“Holding Oneself Open in a Conversation” – Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics and the Ethics of Dialogue Scherto Gill Philosophical hermeneutic ‘understands itself not as an absolute position but as a way of experience. It insists that there is no higher principle than holding oneself open in a conversation’ –Hans Georg Gadamer This paper’s aim is to explore Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics in order to draw out implications for the ethics of dialogue. Through examining key interconnected components in Gadamer’s theory, I highlight the openness to the other and otherness as a key normative ideal for dialogic understanding and their influence on the core practical ethos that underpins dialogue encounter, including the ethics of alterity, self-cultivation, equality, reciprocity, and solidarity. We further consider hermeneutical application or praxis by way of a guide insofar as to how one might act in the world through dialogue construed through these ethical dimensions. Keywords: philosophical hermeneutics, Gadamer, dialogue, encounter, otherness, ethics, praxis.
Introduction Gadamer argues that dialogue is fundamental to understanding and to our way of being-in-the-world (Heidegger 1962). Since a human’s embeddedness and finitude demand self-transformation, the hermeneutical problem is not only universal but also existential. One of the central threads in Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics is the place of the other in dialogic interpretation and in the process of understanding. From this emerges the intersubjective nature of transcendent human conditions. Dialogue takes place whilst individuals seek to understand within the interplay of the perspectives present in an encounter, which are constituted in historical consciousness, traditions, cultural contexts, and so forth. Gadamer postulates that understanding is dialogic, and thus intersubjective, including the relationship between oneself and the other, and the relationship between the agent and the world. Indeed, many thinkers have addressed a similar topic, among them, Dr Scherto Gill is Research Fellow and Executive Secretary at the Guerrand-Hermès Foundation for Peace. She is also Visiting Fellow and Associate Tutor at the University of Sussex’s Department of Education.