ARTICLE HERMENEUTICS AND PHILOLOGY: ARECONSIDERATION OF GADAMER’S CRITIQUE OF SCHLEIERMACHER* Kristin Gjesdal Hans-Georg Gadamer’s major work, Truth and Method (1960), combines two equally important moves within the field of modern hermeneutics: an ontological approach to Dasein’s being-in-the-world and a critique of the idea of hermeneutics as a philological method. Whereas the ontological turn in hermeneutics is ascribed to Gadamer’s teacher, Martin Heidegger, its philological-methodological legacy is traced back to Friedrich Schleier- macher’s theory of understanding. Recasting Heidegger’s call for a destruction of the philosophical tradition in terms of a Socratic-Platonic notion of dialogue, 1 Gadamer seeks to overcome the way in which Schleiermacher, standing in the intersection between Enlightenment philosophy and romantic aesthetics, left hermeneutics in an objectivist cul-de-sac. Over the past decades, numerous attempts have been made to defend Schleiermacher against Gadamer’s objections. Some have argued that Schleiermacher’s theory initially was not that far apart from Gadamer’s own (Heinz Kimmerle). Others have pointed out how Schleiermacher’s sensitivity to the uniqueness of the text provides a hermeneutics that is particularly attractive when considering modernist literature and art (Peter Szondi and Manfred Frank). Others again have insisted that Schleiermacher’s hermeneu- tics must be viewed within the broader context of his work, driven as it is by ethical as well as epistemological worries (Gunter Scholtz and Christian Berner). *I would like to thank Andrew Bowie, Michael Forster, Espen Hammer and an anonymous BJHP referee for their comments on an early draft of this essay. 1 This idea is initially developed in Plato’s Dialectical Ethics (1931), translated by Robert M. Wallace (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991); Platos dialektische Ethik, Gesammelte Werke, (Tu¨ bingen: J. B. C. Mohr, 1986) Vol. 5. Subsequent references to this work will be given (in the text) by page number, preceded by PDE; PdE. Later on, however, Gadamer enhances his reading of Platonic dialogue in Truth and Method. See Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, translated by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1994) 366ff; Wahrheit und Methode, two Vols, Gesammelte Werke, Vols 1 and 2, 371ff. Subsequent references to this work will be given by page number, preceded by TM (Truth and Method) and WM (Wahrheit und Methode). British Journal for the History of Philosophy 14(1) 2006: 133 – 156 British Journal for the History of Philosophy ISSN 0960-8788 print/ISSN 1469-3526 online ª 2006 BSHP http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/09608780500449206