Quid Facti or Quid Juris? The Fundamental Ambiguity of Gadamer's Understanding of Hermeneutics

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QUID FACTI OR QUID JURIS?

THE FUNDAMENTAL AMBIGUITY OF GADAMER'S
UNDERSTANDING OF HERMENEUTICS
INTRODUCTION
We must, Gadamer suggests in his analysis of the logic of question and answer, always understand a text as an answer to a question;
in order to do this, we must acquire "the horizon of the question that,
as such, necessarily includes other possible answers. " 1 There is, furthermore, a danger in interpretation if we attempt to make a text
answer questions which are foreign to it, and the Gadamerian way of
avoiding that danger is to remain in a state of openness to the questions which the text asks us. It is this openness which presumably insures that we will not distort the meaning of a text by expecting it to
answer questions which are alien to it.
Since I think that Gadamer is to a large measure correct on this
point about the relationship between question and answer, I approach the following analysis with some degree of hesitation, for it is
possible that I am expecting Gadamer to provide an answer to a question which he is not asking: the quaestio Juris in regard to
hermeneutical understanding. Indeed, in his debate with Betti,
Gadamer seems to have clearly rejected the suggestion that his work is
concerned with the quaestio Juris in the sense of a question about
what understanding ought to be. 2 It would seem to be inappropriate,
in the light of this, to ask whether Gadamer has adequately dealt
with the quaestio Juris. To criticize an author for failing to answer a
question that he was not asking would seem to ignore one of the fundamental insights of hermeneutics.
Yet we are, I think, justified in posing the quaestio Juris in relation to Gadamer's analysis of the hermeneutical process, even if we
accept his own analysis of the dialetic of question and answer. First,
as Gadamer would be the first to admit, we cannot simply let the
author's intentions be the final arbiter in such matters: the meaning
of a text overflows the boundaries of the author's intentions. Second,
every posing of a question involves presuppositions, and it would seem
that Gadamer's position does not necessarily entail a complete or un1 HansGeorg Gadamer, Wahrheit und M ethode, 2. Auflage (Tiibingen:
Mohr, 1965), p. 352; Truth and Method (New York: Seabury Press, 1975), p. 333.
Hereafter WM and TM, respectively.
2 WM, 483-4; TM, 465-66.
512
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QUID FACTI OR QUID JURIS:

THE FuNDAMENT AL AMBIGUITY OF
GADAMER'S UNDERSTANDING OF HERMENEUTICS
critical acceptance of the original presuppositions of the particular

way in which the question was posed by a given author. Third, we
must ultimately follow the logic of the thing itself: openness involves
letting ourselves be guided by the proper logic of the thing itself as it
unfolds in the hermeneutical process of understanding, interpretation, and application. We are not, therefore, bound by the principles
of Gadamer's hermeneutics to accept his self-interpretation as
necessarily valid when he excludes the quaestz'o jurz's as a question
about what understanding ought to be.
Yet this only establishes that we have a right in principle to ask
Gadamer's texts to speak to the question of justification. It does not
establish that we are justified in doing so in this particular instance,
for this latter claim can only be established through a concrete
analysis of Gadamer's work. In the following remarks, I wish to
establish the legitimacy of the quaestz'o jurz's as the question of justifying what interpretation ought to be within the Gadamerian
understanding of hermeneutics. As I shall show below, Gadamer's exclusion of the quaestio jurz's in this sense is not only unjustified: it is incompatible with a number of fundamental insights that are presented
in Truth and Method. Unless this question is brought out into the
open and adequately answered, Gadamer is faced with a dilemma.
Either he is presenting only an analysis of what is inevitably involved
in all understanding, interpretation, and application, or else he is
(perhaps also) presenting an analysis of what is involved in all good
(or valid or justified) understanding, interpretation, and application.
In either case, he must provide some account of the relationship between these three eleme-nts and the question of truth. The fundamental ambiguity in Gadamer's understanding of hermeneutics is
centered around the question of the locus of truth: if truth is identified with the hermeneutical process itself, and if this process is simply the way things are, then it becomes extremely difficult to
distinguish between truth and nontruth, to say what is not truth. If,
however, one can say in some significant sense that some interpretations are true in a way in which others are not, then it appears that
truth cannot be identified with the hermeneutical process tout court,
but rather must belong in a special way to some interpretations rather
than others. Yet if this is the case, there must be some criteria in
terms of which one can judge how true a given interpretation is. To
ask for such criteria is to ask the quaestio jurz's. Insofar as Gadamer
constantly presupposes in specific instances that some interpretations
have in fact a greater claim to truth than others, he presupposes but

PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
514
does not acknowledge a particular answer to the quaestio jurz's. It is

the task of ~his paper to bring to light and to critically examine that
presupposed answer. Unless this is done, the "truth" in Truth and
Method will remain fundamentally ambiguous.
Gadamer's Statement of the Hermeneutic:;i 1 Problem
If an investigation into Gadamer's understanding of
hermeneutics is to reveal the inner necessity of posing the quaestio
jurz's as the question of what understanding, interpretation, and application ought to be, it must begin with the way in which Gadamer
has posed the hermeneutical question, for only in this way will it be
possible to gain access to Gadamer's own presuppositions and free
them for an examination which is critical yet internal to the dialectic
in which hermeneutics is involved. On the basis of such an examination, it will be possible to see both the way in which Gadamer presupposes an answer to the quaestio jurzs and the reason why that answer
has remained partially hidden from view.
Gadamer's primary concern in Truth and Method is with a
retrieval of the question of truth within the human sciences in
general, and especially within the domains of aesthetics and historical
consciousness. 3 The human sciences have, in Gadamer's eyes, lost
sight of the question of truth, and to a large measure particular commitments to the priority of specific methodologies (and an implied
general commitment to the priority of method as such) have been
responsible for this development. In the historical sciences, for example, the question of truth has been reduced to a question of the accuracy with which past events are reconstructed , and this accuracy
has in turn been defined in relation to specific methodologies. Truth
is thus restricted to methodologically-grounded accuracy. An
historical study is "true" in this sense if it is accurate, i.e., if it meets
the methodological requirements of historical scholarship.
Such_a notion of truth, Gadamer argues , is an impoverished one
which fails, on two counts, to come to grips with the fullness of the
phenomenon of truth. It not only neglects the question of the way in
which history is about something (i.e., history is about truth in the
sense that it reveals that which is true), but it also fails to take into account the way in which the historian himself is fundamentally con.3
Alt_houg~ in general I shall use the term "human sciences" to refer especially
to h1stoncal science , I shall also be considering Gadamer's analysis of aesthetics in-
sofar as this provides a unified model of understanding and truth for the human
sciences as a whole.

515

cerned with something beyond accuracy (i.e., with the truth of the
matter which presents itself in history) . In other words, such a notion
of truth fails to take into consideration the relatedness of both the
historical matter and the historian to a common question: the truth
which is revealed in and through historical existence . It is, indeed,
this shared concern which constitutes the inner, if often concealed,
continuity of historical existence.
In order to establish his position, Gadamer must exhibit (a) the
ways in which the "objects" of historical study stand in a relation to
the question of truth, (b) the ways in which the "subjects" who pursue
historical research also stand in a relation to the question of truth, (c)
the unifying bond between these two, and (d) how and why this
relatedness to truth has been forgotten through the modern concern
with methodology. In this sense, Gadamer is following the Heideggerean path of Wilderholung: 4 just as Heidegger attempted to
retrieve the question of Being from the Seinsvergessenheit into which
it had fallen in the history of Western thought since Plato, so
Gadamer attempts to retrieve the question of truth from the human
sciences which have, in their concern for method, lost sight of this
question. In order to do so, he must show that the human sciences
have grounded themselves on an inadequate understanding of both
the being of the historical "object" and the being of the historian as
"knowing subject." Thus, before the positive dimension of the
phenomenon of "truth" can be exhibited, it is necessary to free
understanding from the false, methodologically-based objectivism
which has concealed the question of truth from it. Just as Heidegger
found a destruction of the history of Western ontology necessary in
order to free the question of Being, Gadamer finds a destruction of
the history of the human sciences necessary in order to free the question of truth from the boundaries of methodological accuracy.
At the risk of not doing justice to the inner unity of Gadamer's
position here, I shall, for the purposes of analysis, consider the
"negative" and "positive" dimensions of his task separately, although
these are - at least to some extent - simply two sides of the same
hermeneutical coin.
4 0n the differences between Heidegger and Gadamer on this point, see T.
Kisiel , "Repetition in Gadamer's Hermeneutics," Analecta Husserliana, II (1972),
196-203. On the more general relation between the two, see Hermann Braun,
"Zurn Verhaltnis von Hermeneutik und Ontologie," Hermeneutik und Dialektik,
edited by Rudiger Bubner, Konrad Cramer , and Reiner Wiehl (Tiibingen: J ohr,
1970), Vol. II, 201 -18.

516
The Critique of Method

The "recognition that all understanding inevitably involves some
prejudice ," Gadamer maintains , "gives the hermeneutical problem
its real thrust, " 5 for this recognition (a) casts into doubt the
legitimacy of any methodology which claims to be presuppositionless
and (b) raises the philosophical question of how, given the necessarily
presuppositional character of understanding, these presuppositions
are to be grounded or legitimized . This section is concerned primarily
with the first of these two problems.
The philosophical and historical roots of the contemporary
adherence to the primacy of method are to be found , Gadamer suggests, primarily in the Enlightenment's belief that it is possible to
avoid error through a methodologically disciplined use of reason.
Through the application of the proper method, it should be possible
to subject our previous beliefs to a disciplined scrutiny and thereby
separate that which is true (i.e ., that which has been methodologically secured) from that which is mere opinion or prejudice (i.e., that
which has not passed the test of method) . Reason, conceived of as a
particular method of inquiry, becomes the measure of all that which
has been handed down through tradition. Once this commitment to
the primacy of method has been made , tradition is robbed of its
power (i.e. , its claim to truth) , for it is approached with the
methodological presupposition that it is, at best, doubtful - in all
probability, false . The Enlightenment conceals from itself, however,
the fact that its standard ofreason is itself an historical one, rooted in
a methodological ideal of certainty derived from the natural sciences
and impelled by a reaction against dogmatic interpretations of the bible. Representatives of the Enlightenment failed to realize, in other
words, that their attempted rejection of all prejudices was itself a prejudice with its own concealed , historical roots.
The philosophical foundation of Gadamer's critique of the
Enlightenment's prejudice against prejudices is to be found in the
Heideggerean analysis of the forestructure of understanding.
Although Gadamer's development of Heidegger's argument is both
rich and complex in its details, its fundamental structure is as simple
in outline as it is bold in conception. Understanding is necessarily
presuppositional in character. In any encounter with a possible object
of understanding, we always approach the object with a particular
5
WM, 254 ; TM , 239 .

517

THE FUNDAMENTAL AMBIGUITY OF
anticipation of meaning - with, in Heideggerean terms, a foreproject of understanding. Precisely because that which we are approaching is something yet to be understood, we are always ahead of
both ourselves and the object. We can never know in advance
whether this anticipation will be confirmed by the object itself, for if
this were the case, we would have already understood it. It is only in
the process of working out this initial projection of meaning that we
discover whether or not it is justified. Thus the process of working-out
involves putting our preliminary understanding, our prejudices, "on
the line," risking the possibility that they will not be confirmed.
Because understanding is always ahead of itself, because it is
necessarily temporal in character, it must necessarily approach the
objects to be understood with its own prejudices, i.e., with judgments
which are "given before all the elements that determine a situation
have been finally examined. "6
The basic philosophical error committed by those who maintain
the primacy of a particular method in the human sciences is that they
fail to recognize that their method is itself a specific anticipation of
meaning, i.e., a highly formalized foreproject of understanding.
Their method is, in other words, itself a prejudice in that it is a judgment which is given before all the elements that determine a situation
have been finally examined. Insofar as they maintain the primacy of
their method, insofar as they maintain that their particular method is
the measure of truth itself, they raise a particular prejudice to the
level of an absolute measure of truth itself. Moreover, insofar as they
do this, they insulate their own prejudice from any possible
counterclaims which would reveal its inadequacy or falsity by making
that prejudice the measure of truth. It then becomes impossible in
principle to recognize a truth claim which would count against the
method - or prejudice - itself, for the acceptance of that prejudice
is the condition of the possibility of recognizing any truth claims at
all . Finally, insofar as this prejudice is itself rooted in the historical
situation of those who advance it as a method, that historical situation itself is raised to the level of an absolute which is immune to the
truth-claims of earlier history. Thus truth (in its fundamental sense)
disappears from history, and a methodologically-based criterion of
accuracy takes its place: the commitment to the primacy of method
exempts the historian from raising questions about the truth of his
own situation, and this commitment leads him to forget the question
6
WM, 255 ; TM, 240.

518
of what truth is revealed in history and thus to overlook the rootedness

of his own situation in history itself.
Although this critique of the false , objectivistic selfunderstanding of the historical sciences is sufficient to ground
Gadamer's rejection of any claim to the primacy of a particular
method, it anticipates but does not yet establish the positive claim of
hermeneutics to provide , in some significant way, access to truth.
While his critique thus exhibits what is involved in a particular kind
of misunderstanding, it does not yet establish what is involved in
understanding truth . We shall now turn to this problem .
The Hermeneutical Model of Understanding

The previous section has already provided an anticipation of the
insight which grounds the hermeneutical model of understanding: all
understanding inevitably involves some prejudice. Taken in isolation ,
however, this insight merely leads to a kind of relativism, an
epistemological laissez-faire , which would be as unacceptable to
Gadamer as the dogmatism which characterized the Enlightenment
prejudice against prejudices. In order to avoid such relativism,
Gadamer must exhibit the positive relation between the
hermeneutical model of understanding and truth. The relation can
be understood most clearly in terms of the model of play. Although
Gadamer uses this model only in passing in his discussion of the
hermeneutical event in Part Two of Truth and Method, his heavy
reliance on it in the explication of the mode of being of the work of
art and the recurrence of this model in the important concluding
paragraphs of the book justify the attempt to grasp his position on
understanding in terms of this model.
Consider , first of all , what takes place in playing a game of chess .
One approaches the game with a certain foreproject which provides
an anticipation of the kinds of moves one is going to make. In the initial stages of the game, the foreproject is rather indeterminate and ,
to that degree , subject to the will of the individual player. As the
game progresses, the foreproject becomes increasingly more specific
and one's freedom of movement correspondingly decreases : moves
become less arbitrary, more necessary. The magister ludi is, as it
were, the one who is least free: he is the one who never does what he
wants as the game progresses, but always does what the game
demands of him . (Indeed, the years of training are spent , in a very
real sense, in learning how to avoid letting oneself get in the way of

519

THE FuNDAMENTAL AMBIGUITY OF
what the game demands.) As the game progresses, the significance of

past moves begins to reveal itself: their full consequences are gradually unfolded in the process of playing out the game. In this process of
playing out the game, one discovers that one has made mistakes, i.e.,
wrong moves based on mistaken anticipations. As one looks back on a
given move in order to understand it, one discovers that the individual move cannot be understood in isolation from the complex
web of antecedent and consequent relations of which it is a part: it
must, in other words, be understood in relation to the previous moves
on which it was based and in terms of its later consequences in the
game. One discovers, furthermore, that one's understanding of that
past move is itself grounded in the particular moment of the game
from which one looks back: at that moment, some (but perhaps not
all) of the consequences of that earlier move have revealed
themselves; at the same time, that understanding is also determined
in relation to the possibilities present in the moment for future moves.
One sees the meaning of previous moves in terms of one's present options, but at the same time one sees that those options have been
shaped by the past moves. One realizes, finally, that the full consequences of the move that one now decides to make wiq only be revealed as the game is played out; at the moment of making the move, one
cannot be absolutely certain that it is right - unless it concludes the
game with checkmate.
Although this analogy has severe limitations which will have to
be discussed, it does serve as a helpful model in understanding a
number of the basic theses which Gadamer advances in relation to the
hermeneutical process as a whole. First, the necessity of a foreproject
is clearly given: any attempt to understand and participate in the
game necessarily demands an anticipation of the moves yet to be
made. I shall call this the anticipation thesis. Second, the dependence
of understanding on presuppositions is illustrated by the way in which
this anticipation is based on the totality of previous moves which, at
any given moment during the game, are given. This is the presupposition or givenness thesis. Third, the magister ludi example suggests
that the possibility of making correct moves depends in large measure
on a knowledge of past moves (and their consequences) and an openness to the demands of the game itself. Noting that this kind of openness is only possible on the basis of such knowledge, I shall refer to this
as the openness thesis. Fourth, the fact that the significance of a given
move only emerges gradually in the process of playing out the game
can be taken as an instance of the temporal distance thesis: the full

520
consequences of a given event can only emerge through time. This

suggests a fifth, closely related thesis: the meaning of a given event
cannot be considered in isolation from its effects. This is the effective
history thesis. The fact that one's understanding of the game at any
given moment is shaped by the previous moves suggests that these
moves are effective in one's consciousness at any given moment. This
suggestion that consciousness is effected by history is what I shall call
the historical-effective consciousness thesis. 1 The fact that, on the
basis of this consciousness, one acts and thereby effects the game suggests a seventh thesis: consciousness is effective in history. I shall call
this the historical-effective consciousness thesis. 2 Two final , and again
closely related, theses are implied in the play model. The application
thesis and the conffrmation thesis state that one can only determine
whether one's interpretation of the game is right if one applies that
interpretation in future moves and then, on the basis of the way in
which those moves work themselves out in the game , one discovers
whether or not one's interpretation is right; it is, in other words, only
confirmed in the playing out of the game.
The major limitations of this analogy can now be discussed.
First , whereas a chess game has a clearly defined beginning and end,
there is no such possibility on the level of historical existence as such .
We are always already in the middle of a game in which countless
moves have already been made for us, and we hope (for the sake of
mankind as a whole) that we will not be present for the final move.
Second, the chess game is one game among many other possible
games , all of which exist within the broader framework of a nonplay
world. If historical existence is to be seen in terms of the play model ,
it must be recognized that there is only one game and that there is no
nongame world surrounding it. This leads to the third main point of
disanalogy: whereas one can choose to play chess or not to do so, there
is no choice in regard to historical existence. To be at all is to participate in that play. A fourth difference follows from the preceding
three: whereas the chess player has an identity outside of the game
which provides a certain distance between himself and the chess
game, there is no ego-identity outside of historical existence and consequently one is completely immersed in the game. The limits of the
game are the limits of reality itself.
If the play model is amended in light of these points of
disanalogy, it then becomes possible to see the philosophical foundation of Gadamer's understanding of hermeneutics and the way in
which this grounds a number of the specific insights found in Truth

521

and Method. In keeping with the general Heideggerean tendency to

try to overcome the subjectivism of modern thought, Gadamer is attempting to provide a model of understanding which avoids the
dualities which have traditionally plagued epistemology. The model
of play is particularly suitable for such an undertaking. The split between subject and object as, respectively, active and passive disappears
in the play model: it is, as Gadamer says, "the game itself that plays,
in that it draws the players into itself and thus itself becomes the actual subjectum of the playing." 7 In a similar way , the traditional opposition between , on the one hand , knowledge and freedom and, on
the other hand, tradition and obedience disappears: it is only on the
basis of a knowledge of previous moves and an openness to the
demands of the game itself that one can know how to act in the
future. The impossibility of calling all of tradition into doubt at one
time is also given in the model: the givenness of past moves is the condition of the possibility of any future moves; tradition is the condition
of the possibility of any meaningful action whatsoever. Without tradition, action would be utterly arbitrary. The amended analogy pro
vides, moreover, the reason why it is impossible in principle to doubt
the totality of the rules of the game as such: since the limits of the
game are the limits of reality itself, any such attempted doubt would
be an attempt to step outside the bounds of reality. It would be in
principle impossible to express such doubt, for its expression would
either (a) presuppose the framework of meaning provided by the
game itself, in which case it would be presupposing the validity of the
very thing it was doubting and would thus be existentially selfrefuting, or (b) it would reject that framework of meaning, in which
case it would be meaningless if that were the only framework of
meaning possible.
Although the play model of understanding can be extended in
such a way as to encompass many of Gadamer's specific insights e.g., the logic of question and answer , 8 the way in which in a genuine
conversation the participants follow the immanent logic of the topic
itself rather than their individual wills, 9 the way in which the true
method consists in not interfering arbitrarily with the activity performed by the thing (i.e. , the game) itself, 10 or the way in which the
WM, 464; TM, 446; cf. WM, 97 ff.; TM, 91 ff.
WM, '.H4-60; TM, 325-41.
9 WM, 361 ; TM, 345 .
10 WM , 439; TM , 421.
7

522
hermeneutical circle "describes understanding as the interplay of the

movement of tradition and movement of the interpreter, " 11 and the
way in which language itself is structured as a game 12 - the primary
purpose of this paper is not to explore the heuristic value of the play
model as such in understanding. The model has, rather, been
developed for a more specific purpose: to shed light on Gadamer's
understanding of truth and thereby to see more clearly the way in
which the question of truth raises the quaestio juris. It is to these problems that we shall now tum.
World, Tradition, and Truth

In the concluding paragraphs of Truth and Method, Gadamer
explicitly links the question of truth to the concept of play. Truth
which is revealed through language, he suggests, "can best be determined again in terms of our concept of play."
The way in which the weight of the things that we encounter in
understanding disposes itself is itself a linguistic event, a game
with words playing around and about what is meant. Language
games are where we, as learners - and when do we cease to be
that? - rise to the understanding of the world. .
. (It is) the
play of language itself which addresses us, proposes and
withdraws, asks and fulfills itself in the answer. 13
Gadamer is careful to note, within this context, that it is the game

itself which is the actual subjectum of the playing: it is the game of
language itself which draws us, as players, into it and which plays out
its own possibilities. Furthermore, it differs from the chess game
analogy offered above in this important respect: the participants do
not withhold commitment to the game, do not treat it as "only" a
game, but rather are already involved in, and committed to, the
game insofar as they participate in understanding at all: "Someone
who understands is always already drawn into an event through which
meaning asserts itself. So it is well grounded for us to use the same
11 WM, 277; TM, 261. Also see Gadamer, "Vom Zirkel des Verstehens,"
Martin Heidegger zum Siebzigsten Geburtstag: Festschrift, edited by Gunther
Neske (Pfullingen: Neske, 1959), 2434, especially p. 34: "In Wahrheit wird das
eigene Vorurteil dadurch recht eigentlich ins Spiel gebracht, dal3 es selber au~ d~m
Spiele steht. Nur indem es sich ausspielt, spielt es sich mit dem anderen so we1t em,
dal3 auch dieses sich ausspielen kann."
12 WM, 464; TM , 446; also XXII , fn . l; 500, fn. 13.
13 WM, 464; TM , 446.

523
QUID FACT! OR QUID JURIS:

concept of play for the hermeneutical phenomenon as for the experience of the beautiful. " 14 In this sense, understanding is only possible because of a prior involvement in a language game and a commitment to its rules as the condition of the possibility of understanding at
all. Thus Gadamer concludes the penultimate paragraph of Truth
and Method:
What we encounter in the experience of the beautiful and in
understanding the meaning of tradition has effectively something
about it of the truth of play. In understanding we are drawn into
an event of truth and arrive, as it were , too late , if we want to
know what we ought to believe . 15
We necessarily arrive too late to know what we ought to believe

because, in order to raise the question of what we ought to believe, we
must have already committed ourselves to a belief in the game of
language. To ask what we ought to believe already involves a belief in
the language game within which the question is posed - and, more
fundamentally, in language as the clearing within which truth is
revealed.
Yet what exactly does Gadamer mean by "truth" here? In his
discussion of play as a clue to the mode of being of art, Gadamer suggested that play is a transformation into a structure, and this in turn
is equated with a "transformation into the true." Thus:
. . . it is itself redemption and transformation back into true being. In the representation of play, what is emerges. In it is produced and brought to the light what otherwise is constantly hidden
and withdrawn. If someone knows how to perceive the comedy
and tragedy of life, he is able to resist the suggestiveness of purposes which conceal the game that is played with us. 16
Truth is in this sense structure, and the truth which is uncovered in

art is the structure of what is; the structure of "what is" reveals itself,
in turn, as "the game which is played with us ." The fundamental
truth, in other words, which is revealed in art is the truth of human
finitude in the face of the power of fate. 17 In his analysis of the structure of human experience, Gadamer reaches a similar result:
". . . experience is experience of human finitude . . . What is properly gained from all experience, then, is to know what is. But 'what
is,' here , is not this or that thing, but 'what cannot be done away
14
15
16
17
WM, 465; TM, 446.

Ibid.
WM, 107; TM, 101.
WM, 126 ; TM, 117 .

524
with' . 18 The shared truth which is revealed through art as well as

through understanding is the truth of man's finitude in the face of
"what is." The truth in this sense is that we are already caught up in a
game that is being played with us, and any attempt to step outside of
that game can only be a step into the abyss. This sense of "the truth"
provides, then, one interpretation of the concluding claim of Truth
and Method that a discipline of question and research "guarantees
the truth": 19 this discipline guarantees that we will see that the truth
of human existence is its finitude in the face of "what is;" it
guarantees, in other words, that we will see that the event of truth is a
game that is played with us.
There is a second, and closely related, notion of truth present
here , and it can also be understood in relation to the model of play.
In the discussion of the chess game analogy, I suggested that
Gadamer's temporal distance thesis can be understood as asserting
that the full consequences of a given event (or move in a game) can
only emerge or reveal themselves through time. The event structure
of truth is rooted in part in precisely this structure : truth as an event
in this sense is the revelation in time of the full meaning of something,
and this revelation is the "truth" of the thing. It is here that the
necessary temporality of truth emerges. In the aesthetic dimension,
the temporality of truth is revealed through a "playing out" of the
play, and in the dimension of hermeneutical understanding it is
revealed in the "working out" of the interpretation. Such "working
out," however, is itself ultimately a "playing out" of the game of
language. The various other theses all presuppose this temporal
dimension of truth. The presupposition thesis states that we are
drawn into a game already in progrei;s. The anticipation thesis implies an awareness of that which is yet
be played out. The openness
thesis expresses the participant's willingness to give himself over to the
play in which he is already involved, while the application thesis indicates that this involvement must be an active one in some sense .
The confirmation thesis expresses the way in which this anticipation is
subjected to the playing out of the game itself. The effective history
thesis asserts the continuity of this game, while the histmical-effective
consciousness theses indicate the dual (past and future oriented) relationship between consciousness and the game itself. This second notion of truth as event thus provides a second, complementary inter-
!to
18
19
WM , 339-40 ; TM, 320.

WM, 465; TM, 447.

525
QUID FACTI OR QUIDJURIS:

pretation of the final sentence of Truth and Method: a discipline of

question and research "guarantees the truth" in the sense that it
guarantees an openness to participating in the events in which particular truths unfold themselves in time.
The play model thus has a double role in the determination of
the concept of truth. On the one hand, "the truth" is finally that we
are unavoidably and inextricably caught up in a game which is being
played with us; on the other hand, particular "truths" have the structure of events in which we participate but which unfold themselves, as
it were, independently of our own individual wills. The understanding of a particular truth is "like an event which happens to us, "20
and the fundamental truth which we discover through art as well as
through the.understanding of history is that this is the structure of all
truth, i.e., the truth about truth.
This model allows us, moreover, to understand the relation between tradition and truth: tradition is, in a sense, the game as it is effectively handed over to us in the moment. Once again, there are two
dimensions of the problem. The truth of tradition, in the first sense,
is that all truth is finite, temporal, and thus bound to tradition:
" . . . we stand always within tradition, and this is no objectifying
process, i.e. , we do not conceive of what tradition says as something
other, something alien. It is always part of us . . . "21 The truth which
tradition thus reveals is that the truth which we ourselves are is an
historical truth rooted in the effectiveness of tradition in us. In the second sense, particular truths can only reveal themselves within tradition itself. In this sense, the understanding of particular truths "is not
to be thought of so much as an action of one's subjectivity, but as the
placing of oneself within a process of tradition, in which past and present are constantly fused." 22 Thus truth is always traditional, and
particular truths are always discovered by giving ourselves over to the
play of tradition .
The play model elucidates, finally, the relationship between the
world and truth for Gadamer. All understanding necessarily involves,
for Gadamer, a fusion of horizons, and the event of understanding
tradition is a working-out of the fusion of present and past horizons. 23
This process is not to be viewed as the bringing together of discrete,
closed horizons into some kind of aggregate; nor, according to
20
21
22
23
WM ,
WM,
WM,
WM,
361; TM, 345.

266; TM, 250.
274-75; TM, 258.
289 ; TM, 273.

526
Gadamer, is it to be seen as the subsumption of all past horizons

within a present horizon whose validity remains unquestioned. There
is, rather, "one great horizon that moves from within and, beyond the
frontiers of the present, embraces the historical depths of our selfconsciousness. It is, in fact, a single horizon that embraces everything
contained in historical consciousness. " 24 The ground of this fusion of
horizons which comes to consciousness through the understanding of
tradition is the continuing effectiveness of the past in the present. The
fusion of horizons is, in other words, only possible because history is
effective history; when this fusion takes place through the understanding of tradition, effective history then becomes effective historical
consciousness. The play of history, in this sense, comes to consciousness of itself as effective historical consciousness; as such, it is
consciousness of the (in part still projected) unity of this game; it
becomes, in other words, consciousness of effective history as consciousness of the world as the one great horizon within which particular truths are revealed. Once again, this is a twofold insight. The
world is necessarily an historical world, and this is the truth about the
world as such; the projected unity of this world, moreover, is the
framework within which particular truths reveal themselves .
Understanding particular truths thus presupposes a common world, a
fusion of horizons; and an understanding of this general structure
reveals that the event of truth itself always takes place within a
horizon or world.
It is this understanding of truth which is, I think, the basis of
Gadamer's rejection of any attempt to be dealing with the quaestz"o
Juris in Truth and Method. We shall now turn to this problem.
Quid facti or quid juris?
In his debate with Emilio Betti, Gadamer attempted to elucidate
what he himself was doing in his hermeneutical works. Thus he
replied to Betti: "Fundamentally I am not proposing a method, but I
am describing what is the case. That it is as I describe it cannot, I
think, be seriously questioned . . . I consider the only scientific
thing is to recognize what z's, instead of starting from what ought to be
or could be. Hence I am trying . . . to envisage in a fundamentally
universal way what always happens. " 25 When Betti replied that
Gadamer has limited the hermeneutical problem to the
phenomenological or descriptive quaestz'o Jacll and completely
24
25
WM, 288; TM, 271.

WM , 485-6; TM, 465-66.

527

neglected the quaestio jurz"s, Gadamer's rejoinder was:

As if Kant's raising of the quaestio juris was intended to prescribe
to the pure natural sciences what they ought to be , rather than
seek to justify their transcendental possibility as they already were.
In the sense of this Kantian distinction, to think beyond the concept of method in the human sciences, as my book attempts, is to
ask the question of the "possibility" of the human sciences (which
certainly does not mean what they really ought to be). This fine
scholar is here confused by a strange resentment against
phenomenology. 28
Although some interesting hermeneutical questions about the fusion

of horizons are raised by the implied ad hominem argument hen~. this
may be safely ignored, for the strictly philosophical issues raised in
this passage are sufficient to occupy our full attention.
In his interpretation of his own work, Gadamer seems tio be
maintaining, although he would be uncomfortable with this
transcendental language, that (a) he is posing the quaestio juris in the
sense that he is asking the question of the "possibility" of the human
sciences as they already are; that (b) he is not asking the q'!!-aestt"o furi's
in the sense of asking what the human sciences really ought to be; and
(c) that Kant's understanding of the quaestio juris corresponqs to
Gadamer's own. Although this third point is not directly releva~t to
our problem insofar as it is concerned only with the correct itjterpretation of Kant, a brief comment on it can serve' as a preface ~o a
discussion of Gadamer's first two points.
When Kant draws the distinction between quid Jacti and quid
juris, he makes it clear that the latter question is a question of justifying - establishing the right or legal claim - the application of particular concepts to experience. 27 One reason for raising the question
of right is the claim made by certain usurpatory concepts such as fortune and fate. A semantic difficulty arises here if one says that Kant is
maintaining that science ought not to employ these concepts, for he is
not issuing a moral imperative here; rather, he is suggesting that if
one does employ these concepts, then one cannot gain scientific
knowledge. If, in other words, science uses these concepts, it is no
longer science. However, Kant is also establishing the limits of the
employment of particular concepts, i.e., as limited only to possible
objects of experience. This is certainly not simply to justify the
transcendental possibility of these concepts as they already were, for it
involved both excluding the claim of certain usurpatory concepts and
28
21
WM, 484; TM, 466; cf. xv ff; xvii ff.

KRV, A 84 f; B 116 f.

528
establishing the limits of the claims of other concepts. In this sense,

Kant was trying to accomplish more in asking the quaesti"o Juris than
Gadamer seems to recognize.
Let us now turn to Gadamer's first claim: he is asking the question of the "possibility" of the human sciences as they already are.
The claim is not new. In Truth and Method Gadamer has already
stated that the work of hermeneutics "is not to develop a procedure of
understanding, but to clarify the conditions under which understanding takes place. But these conditions are not of the nature of a
'procedure' or a method, which the interpreter must of himself bring
to bear on the text, but rather they must be given. They are not at his
free disposal." 28 Insofar as Gadamer equates the human sciences as
they already are with the conditions under which understanding must
necessarily take place, his first claim about what he is attempting to
do is justified. It is, however, ambiguous, for Gadamer's clarification
of the conditions under which understanding takes place conflicts in
many instances with the self-interpretation advanced by representatives of human sciences. If it is the case that Gadamer is justifying
the self-interpretation of the human sciences as they already are, it is
clearly not the case that he is justifying the self-interpretation of the
human sciences in many instances. Indeed, one of the central points
of Truth and Method certainly seems to be to challenge that selfinterpretation .
This distinction between what the human sciences inevitably are
and what they think they are, between the human sciences and their
self-interpretation, is also important in interpreting Gadamer's second claim: he is not asking the quaestio Juris in the sense of asking
what the human sciences ought to be. This claim is justified in relation to the human sciences as such, but. it would be, at best, rather
odd if it applied as well to the self-interpretation of the human
sciences , for Gadamer seems to be telling them how they should interpret themselves. Gadamer appears to be saying, in other words, that
this is the way things really are in the human sciences and that the
representatives of the human sciences should recognize this fact. This
seems to be the sense of his remark to Betti that the only scientific
thing to do is to recognize what is.
Yet what difference would this recognition make? Gadamer appears to be caught in a dilemma here, and it is one which is directly
rooted in his avoidance of the quaestio Juris and which, in turn, pro28
WM, 279; TM, 263.

529

foundly affects the claim of hermeneutics to truth. If, on the one

hand, Gadamer maintains that he is describing the human sciences as
they really are, and if this description conflicts with the selfunderstanding of the human sciences, he appears to be committed to
maintaining that that self-understanding is not essential to what the
human sciences are. If, in other words, hermeneutics describes what
inevitably takes place in all understanding irrespective of the selfunderstanding of the participants, then that self-understanding does
not appear to be essential to the process of understanding. If this is
the thesis of Truth and Method, then it would appear to contain no
recommendation for change in the procedure of the human sciences.
If, on the other hand, Gadamer's description is in accord with the
self-interpretation of the human sciences (which it is not in many
cases), then he appears to have no basis for criticizing their
methodological commitments. In either case, the business of the
human sciences continues unchanged: in the former case, because
understanding proceeds independently of self-interpretation; in the
latter case, because his description would agree with that selfinterpretation. In either case, recognition of the essential structures
of understanding as Gadamer has analyzed them would appear to
make no difference in the procedure of the human sciences.
Yet another set of alternatives present themselves here, and these
would depend on the premise that the self-interpretation of the
human sciences is essential to what the human sciences are. If that is
the case, and if Gadamer's description is at variance with that selfinterpretation, then he is clearly not describing the human sciences as
they actually are, but rather as they ought to be. If, on the other
hand, his description is in accord with that self-interpretation (which
in most cases it is not), then his work once again loses any critical
edge. This is the dilemma - or perhaps quadralemma - which
Gadamer faces: either he is simply describing what inevitably hap pens in all understanding, in which case the recognition of that
description by those involved in understanding would not make an
essential difference in the process of understanding; or else he is
describing what should or ought to happen in genuine understanding, in which case he is asking the quaestio juris in a way in which he
does not acknowledge.
This problem , moreover, is not an abstract one resulting from
that kind of sophistic discourse of which Gadamer is so rightly
critical. It touches the very foundations of his understanding of
hermeneutics and truth. Gadamer has advanced, in effect, two

530
claims, one of which is about the relation between method and

understanding (in the broad sense which includes interpretation and
application), the other of which is about the relation between understanding (again in the broad sense) and truth. The former claim,
presented above in the section on the critique of method, is that the
primacy of method must be rejected in favor of a hermeneutical
model of the forestructures of understanding. Yet while that model
provides a necessary corrective against tendencies to absolutize any
prejudice, the model becomes inadequate, at least as Gadamer has
presented it, when the question of truth is raised. As was shown in the
analysis of the play model of truth in Gadamer's understanding of
hermeneutics, truth according to Gadamer is primarily something
which happens to us. Insofar as this is the case, while it is necessary
for us to participate in order for the event of truth to happen, the
event seems to play itself out, as it were, independently of our will. It
is, I think, precisely this understanding of truth w'hich leads to the rejection of the quaestio juris: if truth is an event which plays itself out
independently of our will, then there can be no question of how we
should participate in that event and thus no quaestio juris in that
sense. This is presumably the foundation of Gadamer's claim in the
forward to the second edition of Truth and Method: "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." 29 Insofar as what we do or ought to do is excluded from the sphere of
Gadamer's philosophic concern, the quaestz"o Juris is also apparently
excluded.
This exclusion gives rise, however, to a fundamental ambiguity
in Gadamer's understanding of the relation between hermeneutics
and truth. Whereas Gadamer succeeds admirably in the critical task
of showing the limitations of any absolute commitment to a particular methodology in the human sciences, the positive dimension of
his task consists in exhibiting some kind of necessary relationship between hermeneutics and truth. The concluding sentence of Truth and
Method seems to indicate that Gadamer thinks that he has succeeded
to this task. yet his rejection to the q11aestio j11ris calls into question
the legitimacy of this claim . In discussing the relationship between
understanding and self-interpretation in the human sciences in relation to the q11aestio j11ris. I suggested that Gadamer must maintain
either (a) that he is describing what inevitably happens in all
29
Wl\I. xiv: TM. xvi .

531

understanding, and that the self-interpretation is irrelevant to this

process, or (b) that he is describing what should happen in genuine
understanding, and that a hermeneutically-grounded self-understanding is necessary to this process. If he is maintaining (a), then the
quaestio juris is indeed legitimately excluded, but then
hermeneutically-grounded self understanding no longer seems to
make any difference; if he is maintaining (b), then the relevance of
hermeneutics for self-interpretation is clearly established, but the
quaestio juris is necessarily posed, for Gadamer is making a statement
about what should happen in genuine understanding. The problem is
all the more pressing in regard to the relationship between
hermeneutics and truth. If Gadamer is suggesting that truth is an
event which plays itself out in the process of understanding in a way
which is independent of our will, then it appears questionable
whether a hermeneutically-grounded self-understanding necesarily
contributes in any significant way to the emergence of truth: if it does
not, then the concluding claim of Truth and Method is unwarranted,
for the hermeneutic discipline of research and questioning cannot
then be said to guarantee truth in any distinctive manner. If, on the
other hand, the hermeneutical self-understanding does, as Gadamer
appears to believe, guarantee truth in some unique way, then such a
self-understanding is presumably to be recommended as an essential
dimension of what ought to take place in the process of coming to
understand and know the truth. This, however, is to say what
understanding ought to be.
There is, of course, a way in which these difficulties could be
avoided. Gadamer could maintain that he is describing what inevitably takes place in all understanding insofar as it is genuine
understanding of the truth and that anything which does not meet
the conditions he has described is not to be taken as an instance of
understanding at all. He could claim, in other words, that he is
describing what takes place in understanding, if it is to be considered
understanding at all. While this would dispose of the quaestio juris in
one sense, it leaves us with the question of determining in specific instances what does or does not count as understanding, i.e., what has
the right in a specific instance to claim to be understanding. This,
then, shifts the locus of the quaestio juris from the general level of
what understanding is to the particular question of whether a specific
event is or is not an instance of understanding. The fundamental am biguity of Gadamer's position centers around the relationship between claims made on this general level and particular claims advanc-

532
ed in specific instances . I would like to give two examples of this kind

of ambiguity and then indicate the way in which that ambiguity is
grounded in Gadamer's understanding of the relationship between
hermeneutics and truth .
Consider, first of all, Gadamer's analysis of the classical. He
describes the classical as "what is preserved precisely because it
signifies and interprets itself, i.e. , that which speaks 'in such a way
that it is not a statement about what is past, but says something to the
present as if it were said specially to it. " 30 In approaching the classical
in this fashion , Gadamer severs the concept from its ties to a particular style or historical epoch , but he then leaves us with the question of how we know what is truly classical. To reply that it "through
the constant proving of itself, sets before us something that is true, " 31
is insufficient, for we are still faced with the problem of determining
whether what has been set before us is true or not. The classical
becomes true by definition, but the difficulty is in determining
what corresponds in any particular instance to the definition . A
parallel problem arises in relation to Gadamer's analysis of authority.
He maintains that "the recognition of authority is always connected
with the idea that that which authority states is not irrational and arbitrary, but can be seen, in principle, to be true ." 32 The difficulty,
however , is to determine in specific instances whether that which
authority states can be seen in principle to be true , for presumably
one decides on the basis whether the statement is to be taken as a
legitimate statement of authority or not. The statements of authority
are true in principle (i.e., by definition), but to know this is not to
know whether particular statements count as statements of authority
or not . In both of these instances , the problem is to move from the
general level to particular cases.
The problem of truth arises as a crucial issue precisely in relation
to this transition from the general to the particular, and the fun damental ambiguity of Gadamer's understanding of truth arises from
the way in which he makes the transition. He can legitimately
establish a bond between , on the one hand, truth and, on the other
hand, tradition , authority, the classical , etc . , analytically by defining
those latter concepts in terms of truth ; on an even more general level ,
he can establish the bond between hermeneutics and truth in a
similar way. However, the difficulty is then to establish the right of
30
31
32
WM, 274; TM , 257 .

WM , 271 ; TM , 255 .
WM, 264 ; TM , 249 .

533

particular events to count as instances of these general concepts, and

it is at this level that Gadamer often appears to beg the question. To
say. for example, that the classical sets before us something that is
true is not to say that any particular thing is classical. In order to
decide what is classical, we must determine what is true. The circularity of Gadamer's position is found in the movement from the
classical as a whole to particular instances of the classical, as one example, or from tradition as a whole to particular instances of tradition. etc. It is necessary here to distinguish between two types of truth
claims. Gadamer is claiming, first of all, that the acceptance of the
truth of tradition as a whole is a necessary condition of the possibility
of understanding insofar as tradition is the context of significance
handed down to us through history in language. This is, I think, a
variant of Heidegger's argument in Being and Time about the impossibility of doubting the existence of the world: as the context of
significance within which any doubt at all must be expressed, the
world in Heidegger's sense is necessarily presupposed by any expression of doubt and, in this sense, such doubt is existentially selfdefeating. Insofar as Gadamer identifies tradition with the context of
significance in which we live, it becomes impossible to doubt the truth
of tradition as a whole. This does not, however, provide an adequate
guarantee that any specific item of tradition is true. The question of
truth thus arises in the movement from the whole to the particular instances, if Gadamer's argument is read in this fashion.
The ambiguity can be seen more clearly if one recalls the play
model of truth discussed above. On the general level, Gadamer is
maintaining that an acceptance of the rules of the game as true is a
necessary condition of the possibility of understanding the meaning of
any particular move: the rules of the game are by definition true, at
least considered as a whole. This does not prevent, however, any particular move from being a false one; in a similar way, any particular
item of tradition may be false. In order to establish the truth value of
any particular item, it is necessary to presuppose the truth of tradition as a whole and, presumably, of some specific items within tradition. It is precisely at this juncture that the quaestio juris arises:
what items have the right to claim the truth of tradition? Insofar as he
adheres to the play model presented above, Gadamer implies that the
quaestz'o jurzs is, as it were, decided by itself by the way in which the
game plays itself out. Yet this implies, in its own way, a particular
answer to the quaestio jurzs: productivity. The play model suggests

534
that the "right" move is the one which is productive of further moves,
and Gadamer's own discussion of prejudices suggests a similar point.
Insofar as he speaks of "justified prejudices productive of
knowledge," 33 of "hermeneutical productivity," 34 of a "genuine productivity of process, " 35 Gadamer is suggesting that the claim to truth
is established in the process of working - or playing - out the game.
That which is true is that which is productive. The implication here is
~ha~ ~he definition of what counts as productive is given, not by the
mdlVldual, but by the tradition in which the individual finds himself.
In this sense, tradition decides the quaestio Juris independently of the
individual's will.
Conclusion
If the preceding analysis and criticism of Gadamer's position is
correct , the claim of hermeneutics to truth is, at best, an ambiguous
one. Truth is an event which plays itself out in human history, but it
is one which to a large measure takes place independently of individual action and decision . Yet to the degree that this is the case,
truth becomes something which we cannot determine: it determines
us. The ambiguity, however, of Gadamer's claim is that, if this is the
case, hermeneutics consigns itself to an odd kind of irrelevance. Insofar as understanding and truth have the structure of events which
happen to us, hermeneutically-grounded self-understanding makes
no difference to the playing out of these events. If "history does not
belong to us, but we belong to it," if the "self-awareness of the individual is only a flickering in the closed circuits of historical life, " 36
then hermeneutics leads, at best, to a recognition that hermeneutics
itself makes little difference in the way in which these events are
played out. At the same time, hermeneutics undermines its own claim
to truth, for the fundamental truth which it seems to uncover is that
we - even with a hermeneutically-grounded self-understanding have little control over the way in which the event of truth plays Itself
out in history. If hermeneutics allows the possibility of any control at
all, it is primarily in terms of the degree to which we give ourselves
over to this game; yet to the degree that this is a game which is played
with us rather than by us, even the hermeneutical exhortation to
33
34
35
36
WM,
WM ,
WM,
WM.
263 ;
267;
281;
261 ;
TM ,
TM,
TM ,
TM ,
247 .
251.
265 .
245.

535
QUID FACTI OR QUID JURIS :

openness appears to make little difference: we play out the

possibilities of the game, whether we choose to be open to them or
not. If hermeneutics allows us any control at all, it is the control exemplified in the resignation of the magister ludi who, in giving
himself over completely to the game, allows himself to be completely
mastered by it.
If Gadamer's understanding of hermeneutics is to escape the
resignation implicit in its play model of understanding and truth, and
if it is to avoid undermining its own distinctive claim to truth, it must
begin with a recognition of the necessity of asking the quaestio Juris as
the question of what understanding, interpretation, and application
ought to be. To fail to do this is, in Heideggerean terms, to reduce
Dasein to is facticity and to ignore the fact that Dasein is in each case
the kind of being for whom its own being is an issue. The question of
how we understand is for us always simultaneously the question of
how we ought to understand insofar as we are concerned with the
question of truth.
LAWRENCE M. HINMAN.
UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO.


Quid Facti or Quid Juris? The Fundamental Ambiguity of Gadamer&#39;s Understanding of Hermeneutics

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QUID FACTI OR QUID JURIS?

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critical acceptance of the original presuppositions of the particular

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does not acknowledge a particular answer to the quaestio jurz's. It is

to h1stoncal science , I shall also be considering Gadamer's analysis of aesthetics in-

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QUID FACTI OR QUID JURIS:

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The Critique of Method

WM, 254 ; TM , 239 .

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WM, 255 ; TM, 240.

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of what truth is revealed in history and thus to overlook the rootedness

The Hermeneutical Model of Understanding

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what the game demands.) As the game progresses, the significance of

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consequences of a given event can only emerge through time. This

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and Method. In keeping with the general Heideggerean tendency to

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hermeneutical circle "describes understanding as the interplay of the

World, Tradition, and Truth

Gadamer is careful to note, within this context, that it is the game

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We necessarily arrive too late to know what we ought to believe

Truth is in this sense structure, and the truth which is uncovered in

WM, 465; TM, 446.

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with' . 18 The shared truth which is revealed through art as well as

WM , 339-40 ; TM, 320.

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pretation of the final sentence of Truth and Method: a discipline of

361; TM, 345.

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Gadamer, is it to be seen as the subsumption of all past horizons

WM, 288; TM, 271.

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QUID FACTI OR QUID JURIS:

neglected the quaestio jurz"s, Gadamer's rejoinder was:

Although some interesting hermeneutical questions about the fusion

WM, 484; TM, 466; cf. xv ff; xvii ff.

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establishing the limits of the claims of other concepts. In this sense,

WM, 279; TM, 263.

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Quid Facti or Quid Juris? The Fundamental Ambiguity of Gadamer's Understanding of Hermeneutics

Quid Facti or Quid Juris? The Fundamental Ambiguity of Gadamer's Understanding of Hermeneutics

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