Hermeneutics and the Contemporary Anglo-American Philosophy

Jaroslav Hroch

 This paper tries to reflect the problems of understanding and hermeneutics in contemporary
Anglo-American philosophy. It examines the hermeneutical conceptions of Peter Winch, Charles
Taylor, Paul de Man, Harold Bloom and Richard Rorty.1 The last part of this article is devoted to
the instigations of the William James´s philosophy for the theoretical and methodological
foundations of the deep hermeneutics.

 The access to the problem of understanding and hermeneutics in Anglo-American philosophical
thought was strongly influenced by neo-positivism until the end of the 1950s. Up until this time,
in the terminology of philosophy and social science, the English notion "understanding" had a more
general character than the German notion "Verstehen". The notion of "understanding" had a meaning
similar to the German notion "Begreifen", and therefore had not been considered to be a specific
type of understanding which was necessary to apply to cultural phenomena and human behaviour. The
notion of "understanding" was, in essence, viewed as synonymous with the notion of
"comprehension".2

 Until the end of the fifties, then, the term "understanding" had not been identified in
Anglo-American philosophy with the method, but rather with the aim to which all the sciences and
their methods are directed. When the neo-positivists in the social sciences used the notion
"Verstehen", which had originated in the German hermeneutic tradition, they did not ascribe great
epistemological and heuristic value to it. They viewed this notion as an accessory procedure in the
mind of the investigator of social processes, who, during his research work, applies the common
psychic abilities of empathy and introspection to understand the behaviour of the individual or
social group.3

 Against the original positivistic claims concerning the scientificity and objectivity of social
scientific inquiry, Peter Winch argues that we ought to have in mind the sense of the hermeneutic
situation in which the language game constitutes the object of the social sciences.4 Winch
maintains that Wittgenstein's emphasis on how we act in a given context can be very important and
inspiring for the conception of understanding in social scientific inquiry. Therefore, an important
part of what we mean by understanding in relation to social practices and culture depends on having
a context within which we can adequately act.5

 In his conception of hermeneutics from 1990s, Winch claims that understanding another culture is
not a matter of understanding the behaviour of all or even most of the individual subjects in it;
it is, in fact, "understanding the inner maps according to which people of that culture navigate
and the destinations they are trying to reach".6 Such maps will be to a large extent culturally
determined.

 Along with Peter Winch, Charles Taylor also emphasizes the situated character of social scientific
understanding in his methodological theory, which is especially influenced by Wittgenstein's theory
of language games and Gadamer's hermeneutics. Social reality, the actions, practices and norms,
which the social sciences investigate, are constituted within semantic fields or language games and
therefore, the possibility of understanding them depends upon familiarity with the relevant
language games and their interrelated meanings. Taylor argues that understanding the meaning of an
action, social practice or social norm involves understanding the range of contrasted and relevant
meanings that form the context of the investigated phenomena.7 In continuity with Wittgenstein's
conception of language games, he introduces the notion of intersubjective meaning as an important
methodological category in the proces of understanding social reality.

 In the second half of the 1980s, Taylor also provides his hermeneutic conception of understanding
with a deep ethical dimension and as a consequence of this - influenced by Heidegger and the
Augustinian Christian tradition - he constructs his concept of understanding with the reflection of
the temporal and spacial structure of a being in the world. According to Taylor understanding has
narrative dimension and can be roughly defined as the ability of the life orientation in the world
along with the projection of a future being. "My life always has this degree of narrative
understanding, that I understand my present action in the form of an ´and then´: there was A (what
I am), and then I do B (what I project to become)."8 This orientation can be in a transcendental
dimension comprehended as a movement in moral space aiming towards the future.

 The influence of hermeneutics could be noticed in the United States since the second half of the
1960s in the works of literary theoretician E. D. Hirsch, Jr. who was mainly influenced by
historically and philologically oriented hermeneutic concepts (E. Betti, to a certain extent W.
Dilthey) and who criticised Heideggerian and Gadamerian hermeneutics for their alleged relativism.
However, the development of hermeneutic conceptions in the USA was above all tightly connected with
the beginnings of post-analytic philosophy. This kind of philosophy originated due to the reaction
to the American philosophical thought in the 1950s and 1960s, which had been strongly influenced by
neopositivism and logical empirism as the basic theoretical backround of analytic philosophy in the
USA.

 But approximately since 1970s it has been much more obvious that analytic philosophy owing to its
international character, as well as due to proclaimed conception of the unified science, cannot be
useful in solving the complex socio-cultural problems of American society, especially the questions
of cultural and political identity, future perspectives and entire sense of Euroamerican culture.
The great merit for the knowledge and development of  philosophical hermeneutics in the USA has
Richard E. Palmer. 9

 At the beginning of the 1970s, we can speak about the instigations of both hermeneutics and
anti-logocentrism within Anglo-American philosophy in the methodological conceptions of the primary
representative of the American Cultural Left, Paul de Man. He refused the dogma of a distinction
between literary and critical language, as well as the concept that there exists a single neutral
vocabulary, a certain kind of metalanguage, to be extracted from changing literary traditions. In
connection with this demand, he puts stress on the self-identity and authenticity of the creative
subject, both author's and critical reader's.

 In accordance with this opinion Paul de Man claims that "not only does the critic say something
that the work does not say, but he even says something that he himself does not mean to say. The
semantics of interpretation have no epistemological consistency and can therefore not be
scientific. But this is very different from claiming that what the critic says has no immanent
connection with the work".10 From that point - according to Paul de Man - no interpretation
pretends to be the precice description of a philososophical or literary work. "Interpretation could
perhaps be called the description of an understanding, but the term ´description´, because of its
intuitive and sensory overtones, could then have to be used with extreme caution, the term
´narration´ would be highly preferable." 11

 Paul de Man has also contributed a great deal to the Derridean polemic against logocentrism and
has worked out an inspiring conception of the author's identity. Having applied syncretic
influences of Marxism, psychoanalysis and existentialism, he advances his fundamental thesis that
literature is the only branch of human activity which transcends nostalgy and desire and that the
desire is the fundamental model of being.12

 Paul de Man´s literary theory and hermeneutically oriented philosophy, inspired not only by
Heideggerian hermeneutics but also by Freud's psychoanalysis, anticipated the dialectical
conception of understanding and misunderstanding, as well as the problem of tradition, continuity
and discontinuity in the philosophical thought of Harold Bloom. According to him, poets till the
period of Middle Ages lived in a common world where the members of the community established their
creative identity in sharing their heritage with one another, tightly connected with literary
audience in the form of religiously oriented society. But after the renaissance, the artists had to
create their works in an individualistic world, where all the autors had to protect and establish
their individuality through original and unique character of their achievements so they were in a
certain way forced to break the tradition and stress the moment of discontinuity with their
predecessors.13 In this connection - according to Bloom´s view - the uniquiness of imaginative
identity of the modern author is rooted in misunderstanding. That means the understanding one poet
has of another poet´s poetry is not only subjective, it is also a more or a less conscious
misunderstanding.14

 In his book Agon. Towards a Theory of Revisionism (1982) Harold Bloom - influenced also by
gnosticism and psychoanalysis- - reassumes his conception of tradition as a constant process of
re-interpretation, discontinuity and revision of previous cultural and artistic patterns. To
agonize means in English (in ethymological continuity with the word agon in Old Greek) not only to
suffer, but also to struggle. "Revisionism, as Nietzsche said of every spirit, unfolds itself only
in fighting. The spirit portrays itself as agonistic, as contesting for supremacy, with other
spirits, with anteriority, and finally with every earlier version of itself.“15

 Cultural and philosophical tradition represents therefore for Bloom the constant struggle over the
very notion and sense of tradition in the form of the new readings, proof-readings and
re-evalutions. Such concept of tradition means - of course - its perpetual self-denying, the
emphasis on change and the ability to be independent on one´s predecessors. From it - according to
Rorty - follows that "the reader ought to read Bloom on Emerson or Freud in order to see these
authors transfigured, beaten in fascinating new shapes, in a similar way, as the other interpreters
read Derrida on Plato, Hegel and Heidegger."16 In this connection Bloom rejects the "Kantian" view
of culture as a museum of great philosophical and literary works that refer to something objective
or timeless in historical consciousness or in the human imagination.17

 Let us compare this Bloom´s conception of tradition with Gadamer´s. In accordance with his
conception of philosophical hermeneutics Gadamer argues that tradition can be conceived as an
onto-creative category, which reflects the perpetual process of valorization and actualization of
the past culture: "In Wahrheit ist in Tradition stets ein moment der Freiheit und der Geschichte
selber."18 But from the point of view of Harold Bloom the influence and weight of tradition
represents rather danger and threat for contemporary culture and art. Tradition and creative
identity are therefore in dialectical tension, on the contrary to Gadamer´s conception.

 Bloom´s emphasis on misprision, uncorrect reading and antithetical character of understanding
develops and intensifies these conceptions of post-modern philosophy and deconstructivism which are
focused on tensions and contradictions inherent to the text, to its inconsistences.19 But on the
other hand, Harold Bloom´s philosophical and critical thought is in a certain way differentiated
from the conceptions of European post-modernism by its hermeneutical emphasis to substantial
continuity with homegrown philosophical tradition, especially with the philosophy of R. W. Emerson.
According to Bloom, the relation of Emerson to both Friedrich Nietzsche and William James also
suggests that Emersonian transcendentalism was much closer to pragmatism than to Kant´s
metaphysical idealism. Emerson namely wants "his language and philosophical thoughts to be
independent, fresh, but above all useful, in the basic intentions of pragmatism".20

 If we turn our attention to the other representative of American post-analytic philosophy Richard
Rorty, we can find in his conception of the creative identity certain similar features with Harold
Bloom´s theory, as well as with Gadamer´s hermeneutics. On the contrary to essentialism and in
continuity with the hermeneutic category of Bildung Rorty takes attention to the creative,
self-forming character of philosophy.21 The process of hermeneutic understanding is therefore
connected with the self-transformation of man by means of his edification based on communicative
processes, such as reading, artistic creation or, for instance, the dialogue within community.

 Using the instigations of romanticism, Rorty emphasizes the self-forming nature of human mind, the
creative character of which is enabled also by the fact that our thought is oriented not only to
verified knowledge, but also to something unknown, abnormal, revolutionary, poetical, metaforical.
In this connection he highly evaluates romanticism, which is understood by him as the other name
for the creative conception of reality. Romantic tradition, tied to the emphasis on the creative
subject and characterized by the conception of life as the work of art, ought to be connected -
according to Rorty - with social reformism, the function of which is to develop the ideals of
liberal democracy in present time.22

 Understanding is based on the process of constant forming and interrelated dialogue of various
interpretations, regarded from the beginning as equal and legitimate. On the basis of mediation
between the influences of American pragmatism and modern European hermeneutic thought Rorty argues
that the only criterion of the adequatness and "rightness" of understanding and interpretation can
be only consensus within historically concrete community which respects the principles of
democracy, dialogue, and tolerance.

 As far as Richard Rorty's conception of tradition is concerned, we cannot miss an important
influence of German hermeneutically oriented philosophy (M. Heidegger, H.-G. Gadamer, J. Habermas).
Rorty is especially connected with Gadamer's hermeneutics by dialogical conception of understanding
and by a great attention paid to integrative function of interhuman relations. Both Gadamer and
Rorty highly evaluate historical role and moral authority of these institutions, the origin of
which has been connected with gradual formation of the democratic political life.23

 For that reason Rorty cannot agree with one of the most typical Leftist ideas that "escaping from
such institutions is automatically a good thing, because it ensures that one will not be used by
the evil forces which have ´co-opted´ these institutions".24  In accordance with the conceptions of
Gadamer´s hermeneutics Rorty especially in conteporary time refers to a great importance of
tradition and the consciousness of political and cultural continuity in the social life of North
Atlantic civilization.

 There is - of course - a certain difference in socio-historical and political foundations of their
conceptions of tradition. For instance Gadamer emphasizes much more than Rorty the importance of
the spiritual heritage of Christianity in the life of Western society. Rorty on the other hand
conceives his notion of tradition along with the sharp analysis and profound reflection of the
contemporary situation of American society and its future perspectives. He interprets tradition
therefore as a historical continuity with the spiritual heritage of these historical personalities
in the political and cultural life of United States who have embodied the ideals of democracy,
justice nad equality among the citizens (especially R. W. Emerson, A. Lincoln, and M. L. King).
Rorty in this connection argues that we cannot escape the traditions to which we belong as well as
we cannot "step outside our skins".25 Nowadays he even criticizes American Cultural Left for the
lack of a sense for tradition and national identity.26

 If we try to summarize Rorty´s conception of tradition, we can view it as a result of his effort
to synthetize the spiritual heritage of European, especially Gadamerian hermeneutics and American
pragmatism. This synthesis was succesful owing to Rorty´s ability to find their common feature in
the sense for solidarity and dialogue, in historical attitude to social reality and in emphasizing
the practical dimension of philosophy.

 At the end of this study I would like to point out to some motives uniting American trancendental
idealism and pragmatism (R. W. Emerson, W. James) in their theoretical contribution along with
analytical psychology and archetypal literary science to create the foundations of the deep
hermeneutics (C. G. Jung, J. Lacan, J. Hillman, P. von Matt). It is well known that William James,
influenced by Frederick C. Myers, has introduced to his philosophical and psychological thought the
categories of subliminal consciousness and of subconscious self, used in the psychoanalysis of S.
Freud: "The subconscious self is nowadays a well-credited psychological entity; and I believe that
in it we have exactly the mediating term required."27

 W. James - on the contrary to the influential opinion of German psychologist W. Wundt (Grundriss
der Psychologie, Leipzig 1902, p. 248-251) - has legitimated the existence of the psychical
processes which exist outside the primary consciousness. This has been very appreciated by the
forerunner of the deep hermeneutics and the founder of analytical psychology Carl Gustav Jung. It
is not surprising that in Jung´s essay Theoretische Überlegungen zum Wesen des Psychischen we can
find this important passage from W. James´s The Varieties of Religious Experience: "I cannot but
think that the most important step forward that has occured in psychology since I have been a
student of that science is the discovery, first made in 1886, that [...] there is not only the
consciousness of the ordinary field, with its usual centre and margin, but an addition thereto in
the shape of a set of memories, thoughts, and feelings which are extra-marginal and outside of the
primary consciousness altogether, but yet must be classed as conscious facts of some sort, able to
reveal their presence by unmistakable signs. I call this the most important step forward because,
unlike the other advances which psychology has made, this discovery has revealed to us an entirely
unsuspected peculiarity in the constitution of human nature."28

 Anticipating the conceptions of the deep hermeneutics W. James argues that "there is actually and
literally more life in our total soul than we are at any time aware of." 29. In this consequence we
ought to realize that the philosophy and psychology of William James, especially his theoretical
reflections from The Varieties of Religious Experience, have helped C. G. Jung to create a new,
very inspirative paradigma of psýché. It might be argued adequately that Jung´s theories of
collective uncousciousness and archetypes - with the central archetype of Selbst (Self)30 - have
been influenced by Gnostic and Neoplatonic conceptions of the soul, too, but these spiritually
oriented philosophical ideas are characteristic for the Emersonian and Romantic tradition in
American philosophy. In particular Jung´s conception of Selbst (Self) - which represents the
totality of the spiritual life of human being - has been immensely inspired by W. James and his
idea of wider self: "we have in the fact that the conscious person is continuous with a wider self
through which saving experiences come, a positive content of religious experience which, it seems
to me, is literally and positively true as far as it goes."31

 Thus William James has inspired Jung´s hermeneutically oriented paradigma expressed in his primary
archetypes of Selbst and Individuation - that coherent growth and self-transformation is central to
the philosophical, religious and ethical life. In this context we can find therefore analogical
features between Jung´s theory of Selbst (Self) on one side and the stress on the self-improvement,
identity and moral self-development of human personality in the ethical theories of W. James´s
followers on the other side (as one of many examples we can state for instance the concept of
"growing, enlarging, liberated self" in John Dewey´s ethics).32 The use of the methodological
procedures of the deep hermeneutics - whose founder C. G. Jung, as we have shown, was in his early
philosophical and theoretical development in 1910s crucially influenced by W. James - enables to
explain and deply reflect the turn toward Romanticism and spiritualism in the contemporary
neo-pragmatic philosophy (R. Rorty, H. Bloom, S. Cavell).33

 This type of interpretation in the deep hermeneutics, based on the communication of consciousness
with unconsiousness, leads to the movement from metalanguage to language, from argumentative,
scientific language to natural language, often akin to metaphorical language of art, accordingly
from the constantive statements to the performative ones. The use of performative language in the
deep hermeneutics (but also, for instance, in various conceptions of Anglo-American neopragmatism)
is not the expression of purposeless aestheticism, but it is - according to my opinion - the
embodiment of the attempt to extend the horizons of philosophical thought.


Notes:

 1 In the difference to my monograph Filosofická hermeneutika v dějinách a v současnosti
[Philosophical Hermeneutics in the History and Present]. Masarykova univerzita and Nakladatelství
Georgetown, Brno 1997, 1998, the hermeneutic conceptions of Peter Winch, Charles Taylor, Paul de
Man, Harold Bloom and Richard Rorty are not analyzed in the book of Jean Grondin: Einführung in die
philosophische Hermeneutik. Wissenschatliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1991. Czech translation:
Jean Grondin, Úvod do hermeneutiky. Translated by Břetislav Horyna, Pavel Kouba. OIKOYMENH, Praha
1997.

 2 Compare: Understanding and Social Inquiry. Ed. F. R. Dallmayr and T. A. McCarthy. Notre Dame -
London 1977, p. 10-17.

 3 T. Abel: "The Operation called Verstehen", The American Journal of Sociology, 54 (1948), p. 218.

 4 P. Winch: The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy. 5th ed. Routledge and
Kegan Paul, London - New York 1967, p. 51-67. Compare to it: F. R. Dallmayr, T. A. McCarthy: "The
Wittgensteinian Reformulation". In: Understanding and Social Inquiry. Ed. F. R. Dallmayr and T. A.
McCarthy. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame - London 1977, p. 140.

 5 P. Winch: Trying to Make Sense. Basil Blackwell, Oxford - New York 1987, p. 24. Compare to it:
P. Winch: "Understanding a Primitive Society" in: Understanding and Social Inquiry. Ed. F. R.
Dallmayr and T. A. McCarthy. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame - London 1977, p.173.

 6 P. Winch: Can We Understand Ourselves ? The text of the paper at the conference on hermeneutics
in Halle, Germany, September 1994, dated 21st July 1994, p. 5.

 7 Ch. Taylor: "Interpretation and the Sciences of Man", originally in: Review of Metaphysics 25
(1971), p. 3-34, 45-51. Here quoted according to Ch. Taylor: Philosophy and the Human Sciences.
Philosophical Papers 2. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1993 (reprinted), p. 19.

 8 Ch. Taylor: Sources of the Self. The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge 1994, p. 47.

 9    R. E. Palmer: Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger and
Gadamer.  Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969. Compare to it: A Gadamer Reader.
Translated and edited by Richard E. Palmer. Evanston: Nortwestern University Press, 2002.

 10 P. de Man, P.: Blindness and Insight. Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism. Second
revised edition. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1983, p. 109.

 11 Ebenda, p. 108.

 12 Ebenda, pp. 15-18.

 13 H. Bloom: The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. Oxford University Press. Oxford 1973,
pp. 71-80. See also T. K. Seung: Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Columbia University Press, New
York 1982, p. 168.

 14 H. Bloom: Agon. Towards a Theory of Revisionism. Oxford University Press, Oxford - New York
1983, p. 19.

 15 Ebenda, p. VIII.

 16 R. Rorty: Essays on Heidegger and others. Philosophical papers. Volume 2. Cambridge University
Press. Cambridge 1994 (Reprinted), p. 120.

 17 J. Rajchman: "Philosophy in America", in: Post-Analytic Philosophy. Ed. by John Rajchman and
Cornel West. Columbia University Press, New York 1985, p. XVI.

 18 H.-G. Gadamer: Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik. Gesammelte
Werke. Band 1. J. C. B. Mohr, Tübingen 1986, p. 286. Compare also J. Černý: "Hermeneutika v soudobé
buržoazní filozofii - její rozchod i smiřování s vědou" [Hermeneutics in contemporary bourgeois
philosophy - its parting and reconciling with science]. Filozofický časopis 29, 1981, Nr.3, p. 35.

 19 See G. Warnke: Gadamer. Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason. Stanford University Press, Stanford
1987, p. 89.

 20 H. Bloom: Agon. Towards a Theory of Revisionism. Oxford University Press, Oxford - New York
1983, p. 19.

21 R. Rorty: Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. B. Blackwell, Oxford UK and Cambridge USA 1994,
p. 359-360. Compare to it: J. Hroch: Filosofická hermeneutika v dějinách a v současnosti
[Philosophical Hermeneutics in the History and Present], Masarykova univerzita and Nakladatelství
Georgetown, Brno 1997, 1998, p. 169.

 22 Compare R. Rorty: Essays on Heidegger and others. Philosophical papers. Volume 2. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge 1994, p. 175-176.

 23 Compare: H.-G. Gadamer: Vernunft im Zeitalter der Wissenschaft. Suhrkamp. Frankfurt am Main
1977, p. 10-22.

 24 R. Rorty: Essays on Heidegger and others. Philosophical papers. Volume 2. Cambridge University
Press 1994, s. 174., p. 174.

 25 R. Rorty: Consequences of Pragmatism. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1982, p. XIX.

26 See R. Rorty: "The Unpatriotic Academy", The New York Times. Sunday, February 13, 1994, p. 15.

 27 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience. New York: Vintage Books. The Library of
America 1990, p. 457.

 28 Ebenda, p. 215. Compare to it: Carl Gustav Jung, "Theoretische Überlegungen zum Wesen des
Psychischen", in: Gesammelte Werke von C. G. Jung. Band 8. (Die Dynamik des Unbewussten). 2.
Auflage. Olten und Freiburg in Breisgau: Walter Verlag AG 1971, p. 215. In my reflection concerning
the affinities between W. Jame´s and C. G. Jung´s psychology I am grateful to PhDr. Karel Plocek
and to prof. PhDr. Vladimír Smékal from Masaryk University in Brno for their advice, kind help and
theoretical inspiration.

 29 W. James, The Varieties of Religious Experience. New York: Vintage Books. The Library of
America 1990, p. 457.

 30 C. G. Jung, "Die Beziehungen zwischen dem Ich und dem Unbewussten". In: Gesammelte Werke von C.
G. Jung. Band 7. (Zwei Schriften über analytische Psychologie). 2. Auflage. Olten und Freiburg in
Breisgau: Walter Verlag AG 1974, pp. 195-201, 263-269.

 31 W. James, The Varieties of Religious Experience. New York: Vintage Books. The Library of
America 1990, p. 460.

 32 John Dewey, Ethics. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press 1981, p. 307.

33 Compare Russel B. Goodman: American Philosophy and the Romantic Tradition. Cambridge University
Press. Cambridge - New York - Sydney 1990, p. 1-33, 37-46 58-89.