Truth and Method

by

Hans-Georg Gadamer

Hermeneutics to Deconstruction

Book Reflection and Analysis

Laurence Ryan V. Mata

Introduction;

What is the truth is the question that arises to man’s thought when he or she encounters

absurdity or doubt. It was because man was not endowed with knowledge when he was born in

this world. He is not like the angels which is spiritual and has full knowledge of everything. Man

is bound in space and time, he is both corporeal and spiritual being. This is the reason why man’s

approach to know what is true is a continuous trial and error. Though man has no full access to

knowledge of everything it does not follow that he can no longer know a thing. Learning through

the use of reason is a unique attribute of man that distinguishes him from beast and any other

living things that grows in this world. Through the length of time man learned how to maximize

the use of reason and developed different methods in learning to gain access to the meaning of

the things around him. Through the use of reason combined with man’s creativity, man continues

to discover and invent new things. This is the reason why the world continues to develop in time

up to this modern world.

The development in this world did not happen as quick as a lightning bolt. Man’s

progress is in reason and invention is like building a house or like a growing tree. Piece by piece

man begin to put things in order. Layer by layer man begin to experience growth and

development. But even though we are living in the world that seems to be progressive and

already modern, there is still a continuous progress and a deep search for true meaning of things.

Man is not satisfied with what he has or have. Man is still capable to something more and he

becomes so restless in trying to look for answers which is very difficult to find. It is as if the

world that we are in now is a big puzzle that is unending. It is difficult. The more that we put a

piece of a puzzle the more that the whole picture seem to be lacking and incomprehensible. It is

as if that the more man answer a specific question a more difficult series of questions is starting
to pop out in reason. The more progress that man seem to have the farther he goes to the real

meaning of things around him most especially the meaning of his life. As time goes on and on

like a passing shadow the more that man needs to catch up. Every minute that counts is already

part of history that man needs to understand.

Philosophy is an ancient discipline. It already branches out to different methods and

parts. Studying philosophy is important because it gives us wisdom and knowledge about the

things around us. In short it tries to bring man to the ultimate cause of everything. Philosophy

tries to give meaning in life that man may learn how to live this life on this passing world.

Philosophizing will continue as long as there is reason and the material world that exist. A

philosopher cannot claim that he has the full knowledge of everything. That is an ambitious

claim and contradictory to the truth. Man reason is limited. As what Immanuel Kant said in his

Critique of Pure Reason: “man has this peculiar fate that with reference to one class of its

knowledge, it is always troubled with questions which cannot be ignored because they spring

from the very nature of reason and which cannot be answered because they transcend the powers

of human reason.”1 In the end Kant said that we can only know what appears. Man has its own

limit and he is inviting us to remember what Plato said about the knowledge of oneself. Is man

really capable of understanding and knowing things beyond the island of truth? To the

metaphysical realm which became for man an unending arena of debate. This is the reason why

metaphysics is not yet a science. The argument in philosophy since ancient times continues, as I

mentioned earlier, as long as there is reason and the material world, philosophizing will continue

maybe until the end of time.

1
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Practical Reason. Translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbot. London: Longmans, Green
and Co. Ltd, 1963.
 According to Plato, philosophy is nothing if it will not teach us how to live and die. Why

do man desire’s to know the truth? Why are we attracted to truth? Maybe because we are

uncertain. Maybe Martin Heidegger was right in his idea of the thrownness, we are beings

thrown in this world whether we like it or not we must exist on our own without asking our

opinion where to be placed in this world. Sometimes our feeling of helplessness and ignorance

could bring us to search for truth and meaning about our own life and about our own existence.

The search for meaning troubles our human mind. We continue to look for the truth. We

are like the five blind persons who were asked to describe what an elephant is. The first blind

person is holding the elephant’s legs and claimed that an elephant is like a very strong tree. The

second blind man is holding the elephant’s tail and rebuked the first blind man and claimed that

the elephant is like a rope. The third blind man laughed. He is toughing the elephant’s belly and

said no, an elephant is like a wall. The Forth blind man exclaimed that they are all wrong. He is

holding the elephant’s tusk and said an elephant is a pointed sharp thing. The fifth person, who

happens to be the last one to describe the elephant is holding the elephant’s trunk. Because there

was wind and sort of water coming out of the elephant’s trunk he tried to put its end on his face

and said that an elephant is like a big hose, and invited the four blind me to come and drink the

water from the elephant. I already added some anecdotes to the story but the message that the

story is trying to portray is relevant to what this paper is trying to reflect about. This paper is

trying to work on Truth and Method. We cannot laugh at the five blind men as they describe to

each other what they experience. What they experienced was something very real and true for

them because it came from their very own experience and there is a latin saying, Non experientia

patet, or experientiis non disputandum. Meaning to say we cannot argue from experience. It just

happened that the five men has limitations, they were blind, but their limitation is not the limit of
what they can know. Perhaps if they combine their answers together and analyze it further, they

can have a better picture of what an elephant is. Philosophy is also like this. It is not a work of a

single man. It is a combination of different thoughts and ideas that was passed through

generation. To question and to combine the different ideas of great thinkers can forms a big

picture of meaning and truth. Man is not an island in knowing and reasoning about the things

around him. Yet though man is not an island, each man is unique and has a unique and specific

access to the meaning of things. Each person is unique and there can be no copy even though this

modern world can make clones or something. Each will vary from their experience in world,

experience is important because it is the means to gain access to the knowledge of the things

around him.

The Science of Hermeneutics

In a prayer composed by the Angelic Doctor of the Church, Thomas of Aquinas, he said,

Lord, true source of light and wisdom, give us a keen sense of UNDERSTANDING, a retentive

memory and capacity to grasp things correctly.” The Angelic Doctor asked for a keen sense of

understanding. Why did the Angelic Doctor asked for the gift of understanding and not the gift

of knowledge or immediate wisdom? St. Thomas, though he was given the title of Angelic

Doctor doesn’t have the mind or knowledge like an Angel. He was not infused with divine

knowledge. He uses his reason in order to understand things. He developed a certain habit in

study through discipline. He disciplined himself very well in study of divine truths. He was

called an Angelic Doctor because of his chastity that seems to surpass those of Angels who

girded his loins with the mystical cord of chastity. Understanding for St. Thomas is habit. He

said in his summa that, “what is known in itself, is as a principle, and is at once understood by

the intellect: wherefore the habit that perfects the intellect for the consideration of such truth is
called UNDERSTANDING, which is the habit of principles.” 2 In order for St. Thomas to

Understand he must develop a habit of understanding. In a biography written about St. Thomas,

biographers claim that when St. Thomas was asked about the most wonderful gift that he

received he mentioned that ‘I understand every page that I read.’ This is hermeneutics.

Hermeneutics is a knowledge of hindsight and foresight that enables man to see the whole

picture in order to gain understanding of its true meaning. It is not cockeyed. This is the reason

why the symbol of philosophy is an owl. It is because an owl can turn and move around his head.

Meaning to say he has a wide view of the things around him, he is able to see his front and can

immediately turn his head to see his back.

Hermeneutics is the science of interpretation or understanding. To understand is to

somehow see. Interpretation is a kind of seeing things in order to know. There is a need to

interpret because knowledge is not exact. We need to assess our understanding in exact science

and more understanding and interpretation is required in the human sciences because they are not

always the same. There is a need for interpretation because knowledge needs investigation.

Knowledge is not served in a silver platter and it is not always clear. Hans-Georg Gadamer wrote

a book about hermeneutics and the title of his book is Truth and Method.

The entire book is composed of three parts. These three major parts are still subdivided

into different topics. The first major part of Gadamer’s book is about the question of truth as it

emerges in the experience. The Second major part is the extension of the question of truth to

understanding in the human sciences. The last part but not the least of them all is the ontological

shift of hermeneutics guided by language.

Geman Terminologies

2
I-II, Q. 57, Art. 2
 Gadamer wrote his book in his own German Language. What I can access, since I have

no background of German language is only the translation of his work. But even though it is

already translated in English, there are still German terminologies that is being used because the

whole thought has no perfect equivalent to that of the English language. This is also to preserve

the brilliance of Gadamer’s thought. Language is a limitation but it is also the access of a greater

understanding.

The first major part of Gadamer’s book is about the question of truth as it emerges in the

experience primarily experience of an art. Erlebnisse is the German term that Gadamer used and

it is translated in English as ‘experience.’ If it is an experience of an art, an aesthetic experience.

This particular art experience also has an equivalent term in German as Erfahrung together with

Gebilde which translated in English language as ‘structure’.

Concepts

Gadamer found in looking at art a way or a method in understanding meaning. For

Gadamer believed that the art of play, the art of music, paintings or any other forms of art as

something not subjective but already structural even though art may seem to be a sort of a copy

of a copy of the ideal world man is still able to meditate on art and this process of meditation is

called ‘Vermittlung’. Communication process withdraws the possible meaning that we can get in

looking at an art. The process of communication withdraws from prominence.

In part II of Gadamer’s Truth and Method he mentioned the idea and importance of

philology in historical science. The science of Philology is a historica, for within which it studies

history and its language to a literary form. Consciousness is also in line with tradition and
history. It is to say that our consciousness is a historically affected consciousness. This

consciousness has the notion of ‘Gehoren’ or belonging. This belonging is belonging to history.

Gadamer also points out the importance of listening as a tool of validating things. It also

comes from ‘Gehoren’, ‘Horen’ which is translated ‘to listen to’, to obey or to hear is a tool of

validating. This happens when each person conversing grant what “is due” to the subject matter,

to about biases and one sided part of the whole truth. Through communication only when two

parties agrees to listen to one another with the common subject matter, then the term is called

“belong” or “gehoren”.

As this undergoing or the process of belonging continues, then it becomes a certain

tradition. This is called by Gadamer as “uberlieferung” or tradition. This tradition leads to a task

or a responsibility because it opens us to our limitation in understanding. This is the main

concern of Gadamer, the idea of understanding or “Verstehen”

Understanding is not just one of the various possible behaviors of the subject,

but the mode of being of There-being (Dasein) itself. This is the sense in which

the term ‘hermeneutics’ has been here. It denotes the basic being-in-motion of

There-being which constitutes its finiteness and historicity, and hence includes

the whole of its experience of the world.3

Heidegger formed a great influence to Gadamer’s thoughts. It is quite obvious in this

paragraph. For Gadamer, the science of hermeneutics is not just an occasional tool which we can

take up to expose some hidden meanings, as in the exegetical and philological traditions. It is

also not a general classifying method of the human sciences, as what other philosophers of

hermeneutics attempted to do. Gadamer focusses on being, our very own being, what is so called
3
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1988), p. xviii
“existential distinction.” It is in the human existence, for human existence in the realm of being

is hermeneutical through and through. Humans like us can understand, can mean and can

interpret. We always understand something. There is the world, the material world that we relate

interpretively to. We can somehow grasp it, mean it, and give significance into it, and this makes

understanding, ontological.

“Verstandigung”

Verstandigung is the process of coming to understanding with someone. There are three

ways in which Gadamer expanded the understanding. According to Gadamer it is a three way

relation in which one person understand a thing with the other.

Person A + Person B + Subject

To understand something is not to turn the self into an object. The process is like

knowing one’s way around. Self-understanding is not turning oneself into an object but it is

knowing one’s way around. There is a notion here of self-knowledge and consciousness in order

to know one’s way around in the process of understanding.

Here comes now the value of the human language in the process. Language matters most

in understanding. Language is the medium or the middle ground in the process of understanding.

Language is somehow equivalent to the German language ‘Vermittlung’.

Aesthetics

Gadamer offers an aesthetic of beauty which is open to all who sees. Beauty becomes a

universal thought of understanding, a phenomenon.

 This beauty comes to the person in the form of light like being enlightened. This is

similar when we find out the truth when it comes to a person in an event. Something that

belongs to the specific temporal nature of our human identity.

Man can find beauty anywhere in this world. He can find beauty in nature, or in the face

of another person. Man can find beauty in arts or in music. One particular example is looking at

the beauty of sunrise or a sunset. The beauty that it gives as the person witness the

transformation from darkness into light or from light into darkness is similar to man’s

understanding. When a person realizes some truth about himself in the world, the idea that the

truth rush forth directly into one’s consciousness is like gazing at beauty.

Geisteswissenschaften

Gadamer contrasted natural sciences from the human sciences. Gadamer claims that the

scientific method are the method of the modern sciences but it is not the method to be used in the

human sciences. Gadamer said “in understanding tradition not only are texts understood, but

insights are acquired and truths known.” 4

The critique on the aesthetic consciousness does not only pertains the artwork. The

method itself is for a scientific conception of truth that constitute the science of hermeneutics.

The hermeneutics for Gademer is not about the methodology of the human science but of

understanding what the human science truly are. It is like the process of knowing oneself or the

method of self-knowledge.

1. Methodological self-consciousness of the human sciences.

2. Connection with the experience of the world.

4
Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. xxvi
 Kant became famous because of his work on the critique of pure reason. This work is a

critique of human reason, an attempt of making metaphysics a science. Kant’s influence to

philosophers who followed after him was a very positive influence, for he was able to leave them

questions and conditions which a philosopher cannot just ignore or set aside. Gadamer was

influenced by this Kantian question which asks, what are the conditions of our knowledge, by

virtue of which modern science is possible, and how far does it extend?

Kant was not the only philosopher which influence Gadamer. Heideger also made a big

impact in Gadamer’s thoughts. We get to know things base from our experience of things in

space and time. Experience in the world as Heidegger mentioned is from his idea of dasein as
5
being in the world. This thought also involves finitude and historicity. This universe wherein

we can accumulate knowledge and meaning according to Gadamer is a work of art. “The

hermeneutic universe is a work of art.” This statement is important in order for us to understand

Gadamer’s main thesis.

“Discovering what is common to all works of understanding and to show that

understanding is never a subjective relation to a given ‘object’ but to the

history of its effect; in other words, understanding belongs to the being of that

which is understood.”6

Again like Kant, Gadamer is trying to make an appeal toward understanding.

Understanding is never a subjective relation to a given ‘object’. Understanding always belongs to

history and the possible effect of history. Understanding is and always belongs to the being. This

being is that which is understood.

5
Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. xxx.
6
Ibid, xxxi.
 “My real concern was and is philosophic: not what we do or what we ought to do, but

what happens to us over and above our wanting and doing.”7 Self-knowledge and self-evaluation

is the first thing that a philosopher of the mind must consider. Why? In order for the philosopher

to know what he ought to do. Knowledge is not the main goal of philosophizing. There is a need

to gain knowledge in philosophy but it is not always and anywhere the goal of philosophy for

philosophy is for living a practical life. Knowledge is there to teach us how to live in this world

and how to limit our thinking. It is not always about what we want to do or accomplish,

sometimes we need to examine ourselves whether we can or we cannot do the things that we

really ought to do.

“The finitude or the finite nature of one’s own understanding is the manner in

which reality, resistance, the absurd, and the unintelligible assert themselves.

If one takes this finitude seriously, one must take the reality of history seriously

as well.”8

Understanding works in our finitude. We are not infinite beings, our understanding is

more human and not divine, and understanding works in our humanity as the divine also reveals

to us in our humanity, according to our finitude. Therefore we must give importance to our

finitude for understanding works in that same level. If we take importance to our finitude we

must also consider the reality of history very well.

The truth of the other is revealed by the other. We cannot fully claim that we know the

other being even ourselves unless that being reveals himself. It is also the same with historical

tradition. And this being in history that can only be understood is language. Language through

7
Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. xxviii
8
Ibid, xxxv.
experience can only be understood only if we understand what is happening. From this idea now

enters the problem of phenomenological immanence. According to Gadamer, “play and language

are intended in a purely phenomenological sense.”9

Knowledge of the self or self-knowledge plays a very important role in philosophy. Self-

knowledge is not just the persistent posing of ultimate questions but the sense of what is feasible,

what is possible, what is correct, here and now. Gadamer proposes that:

“the philosopher of all people, must I think, be aware of the tension between what he

claims to achieve and the reality in which he finds himself.”10

Conclusion

Socrates’ dictum about the un-researched life is not to be lived by man becomes very

prominent in every philosophical thought. It affected many philosophers to claim and theorize

philosophy as a way of living and not purely reason and gaining knowledge. Plato continues to

add that philosophy is nothing if it will not teach us how live and how to die.

Going back again to the life of St. Thomas Aquinas, his life somehow reflects what Hans-

Georg Gadamer is saying about, understanding, hermeneutics, and the importance of self-

knowledge in the process. St. Thomas became known for his gift of understanding and

hermeneutical sense. He is also known for what he said in the near end of his life which

exemplify the idea of the knowledge of the self. After all the magnimus and brilliant writings of

St. Thomas on philosophy and theology, he has the courage to say that his writing are merely

straw compared to the knowledge that was revealed to me. The angelic doctor was not ashamed

to say that his s glorious work on philosophy are merely straw. This shows that Thomas is

9
Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. xviii.
10
Ibid, xviii.
working in a finite way and is knowledgeable about his ability and the limits of his very own

understanding as a human. Yet in what seems to be his limitation, truth manifest itself to him

after his lifelong discipline of studying. This was supported by Gadamer’s words when he said,

philosophical hermeneutics he said, “understands itself not as an absolute position but as a way

of experience. It insists that there is no higher principle than holding oneself open in a

conversation.”11 This teaches us the “discipline of questioning and research, a discipline that

guarantees truth.”12 There is no absolute interpretation. Gadamer points out that an interpreter of

a text or a philosopher cannot pontificate a certain understanding or interpretation. This is the

reason why hermeneutics is one of the challenging branch of philosophy because it is always

changing. If truth is historical hence temporal, man cannot access the absolute truth. Truth is not

fixed in a single thought, unless or course you have the mind of God who is Truth Himself. Truth

for man is not fixed it is always an alithea or the unveiling of truth in the mind. This truth

uncovering is like the work of art.

Truth is a gradual revelation like what St. Thomas has experienced in his life on earth. He

struggle many trials and difficulties in his search for truth. It is because truth is a gradual

revelation, also known as alithea. This makes a very difficult access to truth because truth is

gradually changing and absolute. Only divine truth never change. That is why when God

appeared to St. Thomas and said, ‘you have written well of me Thomas, what it is that you

desire?’ Thomas answered back, ‘nothing more Lord but you.’ In short Thomas asked for The

Truth for The Truth is no other than God Himself. He said “I am the way, the Truth and the life.”

After Thomas received this revelation from God, he stopped writing. He compared his writings

to a bunch of straw that we find in the farm. This is not to suggest his brethren to stop searching

11
Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, p. 189.
12
Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 447.
for the truth. He is trying to give his brothers a challenge to add more straws of knowledge to

what he had already contributed for he was not capable anymore.

Interpretation is not a monopoly of a single mind of a person. Each person can always

add something. No matter how little it may seem as to compare it to a bunch of straw, it will

always be a contribution to the knowledge and wisdom in this world.