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various approaches to Ricoeur’s work, allowing the differences in understand-

ing and exposition to emerge, thus opening up new critical perspectives for

understanding his hermeneutics. Ricoeur has pointed out many times that he

means to continuously develop his thinking, to expand his own understanding,

or even to modify his previous interpretation. As a philosopher, who insists that

existence itself is essentially hermeneutic, he could hardly avoid endorsing the

ideal of an ever developing interpretation. Only thus does hermeneutic think-

ing show us its full radiance. Ricoeur’s is a truly polysemic voice, sacrificing

neither truth nor variety. His voice has been true to the confusion of voices,

which constitutes the tradition that we are.

Phenomenological Hermeneutics: The Horizon of Thinking

Between Description and Interpretation: The Hermeneutic Turn in Phenom-

enology

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 elaborates on the complexity of the relationship between phenom-

enology and hermeneutics, particularly by addressing the tension between phe-

nomenological hermeneutics and hermeneutic phenomenology. The volume is

a debate between the philosophers and theologians who confront key issues at

work and offer their unique perspective to grasp the meaning of that which

needs to be understood. Thus, this debate happens in the spirit of the priva-

tissimum, a seminar where questions are asked because there is something that

needs to be thought through, not just alone, but in a community of scholars

who understand themselves as being addressed by the matter at hand. Here the

German  Angesprochensein is understood not as a kind of mysterious, unde-

fined call by Being, but as a personal responsibility to give an answer to the

voice that addressed me, an individual in the community of thinkers. This voice

is an unmistakably recognizable synteresis, the intuitive knowledge of what is

right, the divine spark of the soul, requiring my comprehensive answer (re-

spondeo). Hermeneutic discussion is a lively debate where the participants re-

spond to each other, posture at one another, and clarify their positions. While

abandoning the presupposition that there is one correct interpretation for pre-

senting ,the truth of the matter‘, hermeneutics does not forsake the search for

that truth. Hermeneutics does not abandon truth.

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 Every reading is a new read-

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 Wierciúski, ed., Between Description and Interpretation: The Hermeneutic Turn in Phenome-

nology.

83

 See Lawrence K. Schmidt, The Specter of Relativism: Truth, Dialogue, and Phronesis in Philo-

sophical Hermeneutics (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1995); Brice R. Wachter-

hauser, ed., Hermeneutics and Truth (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1994).

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ing and every act of understanding a pathway to new understandings.

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 The

real meaning of the hermeneutic conversation goes beyond clearing the matter

at hand; it truly transforms us, the participants of that never ending Gespräch.

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The most decisive element in this hermeneutic conversation is not a particular

understanding of something, however important, but the happening of our per-

sonal transformation. In a genuine conversation the question takes over.

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 As

partners in a dialogue (colloquium), we always experience a back and forth

movement; listening to each other, understanding our prejudices, and verifying

our positions, we are led by the very dynamics of the dialogue: after participat-

ing in a hermeneutic conversation, we are not the same anymore. Hermeneutic

conversation becomes a modus vivendi for our life, a communion in the self-

understanding of humankind, and in sharing, together, the world in which we

live. In Gadamer’s lingually oriented hermeneutics the understanding of lan-

guage as conversation, Sprache ist Gespräch, means that we always think in a

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See Werner Kogge, Verstehen und Fremdheit in der philosophischen Hermeneutik: Heidegger und

Gadamer (Hildesheim: Olms, 2001).

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 For Heidegger, we are conversation and language is conversation: “Wir – die Menschen – sind

ein Gespräch. Das Sein des Menschen gründet in der Sprache; aber diese geschieht erst eigentlich

im Gespräch. Dieses ist jedoch nicht nur eine Weise, wie Sprache sich vollzieht, sondern als

Gespräch nur ist Sprache wesentlich … Was heißt nun ein Gespräch? … Offenbar das Miteinan-

dersprechen über etwas … Redenkönnen und Hörenkönnen sind gleich ursprünglich. Wir sind ein

Gepräch – und das will sagen: wir können voneinander hören … Seit ein Gespräch wir sind, hat der

Mensch viel erfahren und der Götter viele genannt. Seitdem die Sprache eigentlich als Gespräch

geschieht, kommen die Götter zu Wort und erscheint eine Welt … Und das so sehr, dass im Nennen

der Götter und im Wort-Werden der Welt gerade das eigentliche Gespräch besteht, das wir selbst

sind.” Martin Heidegger, “Hölderlin und das Wesen der Dichtung” in idem, Erläuterung zu Höl-

derlins Dichtung, GA4, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 1981),

38–40.

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For Gadamer, the question and the answer belong together. A dialogue operates on the model of

question and answer. We are always interpreting the content of a dialogue as an answer to a question,

which in turn raises new questions requiring new answers. It is particularly manifested in the

experience of the work of art. Gadamer writes: “But how it is with artwork, and especially with the

linguistic work of art? How can one speak here of a dialogical structure of understanding? The

author is not present as an answering partner, nor is there an issue to be discussed as to whether it is

this way or that. Rather, the text, the artwork, stands in itself. Here the dialectical exchange of

question and answer, insofar as it takes place at all, would seem to move only in one direction, that

is, from the one who seeks to understand the artwork. … The dialectic of question and answer does

not here come to a stop. /…/ Apprehending a poetic work, whether it comes to us through the real

ear or only through a reader listening with an inner ear, presents itself basically as a circular

movement in which answers strike back as questions and provoke new answers.” Hans-Georg

Gadamer, “Reflections on My Philosophical Journey,” in Hahn, ed., The Philosophy of Hans-Georg

Gadamer, 43–44.

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