Abstract

Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics seeks to provide an analysis of understanding expressed particularly in Truth and Method and in some of his later works. His goal is to describe "what is the case" in human understanding aside from and prior to any methodology. Gadamer's essential insight is his notion of historically effected consciousness . Such a consciousness is a consciousness at once effected by history whether conscious or not of these effects. Gadamer not only asserts that history or tradition conditions understanding, but in "an ontological turn" he also makes the case that language is the foundation of philosophical hermeneutics. His claim that "being that can be understood is language" moves him to conclude that philosophical hermeneutics is universally applicable in all understanding whatsoever. ;Gadamer's assertion of the universality of hermeneutics raises the specter of epistemological relativism by considering all understanding as historically, linguistically, and thus interpretively formed. The present work argues that the claim to the universality of hermeneutics, once properly qualified or delimited, absolves Gadamer from the charge of relativism. ;Then the analysis of understanding is expanded to include a futurally effected consciousness defined as a projection of the past into the future as well as an openness toward an indeterminate future that folds back upon the understanding in the present. We find in Gadamer ample textual evidence for a latent concept of futurally effected consciousness in understanding, but this concept is in need of development. Moreover, the present work asserts that the futural dynamic, while complementary or even inclusive of a historically effected consciousness, is an even greater determinant in understanding than is the historically effected consciousness. The conclusion points to the need for further investigation of the concept of a futurally effected consciousness in its various manifestations, particularly the modes of hope and despair which appear to provide the very impetus for thinking and understanding