The Fragility of Freedom Gadamerian :: Gadamer Freedom Essays

The Fragility of Freedom GadamerianABSTRACT This paper examines the nature of freedom in Hang-Georg Gadamers hermeneutics. It focuses on the last section of Wahrheit und Methode advancing the hypothesis that Gadamers model of sagaciousness is derived from his particular appropriation of the Platonic nonion of the better-looking which poses a passive interpretative posture toward the object of understanding and deprives the employment of interpretation the essential creative quality of freedom. I argue that to the bound that the object of understanding presents itself as im negotiate revelation of impartiality, the interpreting overthrow is reduced to a mere acknowledger of truth as opposed to a creative producer. Opponents of teleological ontology and of philosophy of story have been attracted to hermeneutics as a more congenial perspective for the exploration of such issues as truth and right, knowledge and action, fate and freedom. The appealing claim of hermeneutics is th at prevalentity need not be and should not be absolute as an ultimate demise of a process of actualisation. In the view of hermeneutics, a determinate universal converts freedom to necessity however much consciousness may mediate activity. That is, even though activity engenders change, consciousness is more an expression of necessity in relation to the absolute than an expression of freedom. Indeed, in this view, teleological mediation between freedom and necessity is no reconciliation but preferably a subsumption of freedom by necessity. To rehabilitate freedom, hermeneutics opts for a non-teleological history with an open, indeterminate future. The departure from teleology finds a new non-essentialist ground for truth and universality, namely, unwashed understanding.In this paper, I examine Gadamers notion of mutual understanding, alliance of horizons, to assess the place reserved for freedom. I focus on Gadamers appropriation of the Platonic notion of the beautiful as the model of understanding and I argue that such a notion of understanding poses a passive interpretive posture toward the object of understanding, i.e. tradition or modern-day alien culture. In this model of understanding, I shall argue, the latter presents itself as conterminous revelation of truth and thereby deprives interpretation of the productive quality which Gadamer would equal to attribute it. I begin by providing some theoretical mount to Gadamers notion of understanding noting its debt to Heideggers phenomenological ontology. I then choke to examine Gadamers appeal to the Platonic dialectic of the beautiful as a model for understanding which highlights, to my mind and as I noted, the latent passivity of Gadamerian interpretation.