[Milton-L] historicism, formalism, etc. (Skulsky)

[jfleming at sfu.ca]

Apologies for being selective, but I take the ball to be here:

On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:11:05 -0500 milton-l at lists.richmond.edu wrote:
there seems to be a position Professor Fleming disagrees
> with. The disallowed position, in his words, is this: “It makes sense
> to think we achieve our understanding [of an utterance or text] by
> rigorous methodical alienation of interpreter from interpretandum.” 

Yes. My position is that the idea of method -- objective, or
non-interpretative, adequation of the understanding -- can never give a
satisfactory account of understanding (basically because it begs the
question), and should therefore be abandoned, root and branch. Half measures
won't do. There is simply no problem with understanding; it is a phenomenon
that we experience. The problem is with the idea that understanding needs
objective justification. For that idea, as I have stated (and as I have
tried to explain more satisfactorily in print), invariably produces
circularity and/or infinite regress. 

What is the alternative?
(1) a recognition that we only ever understanding anything applicatively: by
allowing it to address us in our given interpretative situation.
Understanding, in Gadamer's analysis, is an event. It is something that we
undergo. If so, then the idea that we can _improve_ ourselves
interpretatively by turning to method -- sequestering or repressing what we
take to be our interpretative presence, in the manner of a narturalist
behind a duck-blind -- is, in fact, the idea that we can understand better
by avoiding understanding. But that idea, as I said, doesn't make much
sense.
(2) dialogue and questioning. We have to say the way things seem to us.
Insofar as others may disagree, they will tell us. We work toward the fusion
of horizons (Horizontverschmelzung [one of those Pythonesque German
abstractions]), vis-a-vis a subject-matter. (Thus Milton in _Areo_).

None of which adds up, I don't think, to an epistemology. It adds up,
arguably, to an hermeneutics: an attempt to understand what understanding
is. In this respect, I think, Gadamer has much more to tell us than has ever
properly been recognized. Milton, too.

JD Fleming