, it is not

ReĮigion 53

commensurately clear how or why the relation of hermeneuticswith religion does not assume a Hegelian form in which thereligious tradition is interpreted and rhereby aufgehoben, its formsuppressed and its content conserved, by the rationality of philos-ophical discourse in which its definitive truth is put into laįuage.There are at least two reasons why this Hegelian relatįn ofAufhebung does nor hold for hermeneurics. Firit, it still assumesthe ideaļ of objectivity whose eventuaļ coincidence with thesubject makes it possible to speak of a definitive attainment of thetruth. second, or simply from a different perspective, courd thereever be an Aufhebung to match the advaįce of a 'kenotic'tendency that beļongs from the first to the very content ofrevelation? Ir seems, in short, that one cannot think the Hegelianovercoming otherwise than in view of growth, eļevation (oĻe ofthe senses of aufheben), appropriation; all of which are whollycontrary to the divine kenosis spoken of by the Gospels.

In the final analysis, the philosophical approįriation of thetruth of religion still takes place in accordānce with a law ofphilosophy, of the reason thar reconciles itself to itserf. But thekenosis that occurs as the incarnation of God and most recentlyas secularization and the weakening of Being and its srrongStructures (to the point of the dissolution of the ideal of truth aįobjectivity) takes place in accordance with a 'ļaw' of religion, atleast in the sense that it is not by its own decision that thĮubjectis committed to a process of ruin, for one finds oneserf called tosuch a commirment by the 'thing itself'. The idea underpinninghermeneutics of the belonging of the interpreter to the 'tĖing, tābe interpreted, or more generally to the gĮme of interpretrĮion,mirrors' expresses, repeats and interprets this experiencĮ of tran-scendence. The difficulty of finding the right term for the relationbetween the hermeneutic experience of belonging to the thingitself and the religious experience of transcendencā confirms thaįit is not easy to quit the traditional metaphysical configurations ofthe philosophy-religion relation (the iĄristotelian'1elation ofontological pluralism; and the Hegelian reļation of Aufhebung).And yet Heidegger quite clearly tells us rhat, in this case too, withregard to the metaphysical tradition one cannot do otherwise thanestablish a reļation of Verwindung:1a of resigned acceptance, ofcontinuation, of (dis)tortion.l-s Which means, here, thai we must

54 Religion

not be surprised iį in the effort of thinking the relation from theperspective of hermeneutics, we rediscover certain aspects of thely9 melaphysical co figurations to which *. r,įĮ-referred.Effectively, thinking of itself as the heir of -"J;r ;į..-.n.u-tics also thinks of its own relation with the ,.ligio;;;äįio.,

". "historical provenance that has .o..rii,rg .r ,r,Ė rrįį.iįiĮirr..,i-caļ overcoming: in the secularization tĒ"t ...*;il; itself is,the content of Christian revelatiān-_i, p....rved as it assumesdifferent forms' on,the "th., hānā, precisely because it is notgoverned by the ideal of uļtimate self-transparency and fullreappropriation, this proce.ss is only the liberati_Jn;i';il. Įir."lltyof the senses of Being, in the..n..',h;; we have, fo..onu.*i.n..,called Aristotelian.

This is as far as. we can go: the liberation of the plurality ofmyths, and thus the re-legiĮmation of religion in the wake ofhermeneutics' are wholly aäp.na.ni Įn "

pro..., of secuļarizationset.in train by the story of Įhe kenosis of God in the incarnation.If the legitimation of this prurality *... und".pinned sorely by theStructural multivocity of Being itselį it would in truth becomeuntenable' One cannot do witĪrou, .ub.rrn.e in Aristotle _ even1he

pure and simple affirmation .i ,h; irreducible -rltiĮ.ity ofBeing would always . be the object

"f ;1il;;rr,"-ļ,rJir.,.rraffirmation. Transposing this intä th.-i."me of ou, o*., ä,rquiry:when, as often_ happens, philosophy in general and hermeneuticsin particular declare that there

"r"

--rny.ways of having anexperience of truth. (for example that myth is ,n .oiĒ.i *ryalongside the /ogos), this is stated ,' l"sįr, *rriĮį, iJiäpri.irryaffirmed.'as. the superior form. o įr* or religion that theorizesthe possibility of philosophy alongsiāe itself anā ;;,h';;r;irights

has yet to be born.Hermeneutics can be what it is _ a non_metaphysical philosophywith an essentially interpretatiu. ,riįįį. towards truth, and thusa nihilistic ontology _ only as heir āĻ. Cļ,, ;;;Ä;i,T;incarnation of God..Perhaps the only_hĮ.-.neutic philosopher tohave provided the instruments to ihink tl,i. .onälįiļ. Įt..rgl,

11d.lcallf was Luigi .pareyson, fo. *ho- philosophy was rhehermeneutics of religious experience,6 _ whiįh n" .įtĻrJlo, inno sense pejorativelv, as myth. To him, philo.ophįįĮrrJi., r,reflect on the .*p.ii..,." ol

" ,rrnįĮĮria.n.. given originarily in

ReĮigion

the form of myth, that is, as the 'symbolic' presence of the divinein the visible. The mythic character of the encounrer with thedivine does not arise from the roughness of human faculties yer tobe educated in rational thought. Iį arises from the essence of the

anscendent itself, which is revealed only in speaking to the wholeof man as a natural being, imposing itseĪf in io... Āat.rn.,ot b"appropriated, as is the case with myth, poetry and languagescharged with images and emotions. But that the transcendent isgiven in this way and nor only by virrue of the immaturity of thehuman faculties is something that we learn only from the incar-nation of God in Jesus Christ. Christ - at least ir seems ro me rhatPareyson's premiss may be developed in this way - is not just aspecial case of a 'generic' sensible revelation of God: it is He thatmakes possible, through his incarnation, every symbolic manifes-tation of the divine. Christ does nor undermine the myths andstories of false and lying gods: he makes their significarion of thedivine possible for the first time. If we accept Pareyson's use ofthe term in a Schellingian sense to mean, in contrast to allegory,the full presence of the symbolized in its sensible manifestation,lTwe shall be unable to take Christ as opening the way to arecognition of ancient myths as partially and provisionally true,yet rendered obsolete by his coming, for which the rerm allegorywould in fact be more appropriate.

The consequences of these premisses, which Pareyson wasunable or unwilling to develop fully, are dense and complex. It isnot a matter of using the Gospel paradoxically to re-evaluateancient mythologies, but rather of rethinking more concretely thesecularization of Christianity as a liberation of the plurality ofmyths, not only the ancient myths, but aļso and above all those ofreligions with which Christian ecumenicalism deaļs today: aliberation made possible by rhe incarnation of Jesus, that is, bythe kenosis of God. The question of ecumenicalism might be purlike this: what can be the relation between Christianity and otherreligions with which it has come into ever more intense contact inmodernity and that, in modernity, it can no longer treat as errors_ precisely because the experience of encountering them has ļeft itunable to think of itself as the sole objective and exhaustivemetaphysical truth (missions can no longer follow in the footstepsof colonists)? Its importance is not only for theology and tĒe

55

56 ReĮigionReĮigion

place within the history of salvation narrared in the Bible, it willnot be able to rest with a vision of secuļarization as a lirrear andprogressive departure frorn the christian tradition, where thepresent 'VeĮtanschauung is Seen to assume tlre form of aesthetics,in conrrast to an appare.rly earlier religious configuration that isto be 'overcome'. One does not escape this presentation of theproblem by satisfying oneself that arr and reĮigiorr, and ultinratelyphilosophy, are simply different ways of getting at the truth thardo not conflict with one anotherl for in this way one would simplyreturn to the purely metaphysical panoramic-objectivistic sense ofthe Aristotelian ,o on lėghetai poĮlach\s. Therefore it seenrs asthough hermeneutics cannot avoid confronting the problem ofaesthetics - not abstractly, as a particular experience to describealongside orher experiences i. its conditions of possibility, but inthe concrete and constitutive relation with religion in which arthas come to find itseļf in the course of the process of secularizationthat characterizes modernity.

57churches: it is a problem that also bears upon hermeneutics as thephilosophy of modernity, in the various senses referred to inearlier chapters. Indeed,-it -r/ *Įtt . įrrrĮ-*"'Įr.'.tior' orecumenicalism appears so centrai only b.*uĮ;;"';"" Ti',i r,"ror,another configuraiion of the p.outĮ,r,'u.ound which our discoursehas been moving from the nrĮr, ,r,ri'of not reducing herrneneuticsto a simple, metaphysical, pluralist philosoph;;:rffiä, *irr,

"tendency towards relativism ,"ā,-jr,.rtely, the frivolous. Butthat one arrives 'lli' ..,r-,"r;āįĖgi.rrion iļ',rot *ril;; signifi-cance for the cļarification of the Ļrr'irg of hermeneutics forphilosophy. For rhe question of ecumenicarism provides a cruciarlink between the p.oĖl.,r*i. Įr , Į'u.,iu.rsality of philosophicaltruth and the destiny or ti,. w"ļt"ilĮ .otution that lts version ofhermenerrtics is inclinea t. gi'. ĮĮ ,n" qr".,ion of the uniĮr."tityof the true is ultimately -.ä.rrįj, Į'Ļ" kno*,

", į;;;Į'ä ritiqueof ludgement' The views of ,h"- ir;;;;.eutic. ph,osopher are purforward not on the basis "f ā;;;;.rrinn, b;, ;il;;-rs judge-ments of taste whose uriversality ,. . f.9T. rn always contingentconsensus straining towards expansion. elthouįh tĪ. *ä"t r,r.been approp.irt"j,rr"orįįiį"rr;];';l*"rs. risks appearing tooaesthetic, too disincalnate' lf ii ļo.s not take into considerarionthe concreteness of t i.t"rl."t_į*;;;. in which judgement ismade and put to the consensus of otlrers. If one forces āneself toimagine the concrete condition. ln_įt'i.t, this garne of calļ andresponse takes place, what one finds is , f.r-"*ork wirhin whichare mixed two kinds of experien.", ,.įth"riį il;;ld;Įļ. b' , .one hand, both the fundaÄenrai i,"įĮrr""-e, for herĻeneutics, ofthe defence of the truth of ".,

įįr"ä"ii , .ļ"..i. text sucļr as Truthand Method, and the 'aestheti."- J'iorty,s theory of redescrip_tions show thar the.plurrlity oi-th J-iuttorrrhauwngen,of thosealļ-embracing theoriĮs thrt'".į ;; ;;:" indispensable to bothindividuals and groups and irreducibre ro the cremonsrrativeuniversality of scienti,į p.opositioĮ, Įr"n onry be thought by ,lay,philosophy under the c-ategār y of

^rĮ and aesthetics. oį the orherhand, however, a differeilr il ;;;;"powerful type .f globaltheory c<lntinues to Stand i" .ppo.;;į;r to that modelled on theplurality of the artistic 'op.ninģJ', ĮrĮļry, the world of religiousdoctrines and the .t-,u..Ė... ii ii;;;".ring the non-univocalmeaning of secularization hermen.rriį, ..omes aware of its own

59

5are denied entrance to churches only during the hours of mass, no

rnuseum has ever reserved a portion of its opening hours forbelievers who wished to pray before paintings of religious subjects.

Experiences such as these appear neither parricularly relevantnor, above all, problernatic from the perspective prevailing inmodern aesthetics, which has become used to resolving thequestion along the lines of the sign reading 'Tourists are notpennimed to visit while religious services are in progress'. There isa rime for the religious use of sacred buildings and there is a timefor their aesthetic enjoyment. It is pointless trying to say who isright between the faithful going to Sant'lvo della Sapienza solely(or principally) to pray, having only a 'distracted perception' forthe architectural wonder of the place (like tlrat which \WaĮter

Benjamin believed was most natural and most sr"ritable for archi-recture and which at bottom he considered most authenticl), orthe visitors interested in enjoying the masterpiece by Borrominilfor the two types of interest correspond to two dimensions ofhuman experience that we (moderns) have learnt to distinguish byrecognizing their specific rights. In church one prays, in theļIuseum one aesthetically errjoys works of art' And even when thetwo experiences take place in the same space, one can easilyresolve the conflict by a careful division of 'times' - although itstiļl remains a little unclear why it is the clrrrrches that contrivethis divisiorr of times and not rather the museums. Interpretedradically, this fact could only signify an intrusion of the problem-atic of secularization into the apparent order of the 'modern'distinction between the different types of experience: inasmuch asthe distinction between the various dimensiorrs of experienceacknowledges the rights proper to each, and yet cannot avoidaffinning a certain 'superiority' of that dimension which theorizesand establishes those rights. In this way, pushing the argtļmentjust a little further, it is clearly the dimension of the museum thatis in control, as in the final analysis even the faithful at prayer inSant'lvo alla Sapienza are assigned their place as 'rnuseum-pieces'to be respected alongside the works of art that they continue to'įļse' for an end not their 'c)wn', that is, rrot purely aesthetic andthus foreign to the dirnension to which they specifically belong.

As far as art is concerned, hermeneutics is of course character-ized precisely by the challenge it poses to the ideology of the

ArtW

As a point of departure, ler us rake an experience that is probablycommon to most of us as citizerrs of rhe aāvanced incįust.ial wo.ldwhose duties aS consumers irrclude that clf culturaļ ,.rri.-. Manywiļl undoubtedly have found thenrselves walkirrg into ā churchone Sunday mornitrg to See the frescos that decorär. ,į,. Ļ"tt., ,ostudy the architecture, and to take a closer look at the statues andthe bas-reliefs. But it is Sunday, there is a mass in progress, anclthe faithfuļ in rheir pews are d.Įutly intent on prayer or attentiveto the honrily. The įultural rourist, ,irt'uugt (as is more ancļ nroreoften the case) unchecked by rh9 sign reading ,No entry fortOurists during Services" mOVeS with a Įe.tairi embarrassment andis consci<lus of being a disturbarrce, ancl ou, oi pi"į. irrĮr. i.prayer regard tourists witļr nrixed feelings, fn, on the orre handthey should weļcome thern with u .hr.iiuįļ. ,rįįrā., Į.į..*rrof their inreresrs and the intenrio's rhat have b.;r;h;;"{;- .rheir church' Yet on the other hand they sense ii įur.i.,, ^foreigrrness in conflict with what,

", l.r., ,t th"t.mom*i,_ļ".,rr.to thenr to be the proper nreaning of the place. Ār_r.rrĮg.r,situation, symmetrically reversecl, r.,iould occur if a beļiever irr theMadonna and Saints were to enter one of the ,"r,'y-;;,;Ļ. ofart frequented for the pr-rrposes of .aesthetic, contempfrrion,

"nakrreeļ down before un āltr.pi..e. This sįcond situation is far lesscotĪmon' indeed it has probably never happ.,..a' ,iįt įuįĮ trri,too should give us prr.ā for thought. In any case, while tourists

60 Art

museum via its critique of 'aesthetic consciousness' as that attitudewhich, aS a -compļement to modern scientism, assigns to art adinrension of experience wholly Separate from that Ļherein onedeals with rruth. It was in defence of the capacity of arr to conveytruth that Gadamer, as we have noted ,"u".āl times already, p"u.āthe way for a recognition of the interpretative charactĮ. Įf nllhuman experience. But how is alļ this reflected in our understand-ing of what, for convenience, we shall call the 'sant'Ivo experi-ence'? It seems, once again, that wļrat a hermeneutics clāarlyaware of its own nihilistic vocation must do is to renew arrd tļradicalize the standard hermeneutic positions rhat, even on rheproblem of art, permeate the koinė that the phiĮosophy ofinterpretation has now become. The radicalization,

". shÄuįd beclear by now, consists in placing the classical theses of hermeneu-tics, primarily those of Gadamer, within a framework of thehistory of nihiļism as rhe history of modernity arrd thereby ofsecularization.

In its standard form, hermeneutics has ļed aesthetics to renewits interest in art as an experience of truth, in contrast to anesserrtially Kantian, and above alļ neo-Kantian, tradition that hastake, roor in modernity for which aesthetics is a theory of thespecificity-of the experience of art privileging what Gadämer, inTruth and Method, has called 'aesthetic āiffįrentiation,. Accord-ing to a programme that is stiļl in fact very much alive in recentthinking (inspiring, for example, the wittgensteinian idea oflin-guistic therapy via the careful distinction oithe specific rules ofdifferent linguistic games) progress in philosophy and in rational-ity in general is achieved by throwing the spotright on variousdimensions of experience and clarifyinģ their ipec city, which isthen taken aS a normative basis for judgemer",t

"nd choiįe. Clearly,

a philosophical attitude of this kind corresponds u..y .lor.ly Įomodernization as characterized by Max \ eber a.rd as, it seems, ithas actually unfolded in the last hundred years o.'ro. in this way,we are faced with a situation againsr which Heidegger, along wiihmost of the early twerrtieth-century avant-garde, .įĒ.li.d wĒen h.called for thinking to return to the recolleįtion of Being. In spiteof the enduring prominence of 'purist, poetics (pr.e pĮet.y, artfor art's sake etc.), even the artistic avant_garde .r't on the įhoļ.be numbered amongst the movements āf rebellion against the

61Art

trend towards specialization and the separation of distinct spheres

of existence by virtue of which art too became isolated in a

domain entirely separate from those of truth, moral values and

concrete sociaĮ existence.2All the same, the impression that the hermeneutic rediscovery

of the truth of art did not press its conclusions beyond a fairlygeneral level is not without justification. To be sure, rhe way thatv/e approach the work of art is still decisively influenced by whatGadamer tells us about aesthetic experience as true experiencethat is transformative of its subject and that cannot be adequately

described by theories which continue to rely on Kantian disinter-estedness conceived in terms increasingly remote from any onto-logical point of reference.'3 That said, however, if the 'truth' thatart contains is to be anything more than a generic form of wisdomabout life and human destiny (and this is what one reads in even

the least banal of 'prose versions' of poetry), we will have to takeup tougher and more explicit positions regarding the relationbetween truth as discovered in the work of art and truth as soughtin philosophy and debate. The clearest example of what I have inmind here is the meditation on the concrete development of the

arts found in the second, historical, part of Hegel's Aesthetics.Itis an example that is not far removed from Gadamer either, whothinks the truth of art precisely on the basis of the Hegelian notionof Erfahrung, in which he hears above all the idea of fahren, thejourney as an experience that transforms and that for this veryreason is a bearer of truth. That Gadamer nonetheless does notpress much further in the direction we are thinking of here restsonce again on the fact that - probably for the best of reasons,alert to the risk of a lapse into some form of strict historicism -he does not situate the recuperation of the truth of art withinwhat Heidegger would calļ the history of Being.a

If it is true that the source of a certain impression of incomplete-ness that one feels with regard to hermeneutic aesthetics lies, as Ibelieve, in its failure to take on board the whoĮe concretehistoricity of the experience of truth given in art, the reason forthe significance of the 'Sant'Įvo experience' for our discoursebecomes clear. To the questions that it raises one can only respondwitļr a general affirmation of the significance of the truth ofaesthetic experience, understood as another possible form of the

62 Art Art 63givenness of truth rhat can stand quietry arongside that of religiousexperience' It is not a case of wanting to see conflicts at all costs,nor, as might easily be.objected, of" having t, ;t;i;l ou..lysys.tematic. conception of truth intolerant oi

"ny įi"."riĮ-. rn"point is that the . ,Sant,Ivo .xp.ri.n.., itself provides a moreconcrete and precise exp.ession of the initially urguJ"..n."rionthat something was missing rro*įį.' ermeneutic dįfence of thetruth of art' The p':T'...... a"u.Ioį.a i" ;į; ;;;"Į"Į'Įr'ro,".,have now led us to think thrt thi.-r'o-ething tĖrt iļ -iĮi"g f..,hermeneutic aesthetics in its .r;;; form (what we caļl thestandard hermeneutic theory)-migh;į; f;il Ļ;';;o.*,nļ or, ,h.relation, probablv corrfli.tuļļ, ;*;;" .art and religion or, inother terms, on įh. a.rtinį Įr ;;; ii relation to the process ofmodern secularization.

It is a theme that- seems to have been seļdom treated in recentaesthetics, but which, has notable p."..d"nt. ""j_ā"įp ä ,rr"r-oughly respectable theoretical ,oä*-v..y p.o rįīyl i,įĮ. ,r,.three.founding fathers of German iāĮ"li.., Hegel, Hcilderlin andSchelling, conceived.the project įrrįīhas been handed down tous in the fragment known ,. th. 'oid"rr šilffi.*ä.,," ofGerman ldealism',s it was less in

" .pi.i, of polemic with Kant _and that is, with the very bases of -Įļ"rn aesthetics _ than in aspirit of continuation ,.,ā frlfil-.rį. Ėere art,

".ā ;";'.pecifi-cally poetry, is assign:9 :h: ,r.į "i į."pr.i.,g the reaļization ofthat realm of liberw which the Pari;ia;;;volutĻnr.iį.īrĮĮ"rg},,

in vain to establish (rhe rext d";.. f;; a time, namely the periodof their.friendship at the seminary in"rrruing"n, when the threefriends had already rost faith in the French revorution). Therenewaļ sought h.r" i, .o-.-hrt "įr" iĮ ,#';;;;;:ä.ri,ļļn,,,.,in the Letters on the Aesthetic Ed;"o;;;^Zīn

"'|ižuļi.t.r.,,-ing, Hcilderlin and Hegel thi"t th"tįį.."rlĻ.iriĖ*,y, inĻr,i.tthere 'awaits ' ' ' the" equaĮ ;il;;;;;" of aĮĮ powers, of theindividual as weļI as . of ,tt i"JiulJuris, lmy italics], could berealized on the basis of "

'r.rigion oi-tt senses, thar is needed notonly by the masses, but .by trr. įĖir..opher too. It would becharacterized by 'monotheisÄ .i.";;;nd of the heart, polythe-ism of the imagination and ,.,',_ įnā'Įould take the form of a'new mythology' that -r.t, ho*Įuįr,-' į at the ,erri.. oilĮļ"., i,must become a mythology'of ,roron; [.riy itrlics]. It is cļear from

rnany aspects of the short essay, not least the opening lines, thatthe authors see themselves as following on from Kant, from thatKant for whom beauty stood as a symbol of morality. It is worthremembering this spirit of fidelity to Kant in order fully toappreciate that the positions advanced in the 'System-Programme'are by no means foreign to the principal current in modernaesthetics. Only in the course of the nineteenth century, with therise of positivistic scientism and also, to a considerable extent,neo-Kantianism, did the disinterestedness that Kant attributes toaesthetic experience become a complete disengagement of art inthe face of truth. The 'System-Programme' testifies to the fact thatKantianism, even that of the Critique of Judgement, could beinterpreted in a sense that accentuates the link between art andreligion. The religion of the senses the authors envision is perhapsthe most striking ideal configuration of an art conceived explicitlyas secularized religion. 'Ų7here the term secularization tells us thatwhile, on the one hand, we are no longer dealing with religion inits original form (another passage in the essay alludes explicitly tothe necessity of 'overturning superstition, persecuting the clericwho has for a long time given credit to reason'), on the otherhand, the poetic mythology that must replace it is in its own wayheir to both the task and the subject matter that once belonged toreligion.

The positions on art, religion and new mythology expressed inthe 'System-Programme' appeared for the most part to subsequentphilosophical aesthetics as too closely bound to German idealism,and to its Romantic phase in particular, for them to be recovera-ble. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy of art came tobe dominated by the idea that 'progress' in both theoreticalaesthetics and the arts themselves be identified with the speciali-zation of the aesthetic experience, its constitution juxta propriaprincipia in opposition to every unwarranted conjunction withother activities and other spheres of interest and value (Croce, inspite of all his historicism, takes up a position of the kind with his'dialectic of the distinct'). Yet even for the aesthetics that foļlowthis trajectory, the relation of art to religion remains 'constitutive',at least in the sense that it is primarily, indeed exclusively, withreligion that art has had to avoid being confused in order to affirmits own specificity and exercise its own function in the history of

64 Art

Ų7estern culture. This is perfectly exemplified in Lukācs,s Aesthet-ics; for he roo, like croce, is histtricist and yer steeped in the spiritof neo-Kantianism. According to Lukācs, the aesthetic dirnensionof experience is constituted arid theoretica-lly .lr.ifiĮā in -Įa..niryprecisely via a process. of emancipation f1ä*

" a"į.ra"r." ,rr^r,in.ļate antiquity and.the medievaļ period, "r*"y. ĖoĮrĮ'i . ,r*(ub9Y: al-l the figurative arts, whicĖ are not, ho*"u.r' ir,oļ. .o.,socially determinant in wļicļ 'the great spiritual ,u."-į pointsoccur'6) to theology and the chuĮh. T'he

'rp.;i;;_i, " of art'emancipated' from religion over thar which carries out theecclesiastical directive to ...u. as a Bibre for the ;; ,iot onryfounded, for Lukäcs, on the ".hiįuį-.nt of įs own specific'naturaļ' function - although it is very difficult to diĮtirrgri.į,between the various motifJ 1mong which this is ,.JĮrut.aryinfluential. Lukācs generally beļiev"es that amānį ,m-āirr.*.,

:1l. in which.objectivity is mirrored in pursuit"of the Įeneralnuman arm of 'conserving, maintaining and enriching theiife' ofthe species,7 art and ..i.riį" ...or.rpli.ī a diaļectical"ou..-*irrgof the empirical individuality of :l. Įinįu". p.rron, .o fJīitrtinga more 'adequate' (because social) -"rāg.-.nt of the instrumentsthat serve to further this conserurtiį,, äf ,h. [f; ;i , . Įi..l...The inferiority of religion ries in it. t"nd"n.y ,o .o.,..ru" rriaiuia-uality as such, which-is thereby .endered iĮup"bl. oi Ā.äirrionwith the world and .o.rr.".į. itself to divine transcendencetowards which it can only stand in a relatio"

"f ."b;i.įiļĻ ,nairrationaļ faith.8 I menrion Lukäcs here only ..rrr. į. ĮĮuid..an example of how ir is not only abstract and theoreticaļ consider-ations of modern art that must face the question of secularizationaS. a central question, but also concrete-iristorical orr.. ,ä on.might ask, then, to what extent Lukäcs ends up rediscovering akind of limit to securarization in ,hui n.* church that is the;"otlmunist

p."'y.. the emancipation of art fro- i"ji;āurtir-(noelsm' trrattonaļlsm) in which_ religion remains cļosed must not,for him, issue in the poerics of the"avant-garde, marked by thesame sin of individualism and irrationalisml ut'in ,n'"Į lĖ", i.stilļ abļe to transcend the sphere of ināividuality ,.Jį;į; Į,' ,,,explicit social meanirrg. Is nįt Lukācs too thinking h;;;iri".r,of 'rational mythology, capable of taking the role plaved inmedieval art by Christian mythology, ;h;.i įļ"r..r.a""oä" , .

Art 65

content of art the 'naturalness and the clarity of the immediatephenomenon'e (without which it is probably difficult even toconceive of the possibility of an aesthetic experience)?

If indeed, as one could reasonably argue, at the end of hisemancipation of aesthetics from its deperrdence on religion Lukācsultimately rediscovers the church in the form of the party, class

etc.' the itinerary of his thinking couĮd be taken as an example ofa faiļed process of emancipation; failed precisely insofar aS, notrecognizing the arnbiguity of the very idea of secularization, he

ends by believing that the bond with religion has been leftdefinitively behind, whereas it continues to operate all the morepowerfully the ļess one wishes to recognize it.1O

The ambiguity - and aļso the fecundity, once it has been

thematized - of the bond that subsists between religion and artunderstood aS a momerrt of the process of modern secuļarizationsounds out, more clearly still than in Lukācs, in the essay bylWalter Beniamin to which we have already referred, on 'The'Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'. It is truethat the 'enemy' to be defeated in this case is once againcharactertzed with a religious name, the 'cult value' attributed tothe work and to its hic et nunc, as though the work of arr were afetish endowed with rnagic powers (hence the importance of theauthenticity of the work and thereby its market value). But the'expository vaļue' that can Serve aS an eventual liberation fromthe advent of the means of the technical reproduction of the work- above all in the arts that are by nature reproducible, such as thecinema - refers back to an aesthetic experience that is no longerspecialized, museum-bound and fetishistic, but which may be

thought in connection with the 'distracted perception' that thecitizens of the city of art reserve for their monuments, largely onthe model of the rational mythology that was the ideal of the'System-Programme'.

The difficulty experienced by Lukäcs, and probably Benjamintoo and perhaps in general by all 'modern' aesthetics that findsthe limits of the Kantian and neo-Kantian doctrine of aestheticdisinterestedness too confining, consists, from the perspective thatwe are trying to clarify here, in the fact that one cannot thinksecuĮarization in all its significance. The development of art as aspecific phenomenon (and of aesthetics as theory) seems bound to

Art66 67

the emancipation of arr from religion; b,t when one tries ro graspthe meaning of aesthetic experienĮe in its specificity, one is referredback once again to a spheie that resists definition otherwise thanin rerms of the expe.rience of religion and of myth. ti i. onlynatural that this should come to beįnderstood on inĮ .Į"ngtt, orthe critique ļevelled by hermeneutics against aesthetic consciot-ts-ness and the differentiation of art. Inįther words, th. Į.itiquethat seems in Gadamer to have the status above alļ of a theoreticalpremiss oriented towa.rds the recuperation of the truth of a.t, andconsequently of the full range of experiences tĪeated by the humansciences, must arrive at a more eĻplicit recognition'oi i* n*nlinks with the intentions, or at leasi the probĒm., found *ithin1he.

5ystem.-Programme' of Schelling and his f.i.;ä;. nui 1r., ".Lukäcs's idea of secularization is unilateral (as, i., -, -.iiglay

differenr sense, is Benjarnin,s), equally unilateral would be atheory like that obscurely adumbratįd in the ,syst.m-trĮĮrĮ--.,,which sought to derive from the icrea that art has its roots inreļigion the programme of a pure and simple return ,o.,r.h.oor..

\,hat, then, are *. to -rĖ. of thingsl To be ,or", or-,..-one hasg:i,sP"d the. full significance of the čadamerian .lriįuĮ Įf

"".-thefļc consciousness (that, as I have tried to show eļsewhere, findsa point of correspondence in the intolerance of the po.,i.. tr ,n.historicaļ avant-garde towards the aesthetic differĖnti"rion pr"-'vailing in nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophį;l, on"ļoses all interest in 'systematic' aesthetic theories that strivefrantically to define the specific characrer of art and to derive fromit criteria of evaluation, or at least the bases for , ,Į-ā.ā.rĪ.,g orexperience in the-light of a conception of philosophį u.J"r*rooa,via Kant, as a reflection on the cįndition' or por.luiriiį. eĮtrr.t-ics, at least from this

-point of view, can no longer "

, .įflį.tior'on the pure and simple t.r,,...nd.,rrar conditiois

"r por.icitiry orthe experience of art and of the beautiful, but must uiro* īiļ"rr .ļisten to the truth that is 'openecl' irr the work of art. But how willthis.listening be realized? f have already suggested that it cannor

easily be identified with a generic effort įo dirw philo.Įprriā ,ndexistential 'trltths' fr<rnr poetry' Aside from b.rng ,np.oauĮ,iu.,this 'method' would also be Ėa.d to defend , ;.;iį;jĻ,li t .experience of truth given i, arr is to be understood, in GJiu*".,,sense, as a process of transformation in which the reader of the

Art

work is irnplicated (together with the work itself, remember,whose Being is in reaĮity increased by the interpretations itreceives). In short, the truth cannot be thought by hermeneuticson the modeļ of the Statement. If anything, even that experienceof ruth which occurs on the basis of a statement (I come to knowsomething, I discover a scientific law etc.) is such only insofar as

it transforms whoever is implicated in it. Thus, to rediscover thetruth of art cannot even remotely mean to 'prosify' poetry, toderive statements from pictorial works, and so on' Less banaļ arethose positions that insist on the truth of the work as, inHeidegger's words, an 'opening of a worĮd' _ an expression thatcan however be understood in senses that hold for most contem-porary aesthetics, from Ernst Bloch to MikeĮ Dufrenne, to Dil-theyan historicism, to Lukācs himself. A line of demarcation canbe established between all these different positions, which do notaļļ refer explicitly to Heidegger' on the basis of the temporaldimension that is sometimes privileged. Ernst Bloch undoubtedlyprivileges the future,12 such that the opening of a world producedby the work is ultimately prophetic in character (but therebyļinked to a red emancipatory thread which is somehow alreadypresent in history). Dufrenne, who speaks of the work as a 'quasi-subject',ļ'3 a felicitous expression that is also helpfuĮ for under-standing the 'plausibility' of Heidegger's own position (whichotherwise might Seem too emphatically and exclusively modelļedon the 'epochal' works: the Bible, Dante, Hcjlderlin and so on)Seems to priviĮege the dimension of the present: at least in thesense that the encounter with the work is an encounter withanother vision of the world (but also, in Dufrenne, with another'aspect' of the ontologically real worļd that is irreducible to asubjective vision) that modifies our own, and not with a 'thing'introduced peacefully into the world as it stands. Positions likethose of Lukäcs, Diltheyra and Gadamer ļean towards reading thework of art primarily as a historical document. As for Heidegger,who radically advanced the thesis of the work of art as a settinginto work of truth, he seems, in spite of all appearances, to beclose to this last position - with the proviso that, for him, thecapacity proper to art and poetry of revealing the truth of varioushistorical worĮds depends orr the inaugural force that the poeticword possesses with respect to these worlds, for which reason it

68

is right toart.

read Heidegger's ".ln'.r,.. as a ,prophetic, theory of Iarcr on the'Way to Language.16 The lecture is a veritable Summa

of themes that we have tackled in this chapter, and provides somevaluable irrdications that Heidegger himseĮf did not develop in the

sense rhat interests us here, but that can legitimately be taken upand used in the present context. Above all, we come away fromthis ļecture with two points on which Heidegger's critique doesnot generally fix its attention.lT Hcjlderlin is chosen by Heideggerin order to speak of the essence of poetry because, in distinctionfrom other poets in whose work this essence unfolds, he is thelpoet of the poet'. 'Hcilderlin's poetry was borne on by the poeticvocation to write expressly of the essence of poetry.'18 This themeis very dear to Heidegger and is repeated at the beginning of theessay ''What are Poets for?', which rakes its title from a verse byHcilderlin, although it goes on to deal with Rilke, who is alsoconsidered a poet of poetry inasmuch as he sings in the time ofprivation (the verse from Hcilderļin in fact runs: "Ųfozu Dichter indurftiger Zeit?' ''What are poers for in a destitute time?'). In themain, Heidegger's critique sets aside this initial justification of thechoice of Hc;lderlin (or Rilke), almost as though it were purelyrhetorical, and rnoves directly to consider the significance of hisreading of the texts for an nderstanding of the destiny of thatepoch of destitution whicĮr is the epoch of metaphysics. But whatis most important is simply the observation that the poets towhich the philosopher can turn, today in the epoch of the end ofmetaphysics, are the poets that speak of the essence (the Wesen:the historico-ontological destiny, not the eternaļ nature) of poetry.By this I mean that whiļe Heidegger's discourse does not alwaysremain faithful to this assumption in every detail (above all inHolzwege and On the 'Way to Langwage), what he reads in thepoets is by and large and fundamentally an ensemble of ideas onpoetry, on the destiny of poets, on the artist's condition - noteternal, bur situated, 'in a time of destitution'.1e And - a secondpoint that seems particularly significant for the question ofsecularization that interests us here - the condition of the poet isdefined primarily as that of an intermediary between gods andpeople; but being an intermediary is not ar1 easy function to define:'The poet himself stands between the former - the Gods, and thelatter - the people. He is one who has been cast out.' It is for thisreason, he seems tcl believe, that Hciļderlin poetizes on poetry: not

69Art

. In what Sense, and. this is the final point that I shalļ enter intohere, can the recognition of art as-a phĮnon'"non of secularizarion,and th.us the.recognition aļso of the ambiguous li'k; ;ļr;;^;onnectit wirh, an! sepTare. it from, religion, constirure a decisivemoment in furthering the precision arid nit,itirrl. ."āįrli,y of thehermeneutic thesis oī ,rt ä. th" ,"riing into work of trrrhl or,more simply: what does the 'sant,Ivo experience, have to do withthe hermeneutic defence of the truth of art and with the possibilityof orienting oneseļf

-amongst th" .nrrrį nteanings that it can takeon and in fact has taken on?The.first step towards clarifying this connection is, as we haveseen, the Gadamerian critique-of āesthetic consciousness and alsoof its social equivalent, the Ļu..u*.,, įll ,h.;;;;;"l"oĮ'r. on.confines oneseļf to decļaring that it is not only 'aesthetic con-sciousness' that features in the contemplati"n or'tr"," įorī'Įf ..r,but that there also occurs an encounter with truth (whether inBļoch's overly romantic prophetic Sense' or as the truth of otherhistoricaļ worlds, o. oi- o,h., p...ānal interprerrrio".'-įr ,rr.world) rhat transf<lrms whoever is irnplic""a i, į,_iiĮ.Į., ,r,r,one remains within the bounds of thät pluralistic'prriĖ."pr'y .rculture which in preced_ing chapters ..į-.d to be stilļ too charac-'teristically.metaphysical

to be ionsidered g.nrln.tį_}Įiirrrriį" rrr.orrtological irrspiration that lies at the baĮis of ,Į."įl.,rr-įenturyhermeneutics. And accordingly, neither could such , tĖāy aojustice ro what has seemed toĻ',o b" tĖ. meaning of the ,Sant,Ivoexperience' taken here as emblematic of ,r,. įui.r-,', ,.Ļr",i.l-,the aesthetics currenr irr standarcļ hermeneutic theory is unable torespond.

But again: if 'ot this - if not an enquiry into the trurh of rhe

::jL::. T- :|.",i.8 of historic.l *Į.lä., "' ; p;;lįr, ,lu.rT.:r, or srmply a change of perspective - then įhrt i. to b.aone, LJnce agaln, we must return to (what are for r_rs) the'canonical texts' of hermeneutics: to b. p;..;į;; ,Į, ä rr,Į".r.ryon 'The origin of the Work of Art' to which *. .,"u"

"ļ readyreferred, but to a le-cture that Heidegģ., gru" in the Same year,'Hcjlderļin and the Essence of Poetry:1 ,Īr ,l,. įillĮ ĮĮ.įi"g i"mind rhe commenrs on the poets found in Holzweg, ,niir, ,t.

fl'įļį

7170 Art Art

their works), than the ontological significance for the history ofrhe meaning of Being that can be perceived in the destiny of art

and poetry in the epoch of the end of metaphysics. And poetry

invites us to regard this epoch as an epoch of departed gods and

of a (very problematic) anticipation of a god that is to come; inshort as an epoch in which the problem of secularization is

central.In this way, there are reaĮly only two directions marked out for

the aesthetic reflection inspired by hermeneutics to go. Nonethe-less, simply to indicate these directions is already to raise some

substantial issues on which, in conclusion and with no pretence tobeing systematic, I shalĮ try to shed some light.

In the first place, if the interpretation of Heidegger's emphasison the 'poetry of poetry' that I have proposed is valid, aestheticphilosophy will have to come to terms with the truth of art aboveall by addressing the significance for the destiny of Being of the

sociaļ constitution of arr in our epoch; after all, it is relativelyuninteresting, and often enrireĮy vacuous, to believe that Heideg-ger and hermeneutics Įļrge uS to try to extract philosophical thesesfrom poetry, Įiterature and the figurative arts. Moreover' to movein the direction of a historico-destinaĮ ontology of art, it would be

necessary to enquire further into the reasons behind Heidegger'sdecision to concentrate only on the opening of truth that is givenin the work of art, and not on the other forms of the occurrenceof the true named in the passage from 'The origin of the'Ų7ork ofArt' to which we referred earlier. On first inspection, the reasonsfor this choice are clearly those which we believe we identifiedearļier (in Chapter 2). But it is probable that they are reducible toa more radical reason on which they depend, namely, the pecu-liarly central position that art assumes with respect to other formsof culture in the epoch of metaphysics and its end, that is, inmodernity. The emphasis on art and the figure of the artist is aphenomenon in many respects peculiar to the modern age and itculminates as such in Romanticism, with its links įo the Kantiantheory of genius and to the need for a new mythology that isexpressed in texts such as the 'System-Programme'.

Now this fully fledged mythicization of the figure of the artįstcan only be understood in the framework of a culture in whichreligion is substituted for art, at least (but this too is significant)

'for lack of cosmic substance' but 'because he reaches out withpoetic thoughr into the foundation and the midst of being,. Alltļris holds of the poet in the new time that Hciļderļin foundi (arrddoes not simply mirror): it is the rime 'of the gods that have fledand of the gods still to come'.20

As I said, it is not my intention, at least not here, to draw anymore than a few preliminary indications from tlris text of Heideģ-ger's; indeed it is merely to underline how, with regard to tĒeproblems presented by the 'Sant'Ivo experience', there are pointsraised in these pages rhat are not generally given enough consider-ation. 'what I have in mind is not only the fact that Horderlin isread as a poet's poet, with all that this might mean for the ,self_

reflexivity' (the critical awareness of the .o.rditio,l of the artist, ofhis languages etc.) of the early twentieth century, but also the factthat there may be a decisive link between the historico-ontologicalessence of poerry and the 'religious' function of the poet as theintermediary between people and gods, his singing in the momenrof the absence of the ancienr gods and of the god to come. Allth-is, to adopt an artitude that we saw in the previous chapterwhen speaking of the facility with which .".tri., conremporaryphilosophers use religious 'meraphors' without justifying themand without considering their concrete historical

".rd dāct.inal

weight, is generally attributed to a certain Heideggerian 'romanti-cism': if he speaks of gods, it is because he is speaking of poets,and above all of a poet like Hcjlderlin who is dĮeply Āot.ā i,-,

"classicist's nostalgia for Greece and in a certain viįion of Christi-anity in its relation ro ancienr mythology . . . Once again, we areback with the questions raised in the 'system-programme, (whichwe can hear echoing rhroughout these pages from Heidegger),issues from which 'modern' aesthetics has now ļiberated itseifįndthat in Heidegger musr be read and inrerprered, indeed demysti-fied, just to clarify his conception of metapĒysics and its crisis . . .

In contrast to so reductive a vision of these themes (the poetryof poetry, the gods departed and that still to come) the hermeneu-tic endeavour to look at art i.dependently of aestheticist perspec-tives and in tlre light of a conception of the work as ,n įu.nį oftruth must develop a new sensitivity to two questions: the truth ofart that philosophy must seek ro understand is less what the artistsand poets say (a path that c lminates in banal ,prose versions, of

72 Art

for the 'cultured crasses'- a substitutio, which corresponds to theenrptying of the sacred that rakes place in th. *udį- age andwhich entails, am:n*S.t oth", thi,rį.i" lo.. (in Hegelian terms) ofthe 'substantiality' āf ,.t' Thi; ;;' Į*p.".r"d in the increasingfemoteness of 'high' art from the oerspĮctive of th. ."rr.., *horemain prisoner of the kitsch whicī fcally anä in-įļ,lį,,.e, fo be , ,.,ti,",1'oi':i: Ę:i';rr?iiijä;dreamed of by the Romantics. rrrį'Į.r, critical and ,rnilitant,

ofaesthetics, such as that of Adorno, ."n ".,fy

oppose kitsch with anavant-gardist affirmation of the pu.ity of ļrtrr*rĮrrl"Į.Į system-atically into aphasi^.1 v..or,,rr.i,-'""sthetics of a hįrmeneuticinspiration shows itself to be ..."ĮĻį.,ive to the sociaļ existenceof art' and even to the -or. prtīt.Įrri. ".p..ts of 'mass, art suchas rock music.z2

It is above aļl in this ļasr-named clirection that it SeelĪs onelĪust go (not just of rock, obviously, but of ,t. ,oįirt'rĮrrin.un..of art), although one must b. "*rrį'of ,r,į "Į.. ,Įääil'risk offirrding oneself, in the,rush.to t.įĮi*,r. the new .reproducible,

arts, confusing the truth of rh. *J.k *irt' , į ;;;..rij';š*., ofļts cotnmercial success.The aestheticization. that, with reason, many identify as acharacteristic feature or po.,-oāĮ.,,

^.ä.i u t'."i.;;;.;i;' ii, J -o."-over and indeed above aīl a meaning linked to the history of latemodernity as the history .r .rr" į.rt;;;, ļi il:];Į:'tn ,t'.preceding chapters we have t.ied to sįo* thä't ,r'. ,ā'ufii., or ,nihilistic inrerpretation. of -"d;;;' also provides criteria ofevaluation and orientation,

.prirna.iii l" thę area of ethics' Wiļlthis also be the case for "..tĖ"tl.rirįe can at least be sure that aconception of art inspired by the ontologico-hermeneuric nihilismthat we have tried

_

ro orįtinį- ;ill"';", cļose its eyes to thetransformations that aesthetic ""į..i.n.. has undergone and isundergoing still in late-industrirr'.į.įri.s. It is not a case ofinsistirrg that the seatch for the ,."rr, įi

"., Įre confin.J "*.irĮiu.tyto the traditional 'high' places, ,į

"il."r.i"g - ,įĮįįi,'ira."aprimarily, at the p.rra.iv. a".ih.ti. .įr.r.r., preserrtly leaving itsmark on the worļds- of commer.; ;il'information, and on thewhoļe of colļective life. Its |.f.n..;;;;., being purely and simplyan apology for wlrat already .*l'" i.,iii_ii. in tĒ.'į.,nlrpiĮĮ ,t r, i,can derive from its o*n nihili.ti. inĮpi.rtio. "Äā i."Ärįrr,

/JArt

from the recognition of the link that the phenomenon of secuļari-zation preserves between aesthetic experience and the religioustradition. In the precint of this proximity may in aļl likelihood be

found also that ensemble of phenomena of identification and ofexperiences of community that one finds today in certain forms ofyouth arr (from the 'cornmunitarian' feeling that one has at bigrock concerts to the collective identity that groups of fans of thesame kind of music form among themselves; punks and suchlike).If we said that the limit between 'what is of worth' and what isnot in these experiences is signalled by their greater or lesserfidelity to the guiding thread of nihilism (the reduction of violence,the weakening of Strong and aggressive identitįes, the acceptanceof the other, to the point of charity) would this not be a faithfulinterpretation of the meaning of the nihilistic vocation ofhermeneutics?

BLrt all these are no more than examples of themes that anaesthetics of nihiļist-hermeneutic inspiration would have to treatmore extensively, more analytically and at greater length than itis possible to do here. Above all, the developments inspired by the'Sant'Ivo experience' have only been mentioned in the briefesrterms. It is probable that, as we have already had occasion t<>

observe, secularization establishes between art and religion a

complex relation of reciprocaĮ action. The inessentialness that hasovertaken certain manifestations of contemporary art (whichoften appeals only to a pr"rblic of specialists, of artists involved inthe same work, or of deaļers who exploit its lasting cuļt value andthereby, very remotely, its connections with religion) may well beexplained by the fact that secularization began arrd has been ļivedas the abandonment of any lingering illusion over the capacityand the duty of art to serve as a 'new mythology', a rationalreĮigion, in short, as a place in which a society or determinatesocial group recognize themseļves and their shared convictions.Secularization, nonetheless, plainly consists in the fact that thereis no longer a single shared horizon, whereupon the experience ofart even as mythology and rationaļ religion is essentially a pluralexperience.2a Might the awareness of the derivational link betweenart and religion not also impinge in some way upon present-dayforms of religious experience? If art can rediscover its ownessentiality by becoming aware of its own constitution as secular-

74 Art

ized. religiorr,-religion couļd find in this connection a reason tothink of irseļf in terms that are ļess dogmatic and disclipinarian,and more 'aestheric', more in line with Įr,rį įr,i.Jį*Į, ĮrrĮ':Ļ.

"rthe spirit', which may well have been one of tr,. iā*įlrr"t"inĮpi..athe 'S.ystern-Programme,. !7e are at that point on..

"gri.rj undthere is no reason to be ashamed of it.

Appendix 1

The Truth of Hermeneutics

How does hermeneutic ontology speak about truth? This questionmust address the widely held suspicion that the philosophicalposition of hermeneutics is relativist, anti-intellectualist,irrationaļist and, at best, traditionalist. For it lacks that instanceof truth which the metaphysical tradition (we use the expressionhere in Heidegger's sense) has always thought in terms ofevidencer (the incontrovertible givenness of the thing, fostered bya suitable strategy of approach) and the correspondence of theproposition to the (evidence of the) thing and how things are. TheHeideggerian critique of the notion of truth as correspondenceseems to deprive hermeneutics of this instance, and even to makeit impossibĮe for hermeneutics to 'save the phenomena', toacknowledge the experience of truth that we alļ have, whether itbe in openly defending the validity of an assertion or in puttingforward a rational critique of the existing order (a mythicaltradition, an idolum fori, an unjust social structure), or, above all,in correcting a false opinion and so passing from appearance totruth. \X/ithout some idea of evidence, and thus of correspondence,is it still possible to secure these applications of the notion oftruth, withor"rt which thought seems to abdicate its vocation?

One can reply to such a question only by tryirrg to reconstrĮļct)or perhaps to construct, at least in good part, the positive termsof a hermeneutic conception of truth on the basis of and beyondthe 'destruction' of truth as correspondence performed by Heideg-

76 Appendix 1

ger. To begin with,_ however, let us recall (here too, perhaps,correcting some of the implicit but nonetheless influeniloi *i.āp-prehensions of Heidegger's interpreters) the essential ,rāilu., ro.Heidegger's rejection of the .,oiio., of truth

". ;";r;Ļ;,.d.n...The misapprehension we are concerned to put ,įr'i-Ī. Įnr, inBeing and Time Heidegger rooks for a more

"d.qur",. description

'|į: meaning of Being and of the idea of truth j ,, if įįl,rotionof Being aS presence handed down to us by -"rrpįyļi..,įnd thecorresponding notion of truth as the .o....po.rĮ..r.. Įf prop-osition to thing, were partial, incomplet., o. .o..,.how inadequatearrd therefore false,_descriptions of Ėeing as it is reaĮly given and9f !h. e.xperience of truth'as- it ,roĮĻ- Įrrrrrs. That this might notbe Heidegger's inrention is, from the beginning of the work, lessthan cļear' However,. it may be app.ecātecl rielļ .nuįt' ir o.,.reflecfs that such an irrtention .ouid' only be ..,.r.rĮĮĻ' evensolely in light of the features 2t pray within *utl, .. .ori.rpon-dence. But with the evolution.of Fi.ii"gger's work after Being andTime, it becomes clear that his ontolĮgy cannot in any way betaken for a kind of existentially phraseĮ

""o-xrrrįi"nįir'į*rr.r.the structure of reason and iis'a priori have falļen into thethrownness and finitude of Dasein's project) and therefore aļsothat his objection to the conception oĖ truth "' .o....į"nāįn.. i.not based on its inadequaęy aS a faithful d...;,p;;;*įr , .experience of truth. For with the acknowledgemenr o? lrr"a.qur.yit emerges that one c-annot keep to a conception of truth ascorrespondence, since this implies ā conceptio., of B.ing

^, ėrrnd,

".: "' insuperable first principle that ."āu."* "l quÄtiā"ing tosilence. Moreover, it is preciĮely the meditation on th. in.urn-

ciency of the idea of t.utĒ. r. the'correspondence or ;uāįĮ-Įn, ,othing that has set uS on the path of BĖi.,g ,. .u"nr' cirr'tįa, ,osay that 'Being is event, - as Heidegg". po rt"dly never alJ, u, ,,one is almost obliged to do *1,.n .p.rking .f t i- lna l,philosophy in that inevitable, ambiguous and distortive relationto the language of metaphysics thā-t led to tt " lnį...rpĮiĮ" .rBeing and Time and which Heiclegger in some sense acceprs,beginning, after the

'Kehre, to speakĪĮ *"trphyri."l t..-.

"g.ir,reworking thern with the resigned distortiorr oį th. Veruindungz- to say that Being is evenr.is itseJf apparently to offer a a.r..ipriu"proposition that cļaims to be 'adeqr"t.'. uį only those *t o o*

The Trutb of Hermeneutics

before the ontological implications of the principle of non-contradictiorr wilļ be satisfied by this kind of superficial remarkthat one often finds in the 'winning' arguments of metaphysics(the argument against scepticism is a typical example). They donot persuade anyone to change their view, however, and above alļthey do not allow for any further advance in thinking (which,within the horizon of the ontology of the principle of identity andnon-contradiction, appears committed simply to a coļossal workof tautoĮogY). In general, Heidegger has taught us to refuse theuntroubled identification of the structures of Being with theStructures clf our historical graĪrmar and of language as it is infa* given; thus also with the immediate identification of Beingwith that which is sayable without performative contradictions inthe context of the Įanguage that we Ērpp.n to speak.

To say that Being is event means somehow to pronounce, stillin the language of metaphysics, consciously accepted and uerwun-den, the ultimate proposition of metaphysics (whose accomplish-ment and conclusion, end, is nihiļism _ which is this sameproposition). It is, albeit experienced in other terms, the sameprocess of unfourrdation Įsfondamento) by taking the logic offoundation to its extremes as that which Nietzsche 'described'with the proposition 'God is dead.'

It would not be slipshod to reconslruct all of the secondHeidegger's thought as an elaboration of this contradiction,whereby the Kehre is entirely resolved _ dissoĮved - into Veruin-dung, the resigned resumption-distortion-acceptance of metaphys-ics and of nihilism. \ ile recaļl this ensemble of problems here onlyin order to remind ourselves that, in attempting to construct a

positive hermeneutic conception of the experience of truth beyondthe pure and simple destruction of truth as correspondence, wemust allow ourselves to be guided by the authentic demands thatmotivated Heidegger in that destruction - motives which are notreducible to the search for a description that is truer because moreadequate but which have, instead, to do with the impossibility ofstilļ thinking Being as Grund, as a first principle that can lre givenonly to the precise contemplation, panoramic but soundless, ofno s. As I hope to show, returning to the true motives behindHeidegger's critique of the notion of truth correspondence iscrucial if one is to overcome the aporias that seem, and not only

78 Appendix 1

in the view of its critics, to threaten the hermeneutic conceptionof truth. such a conceprion, which finds its point of departure inwhat Heidegger calls 'opening', will avoid the risks to whichcritics of hermeneutics have drawn our attention, sometimes witļrgood reason (the risks of irrationalism, relativism and traditio'al-ism), only insofar as it remains genuinely faithful to the demandsthat motivated Heidegger's destruction; these aimed ro ,respond'to_ the meaning of Being as event, and not to propose a moreadequate conceprion of truth.

Tlris guiding thread will aļso help us to resolve, or at least toarticulate mclre productively, a problem that post-Heideggerianhermeneutics does not Seem until now to have įosed in tĖe rightterms: the question of the relation between truth as opening andtruth as correspondence; or, which is in many .",.,r"a the samething, berween truth in phiiosophy (and in the human sciences)and truth in the positive sciences. Every reader of Truth andMethod, arrd perhaps aļso of Gadamer's later works, will knowthat it is not clear how far Gadamer intends, in that work, toclaim tlre capacity for truth aĮso for the human sciences foundedupon interpretation, or whether he wishes to propose this 'model'of rruth as valid in general for every experienāe o} truth, and thusfor the experimenral sciences too. Either way, ir seems that this'obscurity' in Gadarner may be easily explained by noting rhat, arleast in Truth and Method, the Heidegger to which h. mikes mostconsrant and wide-ranging reference is the Heidegger of Beingand Tįme.3 Now, on the basis of Being and Time' one can Saythat the simple presence to which both banal everydayness andscientific objectivism may be reduced, albeit in different rerms,arises from a partial attitude that cannot Serve aS the only modeļfor-thinking Bei.g. Inauthentic thought, which already i,n Beingand Time is the ontology that must be destroyed and which wiĮļlater become the metaphysics that forgets Being in favour ofbeings thought as simple presence, is that which (ior reaso.s thatappear at first to be ļinked to the sedimentation of Daseirr inworldly commerce; a.d which, in the Heidegger of the Kehre, willthen have to do with the very destiny of Being a,d irs epocharessence) thinks not only worldly entiries, but Being itseli, andDasein too, according to the model of sirnple preserļce and theobjectivity of objects. To avoid botli ināuthįnticity and the

The Truth of Hermeneutics

careless ar-rd forgetful distortions of metaphysics, it would seem,

therefore, that one must simply resist this unwarranted extensionof the model of the simple presence of entities and objects to Beingitself. Gadamer does not seem to go any further than this in hiscriticism of modern scientism in Truth and Method. Such scien-

tism is, for him, not the inevitable outcome of metaphysics; less

stiļl is it a fact bound up with the destirry and history ofmetaphysics, as it clearly is for Heidegger in the works after Beingand Tįme' Even Rorty's thesis in Philosophy and the Mirrrlr ofNature, in which he distinguishes between 'epistemology' and'hermeneutics' in terļĪS that nray well refer back to correspon-dence and opening,a seems to be a reformulation (albeit too'urbanized', like that of Gadamer) of a position whose basis rnay

be traced in Being and Time. Epistemology is the construction ofa body of rigorous knowledge and the soļution of problerns in the

light of paradigms that lay down the rules for the verification ofpropositions; to be sure, these rules do not necessarily imply thatwhoever foļlows them gives a truthful account of lrow things are,

but at least they do not excļude it. Moreover, they aļlow a

conception of science and a scientific practice to survive that are

for the most part in harmony with the traditional metaphysicalvision of the correspondence between proposition and thing.Hermene tics, by contrast, unfolds in the encounter with differentparadigmatic horizons. Resisting evaluation on the basis of anycorrespondence (to rules or, ultimately, to the thing), such hori-zons manifest themseļves aS 'poetic' proposals of other worlds, ofthe institution of different rules - within which another 'episte-mology' is in force.

'We shaļl pĮrrsue here neither the suggestions nor, above all, tlreproblems arising frorn Rorty's hypothesis, which are, it seems, forthe most part common to the Gadamerian perspective as well,although Gadamer himself has always said very little on the

subject of the relation between knowledge in the interpretativesciences and kr,owledge in the hard or natural sciences. Onerelevant difference between his position and that of Rorty may liein the way that Gadarner (above all in the essays in Reason in the

Age of Sciences) confers a kind of supremacy on knowledge in the

human sciences, on the moral plane at ļeasr' The natural sciences,

with their inevitable ļink with technology and their tendency

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80 Appendix 1

towards specialization (not only in knowĮedge, but also in thepursuit of ever more specific ends, possibly in conflict with thegeneral interests of society), must be 'legitimized' by , thinkingwhich relates them back to the logos, to the common conscious-neSS expressed in the naturaļ-historic language of a society and inits shared culture, whose continuity - even, it has to be said, inthe sense of a critical reconstruction - is assured precisely by thehuman sciences and by philosophy in particular' In the terminoļ-ogy of Being and Time (and then of 'Vom 'Wesen der 'Wahrheit'),

the opening (which occurs in language, and in its founding events,like the work of art spoken of in an essay in Holzwege6) is truthin its most original sense, which also serves as a point of referencefor the legitimation of truth as correspondence in the sciences.The latter, however, insofar as they specialize via the constructionof artificial languages, 'do not think', as first Heidegger and thenGadamer after him have said.7 As for Rorty, he takes up whatseems to be a more radical position than that of Gadamer inwhich there is no trace of the distinction between naturaļ andhuman sciences: each form of knowledge may be in a hermeneutic'phase' or an epistemological one, according to whether it isexperiencing a 'normal' or a 'revolutionary' period, to use Kuhn'sterms.8 However, this excludes any possible hierarchy betweenthe knowļedges, or any privileged place for human rationality ingeneral, such as Gadamer's /ogos-language (and common sense,charged with history). Yet just how radicaļ is this differencebetween Gadamer and Rorty? Both, it seems (at least insofar asGadamer too refuses to follow Heidegger in speaking of a historyof Being), relate truth as correspondence back to truth as opening,understood either (in Gadamer) as an historico-cultural horizonshared by a community that speaks the same language, and withinwhich specific rules of verification and validation are in force, oras a paradigm that, without necessarily being identified with a

linguistic community or a cultural universe (but equally withoutnecessarily excluding such an identification), nonetheless containsthe rules for the solution of its own internal problems, and, as a

whole, manifests itself as a foundation which is not in its turnfounded, not even by that historical continuity which still seemsto be operative in Gadamer; for whom, however, the problemultimately remains the same as with Rorty, since he too regards

81The Truth of Hermeneutics

the historical continuity that legitimizes the opening (and whichprevents its reduction to a relatively arbitrary and casual para-digm, to one lacking any further justification, as in Rorty - unlessit were justified in hackneyed vitalistic terms) as nonetheless alimited community in that it does not permit, at least notexplicitly, the passage to the limit that would bind it to humanityin general. There is, for Rorty, but in the end probably forGadamer as well, a certain ''Weberian' reļativism in place: one canspeak of truth in the sense of conformity with rules, given withthe opening itself, only within an historical-culturaĮ opening orparadigm. At the sarne time, the opening as such cannot be saidto be 'true' on the basis of criteria of conformity, but is (at leastfor Gadamer, explicitly) original truth since it institutes thehorizons within which alļ verification and falsification is possible.Our 'hermeneutic' experience of the opening is more or lessexplicitly 'aesthetic'; this is cļear in Rorty, who conceives theencounter with other paradigms as an encounter with a newsystem of metaphors or a poetic creation.e Not by chance doesGadamer himself begin Truth and Method by affirming thecapacity of art to convey truth, except that in Gadamer theencounter with other openings of the world constitutive of inter-pretation is aesthetic experience only to the extent that the latteris thought fundamentally in historical terms, as an integrarion, orbetter still an 'application', in the present of a call whose prov-euance lies in the past.

In fact, it is to Gadamer more than to Rorty that we shouldturn for an articulation of the hermeneutic doctrine of truth asopening; even if it is precisely in him that the problems entailedby sr"rch a conception become clear, forcing us to return toHeidegger, to his thought as it develops after Being and Time, andto what seem to us to be the fundamental demands alreadymotivating the critique of truth as correspondence in that work.

If it is not (thought as) the incontrovertible givenness of anobject held in a clear and distinct idea and adequately describedin a proposition that faithfully reflects that idea - which is(perhaps) possible only within a horizon, an opening to the thingthat institutes every possible criterion of conformity of the prop-osition (to the thing, or at least to the rules of language) - thenthe truth of the opening can, ir seems, only be thought on the

82 Appendix 1

basis of the metaplror of dweļlirrg. At bottom, tlris is the case notonly for Gadamer, but for Rorty as welļ: I can do epistemology, Ican formulate propositions that are valid according to cerrainrules, only on the condition that I dwell in a determinate linguisricuniverse or paradigm. It is 'dweļling' that is the first corrdition ofmy saying the truth. But I cannot describe it as a universal,structuraļ and stable condition, for historical experience (arrdlately that of the history of science as well) evinces the irreducibiļ-ity of heterogeneous paradigms and cultural universes, and more-over (independently of this firsr, and possibly problematic, reason)in order to describe tlre opening aS a stabļe Structure, I wouldneed a criterion of conformity, which would then be the moreoriginal opening.

It is in terms of dwelling, rherefore, that I shall speak of truthas clpening (which I calļ truth because, like rules regardingindividual propositions, it is the first condition of every particulaitruth). Dwelling in the trurh is, to be sure, very different fromshowing and simply rendering explicit what always already is. Inthis respect Gadamer is right when he observes that belonging toa tradition, or even in \Wittgensteinian terms ro a form of life,does not mean passively urrdergoing the imposition of a system ofprejudices;r0 in certain other contemporary readings of Nietzschethis wouļd be equivalent to the total (nrore or less explicit)reduction of truth to a play of forces.rr Dwelling implies, rarher,an interpretative belonging which invoļves both conserrsus and thepossibility of critical activiry: nor for norhing, one mighr add (tobe criticaļ of the optirnism of this conception), do moderndictatorships give an ever grearer place to rechniqr"res for theorganization of consensus. Dominion through consensus is moresecure and more stable. Nevertheless, there is a certain differencefrom pure constriction estabļished here which per:haps humanizesthe exercise of despotic power. It certainly recognizes, albeitparadoxically, the decisive significarrce of a consciįus adhesion(or at ļeast what is taken for such) to a traditiotr, and the alwaysactive interpretative character of staying in a tradition. As ametaphor for speakir-rg of henneneuric tr:r-rth, dwelling mighr bestbe understood as though one were dwelling in a library; whereasthe idea of truth as correspondence conceives of knowledge of rhetrue as the possession of an 'object' by way of an adequare

The Truth of Hermeneutics 83

representation, the truth of dwelling is by contrast the competenceof the librarian who does not possess entirely, in a single act oftransparent comprehension, all of the contellts of all of the booksamongst which he lives, nor even the first principles upon whichthe contents depend. One cannot compare such knowledge-possession through the command of first principles to the compe-tence of librarianship, which knows where to look because itknows how the volumes are classified and is also acquainted withthe'subject catalogue'.

It is therefore senseless and misleading to accuse hermeneuticsof being redr.rcible to a relativism or irrationalism for which eacharticulation within the opening, each epistemology, would bemerely the manifestation, the revelation (once again, according toa sirnplistic rnodel of adequation) of that which, without anychoice, always already is (such that the conflict of interpretarionswould be nothing but a genuine conflict between forces that haveno 'argument' whatsoever to offer, other rhan the violence bywhich their predomination is secured). For thrownness in ahistorical opening is always inseparabĮe from an active partici-pation in its constitution, its creative interpretation and transfor-mation. However, these suspicions about hermeneutics are alwaysrevived by its apparent inability to describe 'original' truth interms of dwelling without recourse to a further metaphor rooteddeeply in the metaplrysical tracļition; namely, that of 'community',or even, in Hegel's terms, 'beautiful ethical life' (the persistentforce of this reference is still in evidence, most recently inHaberrnas's Theory of Communicatiue Action where the appealto the LebensweĮt is thought, implicitly but quite clearly, via theideal of an organic community characterized in terms of erhicallife, and has both a normative and a foundatiorral roĮe). Ethicallife seems to be indispensable, if henneneutic dwelling is to includea moment of 'evidįnce', of the recognition of truth, withouthaving to fall back into the model of correspondence. In otherwords, trutļr as openirrg aļso seems to involve a nroment of'recognition', a 'sensation' of incontrovertibility, of full evidence,of a result reached. In accordance with the characteristicallyaesthetic quality of the hermeneutic experience of truth, butplainly also with its links with pragmatism (such ļinks as arecurrently promoted by Rorty are legitimized by aspects of prag-

84 Appendix 1

matism in the existential analytic in Being and Time), this comesto be understood as the recognition of a harmonious integration,more than as the appropriation of a certain content via anadequate representation. Classicaļ doctrines of eviderrce as charac-teristic not only of certainty but also of truth have (until pheno-menology) always striven to regard this sensation of integrationand achieved harmony as a sign and symptom to which the truthof the content of experience cannot be reduced; yer they havedone so without ever producing convincing proof that this differ-ence really existed. Nietzsche acknowledges rhis too, when heinvites us to doubt precisely that which appears to be mostevident, certain and indisputable. This pāSsage (which looks likea kind of neo-classical metaphysics: from the principle of non-contradiction to the structure of Being; from our not being able tosay differently to Being's not being able to be differentĮy) iscomprehensively liquidated in the hermeneutic conception of truthas opening. The truth of the opening is not an object whosecognitive possession may be authenticated by the sensation ofevidence, cornpleteness and integration that we might feel in agiven moment. This integration is the original truth itself, thecondition of our being in the true on which depends the possibilityof making judgements that are true inasmuch as they are verifiedin tlre light of ruļes of correspondence'

Can these complications, and the problems connected withthem, be avoided by reducing truth to merely 'secondary' truth,to trLrth as correspondence, as in the end metaphysics (with theexception of Kant) has always done? Yes, but only by 'reducingBeing to beings', in Heidegger's phrase, or in a different terminol-ogY' at the price of remaining prisoners of ideology, unabĮe toplace any distance between it and ourselves, and of identifying theparadigm or cultural universe into which we are thrown with thereal worļd tout court. 'Ų hich, it is understood' one cdnnot do: onecannot knowingly construct myth, one cannot (not because oneshoLrld not, but because it cannot be done) artificially assume(after the critique of ideology, after historicism, after Nietzsche) a'natural' attitude . . . So (and this could be argued at length) theproblem of truth as opening is posed in a way from which wecannot prescind, and, that is, as a problem of opening as truth;for, once again, not to consider the historical-cultural (or, with

The Trutb of Hcrmcneutics

Heidegger, the ontologico-destinaļ) condition into which ĪrĀ/e aretļrrown to be a problem of trirth means to take it, more or ļessconsciously) as a brute fact, whose inevitable reduction to aneffect of force (truth as 'will to power') is merely a sign of itsremaining within the sphere of a metaphysics of foundations; aprisoner once more <>f Grund as the ultimate instance beyondwhich one does not go and which silences all questioning andthereby closes the discourse. Thus we cannot help but pose theproblem of opening (why and for what reasons should we decideto take the world as being identical to our historical descriptionof it, which in the meantime, as a resuĮt of the evolution ofmetaphysics into nihilism, has appeared ro us as sucb?|, and wecannot help but (that is we must) pose the problem of opening interms of truth. If we do not, we shall end up Stiļl taking it to be abrute fact, a Grund. Yet this seems to be 'prohibited' both by theneed, which can no longer be ignored after Marx, Nietzsche andHeidegger, to distinguish the opening from its articulation (thehermeneutic from the epistemological) and also, in a relatedfashion, because that which becomes unthinkable with the experi-ence of the distinction between the opening and single truths (or,irr other words, witĮr the ontological difference) is preciselysomething like Grund - which becomes that which is mosrsuspect, precisely insofar as it is presented as the ultimate instance,silencing, authoritative (and authoritarian). It was the impossibil-ity of continuing to think Being in terms of Grund that inspiredHeidegger's critique of truth as correspondence, which could nothave been moved by the desire to find a more adequate descriptionthan that handed down by metaphysics.

Yet does this need that Heidegger raises, and which we assumehere to be ineluctable, find a response in the reduction of theevidence of the givenness of the object (and of truth as correspon-dence) to an aesthetic experience of fulfiĮmenl, of harmoniousintegration in a community, of self-recognition in Hegelian spirit?It is not simply a matter of regarding with suspicion the aesrheti-cism which this hermeneuric conception of the experience of truthseems necessarily to involve. Aestheticism - for in the end such isthe referral of the sensation of objective evidence back to arecognition of integration in the worļd in which one 'dwells' andin which one feels at home, as though in beautiful ethical life - is

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'suspect' only insofar as it does not bid farewell to the true asGrund, but seems instead to be a still more monumental andperemptory version of it. The solution to the problerns anddiscomforts created by life in a 'society' held together only bycontractual, mechanical and conventional links is not the recon-struction of an organic community; iust as the recovery of a

notion of virtue within a concrete lristoricaļ horizon of sharedvalues (through belonging to a common tradition) is not thesoļution to the subjectivisr aporias in which modern rationaļistethics has issued. It is not, perhaps, by chance that the critiqr.resnroved by modern ethical rationaļism, exeniplified by Mclntyre'sreflections on ethics, conclude in the proposal of a return to a pre-modern morality.l2 This demonstrates a risk that is also run bythe hermeneutic conception of truth. At times in Gadamer it seemsto be something more than a risk. Yet in Gadamer, as in Rortyand his conception of 'conversation', there are the resourcesrequired to prevent the 'aesthetic' model which underlies thehermeneutic conceptįon of truth from leading to aestheticistresults. It is a matter of recognizing these eļements while keepingin mind the proposal that, as we have said, guides the Heidegger-ian critique of truth as correspondence. In this way, one wouldalso be more faithful to an 'aesthetic' model no longer thought inanachronistic cļassical terms. In effect, while trutlr aS the appro-priation of a thing via an adequate representation is indeedreplaced in hermeneutics by truth thought as dweļling and as anaesthetic more than a cognitive-appropriative experience, thisaesthetic experience is in its turn thought on the basis of its actualconfiguration in the epoch of the end of metaphysics to whichhermeneutic ontology itseļf beļongs. For this experience, whatpresents itself tocĮay as complete and well-round, boasting rhe

harmonious conciliation and perfect interpenetration of contentand form that were (thought to be) proper to art in its classicaļSense' is precisely and only the faļse work of art, kitsch. Theconnection between hermeneutics and aesthetics in the epocli ofthe end of rnetaphysics could also be formulared in this way: toassert the importance of aesthetic experience for truth, as doesnineteenth-century hermeneutics, and moreover to offer it as a

significant 'model' for a conception of truth free frorn the preju-dices of scientism (that is, frorn the idea of truth as correspondence

The Truth of Hermeneutics

and the evidence of the object), is only possible when aestheticexperience is modified ro such a degree that it loses the 'classical'characteristics with which it has been associated in the metaphys-ical tradition. This transformation of the aesthetic, which we musrfoļlow Heidegger in regarding as a feature of the destiny of Beirrg,is probably matched by a radical rransformarion of cognitiveexperience in the sciences, to the point where (but it is only aliypotĮresis here) the proposal of aesthetic experience as a 'modelof truth' might no longer appear foreign or opposed to the self-knowledge concurrentļy reaching maturity in the sciences.

The critique of the idea of truth as correspondence, then, leadshermeneutics to conceive of truth on the rnodeļ of dwelling andāesthetic experience. But this experience still tends to be presentedaccording to classical images of integration, harmony and well-roundness corresponding to the manifestation of art in the epochof metaphysics (and thus also in the epoch of truth as correspon-dence); if henneneutics gives in to this rendency, it will end up byopposing truth as correspondence with nothing more than anidealization of the beautiful ethical life. Instead of escaping rheauthority of Grund (and its forgetful identification of Being andbeings), this would rnerely reassert an even more monumentalfoundationalism, one that could express itself in rhe pure andsimple identificatir>n of the opening with the brute factuality of acertain form of life not open ro discussion, and which shows itselfonly in its holding as the horizon of every possible judgernent. Arnore accurate recognition of the aesthetic experience that servesas a modeļ here and a radical fidelity to the purpose behirrd the(Heideggeriar-r) critique of tn-rth as correspondence lead instead toa different outcorne.l3 First, they lead to a distancing from theernphasis that rnetaphysical thought has always placed upon rhesubjective sensation of certainty, taken as a sign of truth. Regard-less of every effort to the contrary, it seems irnpossible, afterNietzsclre, stilļ to think of clear and distirrct ideas as the rnodel fortruth, or of the experience of the true as the incontrovertiblecertainty of consciousness before a given content. The Nietzschean'school of sr-rspicion', surely, can lead only to a denrystification soradicaļ as to demystify suspiciclrr irself. Such ar-r olļtcolĪe' however,is not equivalent, as many tend to believe, to a recuperation pureand sin-rple of the evidence proper to consciousness, this side of

87

88 Appendix 1

any suspicion. If hermeneutics wishes to be faithful to the inten-tions (and good reasons) underlying the Heideggerian critique oftruth as correspondence, it cannot simply offer another explan-ation of the experience of evidence, referring the sensation offullness, satisfaction and stillness back to a cause distinct from themanifestation of the thing in its simple presence - for example, tothe sense of integration in a community thought as Hegelianbeautiful ethical life, whiclr to aļl intents and purposes functionsas Grund, all the more pereffIptory and compelling in the absence

of the distance guaranteecį by objectification. (Should it not be

said that, with respect to the organic unity of rnythical conscious-ness, the metaphysical reduction of Being to beings is already a

first announcement of the ontological difference?) For hermeneu-tics it is a matter, rather, of fully recognizing the link between theevidence of consciousness itself and metaphysics, whose historycomprises the manner in which truth is given as a clear anddistinct idea and as incontrovertible certainty. In this case too, as

in general with all elements of the history of metaphysics, thinkingcannot deļude itself that it can perform a genrtine overcoming. Itmust instead work at a Verwįndung, a resurnption and distor-tion'1a which here wilļ mean maintairring the model of correspon-dence as a secondary moment of the experience of truth.

After Nietzsche, but at bottom simply after Kant (whosetranscendental for-rndation already places particular truths and thecorrespondence of propostions on a secondary level), we no longerthink of truth as the correspondence of a proposition to howthings are. Such truth as correspondence, and even as incontrov-ertibĮe evidence experienced in the certainty of consciousness, is

only a secondary moment within the sphere of the experience oftruth, which is revealed as such precisely with the maturation ofmetaphysics towards its completion; for example, with the adventclf modern experimental science and its far-reaching technologicalconsequences, with the transformation of the scientific projectinto a social urrdertaking of gigantic proportions and irreducibļecomplexity _ which render de facto irreļevant that mythicalmoment of discovery and conscious certainty on the modeļ ofwhich metaphysics constructed its idea of truth. Just as, goingback to aesthetic experience, to conceive the encounter with the

work of art in terms of the classically perfect identification

;t:

The Truth of Hermeneutics 89

between content and form, and the completeness and definitivequality of the work, is anachronistic, illusory and in the endpositively kitsch (nowadays only merchandise promoted in adver-tising is presented in this way), so still to think of rhe 'eureka' ofa scientist in the laboratory as the principal moment, as rhe veryrnodel for the significance of the experience of truth, is ideologicaland mystificatory. Perhaps it is from there that the experience oftruth begins, as one sets out from certainty on a voyage to discoverthe conditions which render it possible (or perhaps beĮie it), arrdwhich are never given once and for all in evidence thar is incisive,simuĮtaneous, exhaustive and comparable to the initial nroment inwhich a content is 'installed' as incontrovertible.

To tļre Erklärung, to positive-scientific 'explanaticln', employingperfectly evident relations to subsume a single case under a generallaw that is itself given as evident, hermeneutics does not oppose aVersteben that, as a lived experience of affinity and commonbelonging, reproduces at the level of vitalistic immediacy the same'silencing' authority of objective evidence. Instead, it sets inopposition wļrat Heidegger might call an Erorterung,ī.5 a unfound-ing [sfondantel6l 'collocation' that has indeed many of the traitsof aesthetic experience, but as it is given at the end of meraphysicsand as a moment of its 'overcoming' in the form of a Verwindung.The research opened up by Kanr on the conditions of possibilityof physics as a science finds here perhaps, and maybe paradoxi-cally, its corlsumlnation: physics as a science, or in general moderntechnical science as it is Set out in the worļd of Ge-StelĮ, irr totallyorganized society, is possible only on the condition of no longerthinking truth on the model of the evidence proper ro conscious-ness. The modern scientific project itself heralds the consumļĪla-tion of that model, the relegation of truth as correspondence to asecond level, ultimateĮy the ever more en-lphatic divaricationbetween the reaļ - as that which is given in the immediacy of acompelling intuition - and rhe rrue, as that which is establishedonly by virtue of its being situated within an unfounding horizon.

Alļ of which, naturally, one would have to argue in greater.detail, reconstructing the rising self-consciousness of the sciencesover the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, for example, withparticular reference to the debate on realism and conventionalismup to and including some of the most recent contributions (such

90 Appendix 1

as Feyerabend's meth<ldological anarchism, of cOurse, but aļso therenewed interest in 'reaļism' and its various significatiorrs17).

From the point of view of hermeneutics - to which I confine rnyattention in this essay _ the features of the Ėrc)rterung aS analternative to the metaphysical 'model of truth' as correspondence(and to its variations in the sense of the organic community) aredeļineated more clearly if, wlrile keeping in mind the character-istics of late-modern aesthetic experience, one reflects further onthe rnetaphor of dwelļing (which is, after all, central to many ofHeidegger's writings). To speak more specifically of dwelling in a

library is, however, merely to highlight a feature common to alldwelling, namely, the irrtrocļuctiorr of oneself not into a naturalspace conceived ultirnately as abstract and geometrical, but into alar-rdscape bearing the marks of a tradition. The library in whichlate-modern man lives, and within which ļies his experience oftruth, is, to use Borges's expression, a 'library of Babel'. Theelements for this specification of the concept of Ercirterung canalready be traced in the distinction Heidegger underscores inBeing and Time between tradition as Tradition and tradition as

Ūber-Įieferung (understood as the active irrheritance of the past aS

an open possibility, not as a rigidly detennined and determiningschemats). '1(/hat constitutes the truth of the particular truths givenin propositions that 'correspotrd' (to the thing, but above aļl tothe ruļes of verification) is the reference back to conditions ofpossibility which cannot in their turn be stated in a propositionthar corresponds, but which are instead given as an endlessnetwork of references constituted by the multiple voices of theÜber-Iieferung, of the handing down (not necessarily from thepast), that echo through the language in which those propositionsare formuļated. These voices - and this is a specifically modernexperience, thereby makirrg the ļink between the giving of truth as

Ėr rterung ar-rd the ending of metaphysics impossible to avoid _speak aS an irreducibļe multiplicity, resisting every attenlpt todraw them back to a unity (as still capable of being given in theform of a content that can be grasped in a single look and statedin a proposition that corresponds). Does not the closed anddefinitive system of the Kantian categories crumble also, andindeed precisely, by reason of discovering of the rnultiplicity ofcuĮtural universes, and thr"rs tlre irreducible plurality <>[ a priori

The Truth of Hermeneutics

conditions of different knowledges? This multiplicity, however,would remain only a factuaļ given with no philosophical signifi-cance, if philosophy for its parr did nor link it to the discovery ofthe temporality constitutive of Being, as happens in Heidegger.The irreducible multiplicity of cultural universes becomes philos-ophically relevant only when seen in the light of the mortalityconstitutive of Dasein, which confers on the Über-Įiefertļng notthe character of a confused superposition of perspectives rhatdisturb the apprehension of the thing as it is, but the dignity ofthe Ge-SchicĮ<, of the giving of Being as the handing down ofopenings which vary from time to time, as do the generations oflrumanity. This is to be kept in mind, even beyond the ļetter ofHeidegger's text, in order to understand how it is that the traditionwithin which truths as corresponding propositions are introducedand acquire their most aurhentic truth is not only Babelic as anirreducible multiplicity of voices, but also has a 'faļlen' characterthat marks it as a dissoļutive Source compared with a giving ofBeing as simple presence. This aspect of the (iberJieferung, whichbrings together the sense of transmission and the more specificsense of handing down and provenance, is recognized explicitlyhere in order to avoid yet another metaphysical equivocality thatcan be seen in aļl versions of hermeneutics as pure relativism -versions that take hermeneutics purely as a philosophy of theirreducibļe multiplicity of perspectives. Now, in Heideggerianhermeneutics, the irreducibļe multiplicity of perspectives is openedby the rnortality constitutive of Dasein, which finds itseļf alwaysalready thrown into a project, into a language, a culture, that itinherits. First and foremost, rhe awareness of the multiplicity ofperspectives, of the cultural universes and of the a priori thatmake experience of the world possible, is inheritance.The concep-tion of truth as dwelling in the Library of Babel is not a rruedescription of the experience of truth that would in the endreplace as false the metaphysical conception of truth as correspon-dence. It is, rather, the outcome of the unfoļding of metaphysicsas the reduction of Being to presence, of its culmination in techno-science, and of the consequent dissolution of the very idea ofreality in the multiplicity of interpretarions. Sitr-rating rrurhs,propositions that 'correspond', within truth as opening does notsimply mean Suspending their uļtimate cogency within a muļti-

91

939Z Appendix 1 Tbe Truth of Hermeneutics

resoļved by the substitution of a relativistic metaphysics for thereaļist metaphysics of the tradition (a move that twentieth-centurythought has manifestly often desired). The divarication of the trueand the real, which seems to be one of the most striking conse-quences of the development of modern science (the entities ofwhich it speaks bear increasingly little resemblance to the 'things'of everyday experience; partļy because many of these entities arethemselves the products of technology), would acquire the sensehere of an aspect of the history of the completion and dissolutionof metaphysics. At the end of this history Being is given as rharwhich is not, at least not in the sense of an object, of present andstable reality; like the opening that makes possible parriculartruths as propositions that correspond to the given, while yetexplicitly withdrawing from any kind of appropriable susceptibil-ity to being stated. The conquest of the true would therefore be apath leading away from the real as the immediate pressure of thegiven, the incontrovertibļe imposition of the in itself, the evidenceof which wouĮd thus appear, to use an example from psychoanal-ysis, increasingly ļike the fascination of the imaginary arrd itsgames of identification, from which, in Lacan's terminology, onecan onĮy withdraw via a passage to the level of the symbolic.2o

The unfounding horizon within which, from this perspective,particular truths (even as scientific statements that 'correspond')acquire their authentic truth, that is come to be 'founded', wouldbe neither the historically determined paradigm rhar contains therules of their formulation and yet brooks no further interrogation(like a forrn of life which legitirnizes itself by the very fact of itsexistence), nor merely the disordered multiplicity of paradigmsthat, once evoked by philosophy and the history of ideas, wouldserve to suspend the claims of particular truths to definitive srarus.To stand in the opening is not to undergo a harmonious (tra-ditionalist, conservative) integrarion into a canon that is receivedand shared on the basis of an organic community; nor is it thepure relativist-historicist detachment of the bļasē (which Mann-heim regarded in ldeoĮogy and ĮJtopia as the only possible pointof view rrot ļirnited by ideology,2l and which is takerr up not bythe Marxian proletariat, but by the European inteļlectuaĮ formedin and by the knowledge of many culturaļ universes). Rather, onegets back to truth as opening by taking the unfoundation as

plicity of perspectives that renders thern possible (and also showsthem to be mereĮy possible). This, as far as one can see, mightstand as a description of the deconstructionist version of herme-neutics proposed by Jacques Derrida. Instead, the hermeneuticErc)rterung siruates truth against the background lsfondol of theirreducible multiplicity of voices that make them possiblĖ; but itexperiences this situation as a response, in its turn, to a call thatcomes from the Über-Įieferung, ind which keeps ihis unfounda-tion Įsfondamentof from simply being confusion, or at the veryļeast arbitrariness.l9

This seems to be the o,ly way ro pose not only the probrem oftruth as opening (truths as propositions that co.respond need ahorizon thar renders rhem possible), but also the problem ofopening as truth (the supporting horizon cannor be reduced to abrute fact, insuperable and endowed with the same peremproryauthority as metaphysical Grund). The mulriplicity of voicesagainst the background of which alone single truths acquireauthentic truth is not, in its turn, an uļtimate structure given astrue in the place of Being as uniry, arche and foundatioį. It is,rather, provenānce: Being, which in metaphysics is given in theform of presence opened out to the point where it disšolves in theobjectivity of the objects of techno-science and in the subjectivityof

-the modern subject, itself always cļose to turning into an object

(of measurelĪent, manipulation etc'), is given tād"y as multi-plicity, temporality, mortality. To recognize this giving as anevent, and not aS the unveiling of an already-given, p.rā-ptoryand ineluctable structure' means to find in tĒe muitipliciiy ofvoices in which the a priori is dissolved not only an anarchicconfusion' but the caļl of a Ge-schick, of a destiny Įh"t no longerhas the characteristics of metaphysical ground just because itconsists in the dissolution of ground. The Ge-schick rerainssomething of metaphysical Grund and its capacity for legitima-tion; but only in the paradoxical, nihilistic form of a vocatįn fordissipation thar cannor, precisely for this reason, presenr itself ascompelling in a metaphysical Sense' but which noįetheless repre-sents a possible ratiorrality for thought, a possibļe 'truth of theopening'. Thus, in the sphere of this dissolutionary destiny ofBeing, the succession of scientific paradigms and science's growingawareness of its own historically situated charact., ār. not

94 Appendix 1

destiny. If it is true that the developrtents of science evince a

growing divarication of the true from the real, then this destinymeans that the divarication attests not onĮy to the insuperablehistorical relativity of the paradigms, with alļ the consequences -theoretical too - that this involves (first amongst which is thepermanent temptation to scepticism), but also to Being's vocationfor the reduction and dissoļution of Strong characteristics. Thispresents itself as a possible guiding thread for interpretations,choices, and even moral options, far beyond the pure and simpleaffirmation of the plurality of paradigms."

'Ų hat remains in this perspective of the evidence of the objectand the 'traditionaĮ' notion of truth aS correspondence? Paradox-icalĮy, but not excessively so, what is enhanced here is the criticaĮfunction of truth, its taking the form of a leap into the Įogoi, anever renewed passage 'from here to there', to use the Platonicexpression - inasmuch as even the consciousness of evidence iscontinually re-interrogated regarding its conditions, forever drawnback into the horizon of the opening that constitutes its permanentunfoundation. The sensation of success and the feeling of fullnessthat accompanies the 'discovery' - which under the conditions ofscientific research today is increasingly delegated to meāSure-ments, instrumental verifications, the establishment of continuityand'tests'between'objects'.- if they are experienced at all anymore, are relegated to the rank of secondary effects of truth, oreįse serve as points of departure that one must leave behind as tooheavily compromised by the pressurę of the 'real' (a separationthat began with the distinction between primary and secondaryqualities, and in general with the ideal of disinterestedness andscientifi c objectivity).

The growing historico-political self-awareness of science (on

account of which epistemology at its best turns increasir-rgly fromthe theory of knowledge, logic and the theory of scientificlanguage towards the sociology of the scientific community) mightweļl be numbered amongst the aspects of this transformation ofthe notion of truth; a notion that does not explicitly deny the ideaļof correspondence, but which situates it ou a second and lowerlevel with respect to truth as opening. (Despite appearances, thisdoes not amount to a reaffirmation of the supremacy of philos-ophy and of the human sciences over the natural sciences. Rorty's

The Truth of Hcrmeneutics

distinction, recalled earlier, between 'epistemology' and 'herme-neutics' is moreover probably too schematic, drawing too rigid a

distinction between the work of the internal articulation of aparadigm, the solution of puzzles, and the revolutionary transfor-mation of the paradigm itself. For scientific work, even from thestandpoint of Popperian falsificationism, is difficult to describe assimply the articuļation of rules given in verifying the correspon-dence between propositions and states of things. And on the otherhand, the institution of historical openings, of new horizons oftruth, is perhaps a less aesthetically emphatic event than Rortyseems to think.)

Neither is the other traditional metaphysical usage of truth, inwhich the universal validity of true statements is guaranteed onthe basis of the thing being given 'in person', entirely lost in thehermeneutic reformulatior-r of truth as opening. Here, in place ofthe merely postulated universality of true prāpositions -- alwayspostponed to the surreptitious identification of the 'we' of thedeterminate scientific community or the specific cuļtural urriverse('Western Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,ultimately) with humanity in general - there is an actual settinginto reļation of particular truths with the multiplicity of perspec-tives constitr"rting the network that supports them and rendersthem possible. Once again, it is worth repeating that the herme-neutic conception of truth is not an affirrnation of the 'locaļ' overthe 'global', or any such 'parochial' reduction of the experience ofthe true - for which statements would hold true only within a

delimited horizon, and could never aspire to a wider validity. Toopen up - as Heidegger has often done in his etymologicalreconstrĮļctions of the vocabulary of 'Western metaphysics - theconnections and the stratifications that echo, in-rplicit and oftenforgotten, in every particLļlar true Statement iS to awaken thememory of an indefinite network of relations (such as 'Wittgen-

stein's farnily resemblances, opposed to the abstract universalityof essence, genus and species) that constitute the basis of a possibleuniversality, namely, the persuasiveness of that statement; ideally,for everyone.

It is a case of a universality and, first, of a criticaļ attitucle thathas been uerwunden; taken up again in rheir earlier metaphysicaldetennination, pursued and distorted in corresponding to, that is,

9.5

96 APPendix 1

in hearing, a call of Being which resonates in the epoch of the

..Āpt",i"n of metaphysicį. These,. loo, are the transformations

on įco,'nt of whicĖ Ėeidegger, with a terminological twisr that

hermeneutics must always meditate afresh, believed it necessary

to refer the most original esseuce of truth to 'freedom"23

-___Ę

f:lit:;

.l.i

Appendtx 2

The Reconstructionof Rationality

Hermeneutics has often been branded an extreme expression ofthe irrationalism that has permeated the greater pr.t of conrinen-tal European culture and philosophy since the first decades of thetwentieth century. This accusation is launched botli by the sup-porters of historicist rationalism (such as the followers of Lukäcs)and by neo-positivist scientism. And it is an accusation that is atleast in part legitimare, given that the bases of hermeneutics -above aĮl, Heideggerian ontology _ are strongly polernical inrelation to these two forms of rationalism, which hermeneuticsconsiders not as opposed to one another, but rather as twomoments of the same developrnent of metaphysical reason.Recently, since both these forms of rationalism have ļost theirhegemonic position in our culture, the accusarion of irrationalismwith respect to hermeneurics has been propagated in a weakerform: it maintains that hermeneutics involves a more or lessexplicit rejection of argumenrarion, which is replaced by a kind ofcreative-poetic, or even purely narrative, way of philosophizing. Iintend to cļaim here that:

This accusation of irrationaļism is not entirely unfounded, orat least identifies a risk that is indeed present in the rnost wellknown and talked about of hermeneutic theories.Hermeneutics can and must rebut this accusation by workingto develop from its own original presuppositions a notion of

98 APPendix 2

rationality all of its own that, withour returning to the founda-

tional procedures of traditional rnetaphysics, does -not com-

pletely annul the specific characteristics of philosophical

āir.ur.r., as distinct from, say, poetry and literature' This,ratiorrality of hermerreutics" or hermeneutic rationality, aims

specifically to rebut the latest, weak, form taken by the accu-

säti.rn of irrationaļism which focuses on the absence of argrr-

ment in hermeneutic rheory; but it can also open the way to arenewal, at least in certain respects, of the more classical

historicist and scientific notions of rationality.3 The reconstruction of a hermeneutic notion of ratiorrality is

inseparable from a reconsideration of the relation between

hermeneutics and modernitY.

L Hermeneutic'Irrationalism'

The present-day accusations of irrationalism laid against herme-

neutiįs are formulated principally on the basis of a weak notion

of rationality aS the capācity to put forward publicly recognizable

arguments rather thari simple 'poetic' intuitions; this weak ration-

aļįm is often accompanied by the remains of a stronger notion of

reason, that is, by th. remnanrs of the myth of historicism and

scienrisrr. But when hermeneutics is accused of irrationalism, the

reference is generally to theories such as Rorty's distinction

between hermįneutics and epistemology.1 From this poirit of view,

a philosophical discourse thar propounds publicly recognizable

,.ģu*"nti would fall errtirely within the episternological domairr

(bāing what Kuhn calls normal sciencez), whereas what is herme-

neuti; is just the encountef - necessarily non-argun'Ientative - with

a new.yit.* of metaphor, or a new paradigm, whose comprehen-

sio,', and acceptance liave nothing to do with procedures of

demonstration, or at most only with persuasive argumentation.

As is well knowu, Rorty regards his idea of hermeneutics as beirrg

well represented by Jacques Derrida - although it is not clear to

,"hat extent Rorty .o,-,.īd"r' deconstruction to be an exemplary

form of encounter with new systems of metaphor, or rather

approaches it precisely as one of these new metaphoricallurgurg... This įroblenr _ by nO ffleans either rnarginal or trifling

The Reconstruction of Rationality

_ may well have to do with anotlrer more radicaļ question: isRorty's distinction between epistemology and hernreneutics itseļfepistemological, that is, argumentative, or is it hermeneutic and'poetic'? A problern like this probably seems merely formal, oreven captious. But in the course of this exposition, I shall rry toshow that it is on the contrary crucial for the reconstruction of ahermeneutic notion of rationality. As regards Rorty, and insofaras the problem can have any meaning for hirn' I beļieve that hisresponse to the query over his attitude towards Derricļa would bethat Derridian deconstrucrion is a. exemplary way of practisingphilosophy as ļrermeneutics, namely as an encounter with arrālistening for new metaphorical systems; and that since this way ofpractising philosophy offers no justification for irs own preferabil-ity, ultimately it is itself a 'poetic' and creativ. p.opn."ī of a newparadigrn, of a new metaphorical la'guage. However accurateRorty's descriprio' of Derrida may be (and I believe that Derridais-not at all persuaded by it), it at least stands as a good exampleof what the critics calļ the irrationalism of herrnenĀtics. Herme-neutics follows Heidegger in rejecti,g the theory of truth ascorrespondence; a statement can be proved only within an openingtlrat makes possible its verification or falsification, and the oį.ninģis somethi,g to which Dasein belongs and over which it does nothave control. The project is a rhrown project. The guidingmetaphor for the conceprion of truth here is no longer grasping,'apprehension' (com-prehension; Begriff, con-ci2tere eic.),- britdwelling. To say the truth means ro express - manifesr, articurate- belo,ging to a, opening in which one is always alreacly thrown.It is .ot by chance that Heidegger commenrs so often on the versefrorn Hcjļderlin otl the poetic dwelling of man: 'dichterisch wohnetder Mensch auf dieser Erde'. If the guiding metaphor for thenotion of truth is dwelling, the experie.ce of truth ir-revirablybecoures a poetic or aesthetic experience - precisely what happensin Rorty's distinction between hermeneutics and episternologį.

At this point, hermeneutic irratiorralism can aīso be .hnijr.te.-ized by another term - aestheticism; this seems paradoxical, if o'erecalls that the critique of aesthetic conscior-rsness was one ofGadanrer's key poi.ts of departure in Truth and Method. Trrisparadox should serve as an indication that, if hermeneutics resultsi' aestheticism, it is probably because it has betrayed its own

100 Ap'pendix 2

originary irrspiratiorr; which, at least in Gadamer's canonicaļformulatior, , should push it in precisely the opposite direction,that is, in the direction of a defence of rationality.

My airrr lrere wiļl be to discuss irr the briefest terms some ofthe forms of irrationalist - and that is, in the only sense that theword has here, non-argumentative - aestheticism that permeatemr"rch of contemporary hermeneutics. In doing so, I shall refernot only to Rorty's distinction between hermeneutics and episte-mology _ which is not, aS one can See' jĮļSt a descriptive distinc-tion - but also to Derrida's deconstructionism. I shall leave asidethe question - not irrelevant, to be sure - of whether Derridacan be considered a hermeneutic thinker: I believe that he can,at least in the sense that what he does exhibits a substantialanalogy with Heidegger's An-denken, which has a profounddeconstructive meaning as well. The difference between Derridaand the other principal hermeneutic current that has its source inHeidegger, namely, that of Gadamer, seems to me to mean onlythat Derrida has developed the Heideggerian legacy along linesthat are distinct, but perhaps no less legitimate and certainly noless important.

Derridian deconstructionism may be characterized by the factthat, over the developmental arc of this thinking, Derrida hasgranted priority in both his philosophical practice and his self-interpretation to the archetype of Mallarmė's coup de dės overthe more argĮļmentative approach that could stilļ be seetl in theintroductory chapter to Of Grammatology3 ('The End of the Bookand the Beginning of \X/riting'), where Derrida seemed to justifywhat we might call the'grammatological tum by appealing to akind of epochal change. The argument, as the reader will recall,ran more or less as follclws: today, owing to a conjunction ofcircurnstances that are not easily described in full, the word 'wrire'has taken the place previously occupied by the .term 'language'[Įinguaggioļ, which in its turn had only recently replaced otherterms such as action, movement, thought, reflection, unconsciousetc. For the rest of the page, Derrida continues the description ofthe historical transformations that in some sense explain and, wehave to believe, also justify the proposal of grammatology. Thistext' So far as I am aware, is a kind of hāpax legc5menon inDerrida's work; nowhere eļse has Derrida provided, or even Set

The Reconstruction of lĮationality

out to provide, an argued justification of his 'method' (with manyscare quotes), or of the terms and ideas to which his attentionperiodically turns. (Might it be that he too supposes, tacitly,hermeneutico-circularl|, a 'canon', a common logos, a kind ofexperience?) Not only is the beginning of the deconstructiverneditation not justified by argumentation (either in general or inparticr.rlar instances), when put into practice - and this is of coursesaid without the slightest disparagement - it increasingly resem-bļes a performance' the effect of which is not easily distinguishedfrom that of an aesthetic experience; this may perhaps explainwhy there is ultimately no Derridian 'school', with a doctrine ofits own detennining the problems on which work is required etc.(lncidently, Nietzsche and his Zarathustra wanted precisely this.)Derrida, one rnight say, cannot be followed, but only imitated;just like artists. There is no need for me to say that in Derrida'sview this is probably not regarded as a Įimitation, but rather assoļĪething positively desired' Fronr the point of view that I arndefending here, however, all this carries a very high risk (if such itbe) of aestheticism, similar ro that which I believe one finds inRorty. Irr distinction from Rorty, and in conllĪon with muchFrench philosophy of the second half of the twentieth century,this aestheticism is comprised in part by a link with literaryexperience, especially Mallarmēarr syrnbolisrn and, perhaps to a

lesser extent, the twenthieth-century avant-garde. The arbitrarycharacter of the choice for deconstruction and of its specificthemes seems to me to speak of a syrnbolist faith in the possibilityof arriving at the 'essential', or at least of saying somethingmeaningful, from any point whatsoever of the traditional text, oreven of the language within which we stand. If instead one focusesnot on the arbitrariness of tl-re deconstructive choice, but ot'I

Derrida's preference for the margins - the frame, the borders etc.

- then another metaphysics lies in ambush: that which looks forthe true or perhaps the most authentic, the most worthy of beingsaid and thought, in what lies outside the canon. But this attitudetoo, which to be sure is no more than a risk in Derrida, cannonetheless be caĮļed aestheticist, irr a broad sense that encompas-ses the rhetoric of the bohėmien artist, the damrred poet and thecreative intellectual as excluded from the harmony of the bour-geois order and so on.

101

102 Appendix 2 The Reconstruction of RationaĮity 103

and foremost, it will find itseļf re-proposing a clearly metaplrysicalconcePtioļ1 of aesthetic experience.

2 The 'Foundation' of Hermeneutics

Although Gadamer's critique of aesthetic consciousness providesa gocld way out of hermeneutic aestheticism and irrationalism, theĪecurrent suspicions of traditiorralism or, at the other extreme, ofreļativism raised by lris critics are in part justified by the fact thathe has never radically addressed, on the basis of his own prem-isses, the question of hermeneutic 'rationality'. In spite of itsrichness, Truth and Method does not put forward an explicit'foundation' of hermeneutics to which one can appeal as proof of,or at least as a persuasive argument for, its general validity. In onerespect, it is as though Gadamer professes the truth of hermeneu-tics in the name of a phenomenological analysis of aesthetic andhistorical (historiographical) experience; or, to put it another way,by showing that what really takes place in our experience of thework of art or in the encounter with texts from the past is notadequately urrderstood or described by philosophicaĮ theoriesdominated by the prejudices of scientism. If this were the case,however, we would have to regard Gadamer's theory of interpre-tation as founded on an objective, metaphysically true andadequate, description of what hermeneutical experience is reallyof * which would be an obvious contradiction, given the polemicdirected in Truth and Method against every pretence of scienceand philosophy to provide an 'objective' description of reality.

Alongside, or at a deeper level than, this phenomenologicalanalysis of hermeneutic experience, there is in Trutb and Methodalso a historical reconstruction of the process by which ther-rrethodologicaļ seļf-consciousness of the modern Geistesuissen-schaften developed in the direction of a general philosophy ofexistence conceived as interpretation, that is, in the direction of ahermeneutic ontology. \X/hat remains unclear throughout the bookis the relation berween these two leveļs of argumentatiorr - tlrephenomenologico-analytic and the historico-reconstructive. Gad-amer shows that the predominance of scientific methodologismbeginning in the seventeenth century obscured significant elements

Having travelļed thtts far, the aestheticism, and irrationalism,

of hernrĻeutics seenrs to have taken on two different meanings:

ā..,, it is defined in relation tÖ Rorty's - distinction between

į..,r.n"rrtics and epistemology, in which the comprehension of

,Į* ,y.,.*, of *et"phors _

is cont.asted to normal-scientific

activitį that argues froĻ within a given and accepted paradigrn'

ihi, .t-preheāsion can only be a kind of aesthetic 'assimilation'

of the wįrļd and to the worļd opened by the new system of

*"trpl",o. urrcįerstood as Heidegger- understood the work of art in

ih" ,Ürrp.,rrrg des Kunstwerker'-į'Th. origin of the'Work of Art').

In this Įnr.,.-th. assimilation, to call it such, excludes argumeļlta-

tion, demonstrution, logical cogency' In a second sense' the

decorrstructionist uįr.io,, of hermeneutics Seems to irr-rply

irrationalism inasmuch as' to escape metaphysics, it reiects all

urįr-.",urive iustificatiorr of its own choices and way of proceed-

īnĮ, p....n,irig itself rather ^S

a coĮ'ĮĮ) de dės' However' at least in

-i'ui.*, thisįntails the burderrsome recurrence of a metaphysical

_ ļbou.'all, symbolist _ background; at which point' the anti-

rnetaphysical vocation of hermeneutics is betrayed'

It is įorsible to demonstrate the connectiotl between these two

fornrs, įr irrflections or versions' of hernreneutic aestheticistn and

irrationaļisrn by referring back to the critique of aesthetic con-

sciousness developecĮ by Gadarne r in Truth and Method' There'

as rhe reader will-recall, aesthetic conscioustless is said to consider

the work of art as a closed and separate universe that one

approaches via a well-hone d and intuitive E'rĮebnis' Įrr this Sense)

the Gadarnerian critiqr-re seems to be applicable primarily to Rorty

and the conception oi th. hermeneutiā "t " an encounter with a

wholly ,-,.* ,įrt"* of metaphors' But the absolute newness and

^rront,,,y of ih. work of ,it thnt offers itself to the weļ1-horrecļ

taste of th. nerth.tic Erlebnis has its correļate in tlre creative

gĮ,ri". _ which in the post-Romantic. age lras come to.lose tlre

ieleologi.o-natural roots it once had in Kant, remaining pure

arbitraiiness. And in this sense, the Gadarnerian critique seems to

strike too at the arbitrary 'genius' of the deconstructive act.

These observations ai. Įig'-'ificant in nry view, for what I am

tryir-rg to show is that, if ļreimerreutics gives w1y to either of the

fnr,rš of aestheticism arrd irrationalism that I have describecĮ, it

will betray its own premisses and return to metaphysics. And first

104 Appendix 2

of the preceding rraditional philosophy, along with aļl the social,practicāļ and aesthetic implications of n<ltions such as sensuscommunis, discretion, taste, culture etc. The reasons for speakingof obscuration, of loss (even if these are not precisely the terms he

uses) seem to lie in a phenomenological analysis of experiencelthis cannot, however, be understood as a more adeqttate descrip-tion of what really happens, at least not if Gadamer wishes toavoid self-contradiction. If this is how things stand, perhaps Rortyis right: the only way to 'adopt' a hermeneutic point of view inphilosophy may well be to approach it as though it were a workof art, or a discursive universe that is to be intuitively assimilatecļ(although precisely tuhy is a problern that must ultimately beposed to aesthetic experience as weĮl), in much the same way aS

an anthropologist assimilates (or is assimilated to) the otherculture that he or she wishes to study 'from within'. But this wayof adopting or assimilating the philosophical position of herme-neutics would contradict another central point in Gadamer'stheory, namely, his critique of aesthetic consciousness and aes-

thetic Erlebnis. For the same reasons, I believe that we cannotexpect Gadamer to recommend the adoption of hermeneutics as acoup de dls, which in the deconstructionist perspective seems tobe legitimated by its arbitrariness alone. From Gadamer's point ofview, this would look like an unjustifiable revival of the late andpost-romantic vision of the artist as an uprooted, marginalizedgenius excluded from bourgeois social rationality.

The solution to this problem - how to avoid the irrationalismthat seems to be implicit in the very 'foundation' of hermeneutics

- may be possible by way of an attempted radicaļization of Truthand Method with a view to clarifying the reconstruction of thedevelopment of the methodological self-consciousness of the Geist-eswissenschaften. The direction of this radicaļizatļon is indicatedby Gadamer himself precisely inasmuch aS the phenomenoĮogicalanalysis of experience is never separated from the historicalreference to the tradition: thus, for example, when he speaks ofthe applicatio as a model of hermeneutic understanding, thediscussion is founded on Aristotle and the tradition of iuridicalhermeneutics; the same goes for the crucially important pages inwhich the analysis and the critique of aesthetic consciousness is

conducted in continuous dialogue with Kant, Kierkegaard and

The Reconstruction of Rationality

twentieth-century aestherics. All this, radically - and perhapsbeyond the explicit intenrions of Gadamer himself - means rh;rthere is no 'phenomenological' analysis of experience (the invertedcommas cannor be avoided here) that is not conditioned, that is,made possible and qualified, by the fact of belonging to atradition. Even the coup de dės is described in reference to thehistorical experience of an artist from the past. Its arbitrariness,consequently, can only reside in the refusaĮ to explain whypreciseĮy this term and this specific historical reference are chosen.But is this not a situation familiar to hermeneutics - rhat one whois dominated by prejudices cannot recognize and thematize themas such? Is there not here somerhing that Gadamer would call aforgetting lobĮio] or a remotion of 'Wirkwngsgeschichte? In thevery principĮe of Wirkungsgeschichte'a in the opposition of wįr-kungsgeschichtliches Beuusstsein to aesthetic consciousness andEnlightenment historiography - that is, in the thesis that a workof art, a text or a trace of the past can only be understood on thebasis of the history of its effects, of the interpretations by way ofwhich it has been handed down ro us - there may lie a clue forthe reconstruction of an idea of hermeneutic rationality. The factthat Gadamer does not fully clarify the relation berween rhe'phenomenological' and hisrorical aspects of his discourse maywell be due to the fact that he does not adequately apply to hisown theory the principles that the theory itself wishes to uphold.To radicalize the premisses ser down in Truth and Method,therefore, means to recognize that hermeneutics as theory canonly be coherently legitimized by demonstrating that it is in itsturn nothing more than a correct hermeneutic interpretation of amessage from the past, or in any case from 'somewhere else' towhich, in some degree, it itself always already belongs - since thisbelonging is the very condition for the possibility of receivingmessages. The critique of objectivism and postivistic scientisrnwould be neither radical nor coherent if hermeneurics did not aimto stand as a more adequate description of what experience,existence, Dasein, really is. 'There are no facts, only interpreta-tions,' wrote Nietzsche;s but this too is not a statement of fact,but'only' an interpretation.

In a somewhat paradoxical fashion, it is only the radicalawareness of itself as interpretative, and neither descriptive nor

10s

rir

106 Appendix 2

objective, that guarantees hermeneutics rhe possibility of arguingratior-rally on its own behalf. The 'reasons' offered by hermeneuticsin order to demonstrate its own theoretical varidity amount to ani.terpretative reconstruction of the history of modern philosophy,broadly similar to the reasons put forward by NietzscĖ. to ,ffirmthat 'God is dead'. This affirmation too was not, and did not wishto be, a descriptive rnetaphysical statement on the non-existenceof God; it was a narrarive interpretatio. of the history of ourculture, aimi.g to show that it is no longer n...rrn.y, .ro,'morally' possible, to believe in God - at leasi not in the God ofthe onto-theoĮogical tradition. In effect, this amounts to a ,logical,(that is common-sense) expectation that someone who has readMarx, Nietzsche, Freud and 'Ų7ittgenstein etc. can 'no longer,accept certain ideas, beliefs or assume certain pracrical or theoret-ical attitudes. As we might say, 'After Marx, aiter Nietzsche, after- how can one srill believe that -?'This 'a[ter' is nor a logicallycogent 'given tlrat', a Strong foundatiorr; bLrt neither is it įo..lįand simply an invitation to share in a certain taste - all of Ļhichtakes us back to the aestheticist lrorizorr of hermeneutic irrationaļ-ism. The very idea that, if not a proof or a logical foundation, this'after' must be a nrerely aestlretic Erļebnis clĒarly betrays its owndependence on scientism. In a certain Sense, it is truį that tlre'rrodel' of the hermeneutic notion of truth and of the experienceof truth is an aesthetic

'rodel; but - as Gadamer has shown in the

first part of Trutb and Method - not in the sense of 'aestheric,that came to prevail after Kant, and that echoes, for example,through the Kierkegaardian idea of aestheric exisrence.

3 Hermeneutics and Modernity

As I said at the begirining, the reconstruction of ratiorraļity frorrr alrernreneutic perspective caļls first arrd foremost for a radiculiza-tion of the philosophical premisses on which the developmenr ofhermeneutics rests. That it is only a matter of radicalizationsignifies lĪoreover tlrat the form of argĮĮļĪentation I have tried todescribe by recalli.g the exampl. of Nietzsche's dictum ,God isdead' is to a c.nsiderable exterlt already present in today'shermeneutic activity; not orrly in Gadamer, bui aļso in Rorty and,

t:,:;*

The Reconstruction of RationaĮity 1.07

far more clearly, in Derrida. The 'psychoanalytic,, or psychother_apeutic, deconstruction of 'western meraphysics that Rorty con-ducts in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, the .r,ltipledeconstructive activity of Derrida and, naturally, Gadamer's 'his-torical preparation' in Truth and Method are the obviousexarnples of this kind of narrative-inrerpretarive argumentation.Yet to escape the risks of relativism, aestheticism and irrationaļismaltogether, it seems to me indispensable that the ontologicalimplications of hermeneutic discourse be made explicit.

Hermeneutics, as a philosophical theory, ,proves, its ownvalidity only by appealirrg to a lristoricaĮ process of whiclr itproposes a reconstruction that shows how 'choosing, hermeneu-tics - as opposed to positivism, for example - is preferable ormore justified' This formuļatiorr mighr sound too hard or rigid tomany hermeneutic philosophers, but it seems indispensable įo meas a first step towards rhe reconstruction of hermeneutic rationaļ-ity. As I have said, I do not believe that interprerarive reconstruc-tions of the history of modern philosophy such as Gadamerprovides in his work, or one finds in Nietzsche,s writings, or thatis Rorty's in Pbilosopby and the Mirror of Nature, or which,aļbeit in a deliberately fragrrrentary arrd parrial way, is presentedby many of Derrida'S texts, are reducible to 'poetic, inrāges. It isnot by chance, i. this respect, that the problematic withiir whichhermeneutics was born and has developed up until the presentday is that of the validity of the Geisteswissenschaften, and oftheir distinction from purely poetic representations of otherculturaļ universes and of forms of life frorn the past. There is noquestion here of a vicious circle that couļd undernrine the veryclaims to validity of hermeneutics. The truth is rarher rhathermeneutics can defe,d its theorerical validity only ro the precisedegree that the interpretative reconstruction of history is a rįtionalactivity - in which, that is, one can argue, and not only intuit,flih len, Ė,infiih Įen etc.

Ontology - in the specific sense that rhe term has here, and thatI shalļ explain in a moment - has to do with all this becausewithout it hermeneutics risks appearing as llo more than a theoryof the multiplicity (irreducible and irrexplicable, to be acceptecļ asone accepts life itself, or as an 'ultimare' quasi-metaphysical fact)of conceptual schemes; where it too is only o,e .o,.r..pto^l scheme

108 Appendix 2

amongst others, to be preferred solely on the basis of a choice thatcannot be reasoned, and which may take the form either of an

aesthetic encounter with a new system of metaphors, as in Rorty,or of Derrida's avant-garde-symbo|ist coup de dės. only if the

birth and development of hermeneutics is not simply a questionof conceptual schemes (that do not, as such, touch the Being-real'out there'), but belorrgs to what Heidegger calļs the destiny ofBeing, can the theoretical choice in favour of hermeneutics, andalso specific interpretative choices (like the Derridian deconstruc-tions), be anything more than aesthetic Ė,rlebnisse or acrobaticcoup de dės.

Schematically speaking, what comes to be calļed the irrational-ism of hermeneutics is the aestheticism that one can discover inauthors such as Rorty and Derrida, and which constitutes a riskin Gadamer too, at least insofar as he does not clarify the way inwhich hermeneutics 'proves' its own validity as a theory. Aclarification of this kind calls for hermeneutics to cease thinkingof itself, more or less consciously and explicitly, as a theoryfounded on a phenomenological analysis that is 'adequate' toexperience. Hermeneutics is itself 'only interpretation'. Its ownclaims to validity are not founded on a presumption of access tothe things themselvesl to be consistent with the Heideggeriancritique of the idea of truth as correspondence from which itprofesses to draw its ir,spiration, it can only conceive of itself as

the response to a message, or as the interpretative a.rticulation ofits own belonging to a tra-dition [tra-dizione|, Uber-Įieferung.This tradition is not simply a succession of 'conceptual schemes' *

for thought irr this way,'it would stilļ leave an ontos on outsideitself, a thing in itself thought in metaphysical terms' If it wishesto escape this relapse into metaphysics, hermeneutics must makeexplicit its own ontological backgound, that is, the Heideggerianidea of a destiny of Being that is articulated as the concatenationof openings, of the SyStemS of metaphors that make possibļe andqualify our experience of the world. Hermeneutics conceives ofitseļf as a firoment within this destiny; and it argues for its ownvalidity by proposing a reconstruction of the destiny-traditionfrom which it arises. This reconstruction is itself obviously an

interpretation; but not 'only' an interpretation in the sense inwhich such an expression still implies the idea that beyond it there

Tbe Reconstruction of Rationality

may be an ontos on that remains external to our conceptualschemes. The destiny of Being, naturalĮy, is given only in aninterpretation, and does not have objective-deterministic cogency:it is Ge-Schick in the sense of a Scbickung) a sending. 'We cantranslate thus: the rationality we have reached consists in the factthat, essentially involved in a process (into which we are always-already 'thrown') we always-already know, at least to a certainextent, where we are going and how we must go there. But toorient ourselves, we need to reconstruct and interpret the processin as compļete and persuasive a manner as possible. It would be

an error to believe that we can jump outside the process, somehowgrasping the arche, the principle, the essence or the ultimatestructure. Rationality is simply the guiding thread that can becomprehended by listening attentively to the messages of theSchickung. Both the theoretical choice for hermeneutics and thespecific choices of our interpretative activity can be justified byargumentation on this basis.

The ontological radicalization of hermeneutics put forward herehas significant consequences, or at the very least rnakes a differ-ence. One of these consequences concerns the relation of herme-neutics to modernity - or, in other terms, to modern thought as athought of the advent of nihilism. If hermeneutics has no sourceof validity beyond its belonging to an ÜberJieferung which isspecifically that of modern thought, its relation with this traditionwill have to be thought in different and far more positive termsthan those which characterize, for example, Gadamer's positionin Truth and Method. The relation of hermeneutics to modernscientism or to the world of technical rationality cannot be simply,or even primarily, that of a polemical rejection - as if it were a

matter, yet again, of opposing a truer knowledge and a vision ofmore authentic existence to the theoretical and practical vagariesof modernity. Rather, it is a matter of recognizing and demonstrat-ing that hermeneutics is a 'consequence' of modernity and a

confutation of it.For hermeneutics this entails rhe task of developing an import-

ant and controversial aspect of its inheritance from Heidegger;and that is, his conception of the Ge-StelĮ' of the technical-scientific world, understood both as the accomplishment of meta-physics and as the first announcement of its overcoming (as in the

109

110 Appendix 2

famous passage from Identity and Difference on the 'first oppress-ing flash of Ereignis'). Hermeneutics is not a theory that opposesan authenticity of existence founded on the privilege of the humansciences to the alienation of the rationalized society; it is rather a

theory that tries to grasp the meaning of the transformation (ofthe idea) of Being that has been produced as a consequence of thetechno-scientific rationalization of our world. It is not hard to see

that this way of developing the hermeneutic discourse is differentto that which, with aesthetical implications, characterizes writerssuch as Rorty and Derrida. It may perhaps be closer to Foucaultand to what he once caļled the 'ontology of actuality'.

As a theory of modernity - in the objective and subjective senses

of the genitive - hermeneutics could also recover, at least in part,the two principal senses that rationality has had in the moderntradition: that is, the senses linked to the positive sciences and tohistoricisrn respectively. As for the sciences, they could come tobe no longer considered just as ways to push the metaphysicaloblivion of Being to its extreme, but also as conditions, along withtechnology, for a transformation in the meaning of Being in thedirection of its post-metaphysical givenness. The world of scien-tific 'objectification' - as Heidegger demonstrates in the concĮud-ing pages of the essay 'The Age of the'Ų orld Picture'- is also thatin which, by a kind of inflative process (the images proliferate andso undermine any pretensions to objectivity), the metaphysicalqualification, or'Wesen, of Being tends to dissolve. As for histori-cist rationality, it is all too clear that the way of arguing for thevalidity of hermeneutics has a great deal to do with historicism.In contrast to the metaphysical historicism of the nineteenthcentury (Hegel, Comte, Marx), hermeneutics does not take themeaning of history to be a 'fact' that must be recognized,cultivated and accepted (again as a kind of metaphysical finality);the guiding thread of history appears, is given, only in an act ofinterpretation that is confirmed in dialogue with other possibleinterpretations and that, in the final analysis, leads to a modifica-tion of the actuaļ situation in a way that makes the interpretation'true'. For this reason, I repeat, the interpretative reconstructionof history that hermeneutics proposes is not simply a new poeticvocabulary that offers itself to an aesthetic ErĮebnis: and anyway,how could a philosophical system that claimed to be universally

The Reconstruction of RationaĮity 1"11

true, such as the Hegelian system, be approached as though itwere a poetic creation? Wouļd this rrot be a way of misunderstand-ing precisely that which it believes to be most essential to itself?'Ihe novelty and the importance of hermeneutics ultimately con-sists in the affinnation that the rational (argumentative) interpre-tation of history is not 'scientific' in the positivistic sense and yetneither is it purely 'aestheric'. The task of contemporary herme-neutics Seems to be that of articuļating in an ever more completeand explicit form this original inspiration; which ļĪeans further-more the task of corresponding responsibly to the appeal arisingfrom its inheritance.

2

-)

4

l o/es

Chapter 1 The Nihilistic Vocation of Hermeneurics

Cf. my essay 'Ermeneutica nuova koinė' now in the voĻume EticadeĮl' interpretazioze (Rosenberg 6c Dellier, Turin, 1 989), pp. 38_48.on this, cf. L. Pareyson, Estetica. Teoria deļĮa formatiuitā (Bompiani, Milan,t9 54), pp. 7 Sff.H.-G. Gadamer,Truth and Method [1960ļ (Slreed & Ward, London, 1979).In spite of the best intentions of the author, this is the direction taken by V.Mathieu's 'Manifesto di urr movimenlo ermeneutico urriversale', FiĮosofia,43 (May-August 1992\, 2.I am of course thinking of the 'paradigms' spoken of by Thomas Kuhn inThe Structure of Scientific ReuoĮutions [1962] (University of Chicago Press,Chicago, 1970).This because - by virrue of the temporality of consciousness^ that keepsCassirer no less than Heidegger from thinking Being as sirnple presence - itis difficult to distinguish the activity of symbolization (which would be thetratrsįation in Cassirer's language of the term interpretation) from tlreconcrete fonns thar it takes in history, from the languages that it inherits, inshort, from its finitude; which, rather contradictorily on the basis of the sameCassirerean presuppositions, is ultimarely frustrated by a characterisricallyHegelian teleological structure of taste, where historiciry is at once recognizedand removed. On this, cf. the introduction by L. Lugarini to the ltaliantranslation of Cassirer's 'Essay on Man' of t923,'saggio sull'uomo', transE. Arnaud (La Nuova ltalia, Florence,t987),p.77.Cf. E. Cassire r, Tbe Philosophy of SymboĮic F'orms, Yo| 1: Language [1923l,trans. R. Mannheirn (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1955), p. 83.Cf. e.g' aphorisrrr 22 in Beyond Good and EuiĮ [1886) (Perrguin Books,llarmondswo rth, 1,97 9).Ci. J. I{abertnas, The PhiĮosophicaĮ Discourse of Modernity, trans. F.Lawrence (Polity Press, Cambridge, 1985), ch. 3, pt. L n .4, p.392.

-wNofes to pp. 12-22 113

Cf. 'The Reconstruction of Rationality', published here as appendix 2.Cf. above all my essay 'Heideggers Nihilisrnus: Nietzsche als InterprctHeideggers', in F. von Hermann and W. Biemel (eds), Kunst und Technik.Gedäcbtnisschrift zum L00. Geburtstag uon Martin Heidegger (Klostern'rann,Frankfurt a.M., 1989).

Chapter 2 Science

M. Heidegger, 'The origin of the Work of Art', in HoĮzwege (VittorioKlostermanrr, Frankfurt a.M., 1,977), p. 62.M. Heidegger,'What is CaļĮed Tbinking? [1954)' trans. J. Glenn Gray(Harper & Row, New York, 1968), p. 33.R. Rorty, PhiĮosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Blackwell, Oxford, 1980),ch.7.Cf. the various essays collected in R. Rorty, Contlngency, Irony andSolidarity [1989] (Cambridge University Press, 1992).Many important analogies between Popper and not insignificant aspects oflrermeneutics are illustrated clearly in D. Antiseri's fine work Le ragioni deĮpensiero deboĮe (Armatrdo, Rome, 1'992); on metaphysics and its nreaning inPopper's fallibilism, cf. esp. pp.64ff ,

K. O. Apel has paid particular attention to the 'hermeneutic' aspects ofPeirce's thought and to the meaning of the notion of an 'experimentalcommunity of researchers': cf. Transfot'tnatiott der PhiĮosophie (Sulrrkamp,Frankfurt a.M., L973\.In The Structure of Scientific Reuolutions, citecl above, Thomas Kuhnadvanced the now well-known thesis that the experimental sciences do notdevelop in a linear fashion, resolving the problems left open by earlierresearch. Such linearity occurs' but only withįn the bourrds of a sirrgleparadigrn, that is, within the horizon of a certain language, a certainmethod, a certain criterion for distinguishing between what is relevant andwhat is not. The paradignrs change historically, but not because they cometo be seen as false in the light of some more general criterion. Rather, whenthey go into crisis because they fail to resolve certain problems, and whenanother alternative paradigrn presents itself, they are simply abandoned bythe scientific community; arrd tlris is what Kuhn caļls a 'scierrtific revolution'.Cf. G. Vattimo, 'Ermeneutica e teoria dell'agire comunicativo', in L. Sciolaarrd L. Ricolfi (eds), I/ so etto deĮĮ'azione (Franco Angeli, Milan, 1989).Cf. above all $ 6 of E. Husserl, Crisrs in tbe Europearz Sciences andTranscendentlļ PhenomenoĮogy Į1'954] (Northwesterrr University Press,Evanston, lll.,1970).Cf. on the other hand books (mostly of Anglo-Saxon origin) such as J.Bleicher, Cofltemporary Hermeneutics (Routledge, London, L980), thatinclude Apel and Habermas as fuĮly fledgecl exponents of 'criticalhermeneutics'.H.-G. Gadamer, Reason in the Age of Science [1976], tians. F. Lawrence(MIT, Cambriclge, Mass, 1981).K. Mannheim, Ideology and Utoltia [1929] (Rourledge & Kegan Paul,London, 1968).

1011

10

1\

12

-M.1

Nofes to pp. 32-6 11s1.14 No/es to pp. 23-31

13 E. Bloch, Gesamtausgabe, ud. 1.6: Geist der Utopie [1923] (Suhrkarnp,Frankfult a.M., t971,\.

14 It seen.rs ro me that a similar existentialist 'tone' may be heard in Gadamer;and in many pages of Derrida's essay on Levinas ('Violence and Metaphys-ics', trans. A. Bass (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1981)), on which, seemy essay 'Metafisica, violenza, sccolarizzazione' in G. Vattinro (ed.\ FiĮosofia'86 (Larerza, Rorne-Bari, 1987), pp.7t-94.

15 Cf. M. Heidegger, Identity and Difference) tĪans. J. Stambaugh [1957](Flarper & Row, New York, 1969), p.38. The Ge-Steļl, which I havesuggested be translated into Italian as 'im-posizione' [im-position] (cf. myĮrans. of Heidegger, Saggi e discorsi (Mursia, Milan, 1976) p. 14) indicatesthe errsemble (Ge-) of the SteļĮen (the position, the disposition etc. thatconstitutes the essence of modern technology); and it is precisely in thisensemble, which is also the high point and triumph of meraphysics, i.e. ofthe presentation and veiĮing of Being irr the sub|ect-object relation, thatHeidegger sees the first glimmer of a possible overcoming of metaphysicsitself. I have comrnented on this aspect o{ Hcidegger's rhought in variousessays; cf. e.g. the final essay in The End of Modernity (Polity Press,Cambridge, 1988).

16 This is a text {rom 1938, included in M. Heidegger,The Question Concern-ing Technolo8y' tfans. 'Ųf. Lovitt (Harper & Row, New York, 1977),pp.115-54.

17 lbid., p.1.29 n. 6.18 lbid., p, 135.19 lbid., p. 135 n. 13.20 lbid., p. 1.36. [Vattirno modifies the existing Italian rranslation (Chiodi) by

translating 'uerweigert' as'precĮusa' rather tlran 'uietata'' This suggests'closed off' rather than 'forbidden'. - Trans.]

2L Cf. e.g. Crlsis, cited above, $ 34 cl.

Chapter 3 Ethics

F'. Nietzsche, The lViĮl to Power, trans.'w. Kaufrnann and R. J. Hollirrgdale(Randorn House, New York, 1968), p. 38.It is curious - but perhaps not too strange if one follows Heidegger inthinking that the tradition of philosophy up unril Nietzsche has been underthe constant domination of the metaphysics of presence - that if one looksin the philosophical tradition for a definition of violence, one ends up havingto go back to an essentialist definition (or, which is a slight variation, onedrawn from natnral law). Violence is what plevents a beilg from realizingits own natural potentiāl: whiclr irl thc end is trot very differerrt frorn tlreAristotelian doctrine of 'natural places' (the stone tends to go downwarcl,fire upward etc.), otr the basis of whiclr one dcfines that which js katä andparā pbysitl, accorclirrg to or against (or beyorrd) nature. Įrrrportar-rt ideaspointing in the 'hern-rel'Įeįįtic' diį'ectiorr that I arn trying to follow may befound, however, in P. Ricoeur, Violence et Įangage [1967), now in LecturesI. Atttoltr du poĮitique (Seuil, I)aris, 1991), pp. 13t_41.

3 Cf. ļr. Nietzsche, Human All'loo Human [1879] (Canrbridge UrriversityPress, Camblidge, 1986) and Nietzsches 'Werke: Krįtiscbe Gesamtaltsgabe,

ed. G. Colli and M. Monrinari, vol. 4, pp. 437, 431,: .Bei einern wenigergewaltsarn Clrarakter des soziaļen Lebens verlieren die letzten Entscheirļr]n_ge. (riber sogenannre ewige Fragen) ihre \) ichtigkeit. Man bedenke, wieselten schon jetzt cin Mensch erwas mit ihnen iu rhun hat': 'rwhere thechafacter of socįal life is less uiolent, the ultirnate decįsiorrs (on the so-calledetemal questions) lose their importance. one reflects how seldom man hasanything.to do with them roday' (Fragment 40.7).'Meraphysik und philoso-phie sind Versuch, sich gewaltsanr der fruchtbarsten GĖbibte zu bemächti-gen': 'Metaphysics and philosophy are atremprs to gain control over rhemost fertile territories by.force' (Fragmenr 40.21,). [Both of these passageshave been trarrslated by the present translator, followirrg the Italian editįnquoted by Vattimo. The emphasis in each case is Vartimois.]

4 [The Italiarl runs: 'l'es1lerienza deļĮa ueritā ė condizįortata dāt fano di disporredi, e di essere disposti it'l, utt Įitlguaggio" My trarrslatio., h... does notcapture the exact play on the verb,disporre', which can mean both.to useor have at one's disposal' and (i' its passive form) 'to be set out or to bearticulated'. - Trans.]

5 Cf. e.g. Apel,Transformatiorx der Philosophie, see ch. 2 n. 6 above.6 cf. ibid., rhe final essay on 'Das Apriori der Kommunikationgemeinschaft

und die Grundlagen der Ethik'. on Apel and ethics cf. also Ē'. Mancini,sstudy Linguaggio ed etica. La semiotiįa ft'nscendentaĮe di KarĮ-Otto ApeĮ(Marietti, Genoa, 1988).

7 Cf . e,g. the conclusion ro the firsr part of Gadamer, Truth and Method (seech. 1 n. 3), pp.146fL

8 It.may be that lĮorty's theory was constructed in direct polemic against it.Cf. e.g. Rorty, PhiĮosophy and the Mirror of Nature, pį. lzltt. IĮĮgarclingredescriptions, cf. Contingency, Irony and Solidarity citeāābove, ch. z"n. 3.

9 The idea of redescription įs for the most part used by Rorty oniy in contextsthat have to do witlr the constitution of philosophy, of poeĮry etc. \ hen it isa marter of morals, his preferred concept is that of solidariry, as is the casein Contingency, Irony and SoĮidarity. Nonetheless' as he writes in the finalessay of this book ('solidarity'), the ironic liberal (rhe redescriber who is self-aware etc. is 'someone for whom this sense was a matter of irnaginariveidentification with the details of others' lives, rather tlran a recognītion ofsomething anrecedenrly shared', p. 190. It is not far-fetched, then, ro see arelation between redescriptions and solidarity: the latter, sincc it cannotfound itself on a rnetaphysical kind of u'iversalism, depencrs on 'whichsirnilarities and dissimilarities strike us as salient, and that įuch salience is afunctiorr of a historically contingent firral vocabulary', p. 192' Sucļr a finalv.ocabulary certainly has somethirrg to do with redescriįtiorrs (it concļitionsthem, is.modified by them, and so on). My irnpression is that Rorty does nordevelop his refļections otr these connections far errough.

10 Cf. G. Delettze, Foucauļt u986ļ, trans. S. Hand lAthlorre Press, London,1988), p. 106.

11 Cf. P. Klossowski, Nietzsche et Įe circle uįcieux [1969ļ (Mercure cle Francc,Paris, 1,969\.

12 of course, it wor.rlcl be very sirnplistic to recļuce Rorty's reclcscriptions, orKlossowski's conspiracy a,d Foucault's variarions i' lifestyle, to n puielyaesthetic denominator. one can hear echoes of the existentialist traĮitiorlof autherrtįcity as the sole possible ethical irnperative irr the age of nihilism,

11,6 No/es to PP.36-40

and also, from a tnore recent time, the same broadly 'ecological' concernas manifests itself in efforts to save animal or vegetable species on the wayto extinction. At the root of these efforts lies the idea that the survivalof the human species has irr the past been assured by the multipĮicity ofcultures' that is, of responses that įt has known how to make to thechallenges of the environment. The preservation of this rnultiplicity forthe future seems to bc an indispensable condition of survival. On thesignificance of the conspiracy in Klossowski, and on the relations that couldbe established between Rorty and Foucault, cf. my essay 'll paradigma e

I'arcano' in G. Vattimo and M. Ferraris (eds), Filosof a'93 (Laterza, Rome-Bart, t994), pp. 231-50.

13 Cf. e.g. ch. 5 of Contingency,Irony and Solidarity, esp. pp. 717-1'8.14 Orre is remindecļ ag,ain of tlre idea of a 'forming forrn' theorized by Pareysorr

rn his Estetica.1-5 Cf. S 3 of tlre final chapter of lĮorty' PbiĮosophy and the Mirror of Nature,

pp. 373-9.16 On the whole of this orientation, profoundly related to the spread of

hermeneutics, cf. F. Volpi, 'Tra Aristotele e Kaut: orizzonti, prospettive e

limiti del dibattito sulla riabilitazione della 6Įosofia pratica', irr C. A. Viano(ed.\, Teorie eticbe contemporanee (Bollati Boringhieri, Turin, 1990),pp. 128-48.

17 Cf. the essay'The Truth of Hertneneutics', appendix 1 to this book.18 But why does hermeneutic ethics have to be an ethics of continuity? One

might suspect that, once again, it is a case here of a return to the classicalideal of harmony, the good as the beauty of an achieved conciliation, as a

non-confļictual belorrgirrg to a totality' But, to speak of an open continuityalways established afresh on the basis of a risky interpretation, as opposedto the idea of a kįnd of Hegelian absolute subiect, shows tlrat what we arefacing lrere is a Veruindung of rnetaphysics, i.e. according ro the sense thatthe term has in Heidegger, a 'distorted and transformed' resumption of theneed for foundations that guided metaphysics, and that one canrrot simplylay aside like a piece of discarded clothing or an error that has beenrecognized as such (for this would be to claim that one had finally arrived atthe objective truth, tllereby repeating the metaphysical error). Cf. also ch. 4n. 14 below. Continuity seems to be the only meaning of rationality in theepoch of nihilism (and cf. 'The Reconstruction of Rarionality', appendix 2to this book). l'or metaphysics it was a case of establishing itself on theultimate and certain basis of primary foundations; for nihilistic hermeneuticsit is a casc of arguing in such a way that each new interprctation euters intodialogue with those that came before and does not coltstitute an incompre-hensible dia-'logical' leap. In the end (see the conclusiou to this chapter) thcirnperative of continuity belongs to a rationality that does not de6ne itself inreļation to objective structįlres that thirrkirrg should and could reflect, but torespect and to pietas for the neighbour. For this reason too, however,continuity cannot be defined abstractly, but must refer to a determirtateneighbour or neighbours.

19 on the history and nreaning of the term, and on its use aĮrove aļl in Davidson,see the eighth study by D. Sparti, Sopprimere Įa Įontananza uccide. D.Dauidsoll e la teoria delĮ'interpretazione (La Nuova ltalia, Florerrce, L994\,pp. 54ff.

Nofes to ltŲ.42-53 117

Chapter 4 Religion

1 Cf. w' Dilthey, GesamlneĮte Schriften (Teubner, Leipzig-Berlin, 1914), vol.5: Die geistige'X/ eĮt, pp. 31'7-t8.

2 on this point, see the Introduction to my ScbĮeiermacher fiĮosofodell'interpretazione [1967] (Mursia, Milan, 1985), and the bibliographygiven rherein. Regarding the observations that follow, see also of course M.Ferraris, Storia deļl' ermeneutica (Bompiarri, Milan, 1988).

3 Gadarner, Truth and Method, pp. t92-235.4 I am thinking primarily of certain texts by M. Cacciari, such as L'angelo

necessario (Aclelphi' Milan, L886); and Deļļ'inizio (Adelphi, Milan' 1990).5 See' in addįtion to the most important of J. Hillman's writings, suclr as Tle

Myth of AnaĮysis [1972] (Northwestern University Press, Evanstotr, Ill.,1972\ and Re-uision of Psychology ft9751; also J. Hillman and D. L. Miller,The New PoĮytheism: The Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses (New York,7974)' Cf ' also various chapters tn rhe Trattato di psicoĮogia analitica, ed. A.Carotenuto (Uret, Turin, 1992).

6 See esp. rhe 1978 essay by Odo Marquard, 'Lob des Polytheismus (In Praiseof Polytheism)', in A Fareulell to Matters of PrincipĮe (oxford UniversityPress, New York, 1989).

7 Aristotle's expression may be found in Metaphysics IV. 2. 1003a33. Thephrase from St Paul ('Multifariam, multisque, modis olim loquens, Deuspatribus in prophctis: novissime diebus istis locutus est nobis in Filio') is inHebrews 1: 1-2.

8 Joachim's rnystical doctrine is entirely unique and, perhaps for this reasorl,has left traces in alrnost all subsequent history of European thought: on this'see H. de Lubac, Į'a postėritė spirituelĮe de Įoachim de Fiore, 2 volsU979-8tl (Dessain et Tobra, Paris, t972l82). See aĮso Joachirn, Enchirįdionsuper Apocalypsim, ed. E. K. Burger (Toronto, 1986), and with a Latin textand Italian translation by A. Tagliapietra (Feltrinelli, Milan, 1994).

9 F. D. E. Schleiermacher, olz ReĮigion: Speeches to its Cultured Despiscrs[1,799], trans. J. omarr (Harper & IĮow, New York, 1958), p. 91 (the seconddiscourse).

lO Novalis, Die Christbeit oder Europa Į'!'799, but publ. ļn 1826ļ in Dichterilber ihre Dichtungen, vol. 15, ed. H.-J. Mähl (Heimeran, 1976\, pp. 60-8.

11 I am referring here above all to texts such as R. Girard, Vioļerlce and theSacred Į1972]' trans. P. Gregory (Atlrlorre Press, London, 1988) and TbingsHidden Since the Foundatiotl of the WorĮd U978l, trans. P. Gregory (AthlonePress, London,1,987).

12 H. Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age [7966], trans. R. M.Wallace (MIT, Carnbridge, Mass., 1983).

13 The work of revealing the 'human all too human' background of all moraland metaphysical systems, in short o{ all eternal truths, conclrrdes inNietzsclrc witlr the dissolr"rtiorr of tįre value of truth itself: on this, cf. my 1/

soggetto e la maschera. Nietzsche e iĮ problema della ļiberazįone Ī1974](Bornpiani, Milan, 1994), pp.71ff .

14 Tlris is the term tlrat Heidegger įļses to indicate the relation that, in his view,thinking maintains with metaphysics, understood as the oblivion of Being;which would therefore be 'overcome' (iiberwunden). But sirrce it įs not a case

No es to pp. 53-61

Chapter 5 Art

orr all these themes, cf. 'The 'Ų(/ork of Art in the Agc of MechanįcalReproduction', in W. Benjamin, Illuminatiorts, trans. H. Zolrn, ed. I{. Arendt

[1936] (Cape, Loudon,1982), esp. $ 15.Ī have discįssed all this more fully in the first chapter of Poesįa e ontologia

[1967ļ (Mursia, Milano, 1985). In spite of their age, those pages still providethe thcoretical background to the (relatively different) ideas that I ampl eseuting hefe.On the subjectivization of acsthetics that dcvelops on the basis of Kantiancritique, but after Kant, cf. Gadamer, Truth art'd Method, pp. 51ff.Itcgai'ding the meaning and significance of the reference to the experience ofart for his conception of truth, see the essay 'The Truth of Hermeneutics',appendix 1 to thįs book.

5 Nowadays it is thought to be the work of Schelling, fonnulated, with thehelp of his two frierrds, il 7795i tlre edition that has come down to įļs isfrom Hegel's hand and dates from 1796. There are several English transla-tions, but the versiorr cįted here is pubĮished in F. Hcilderlin, Essays andLetters onTbeory, ed. and trans. T. Pfau (SUNY, Albany, 1988)' pp. 154-6'

6 G. Lukācs, Aesthetics, Vol 2, (Luchterlarrd, Berlin, 1963) , p'273. Theprivileged position of painting is a consequence of the fact that in the

inedieval period art was entrusted by the church with the task of passing onthe contents of the Bible to the illiterate.

7 lbid., p.776 .

8 lbid., p.778.9 lbid., p.690.

10 The questįon of secularization, understood here as the necessity for aestheticsexplicitly to take note of art's relation to its religious origins, is anouistanding example of that way of consciously placing oneself in the'hermeneutic circle', which is, according to Heidegger, the only way topĪevent the circle being logically vicious. It is also woĪth femembering thežrehabilitation' of prejudice proposed by Gadamer ļn Truth and Method,pp.241f.f , which has the same sense. However, given the way our dis-įourse is going' can we be satisfied with the thought that the question ofsecularizatlon may be iust a case, albeit outstanding, of the problem of thevicious circle? \ ill it not rather be its most radical and 'proper' meaning?Aside from anything else, thought in this way, the 'right' placement in the

hermeneutic circle and the rehabilitation of preiudice (as the conditionthat one must be aware of in order not to be dominated by it), no longerlooks Įike a simplistic application of psychoanalysis to philosophy. (It

might otherwise seem to be so, in that the unconscious ceases to produceneurotic symptoms once it has been brought to consciousness. But not eventhe most orthodox of psychoanalysts believe this any more' even if they everdid.)

11 Cf. the first chapter of my Poesia e ontologia (n. 2 above).12 E. Bloch, Geist der ĮJtopie |1923ļ in Gesamtausgabe, vol. 2 (Suhrkamp,

Frankfurt a.M., 197t1 and Das Prinzip Hoffnung (Suhrkamp, Frankfurta.M.,1959).M. Dufrenne, Tbe PhenomenoĮogy of Aesthetic Experience [l953], trans. E.Casey (Northwestern Press, Evanston, Ill., 1973).of Dilthey, cf. rrot only Das ErĮebnis und die Dichtung [1906ļ (Vanderrhoeck

& Ruprecht, Gcirtirrgerr, 1957), but a|so Der Aufbau der geschicbtĮichenWelt i'n'den Geisteswissenschaften [1910] and the posthumous PĮan derFortsetzutlg zum Aufbau der geschichtlicben weĮt in den Geistestaissenschaf-ten,botl't included in vol. 7 ol rhe Gesammelte Schriften cited in ch.4 n. 1

above. A more accessible edition of these texts tnay be found in the volumeentįtļed Der Aufbau der geschicbtlichen 'Welt in den Geistestuissenscbafterl,ed. M. Riedel (Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M., 1981).Cf. Gadamer, Truth and Method, p.78.The lecture on 'Hcilderlirr arrd the Essence of Poetry' [1936ļ appears irr M.Heidegger, Existence and Being (Gateway, Chicago, '1967).The essay'WozuDiclrter'?', originally published in HoĮzwege (Vittorio Klostermatrn' Frarrkfurta.M., 1977), has been translated as'\What are Poets For?'and appears in M.Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought (Harper 6d Row, New York, L971)

Nofes to pp. 62-9 t19118

of correcring the error of metaphysics with a morc objectively true vision ofhow thingJ statrd, the way out of metaphysics is showu to -be morecomplicatēd.

'! e do not have before us an obiectivity that, otrce discoveredir-r wīat really is, could provide a criterion by which to charrge our thoļ]ght;as though metaphysics ruight be set aside as an error or a discarded and

*or,r-u.it piece of clothing. The only thing that we can do to 'get out' of the

metaphysiial oblivion of Being is to undertake a Verwindutg. TĮris term,preserving also a literaĮ connection with įiberwinden, to overcolne' fileans'Ī1o*.u.r, in practice: Įo recover from an illness while still bearirrg its traces,to resign oneļelf to solnethįng. on all of tlris see, M. Heide8ger, The-End ofPhiĮos phy (Harper & Row' New York, 1,973), pp.85ff; and the 6rral

chapter oĮ my The End of Modemity.15 [Vaitimo rrairslates Verwindung by prefixing the ltalian torsione with dls- to

give dis-torsione, thereby capturing the sense of 'twisting-free' intended byHeidegger. However, in English, the word 'torsion' that conveys the sense of'twist'-is not directly transposed into 'distortion', thereby making it imposs-ible to pre serve Vattimo's wordplay precisely. - Trans.ļ

].6 I am rēferring here and in what follows to Pareyson's final period of work,beginrrirrg *įh hi, rnajor essay 'Filosofia ed esperierrza religiosa' whichappeared in the Annuario fiĮosofico of 1985 (Mursia, Milan, 1986)

' pp.7_52,

anā which has now beerr republished in ontologia deĮla libertā ļĖinaudi,Turin, L995). Rereading it today, I ręalize tlrat Pareyson does not accord JesusChrist the central position - for the 'foundation' of myth and of symbol - thati! scems to n-re hįs premisses quite reasonabĮy allow. But perhaps this is whyhe does not carry the process of secularization as far as I believe that he couldand indeed should have done. Fr<lm the point of view of the thesis that I amputting forward here, all tlris wouĮd suggest that irr Pareyson, tlļe God_of the

old Tįrtu..nt s ll lrolds sway. Pareyson speaks more explicitly of Christi-anity in the essay 'I-a filosofia e il problema del rnale,' which came out in the

following year's edition of the Annuąrio, but itr terms that do not seem

relevant įo the specific questįon of tlre relatiorr of Jesus Christ to 'other' myths.On all of this, cf. the somewhat abbreviated analysis that I gave in the chapter

'Ermeneutica e seco|arizzazļone' in my Ėtica deļĮ'interpretazione, pp' 49_62'17 Cf. Pareyson, 'Filosofia ed esperienza religiosa', pp. 1'9-27.

13

t4

1516

-)

4

Kjlla.

'.il

121t20 Nofes to pp. 69-79 Nores to pp.79-93

pp' 89*142. Cf. also On the V/ay to Language (Harper & IĮow, New York,t971).

t7 ļn brief and with considerable simplification. on Heidegger,s commentsregarding the poets,_see the fine studį by F. De Alessi, HeiāĮgger ļettore rļeipoeti (Rosenberg & Sellier, Turin, 1991).

18 Heidegger, Existence and Being, p. 271.19 lbid., p'289: 'Hcilderlin writes poetry about the essence of poetry - bur nor

in the sense of a timelessly valid concept. This essence of poät.y Ē.loį, to odetennined time.'

?0 lgl all these quorarions, cf. ibid., pp. 2gg-9.21 This is Adorno's theory of avant-_gärde art, for which figr-rres such as Samuel

Beckett are representative. On tĖir, '.. tĻ.,rrr...or. alIusions to Beckettfound in Aesthetic Theory U970Ļ įrans. C. Lenhardt trrįįtiįaį. Ļ KeganPaul, London,1984),

22 cf. e,g' the whole of the fust section of Gadamer's The Actuarity of theBeautfuĮ'(which gath-ers..together essays from various years betweĮn 1967and 1986), trans. N' 'Ų(alker,

ed. R. Beinasconi (Cambridg. Unu..riiį P...r,1e86).

23 Cf. e'g.:!: ::.1y by W. Welsch, 'Das Ästhetische. Eirre Schltisselkategorieunserer Zeit?', in the.volume edired. by \/elsch and co,taining *ori byvarious authors, Die AktuaĮität des Ästįletischen (V' Fink, Muriich,1g93i'And.irr addition, R' Bubner, Aesthetische Erfairung lrģspī įs;Ė.k, '

Frankfurt a.M.,79891.24 This mi8ht even lead to a re-evaluation of the lnĮįseįļm, with a clifferent

orieįltation to that of 'aesthetic differerrtiation': sce my .ršry o,i .il *ur.o .l'esperienza deļl'arte nella post-rnodernitä' in Riuist'a cle 'EstetiĮa, ns 37(įeetl.

5 See above, ch.2, n. 11.6 Heide88er, 'The origin of tlre \ ork of Art' [1936ļ, in Poetry, Language,

Thought,pp. t7-87.7 Cf. Heidegger, what is CaļĮed Tbinking?, p.33; and (iadamer, Reąsotl itl

the Age of Science, p.1.2.8 Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific ReuoĮutiotts.9 Cf' again ch.7 of Rorty, PĖiloso1lhy and the Mirror of Nature.

10 Cf. e.g. Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp.245ff , esp. p. 250.11 This, for example, is Foucault's position, at least according to Paul Veync,s

radical .interpreration, which I consider to be exemplary: cf. above ali theessay'E possibile una morale per Foucault?'in Effetto FoucauĮt, ed. P. A.Rovatti (Feltrinelli, Milan, 1986), pp. 30-8.

12 See A. Mclntyre, After Virtue [1981] (Duckworrh, London, 1985).13 For a fuller illustration of this point, see my contribution ro the Royaumont

colloquium of Į987, 'L'impossible oubli', now included in the volurne Usagesde l'oubli, together with writings by Y. H. Yerushalmi, N. Loraux, -H.

Mommsen, J. C. Milner (Seuil, Paris, 1988).14 Cf. the writings referred to in n. 1 above.15 On the notion of Erdrterung, a fuller discussion may be found in my Essere,

storia e Įinguaggio in Heidegger [1963ļ (Marietti, Genoa, 1989), esp. ch' 5,pt.2.

16 [The terms sfondante and sfondamento have been rranslared, somewhatclumsily, as 'unfounding' and 'unfoundation' respectively. In Italian, theprefix 's' reverses the sense of the word to which it is attached: e.g. scontento(unhappy), spiaciuto (displeased) and * significantly - sfondare (to breakthrough or knock the bortom - fondo - our of somerhing). In the presentcase, the 'root' words are fondante and fondamento, that is, ,founding, and'foundation' respectively. Whilst 'disinregraring' and 'disinregrarion' weremore elegarrt alternatives, too much of the philosophical sense wouldprobably have been lost. The same point coulcl also be made regarding theItalian sfondo, translated here in its cĮļstomary sense as 'backgroun<l', whichcould be thought to signify rhe conrrary of 'fondo', meaning .borrom, or'grould'. For an example of where Vatrimo exploits this wordplay explicitlycf . The Transparent Society, rrans. D. Vebb (Polity Press, Cambri dge,'7992),p. 52.- Trans.l

17 Cf. e.g. the panorama given by L Hacking, Representing and Interuening:Introductory Topics in the Pbilosopby of Science [1983ļ (Cambridge Urriver-sity Press, 1983).

18 C)rr the two setrses of tradition in Heidegger, see M. Bobnola, Verįtā einterpretazzione nello Heidegger di 'Essere e tempo' (F.dizioni di filosofia,Turin, 1983); cf. esp. ch. 5.

19 Dcrrida, speaking of the 'arbitrary' stratcgies of the th<l'ght of difference,clearly evokes tĮre Mallarmėar, coup de dės, and this is not a purely accidentalreferetlce. Cf. 'Diffėrarrce' in Margitls of Philosophy U972], trans. A. Bass(Harvester, Blighton, 1982).

20 In r.rsi'g Lacan's terminology here, I make no claim wharsoever to be faithfulto his text; not leasr since alongside the irnaginary and the symbolic, he alsoposits the 'rcal', which in rny schema seems only to have a place on thc sideof the irnaginary.

21 Cf. K. Mannheim, IdeoĮogy and Uto1lia, where a historicist relativisnr is

Appendix 1 The Truth of Hermeneutics

1 [The primary. sense of . the -Ītalian euitļetlza is .clearness,, ,obviousness,,

asopposed to 'the available facts'. In this respect, .evidentiality, rnisht havebcen a morc accĮļrate. tratrslation, but its unwiįldln.r, .ornļ.tt.Į'Įįrin.t.S.ince-the English'evidence'carr be used in tlre setlse inten<ļed her.'Īhav.therefore chosen to use it in spite of the slight differenccs ii-, u."įĮ-Įut ar.reader is advised to bear in minį. - Trans.ļ

2 On rhe crucial sense of this rerm in HeidĮgger, and on the movement of histhinking in.the directign 9{ 3 way out oiĻeiaphysi.', '.. ,t-,. .oi'Įtudingchapter o! my The End of Modernity, and rny c'onįribuiions to rhe editions

- of Filosofia '86and Filosofia'87 (La r'za,RomĮ-Bari, 1988).3 In .addirion to the pages from Gadamer's Trutb and'Method rhar are

dedicated to Heidegger, anorher important documenr relating to this point istlre interview witlr Gadarner c^onduįted by Adriarro Fub.i;;nJ;; riĮr'.a i"!y9r'ia, fasc. 7 (1982), where Gadamer inšists on his closeness įJii,. Ļ.onaHeidegger', but also to the idea that the second Heidegg.. Ļ,,ri Ļ Įu*nback to the first' because it is-ultimately a matter orlīrn't i*įinio tlr.language of Being and Time what was įresented in the latei įį?r.Į_i, ,r,.fornr of'visions'.

4 Cf. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature,pp. 315ff.

rei.:::

1,22

45

Nofes to pp.94-105

ternpered by the beliefthat ideological poi,ts of view may be integrated intoa 'comprehensive totality' (p. 134) thāt provicles the bäsis fo, ä-į.i.ntin.politics.

22 on this point, a fuller discussion may be found in rny .Erhics of communi-^ ^ :ltiol or Interpretation?, in The Transparent Society, ģp. 1O5-2O.23 This is-, of course, the thesis of the leiture 'on the'Ėļsence ofīruth, (which

d-a_te s frorn 1930, but. was only publishe d in 1943), i" fi,f. H.,a.gg'.r', Bori,Writitlgs, trans. J. Sallis et al., (Routledge, London,

'Įlls1, pp.1ir:i8.'

Appendix 2 The Reconstruction of Rationality

Rorty, .PhiĮosopby and the Mirror of Nature, ch. 7 .Cf. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientifi'c ReuoĮuiions.Į._D9r1ida, Of GrammatoĮogy,trans. G. Chakravorty Spivak [1967] (Johns!9lļins University Press, BaĪiimore, 1984).Cf. Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 267f't.Cf . F. Nietzsche, The WilĮ to Powei' p. 267 .

1

23

tl)

Indexffi

I

Adorno, Theodormistrust of metaphysics 30-1

aestheticscļassical ideal 38experience 56-7, 61-2, 63-4hermeneutic irrationalism

99-100human sciences over natural

16-18irrationalisrn 102Nietzsche's ethical consequences

35-6postrnodern social existence 72responsibility of the aĪtist 36_7Romanticism and genius 1.7systematic theories 66truth 8L, 85-6, 88-9

Aesthetics (Lukācs) 64'The Age of the \X/orld Picture'

(Heidegger) 24_5' ļ10Apel, K. O, 3Z-3,34,35Aristotle

foundation of hermeneutics104

plurivocity of Being 46-7, SZ, 57substance 54

art 58-74German idealism 62-3and individualism 64link wirh religion 63*4magic and cuļt value 65mythicization of artists 71-2poets use of religion and myth

70rock music 72-3secuļarization 73-4trįth 67_71see also aesthetics

BeingDerrida no longer speaks of 12destiny 108-9dissolution 39hermeneutics as the narrative o{

meaning 12*14idea of truth 76-8modernity 24-5plurivocity 46-7,48, 52, 57positive-scientific method 11

B eing and Time (Heidegger)idea of trurh 76-8against metaphysics 29-31

1,24

Benjarnin, \Walter 45, 59'The 1 /ork of Art in the Age of

Mechanical Reproduction'65

Bibleeveryone an author 49myths 55

Bloch, F,rnst 23,67Borges, Jorge Luis 90, 91

Cassirer, ErnstThe Philosophy of SymboĮic

Forms 5-6charity, principle of 40, 43,47in Christian tradition 51

Christianity see religionconsciousness 88correspondence theory of truth

Heidegger's critique 75-8, 85,86-7

historico-cultura I horizon80-1

traditional notion 94Crisįs in the European Sciences

(Husserl) 26-7The Critique of Judgement (Kant)

56,63Croce, Benedetto 63culture

philosophy of 38,46see aļso tourism' cultural

deconstructi on 1.2, 98-101Deleuze, Giļles 35Derrida, Jacques 92, 1,08

deconstruction 98-101, 107Of Grammatology 100no longer speaks of Being 12

determinism 11"

Dilthey, Wilhelmart as historical document 67

Index

methodological modeļ ofsciences 15

'The Origins of Hermeneutics'+2-4

religious origins of hermeneutics10

Dufrenne, Mikel 67

epistemology 79librarian's possession of

knowledge 82-3,90,91Rorty, Richard 17-19, 79,

94-5,98*102universaļ validity of knowledge

10ethics 31-41

anti-metaphysical inspiration38

classical ideal 38of communication 3Z-4, 39of continuity 32,37-9and metaphysics 31-2rationalism 86of redescription 32, 34-6,39responsibility of the artist 36-7

experience 56-7, 61.-2see also aesthetics

Feyerabend, Paul 90Foucault, Michel 110

humanitarianism as disciplinarystructure 51.

redescriptions 35foundationalism 31fundamentalism 39

Gadanrer, Hans Georgart as historical document 67critique of aestlretįc

consciousness 66-7ethics of continuity 37-9

Index

foundation of hermeneutics1,03-6

Heidegger-Gadamer axis 2*5hermeneutic irrationalism and

aestheticism 99-700modernity 44Reąson in the Age of Science

79rrurh 78-82see also Truth and Metbod

German idealism 62*3Girard, Renė 50_1Greek philosophy 43

see also Aristotle; Plato

Habermas, Jrirgencommunicative action 33-4,

35ethics of communication 32Theory of Communicatiue

Action 20, 83Hegel, Georg\W. F.

Aesthetics 6tethics 37German idealism 62religion 53

Heidegger, Martinaesthetic experience 90-2'The Age of the \il/orld Picture'

24*5,110Being and positive-scientifi c

method 1.1-12destiny of Being 108-9existential analytic 44existentialist decisionism 22Heidegger-Gadamer axis 2-5hermeneutics as the narrative of

meaning 1,2-14'Hcilderlin and the Essence of

Poetry' 68-70Holzwege 68,69Identity and Difference 24,1.1.0

125

'The Origin of the Work of Arr'15-76,23-4,71,1.02

pre-understanding 5,6rebellion 60revolution against metaphysics

23-7,29-31science and technology 109-10rrurh 45,67,75-8,96unfounding 89Verwindung 53-4,76-7On the Way to Language'What are Poets for?' 69V h at is CaĮĮed Th inhing?

hermeneuticsbasic argument on truth 8

aS common idiom or koinė 1_2defined too broadly 1-2epistemology 79established as koinė "j'9

interpretative structure ofhuman existence 6

lacks evidence 75methodological model 43-4narrative of the meaning of

Being 12-74nihilism 7-9,12origins in specialist fields 4phenomenologico-analytic and

historico-reconstructive103-6

rational or irrational 97-1,03religious origins 10, 47-50well-disposed towards religion

44-5historicism 110

determinism l. L

irrationalism 98natural and human sciences l.5

historyfable or myth 9-11language community 37-8nihiļisrn and interpretation 7_9

69

16

126

religion 47ofscience 19,22transfonnations and language

1 00-1Ilcilderlin, Johann 62, 68-70'Hcilderlin and the Essence of

Poetry' (Heidegger) 68-70ļrumanism 40Husserl, Edrnund 20,23

Crįsis in the Ė,uropean Sciences26-7

identity 93fundamentalism as a defence

39I dentity and D ifference

(Heidegger) 24,11,0IdeoĮogy and Utopia (Mannheim)

22individualism 64

Joachim of the Flowers 48-9, 50Jung, Carl 46

Kant, Immanuelaesthetic disinterestedness 65categorical irnperative 33The Critique of Judgement 56,

63possibility of physics B9transcendental function of

reason 9, 10trurh 88

Kierkegaard, Sorenethlcs J /

Klossowski, P. 35-6Koinė 1_2,1'9Kuhn, Thomas 80

normal science 98paradigms 17

Index

languagebearer of the a priori 8-9communities 37-8,80-2Heidegger-Gadarner axis 3

historica I tra nsforrnations100-1

/ogos 80metaphorical character 46task of rhinking 21transparency and opacity

33-4,35scc aĮso lil/ittgenstein,

reasonableness of languagelanguage games 32-3,60L,e b ensu elt see lifeworldLetters on tbe Aestbetįc Education

of Man (Schiller) 62Levinas, Emrnanuel 30-1liĮrerty 62lifeworld Z0-2,23

communicative action 33-4modernity 24task of thinking 21

logos 54Lukācs, Georg

Aesthetįcs 64art as historical document 67

Mannheim, Karl 93Ideology and Utoltia 22

Marxism 45Mclntyre, Alisdair C. 86metaphysics

evidence of consciousness 88Heidegger reiecrs 1,3, 23-7,

29-31henneneutic rejection 10inrperatives 32secularization 25truth 76-7vioļation of individual's rights

30-1

methodologism, Gadamer 3rnodernity 106-11

aesthetics 72history of nihilism 9-11no facts, only interpretation 42post-metaphysical 23 -7secularization 42, 5'1,

rnulticulturalism 19museums 68

cultural tourism 58-9myth and mythology

art 66in Gennan idealism 63hermeneutics lends plausibility

45history and hermeneutics 9-1 1

legitimation of religion 52mythicization of artists 71-2poet's use of 70re-evaļuated with Gospels 55

Nietzsche, Friedrichdespised humanitarianisrn 51doubt 84ethics of redescriptions 35-6God is dead 6-9,1.4,1.06nihilism 7-9,28-9no facts, only interpretation

104trurh 88Twilight of the ldols 7will to power 28-9

nihilisrnhistory of 12Nietzsche 7-9,28-9

Novalis (Friedrich vonHardenberg) 49

of GrammatoĮogy (Derrida) 100'Oldest System-Programme of

German Idealism' (possiblySchelling) 62-3,70,74

127

on th'e Way to Į'anguage(Heidegger) 69

ontologyof actuality 10apophasic 13Heidegger 76-7,78rnultiplicity 107-8pluralism 53radicalization of hermeneutics

109'The Origin of the \ /ork of Art,

(Heidegger) 15-16, 23-4,7L,1.0Z

'The Origins of Hermeneutics'(Dilthey) 42-4

Pareyson, Luigi 54*5forming form 2

St Paul 46-7,48Peirce, Charļes 19phenomenology, lifeworl d 20 -ZPbiĮosophy and the Mirror of

Nature (Rorty) 107hermeneutics and epistemology

77-19tĪuth 79_82

The Philosophy of SymbolicForms (Cassirer) 5-6

Platoideas and Being 25metaphysics 40

pluralisrn, truth intolerant of 62Popper, Karl 18,95pragmatism 83-4psychoanalysis 45-6

ratio alism 60,97-103anti-religious 49ethics 86guiding value in European

culture 20/ogos as a shared 21-2

Index

1,28

reaļitydivarication from truth 93-4as plural 46

Reason in the Age of Science(Gadamer) 79

relativism 8lreligion 42-57

anti-religious rationalism 49Biblical exegesis 47-50Christianity as metaphysics 25churches 48-9,50cultural tourism 58-9death of God 6-9,14descent of Holy Spirit 49-50ecumenicalism 55-7experience 56-7hermeneutics wel l-disposed

towards 44-5incarnation and substance

46-s0Jungian polytheism 46henosis 48,49-50, 52legitimation of mythology 52Nietzsche's announcement 106plurivocity of Being 46-7Protestant Reformation L0relationship with art 63-4revelation 54secularization 25, 42, 7 3 - 4superiority of secular rights 59truth of 53

RiĮke, Rainer Maria 69rock music 72-3Romanticism and genius 17Rorty, Richard

aesthetic experience 104epistemology and hermeneutics

1.7 *79, 7 9, 9 4 - 5, 9 8-1,02metaphors 81PhiĮosophy and the Mirror of

Nature'1.7 -1.9, 7 9, 107pragmatism 83-4

redescription 1.8, 34-6, 39, 56truth 79-82

Rosenzweig, Franz 45

von Schelling, Friedrich lW. J.possible authorship of 'Oldest

System-Programme ofGerman ldealism' 62-3

von Schiller, Johann C. F.Letters on the Aesthetic

Education of Man 62Schleiermacher, Friedrich 34

everyone author of a Bible 49origins of hermeneutics 44

science and technology 1.5-27Being and ethics 32does not think 18ethics 40Heidegger 109-10historicity 1.9,22human versus natural 4,

'1.5-1.6,16-18, 80mass media 23methodology 1.'1.-1.2, 90multiplicity of paradigms 91-5no longer facts, only

interpretations 26objectification 110spirit of utopia 23symbolism 6rrurh 79-80,89-90

scientism, Gadamer 3Spinoza, Baruch

exegesis of Bible 42Tr a ctatu s th e o Į o gi co -p o liti cu s

43subiect, not the bearer of a priori

8-9symbolisrn 6

textsart as historical document 67

Bible 42-3, 47-50,55Derrida's deconstruction L07ethics of continuity 37

Theory of Communicatiue Action(Habermas) 20, 83

tourisrn, cultural 58-60Tra ctatus th e o Į o gi co -p o liti cu s

(Spinoza) 43trĮ]th 7 5-96

aesthetics 61-2, 85-6, 87,8 8-9

of arr 67-71.basic hermeneutic arguments 8

as conformity 45divercation frorn real 93-4dwelling in 82-3experience of 54Grund 77,85-8,92interpretation 4-6, L3-74, 42,

104intolerant of pluralism 62linguistic communities 80-2Įogos 54rnultiplicity of paradi grns

90-5Nietzsche invites doubt 84opening for 16,78Popper and falsification 95of religion 53replacing 40and sciences 79-80see aļso correspondence theory

of truth

L29

Truth and Method (Gadamer)aesthetics 60-1,102defence of truth of art 56ethics of continuity 37-9foundation of hermeneutics

1,03-6/ogos as a shared rationality

21,-2model of truth 78-9scientific methodology 3-4, 1,6

TwiĮight of the IdoĮs (Nietzsche)7

unfoundatio nl sfondamento 7 7,

89,92,93

violence 30and the sacred 50

'Ų7eber, Max 51,60reļativism 8].

'What are Poets for?' (Heidegger)69

What is Caļled Thinking?(Heidegger) 16

Wittgenstein, Ludwigcommunicative action 19family resernblances 95language games 32-3reasonableness of language 5

'The \Work of Art in the Age ofMechanical Reproduction'(Beniamin) 65

Index Index