Gadamer and Aristotle. Problems of a Hermeneutic Appropriation

ABSTRACT

When Gadamer elaborates his conception of philosophical hermeneutics as a transcendental inquiry, he appeals to Aristotle’s practical philosophy as a “model”, which can elucidate his own conceptualization of understanding as intrinsically bound to the specific circumstances of every interpretation. The explicit formulation of the analogy between Aristotelian ethics and philosophical hermeneutics provides a framework that clarifies Gadamer’s principal intention; it also reveals some of the crucial tensions inherent in the Aristotelian conception of practical philosophy and its relation to praxis and phronêsis. In the 1970s, however, Gadamer suggests a practical transformation of hermeneutics, claiming for it the role of an “heir of the older tradition of practical philosophy”. Against Gadamer’s late “turn”, construed as a deviation from the initial analogy, I defend Aristotle’s practical philosophy as an exemplary model for philosophical hermeneutics, but I also maintain that the two projects pursue distinct epistemic goals.

KEYWORDS:

• Gadamer
• Aristotle
• philosophical hermeneutics
• praxis
• practical philosophy
• phronêsis

1. Introduction

In the year 1922, at the age of 22, Gadamer was studying in Marburg, the cradle of Neo-Kantianism, and writing his doctoral dissertation under the supervision of Paul Natorp. That same year, Martin Heidegger wrote and submitted a manuscript to Natorp, now commonly known as the Natorp-Bericht (“Report to Natorp”; English translation: Heidegger, “Phenomenological Interpretations”). This text outlines a broad research programme on Aristotelian philosophy envisaged by Heidegger at that time. Natorp lent the manuscript to the young Gadamer, who described his experience of reading it as “like an electric shock”.¹ Gadamer, we might say, met Heidegger through Aristotle: the depth, originality, and liveliness of the interpretations included in that manuscript made him abandon Marburg and Neo-Kantianism and rush to become a student of the “hidden king” of the German philosophical scene.² And at the same time, Gadamer met Aristotle through Heidegger: Already in the first semester of his apprenticeship in Freiburg, during the Summer Semester of 1923, Gadamer attended all five courses offered by Heidegger, highlighting among them a seminar on Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics (cf. GW 2, 485; GW 3, 199-200). In the following decades, Gadamer’s entire philosophical itinerary was decisively shaped by this distinctive “triangular” relationship – as a constant confrontation with the work and the legacies of Aristotle and Heidegger.

But what was so “shocking” about that seminar in 1923, from which no material seems to have survived? Apparently, it was primarily the way in which Heidegger elucidated the dianoetic excellence (aretê) of practical reason, phronêsis, as an allo eidos gnôseôs, as a “different kind of knowledge” (cf. EN 1141b33-34, 1142a30, EE 1246b36). The excellence of phronêsis is a distinct way in which the soul “has truth” (alêtheuei), by no means inferior to “theoretical wisdom” (sophia), “science” (epistêmê), or “mind” (nous); phronêsis functions within the Heidegger-circle as a Zauberwort (GW 2, 485), a “magic word” that signals the need for an extensive reorientation of the entire philosophy.

Some decades later, in 1960, Gadamer published his magnum opus, the celebrated Truth and Method, thus inaugurating one of the most important philosophical currents in the twentieth century: philosophical hermeneutics. This project possesses clear transcendental traits (without, of course, embracing any subjectivist features of transcendentalism): Unlike traditional hermeneutics, which stood for an art (or even a technique) of proper understanding, Gadamer focused on the conditions of the possibility of understanding in general. The “theoretical, transcendental character” of philosophical hermeneutics is retrospectively and explicitly affirmed by Gadamer, in a text from 1968 (GW 2, 117). But already in the Preface to the second edition of TM (1965), he emphasizes that:

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 […] The following investigation also asks a philosophic question in the same [Kantian] sense […] It asks (to put it in Kantian terms): how is understanding possible? (TM, xxvi-xxviii)³

Aristotle retains a prominent role in this work, a central chapter of which is entitled “The hermeneutic relevance of Aristotle” (TM, 310-321). The aim there is not to provide a conventional historiographic analysis, but to systematically integrate some of the key aspects of Aristotelian ethics into the project of philosophical hermeneutics.

2. The Analogy: (A / B) ≈ (C / D)

The chapter of TM on Aristotle is of crucial importance, since it is expected to contribute to the solution of “the central problem of hermeneutics: […] the problem of application, which is to be found in all understanding” (TM, 306). Gadamer exposes this problem by referring to the traditional distinction between three different moments of understanding: subtilitas intelligendi denotes the skill of (inner) comprehending; subtilitas explicandi refers to the skill of articulating an interpretation externally, e.g. verbally; and subtilitas applicandi (added by pietistic hermeneutics to the two previous moments) denotes the skill of application, i.e. the linking of what has been understood with the special situation and circumstances of the addressee of an interpretation (TM, 306). Gadamer points out that romantic hermeneutics (i.e. basically Schleiermacher) had recognized the unity of the two first moments, or, in other words, the inherently linguistic character of any understanding, but it had completely neglected the third skill, thus excluding application from the scope of hermeneutics proper. This exclusion must now be reversed: “understanding always involves something like applying the text to be understood to the interpreter’s present situation”, and in this sense, “we consider application to be just as integral a part of the hermeneutical process as are comprehending and interpretation” (TM, 306-307); “application is an element of understanding itself” (TM, xxix). Every understanding, therefore, involves the application of its topic to the present, concrete situation of the interpreter, not as a subsequent, ancillary act, but inherently and from the very beginning; application forms part of understanding as a “unitary process” (TM, 307, 309).

Gadamer's invocation of Aristotelian practical philosophy as a “model” for his own philosophical hermeneutics aims precisely at demonstrating the emphasis on application as an integral part of a “unified” understanding: The moment of application is as vital for understanding as it is for phronêsis in Aristotle. In a lecture series in 1957, Gadamer clarifies from the outset that Aristotle is not interested in the topic of interpretation itself, and that his invocation only intends to point out some “striking analogies” between Aristotelian ethics and his own hermeneutics.⁴ The term “model” first appears in TM, when Gadamer seeks to summarize the actuality and relevance of Aristotle for his own endeavour: “Aristotle’s […] analysis in fact offers a kind of model of the problems of hermeneutics” (TM, 320-321). The term does not indicate a regulative function; unlike, e.g. Platonic dialectic, which is a “model” in the sense of a prescriptive Vorbild (TM, 356), Aristotelian ethics is only a descriptive Modell, and more precisely “a kind of” model. But, what is the exact role and character of this invocation? I propose that we can initially capture Gadamer’s correlation of his hermeneutics with Aristotelian ethics through an analogy, which could be illustrated in the following scheme: ${\displaystyle \frac{\left(\mathrm{A}\right)\left(\mathrm{A}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{l}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{n}\right)\mathrm{p}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{c}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{c}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{l}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{h}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{l}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{h}\mathrm{y}}{\left(\mathrm{B}\right)phron\text{^}esis\left(\mathrm{a}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{l}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{z}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{d}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{n}praxis\right)}\approx {\displaystyle \frac{\left(\mathrm{C}\right)\mathrm{p}\mathrm{h}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{l}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{h}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{c}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{l}\mathrm{h}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{m}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{u}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{c}\mathrm{s}}{\left(\mathrm{D}\right)\mathrm{u}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{d}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{d}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{g}}}}$

The scheme is not explicitly proposed by Gadamer,⁵ but is seems appropriate as a way of explicating his (initial) position: Philosophical hermeneutics approaches, analyses, and relates to understanding in a way analogous to that in which Aristotelian practical philosophy approaches, analyses and relates to the field of practice, and in particular to the excellence that is phronêsis. We can now inspect the specific aspects of this analogy.

3. The Circumstances: B ≈ D

The primary and fundamental parallelism in the analogy is that between phronêsis and understanding; the starting point of the whole analogy is the parallel way in which both concepts, as forms of “application”, draw attention to the unique situation and the specific circumstances under which an action or an act of understanding takes place. Both concepts are described by Gadamer in terms of a “logical relationship”: as mediations between something universal and something particular or individual. Starting with understanding, Gadamer presents it as “a special case of applying something universal to a particular situation” (TM, 310). The “universal” or “general” (Allgemeines) here is the topic or object of understanding, e.g. a specific text, or even more broadly, the tradition in which this text stands (TM, 310, 321). Gadamer does not explicitly expound and clarify the structure of this universality; we can nevertheless assume that a text, or a work of art, constitutes something universal inasmuch as it functions as a point of reference for a multitude of interpretations, being the common source of the meaning they produce, and therefore also functioning as their unifying element. We might even think of the “universality” of a text⁶ in terms of its “ideal meaning”, which comes forth in its various interpretations. On the other hand, the particularity in this relationship, the Besonderes, consists in the special conditions of the interpreter, which constitute the starting point of any understanding: the “concrete and specific situation” (TM, 310), out of which an interpretation is motivated and cultivated. This situationality of understanding has been established and expounded by Gadamer with recourse to the function of our specific “prejudices” and our historical tradition, as prerequisites for any understanding.

When Gadamer emphasizes the inherent and indispensable role of application in the process of understanding, he seeks to establish understanding as a specific form of mediation between the universal (e.g. a text) and the particular, individual conditions and circumstances. At this point, Gadamer exploits fundamental insights of Hegelian dialectic (without making an explicit reference to Hegel): He stresses that this mediation is not a retrospective bridging or linking of elements existing beforehand as autonomous, substantially fixed and static magnitudes. The universal text does not exist somewhere “out there”, awaiting its ex post mediation (by means of the hermeneutic application) with a specific hermeneutic condition. “The interpreter dealing with a traditionary text tries to apply it to himself. But this does not mean that the text is [initially] given for him as something universal, that he first understands it per se, and then afterwards uses it for particular applications” (TM, 321). Rather, the very universality of the text is constituted through the mediating act of understanding. This is especially the case, if we conceive the universality of a text as its “ideal meaning”; this ideality does not pre-exist, but is only constituted by and through the multitude of its interpretations.

Now, this is precisely, as Gadamer reminds us, the logical structure of the virtue of phronêsis; this excellence, as we know from EN VI, does not exist as a universal, static, pre-given form of knowledge, which its possessor (the phronimos) could sometimes apply and sometimes not. Phronêsis is not applied ex post to specific situations; it does not exist as a mere grasping of some general rules, but takes shape and becomes firmly established as a universal only by and through its application within the individual, specific circumstances of life. A practical reason that “exists, but is not applied” would be an absurd contradiction. The exemplary character of Aristotelian practical philosophy for philosophical hermeneutics is therefore largely based on the common logical structure of their objects (B ≈ D), which are both constituted as forms of mediation between a universal and a particular. The crucial point, therefore, is that the “application” of the universal is not a posterior act; the universal is only constituted by means of such applications. I propose that this “mediative” character of components (B) and (D) of the analogy can be captured in the following scheme: $\begin{array}{r}\mathrm{U}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{v}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{l}:phron\text{^}esis\left(\mathrm{a}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{d}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{c}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{x}\mathrm{c}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{l}\mathrm{l}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{c}\mathrm{e}\right)\mathrm{t}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{x}\mathrm{t}\\ \mathrm{a}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{l}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{c}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{n}:\updownarrow \left(\mathrm{B}\right)phron\text{^}esis\left(\mathrm{a}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{l}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{z}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{d}\right)\updownarrow \left(\mathrm{D}\right)\mathrm{u}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{d}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{d}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{g}\\ \mathrm{P}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{c}\mathrm{u}\mathrm{l}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{r}:\mathrm{s}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{u}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{n}/\mathrm{c}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{d}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{u}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{n}/\mathrm{c}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{d}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{s}\end{array}$Both phronêsis and understanding are versions of an application of a universal in particular conditions; but it is only through this application that the very universality is constituted. The text does not exist “per se”, outside and beyond the horizon of its understanding; and phronêsis does not exist “per se”, outside and beyond its realization in the individual situations, in the specific conditions and circumstances of our acting.

4. The Distinction of Levels: (A ≠ B) ≈ (C ≠ D)

Gadamer's constant concern, in his numerous attempts to approach Aristotelian practical philosophy (not only as a model for his hermeneutics, but also in itself), is the persistent reminder that practical philosophy does not coincide with phronêsis. Practical reason, as realized in phronêsis, is something significantly broader, richer, and more fundamental than (its) philosophical analysis. On the other hand, Gadamer does not hesitate to identify Aristotelian ethics by attributing to it the character of science, or even theory:

When Aristotle used the expression “practical philosophy”, by “philosophy” he meant “science” in that very general sense, indeed as knowledge using demonstration and enabling teaching, but not as the kind of science that for the Greeks was the model of theoretic knowledge (epistêmê): mathematics. (HaPP, 89)

Or, more straightforwardly: “Practical philosophy has in any case the character of theory” (GW 7, 218). Practical philosophy is thus a theoretical reconstruction of the conditions, the structure, and the ways of the fulfilment of practice – a reconstruction that must be “sharply distinguished” from the performance of the actions themselves: “Practical philosophy is not the virtue of practical reason” (GW 2, 304). This distinction has two aspects. First, the phronimos need not be a philosopher. In contrast to the Platonic reduction of goodness to knowledge – a reduction that culminated in the rather comic (and, in my view, certainly unrealistic) figure of the philosopher-king – Aristotle explicitly emphasizes that practical virtue does not presuppose theoretical knowledge, not even a theoretical knowledge about practice; one can be virtuous without being a (practical) philosopher. Second, and conversely, theoretical knowledge is not enough to make somebody phronimos: one may be a (practical) philosopher without being virtuous. With a suggestive irony, Aristotle distinguishes his own position from those who, “by taking refuge in talk, think that they are philosophizing, and that in this way they will become [ethically] excellent” (1105b12-14).

Throughout his long engagement with Aristotelian ethics, Gadamer insisted on this distinction in an almost tiresome way, emphasizing that ethics is not expected or allowed to “usurp the place of moral consciousness” (TM, 311). I must therefore admit that I do not find convincing the criticism expressed by Berti, when he insists that Gadamer “tends to identify” practical philosophy and phronêsis, “excluding in this way the possibility of a practical science”.⁷ Kontos’ critique, although more elaborate and careful, points in the same direction; he claims that Gadamer finally “undermines the very distinction between practical philosophy and practical rationality for which he has argued”; this confusion is attributed to Gadamer’s attachment to “a Platonic background compelling him to assign to practical philosophy genuine ‘moral relevance’”.⁸

But is this claim for a “moral relevance” of practical philosophy a Platonic trait endorsed by Gadamer, or does it also reflect the Aristotelian view? In any case, Gadamer repeatedly characterizes the “relation of practical philosophy to phronêsis” as a central Aristotelian “problem”, which is further intensified by the fact that Aristotle rejects any practical efficiency of the Platonic Idea of ⁣⁣the Good, but does demand such a “usefulness” for his own “theory of practical philosophy” (GW 7, 218). We can hardly accuse Gadamer of obscuring the distinction between practical philosophy and phronêsis when he explicitly warns against the attempts “right down to our own day” to equate them; and we should probably agree with him that “the scientific-theoretic aspect of the so-called ‘practical philosophy’ was left [by Aristotle himself] quite obscure” (GW 2, 302-303). In the last text he published on Aristotle, Gadamer notices (through a quasi-complaint) that the relationship between practical philosophy and practical reason is ultimately described by Aristotle “only in metaphors”.⁹

Before looking into these metaphors, as indications of a tensed relationship that is not produced by Gadamer but arises as a result of the Aristotelian philosophy itself, let us return for a moment to our initial, basic analogy: (A) (Aristotelian) practical philosophy : (B) Phronêsis (as realized in praxis) :: (C) Philosophical hermeneutics : (D) Understanding, or: the distinction between A and B is analogous to the distinction between C and D. Through the explicit reference to his Aristotelian “model”, Gadamer emphasizes thus that, in a way similar to practical philosophy, philosophical hermeneutics, as a “theory”, provides a theoretical reconstruction of the praxis of understanding, and that it must be clearly distinguished from this praxis:

Practical philosophy is certainly not in itself this [practical] rationality. It is philosophy, that is to say, it is a reflection on what a formation of human life has to be. In the same sense, philosophical hermeneutics is not the art of understanding itself, but the theory of it. (GW 2, 23)

The transcendental character of hermeneutics, stressed at the outset of the present study, remains, thus, preserved.

5. The Factual Grounds of Theory: (B ⇢ A) ≈ (D ⇢ C)

The distinction between levels outlined in the previous section does not prevent there being relations between the parameters of the analogy. I have already endorsed Gadamer's position that the relationship between practical philosophy and practical reason remains “quite obscure” in Aristotle, but it does not remain entirely obscure, nor completely undetermined. On the contrary, there emerges a double correlation, which I will schematically represent as the effect of B on A (B ⇢ A) and, conversely, the effect of A on B (A ⇢ B), and which, as we shall see, also results in corresponding correlations between the pair (C) and (D). This dual correlation sheds some light on the relationship between the two levels of the analogy, without (at first) eliminating the distinction between these levels, which was emphasized in the previous section.

The first aspect of this correlation establishes that, in a way, some form of phronetic awareness is a prerequisite for practical philosophy (B ⇢ A). This comes out in the demand that Aristotle makes on those who listen to his lectures:

Each person judges well what he knows, and is a good judge of these things; so, the person who is educated in a given thing is a good judge of that, and the person who is educated in everything is a good judge without qualification. This is why a young person is not fitted to hear lectures on political [ = practical] matters; for he is inexperienced in the actions that constitute life, whereas what is said [here] will start from these [matters and actions] and will be about these. (EN 1094b27-1095a4)

Aristotle insists here on what Gadamer aptly calls the “substantial presuppositions” (inhaltliche Voraussetzungen, GW 2, 326) of Aristotelian ethics. The listener must have the necessary education in the field addressed by ethical teaching, that is, he/she must possess a minimal knowledge of praxis and life in general. But what is this knowledge? It is not a neutral, detached “expertise” in the form of a theory of human things – for this is what (among other things) the lectures on practical philosophy are expected to provide. The knowledge presupposed here requires a certain familiarity with the topic of the teaching; but this familiarity, which is reasonably posited as a prerequisite for any teaching and learning, takes within the context of ethics a specific, emphatic form: The prerequisite for successfully attending to and understanding the Aristotelian ethical treatise is not a kind of epistemic knowledge, but the pre-existence of an (at least minimally acquired) ethical quality. The immoral person, especially in the form of an akolastos (“self-indulgent” person), is a priori excluded from comprehending an ethical treatise.

The parallel with the right-hand side of the analogy here is, I think, obvious. The parallel simply states that the theorist of understanding must have some practical familiarity with the hermeneutic practice in order to theoretically explicate how this is performed. Gadamer makes this clear when he remarks that philosophical hermeneutics is “a theoretical attitude towards the practice of interpretation”, which “only makes us aware reflectively of what is performatively at play in the practical experience of understanding” (HaPP, 112). Or, put in a more pointed, laconic way: “hermeneutic theory should only grow out of hermeneutic practice”.¹⁰

6. Moderate Normativities: (A ⇢ B) ≈ (C ⇢ D)

In the passage that follows the one cited above, Aristotle formulates the second aspect of the nexus connecting practical philosophy and practical reason:

What is more, because they [: the young people] have a tendency to be laid by the emotions, it will be without point or use for them to listen – since the end [of my teaching/treatise] is not knowing things but doing them. (EN 1095a4-6)

And a few pages later:

[…] the present undertaking is not for the sake of theory, as our others are – for [here] we are not inquiring into what excellence is for the sake of knowing it, but for the sake of becoming good, since otherwise there would be no benefit in it at all. (EN 1103b26-30)

These and other¹¹ similar passages confirm that practical philosophy is a form of knowledge with a distinct, divergent character and aim: Not only does it presuppose the existence of an elementary moral quality, but it also aims at its strengthening. As a kind of theory or science (epistêmê), Aristotelian ethics entails a theoretical description and scientific reconstruction of the field of practice – yet, it is by no means limited to this; it rather incorporates and formulates from the beginning a practical aspiration. Its purpose is not simply to know the realm of action, but to help its addressees move within it successfully – i.e. to act morally and virtuously.

In contrast to the theoretical sciences, then, the practical science of ethics fulfils at the same time, and additionally, a practical aim; this “moral relevance” of the practical science, however, must not eliminate its fundamental distinction from the practical virtue of phronêsis. Aristotle does not offer a conceptual clarification of the way in which that aim has to be accomplished by ethics. Gadamer notices this conceptual gap and points out that Aristotle ultimately confines himself to a plainly metaphorical illustration of this intended influence and relevance. The main Aristotelian metaphor, to which Gadamer constantly returns in order to clarify and to hermeneutically exploit it, runs as follows:

Could it be then that the knowledge of this [ultimate good] has great weight for our life, and that if we had this knowledge, we would be – like archers with a target – more successful in hitting the point we have to hit? (EN 1094a22-24)

Gadamer repeatedly alludes to the metaphor of the archer, seeing in it a demonstration of the way in which practical philosophy can contribute to praxis. And yet, locating the target does not obviate the need for mastering the art of archery, i.e. the actual development and implementation of the virtues. The agent cannot spare himself from the burden of his own decision, by delegating it to a moral treatise. Our decisions

surely do not depend upon the guidance of a teacher. However, here too the ethical treatise can offer a kind of assistance in the conscious avoidance of certain deviations, inasmuch as it helps rational consideration to keep before it the ultimate ends of its actions (GW 2, 316). Philosophical ethics […], by outlining phenomena, helps moral consciousness to attain clarity concerning itself. (TM, 311)

Does philosophical hermeneutics also have its own, practically oriented goal and ambition? Can we expect that those competent in philosophical hermeneutics might also become more successful interpreters of a text, a law, or a work of art? At this point, Gadamer remains undecided, ambiguous, or even unstable. In the first place, the very distinction of philosophical hermeneutics from earlier versions of a hermeneutic art or technique suggests that his undertaking, if it is to maintain its theoretical-transcendental character, must refrain from any “applied” claim. In TM, Gadamer is willing to accept a significantly limited practical relevance for his hermeneutics, which “consists in correcting (and refining) the way in which constantly exercised understanding understands itself – a process that would benefit the art of understanding at most only indirectly” (TM, 268; emphasis is mine). The explicit rejection of any direct practical claim appears again in a text from 1971, where Gadamer concludes his debate with Habermas by emphasizing that philosophical hermeneutics “would not elevate an ability to the consciousness of rules […] In contrast to this, a philosophical hermeneutics [only] reflects about this ability and the knowledge upon which it rests” (“Reply to My Critics”, 276).

The relations hitherto described between the relata of our analogy do not, as such, eliminate their distinctive characters, or their respective autonomy. Yes, practical philosophy and philosophical hermeneutics have, as a factual precondition, the ethical and interpretive practice respectively. Yes, they both tend to adopt a limited claim to practical efficacy in these fields. But these connections and correlations do not at first invalidate the fundamental distinction between the two “numerators” of theory (A and C) from the two “denominators” of practice (B and D). Above all, however, any correlations within the analogy should not eliminate the very distinction between the two theoretical relata: the Aristotelian practical philosophy (A) and philosophical hermeneutics (C). In TM, things are still clear: We encounter here two distinct and independent fields; the invocation of the former as a “model” is called upon to clarify elements and aspects of the latter, without this purely “structural analogy” implying any further association (and much less an amalgamation of both). As for the “denominators” of the analogy, every attempt at understanding (D) is indeed a “daring”,¹² and in this sense, is similar to every single individual action in which phronêsis can be realized (B). But this is, again, nothing more than a mere parallel, based on the common character of both actions and acts of understanding as forms of application in specific circumstances (see Section 3 above). Hermeneutic consciousness, as TM explicitly emphasizes, does not coincide with the “moral knowledge” of phronêsis (TM, 312).¹³

In 1965, Gadamer still insisted that it was not his “aim to investigate the theoretical foundation of the work of the humanities, in order to put my findings to practical ends” (TM, xxv). It is, however, only one year after the completion of the aforementioned debate with Habermas that Gadamer will undertake a clear, albeit not explicitly acknowledged, shift. In a characteristic passage, he will now endorse and adopt for his own hermeneutics the old practical goal of traditional hermeneutics:

As the theory of interpretation or explication, [hermeneutics] is not just a theory. From the most ancient times right down to our days, hermeneutics quite clearly has claimed that its reflection upon the possibilities, rules, and means of interpretation is immediately useful and advantageous for the practice of interpretation. (HaPP, 93; emphasis is mine)

The “immediate” practical relevance claimed for hermeneutics in this passage is rather extensive and bold, if compared to Gadamer’s claim (cited above) that practical philosophy could only provide praxis with some “clarity”; it also deviates from the original self-understanding of Gadamer, and indicates a first deviation from the analogy, which will soon prove to be in danger as a whole. From now on, the distinction between the fields of practical philosophy and philosophical hermeneutics will no longer be consistently observed; in fact, the distinction will blur and almost disappear. I will now try to reconstruct the key aspects of this evolution.

7. Disappearing Distinctions: Gadamer’s “Declaration”

Despite his constant criticism of Dilthey, Gadamer seems to essentially adopt Dilthey’s position that hermeneutics is expected to fill a gap in the context of the necessary, but still not accomplished, foundation of the humanities (Geisteswissenschaften). According to Gadamer, this foundation will not be achieved by constructing a new, specific methodology, but by opening up a field of “truth” which will take a balanced stance towards “method”: It will not utterly reject the notion and relevance of a “method”, but will make clear that truth cannot remain limited or be exclusively reduced to it. In this perspective, already TM presents humanities as “stand[ing] closer to moral knowledge than to that kind of “theoretical” knowledge” (TM, 312).

Gadamer expects philosophical hermeneutics to establish the humanities in their totality as a coherent body of understanding, which will prove effective in filling a gap of meaning and in contributing to human self-knowledge; in this sense, they do appear to be somehow related to the moral knowledge of phronêsis – especially when the latter, in a moderate adaptation of Heidegger’s exaggerated identification of phronêsis with moral conscience (Gewissen), is conceived by Gadamer (in an allusion to Socrates) as the pre-eminent form of human “self-knowledge” (Sich-Wissen).¹⁴ At the same time, the Aristotelian foundation of ethics as an autonomous science not subject to the methodological requirements, expectations, and limitations of theoretical knowledge appears in Gadamer's eyes to be a model for the attempt of the humanities nowadays to avoid the “false objectification” assigned to them (TM, 312).

The subject matter of the humanities is human life in its various forms, and, in this sense, there are similarities between the humanities and Aristotelian practical philosophy, which are not only structural, but also relate to the content with which they are concerned. But the decisive step that will allow Gadamer to transform these links into a new objective for his hermeneutics, will be undertaken only after (and under the influence of) his debate with Habermas (1967-71). One of the pleas expressed in that debate by the latter was that philosophical hermeneutics be transformed into a “critique of ideology”.¹⁵ This appeal essentially reiterates the famous Marxist demand, made in the eleventh of the “Theses on Feuerbach”, where Marx juxtaposed a “neutral” understanding of the world to its transformation, which goes in parallel with a transformation of philosophy in revolutionary practice: “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it”.

Through the course of the debate, Gadamer seems firm and confident in his initial position; yet, this confrontation seems to have had a profound impact on him, leaving visible traces on his subsequent pursuit of hermeneutics. Surprising as it may be, Gadamer leaves the debate having fully accepted Habermas’ request for a practical transformation of philosophical hermeneutics. In one of the texts through which he participated in the controversy, Gadamer insisted that hermeneutics, as a theory, is “subsequent to that out of which it abstracted; that is, to praxis”.¹⁶ However, immediately following the debate (in 1972) Gadamer published his prominent text, “Hermeneutics as Practical Philosophy”; the text first appeared in an extensive collective publication aiming at The Rehabilitation of Practical Philosophy, and it did indeed contribute to the aspiration expressed in the title. In the present study, we will only focus on the shifts that are attempted and captured within this text, as well as on the tensions produced by those shifts.

The text begins with Gadamer’s contention that the Aristotelian tradition of practical philosophy is nowadays “remote and no longer alive” (HaPP, 88). After expounding the differences between philosophical hermeneutics and the traditional hermeneutic art or technique anew, Gadamer now states that the former “belongs in the neighborhood of practical philosophy” (97). And a few pages later, he will argue for a “neighborly affinity of hermeneutics with practical philosophy” (109).¹⁷ Such a relationship of “affinity” or “kinship” (Verwandtschaft) goes beyond a mere “neighborhood” – but it still remains rather vague and metaphoric, and does not yet endanger our initial analogy. The text, however, continues with a peculiar, unexpected twist:

The hermeneutics that I characterize as philosophical is not introduced as a new procedure of interpretation or explication. Basically, it only describes what always happens, and especially what happens wherever an interpretation is convincing and successful. […] Understanding is more than just the skilful application of a competency. It always harvests a broadened and deepened self-understanding. But that means: hermeneutics is philosophy, and as philosophy it is practical philosophy. (HaPP, 111)

I intend to argue that the final sentence of this passage, which I shall refer to as Gadamer’s practical declaration, is the most wavering, vague and obscure, and therefore the most unfortunate, sentence in the many thousands of pages that comprise Gadamer’s opera. The declarative sentence reaffirms the claim made by the title of Gadamer’s text under discussion here; but this claim also represents the complete renunciation of the analogy from which our interpretation departed. This renunciation is effected here through the exploitation of a homonymy of “praxis”, and on the grounds of a further semantic vagueness in Gadamer’s own expression.

I will start from the homonymy of the term praxis. In the context of his argument in favour of the declaration, Gadamer invokes the Aristotelian recognition of a “mutual implication” or “reciprocity between theory and practice” (111). He then seems to merely reiterate his old thesis: “When I speak about hermeneutics here, it is theory” (112); and he concludes: “theoretic awareness about the experience of understanding and the practice of understanding, like philosophical hermeneutics and one's own self-understanding, are inseparable” (112). This sounds perfectly reasonable and remains fully compatible with the analogy and the relations among its components, as set out above. In the context of our text, however, these sentences are presented as arguments in favour of the aforementioned declaration – and they can function in this way only on the basis of a homonymy in the term “praxis”. In its strict Aristotelian sense, the term denotes a human activity juxtaposed to theôria and poiêsis; this activity is performed in the field of that which “can be otherwise”, and it affects this field by accomplishing a goal that is inseparable from the action performed. The term also denotes, in a broader sense, any human activity, including the activity of understanding. In the first sense, praxis belongs within the context of the B term of our analogy, and is the topic of practical philosophy (A). In the second sense, “praxis” also entails (as the “practice of understanding”) the context of the D term, which is the topic of philosophical hermeneutics (C).

If Gadamer’s awkward declaration is supported by an argument, this can only be found in the following syllogism (S1):

(P1) The topic of practical philosophy is praxis [in the strict sense].

(P2) The topic of philosophical hermeneutics is praxis [of understanding].

(Dec) Therefore, philosophical hermeneutics is practical philosophy.

The argument is, of course, flawed for several reasons, including the fact that it is constructed on the grounds of the homonymy of “praxis”, indicated above. Gadamer would probably argue that there is no homonymy here, and that Aristotle also uses praxis in such a way that it encompasses every kind of human activity, including that of theôria. Indeed, there is a single passage in the Politics which, according to Gadamer, states that “theory is also a kind of praxis” (Pol. 1325b21).¹⁸ Aristotle reminds us here that the primacy of theory presupposes the smoothness and successful execution of practical life, within which, in a way, it arises as a particular aspect. It is no coincidence, then, that this phrase is Gadamer’s favourite, and that he alludes to it once more in the beginning of our text, suggesting that the notion of praxis be removed from any “opposition to theôria” and understood in a sense that it embraces every “mode of behavior of that which is living in the broadest sense […] Animals too have praxis” (HaPP, 89-90). For Aristotle, however, it is clear that this is not the strict sense of praxis; it is used in this broad sense only once, in the present passage, and a homonymous understanding is prevented by the care that Aristotle takes with his expression here: theory is “also a kind of” praxis. In any case, even if we concede that Aristotle uses praxis in a homonymous way, there is no need to affirm the exploitation of this usage by Gadamer, in order to establish a flawed argument.¹⁹ In this argument the “mutual implication” or “reciprocity between theory and practice” is no more expected to justify the relations of presupposition or moderate practical relevance between the elements of the analogy A-B and C-D, discussed above; the intention is rather to document the claim for a transformation of philosophical hermeneutics into practical philosophy – a claim pursued by exploiting the aforementioned homonymy. In terms of the analogy, this claim amounts to a complete substitution of C for A; in other words, it amounts to the definitive renunciation of the analogy altogether.

In addition to the aforementioned homonymy, Gadamer’s declaration also suffers from an inherent semantic vagueness in the way it is formulated; this vagueness arises from the unclear role and function of the word “as” in his declaration (“hermeneutics is philosophy, and as philosophy it is practical philosophy”). The word can be taken here in a causative function: “since hermeneutics is philosophy, it is practical philosophy”. If taken in this sense, Gadamer would provide us here with a further implicit argument, which could take the form of the following syllogism (S2):

(P3) [Philosophical] hermeneutics is philosophy.

(P4) All philosophy is per se practical philosophy.

(Dec) [Philosophical] hermeneutics is practical philosophy.

The problem with this syllogism lies, of course, in the awkward premise (P4), presumably drawn on the basis of the homonymy inherent in the previous syllogism (S1). But the “as” could also have a merely explicative function: “hermeneutics is philosophy, and more precisely practical philosophy”. In this case, again, the legitimacy of the declaration would rely exclusively on the validity of (S1) above (now as a whole).²⁰ In either case, our initial analogy would vanish. The relation of practical philosophy to praxis would no longer function as a model for philosophical hermeneutics, but (in Aristotelian terms) as the field of a metabasis eis allo genos. The rhetorical emphasis of Gadamer’s declaration does not seem capable of concealing its substantial deficit.

8. Conclusion: The Inflated Normativity of Philosophical Hermeneutics

The transformation of hermeneutics to practical philosophy is advocated not only through the declaration discussed above, but also in the very title given to the study that contains the declaration. One might prefer to consider this text as a temporary deviation; but such an assumption would be wrongheaded. Indeed, Gadamer seems to be more careful, when he subsequently describes hermeneutics as only “the heir of the older tradition of practical philosophy” (“Hermeneutics and Social Science”, 316), or when, a few years later (1980), he returns to the notion of the “model”, in referring to Aristotle’s practical philosophy as “the unique solid model for a proper self-understanding of human sciences” (GW 2, 319). But he will never cease to claim a “practical mission” for hermeneutics; and the last volume of his Collected Works will include a special section on the relationship between “hermeneutics and practical philosophy”.²¹

In the context of his debate with Habermas, Gadamer seems forced to broaden and extend the “universality claims” of philosophical hermeneutics: These no longer have only the ontological character deriving from the universality of language (as in TM), but also extend to the fields of ethics and politics.²² Philosophy now undertakes the task

to defend practical and political reason against the domination of technology based on science. That is the point of philosophical hermeneutics. It corrects the peculiar falsehood of modern consciousness. (“Hermeneutics and Social Science”, 316)

In this way, Gadamer has not only abandoned and annulled the analogy from which our present study began, but he has also abandoned the Aristotelian distinction between theory and practice, or between theoretical and practical science, as well as the Aristotelian conception of phronêsis as a “different kind of knowledge”;²³ and he has annulled the transcendental dimension of philosophical hermeneutics, as a predominantly theoretical elaboration of the practice of understanding.

Some scholars have endorsed the claim of hermeneutics to some form of practical normativity; they have, however, not failed to acknowledge that such an endeavour would “lead us beyond philosophical hermeneutics”;²⁴ and that it ultimately fails to provide us with the new, substantial moral content needed for (but also missing from) modern societies.²⁵ I would like to emphasize the consequences of this claim not so much for philosophical hermeneutics itself, but for the idea of ⁣⁣practical philosophy. The humanities can indeed be structured around the axis of philosophical hermeneutics, and they can even possibly fill the lack of meaning discerned by Gadamer in the modern world. Practical philosophy, however, in its “applied” aspirations, is not so much confronted with a lack of meaning, but rather with the world of prakta.²⁶ Praxis is not a field of inwardness, and phronêsis is not a form of self-knowledge (as Gadamer always insisted), but an excellence realized inasmuch as it contributes to deeds. In the words of Gadamer himself, the truth at which phronêsis aims “is not that a thing is one way or another, but that a good be produced” (Aristoteles: “Nikomachische Ethik” VI, 4). This realized good is always a fulfilment, a completion of praxis, while on the side of understanding, “the very idea of a definitive interpretation seems to be intrinsically contradictory. Interpretation is always on the way” (HaPP, 105).

Gadamer’s practical “turn”, emphasizing the need for a rehabilitation of practical philosophy, represents, among other things, a criticism of Heidegger’s aversion to ethics and his tendency to strip the notion of phronêsis of any moral content.²⁷ But this critique remains in Heidegger’s shadow, and it shares his fundamental presuppositions. Gadamer’s shift to ethics remains equally stripped of all moral content: phronêsis as self-knowledge (Sich-Wissen) is only a (Socratically mantled) prolongment of Heidegger’s understanding of it as mere conscience (Gewissen). The inflated version of hermeneutics as practical philosophy is therefore possible only in parallel with an equivalent deflation of practical philosophy itself. We have observed philosophical hermeneutics claiming to represent a version of practical philosophy, i.e. belonging to it, and in view of the diagnosis that the Aristotelian tradition has vanished, we have seen philosophical hermeneutics essentially trying to completely replace it by taking the position of its sole heir. The character of these expansions and reductions has ultimately appeared to be simple: The claims and expectations placed by Gadamer on “philosophical hermeneutics as practical philosophy” signify a demand similar to that raised by Habermas, when he requested its transformation into a “critique of ideology”. Instead of a Marxist, Gadamer will, of course, pursue an ostensibly Aristotelian diversion, which, however, remains equally incompatible with both the fundamental self-understanding of philosophical hermeneutics as theory and the essential Aristotelian distinction between theory and practice.

Having rejected the normativity of the traditional hermeneutic art or technique, philosophical hermeneutics claims for itself now, in the role of (the heir to) practical philosophy, the competence for a new normativity. This endeavour reveals itself to be a dead end. Aristotelian practical philosophy cannot function for philosophical hermeneutics as anything but a structural analogon. The analogy remains appropriate for drawing attention to the epistemic goals of the two projects, but it also draws attention to the tensions they entail. It must therefore be protected, especially against the expansive, inflated claims addressed to philosophical hermeneutics by its own founder, Hans-Georg Gadamer.

Acknowledgments

For their helpful comments and suggestions, I would like to thank Pavlos Kontos, Chrysostomos Mantzavinos, Carlo DaVia, Vasiliki Vergouli and Michail Pantoulias. Many thanks, also, to Dr. Peter Larsen for smoothing out the prose of my text, and to the anonymous reviewers for their feedback on an earlier version of this paper.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The present publication is part of a research project supported by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (H.F.R.I.) under the “2nd Call for H.F.R.I. Research Projects to support Faculty Members & Researchers” (Project Number: 02443).

Notes

1 Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, 47.

2 This is the renowned characterization offered by H. Arendt, “Martin Heidegger at Eighty”, 295.

3 The transcendental character of Gadamer's hermeneutics is also emphasized by Mantzavinos, Naturalistic Hermeneutics, 48–69; I cannot, however, endorse his, largely critical, approach to Gadamer here.

4 Gadamer, Le problème de la conscience historique, 59. The same point is then repeated in TM, 310: “It is true that Aristotle is not concerned with the hermeneutical problem, and certainly not with its historical dimension”.

5 This analogical scheme does not appear in the literature either. To my knowledge, its closest anticipation is found in Foster, who also presented the “set of relationships” between the concepts invoked by Gadamer as a case of “analogy” (Foster, Gadamer and Practical Philosophy, 68). But I do not agree with Foster’s contention that “in Truth and Method Gadamer constructively blurs the distinction between theory and practice”, while in his other works Gadamer recognizes that “they do not amount to the same thing” (Gadamer and Practical Philosophy, 69). In general, I agree with Foster’s assessment that the tensions in Gadamer’s description of the relation between “practice and theory of practice” generate an “impasse” in his thought (Gadamer and Practical Philosophy, 71); but I do not share Foster’s overall description and assessment of this “impasse”. Gutschker, for his part, has also spoken of a “structural analogy” between Aristotelian ethics and Gadamer’s hermeneutics, without concretely identifying the relata of this analogy (Gutschker, Aristotelische Diskurse, 227). Similarly, Rese also spoke of a “merely structural analogy” (Rese, “Phronesis als Modell”, 142). But in her otherwise interesting analysis, the characterization of the activity of the interpreter, and also of hermeneutics in general, as a praxis causes confusion between parameters B, C and D and ultimately renders not only the scheme of analogy, but also the model role of practical philosophy completely untenable (cf. Rese, “Phronesis als Modell”, 144–145). – An initial, brief outline of the analogy was presented in a handbook article (Thanassas, “Existenzphilosophie und Hermeneutik”, 534). From a completely different perspective, the most recent publication dedicated to Gadamer’s reading of Aristotle (DaVia, “The limits of definition”) tries to describe and justify a “critique of Aristotle’s ethics”, which has never been exercised by Gadamer, and of which no concrete instance is provided by the author.

6 As Carlo DaVia proposed, in a private exchange.

7 Berti, “The reception of Aristotle’s intellectual virtues”, 286, 289; Berti even criticizes Gadamer for conceiving practical philosophy as “not being an epistêmê (or scientific knowledge)”, as bearing an “impossibility of learning it” (286) – although the passages quoted above confirm the exact opposite.

8 Kontos, Aristotle's Moral Realism Reconsidered, 129, 132.

9 Gadamer, Aristoteles: “Nikomachische Ethik” VI, 66. Cf. also: “Aristotle did not succeed, or perhaps he never attempted, to offer an exact representation of the relation between theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge” (63); but “in research, too, the distinction between theoretical reflection and moral consciousness in its concrete exercise does not quite succeed” (65).

10 Gadamer, “Die Aufgabe”, 172.

11 See EN 1179a35-b2: “in practical matters, the goal is not to theorize and know about each of them, but rather to do them”; Met. 993b20-21: “the goal of theoretical science is [theoretical] truth, whereas the goal of the practical science is action”; cf. also EE 1216b21-23.

12 See HaPP, 109: “Wagnis”; the term (“coup d’audace”) was used by Gadamer already in Le problème de la conscience historique, 73.

13 It is, therefore, utterly misleading to claim that “understanding for Gadamer is a form of phronêsis” – as Bernstein once did (“From Hermeneutics to Praxis”, 91).

14 Heidegger’s emblematic identification of phronêsis with conscience (“das ist das Gewissen”) is conveyed and discussed by Gadamer in several passages; see, for instance, GW 2, 485; GW 3, 200, 400. In the transformation of this inheritance (from “Gewissen” into “Sich-Wissen”), Gadamer can of course allude to the Socratic legacy. Two of the prominent passages, where Gadamer presents Aristotelian phronêsis primarily (if not exclusively) as a form of self-knowledge, are GW 5, 241 (a text written in 1930), and TM, 314. In the latter, Gadamer cites Aristotelian passages such as EN 1141b33, 1142a30, EE 1246b36. Rese, however, has successfully shown that this invocation is not legitimate (“Phronesis als Modell”, 139).

15 Habermas, “A Review”, 272.

16 Gadamer, “On the Scope”, 279.

17 Gadamer will try to justify this by appealing here, on the one hand, to the common feature of understanding and action as forms of “daring” (Wagnis); and on the other hand, to the character of understanding as an “adventure”, which “as a new experience enters into the texture of our own mental experience” (HaPP, 109); in this sense, understanding “is capable of contributing in a special way to the broadening of our human experiences, our self-knowledge, and our horizon” (HaPP, 110).

18 The Aristotelian passage reads as follows: ἀλλὰ τὸν πρακτικὸν οὐκ ἀναγκαῖον ϵἶναι πρὸς ἑτέρους, καθάπϵρ οἴονταί τινϵς, οὐδὲ τὰς διανοίας ϵἶναι μόνας ταύτας πρακτικάς, τὰς τῶν ἀποβαινόντων χάριν γιγνομένας ἐκ τοῦ πράττϵιν, ἀλλὰ πολὺ μᾶλλον τὰς αὐτοτϵλϵῖς καὶ τὰς αὑτῶν ἕνϵκϵν θϵωρίας καὶ διανοήσϵις· ἡ γὰρ ϵὐπραξία τέλος, ὥστϵ καὶ πρᾶξίς τις (Pol. 1325b16-21). Gadamer seems to take for granted that the subject of the elliptical final sentence is θϵωρία (see, for example, HaPP, 90, and Aristoteles: “Nikomachische Ethik”, 64). Yet, as Pavlos Kontos has pointed out to me, this reading is far from self-evident, and indeed it is not the reading endorsed by the majority of translators and commentators, who overwhelmingly understand ϵὐπραξία as the subject here. I endorse this objection, but it remains the case that Gadamer’s reading nicely echoes the opening clause, in which Aristotle takes θϵωρία to be a sort of πρᾶξις. I will therefore proceed under the presupposition that Gadamer’s overall reading of the passage is appropriate, or at least tenable.

19 Interestingly, an anonymous reviewer has suggested that one might understand P1 as referring to praxis in the broad sense; in this case, practical philosophy would offer an account of any human activity, and Gadamer’s declaration would offer “not an abandonment of Gadamer’s earlier position, [but] only a mild addition to it”. Such a reading would indeed “rescue” S1: If praxis in P1 were to be understood in the broad sense, philosophical hermeneutics would be practical philosophy in the sense that it offers a theoretical account of any human activity. Against this reading, however, I would argue, first, that such an understanding of “practical philosophy” would be at odds with its traditional (Aristotelian) understanding as a discipline that deals with the sphere of voluntary, goal-directed, ethically qualified actions. This is the notion of “practical philosophy” that Gadamer presupposes throughout his oeuvre. Secondly, Gadamer clearly invokes this traditional sense of “practical philosophy” when he presents his hermeneutics as “the heir of the older tradition of practical philosophy” and formulates its normative aspiration. (For more on this see the next section of the present essay.)

20 The only author who seems to have realized the problems of this intriguing “as” is Chang, who slides over the problem by calling it “the highest implementation of a hermeneutic As” – and not further discussing its status (Chang, Geschichte, Verstehen und Praxis, 14).

21 “Hermeneutik und praktische Philosophie”, in GW 10. Cf. also the title of a text of 1978: “Hermeneutics as a Theoretical and Practical Task” (GW 2, 301-318).

22 A thorough description of this extended aspiration is offered by Gutschker, in his Aristotelische Diskurse (see esp. 238-254).

23 This holds true despite the fact that Gadamer still praises Aristotle for his “great merit” to expose “the structure of practical reason as distinct from theoretical knowledge and technical skill” (Gadamer, “Hermeneutics and Social Science”, 312).

24 Thus Bernstein, who ultimately places our “genuinely practical task” beyond the scope of hermeneutics (“From Hermeneutics to Praxis”, 96, 104). Schmidt, for his part, in affirming unconditionally that “hermeneutics needs to be understood as an ethics”, takes for granted that hermeneutics has “a real and important ethical significance”, and he mentions, among other reasons, Gadamer’s invocation of Aristotle’s ethics as a “kind of model for the problems of hermeneutics” (“On the Sources”, 35-36). Schmidt does not expand on the character of this “model”-function; he sees no difference between this approach, expounded in TM, and the claims made in HaPP. He does acknowledge, however, that Gadamer “never systematically treated the largest questions of the relation of hermeneutics and ethical life” (“On the Sources”, 39). The core divergence between Schmidt’s view and the interpretation presented here can be traced back to Schmidt’s point of departure, and his statement that “hermeneutics is not simply a theory […] but needs to be understood both as, and out of, a practice that cultivates an ethical sensibility” (“On the Sources”, 35). This might apply to hermeneutics as the praxis of understanding, but not to philosophical hermeneutics initially conceived by Gadamer as a theory of understanding. It might be no coincidence that Schmidt clearly prefers the term “hermeneutics” over “philosophical hermeneutics”.

25 Cf. Foster, who aptly notes Gadamer’s “reluctance to commit his practical philosophy to substantive assertions” (Gadamer and Practical Philosophy, 253). In adopting and scrutinizing Gadamer’s practical claim more seriously than any other scholar, Foster eventually only demonstrated the impasses of this claim.

26 Cf. Kontos, Aristotle’s Moral Realism Reconsidered, 9-31, 134-138.

27 Chang notes this “deviation” in the Introduction of his study (Geschichte, Verstehen und Praxis, 8), but he does not further make use of this insight.