contingently, but we cannot specify necessary and sufcient conditions

for the way they condition our knowledge-claims in all cases. () What
Gadamer is saying is that history and language function as conditions of
our knowledge that outstrip our ability to identify and justify fully our
dependence on them. They are known partially, but our knowledge cannot
encompass all the possible ways these factors function as conditions of
knowledge. If this is so, then there is a certain ineluctable inarticulacy and
inescapable opacity in all our knowing
One important consequence of this claim is that the skeptic cannot be
silenced once and for all. () In other words, if Gadamer is right, then
traditional transcendental philosophy cannot hope to complete its
program of making the conditions of knowledge transparent to the knower.
Neither the knower as such, nor the conditions of her knowledge can be
completely known.
According to Gadamer, all truth-claims are historical in the sense that
they are all framed in some tradition of inquiry. This tradition might
function in many complex ways from conditioning the conceptual
language of inquiry to the protocols that govern the gathering and
reporting of data, but we can say that one salient feature of the way
tradition functions in Gadamers account of knowing is that tradition sets
the normative context of inquiry for a community of learners
In this sense, tradition determines things such as which questions are
most important, which have priority for a particular research community at
a particular time, and it sets at least prima facie boundaries of what
conceptual tools are acceptable in attempting to answer these questions.
In short, a normative tradition not only determines the questions in some
sense, but also it plays a substantive role in determining what counts as a
good answer to these questions. Such traditions are normative in that they
guide communities of inquiry toward an epistemic ideal, an ideal that is
historically conditioned
But Gadamer has used the term tradition in a way that has caused
some controversy. Gadamer provocatively says such traditions or
frameworks exercise authority. Normative claims by their very nature
impose themselves on us; they make authoritative demands on us or
address us as if they had a right to be heard. What this authority means,
however, needs to be carefully spelled out. Authorityfor Gadamer is
something a tradition earns by demonstrating its value in the pursuit of
knowledge. In McDowells terms, we can say that such authority is
normative because it has the capacity to operate within our freedom and
should not be conceived as simply imposed on us from a point beyond our
freedom
I emphasize this point because it rightly reinforces the claim that
Gadamer is not an enemy of human freedom. Gadamers notion of
authority is not authoritarian. Nevertheless, what many people still
nd troubling about his notion of tradition and its concomitant notion of
the nitudeof our understanding is that it does challenge a certain view
of rational autonomy. Gadamer opposes a view of our freedom as rational
agents that has its roots in the Cartesian and Enlightenment tradition.
What such a view of rational freedom requires of us is that we be able to
judge the full nature and extent of any norms that govern our knowledge

Such a notion of autonomy is precisely what Gadamer wishes to deny

when he insists on the nitude of our knowledge. To put it in my terms,
Gadamer would argue that autonomy does not require us to place
ourselves in the ctional position of the rst authors of the tradition
somehow; autonomy neither requires that we know exhaustively the
grounding of such norms, nor that we be able to see in advance all the
implications of such norms. One merely has to state this ideal as baldly as
I have attempted in order to see its deeply problematic nature.