intertext

The conflict of interpretations, fo use Paul Ricoeur's ferm,foday haunfs both philosophy and all forms of aesfheficcrificism. On fhe mosf elemenfary of levels, fhe conflicf is bef-ween "trust" and "suspicion," although fhe quesfion to beanswered is, frusf and suspicion of whaf? Of fhe ofher per-son's motives? Of fhe verbal or visuai languages involved incommunicafion? Of the very nature of human communica-fion ifself? Posfmodern hermeneufics, exemplified in Hans-Georg Gadamer, has fried fo argue fhaf by becoming awareof fhe piffalls and dilemmas involved in fhe encounfer wifhwork of arf, we can achieve a degree of "shared horizon"wifhin which meaningful undersfanding becomes possible.Posfsfrucfuralisf philosophers and critics, suspicious of fheferms of "horizon," "hisfory," and "mufualify" wifh which fhehermeneufics of frusf addresses fhem, are more insisfenf fhaf"good will" is af boffom "good will fo power," fo use Derrida'spiquanf variafion of Niefzsche's verbal formula,

Gadamer claims, in Truth and Method \ha^ "fhe experienceof encounfering a work of arf opens up a world." (RichardPalmer's paraphrase, p. 167 of fhe book cifed below.) Derrida,for whom fhe work of arf by no means opens up any defer-minable "world," energefically dispufes such conclusions.

In fhe exchange abouf which Richard Palmer writes, Der-rida's humane and humorous fwisf on Niefzsche's phraseallows Gadamer fo reforf fhaf Derrida's deconsfrucfive efforfssfill evidence fhe real "good will" which validafeshermeneufics rafher fhan deconsfrucfion. The indecisive ouf-come of fhis debafe befween fwo masfers opposing view-poinfs suggesfs fhaf fhe issue of whaf we can frusf and howmuch we can frusf if, a quesfion unhappily inherifed fromNiefzsche, will remain a permanenf ifem on fhe agendas ofposfmodern arf and science alike.

If is because of fhe fundamenfal issues underiying fhe 1981Gadamer-Derrida debafe fhaf Art Papers asi

this carrying forward by Derrida of HeideggerianinsightSy understanding itself as a radicalization ofthose insights finds that it must if it is to be consistentcompletely throw out Heidegger's own Nietzsche-critique, Nietzsche is viewed ( from this new stand-point) not as the extreme of forgetfulness of Beingwhich has culminated in concepts of value and effec-tivenessy but the true overcoming of metaphysics, inwhich Heidegger remains entrapped as he directs hisinquiry toward the meaning of being as toward somekind of disclosable logos.(p. 27)

Gadamer remarks that this reading of Heidegger should notblind us to the fact that Heidegger's project was to overcomemetaphysics the later Heidegger turned to poetry to escapethe language of metaphysics,

Gadamer goes on to concede that in his encounter withDerrida's more radical Heidegger interpretation, he becameaware that his own effort to " translate" Heidegger remainedwithin the romantic tradition of the Geisteswissenschaften (" hu-manities" ed, ) and its humanistic heritage. " But " he assertsin his own defense, "precisely over againsf this prevailingtradition of'historicism' I have tried to take a critical stand"Gadamer goes on to concede that perhaps Heidegger's radicalcritique of Husserl's phenomenological neo-Kantianism puthim in a position to recognize in Nietzsche the extreme end-point of what he called the "oblivion of Being." But Gadamerpoints out

this is an external criticism which does not fall backbehind Nietzsche but goes beyond him. What I miss inFrench thinking is a grasp of the tentative, questioningnature of Nietzsche's thinking. Only by ignoring thiscan it maintain that the experience of Being behindmetaphysics which Heidegger is concerned to dis-close, is somehow surpassed by Nietzsche's extremismin radicality....(p. 28)

Gadamer deals with language in the model of dialogue, fordialogue has the possibility of breaking out of the static forms ofscientific thinking, and forces us to deal with the otherness ofthe other, to communicate, to consider language "a bridge thatcommunicates with the other and over the flowing stream ofotherness" rather than" a box.,. limited by our self- transactionsand walled away from ever really communicafing and ex-pressing ourselves, "(p, 31)

Gadamer discusses the meaning of the words" interpretation"and "text" The perspective one requires in order to deal withtexts and their interpretation goes vastly beyond linguistics andgrammar. The latter are concerned with general rules andstructure of communication but not with what is actually saidFor hermeneutics however, it is the understanding of theindividual utterance that is important Knowing the functioningof language is only a precondition for text interpretatioa just asit is a precondition of understanding that you can actually hearthe person who is speaking or make out what is written on apage.(p. 36)

Gadamer asks: "How do texts stand in relation to language?What is it that can go via language into texts? What is agreementbetween speakers, and what does it mean that something like atext can be held in common, that it can be one and the same textfor both? "( p. 31 ) Among the conditions Gadamer finds nece-ssary for conversation about texts is mutual good will on thepart of partners in the conversation. It is this thesis that Derridatakes issue with in his response to Gadamer.

n. Derrida's Three QuestionsDerrida's response to Gadamer's paper carries the provoca-

tive title: "Good Will to Power (I) " and the subtitle, "ThreeQuestions for Hans- Georg Gadamer, " The first question has todo with Gadamer's appeal to good will and the "absoluteobligation to strive for agreement in understanding. " " Does notsuch a way of speaking.,. belong to a bygone epoch, that of the[Kantian] metaphysics of will?"p. 57)

The second question is directed to the issue of how Gadamerproposes (according to Derrida's understanding of the pre-vious evening's lecture) to integrate a psychoanalytic her-meneutics with his axiom about good will:

What does "good will" mean in a psychoanalysis?Or even merely in a discourse which is something likepsychoanalytic interchange? Will a simple expansionof the interpretive context suffice there as professorGadamer seems to have in mind? Is there not on thecontrary, as I would prefer to say, necessarily a chasm

(between the partners), or a general restructuring ofthe context even to the concept of what is contextitself? I am not referring here to any psychologicaldoctrine in peirficular but to the quesHon of whatcharacterizes the possibility of a psychoanalysis of apsychoanalytically interested interpretafion. Such aninterpretation would indeed perhaps stand closer tointerpretation in the style of Nietzsche than that othertradition from Schleiermacher to Gadamer, (p, 57)

Derrida had deep reservations about rooting one's reflec-tions in "the life-context of living dialogue." This was one ofGadamer's decisive points says Derrida, yet in Derrida's viewthis goes back to a context- related coherence that explicitly ornot has the form of a system,

Derrida relates this problem of coherence and context-relatedness to Gadamer's remarks on the definition of literarytexts. Recalling a quesfion about the closedness of a corpus, heasks: " What is context in this regard and strictly speaking whatis the enlarging of context? Continually progressing expansion?Or is it not rather a discontinuous restructuring? This wasespecially problematic for me in everything Gadamer saidabout the definifion of literary, poefic or ironic texts." (p.57)

The third question had to do with good will, and with making"understanding" "understanding the other," and "under-standing each other" the conditions of interpretation. Again,Derrida quesdons whether understanding is really a process ofcontinually unfolding relatedness which seems to be the viewof hermeneuticsy whether it takes understanding or misunder-standing as its starting-point Rather, he suggests isn't thecondition of understanding a break of relatedness, even a breakas relationship, a cancelling of all mediation? Furthermore, theappeal to "the experience we all have of X" which Gadameremphasizes, is not to be some kind of metaphysics of experi-ence. Yet metaphysics is often thought of in terms of the self-presentation of experience. "For my part" says Derrida, "I amnot sure that we even have this experience at all that ProfessorGadamer has in mind namely that in dialogue harmony(agreement understanding) and success-confirming agree-ment take place."(p. 58)

Derrida then asks: "Does there not indeed come into viewin the web of these questions and remarks, which I leave here intheir improvised and ellipfical form, another way of thinking'text'?"(p. 58)

in. Gadamer RepliesGadamer's reply, titled " Nevertheless: The Power of Good

Will " displays the dialogical good will to which he refers in hispaper and for which he is well known. He opens by regrettingthat his remarks on text and interpretatioa which had Derrida'sposition in mind when they were framed did not achieve theirgoal of provoking a discussion of the issues they raised. Rather,Derrida chose to bring in the Kanfian conception of good willand to try to relate his remarks to the" epoch of metaphysics."Gadamer reiterates that" good will" in dialogue has nothing todo with the KanHan metaphysics of will but refers to theSocratic principle that one strengthens the arguments of one'sdialogical partner rather than weakens them if one is to achieveunderstanding. "Such a procedure seems to me essential forevery understanding. This is a simple consideration and hasnothing to do with an' appeal' least of all does it have anythingto do with an ethics. Even unmoral beings take the trouble tounderstand each other. I cannot believe that Derrida, in truth,does not agree with me about this. Whoever opens his mouthwants to be understood otherwise we would not write andspeak.... Derrida directs quesHons to me and must assume that Iam disposed to understand them,"p. 59)

Gadamer says that he certainly has not been understood ifDerrida thinks he would extend the classical forms of under-standing into psychoanalytic hermeneutics. " My goal has beenthe very opposite, to show that psychoanalyHc interpretationgoes,.. toward understanding not what one intends to say buttiiat which one does not want to say or even admit to oneself. "(pp. 59-60) "Even in my view this procedure is a breach, arupture and not a method that wishes to understand theother."

Gadamer further says he would be the last to deny that onecan approach expressions with a quite different intention fromthat of making an agreement in understanding possible, "Myquestion was precisel)^ When and why does one make such abreach? " He has wanted to make this clear, he says becauseRicoeur's pairing of the "hermeneutics of suspicion" with the"hermeneutics of what is intended" makes it appear that theseare simply two methods, side by side, of reaching the same

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kind of understanding. This is emphatically not the case.In response to Derrida's charge that his appeals to experi-

ence, to living dialogue, and to what we all recognize, arefreighted with metaphysical assumptions* Gadamer suggeststhat what he has in mind is something like what Derrida calledcollocution, in Speech and Phenomena, a joint set of conventionsthat makes communication possible. To make such an assump-tion is not to assume either a metaphysical conception of truth,nor a metaphysics of presence. On the contrary, "this is nometaphysics but simply names the presupposition which everypartner in a dialogue must make even Derrida if hewishes to direct questions to me, "

As to ruptures in understanding Gadamer does not denythem; the solidarities that make dialogue possible do not sufficeto make conclusive agreement possible. Rather, one is alwayscoming up against the limits of dialogue, or the experience oftalking past one another. Nevertheless, the possibility ofagreement in understanding is something that " all humansolidarity, the very existence of society, " presupposes,

Gadamer reiterates his view of the literary "text" as endlessprovocation to understanding, and understanding as an infinitetask. " Every reading that seeks to understand is only a step on apath that has no end One who treads this path knows that hewill never be done with the text "(p. 61) The text strikes itsreader and the reader takes up the task of understanding. Thisis not a matter of just agreeing with one's already existentpreunderstanding but finding that understanding challengedand transformed. In this, Gadamer concludes, he may not be sofar from Derrida as one might think.

rv. Some Remarks On the DebateGadamer has at least replied to Derrida's questions. To that

extent, the debate did take place. One is able to see in the twothinkers two quite contrasting styles and positions Gadamer isto some extent on the defensive in having a positive positionwith regard to dialogical understanding as the foundation forhermeneutics. But he also makes the best of his position bywhat one may call the movement of encompassing of univer-salizing, of making assertions one finds it hard to deny. Thisclever move puts Derrida on the defensive against beingengulfed one might say, by universality.

On the other hand, Derrida has the advantage of a Heideg-gerian and Nietzschean radicality, an oppositional mode ofthinking that feeds on the suspicion that Gadamer's appeals toconsensus thinking and to common experience do not really dothe job. For instance, they do not seem to account for thestriking character of works of art The experience of separation,strangeness, and challenge from works of art (as well as theworks of"thinkers"), which Heidegger conveys so well in hislater work, does not seem to find adequate theoretical expla-nation or grounding in a convention- based, consensus- orienteddescription of the understanding process even if one accepts^as Derrida does not the horizon of appeals to " experience. "

On the other hand, it is hard not to score a point for Gadamerwhen he finds in both Nietzsche and Derrida a certain self-refuting perspectivism. It may be a matter of which contradictionone wants the experience of art contradicting the descriptionof conventional preunderstanding in Gadamer, or a denial ofeven pragmatic truth-claims in Derrida that traps one intoasserting that one does not really expect to communicate.Furthermore, Derrida's identification of Gadamer's" good will"with Kantian will, and thus with a metaphysics of will seems tobe far- fetched, as even editor Philippe Forget suggests. Derridais satisfied, in his response, to be suggestive: lurking behindmy remarks and questions, he says, is another and quitedifferent view of the text

Derrida's " Good WiU to Power (II) "The subtitle of Derrida's paper, which seems to have been its

only title in the original French version, is" Interpreting Signa-tures ( Nietzsche^ Heidegger). " Here we have a familiar themein Derrida, the signature, applied to Heidegger's Nietzscheinterpretation. It continues the trajectory which can be seen inthe recently translated The Ear ofthe Other in which it is the ear ofthe other that receives the text and attaches the signature:^

The most important thing about the ear's difference... isthat the signature becomes effective performed andperforming not at the moment it apparently takesplace, but only later, when ears will have managed toreceive the message. In some way the signature willtake place on the addressee's side....(pp. 50-51)

What is interesting is the interplay between metaphors ofhearing, voice, and writing (the signature). One "hears" asignature. One hears a voice: "The gesture consists in hearing,while we speak and as acutely as possible, Nietzsche's voice. "The philosopher of criture, of the critique of phonocentricviews of language, has come a long way.

In other respects, Derrida seems to be venturing on theGadamerian turf of the positive transmission of the culturethrough interpreting texts. But the reception of those texts has aNietzschean cast of active interpretatioa One must"produce"the signature interpretation is a political gesture. Historicallyand politically, says Derrida, " it is we who have been entrustedwith the responsibility of the signature of the other's text whichwe have inherited." The signature is not only a word or aproper name at the end of a text but the operation as a whole,the text as a whole, the whole of active interpretation which hasleft a trace or remainder. It is in this respect that we have apolitical responsibility. "( pp. 51-52)

Given this understanding of the reading of signatures, onecan understand Derrida's choice of the theme " interpretingsignatures" to suggest his alternative approach to text inter-pretation. In this case, however, what is at issue is the ear ofHeidegger as if perceives Nietzsche's signature. Heidegger'shearing, Derrida suggests^ is already metaphysically conditionedby a totalizing gesture that is typified in his one-word titleNietzsche. Derrida proposes two questions: one centers aroundthe name of Nietzsche and the other around totality.

First Derrida raises the issue of what is referred to by thename of " Nietzsche. " Can " Nietzsche" be a unity, as Hei-degger's analysis presupposes? "But" says Derrida,

Who has ever said that a person bears a singlename? Certainly not Nietzsche. And likewise, whohas said or decided that there is something like aWestern metaphysics^ something which would becapable of being gathered up under this name and thisname only? What is it the uniqueness of a name,the assembled unity of Westem metaphysics? Is it anymore or less than the craving or desire ( dots of ellipsessubstitute for this word in Heidegger's Nietzschecitation! ) for a proper name, for a single, unique nameand a thinkable genealogy? (p. 72)

It is just this totalizing that Derrida identifies with meta-physics and finds that Heidegger practices throughout hisNietzsche interpretation. In fact he finds Heidegger over andover again trying through his interpretation to "rescue"Nietzsche at any cost from ambiguity. It is Heidegger, notNietzsche, who is the last metaphysician! It is Heidegger whodemands that the many-sided Nietzsche be a thinker who

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thinks one thought and Heidegger's following of a basicassumption of metaphysics causes him to interpret Nietzsche ashe does Metaphysics assumes "that to think and say mustmean to think and say something that would be a single matterand a single matter....It is the legein of this logos, indeed, thegathering of this logic, that the Nietzsches ( plural) have put inquestion." (p. 73)

Heidegger's Nietzsche- interpretation, says Derridti, rescuesNietzsche by embalming him as a metaphysician albeit thelast metaphysician. Derrida concludes his analysis of the firstquestion with an amusing image (an indirect allusion to TTIMSSpake Zarathustra). He refers to Heidegger's reading of Nietzscheas

this ambiguous life-saving act, in the course of whichone stretches out the net for the tightrope- walker...only insofar as one has made sure that the unmaskedtightrope- walker, protected by the unity of his name,which in turn will be sealed by the unity of meta-physics, will not be taking any risks. In other words:he was dead before he landed in the net.(p. 74)

Derrida deals with the issue of totality much more briefly,and again he finds Heidegger making Nietzsche metaphysicalthis time wrongly making him into a thinker of totality. Derridacleverly takes two citations Heidegger uses in his analysis andsays, "it appears to me that in its inner meaning, Nietzsche'sthesis ( 'eyeryffti^ has already been transposed into life and sodeparts from it' ) frustrates and cuts across the whole ofHeidegger's principle.For, says Derrida, "is it not preciselylife- death that gives the value of totality its absolute priority? "( p. 76 ) Yet the quotation asserts the need to derive everythingfrom life.

After all says Derrida, it was Nietzsche who went beyondevery ontological determination when he proposed that wethink being from life and not life from being.(p. 76) Agaia itseems that Heidegger rather than Nietzsche is the last meta-physcian, that Nietzsche is suggesting a postmetaphysicalstandpoint in the very quotation Heidegger is citing.

VI. Some RemarksWhile this brief discussion can in no way do justice to the

richness of Derrida's paper, perhaps it has given a few indica-tions of his approach to texts. Ironically, his strategy is moreexegetical and in that sense" hermeneutical " than Gadamer's.It relies much more than does Gadamer's presentation on theinterpretation of texts, is the interpretation of certain veryspecific texts. In Gadamer's paper, in fact one finds few directexegeses of specific lines of texts and more engagement in thetheory of dialogue, of text of interpretation. Derrida's paper,although certainly an example of deconstructioa is"herme-neufical" in the broader sense the interpretation of texts as amethod and strategy of philosophical reflection.

Manfred Frank, in his introduction to the debate as presentedin the Revue Internationale de Philosophie, notes (p. 329 ) that forall their differences, hermeneutics and poststructuralism dohave a good deal in common. Both take the" linguisfic turn" as atheoretical basis for philosophical reflecfion; both feel obligedto inventory the fundamental crisis in modem thought sinceHegel. Consequently, both deny that the formation of sensecan be culminated in some kind of absolute spirit or somenontemporal self- presence; both are philosophies of the finiteworld. Both, although in quite different fashions, build on thediagnoses offered by Heidegger and Nietzsche of "occidentalrationality." And finally, as Frank notes, both structuralism andhermeneufic philosophy accord a primordial significance to the

aesthetic phenomenon in particular to literature and literarycriticism for" only the aesthetic seems to safegaurd the valueof linguistic engagement in the wake of the loss of absolutetruth in the Hegelian sense" (p. 330). One may also add thatthey both recognize a similar canon of foundational thinkers:Plato, Hegel Nietzsche, Husserl Heidegger. Both pay littleattention to Sartre and Merleau- Ponty.

Yet whatever their commonalities, hermeneutics and post-structuralism have clear differences, and much energy willundoubtedly be expended in the near future on clarifying thecontrasts between them. (See, for example, Hermeneutics andDeconstruction, eds Hugh Silverman and Don Ihde [ Albany:SUNY press, 1985].) It is clear that Derrida identifies her-meneufics with a fairly traditional approach to interpretation.Perhaps a reference by Derrida to hermeneufics from The Ear ofthe Other will suggest the difference. In " Otobiographiesi, "Derrida says(p. 32) : "Our interpretations will not be readingsof a hermeneutic or exegefic sort but rather polifical inter-ventions in the political rewriting of the text and its destinafioa "What Derrida has in mind appears to be close to what Nietzschecalled "active interpretafion."

In any case, the" improbable debate" took place. Gadamer'spolished, smooth and carefully elaborated text provides us witha retrospective picture of half a century of work in philosophy.This contrasts with Derrida's modest sets of " questions" whichone is perpetually offered tantalizing promises of future analyses.But behind the contrast in style lurks a deeper contrast betweena mode of interpretafion that seeks agreement in dialogue, anda Nietzschean "active interpretafion" that seeks "the polificalrewrifing of the text and its destinafion. "

References' ed Philippe Forget (Stuttgart FinK 1984). A much shorter version containing the first part of

Gadamer's paper, Derrida's response and Gadamer's reply, but without Derrida's paper, is available inFrench in the Revue International de Philosophie(1964, 38me anne, N. 15), pp 329-47). AnEnglish translation ot Gadamer's paper by Dennis Schmidt will eventually appear in an anthology fromSNY press, ed. Brice Wachterhauser. Derrida's paper, co-translated by Richard Palmer and DianeMichelfelder, will appear later in 1986 in the journal Philosophy and Literature.

' "Anti-Hermes," by Francois Laruelle goes into the claims for the universality made by herme-neutics and asks' what they presuppose. Says Laruelle, in hermeneutics it is the autonomy (not theautarchy) of the signilier which is Ihe very condition for the possibility of the constitution of sense. Butthis seems to suggest the universality of logocentric thinking, says Laruelle. How universal is suchuniversality? he asks. Laruelle argues that Derrida integrates the" signifier" into his work with the textwhile hermeneutics excludes it; nevertheless, this is only an external, empirical difference between twopositions which, together, assume a pregiven circular structure of truth. Laruelle, lorhisparL proposeswhat he terms a "truly universal hermeneutics" based on a unitary, yet at the same time postmeta-physical, logic.

The question of the claim to universality made by Gadamer's hermeneutics becomes a major themerunning through the volume. In his essay, "Der Streit der Universalitten (The Struggle betweenUniversalities)," Jean Greisch further discusses the theme of universality, arguing that Gadamer'sconcept of hermeneutical universality presupposes the universality of reason, and as such tends to tallback into logocentrism. The editor, Philippe Forget, contributes a piece entitled "Aus der SeeleGeschrie(b)en: Zur Problematik des Schreibens(criture) in Goethes Werther(Written from the Soul:On the problem of Writing(e'criture) in Goethe's Werther)." Forget argues that the power of a work liesnot in its universal emotional appeal for each successive generation, but in its force as trail-blazer asbattering ram thus his opening caption, " Novel as Trailblazer and Battering Ram" in the case ofWerther, the work is claimed to be"writteryscreamed from the soul."

The tinal essay in the volume, " Die Grenzen der Beherrschbarkeit der Sprache: Das Gesprach als Drtder Differenz von NeoStrukturalismus und Hermeneutik(The Lirriits of the Masterability of Language:Dialogue as Point of Difference between Neostructuralism and Hermeneutics)" by Manfred Frankraises the issue ol universality in relation to the question of the universality and scope of dialogue inhermeneutics, especially since dialogue plays little role in poststructuralism. Of all the participants,Frank is perhaps best equipped to deal with the possible dialogue between hermeneutics and" Neostructuralism" from a standpoint tully knowledgeable of both sides As Frank notes at the outset of

. his essay, there seems to be an epistemological gap between the two sides, and neither side reallytroubles itself to attain an adequate knowledge of fhe other.

' See also Nietzsches Ofobiographie oder Politik des Eigennamens: Die Lehre Nietzsches, Olten-Freiburg'Breisgau, Band 1,1980 ; also in French as Otobiographies: L'enseignement de Nietzsche et la .Politique du nom Propre, Paris: Galilee, 1984. L oreille del autre (t^ontreal: VIb Editeur, 1982) wastranslated as The Ear of the Other Otobiography, Transference, Translatioa ed. Christie V. McDonald,New York: Schocken Books, 1985.

Richard Palmer is professor of philosophy at MacMurray College inJacksonville, Illinois.

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