Abstract

Following from Heidegger's phenomenology two divergent philosophical movements emerge: Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutics and Jacques Derrida's deconstruction. Both Gadamer and Derrida believe that philosophy can no longer afford theories of truth that find their ground outside of language and history. Where Gadamer avows the truth of Being located in the assimilation of diverse linguistic-historic perspectives given by Being, Derrida's conception of truth sustains the originating difference as an abyss that no concept can identify. While acknowledging the role of the abyss in both deconstruction and hermeneutics, I contend that hermeneutics returns from the abyss by disclosing a shared truth that structures community. ;Derrida's deconstruction criticizes phenomenology, for retaining a transcendental structure, contending that it assumes an ideal meaning which exists prior to language. Derrida criticizes phenomenology's foundationalism by showing that its process of concept formation neither accounts for, nor justifies the conditions under which a concept is formed. The concept always leaves behind a "trace" that resists conceptualization. Derrida thinks the trace as a movement that produces concepts without itself being taken up into the concept. Concepts rely on an absolute negativity that exceeds the concept. Derrida uses this "ungrounding" negativity to dismantle transcendental philosophy without returning to transcendental philosophy. ;We need not succumb to Derrida's conceptual nihilism. Hermeneutics, as the recovery of the historicized self within a community, allows us to form concepts as a response to the abyss that demarcates experience. Gadamer's hermeneutics posits language and history as the fundamental ontological structures of understanding which provide a space for truth to emerge. This transcendental structure does not impose an absolute concept as the end of history, but rather, it acknowledges the unassimilable difference lurking within our experience. Hermeneutics responds to the abyss by assimilating differences within shared concepts without eliminating difference. Although truth and meaning emerge in our concepts, they are always incomplete and indicate an excess that lies beyond the horizon of experience.