EPISTEMOLOGY AS HERMENEUTICS

Author(s): Tom Rockmore

Source: The Monist , APRIL 1990, Vol. 73, No. 2, The Theory of Interpretation (APRIL
1990), pp. 115-133
Published by: Oxford University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27903177

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 EPISTEMOLOGY AS HERMENEUTICS

Recent discussion has seen an increase in the interest in hermeneutics.

The increased interest in hermeneutics goes back at least until the ap
pearance of Being and Time in 1927, more than sixty years ago. This book is
characterized by the unresolved tension between two clearly incompatible
theses: the Husserlian form of absolute truth, and a post-Husserlian view of
truth arising from the hermeneutical circle. More recently, the interest in
hermeneutics has been strengthened by the appearance of Truth and
Method in 1960, in which Gadamer, Heidegger's most important student,
developed the hermeneutical thesis of the latter's Fundamentalontologie in
a way which has influenced numerous other thinkers, notably Ricoeur and
Habermas, in a wide-ranging and often confused discussion. The latter's
theory of communicative action can be seen as carrying further the
Gadamerian view that knowledge results from interpretation. In
Habermas's version of the linguistic turn, which is further influenced by
Kant's view of Vernunftinteresse and Habermas's own, peculiar reading of
Peirce, speech is intrinsically aimed at potential agreement through the
development of consensus.
The aim of the present paper is to contribute to an understanding of the
relationship between epistemology and hermeneutics. The partisans of
hermeneutics, specifically including Gadamer, often present it as a new, un
precedented approach, even as a way to overcome the problem of
epistemology. Like the early Heidegger's claims to recover the supposedly
authentic problem of metaphysics, so as a result of his hermeneutical turn
Gadamer claims to overcome the problem of knowledge through
phenomenological research. But the irony is clear if we recall that a main
theme in Gadamer's thought lies in the renewed attention to tradition as a
source of knowledge, in marked contrast to Heidegger, upon whose concep
tion of hermeneutics he is strongly dependent. Now the novelty of the
hermeneutic approach obviously does not lie merely in a concern with
preceding forms of thought. Indeed, philosophy, even in the positions of
those who refuse the tradition, has always been traditional since the discus
sion, at least in the West, can only take place against the Platonic

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116 TOM ROCKMORE

background. Rather, the novelty of hermeneutics lies in an untraditional at

titude with respect to tradition from which ever since Descartes modern
philosophy has consistently sought to free itself as a source of error. In em
bracing the tradition as a source of possible truth, hermeneutic thought
reverses the prevalent modern view of the uselessness of the prior
philosophical tradition, which it intends to take seriously again as a source
of possible truth.
The thesis of this paper is that philosophy, above all the theory of
knowledge, is and always has been hermeneutical. Now in some ways this
point is obvious. If we construe hermeneutics as interpretation, it is obvious
that philosophy has always been concerned with the interpretation and im
provement upon prior thought, the construal and revision of its own past
history, of the history of philosophy which is the content of the
philosophical process. Although the writings of Heidegger and Gadamer
direct our attention to hermeneutics, or interpretation, this concept is clear
ly older than the recent discussion. We recall Aristotle's treatise, De Inter
pretationen as well as a large number of succeeding discussions, including
Spinoza's attention to biblical texts, and the wide-ranging concern in Ger
man idealism and the Romantic school with the distinction between the let
ter and the spirit of a theory, culminating in the well known Hegelian effort
to construe the entire preceding philosophical tradition as an ongoing
dialogue.
Despite the fact that the theme of interpretation is well anchored in the
philosophical tradition, it has often been held that interpretation and
knowledge are incompatible concerns. From a traditional perspective, the
identification of philosophy as hermeneutics is threatened by the equally
traditional concern, at least since Parmenides, with what, for lack of a bet
ter term, we can call knowledge in the full, or traditional sense. The view of
knowledge as a function of the distinction between episteme and doxa,
knowledge and opinion, truth and belief, excludes interpretation, which is
restricted to the level of conviction only. To put the same point in other
words: on this view when we know, interpretation is unnecessary; and when
we interpret, we do not know. It follows that knowledge and interpretation
are mutually exclusive categories.
This general point can be illustrated by any number of thinkers from
Plato onwards. We recall Plato's efforts in the Theaetetus to define
knowledge in such a way that the proposed explanation surpassed mere in
terpretation. Another, more developed, explicit form of the incompatibility
of interpretation and knowledge is advanced by Gadamer as a secondary
theme in his major statement of hermeneutics. According to Gadamer, who

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 EPISTEMOLOGY AS HERMENEUTICS 117

is strongly influenced by Heidegger as well as the radical effort, widespread

in the modern tradition, to bring philosophy to an end, the problem of
knowledge is overcome in hermeneutics.
Gadamer's claim is a version of the more general assertion that
hermeneutics, or interpretation, and epistemology, or the theory of
knowledge are incompatible and cannot coexist. In what follows, I shall ex
amine aspects of this claim, initially through discussion of Gadamer's effort
to overcome the problem of knowledge through phenomenological
research, followed by an analysis of the role of interpretation in the distinc
tion between episteme and doxa. The third section links the problem of in
terpretation to the rise of dual theories of knowledge as absolute and as
relative beginning with Kant. The fourth part takes up the relation between
the shift to antifoundationalism, relativism and interpretation. A result of
the discussion is to show that knowledge and hermeneutics are not exclusive
alternatives. Whatever the intention of the traditional view of knowledge in
the full sense of the term, the failure of foundationalism and related efforts
which has become evident in recent years means that the theory of
knowledge can no longer pretend to make out the distinction between
epistemology and hermeneutics in the shift to antifoundationalist
relativism.

Since Gadamer's understanding of the incompatibility between

hermeneutics and epistemology is grounded in his view that hermeneutical
phenomenology overcomes the problem of epistemology, we can begin by
an examination of his argument for this conclusion. There is an obvious
link between Gadamer's claim that the problem of knowledge is overcome
in hermeneutic phenomenology and the traditional view of epistemology.
Gadamer shares with the traditional philosophical approach to knowledge
at least the following three points: First, there is a problem of knowledge,
namely, that series of questions which compose the epistemological tradi
tion. Accordingly Gadamer agrees with the rejection, for instance, of
Dewey's view that there is no problem of knowledge; there are only pro
blems of knowledge. Second, Gadamer sides with those who throughout the
history of philosophy have offered a widely varying series of solutions to
the epistemological problem. In this respect, his view innovates in two
respects. On the one hand, he rejects prior solutions in favor of his own
perspective as alone offering an adequate resolution for epistemological
concerns. The difference here is only in the preference of his own point of

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118 TOM ROCKMORE

view, which, paradoxically, means that his preference of his own theory
resembles that of almost everyone else who writes or has written on
epistemological themes, each of whom tends to prefer his or her own pro
posed solution. On the other hand, he specifically opposes hermeneutics to
the epistemological question as its proposed solution, the alleged terminus
ad quern of the discussion of knowledge. Epistemology and hermeneutics
are two incompatible forms of knowledge, which cannot coexist, and
hermeneutics is the solution to the problem of epistemology.
In Truth and Method, Gadamer states the main epistemological thesis,
as concerns the relation between knowledge and hermeneutics in a chapter
appropriately entitled "Overcoming [?berwindung] of the Problem of
Knowledge Through Phenomenological Research."1 Gadamer's claim that
hemeneutics overcomes the problem of epistemology rests on a reading of
Heidegger's view of the hermeneutical circle. In his use of the word ?ber
windung instead of Verbindung Gadamer indicates his interest in the early
Heidegger's restatement of the concept of the hermeneutical circle in Being
and Time, associated with the view of truth as disclosure, which is finally
abandoned at the end of Heidegger's career.
The analysis Gadamer proposes is both Heideggerean and anti
Heideggerean in the effort to regard Heidegger's position?correctly in my
view?as growing out of recent thought, mainly the theories of Dilthey and
Yorck.2 Gadamer's reading of Heidegger's hermeneutical circle against the
immediate philosophical context is useful to deny a central Heideggerean
fiction, namely the claim, stronger in the early writings than after the
Kehre, to return beyond the philosophical tradition to the pre-Socratics.
Gadamer is surely correct. For at this late date how is it possible to identify
or to carry forward insights from early in the tradition, from a period for
which our records are fragmentary at best, assuming that they can be cor
rectly identified at all, other than from the perspective of the later tradition?
Heidegger's suggestion that his thought is mainly tributary of pre-Socratic
thought simply ignores the debt contracted to the surrounding tradition, to
such thinkers as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Schelling, Kant, etc. But
Gadamer's analysis remains Heideggerean in his claim to recover the so
called hermeneutical problem. Like Heidegger, who claimed to discern the
true approach to the problem of the meaning of Being by returning to an
earlier moment of the tradition to uncover that which had been covered up
by later thought, so Gadamer claims to return to the hermeneutical ques
tion.
Gadamer's proposed return to the hermeneutic question is intended as
a solution for the problem of knowledge. We can reconstruct his solution in

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 EPISTEMOLOGY AS HERMENEUTICS 119

terms of his interpretation of the problem. Gadamer rejects the view, voiced
frequently by students of the critical philosophy, that the epistemological
tradition ends with Kant.3 He further accepts the Young Hegelian sugges
tion, never stated by Hegel, that philosophy reaches a peak and an end in
Hegel's thought. His argument for hermeneutics as the solution to the prob
lem of epistemology presupposes a distinction between epistemology and
hermeneutics, according to which the latter is not merely a variety of the
former. In the turn to political economy, Marxists claimed to resolve the
unsolved questions of philosophy bequeathed by the philosophical tradi
tion; so Gadamer suggests that through the transition from epistemology to
hermeneutics, the problem of knowledge is overcome.
Gadamer's argument rests on three main points, including: an analysis
of the transition from Dilthey to Heidegger, following Heidegger's own
view of the matter in Being and Time, para. 76; an analysis of the implica
tions of Heidegger's view of hermeneutics; and a rethinking of the concept
of prejudice in connection with his idea of historical-effective con
sciousness. Beyond the details of the argument, we need to keep in mind
that any claim for hermeneutics as an epistemological panacea necessarily
presupposes a distinction between epistemology and hermeneutics. Let us
now examine the steps in Gadamer's argument before commenting on the
presupposed distinction, upon which the argument rests.
The intention of Gadamer's analysis of the transition from Hegel
through Dilthey to Heidegger is to establish a break or rupture between
Heidegger's view of the hermeneutical circle and preceding thought. Ob
viously, Gadamer cannot argue that the hermeneutical circle itself
originates in Heidegger's position since, as he recognizes, there is a long
hermeneutical tradition, which, with the prominent exception of the
Aristotelian idea of phronesis, he sees as beginning in the pre-history of the
romantic hermeneutic in the discussion over the interpretation of the holy
texts.4
For purposes of his argument, Gadamer needs to establish a basic shift
between Heidegger's understanding of the hermeneutical circle and
preceding views in order to claim that Heidegger's thought, or its further
development in his own position, overcomes the epistemological problem.
Gadamer's reading of this transition, particularly the relation of his own
view to Heidegger's, resembles Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche, intended
to think with the so-called last metaphysician and against him in order to
use his thought to surpass the tradition which allegedly peaks in his thought.
According to Gadamer, in the hermeneutic circle Heidegger transforms
Dilthey's relativism in a manner which goes beyond epistemology. But the
reading of Dilthey's position is problematic since for his own purposes

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 120 TOM ROCKMORE

Gadamer seems to exaggerate the difference between Hegel's concept of ab

solute knowledge and Dilthey's turn to history in order to maintain that
Heidegger's analysis of the hermeneutic circle represents the truth of
Dilthey's relativism.
Gadamer's views of both Hegel's concept of absolute knowledge, of
Diltheyan relativism, and of relativism are further open to question. In
terestingly, although Gadamer insists on the importance of the history of
philosophy, and although he has written on Hegel, in his collection of
material concerning hermeneutics he omits any mention of the latter; and in
Truth and Method he mainly mentions Hegel as the purveyor of a non
hermeneutical theory of absolute knowledge. Now this characterization is
doubly unfair. On the one hand, Hegel is perhaps the single most important
representative of the form of the hermeneutic, or holistic, view which con
sists in the analysis of the part-whole relationship. The basic statement of
that view is given in abstract form in the celebrated Introduction to the
Phenomenology of Mind, which Heidegger, for instance, has analyzed in
detail.5 On the other hand, Gadamer is content to point out a supposed op
position between Hegel's concept of absolute knowledge and hermeneutics
without any effort?surely necessary under the circumstances, since his
argument in part depends on the correct interpretation of Hegel's view,
more precisely, of the manner in which Heidegger improves upon it?to in
terpret Hegel's concept, which does not interpret itself. Since it is at least
arguable that Hegel's view of absolute knowledge is a form of hermen
eutics,6 we need not grant Gadamer's point without argument, lacking here.
Gadamer's interpretation of Dilthey's position is also controversial. He
objects that with respect to Hegel Dilthey merely repeats in different
language, but does not break with absolute idealism. Further, he complains
that the attempted substitution of historical knowledge for spirit com
prehending itself on the level of absolute knowledge is unsuccessful in over
coming relativism. But since from his hermeneutical standpoint Gadamer
objects to Hegel's concept of absolute knowledge, he cannot have it both
ways: either Dilthey merely repeats Hegel in his own language, in which case
the problem of overcoming relativism does not arise on Gadamer's reading
of Hegel; or Dilthey makes a successful break with absolute idealism and
the problem of relativism needs to be faced.
Like many other thinkers content merely to reject relativism, Gadamer
does not seem to have a clear idea of this epistemological approach.7 This
concept seems to function in his position, as in Husserl's thought, as
something to be avoided, as a mistake in principle, although why that is the

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 EPISTEMOLOGY AS HERMENEUTICS 121

case is unclear. Recent discussion of antifoundationalism has called atten

tion to the merits of relativism.8 If we follow Gadamer's attempt to seek
truth through the interpretation of the present in terms of the past tradition,
through a fusion of horizons, then it is difficult to see how the relativism in
trinsic to all interpretation can be avoided. This point can be put even more
strongly with respect to textual interpretation, which often serves as a model
in recent hermeneutical discussion: we can specify interpretations of a given
text which can be excluded, but except in unusual situations we cannot
specify the single correct interpretation and any interpretation which we
prefer is preferable only with respect to additional criteria, to which it re
mains relative. We need only to ask what the correct interpretation of an
important philosophical theory, for instance, Gadamer's, would resemble,
to recognize that interpretation cannot avoid relativism.
The analysis of Heidegger's hermeneutical circle is deeply ambivalent
since Gadamer, whose own theory is deeply dependent on Heidegger's,
desires to portray it as a decisive step which is, however, intrinsically in
complete. According to Gadamer, Heidegger's view breaks with
epistemology, but requires supplementation by a rethinking of the concept
of prejudice and a revalorisation of the philosophical tradition. The discus
sion of Heidegger's view is subtle and convincing. Gadamer is helpful in
calling attention to the way in which what he calls Vorverst?ndnis, that is,
the logically prior conceptual framework necessary for the interpretation of
anything, is continuous with the historically and chronologically prior
philosophical and intellectual tradition. In this way, Gadamer usefully cor
rects Heidegger's view through a historical dimension already present in the
positions of Hegel and Marx. Certainly Marx insists, as Habermas has
recognized, on the way in which cognition is a historical process.
Gadamer's error lies in the identification, or rather misidentification,
of Heidegger's recourse to the hermeneutical circle as a step beyond
epistemology. This kind of error is widespread in modern philosophy, for
instance in the effort, most recently in Rorty's position, to surpass
philosophy, or to bring the philosophical tradition to a close, either by
returning to its origins, or by making a new beginning, or by resolving its
problems on a post-philosophical plane, etc. All of these moves are in prin
ciple inadequate since if philosophy can be brought to a conclusion at
all?something which seems highly doubtful after some twenty-five cen
turies of effort?this can only occur from a vantagepoint within phi
losophy. Similarly, Heidegger does not break with epistemology in his
early thought just as in his later thought he does not break with philosophy;

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122 TOM ROCKMORE

he only breaks with a form of epistemology just as he only breaks with a

form of philosophy. In fact the concept of the hermeneutical circle, which
Gadamer depicts as unprecedented in order to make out his claim to
hermeneutics as the epistemological vademecum, is widely anticipated in the
prior tradition by such thinkers as Hegel, Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Ast,
etc., all of whom rely on some form of the hermeneutical circle as part of
their analysis of the problem of knowledge.9

II

We have considered Gadamer's view of hermeneutics as overcoming

the epistemological problem as an illustration of the supposed incom
patibility between epistemology and hermeneutics. We have seen that his
view of hermeneutics as the solution to the problem of knowledge founders
on his inability to make out the distinction in kind between Heidegger's
view of the hermeneutic circle and epistemology. An examination of the
purported distinction reveals a continuity which precisely undermines
Gadamer's claim. Since his argument is historical, and since it depends on
the reading of the relation between Heidegger's view and certain of its
predecessors in the tradition, we have discussed it from a historical angle of
vision. This examination is not necessarily decisive with respect to the deeper
point concerning the relation between knowledge and interpretation since
Gadamer's failure to make out his point might be due to the selective nature
of his historical vision. We need now to consider his underlying assumption
of the incompatibility between epistemology and hermeneutics.
One way to examine the proposed alternative is through the ancient
distinction between episteme and doxa as it survives in the later
philosophical tradition. We have already noted that the very idea of science
precludes interpretation, or, hermeneutics. Now Plato's classic account,
which determines the entire later philosophical tradition, supposes that
philosophy is the science of sciences which founds all claims for truth either
in the special sciences, which depend on philosophy, or philosophy itself,
which is allegedly self-justifying. The concept of philosophy as science
underlies the turn to the concept of the scientific system in the views of
Aristotle, Descartes and the rationalists, a form of the view which Kant
later regarded as the condition of knowledge in the full sense. In our own
time, this view of philosophy is restated by Husserl more than two thousand
years after Plato in his account of philosophy as a rigorous science and in
his critique of the special sciences for their supposed objectivism. We still
find such a model even in the early Heidegger, as late as the lecture "What
is Metaphysics?," despite his intention to destroy the tradition.

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 EPISTEMOLOGY AS HERMENEUTICS 123

The claim that philosophy must be science in order for truth to be

possible in the full sense of the term means that it is possible to make a tran
sition from the plane of subjective conviction or individual belief to objec
tivity, or what is the case for everyone. Scepticism, on the contrary, consists
in the denial of the attainment of objectivity, for instance in the insistence
on the continual, even ineliminable presence of subjectivity. In ancient
times, the effort to defeat scepticism depended on direct intuition of the in
visible, a form of intuition possible, at least in Plato's view, for certain
selected and properly prepared students of epistemology. In modern times,
this strategy was no longer available. Kant, for instance, specifically denies
direct intuition of the real unmediated by the categories of the mind.
For present purposes it is irrelevant whether Descartes initiates modern
philosophy or whether he merely reacts to earlier thinkers, including Bayle
and or even Augustine. The important point is that he invents, or at least
perfects, the epistemological strategy which has come to be known as foun
dationalism. In Descartes' position, this strategy can be described as the
claim to identify an initial premise, which can be shown to be true, and
from which the remainder of the theory can be rigorously deduced. In a
profound sense, the post-Cartesian history of philosophy, that is, that part
of it concerned with the problem of knowledge, can be regarded as a series
of unavailing efforts in the positions of a great many thinkers, in our time
including Husserl, Moore, Chisholm, Apel, perhaps the early Wittgenstein
and Russell, as well as others, to construct a valid form of a foundationalist
theory of knowledge.
Analytically-inclined philosophers on occasion act as if only they have
closely scrutinized the problem of foundationalism.10 In fact, the theme is
largely analyzed elsewhere in modern thought. Fichte's insight, for in
stance, that a theory which depends on an initial presupposition cannot
establish its veracity, is a decisive objection against foundationalism in all
its forms, although he is at best naive in his assumption that there is one and
only one identifiable first principle which functions as the ground of any
and all theory. This view is naive since it presupposes that we can in fact
have precisely the kind of absolute knowledge which has traditionally been
sought in philosophy, but which Fichte's own argument tends to deny.
The post-Cartesian discussion of foundationalism provides a good il
lustration of the tendency to repeat discussions of which we are unaware on
a lower level. Many of the objections later raised against various forms of
the foundationalist epistemological strategy are quickly advanced against
the Cartesian position, above all in the French discussion. Through his
doubt with respect to doubt, Gassendi anticipates Hegel's scepticism about
scepticism.11 Cousin's point about the impossibility of doubting reason is

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 124 TOM ROCKMORE

restated by Hamann in his rejection of the idea that the critical philosophy
could sit in judgment on itself. Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche as a
source of modern nihilism is anticipated by the nihilism and scepticism
following from the Cartesian demand for absolute foundations, linked to
nihilism and anti-clericalism by Maritain. In that sense, in which Lyotard
identifies post-modernism with antifoundtionalism, Glucksmann is
paradoxically correct to identify Descartes, the founder of epistemological
foundationalism, as the first post-modernist because of his placing of
knowledge beyond the reach of any mere human being.12
We cannot here rehearse the later theory of knowledge in detail. Suf
fice it to say that at present except for a few writers such as Apel and
Chisholm, there is widespread agreement that foundationalism fails in all its
basic forms. This point can be brought out through a review of the available
strategies for knowledge. There is no known way to provide an exhaustive
list of all possible epistemological strategies. So far as I can see, although
there are many variants, there are at present only four main strategies,
which we can call, for present purposes: intuitionism, foundationalism,
relativism, and scepticism.13 With the exception of relativism, the other
three strategies depend on the interpretation of knowledge as absolute in the
traditional philosophical sense of the term, whereas relativism depends on
the acceptance of a weaker standard. There is, hence, a clear relation be
tween forms of epistemological strategy and interpretation of an acceptable
form of knowledge.
Scepticism is an argument against the possibility of knowledge.
Arguments for knowledge in the full, or traditional philosophical sense of
the term can be collected under two main strategies. The chronologically
oldest, epistemologically-simplest, strategy is a claim for direct intuitive
knowledge. This intuitionist view is the basis of Plato's and Aristotle's
claim to intuitive knowledge, in the former's view of dialectic, and in the
latter's noetic grasp of what?despite his criticism of Plato's theory of
forms?he describes as that which is that it is and that which is not that it is
not. The intuitive approach is further exemplified in Spinoza's familiar
assertion, supposedly based on incontrovertible intuition of simples, of
truth as as the warrant of itself and falsity. A related form of intuitionism is
further restated by Marxism, perhaps echoed by the early Wittgenstein, and
certainly by Moore, as well as others. In our own time, an intuitionist ap
proach has been revived by Heidegger's view of truth as disclosure.
The intuitionist approach to epistemology rests on an interpretation of
knowledge as absolute. If there were something like a direct intuition of the
truth, for instance, in the immediate intuitive awareness of the real, then

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 EPISTEMOLOGY AS HERMENEUTICS 125

there would indeed be no need for interpretation. So in the Marxist view of

ideology, what Marxists call "bourgeois thought" merely offers a false in
terpretation which is revealed as false through direct access to the truth
from the proletarian point of view. But an intuitive strategy for knowledge,
which clearly depends on the uncritical assumption of the underlying on
tology, can no longer be sustained in the original Greek form since there is
no compelling reason to assume the existence of the underlying ontology
other than that it makes knowledge of this kind possible. And it is difficult
to make out intuitionism in a more recent form since there is no obvious
reason to grant the validity of one person's intuitions over another's.
The effort to escape interpretation is also basic to the foundationalist
form of epistemological strategy which, like intuitionism, can be regarded
as an effort to escape interpretation. Historically the main example of foun
dationalism is that which follows from the Cartesian position. The pivot of
Cartesian foundationalism is the effort to demonstrate a stable point which
holds despite our apparently infinite capacity for self-illusion, for thinking
that we know when we do not, for taking our dreams of knowledge for
epistemological reality, for falling prey to ideology and other forms of
merely apparent knowledge. The problem which Descartes highlights, and
which he is finally unable to defeat, is how to argue that that which appears
is in fact what it seems, how to make the transition from mere certainty to
truth.
The struggle in the post-Cartesian tradition between those who support
and those who oppose claims for knowledge in the full sense of the term,
between what has come to be called foundationalist s and antifounda
tionalists, is merely a later version of Descartes's recognition of the need to
secure a fundamentum inconcussum, an unshakeable starting point, as a
necessary condition of knowledge. We can regard the post-Cartesian
development as a long struggle centered on the assertion for or against a
claim of epistemological stability, a so-called Archimedean point, oppos
ing, well before the terminology was coined, foundationalists who advance
the claim and antifoundationalists who deny it. Thus Descartes' rationalist
claim is denied as such by Locke, who rejected innate ideas in favor of
knowledge derived from experience, a view which echoes through the
writings of such later thinkers as the British empiricists, Kant and even
Hegel. Hume's attack on empiricism is a rejection of the claim to ground
knowledge in experience, however construed, whereas Kant's critical
philosophy is an effort to demonstrate that under certain conditions ex
perience in fact yields knowledge. But Kant's Copernican Revolution is
meant to ground knowledge in a way which may not finally be compatible

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126 TOM ROCKMORE

with his critical philosophy since he states, in somewhat grandiloquent

language, that his hypothesis is demonstrated by its success and that the
least change in the theory would cause all of human reason to totter. In this
respect, Hegel was correct to regard the critical philosophy as an effort to
solve Descartes' problem since Kant interpreted the Copernican Revolution
as proving the unshakeable foundation for knowledge.

Ill

I have presented a reading of the problem of knowledge from Descartes

to Kant as an effort at foundationalism which a fortiori excludes interpreta
tion as the condition of knowledge. In fact, this is an oversimplification,
since on examination there is a clear dualism in the views of knowledge
beginning roughly with Kant. The critical philosophy exhibits a little
known, but profound concern with two very different traditional and non
traditional kinds of knowledge which will dominate the post-Kantian
discussion. On the one hand, there is the familiar interest in apodictic
knowledge, which excludes interpretation, clearly evident in the familiar
deduction of the categories. Obviously the point of a deduction is to provide
an absolute justification for the employment of just this particular
categorial set. On the other hand, there is the non-apodictic, non-tradi
tional form of knowledge apparent in Kant's concern with problems of
interpretation, in imitation of his transcendental terminology, in the condi
tion of the possibility of interpretation whatsoever.
The non-traditional, hermeneutic side of Kantian epistemology is less
well known but no less important than his better known effort to
demonstrate the possibility of knowledge in the traditional philosophical
sense. The question of interpretation arises at a number of points in Kant's
position, including his theory of art, his views of ethics and history, the
reading of a philosophical position, and the relation of the disciple to the
original thinker. In each case, there is a duality, similar to the well known
tension in his thought between freedom and determinism, between inter
pretations acceptable without contradiction, and that which is beyond inter
pretation. This tension is perhaps most evident on the plane of aesthetics, in
the distinction between the beautiful, which requires interpretation in terms
of reflective judgment, and the sublime which surpasses all possibility of
categorization and hence of interpretation.14 The question of interpretation
also arises in the suggestion that a strictly deontological ethics is nonetheless
compatible with human happiness and in the related view that a deter
ministic analysis of human history is compatible with God's plan. We can

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 EPISTEMOLOGY AS HERMENEUTICS 127

further note that although Kant excludes knowledge based on facts in favor
of knowledge based on principles, he insists often on the interpretation of
philosophical positions, a form of knowledge which cannot be a priori. Ex
amples include: his assertion that all prior views of knowledge have failed;
his claim to know Plato better than the latter knew himself; his insistence,
relative to the correct understanding of his own position, that a
philosophical view is to be interpreted not according to the letter but in
terms of the spirit inhabiting the whole; and his interesting sugges
tion?which clearly applies to his own thought?that an original thinker
forges new rules which are identified by those who come after.
The Kantian duality between foundationalist and antifoundationalist,
or hermeneutic, approaches to knowledge is widely present in the post
Kantian idealist tradition. If we prescind here from discussion of Schelling,
who is in some ways a special case, we find a similar duality in the writings
of Fichte, Hegel, and Marx, to name only these writers. It is not surprising
that Fichte, who thought of his own position as the fulfillment of the critical
philosophy, hews closely to the Kantian line. Fichte follows Kant in an at
tempted deduction of the categories and in a further development of the
Kantian distinction between the spirit and the letter animating a position.
Hegel also reproduces in his thought the duality between absolute and
relative views of knowledge, for instance in his extraordinary effort, in the
wake of Kant and Fichte, finally to deduce the categories which comprise
the main task of the Science of Logic, and in his interpretation of the prior
history of philosophy. Hegel's clear insistence on the interdependence be
tween system and history, between systematic and historical approaches to
knowledge, further highlights the tension in his position, representative of
the entire Kantian and post-Kantian German philosophical tradition, be
tween absolute and relative, or foundationalist and antifoundationalist con
ceptions of knowledge. This tension is neither resolved, nor diminished, in
Marx's apparent abandonment of absolute knowledge, combined as Marx
ists beginning with Engels have correctly seen, with his claim to provide ab
solute knowledge of modern industrial society. In this sense, despite his
reputation for going beyond philosophy, for instance by abandoning
philosophy for economics, and despite his interest in practice, Marx re
mains true to a traditional philosophical conception of knowledge.
From a retrospective angle of vision, we can see that the duality in
classical German philosophy between absolute and relativist conceptions of
knowledge reflects the continued effort to maintain a traditional, absolutist
conception of truth and at the same time to prepare the way for the
emergence of an antifoundationalist view. This duality is visible also in

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 128 TOM ROCKMORE

more recent thought. One instance is Husserl's wavering, in Kantian terms,

between a constitutive and a regulative interpretation of the requirement
that philosophy be a rigorous science, that is, that it be such a science in
order for knowledge to be possible or that it is sufficient to strive towards
this goal in a quasi-Fichtean sense. Certainly, the latter interpretation is one
way to read the famous passage in the Crisis, where Husserl states that the
dream is dreamed out. Another instance lies in the difference between
Wittgenstein's views in the Tractatus and in the Logical Investigations,
which von Wright has evidently shown are not successive but contem
poraneous.

IV

We can summarize the results of the historical part of this discussion

briefly in terms of three main points, as concerns: the relation between
epistemology and hermeneutics, the available strategies for knowledge, and
foundationalism. We have seen that the traditional views of epistemology,
symbolized by the distinction between episteme and doxa, suppose a separa
tion between knowledge and interpretation, according to which knowledge
is beyond hermeneutics. Examination of the survival of this distinction in
later thought has shown two points: the continued reliance on this separa
tion in the foundationalist effort to prove the possibility of knowledge in
the traditional sense in modern philosophy, and the gradual emergence of a
dualistic conception of knowledge as both absolute and as relative begin
ning as early as Kant.
The significance of the coexistence of two incompatible forms of
knowledge is suggested by the result over many years of the effort to make
out the foundationalist strategy for knowledge. The manifest failure to date
of all forms of the intuitionist and the foundationalist strategies for
knowledge suggest a shift to an antifoundationalist approach and a dif
ferent form of knowledge. It is not possible to show that a foundationalist
argument cannot be made out. Nonetheless, at this late date two factors
strongly suggest the failure of any such attempt. To begin with, there is the
inability of the best minds in the modern tradition to arrive at a viable form
of foundationalism, a theory which can resist close epistemological
scrutiny. This inductive point, dependent on a reading of the historical
period, is supplemented by a systematic point frequently raised against
foundationalism, which can be represented here by Fichte's observation
that an initial premise cannot be established within the position which it
makes possible.

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 EPISTEMOLOGY AS HERMENEUTICS 129

The force of this argument has not often been seen, even in the im
mediate context. One effort in the recent philosophical discussion to defeat
this point is the attempt to free a theory of its presuppositions through their
scrutiny from within the theory, an effort which brings together such
unlikely bedfellows as Husserl and Popper. More recently, taking as his clue
Heidegger's own assertion that through the exploration of an area basic
concepts are genuinely demonstrated and grounded, there is Gadamer's
anti-romantic effort, in part directed against Heidegger, to rehabilitate the
concept of prejudice, in effect in order to deny that a theory is weakened by
its dependence on its presuppositions. But no theory of knowledge depen
dent on enfranchising its own presuppositions can be successful; for any
cognitive claim following from a position is dependent on, and hence
relative to, the presuppositions of that position.
The resultant shift away from foundationalism and towards antifoun
dationalism is not a shift towards scepticism as a comment on founda
tionalism will show. In part the intent of foundationalism is to free
epistemological theory from any dependency on presupposition and as a
result to achieve the ancient goal of perfect, unlimited knowledge. This
claim can only be sustained if knowledge without presuppositions is possi
ble, that is if we can demonstrate that there is knowledge following
seamlessly from an initial principle or categorial set known to be true. But
if, as now seems to be the case, only a relative, but not an absolute founda
tion is possible, it does not follow, as Rorty, for instance, holds, that we can
dispense with the concept of knowledge. Scepticism follows only if we con
tinue to insist on a concept of knowledge in the traditional sense for which,
as we have learned from experience, no adequate epistemological strategy
exists. If we are content to adjust our epistemological expectations to the
kind of knowledge that we can in fact obtain, then instead of scepticism
relativism follows as the result of the denial of foundationalism.
Relativism is the outcome of the failure of foundationalism; it is the
form of knowledge possible in antifoundationalist epistemologies which ac
cept and do not reject, and do not deny, the inability to free epistemological
claims from presuppositions underlying the theory. But relativism is not a
form of epistemological anarchism, often attributed to Feyerabend, since it
is not the case that, to put the point in popular language, anything goes. We
still need to justify our claims to know. The significant difference is that we
are aware of and recognize our inability to free our claims for knowledge
from the presuppositions on which they depend and which, hence, cannot
be demonstrated within the theory.
If this point is correct, there is a shift from foundationalism to anti
foundationalism which has been underway in the philosophical tradition for

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 130 TOM ROCKMORE

some time. It is everywhere visible in the failure of foundationalism and in

the rise of antifoundationalist views of knowledge in post-Kantian German
idealism, including the early Fichte, HegePs view of circularity, post
Husserlian phenomenology, in the views of Heidegger, Gadamer, Merleau
Ponty, and in the positions of such American-neo pragmatiste as Quine,
Rorty, Rescher, and Margolis, and other analytically-minded writers who
now regard themselves as pragmatista.15 In the future, looking backward, it
may well be that the outstanding epistemological development of this period
will not be the debate on various forms of materialism, nor the discussion of
reference, nor the problem of translation, nor the debate on medical ethics,
nor the criticism of physicalism and extentionalism, nor any of the currently
modish themes, but the recognition that with the failure of foundationalism
philosophy has in fact shifted from a Platonic to an anti-Platonic, relativist
view of knowledge.

My task here has been to bring out the link between hermeneu
epistemology which has become evident in the turn to antifound
relativism. Suffice it to say that a number of consequences for k
follow from the turn to antifoundationalism. One such change, w
have already noted, is a modification in the standard of truth. T
longer truth as such, but only truth relative to a given con
framework, a form of truth whose justification is merely relative, bu
is no longer deductive or absolute in any sense. A further ch
revalorisation of the concept of subjectivity in the transition to a
view of knowledge. Despite Heidegger's critique of Descartes' supp
anthropological tendency, the Cartesian view of subjectivity i
thropological, but rather an abstract view, an epistemological pla
so to speak, which is introduced in order to permit Descartes to ar
the traditional view of knowledge. But this approach to subjectiv
fluential in the writings of such later thinkers as Kant and Husserl
a proteron histeron since knowledge must be understood in term
capacity of the real subject and not conversely. The resultant cont
tion of knowledge, perhaps most evident in the writings of Fich
and Marx, represents a recovery of the real subject of knowledge a
shift from an acontextual, traditional understanding of knowledg
ring in time, but not of time, to a view of knowledge as contextua
is as limited by historical time and place. It follows that a result of
to antifoundationalism is to invoke a richer view of subjectivity, le

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 EPISTEMOLOGY AS HERMENEUTICS 131

linked to the Cartesian position and more closely linked to human being as
we know it, since we see that objectivity is not independent of the knower
but embedded within subjectivity.
The point to stress here is the inseparable link between hermeneutics,
understood as interpretation, and antifoundationalist relativism. Just as the
ancient distinction between episteme and doxa was meant to situate
knowledge in the full sense beyond subjectivity and interpretation, so foun
dationalism was intended to offer an unimpeachable source of knowledge,
according to Descartes beyond doubt of any kind, by the same token
beyond interpretation which arises and can only arise when and if there is
more than one possibility, more than one manner to construe the object of
knowledge.16 But as the subsequent history of philosophy demonstrates in
its move away from foundationalism, the ancient view of knowledge was
only one possible interpretation. In this limited sense, epistemology and in
terpretation have always been associated. But this association is clearly rein
forced in the recent philosophical shift, still underway but already clearly
delineated, to antifoundationalist relativism, as a result of which different
relative forms of knowledge, and hence different interpretations of the ob
ject of knowledge, are possible. I conclude that epistemology and
hermeneutics are not opposed, incompatible views of knowledge since, if
not earlier, certainly in the turn to antifoundationalist relativism
epistemology has become a form of hermeneutics, that is a hermeneutics of
the object of knowledge.

Tom Rockmore
Duquesne University

NOTES

1. See Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, Garrett Barden and John
Cumming, trans. (New York: Crossroad, 1988) "The Overcoming of the
Epistemological Problem through Phenomenological Research," pp. 214-35.
2. Gadamer insists on this relation as the genesis of Heidegger's epistemological
view. More recent work has tended to cast doubt on this analysis, which follows
Heidegger's own indications. See, on this point, the excellent discussion by
Taminiaux, who points to the influence of Nietzsche. See Jacques Taminiaux, "La
pr?sence de Nietzsche dans Sein und Zeit," in Jean-Pierre Cornetti and Dominique
Janicaud, eds., "Etre et Temps'* de Martin Heidegger, n.p.: Sud, n.d., pp. 59-75,
esp. pp. 68-69.

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 132 TOM ROCKMORE

3. This point has been recently made by Habermas. See J?rgen Habermas,
Knowledge and Human Interests, Jeremy J. Shapiro, trans. (Boston: Beacon, 1971).
4. See Hans-Georg Gadamer and Gottfried Boehm, Seminar: Philosophische
Hermeneutik (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1976).
5. See Martin Heidegger, "Hegel's Begriff der Erfahrung,'' in Holzswege
(Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1963), pp. 105-92.
6. For this reading, see Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge Universi
ty Press, 1975).
7. For a recent survey of relativism, see Paul Feyerabend, Farewell to Reason
(London: Verso, 1987), ch. 1: "Notes on Relativism," pp. 19-89.
8. Margolis in particular has begun to develop a relativistic perspective in a
trilogy recently published under the overall title of The Persistence of Reality. See
Joseph Margolis, Pragmatism without Foundations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989).
9. For Friedrich Ast's little known, but important view of the hermeneutical cir
cle, see Gadamer and Boehm, cited in n.4, above, p. 119.
10. For instance, in his classic discussion in On Certainty (G. E. M. Anscombe
and G. H. von Wright [New York: Harpers, 1972]), Wittgenstein is mainly con
cerned with Moore, and in his important account of "Epistemology Naturalized,"
(in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, [New York: Columbia University Press,
1969]), with the exception of the early American philosopher, A. B. Johnson, Quine
confines himself to a series of analytical thinkers.
11. The problem of whether absolute doubt in a Cartesian sense is possible con
tinues to interest various writers. Apel, who is concerned to provide a founda
tionalist argument at this late date, has recently pointed to Albert's reaffirmation of
Cartesian doubt (see Hans Albert, Treatise on Critical Reason [Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1985], p. 38) as well as doubt about Cartesian doubt in Peirce (see
"Some Consequences of Four Incapacities" in Justus Buchler, ed., Philosophical
Writings of Peirce [New York: Dover, 1955], p. 228) and Wittgenstein (see G. E. M.
Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, On Certainty, para. 115, p. 18). See Karl-Otto
Apel, "The Problem of Philosophical Foundations," in Kenneth Baynes, James
Bohman, and Thomas McCarthy, After Philosophy: End or Transformation?
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), pp. 250-90.
12. See Andr? Glucksmann, Descartes, c'est la France (Paris: Flammarion, 1987)
p. 22.
13. It is interesting to note that according to Descartes, who regarded history as a
fabula mundi and hence tended to disregard as well the history of philosophy, there
were in fact only three thinkers worth taking seriously in the philosophical tradition:
Plato, Aristotle, and himself. On this point, see Andr? Glucksmann, Descartes, c'est
la France (cited in n.12, above) p. 135ff.
14. For interesting discussion of Kant's aesthetic theory as a kind of
hermeneutics, see Rudolf Makkreel, "Kant and the Interpretation of Nature and
History," Philosophical Forum (forthcoming), and Imagination and Interpretation.
The Hermeneutical Importance of the Critique of Judgment (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press [forthcoming]).
15. Paradoxically it is necessary to exclude from this list Richard Bernstein, who
labels himself as a pragmatist, but whose recent efforts to surpass relativism from a
loosely Gadamerian perspective clearly count as an effort to recover the traditional

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 EPISTEMOLOGY AS HERMENEUTICS 133

form of knowledge from a generally hermeneutical stance. See Richard J. Bern

stein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis
16. In fact, even in the Cartesian theory, the problem of interpretation is in
escapable. The most flagrant example is the Cartesian view of the idea. An idea
which is clear is not necessarily distinct, and hence not true. There is always need of
judgment, and hence of interpretation of the idea, to show that what is clear is also
distinct. Accordingly, we can say that Descartes provides a phenomenological
destruction of the kind of phenomenology later proposed by Husserl, who assumes
that what is clear is true. He shows as well there that even foundationalism cannot
escape from interpretation. On this point, see Glucksmann (cited in nl2, above), pp.
149-50, 155.

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