Abstract
In Being and Time §32 Heidegger discusses the hermeneutic circle of understanding, the
thesis that all interpretation should already have understood that what is to be interpreted:
We shall call the development of understanding interpretation. In interpretation
understanding appropriates what it has understood in an understanding way. […]
Interpretation is existentially based in understanding, and not the other way
around.
Wrathall identifies three theses in this account. (Wrathall, 2013)
1. Understanding Has Primacy Over Cognition
2. Interpretation Develops and Appropriates What Is Understood in the Understanding
3. Interpretation Pervades Understanding-Comportment
If coupled with two interpretative mistakes these theses are inconsistent. The first mistake
is to misconstrue the primacy of understanding over cognition as the priority of one type of
activity over another. The second is to think of interpretation as making explicit what is
inexplicit in skillful comportment. The inconsistency is: “if interpretation is necessarily
cognitive in nature, and interpretation pervades all our understanding engagements with
the world, then we have no grounds for asserting the primacy of practice over cognition.”
To evade the inconsistency Wrathall offers a horizontal reading in which
understanding is a non-conceptual seeing of possibilities in reality. “Interpretation, by
contrast, is an act in which one appropriates the understanding and develops it through a
commitment to particular significations disclosed in the understanding.”
I argue that Wrathall’s interpretation is incomplete. In his lectures Heidegger
emphasized the need for philosophy to go back to the factic position of Dasein: we need to
deconstruct the concepts of everyday life and we need to work our way back to the original
position of factic existence. Crucial in this regard is the hermeneutical method of formal
indication:
In the formal indication one stays away from any classification; everything is
precisely kept open. The formal indication has meaning only in relation to the
phenomenological explication. (M. Heidegger, 2004, 44)
Concepts in the factic situation only formally indicate and as such allow for several possible
interpretations.
This is what the circle of understanding amounts to: it is a continuous movement
from the original, factic situation to a specific interpretation and via deconstruction back
again to the factic, philosophical starting point. This provides a conceptual background to
conceive of the hermeneutical circle. In understanding (Verstehen) concepts are already
present, but these concepts only formally indicate a direction into which interpretations
(Auslegungen) can be developed.
thesis that all interpretation should already have understood that what is to be interpreted:
We shall call the development of understanding interpretation. In interpretation
understanding appropriates what it has understood in an understanding way. […]
Interpretation is existentially based in understanding, and not the other way
around.
Wrathall identifies three theses in this account. (Wrathall, 2013)
1. Understanding Has Primacy Over Cognition
2. Interpretation Develops and Appropriates What Is Understood in the Understanding
3. Interpretation Pervades Understanding-Comportment
If coupled with two interpretative mistakes these theses are inconsistent. The first mistake
is to misconstrue the primacy of understanding over cognition as the priority of one type of
activity over another. The second is to think of interpretation as making explicit what is
inexplicit in skillful comportment. The inconsistency is: “if interpretation is necessarily
cognitive in nature, and interpretation pervades all our understanding engagements with
the world, then we have no grounds for asserting the primacy of practice over cognition.”
To evade the inconsistency Wrathall offers a horizontal reading in which
understanding is a non-conceptual seeing of possibilities in reality. “Interpretation, by
contrast, is an act in which one appropriates the understanding and develops it through a
commitment to particular significations disclosed in the understanding.”
I argue that Wrathall’s interpretation is incomplete. In his lectures Heidegger
emphasized the need for philosophy to go back to the factic position of Dasein: we need to
deconstruct the concepts of everyday life and we need to work our way back to the original
position of factic existence. Crucial in this regard is the hermeneutical method of formal
indication:
In the formal indication one stays away from any classification; everything is
precisely kept open. The formal indication has meaning only in relation to the
phenomenological explication. (M. Heidegger, 2004, 44)
Concepts in the factic situation only formally indicate and as such allow for several possible
interpretations.
This is what the circle of understanding amounts to: it is a continuous movement
from the original, factic situation to a specific interpretation and via deconstruction back
again to the factic, philosophical starting point. This provides a conceptual background to
conceive of the hermeneutical circle. In understanding (Verstehen) concepts are already
present, but these concepts only formally indicate a direction into which interpretations
(Auslegungen) can be developed.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publication status | Published - 9 Jun 2023 |