Jonathan Suckow

Theories of literature
Oliver Simons
9 April 2023
Understanding as fusing

In Truth and Method, Gadamer argues that understanding can only be achieved through

language and that language is essential for making meaning possible for others. However, he

also acknowledges that understanding goes beyond any statement that we can make, and that

our desire and capacity to understand always exceed our linguistic capabilities. Therefore,

understanding is not just about reconstructing the intentions of the author, but also involves an

ongoing dialogue and exchange of ideas between the interpreter and the text. This dynamic

process of understanding finds its model in the Greek dialectic, which engages in an ongoing

dialogue without arriving at a definitive answer or absolute truth.

For Gadamer, understanding can only be achieved through the medium of language. He

says: “The ability to understand, then is a fundamental endowment of man, one that sustains

his communal life with others and that, above all, takes place by way of language” (Gadamer

158). The notion of understanding, then, bestows specific weight on the linguistic element of

understanding. To understand is to put something into words, or to express understanding

through a linguistic form. But it is not enough for language to properly function. Gadamer

asserts: “From the hermeneutical point of view, on the other hand, understanding what is said

is the main and only concern. For this, the proper functioning of language is merely a

precondition. Another precondition is that an expression should be acoustically intelligible, or

that a printed text be decipherable, so that understanding what is spoken or written is at least

possible. The text must be readable” (169). In other words, language must be used in a

particular way such that readers of the “text” (this includes any form of expression) can

understand it. Understanding thus requires an activation of language that makes meaning

possible for others.

One might want to raise an objection to this idea, by arguing that understanding can be

achieved without language. For example, one could understand a piece of art without using

language. In the chapter “Language as the Medium of Hermeneutic Experience”, Gadamer

argues that “the fact that our desire and capacity to understand always go beyond any

statement that we can make seems like a critique of language. But this does not alter the

fundamental priority of language” (402). Gadamer goes on to evoke the example of the painter,

sculptor, or the musician who would claim that any linguistic explanation of his work would be

beside the point. The artist can only eliminate the possibility of such a linguistic interpretation,

Gadamer argues, in favor of some other interpretation that would be more to the point. But,

for Gadamer, this interpretation, as a realization of meaning, is always geared to a possible

language, even if it comes in the form of a song or a sculpture (Gadamer 403).

Language is thus essential to understanding. But what is constitutive of understanding?

Gadamer conceives “the primordial phenomenon [understanding] and nature of language as

dialogue” (160). He argues that “the dialogical character of language […] leaves behind any

starting point in the subjectivity of the subject, and especially in the meaning-directed

intentions of the speaker. What we find happening in speaking is not a mere fixing of intended

meaning in words; it is an endeavor that continually modifies itself, or better: it is a continually

recurring temptation to engage oneself in something or to become involved with someone”

(Gadamer 158). Gadamer seems here to take issue with the notion that to understand is to

reconstruct, in a “scientific fashion”, the meaning of a text according to the intentions of the

author. The quote above emphasizes the dialogical character of language and thus

understanding by doing justice to the role of the interpreter. Indeed, the interpreter is not a

passive vessel that absorbs information and spits it out. Rather, the interpreter is very much

concerned with the matter at hand by contributing his own perspective in the effort to

understand the “text”. This dynamic process of understanding finds its model, according to

Gadamer, in the Greek dialectic. Rather than embracing the Hegelian dialectic as a model, “that

had characterized modern dialectic as reaching its fulfillment in the idealism of the Absolute”,

Gadamer goes instead “in the direction of the art of living dialogue in which the Socratic-

Platonic movement of thought took place” (Gadamer 160). Greek dialectic is a better model

because it does not arrive at a definitive answer, but rather engages in an ongoing dialogue and

exchange of ideas. Modern dialectic, on the other hand, arrives at a definitive solution or

absolute truth, which Gadamer rejects as being a proper model for how understanding

operates.

He uses the example of art and history to illustrate this idea. About art he says that “no

matter how much a work of art may appear to be a historical datum, and thus a possible object

of scholarly/scientific research, it is always the case that the work says something to us, and it

does so in such a way that its statement can never be exhaustively expressed in a concept”

(Gadamer 160). Likewise, “in the experience of history we find that the ideal of the objectivity

that historical research offers us is only one side of the issue—in fact a secondary side, because
the special feature of historical experience is that we stand in the midst of an event without

knowing what is happening to us until in looking backwards we grasp what has happened.

Accordingly, in every new present, history must be written anew” (Gadamer 160). Art and

history do not have a predetermined, universal meaning, there is no essence to them that one

can extract. Instead, their meaning emerges through an ongoing process of interpretation and

understanding. Works of art and historical events can be studied as objects of scientific

research, but they are not reducible to simple facts. A work of art expresses something to us

that cannot be reduced to a concept because our subjectivity and situation is always

concerned. Likewise, Similarly, our experience of historical events is shaped by our own

perspectives and contexts, and our understanding of them can change as we reflect on them

from different vantage points.

Gadamer uses the image of a fusion of horizons between text and interpreter to

showcase the event of understanding. Paradigmatic of this fusion is a dialogue between two

interlocutors. For Gadamer, engaging in a conversation has “little to do with a mere explication

and assertion of our prejudices; on the contrary, it risks our prejudices” (Gadamer 163). He goes

on to say that “the mere presence of the other before whom we stand helps us to break up our

own bias and narrowness, even before he opens his mouth to make a reply” (Gadamer 163).

When confronted with another, our awareness of another’s consciousness compels us to

question our perspective, ideas and prejudices as a kind of third person. For Gadamer, this

experience constitutes “a potentiality for being the other” (163). The mere presence of another

is sufficient to give us an awareness of an exterior that one could “fuse” with. Although a
dialogue is only one example of a possible event of understanding, this fusion can occur with

anything that constitutes a “readable text”.

But, unlike a conversation where “one tries to reach understanding through the give-

and-take of discussion […] that one thinks will get through to the other”, a written text does not

allow for “the openness implied in seeking words [because it] cannot be communicated as the

text is written” (Gadamer 173). As such, “a virtual horizon of interpretation and understanding

must be opened in writing the text itself, a horizon that the eventual reader has to fill out”

(Gadamer 173). The writer of the text looks forward, that is, he writes knowing that a future

reader will read his text such that it is already “directed toward reaching an understanding”

(173). So, even with a written text the fusion of horizons is an image that applies because the

writer is, in a sense, already in conversation with his reader when he writes his text. Both

parties work together to reach an understanding.

More generally, the fusion of horizons occurs when “the text interpreter overcomes

what is alienating in the text and thereby helps the reader to an understanding of the text”, “it

is an entering into the communication in such a way that the tension between the horizon of

the text and the horizon of the reader is resolved” (180). In other words, fusion requires the

reader to test his perspective and prejudices against that of the text and negotiate an

understanding with it, which will result in a change of the reader’s and the text’s horizon. Every

event of understanding is something completely knew, not limited to either the text or the

interpreter, which is a resolution of the tension between text and interpreter. Gadamer asserts:

“the separated horizons, like the different standpoints, merge with each other. Indeed, the

process of understanding a text tends to captivate and take the reader up into that which the
text says, and in this fusion the text disappears” (180). This means that the initial separation

between the reader’s horizon and the text’s horizon becomes bridged. Gadamer describes this

process of fusion as a positive experience, in which the reader is not losing anything, but rather

gaining a deeper understanding of the text. In fact, he suggests that the reader becomes so

captivated by the text that the text itself seems to disappear, as the reader becomes fully

absorbed into the perspective of the text.