Philosophy of Being and Knowledge

Hermeneutics (Philosophy of Understanding)

20th Century

In the 20th century, hermeneutics remained one of the leading realms of philosophy, with the main concepts and categories of hermeneutics being further developed. The German scholar Heinrich Rickert (1863-1936), building upon the ideas of Droysen and Dilthey, endeavored to substantiate the uniqueness of history. He worked during a time when scientists were enamored with the achievements of the natural sciences and society held the belief that all sciences should resemble the natural sciences to achieve similar success. Scholars in various fields sought to apply the methods of natural sciences to their areas of research. Rickert defended the distinctiveness of history, asserting that history employs a different method than the natural sciences. Echoing his predecessors, he maintained that the task of the natural sciences is to explain, whereas history, like other human sciences, aims to understand. History's goal is to comprehend individual facts. If history were constrained by the methods of natural sciences, it would lose its distinctiveness. Rickert argued that history, rather than natural science, is the true science, as it examines the facts of reality, whereas natural science operates with universal laws detached from reality. For example, a natural scientist values the law of universal gravitation, which applies uniformly across all situations, without concern for each specific instance of its application; in contrast, a historian values not universal principles, but each individual fact. Understanding historical facts can only be achieved through the values of the epoch. In other words, one can answer why a historical fact occurred only from the perspective of how people of that time viewed universal values.

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) began his reflections with a critique of ontology. He believed that throughout the history of philosophy, philosophers had been concerned only with what has the characteristic of "being," but not with being itself, and thus he called for a return to the problem of being. Heidegger understood being as an ongoing revelation. Knowledge of the revelation of being is knowledge of truth. Here, Heidegger referred to the Greek word "αλήθεια," which translates as "truth," but literally means "unveiling." Humans are capable of understanding the revelation of being because they are a special type of being. Heidegger characterized humans as Dasein, which means "being-there" or "presence." Humans, as Dasein, are present in the world but do not dissolve into it. Through their presence in the world, they are able to understand it. Humans also understand themselves only through their reflection in the world. Knowledge of the world can occur through two pathways: ontic and ontological. The ontic method is employed by natural science, while the ontological method is used by philosophy. Only the ontological method of knowledge allows one to grasp being as revelation. Humans understand the world and themselves in time, meaning that humans contemplate being because they exist in time. Awareness of the inevitability of death drives humans to focus on being. This presentation of understanding, as a fundamental human activity, gives Heidegger’s hermeneutical problem a new resonance in philosophy.

Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) played a role in the development of 20th-century hermeneutics as significant as Friedrich Schleiermacher’s role in 19th-century hermeneutics. His initial concern was with the method of knowledge. Gadamer wrote that the method employed by natural science is not the only means of knowledge and cannot be declared universal. Positivists, who dominated philosophy at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, emphasized that since natural science had achieved tremendous success, its method was the most effective and should be adopted by other fields of knowledge. This call found followers among historians, psychologists, sociologists, and others who sought to align their fields with natural science. Gadamer argued that the method of natural science is not universal, and its indiscriminate application to all fields of knowledge would only lead to the destruction of the particularities of those fields. Gadamer posited that aesthetic, historical, and linguistic methods are equally effective in revealing truth and allowing subjects of knowledge to engage with it.

A historian’s task is characterized by the fact that they always approach the subject of their research with pre-existing knowledge. It is impossible and unnecessary to rid oneself of this knowledge. Gadamer referred to this pre-understanding as "prejudgment." The discovery of this phenomenon is Gadamer's main achievement in hermeneutics. Before encountering a phenomenon, a person already possesses some knowledge that affects their understanding of the essence of the subject. No one can rid themselves of prejudgment, and therefore, it always influences knowledge. On the other hand, it is not necessary to eliminate it. Without prejudgment, further knowledge acquisition is impossible. Prejudgment forms the horizon of understanding, which is the circle of knowledge that enables understanding new subjects. One understands only what falls within their horizon of understanding. For example, a person who knows nothing about China will not understand a lecture on Chinese history, and a person who does not know Spanish will not understand Spanish poetry in its original language. For two people to communicate, their horizons of understanding must at least partially overlap. When new information enters the horizon of understanding, it not only becomes comprehensible but also expands the horizon of understanding. For instance, if someone knows Spanish, they can understand Spanish poetry, which significantly increases their knowledge and horizon of understanding.

Heidegger and Gadamer established the 20th-century hermeneutic tradition, which is based on the belief that understanding is a unique human capacity conditioned by prior knowledge or prejudgment, and it is the fundamental method of knowledge in the humanities, particularly history. The 20th century also saw other philosophers who made significant contributions to the development of hermeneutics but sought to continue the tradition of Dilthey, who emphasized that understanding is only possible through immersion in the situation, or as Dilthey put it, "living into" the situation. This group included Georg Misch (1878-1965), a student of Dilthey, Hans Lipps (1889-1941), Otto Friedrich Bollnow (1903-1991), and others. All emphasized the necessity of considering the lifeworld in which a text arises for understanding the text. Overall, the discourse on hermeneutics in the 19th and 20th centuries was centered in Germany.

Hermeneutics remains a key topic in contemporary philosophical discourse, with philosophers exploring new aspects of the issue. Karl-Otto Apel (1922-2017) identified thought with language. He argued that thought is nothing other than language. The peculiarity of language is that it serves as a means of communication among people; there is no such thing as individual language. Thus, understanding is also only possible within a society. Anyone who speaks tries to speak in a way that those who listen understand them. Therefore, the hermeneutic situation encompasses not only the text and the interpreter but also the person for whom the interpreter is interpreting the text. For instance, if a translator translates a text from Greek so that it can be read in Ukraine, they translate it into Ukrainian, the language understood by those for whom they are making the text accessible. The interpreter must primarily consider the person for whom they are interpreting the text. Thus, interpretation is the unveiling of the text for a communicative community, that is, a community that speaks the same language.

The French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) posited that the entire world of humans is a text or narrative. If hermeneutics is the art of understanding a text, and the human world is a text, then understanding is the principal activity of humans. Ricoeur emphasized that the problem of understanding has been given too little attention in the history of philosophy. Philosophers have studied humans and the world meticulously, but they cannot be understood without considering the connection between them, which is understanding. The same text can be interpreted very differently depending on the horizon of understanding of the interpreter and the community for whom the interpretation is made. Ricoeur referred to the possibility of varying interpretations of a text as textual polysemy.