Yale Studies in Hermeneutics This content downloaded from (cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)147.8.204.164 on Tue, 02 Aug 2022 02:40:44 UTC(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0) All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Yale Studies in Hermeneutics Joel Weinsheimer, editor EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Zygmunt Bauman Robert Bernasconi Gerald Bruns Fred R. Dallmayr Ronald Dworkin Hans-Georg Gadamer Clifford Geertz Frank Kermode Richard Rorty Mark Taylor This content downloaded from (cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)147.8.204.164 on Tue, 02 Aug 2022 02:40:44 UTC(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0) All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms PRAISE OF THEORY Speeches and Essays HANS-GEORG GADAMER translated by Chris Dawson Yale University Press New Haven and London This content downloaded from (cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)147.8.204.164 on Tue, 02 Aug 2022 02:40:44 UTC(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0) All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Published with assistance from the Louis Stern Memorial Fund. This book originally was published as Lob der Theorie: Reden und Aufsiitze by Hans-Georg Gadamer, copyright © 1983 by Suhrkamp (Frankfurt am Main). Copyright© 1998 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Set in Caslon type by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 1900- [Lob der Theorie. English] Praise of theory : speeches and essays / Hans-Georg Gadamer : translated by Chris Dawson. p. cm. - (Yale studies in hermeneutics) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-300-07310-0 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Philosophy. 2. Theory (Philosophy) 3. Hermeneutics. 4. Reason. 5. Science and the humanities. I. Title. II. Series. B3248.G3t3L6313 1998 193-dc21 98-7II5 CIP A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. IO 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I ,,__ ~~s \\' y (;. j'fL This content downloaded from (cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)147.8.204.164 on Tue, 02 Aug 2022 02:40:44 UTC(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0) All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms CONTENTS Foreword/ vii Translator's Introduction/ xv CHAPTER I Culture and the Word / I CHAPTER 2 Praise of Theory/ I6 CHAPTER 3 The Power of Reason / 37 CHAPTER 4 The Ideal of Practical Philosophy/ 50 CHAPTER 5 Science and the Public Sphere / 6z CHAPTER 6 Science as an Instrument of Enlightenment / 7I CHAPTER 7 The Idea of Tolerance 1782-1982 / 84 CHAPTER 8 Isolation as a Symptom of Self-Alienation / IOI This content downloaded from (cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)147.8.204.164 on Tue, 02 Aug 2022 03:12:59 UTC(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0) All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms CHAPTER 9 Man and His Hand in Modern Civilization: Philosophical Aspects / II4 CHAPTER IO The Expressive Force of Language: On the Function of Rhetoric in Gaining Knowledge/ 123 CHAPTER II Good German / 135 Notes/ 143 Glossary / 167 Bibliography/ qr Index/ 174 vii Contents This content downloaded from (cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)147.8.204.164 on Tue, 02 Aug 2022 03:12:59 UTC(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0) All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms FOREWORD To put it the way jaspers did, we wanted to grasp in what way reason was incarnate in existence itself. And it is that search which has determined my entire philosophical work. Right to my very last of years that impulse has held through. . . . We were in search a of way to think in which we could see the truth things, to discover the truth that was there in each thing before us in the world. And this meant that we were utterly distancedf rom ... efforts to control things, to make things, to manage things. Thus Hans-Georg Gadamer recently described his life's project from 1930 to the present. Praise of Theory confirms this self assessment. Here, first translated in its entirety, thanks to the care and commitment of Chris Dawson, the essays and lectures of the late 1970s and early 1980s that Gadamer collected in Praise of Theory represent his ongoing effort to understand how reason is incarnate in existence itself and why it is impossible, for that very reason, to rationalize our existence. The second, critical aspect of Gadamer's project is more ac cessible because more familiar. In Praise of Theory Gadamer sounds a warning against the dominant superstition of our time: the unwarranted belief that the life-world can and should be rationalized, that is, reordered according to a technological model of applied knowledge. "Technical thinking," he fears, "is beginning to expand into a universal view of the world." On that view, it is not just the business world that should be ratio- vii This content downloaded from (cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)147.8.204.164 on Tue, 02 Aug 2022 03:13:09 UTC(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0) All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms nalized by "efficiency experts"; all worlds are best run scientifi cally, by discovering the laws governing them, and then altering these worlds in calculable ways that will ultimately benefit us all. This kind of rationalization appeals not only to bureaucrats who use "expert opinion" to avoid taking responsibility and ex ercising judgment; it appeals to everyone who believes that the life-world can and should be managed scientifically to the end of bettering it. In this fantasy, social engineers join forces with all those obsessed with emancipatory utopias-indeed with all who believe that homo faber is blessed with infinite possibility. A new Enlightenment is needed, Gadamer argues, to over come the old Enlightenment superstition that we can make our world anything we would have it. What has made this superstition credible is the seemingly unbounded power of natural science. Within the physical world, science has worked miracles, and there seemed every reason to believe its successes could be replicated in the human world simply by transferring its method. In Praise of Theory, as in Truth and Method, Gadamer means by scientific method the formal procedure of inquiry by which "reality gets made into an object" so as "to break down the resistance of 'objects' and to dominate the processes of nature." Objectification enables control, and such dominion constitutes the proof and fruit of understanding. The only questions are whether human domin ion has any limits, whether there is anything that precludes objectification, and whether a form of non-objectifying ratio nality exists that therefore cannot be subsumed under method. For Gadamer, we know, it is above all the human sciences that show why method cannot be the universal paradigm of rationality, and that in turn explains why his work in concep tualizing these sciences has made him skeptical, as he says, of "efforts to control things, to make things, to manage things." The life-world studied by the human sciences cannot be objec- viii/F oreword This content downloaded from (cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)147.8.204.164 on Tue, 02 Aug 2022 03:13:09 UTC(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0) All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms tified-and hence it cannot be controlled, made, or managed because we belong to it. The belonging endemic to the human sciences hardly proves that, not being susceptible of method, these sciences are not rational-indeed not sciences. Qyite the contrary, the human sciences represent a kind of "reason in carnate in existence," a kind of knowledge - Gadamer calls it practical knowledge-that comes from participation rather than distanciation. The importance, indeed the daily necessity, of practical knowledge implies that method has no monopoly on truth. It is in fact quite blind to the truths that lie beyond the horizon of the technological worldview, the truths of the human sciences. What then is "the human" that is the subject matter of the human sciences? Among the several defining characteristics of the human to which Gadamer has given his attention over the years-language, in particular-the one to which he returns in Praise of Theory is the beautiful. Perhaps this is not en tirely unexpected, given his suspicion of "making." "Is human society possible at all when work produces only the necessities?" Gadamer asks. "It is worth considering to what extent what the Greeks called to kafon, the beautiful in the broad sense of a free surplus and superfluity, is that whereby human society satis fies itself as human." Elsewhere he speaks of "a whole domain, beyond animal self-preservation and beyond nature-the-artist's inexhaustible play of forms. The clever, deliberate creations of free human being bring a constant surplus into human life: play, imitation, rite, ceremony, and all those things that, un necessary as they are stimulating, we call the beautiful. This is obviously a list that could be extended further, and it enumer ates the opportunities that follow from the non-specialization of being human." What is distinctively human is not "making" -production that serves the end of self-preservation - but rather superfluity Foreword/ ix This content downloaded from (cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)147.8.204.164 on Tue, 02 Aug 2022 03:13:09 UTC(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0) All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms