UNQUIET UNDERSTANDING, Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics
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loginIf there can be no last word in philosophical hermeneutics, there can be nofirst. The question is how and where to join a continuing “conversation.”Gadamer’s hermeneutics has evolved in large part as a response to provoca-tive questions concerning the finitude and subjectivity of understanding inthe work of Dilthey and Heidegger. The character of that response is farfrom settled. The Wirkungsgeschichteof Gadamer’s We rk econtinues to un-fold. This essay seeks to answer some of the key questions prompted byGadamer’s hermeneutics and to contribute to its discussion of the relation-ship between language and understanding. This is not an essay on Gadamerper se. Though he may have coined the term philosophical hermeneutics, whatis at play within the movement of thought it represents far exceeds his au-thorship. This essay endeavors to critically engage with and draw out thepractical and ethical implications of philosophical hermeneutics. It concen-trates on the question of what happens to us when we “understand.” Theconcern with the “event” of understanding is reflected in two of the essay’sprincipal themes, translation and transcendence. How does the act of trans-lating the strange and the foreign into a more familiar idiom effect a moment of transcendence in which we come to understand ourselves dif-ferently? How does the work of hermeneutics work?
