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ABSTRACT
This paper provides an explanation for Gadamer’s inconsistent ideas of the symbol in his works, arguing that his concept of the symbol has evolved from a less-authentic experience to an authentic experience. In Truth and Method, the symbol is defined as having an instituted meaning and substitution function, and is devalued as a pure appearance of the real, which is less authentic than the artistic presentation that occasions the coming-into-existence events of the real. Later, in “The Relevance of the Beautiful”, Gadamer elevates the symbol to the same status as the work of art, and uses it to defend the work of art’s inexhaustibility and irreplaceability in communicating meanings and revealing truth. Gadamer’s changed concept of the symbol also serves to justify the universality of philosophical hermeneutics in addressing modern art-related issues, particularly those involving the speechlessness, definition, and technological reproductions of art.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 64–74, 151–5 (Hereafter referred to as TM).
2 Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful, 31–9, 47–9 (Hereafter referred to as RB).
3 Dow, “Art and the Symbolic Element of Truth,” 178.
4 Soltysiak, “Symbol hermeneutyczny a symboliczność dzieła sztuki według Hansa-Georga Gadamera,” 43–4. We will see later that it might be misleading to name Gadamer’s earlier concept of the symbol as “the hermeneutic symbol”.
5 TM, 151–2. The translation of the German words “Darstellung”, “Darstellen”, and “darstellt” are revised as “presentation”, “presenting”, and “presented”. Although sometimes Gadamer uses the term “Darstellung” ambiguously, I prefer to translate the term as “presentation”, in order to clarify the special sense of Darstellung proper to the work of art as a disclosive event in which the work of art comes forth as itself, and also to distinguish it from the irrelevant connotations of “substitution” (Vertretung) and “production”.
6 Joel Weinsheimer has offered an explicit discussion of Gadamer’s notion of the sign, comparing it to Saussure’s and Cassirer’s. See Weinsheimer, Philosophical Hermeneutics and Literary Theory, 87–123.
7 TM, 153.
8 TM, 153.
9 Gadamer speaks of the mirror image in his distinction between the copy (Abbild) and the image (Bild). A mirror image is more than a copy because it does not simply replicate the original (Ur-bild); rather, it reflects the original such that the original itself appears in a mirror image. In that sense, a mirror image is more like an image. But it is still not an image because it functions as a mere appearance and says nothing about its own being.
10 At this point, Gadamer’s understanding of the symbol as a result of the institution is aligned with Peirce’s concept of the symbol. In Peirce’s classification of signs, the symbol has an “imputed character” for it symbolizes an arbitrary and conventional link between the signifying and the signified. For Peirce’s theory of signs, see Peirce, Simplest Mathematics, 411–15, and Sebeok, Signs.
11 For a detailed discussion of the Gadamerian non-differentiation between the image and the thing, see Weinsheimer, Philosophical Hermeneutics and Literary Theory, 87–123.
12 TM, 119.
13 RB, 64.
14 Davey, Unfinished Worlds, 122.
15 Ibid., 123–4.
16 Davey, 131.
17 TM, 151.
18 Tate, “The Speechless Image,” 61.
19 TM, 151–2.
20 TM, 70.
21 Soltysiak, 25.
22 TM, 72.
23 TM, 68.
24 TM, 72.
25 TM, 77.
26 TM, 77.
27 TM, 78.
28 TM, 75.
29 RB, 32.
30 RB, 32.
31 RB, 37–8.
32 RB, 34–5.
33 RB, 33.
34 Hegel, Lectures on Fine Arts, 10.
35 Tate, “The Remembrance of Art,” 140.
36 RB, 37.
37 RB, 16.
38 Dow, 178.
39 RB, 16.
40 Goethe, Criticisms, Reflections, and Maxims, 180.
41 Ibid., 246.
42 For Goethe’s views on the symbol and allegory, see Luperini, “Symbol and Allegory,” 91–5. For the history of the relation between allegory and the symbol see Crisp, “Allegory and Symbol.”
43 TM, 61.
44 TM, 64.
45 RB, 33.
46 Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, 226.
47 TM, 100.
48 Goethe, 246.
49 Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, 226.
50 Davey, 119.
51 Gadamer, The Gadamer Reader, 131.
52 Gadamer, Gadamer on Celan, 43.
53 RB, 33.
54 RB, 35.
55 RB, 92.
56 RB, 101.
57 RB, 83.
58 RB, 33.
59 RB, 36.
60 RB, 47.
61 Gadamer, The Gadamer Reader, 218.
62 For a critique of Gadamer’s idea of technical reproduction, see Nielsen, Gadamer’s Hermeneutical Aesthetics, 94–123.
63 Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” 221.
64 Danto, “Appreciation and Interpretation of Works of Art,” 39–40.
65 Gadamer, “Aesthetic and Religious Experience,” in RB, 151.