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page218from Building Ideas
The interpreter attempts to step outside
the actual conditions of the experiment in order to achieve a level of
neutrality and repeatability in their observations. Gadamer saw this condition
of estrangement between observer and observed as the exact opposite of the
experience of belonging that he felt was essential to hermeneutic
understanding.
It
is here that Gadamer’s thought becomes prone to the charge of conservatism,
because of his emphasis on the sense of belonging necessary to his concept of interpretation.
In fact, a brief definition makes this point all too clear, when he claims that
hermeneutics consists of :”the bridging of personal or historical distance
between minds … “5 This emphasis on the mind of the author recalls
Schleiermacher’s neo-Kantian notion, which held the genius or the individual to
be the sovereign creator of original meanings. This notion is somewhat
reinforced by Gadamer’s description of understanding as dependent on the
process of the “fusion of horizons”. A person’s horizon is the particular
context in which the act of creation or interpretation takes place, being
analogous to Heidegger’s idea of the network of equipment that defines the
tool. In a later essay, Gadamer emphasizes this orientation towards the past
when he illustrates his notion of art as a symbolic token of recollection:
What
does the word ‘symbol’ mean? Originally it was a technical term in Greek for a
token of remembrance. The host presented his guest with the so-called tesserae
hospitalis by breaking some object in two. He kept one half for himself and
gave the other half to his guest. If in thirty or fifty years time, a
descendant of the guest should ever enter his house, the two pieces could be
fitted together again to form a whole in an act of recognition.6
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