Unquiet Understanding: Gadamer's Philosophical Hermeneutics

ed from the fundamental relation to the world that is given in the linguistic nature of our experience of it, science attempts to become certain about entities by methodically organizing its knowledge of the world. Consequently, it condemns as heresy all knowledge that does not allow of this kind of certainty and that therefore cannot serve the growing domination of being. (TM, 476) Such overt iconoclasm should not pass unremarked. There are serious objections to Gadamer’s critique of scientific methodology, but what is of immediate concern is the nihilistic implication of the quest for this “kind of certainty.” The will to method is charged with perpetrating an ideological deception: that “despite the ultimate incomprehensibility of life” and its “frightful countenance,” it will impart “protection and certainty” (TM, 239). For philosophical hermeneutics, two issues arise here: first, the plausibility of the primary claim concerning certainty and, second, the broader consequences of adopting such a methodology. Concerning the first issue, Gadamer argues that “scientific certainty always has something Cartesian about it.” It spawns a critical method that admits only of the validity of what cannot be doubted . . . in order to guarantee the certainty of its results” (TM, 239). If this means that everything appertaining to a scientific question must be rendered clear and must be ratified as rationally legitimate in order for it to be accepted as a legitimate “scientific issue,” then such clarity is plainly impossible to achieve. The understanding of what it is for something to be a problem depends upon the hidden inheritance of not only our scientific but also our linguistic horizons. The PHILOSOPHICAL HERMENEUTICS AND BILDUNG 99