a Truth and Method sion ofthe enquiry that Being and Time opened up. In defending himself against such superfcialy-argued polemics, Heidegger ould quite legitimately refer to the transcendental intention of his own work, in the same sense that Kant's enguiry was tran- scendental. His enguiry transcended from the sir all empirical differences and hence all als of specie content. Hence we too are beginning with the transcendental signi: ‘cance of Heidegger's problematie. The problem of hermeneutics tains a universal framework, even a new dimension, through his transcendental iniepretation of understanding, The correspon dence between the interpreter and his-objeet, for whieh the thinking of the histrial school was unable o offer any convine- ing account, now acquites a significance that is concretely de- ‘monstrable, and itis th task of hermeneutics to demonstrate i ‘That the siructure of There-being Is thrown projection, that ‘There-being s, inthe realisation ofits own being, understand ing, must also'be tre of the aet of understanding within the human sciences. The general structure of understanding. a 4uites is concrete form in historical understanding, in that the ‘Commitments of custom and tradition and the corresponding potentialities of one's own future become effective in under Standing sel. There-being that projects self relation to its ‘own potentiaity-for-being has always een’. This i the mean” ing of the existential of ‘thrownness". The main point of the hhermeneutis of factiity and its contrast with the tanscendental constitution research of Husser's phenomenology was that no frvely chosen relation towards one's own being can go back beyond the factcty of this being. Everything that makes possi ble and limits the project of There-being precedes i, absolutely ‘This existential structure of There-being must find its expression in the understanding of historical tradition as well, and s0 We shall start by following Heidegger." I Foundations of a Theory of Hermeneutical Experience {THE ELEVATION OF THE HISTORICALITY OF UNDERSTANDING TO THE STATUS OF HERMENBUTICAL PRINCIPLE (9) THe MERMENEUTIC CIRCLE AND THE PROBLEM OF (i) Heidegger's disclosure ofthe fore-structure of understanding Heidegger went into the problems of historical hermeneutics and criticism only in order to develop from it, forthe purposes of ‘ontology, the fore-siructore of understanding." Contrarivise, ‘our question is how hermeneutics, once freed from the ontolog fal obstructions of the seentie concept of objetivity, ean do justice tothe histriafty of understanding. The way in which hermeneutics hes traditionally understood islt is based on its character ay art or technique" This i tre even of Dilthey’s fextnsion of hermeneutics to become an organon of the human ‘Sciences. It may be asked whether there fs such thing 2s this arto technique of understanding—we shall come back t0 the Point. But at any rate we may enquire into the consequences that ‘fundamental derivation of the etcular structure of not need fo be such that a theory is applied to practice and the latter now be performed different ay that i techn cally correct. They cauld sso consist in a correction (and puri ation of inadequate manners) ofthe Way in which constantly exercised understanding understands Tiself—a procedure that ‘Would benefit the att of understanding at most only indirect Hence we shall examine once more Hekdeguers description of the hermeneutical circle in order to use, for our own purpose, the new fundamental signifeance acquired here by the crea Structure, Heidegger writs: Tt isnot t be reduced tothe level fof a vicious eitcle or even ofa circle which is merely tolerated. BS26 Truth ond Method In the circle is hidden a positive possibility of the most prin lal kind of knowing. To be sre, we genuinely take hold oft possibility only when, in our intefpretation, we have understood {hat our fst, last and constant task is never to allow our fore- having, foresight, and fore-conception to be presented tous by fancies and popular conceptions, but rather to make the scien- tie theme secure by working out these fore-stractures in terms of the things themselves’. Being and Time. p 133) ‘What Heideager works out here nol primarily @ demand on the practice of understanding, but isa description of the way in which interpretation through understanding is achieved. The point of Hekdegger’s hermeneutical thinking i not so much to Drove that thore is a circle st to show that this 4 ontoogically postive significance. The de will be obvious to every interpreter who Knows what he i about. All correct interpretation must be on guard against frbitrary fancies and the imitations imposed by imperceptible habits of thought and direct its gaze ‘on the things themselves" (hich, inthe case ofthe literary eritic, are meaningful text, Which themselves are again concerned with objects). i cleat Uthat to let the abject take over inthis way fs nota matter forthe interpreter ofa single decision, but i “the ist, last and constant task’. For itis necessary to Keep one’s gaze fixed on the thing {hroghout al he distractions that the interpreter will constantly experience in the process and which originate in himself A per- Son who is trying to understand a text allways performing an act of projecting. He projects before himsel'a meaning forthe text as a whole as soon as some inital meaning emerges inthe text. Again, the latter emerges only because he is reading the text with particular expectations in regard toa certain meaning, “The working out ofthis fore-projec, which is constantly revised in terms of what emerges as he penctates into the meaning, understanding what is there. “This description is, of course, a rough abbreviation of the whole. The process that Heidegger describes i that every revi sion ofthe fore project is capable of projecting before itself a few projeet of mesning, that rival projets can emerge side by Side tn ibecomes clearer what the unity of meaning i, that Intespretation begins with fore-conceptions that are repiaced by ‘ore suitable ones. This constant process of new projection the movement of understanding and intorpretation. A person Who is trying to understand is exposed to distraction from fore ‘meanings that are not borne out hy the things themselves. The ‘working-out of appropriate projects, anticipatory in are, to be The elevation ofthe histricaity of understanding 337 confirmed “by the things’ themselves, is the constant task of “understanding. The ony “objectivity” here the confirmation of 4 Tore-mesing in its being worked out. The only thing that ‘haracterises the arbitranness of inappropriate fore-meanings is that they come to nothing in the workng-out, But understanding achieves its full potentiality only when the foresmeanings that t Uses are not acbitrary. Thus i 1s quite right for the interpreter fot to approach the text directly, relying solely on the Tore= meaning’ at once available to him, but rather examine explicitly the leptimacy, i the origi and validity, of the fore= ‘meanings present within him This fundamental requirement must be seen as the radicli= sation ofa procedure that in fat we exercise whenever we un~ ‘derstand anything. Every text presents the task of not simply em ploying unexamined our own inguistte usage —or nthe case ot & foreign language the usage that we are falar with from writers for from daily mercourse. We regard our ask as rather that of ‘eriving our understanding ofthe text from the linguistic wsage ofthe time of the author. The question is, of course, to what extent this general requirement ean be Tulled. In the fcld of Semantics, i particular. we are confronted withthe problem of the unconscious nature of our own use of language. How do we siscover that there isa fference Between our own customary Usage and that ofthe tet? think we mus say that its generally the experience of being pulled up short by the txt. Either i does not yeld any meaning fr its meaning snot compatible with what we hid expected. Its this that makes us take account of posible uillerence in wage Wis a general presupposition that can be questioned only in particular cases that someone who speaks the same language 28 To uses the words inthe sence familar to me, The same thing ve inthe ease ofa foreign language, fe that we all think we have 4 normal knowledge of and assume this normal usage when we are reading a tex ‘Whats tre ofthe fore-meaning of usage, however. is equally true ofthe foresmeanings with regard to content with which We rea texts, and which make up our foresunderstanding, Here t00 Wwe may ask how we can break the spell of our own fore, ‘meanings that determine my own understanding ean go entirely tion that what is stated in'afext wil fit perfectly with my on meanings and expectations. On the coniary, what another per- son tells me, whether in conversation, letter book or whatever, is generally thought automatically to be his own and not my ‘pinion; and its this that Tam to take note of without necessar-ae Teath and Method iy having to share it But this presupposition is not something that makes understanding easier, but harder, in that the fore: meanings that determine my own understanding can go entirely Unnotied. I they pve rise to misunderstanding, how can mise Understandings of a text be recognised at al if here is nothing else fo contradict? How cana text be protected from misunder- Standing from the star’? Trwe examine the situation more closely, however, we find ‘that meanings cannot be understood in an arbitrary way. Just as ‘we cannot continually misunderstand the use ofa word without it affecting the meaning ofthe whole, so we cannot hold blindly ‘to our own fore-meaning ofthe thing we would understand the meaning of another. Of eourse this does not mean that when We Tisten to someone or read a book we must forget all our fore- ‘meanings concerning the conten, and all our own ideas. AU that i asked js that we remain open to the meaning of the other person or of the text. But this openness always includes our placing the other meaning in relation with the whole of our own ‘meanings or ourselves in relation to it. Now ii the case that ‘meanings Fepresent @ Muid variety of possibilities (when com- pared with the agreement presented by a language and 4 vo- abulary) but itis still not the case that within this variety of wha fan be thought. ie of what a reader can Tind meaningful and Inence expect to find, everything is possible, and ia person fils {wheat what the other person is really saying, he wil not be able to place correctly what he has misunderstood within the range of his own various expectations of meaning. Thus there fa crite: ‘on here also, The hermeneutical task Bocomes sstomatically Questioning of things and i allways in part determined by this. ‘This places hermeneutical work on a firm basis. Ia person laying 1 understand something, he will nat be able to Fly rom the start on his own chance previous idess, missing as logically and stubbornly as possible the actual meaning ofthe text unt the latter becomes so persistently audible that it breaks through the imagined understanding of i. Rather, a person trying 10 understand a texts prepared for it to tell him something. That is why a hermeneutically tained mind must be, fom the start, sensitive 10 the text's quality of newness, But this Kind of sen Sitvty involves neither “neutrality” in the matter of the object hor the extinction of one's self but the conscious assimilation of ‘one’s own foresmeanings and prejudices. The important thing i tobe aware of one's own bias, so thatthe text may presen itself inal its newness and thus be able to assert its own ruth against ‘one's own fore-meanings. The elevation ofthe historicality of understanding 339, When Heidegger showed that what we call the ‘reading of what i there’ is the forestructure of understanding, this Was, phenomenologcally, completely correct. He also showed by an example the task that arises from this. In Being and Time he ave a concrete example, in the question of being, of the general Slatement that was, for him, a hermeneutial problem." In ‘order to explain the hermeneutical situation of the question of being in regard to fore-having, fore-sght and fore-conception, he critically applied his question, directed at metaphysics, to im= portant turing-points in the history of metaphysics. Here he ‘was actully doing simply what the historical, hermeneutical consciousness requites in every case. Methodological con- ‘cious understanding will be concerned not merely to form an- Ticipatory ideas, but to make them conscious, so as to check them and thus’ aequire night understanding from the things themselves. This fs what Heidegger means when he talks about ‘securing’ our scientific theme by deriving our Tore-having, foresight and fore-conceptions from the things themselves, isnot, then, at alla case of safeguarding ourselves against the tradition that speaks gut of the text but, on the contrary, 10 ‘keep everything away that could hinder un understanding in fers of the thing. It is the tyranny of hidden prejudices that makes us deaf to the language that speaks to ts in tradition, Hrdegger’s demonstration that the concept of consciousness in Descartes and of spirit in Hegel is stil influenced by Greck substance-ontology, which sees being in terms of what is present land actual, undoubiedly goes beyond the selcunderstanding of ‘modern metaphysis, yet notin an arbitrary, wilful way, but on the bass of fore-having that i fact makes this tradition intl sible by revealing the ontological premises of the concept of Subjectivity. On the other hand, Heslegger discovers in Kant's citigue of "dogmatic" metaphysis the dea ofa metaphysics of the finite whichis challenge to his own ontological scheme. ‘Thus he "secures" the scientific theme by framing it within the understanding of tradition and so puting it, ina sense, at risk. This is the conereteTorm ofthe historical consciousness that involved in understanding, ‘This recognition that all understanding inevitably ‘some prejudice gives the hermeneutical problem its real By the lightof this insight i appears that hstoricism, despite ts eritque of rationalism and of natural lw philosophy, based on the modern enlightenment and unknowingly shaves its pee} Udices. And there is one prejudice of the enlightenment that is essential it the fundamental prejudice of the enlightenment is