TEXT AND INTERPRETATION “

HANS-GEORG GADAMER
Translated by Dennis J. Schmidt
aE

The problems of hermeneutics were initially developed from the

point of departure of the special sciences, from theology and juris-
prudence in particular, and in the end even from the historical
sciences. Yet, already in German romanticism we find the profound
insight that Dilthey formulated in remarking that understanding and
interpretation not only come into play in expressions of life that are
fixed in writing, but rather concern the general relation of people to
one another and to the world. In German this has even left an imprint
upon words that are derived from the word for ‘understanding’
[Verstehen], such as the word for ‘communication’ [Verstandnis].>-
Thus, “Verstehen’ also means ‘fiir etwas Verstandnis haben’. The

a. Translator’s note: An earlier version of this paper was delivered on

November 20, 1982 as part of the ‘‘Perspectives of Interpretation”’ series in the
conferences on the philosophy of the human sciences at Temple University. A
subsequent, and greatly expanded, development of this paper and its themes
was delivered in Paris a year later. That paper, along with a commentary by
Derrida and Gadamer’s reply to Derrida has been published in Philippe
Forget, ed. Text und Interpretat (Miinchen: Fink Verlag, 1984), pp. 25-55. This
version is printed with permission from the author.

b. Translator’s note: There is no equivalent in English for the linguistic example

given here. Verstandnis can mean ‘understanding’, ‘comprehension’, ‘com-
munication’, ‘intelligence’, ‘sympathy’; Verstehen is the nominative form of
the verb ‘to understand’; fiir etwas Verstindnis haben means ‘to have an ap-
preciation for something.’

377
378 HERMENEUTICS AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY

ability to understand is a fundamental endowment of man, one that

sustains his communal life with others and, above all, one that takes
place by way of language and the partnership of conversation. In this
respect, the universal claim of hermeneutics is beyond all doubt. On
the other hand, however, the linguisticality of the communicative
event [Verstindigungsgeschehen], which is in play between people,
signifies nothing less than an insurmountable barrier, the
metaphysical significance of which was also evaluated positively for
the first time by German romanticism. It is formulated in the
sentence: Individuum est ineffabile. This sentence points toa limit of an-
cient ontology (at any rate, it cannot be documented in the medieval
period). However, for the romantic consciousness it meant that
language never touches upon the last, insurmountable secret of the
individual person. This expresses the feeling for life that characteriz-
ed the romantic age in a particularly telling manner, and it points to
an inherent law of linguistic expression, which not only sets the limits
of linguistic expression but also determines its significance for the for-
mation of the common sense that unites people.
I believe that it is helpful to recall these historical antecedents of our
present formulation of the question. The consciousness of method
found in the historical sciences, which flourished as a result of roman-
ticism, and the influence exerted by the successful model of the
natural sciences led philosophical reflection to restrict the universality
of the hermeneutical experience to its scientific form. The full extent
of the fundamental hermeneutical experience is to be found neither in
Wilhelm Dilthey, who attempted to ground the social sciences in their
historicality by way of the conscious continuation of the ideas of
Friedrich Schleiermacher and his romantic compatriots, nor in the
neo-Kantians, who worked toward an epistemological justification of
the human studies within the framework of a transcendental critique
of culture and values. This lack of any view encompassing the full ex-
tent of hermeneutic experience might even have been more pro-
nounced in the homeland of Kant and transcendental idealism than
in countries where ‘les Lettres’ played a meaningful role in public life.
In the end, however, philosophical reflection everywhere went in a
similar direction.
Thus I took as my own point of departure the critique of the
idealism and methodologism of the epistemological era. Heidegger’s
extention of the concept of understanding to an existential, that is to a
fundamental categorical determination of human existence, was of
 Text and Interpretation 379

particular importance for me. That was the impetus that motivated
me to critically go beyond the discussion of method and to expand the
formulation of the hermeneutic question so that it not only took
Science into account, but the experience of art and of history as well.
With acritical and polemical intent in his analysis of understanding,
Heidegger followed the example of former discussions of the herme-
neutic circle, maintaining it in its positivity and conceptualizing it in
his analysis of Dasein. However, one should not forget that what is at
stake in this issue is not a matter of circularity as a metaphysical
metaphor, but rather the structure of a logical concept that finds its
real place in the theory of scientific proof as the doctrine of circulus
vitiosus. The hermeneutic circle says that in the domain of under-
standing there can be absolutely no derivation of one from the other,
so that here the logical fallacy of circularity does not represent a
mistake in procedure, but rather the most appropriate description of
the structure of understanding. Thus, Dilthey introduced the discus-
sion of the hermeneutical circle as a means of separating himself from
the post-Schleiermachian scientific epoch. If, along with this, one
bears in mind the true extend that everyday speech accords to the
concept of understanding, then one sees that the discussion of the
hermeneutic circle is in fact directed toward the structure of Being-in-
the-world itself, that is toward the overcoming of the subject-object
bifurcation that was the primary thrust of Heidegger’s transcendental
analysis of Dasein. Just as one who uses a tool does not treat that tool
as an object, but works with it, so too the understanding in which Da-
sein understands itself in its Being and in its world is not a way of
comporting itself toward definite objects of knowledge, but is rather
the carrying out of Being-in-the-world itself. With this the hermeneu-
tical doctrine of method, which bore the imprint of Dilthey,
transformed itself into a hermeneutics of facticity, which was guided
by Heidegger’s inquiry into Being and which included the retrospec-
tive questioning of historicism and of Dilthey.
As is well known, the later Heidegger completely discarded the
concept of hermeneutics because he realized that he would never be
able to break through the sphere of transcendental reflection in this
manner. His philosophizing, which in the ‘Kehre’ attempted to com-
plete this withdrawal from the concept of the transcendental, increas-
ingly encountered such difficultires with language that many readers
of Heidegger came to believe that there was more poetry than
philosophical thought to be found in his work. I believe of course that
380 HERMENEUTICS AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY

this view is a mistake, and so one of my own motives was to look for
ways in which Heidegger’s discussion of Being, which is not the Be-
ing of beings, can be legitimated. That effort led me once again to in-
tense work on the history of classical hermeneutics, and it compelled
me to emphasize what new insights were brought to light by the cri-
tique of this history. It seems to me that my own contribution to these
insights is the discovery that no conceptual language, not even what
Heidegger called the ‘language of metaphysics’, represents an un-
breakable constraint upon thought if the thinker only allows himself
to trust language; that is, if he engages in dialogue with other
thinkers and other ways of thinking. Thus, in full accord with
Heidegger’s critique of the concept of subject, whose hidden ground
he revealed as substance, I tried to conceive the original phenomenon
of language in dialogue. This effort entailed a hermeneutical reorien-
tation of dialectic, which had been developed by German Idealism as
the speculative method, with respect to the art of the living dialogue
in which the Socratic-Platonic movement of thought took place. This
reorientation of dialectic was not intended to lead to a merely
negative dialectic even though it was always conscious of the fun-
damental incompletability of the Greek dialectic. Rather, it
represented a correction of the ideal of method that characterized
modern dialectic as fulfilling itself in the idealism of the Absolute.
This same interest led me to search for the hermeneutical structure in
the experience of art and of history itself, which the so-called social
sciences have as their ‘objects’, rather than initially in the experience
that is treated by science. No matter how much the work of art may
appear to be an historical given, and thus a possible object of scientific
research, it is always the case that it says something to us, and it does
so in such a way that its statement can never finally be exhausted in a
concept. Likewise, in the experience of history we find that the ideal
of the objectivity of historical research is only one side of the issue, in
fact a secondary side, because the special feature of historical ex-
perience is that we stand in the midst of an event without knowing
what is happening to us before we grasp what has happened in look-
ing backwards. Accordingly, history must be written anew by every
new present.
Ultimately, the same basic experience holds true for philosophy
and its history. Plato, who wrote only dialogues and never dogmatic
texts, is not alone in teaching us this lesson. For, in what Hegel calls
the speculative element in philosophy (which was at the basis of his
own observations of the history of philosophy), we are constantly
 Text and Interpretation 381

confronted with a challenge to bring into view this same element in

the dialectical method. Thus I tried to hold fast to the inexhaustibility
of the experience of meaning by developing the implications for
hermeneutics of the Heideggerian insight into the central significance
of finitude.
In this context, the encounter with the French philosophical scene
represents a genuine challenge for me. In particular, Derrida has
argued against the later Heidegger that Heidegger himself has not
really broken through the Logo-centrism of metaphysics. Derrida’s
contention is that insofar as Heidegger asks about the essence of truth
or the meaning of Being, he still speaks the language of metaphysics
which looks upon meaning as something preexisting that is to be
discovered [vorhandenen und aufzufindenen]. This being so, Nietzsche
is said to be more radical. His concept of interpretation does not entail
the discovery of a preexisting meaning, but the positing of meaning
in the service of the ‘Will to Power’. Only then is the Logo-centrism
of metaphysics really broken. In order to be consistent this develop-
ment and continuation of Heidegger’s insight, which Derrida views
as its radicalization, must discard Heidegger’s own presentation and
critique of Nietzsche. In this view Nietzsche is not regarded as the ex-
treme case of the forgetfulness of Being that culminates in the con-
cepts of value and will, but as representing the true overcoming of
metaphysics, the very metaphysics within with Heidegger remains
trapped when he asks about Being, or the meaning of Being, as if it
were a Logos to be discovered. Thus it was not enough that the later
Heidegger developed his special quasipoetical language in order to
escape the language of metaphysics; a language that with each new
essay by Heidegger seemed to be a new language and was always one
that required that each reader be constantly engaged as one’s own
translator of this language. To be sure, the extent to which one can
succeed in finding the language that fulfills this task is problematic;
however, the task is set, it is the task of ‘understanding’. Since my
confrontation with the French continuation of Heideggerian thought,
I have become aware that my own efforts to ‘translate’ Heidegger
testify to my own limits and especially indicate how deeply rooted I
am in the romantic tradition of the humanities and its humanistic
heritage. But it is precisely this very tradition of ‘historicism’ that sup-
ports me, against which I have tried to take a critical stand. Ina letter
that has since been published, Leo Strauss got to the heart of the mat-
ter in saying that for Heidegger it is Nietzsche, while for me it is
Dilthey, who forms the focal point of critique. It could be said that the
382 HERMENEUTICS AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY

distinctive feature of Heidegger’s radicality is that his own critique of

the Husserlian brand of neo-Kantianism put him in the position of
recognizing in Nietzsche the extreme culmination of that which he
called the history of the forgetfulness of Being. But this critical obser-
vation is immanent and is one that rather than being inferior to Nietz-
sche’s thought goes beyond him. Ifind that the French followers of
Nietzsche have not grasped the significance of the seductive and
tempting challenge of Nietzsche’s thought. It seems to me that only
in this way could they come to believe that the experience of Being
that Heidegger tried to uncover behind metaphysics is exceeded in
radicality by Nietzsche’s extremism. In truth, however, there is a
deep ambiguity that characterizes Heidegger’s image of Nietzsche in
that he follows Nietzsche into the most extreme positions and
precisely at that point he finds the excesses [Un-wesen] of metaphysics
at work insofar as in the valuing and revaluing of all values Being
itself becomes a value-concept in the service of the ‘Will to Power’.
Heidegger’s attempt to think Being goes far beyond such disintegra-
tion of metaphysics in the thinking of values, or better yet, he goes
back behind metaphysics itself without finding the satisfaction that
Nietzsche found in the extreme of its self-disintegration. Such retro-
spective questioning does not do away with the concept of Logos and
its metaphysical implications, rather it recognizes its one-sidedness
and concedes its superficiality. In this regard it is of decisive impor-
tance that ‘Being’ does not unfold totally in its self-manifestation, but
rather withholds itself and withdraws with the same originality with
which it manifests itself. This is the deep insight that was first main-
tained by Schelling in opposition to Hegel’s logical idealism. Heideg- .
ger takes up this question once again while applying to it the concep-
tual powers that Schelling lacked.
Thus my own efforts were directed toward not forgetting the limit
that is implied in every hermeneutical experience of meaning. When I
wrote the sentence ‘Being which can be understood is language,”’ it
was implied thereby that that which is can never be completely
understood. This is implied insofar as everything that goes under the
name of language always refers beyond that which achieves the
status of a proposition. That which is to be understood is that which
comes into language, but of course it is always that which is taken as
something, taken as true [wahr-genommen]. This is the hermeneutical
dimension in which Being ‘manifests itself’. In this sense I retained
the expression the ““hermeneutics of facticity,’’ and expression that
signifies a transformation of the meaning of hermeneutics. Of course,
 Text and Interpretation 383

in my attempt to describe the problems I followed the lead of the ex-

perience of meaning that occurs in language in order to point to the
limits that are posited for it. The Being-toward-the text from which I
took my orientation is certainly no match for the radicality of the limit
experience found in Being-toward-death, and just as little does the in-
completable question of the meaning of art or the meaning of history
as that which happens to us signify a phenomenon that is as original
as the question put to human Dasein of its own finitude. I can,
therefore, understand why the later Heidegger (and Derrida would
presumably agree with him on this point) was of the opinion that I
never really abandoned the sphere of phenomenological immanence
to which Husserl consistently held fast and which formed the basis of
my early training in neo-Kantianism. I can also understand why one
could believe that it is possible to recognize methodological ‘im-
manence’ in the holding fast to the hermeneutical circle; in fact, it
seems to me that the desire to break out of the circle cannot be fulfill-
ed, indeed such a demand is truly absurd. For this immanence is after
all nothing other than what it was for Schleiermacher and his suc-
cessor Dilthey, that is, a description of what understanding is. In
view of the scope of understanding, the circularity that moves be-
tween the one who understands and that which he understands can
lay claim to genuine universality, and it is precisely on this point that
I believe that I have followed Heidegger’s critique of the phenomeno-
logical concept of immanence, a critique that is addressed against
Husserl’s notion of an ultimate transcendental justification. The
dialogical character of language, which I tried to work out, leaves
behind the starting point in the subjectivity of the subject, even that
of the meaning-directed intentions of the speaker. What we find hap-
pening in speaking is not a mere reification of intended meaning, but
an endeavor that continually modifies itself, or better: a continually
recurring temptation to engage oneself in something or to become in-
volved with someone. But that means to expose oneself and to risk
oneself. Genuinely speaking one’s mind has little to do with a mere
explication and assertion of our prejudices; rather, it risks our prej-
udices—it exposes oneself to one’s own doubt as well as to the re-
joinder of the other. Who has not had the experience—especially
before the other whom we want to persuade—of how the reasons that
one had for one’s own view, and even the reasons that speak against
one’s own view rush into words. The mere presence of the other
before whom we stand helps us to break up our own bias and nar-
rowness even before he opens his mouth to make a reply. What
384 HERMENEUTICS AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY

becomes a dialogical experience for us here is not restricted to the

sphere of arguments and counterarguments the exchange and
unification of which may be the end meaning of every confrontation.
Rather, as the experiences that have been described indicate, there is
something else in this experience, namely, a potentiality of otherness
[Andersseins] that lies beyond every coming to agreement about what
is common. This is the limit that Hegel did not exceed. To be sure, he
did recognize the speculative principle that holds sway in ‘Logos’,
and he even introduced proofs of the identity of this principle in
dramatically concrete ways: he unfolded the structure of self-
consciousness and of ‘self-knowledge in the Being of the other’ as the
dialectic of recognition and brought this to the point of the struggle of
life and death. In a similar fashion, Nietzsche’s penetrating
psychological insights brought into view the ‘Will to Power’ as the
substrate even in all devotion and self-sacrifice: ‘There is the will to
power even in the slave.’’ However, for me, Heidegger remains
definitive when he finds the Logo-centricism of Greek ontology in the
self-centeredness of this tension between self-abandonment and self-
insistence to be continued in the sphere of arguments and counter-
arguments, and in the factual confrontation wherein it is embedded.
A limit of the Greek modes can be detected here, one that was
critically advanced by the Old Testament, Saint Paul, Luther, and
their modern reinterpreters. In the discovery of the celebrated
Socratic dialogue as the basic form of thought this dimension of
dialogue still does not come into conceptual consciousness. This fits
in quite well with the fact that a writer with the poetic imagination
and linguistic powers of Plato knew to portray the charismatic figure
of a Socrates so that the erotic tension that vibrates about the person
is really brought into view. But because Plato’s presentation of
Socrates shows that when leading the conversation Socrates always
insisted upon demanding an account from the other and upon
leading others back to themselves by convicting them of their
pretended wisdom, it is presupposed that the Logos is common to all
and does not belong to Socrates’ alone. Yet, as we already indicated,
the true depth of the dialogical principle first enters philosophical
consciousness in the twilight of metaphysics, in the epoch of German
romanticism, and then is rehabilitated in our century in opposition to
the subjective bias that characterized idealism. This is the point from
which I proceeded in asking two further questions. First, How do the
communality of meaning [Gemeinsamkeit des Sinnes], which is built up
 Text and Interpretation 385

in conversation, and the impenetrability of the otherness of the other

mediate each other? Second, What, in the final analysis, is
linguisticality? Is it a bridge or a barrier? Is it a bridge over which one
communicates with the other and builds sameness over the flowing
stream of otherness? Or is it a barrier that limits our self-abandon-
ment and that cuts us off from the possiblity of ever completely ex-
pressing ourselves and communicating with others?
In the framework of this general formulation of the question, the
concept of the text presents a special sort of challenge. That is
something that unites and perhaps even divides us from our French
colleagues. However that may be, this was my motivation in con-
fronting the theme ‘’Text and Interpretation’’ once again. How does
the text stand in relation to language? What is communication
[Verstandigung] between speakers? And why is it that something like
texts can be given to us in common? What does it mean that in this
process of communication with one another something emerges that,
like texts, is one and the same thing for us? How has the concept of
the text been able to undergo such a universal extension? It is obvious
to anyone who watches the philosophical tendencies of our century
that more is at stake in this theme than reflections upon the
methodology of the philological sciences. Text is more thanatitle for
the subject matter of literary research. Interpretation is more than the
technique of scientifically interpreting texts. In the twentieth century,
both of these concepts have acquired a new importance in the role
that they play in our view of knowledge and the world.
Of course, this shift is connected with the role that the
phenomenon of language has come to occupy in our thought. But
such a statement is tautological. That language has acquired a central
position in philosophical thought is, on its part, related to the turn
that philosophy took in the course of the last decades. That the ideal
of scientific knowledge, which modern science follows, came out of
the model of nature as mathematically ordered (a model that was first
developed by Galileo in his mechanics) meant that the linguistic in-
terpretation of the world, that is, the experience of the world that is
linguistically sedimented in the lived-world, no longer formed the
point of departure and the point of reference for the formulation of
questions or the desire for knowledge; rather, it meant that the
essence of science was constituted by that which could be accounted
for, or analyzed by, rational laws. In this way natural language lost its
unquestioned primacy, even if it did retain its own manner of seeing
386 HERMENEUTICS AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY

and speaking. A logical consequence of the implications of this

modern mathematized natural science was that in modern logic and
the theory of science the ideal of language was replaced by the ideal
of unequivocal notation. Thus, it is due to the nexus of limit ex-
periences, which restrict the claim to universality of the scientific ac-
cess to the world, that meanwhile natural language as a universal has
recaptured the center of philosophy.
Of course, this does not signify a mere return to the experiences of
the lived world and their linguistic sedimentation, which we know as
the dominant theme of Greek metaphysics, the logical analysis of
which led to Aristotlean logic and to grammatica speculativa. Rather, it
is no longer the logical achievement of language that is being con-
sidered, but language as language and as the schematization of our
access to the world. In this way, the original perspectives displace
one another. Within the German tradition, this led to a resumption of
romantic ideas—of Schlegel, Humboldt, and others. Neither in the
neo-Kantians nor in the first phenomenologists do we find the prob-
blem of language considered at all. Only in a second generation did
the midworld [Zwischenwelt] of language become a theme, thus we
find it in Ernst Cassirer and especially in Martin Heidegger, and in
the interesting contributions of Hans Lipps. In the British tradition
something similar is to be found in the developments that Wittgen-
stein made from his starting point in Russell. To be sure, the issue
here is not really one of a philosophy of language that is constructed
upon the basis of comparative linguistics, or of the ideal of construc-
ting a language that takes its place in a universal theory of signs;
rather, the issue is at the enigmatic connection between thinking and
speaking.
Thus, on the one hand, we have the theory of signs and linguistics,
which have led to new knowledge about the way in which linguistic
systems function and are constructed; and, on the other hand, we
have the theory of knowledge, which realized that it is language that
mediates any access to the world. Both theories cooperate in reinforc-
ing the point of departure of a philosophical justification of the scien-
tific access to the world. The assumption in this point of departure is
that the subject takes hold of empirical reality with methodological
self-certainty by means of its rational mathematical construction, and
that it then expresses this reality in propositional statements. In this
way the subject fulfills its true epistemological task, and this fulfill-
ment climaxes in the mathematical language with which natural
 Text and Interpretation 387

science defines itself as universally valid. The midworld

[Zwischenwelt] of language is left out of consideration here in princi-
ple. Insofar as it is once again coming into view as such, it
demonstrates against mathematical language the primary
mediatedness of all access to the world, and more than this, it
demonstrates the inviolability of the linguistic schema of the world.
The almost mythical status of self-consciousness, which was adopted
in its apodictic self-certainty as the origin and justification of all validi-
ty, and the ideal of afinal justification [Letztbegrundung] in general,
over which a priorism and empiricism fight, loses its credibility in the
face of the priority of the domain of language that we cannot under-
mine and in which all consciousness and all knowledge articulates
itself. From Nietzsche we learned to doubt the grounding of truth in
the self-certainty of self-consciousness. Through Freud we became ac-
quainted with the astonishing scientific discoveries that resulted from
taking these doubts seriously. And in Heidegger’s fundamental criti-
que of the concept of consciousness we have seen the conceptual pre-
judice that stems from Greek Logos-philosophy and that, in the
modern turn, put the concept of the subject in the center. All of this
contributed to the rediscovery of the priority of the ‘linguisticality’ of
our experience of the world. Over against the illusion of self-
consciousness as well as the naivity of a positive concept of facts, the
midworld of language has proven itself to be the true dimension of
that which is given.
From this one can understand the rise of the concept of interpreta-
tion. It is a word that originally arose out of the mediating relation,
the function of the intermediary between speakers of different
languages; that is, it originally concerned the translator and was then
transferred to the deciphering of texts that are difficult to understand.
In that moment when the midworld of language presented itself to
philosophical consciousness in its predetermined meaning, it had to
take a sort of pivotal position in philosophic interpretation. The career
of the word began with Nietzsche and become something of a
challenge to all positivism. Does this given exist from whose certain
point of departure knowledge can search for the universal, the law,
the rule, and so find its fulfillment? Is the given not in fact the result
of an interpretation? It is interpretation that performs the never fully
complete mediation between man and world, and to this extent the
sole actual immediacy and givenness is that we understand
something as something. The faith in Protokollsitze as the fundament
388 HERMENEUTICS AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY

of all knowledge did not last long even in the Vienna Circle. Even in
the domain of the natural sciences the hermeneutical consequences of
grounding of knowledge cannot be evaded, that is, that the so-called
given is not separable from interpretation.
Only in the light of interpretation does something become afact,
and an observation show itself to be expressible. Heidegger’s critique
of the phenomenological concept of consciousness and—similarly in
Scheler—of the concept of pure perception as dogmatic revealed itself
to be even more radical. Thus the hermeneutical understanding-of-
something-as-something was discovered even in the so-called
perception itself. In the final analysis, however, this means that inter-
pretation is not an additional or appended procedure of knowing but
constitutes the original structure of ‘Being-in-the-world’.
But does this mean that interpretation is an insertion [Einlegen] of
meaning and not a discovery [Finden] of meaning? This is obviously
the question, posed by Nietzsche, that decides the rank and extent of
hermeneutics as well as the objections of its opponents. In any case,
one need admit that the concept of text first comes to constitute a cen-
tral concept in the structure of linguisticality from out of the concept
of interpretation; indeed, the special mark of the concept of the text is
that it shows itself only in connection with interpretation and, from
the point of view of interpretation, as the authentic given that is to be
understood. This is true even in the dialogical process of coming to an
understanding insofar as one lets the disputed statements be
repeated and thereby pursues the intention to a binding formulation,
an event that culminates in reification of communication by way of a
transcript. In a similar manner the interpreter of a text asks what is
really in the text. This too can lead to a biased and prejudicial
response to the extent that everyone who asks a question tries to find
a direct confirmation of his own assumptions in the answer. But, in
such an appeal to that which is in the text, the text itself still remains
the first point of relation over and against the questionality, ar-
bitrariness, or at least multiplicity of the possibilities of interpretation
that are directed towards the text.
This is confirmed by the history of the word. The concept of ‘text’
has entered into modern speech from essentially two fields. On the
one hand, as the text of a written work whose interpretation was car-
ried out in sermons and church doctrine so that the text represents
the basis of all exegesis, which in turn presupposes the truths of faith.
The other natural use of the word ‘text’ we find in connection with
 Text and Interpretation 389

music. Here it is the text for song, for the musical interpretation of
words, and here too such a text is not so much a pregiven as it is a
residue of the performance of the song. Both of these natural ways of
using the word ‘text’ point back to the linguistic usage of the Roman
jurists of late antiquity who, by the codification of the laws, tried to
overcome the disputability of its interpretation and application. From
here the word found a wider extention so that it covered all that which
resists integration in experience and represents the return to the suppos-
ed given that would then provide a better orientation for understanding.
The metaphorical talk of the book of nature rests upon the same
foundations. It is that book the text of which was written by the hand
of God and that the researcher is called upon to decipher, namely to
render readabale and comprehensible by way of his interpretation.
Thus, we find the hermeneutical return to the text at work whenever
we encounter resistance to our primordial assumption of the mean-
ingfulness of the given. The intimacy with which text and interpreta-
tion are entangled is thoroughly apparent insofar as even the tradi-
tion of a text is not always reliable as a basis for an interpretation. In-
deed, it is often interpretation that first leads to the critical restoration
of the texts. There is therefore a methodological advantage to
be gained in making this inner relation of interpretation and text clear.
The methodological advantage, which results from this observation
made about language, is that here ‘text’ must be understood as a
hermeneutical concept. This implies that the text is not regarded from
the perspective of grammar and linguistics, and as divorced from any
content that it might have; that is, that it is not to be viewed as an end
product the production of which is the object of an analysis whose in-
tent is to explain the mechanism that allows language as such to func-
tion at all. From the hermeneutical standpoint—which is the stand-
point of every reader—the text is a mere intermediate product
[Zwischenprodukt], a phase in the event of understanding that, as such,
certainly includes a definite abstraction, namely the isolation and
reification of this very phase. But this abstraction moves in precisely
the reverse direction from the one upon which linguists rely. The
linguist does not want to enter into the discussion of the topic which
is spoken of in the text; rather, he wants to shed light upon the func-
tioning of language as such, whatever the text may say. He does not
make that which is communicated in the text his theme, but instead
asks how it is possible to communicate anything at all by whatever
means of punctuation and symbolization that occur.
390 HERMENEUTICS AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY

For the hermeneutical approach, on the other hand, comprehend-

ing what is said is the sole concern. For this, the functioning of
language is mere precondition. Thus, a first precondition is that an
expression be acoustically intelligible, or that a printed text be
decipherable, so that the comprehension of what is spoken, or writ-
ten, is at least possible. The text must be readable.
Once again the use of words offers us an important clue. In a rather
pretentious sense, we speak of the readability of a text when we
want to express a minimum qualification for the estimation of a text or
in the judgment of a translation. Naturally, this is a figurative way of
speaking. But, as is often the case with such speech, it makes things
thoroughly clear: the negative correspondence here is unreadability,
and that always means that as a written expression the text did not
fulfill its task of being understood without any difficulties. We find
further confirmation here that we always already look ahead to an
understanding of that which is said in the text. It is only from this
point that we grant and qualify a text as readable.
From philological work this is well known as the task of restoring a
readable text. However, it is clear that this task always only appears
in such a way that a point of departure is made from some sort of
understanding of the text. Only where the text is already deciphered,
and the deciphered does not allow itself to be unhesitatingly
transformed into understandability, are questions raised about what
is really in the text and whether or not the traditional reading, that is,
the commonly accepted reading, was correct. The treatment of the
text by the philologist who produces a readable text corresponds com-
pletely to that which happens in direct, yet not only acoustical,
auditory transmission. We say therefore that one has heard when one
can understand. The uncertainty in the acoustical transmission of an
oral message corresponds to the uncertainty of a reading [Lesart]. In
both cases a feedback [Riickkoppelung] comes into play. Preunder-
standing, anticipation of meaning, and thereby a great many cir-
cumstances that do not appear in the text as such, play their role in
reading of the text [Auffassung des Textes]. This becomes completely
clear when it is a matter of translation from foreign languages. Here
the mastery of foreign language is a mere precondition. If the ‘text’
can be spoken of at all in such cases, then it is because it not only has
to be understood but also to be conveyed into another language. In
this manner it becomes a ‘text’, for that which is said is not simply
understood, rather it becomes an object—the point is to reproduce
that which was intended against the multiplicity of possible inten-
 Text and Interpretation 391

tions. There is still another indirect hermeneutical relation here: every

translation, even the so-called literal reproduction, is a sort of inter-
pretation.
In sum, that which the linguist makes his theme in refraining from
trying to understand the content of the text represents a mere limit
case for understanding itself. In opposition to this view of the
linguist, that which makes understanding possible is precisely the
forgetfulness of language as that in which the discourse or the text is
formally encased. Only where the language is disrupted, that is,
where understanding will not succeed, are questions asked about the
wording of the text, and only then can the reconstruction of the text
become a task. In everyday speech we differentiate between the
wording of the text and the text itself, but it is not accidental that both
of these designations can also always act as a substitute for the other.
In Greek, too, language and writing go together in the conept of
““grammatike’’. Indeed the extension of the concept of the text is
hermeneutically well grounded. In every case, whether spoken or
written, the understanding of the text remains dependent upon com-
municative conditions that, as such, reach beyond the reified mean-
ing content of what is said. One can almost say that if one needs to
reach back to the wording of the text, that is, to the text as such, then
this must always be motivated by the peculiarity of the situation of
understanding. This can be seen in the current use of the word ‘text’
just as clearly as it can be demonstrated in the history of the word
‘text’. Doubtless, there is a sort of vanishing point [Schwundstufe] of
the text that we could hardly ever call a text, such as one’s own notes
that provided a support for one’s recollections. Here the question of
the text is posed only when memory fails and the notes appear alien
and incomprehensible, and it is necessary to refer back to the signs
and writing; that is, it is necessry to refer back to the notes as text.
Generally, however, notes are not a text because they appear as the
mere trace of memory, the return of which was intended by the entry.
But there is another extreme case of understanding that, in general,
does not provoke a discussion of the text. Here I am referring to
something like scientific communication, which presupposes definite
conditions of understanding from the outset. The reason for this is to
be found on the manner of its address. It is directed toward the
specialist. As was true in the case of notes, which are only for myself,
so too is scientific communication, even when it is published, not for
everyone. It only tries to be understandable for one who is well ac-
quainted with the level and language of research. When this condi-
392 HERMENEUTICS AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY

tion is fulfilled, the partner will not generally return to the text qua
text. He does that only when the information expressed seems to be
implausible and he must ask whether or not there is a misinterpreta-
tion somewhere. The situation is, of course, different from the
historian of science for whom the same scientific documents really are
texts precisely because they require interpretation to the extent that
the interpreter is not the intended reader, so that the distance that ex-
ists between him and the original reader must be bridged. For the
same reasons one generally does not speak of the text of a letter when
one is its recipient. Then one enters smoothly into the written situa-
tion of converstation as it were, so long as no special disruption of
understanding makes it necessary to refer back to the exact text.
Thus, a written conversation demands basically the same fundamen-
tal condition that holds true for an oral exchange. Both partners must
have the good will to try to understand one another. Thus, the ques-
tion becomes How far is this situation and its implications given if no
particular addressee or group is intended, but rather a nameless
reader—or perhaps an outsider—wants to understand a text? The
writing of a letter is another form of attempting a conversation and, as
in the case of immediate linguistic contact or in all smoothly function-
ing exchanges, only a disruption in communication provides a motive
for reaching back to the text as the ‘given’. In any event, like one who
is in a conversation, the writer tries to impart what he means, and
that includes the pre-view of the other with whom he shares presup-
positions and upon whose understanding he relies. The other takes
that what is said as it is intended, that is, he understands because he
fills out and concretizes what is said and because he does not take
what is said in its abstract literal meaning. That is also the reason why
one cannot say certain things in letters as one can in the immediacy of
conversation, even when one sends them to a partner with whom
one is very close. There is too much that is omitted in a letter that, in
the immediacy of conversation, carries the proper understanding;
and furthermore, in conversation one always has the opportunity to
clarify or defend what was meant on the basis of some response. That
is recognized especially in Socratic dialogue and the Platonic critique
of writing. Logoi, which present themselves absolved from the situa-
tion of communication [Verstindigungssituation] (and this is collective-
ly true of written words), risks misuse and misunderstanding because
they dispense with the obvious corrections of living conversation.
Here we find a consequence suggested that is essential to herme-
neutical theory. If every printed text is cut off from the com-
 Text and Interpretation 393

municative situation, then this implies something for the intention of

writing itself. Because as a writer one knows all of the problems of
putting words in print, one is always steered by the pre-view of the
recipient with whom one wants to reach an equivalent understand-
ing. While in living conversation one tries to reach understanding
through the give-and-take of discussion, which means that one
searches for those words (and accompanies them with intonation and
gesture) that one expects will get through to the other, in writing the
openness that is implied in seeking the words cannot be com-
municated because it is printed. Therefore a virtual horizon of inter-
pretation and understanding must be opened in writing the text
itself, one that the reader must fill out. Writing is more than a repeti-
tion of the spoken in print. To be sure, everything that is fixed in
writing refers back to what was originally said, but it must equally
look forward, for all that is said is always already directed toward
understanding and includes the other in itself.
Thus we speak of the text of a transcript, because, from the start, it
is intended as a document, and that means that what is fixed in it is to
be referred to. Precisely for this reason, a transcript requires the
special mark and signature of the partner. The same is true of the
closing of contracts in business and politics.
With this we come to a comprehensive concept that lies at the basis
of all constitution of texts and simultaneously makes clear the embed-
dedness of the text in the hermeneutical context: every return to the
text (whether it concerns a printed text or merely the repetition of
what is expressed in conversation) refers to that which was originally
announced or pronounced and that should be maintained to be a
meaningful identity. What prescribes to all reifications in writing their
task is precisely that this ‘information’ should be understood. The
printed text should fix the original information [Kundgabe] in such a
way that its sense is unequivocally understandable. Here the task of
the writer corresponds to that of the reader, addressee, interpreter,
that is, to achieve such an understanding and to let the printed text
speak once again. To this extent, reading and understanding mean
that the information is led back to its original authenticity. The task of
interpretation always poses itself when the meaning content of the
printed work is disputable and it is a matter of attaining the correct
understanding of the ‘information.’ However, this ‘information’ is
not what the speaker or writer originally said, but what he wanted to
say indeed even more: what he would have wanted to say to me if I
had been his original interlocutor. It is something of a command for
394. HERMENEUTICS AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY

interpretation that the text must be followed ‘according to its mean-

ingful sense’ [Sinnsgemiiss] (and not literally). Accordingly we must
say that a text is not a given object, but a phase in the execution of the
communicative event.
This general state of affairs is particularly well illustrated by judicial
codification and correspondingly in judicial hermeneutics. Judicial
hermeneutics functions as a sort of model with good reason: here the
transference into written form and the continual reference to the text
are in special proximity. From the outset that which is established as
law serves to settle or avoid disputes. To this extent, the parties of the
dispute who seek justice, as well as the findings of justice, the court,
are always motivated to return to the text. The formulation of laws, of
legal contracts or legal decisions, is thus especially exacting, and the
fact that it is put into print makes it all the more so. Here a verdict or
an agreement is to be formulated so that its judicial sense emerges
from the text univocally and so that misuse or distortion is avoided.
‘Documentation’ demands that an authentic interpretation must suc-
ceed, even if the authors themselves, the legislator or a party to the
contract, are not available. This implies that from the outset the writ-
ten formulation must take into account the interpretive free space that
arises for the ‘reader’ of the text who has to employ this space.
Here—whether by proclamation or codification—it is always a ques-
tion of avoiding strife, excluding misunderstandings and misuse, and
making univocal understanding possible. In opposition to the mere
proclamation of law or the actual closing of a contract, putting the law
or contract into print is only an effort to secure an additional
guarantee. This implies, however, that here too there remains a free
space of meaningful concretization, a concretization that has to carry
out the interpretation for the purpose of practical application. That it
is like a text, whether it is codified or not, rests in the claim to validity
of the legal statute. Therefore, law, like the statute, constantly re-
quires interpretation for practical application, and conversely this
means that interpretation has already entered into every practical ap-
plication. There is, therefore, a creative legal function that is always
accorded to legal decisions, to precedents, or to the prevailing ad-
ministration of the law. To this extent, the judicial example shows
with exemplary clarity just how much every preparation of a text is
already related to interpretation, that is, to its correct, analogous ap-
plication. It should be remembered that the hermeneutical problem
between oral and written discourses is basically the same. One may
think of the example of taking testimony from witnesses. In order to
 Text and Interpretation 395

guarantee their neutrality witnesses are not supposed to be initiated

into the larger context of the investigation and the rigors of the pro-
cess of making a judgment. So they encounter the question put to
them with the abstractness of the ‘text’, and the answer that they
have to give is equally abstract. This means that it is like a written ut-
terance. This comes out in the discontentedness with which a witness
admits to the written transcript of his testimony. He certainly cannot
dispute his language, but he does not want to let it stand in such
isolation and would prefer to interpret it right away himself. To the
witness the duty of the court stenographer in making the transcript is
to render an account so that when the transcript is read back every
possible justice is done to the intended meaning of the speaker. Con-
versely, this example of the testimony of a witness shows how writ-
ten proceedings (namely the written component in proceedings) feed
back into the way in which the conversation is handled. The witness,
who is isolated as a result of his testimony, is, so to speak, already
isolated as a consequence of the results of the investigation being put
into print. A similar state of affairs obviously holds true in such cases
where one has given a promise, an order, or a question in writing:
this situation also contains an isolation of the original communicative
situation and must express the original living sense in the style of
something reified in writing. The reflexive relation to the original
situation of communication remains apparent in all of these in-
stances.
This can also be done by way of additional punctuation, which
facilitates the proper understanding that was found meanwhile in the
record. Thus, the question mark, for example, is such an indication of
how the recorded sentence really must be articulated. The very
appropriate Spanish custom of putting a question between two ques-
tion marks makes this basic intent clear in a persuasive manner: one
already knows at the beginning of the sentence how one has to ar-
ticulate the relevant phrases. On the other hand, the dispensibility of
such punctuation aids, which were not to be found at all in many an-
cient cultures, confirms how understanding is, nevertheless, possible
solely through the printed text. The mere sequence of written symbols
without punctuation represents communicative abstraction in the
extreme.
Doubtless, there are many forms of communicative linguistic
comportment that can not be subjugated to this finality; for instance,
texts (inasmuch as they can obviously be regarded as such) that have
been divorced from their addressee—in order to be examined as a
396 HERMENEUTICS AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY

literary presentation—but that in the communicative event itself resist

being put into a text. Instances of such discourse are jokes, or the
empty redundance of the speaker, or the camouflaging of
unconscious tendencies that takes place in the effort to recount a
dream, or communication that is distorted ideologically. In these
cases the interpreter has no original hermeneutic function
whatsoever toward the text: he transforms the utterance into an
‘object’ that it does not want to be. This results in the celebrated
‘hermeneutics of suspicion’.
On the other hand, the interpreter who tries to follow the
‘intentionality’ of the discourse has a function that incorporates his
mediating discourse [Zwischenrede] in the communicative event. His
assistance in the process of understanding does not restrict itself to
the purely linguistic level but goes beyond this to a mediation of
content that attempts to balance the rights and limits of the parties
with one another. The ‘intervening speaker’ becomes the ‘mediator’.
It seems to me that an analogous relation exists between the text and
the reader. When the interpreter overcomes the foreign element in a
text his own withdrawal does not imply a disappearance in a negative
sense, but rather his entry into communication in such a way that the
tension between the horizons of the text and the reader is dissolved.
This is what I have called the fusion of horizons. Like the different
standpoints, the separate horizons enter into one another. Therefore,
the understanding of a text tends to interest the reader in what the
text says, which is precisely the point at which the reader vanishes.
The sense in which the literary text does not vanish, the sense in
which its comprehension is a communicative event, and the role that
falls to the interpreter in this case poses a new theme: the theme of
the ‘eminent text’. I have already made some contributions on this
issue in English.