On The Practical Connotation Of Hermeneutics

The understanding of practice has always been an important topic in the study of Marxist philosophy.The introduction of contemporary Western philosophical thoughts has an impact on our understanding of Marx's practical views.If Chinese Marxist philosophy is to achieve dialogue with the world,it is necessary to make corresponding in-depth responses to these theories and trends of thought.Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics is an important part in the Western thoughts in the context of modernity.In the late period,philosophical hermeneutics gradually finished its practical turn of philosophy.Both in the theoretical and practical senses,great correlations could be found between the practical philosophy of hermeneutics and the development of Marxist philosophy.People tend to study hermeneutics from the perspective of phenomenology or linguistic turn,but seldom understand hermeneutics from practice.Practice is the common key word of Marxist philosophy and hermeneutics.Taking practice as the starting point can help us distinguish the different attitudes toward the two from theoretical roots,forms and applications.This paper is based on contrasting Gadamer and Marx's different understandings of "practice",combing the theoretical roots and manifestations of Gadamer and Marx's "practice",taking the focus on people and the understanding of dialectics as the track of thought to analyze the respective theoretical characteristics of the two and explore how the two can provide insights into each other's theoretical development and people's real life.Gadamer's practical philosophy inherits Aristotle's understanding of practice.It is characterized by its understanding and interpretation of the world as the premise and basic elements of human practice,highlighting the status and role of language in practical philosophy.In his conversations with Duter in his later years,he discussed his understanding of practice and practical philosophy.“First of all,people must be clear about the word 'practice'.There should be no narrow understanding here.For example,it cannot be understood merely as a practical application of a scientific theory.” [Gadamer,Dutt,“Interpretation,Aesthetics and Practical Philosophy: Gadamer and Dutt's Interviews [M].Beijing: The Commercial Press,2005: 67.] He believes that practice and theory are not completely opposite,and the application of theory also belongs to practice,but practice means more."It is a whole including our practical affairs,all our activities and behaviors,and the self-adjustment of all of us in this world." [ Gadamer,Dutt,“Interpretation,Aesthetics and Practical Philosophy: Gadamer and Dutt's Interviews [M].Beijing: The Commercial Press,2005: 67.] Gadamer understands practice as our life Form,and he combines hermeneutics with practical philosophy.He understands practice from ontology as a reflective activity on the form of existence.“Questioning the possibility of proper life” is the core of Gadamer's practical philosophy.First,on the basis of the understanding of Aristotle's practical philosophy,Gadamer treats understanding,interpretation and application as components of a unified process,emphasizing the practical connotation of hermeneutics,and the return of hermeneutics from methodology to substantive problems.Second,Gadamer highlights that practice makes the center of human life and the essential characteristic of human beings.He distinguishes practice and technology by the internality and externality of human actions,and emphasizes the inherent purpose of human practice,which represents human life forms.Third,practice serves as practical reason,whose reflection is based on understanding and dialogue.Dialogue presents an understanding of public meaning.The interpretation of practical reason for public meaning provides significant clues for us to interpret and grasp public consciousness today.In the form of theory,Gadamer's view of practice reveals the opposition between phronesis and modern scientific methods.Phronesis emphasizes intellect which is a social rational view of truth.Gadamer's understanding of practice comes from the understanding of Aristotle's phronesis.He believes that there is tradition of wisdom in any era.Such tradition is based “neither on scientific language nor on scientific methods to express itself”.The social rational view of truth is based on the commonality in human society,with "goodness" as the highest object of general knowledge,and with "the history of effect" as the principle of interpretation,which intends to return to the ancient Greek Aristotle's phronesis seeking for the modern mode of existence.As a social rational view of truth,it symbolizes neither the instrumental reason of science nor the substantive reason of metaphysics.First,it emphasizes the difference between practical wisdom and technical knowledge.Technical knowledge does not involve the relationship between self and other.Practical wisdom requires both the commonality of human society as the basis and the application of theory to self-understanding.Second,the social rational view of truth emphasizes people's thinking about life practice activities over human natural order.It is a kind of humanized reason,which contains the free will of moral practice and uses wisdom to serve the idea of good.It emphasizes intellect resulting from the collaboration of practical wisdom and moral reason.Such collaboration is the result of choice and judgement about the good.The truth of the social rational view of truth is not achieved by means of the fulfillment of the "good".The truth is embodied in the process of human self-consultation.Gadamer believes that what constitutes practice is the life in the broadest sense of human beings.The practice itself also exists in the social process it criticizes.Problems in this process cannot be predicted and decided by science.Only through the correction and resolution of their own social conditions can the social rational meaning of real practice be realized.The philosophy of practice seeks to achieve a valuable self-argument about the good through the absorption of Hegel's objective spiritual doctrine.This argument is be restored as a proper understanding of the world in which human beings exist,which is reflected in his discussion of historically effected consciousness.On the one hand,historically effected consciousness absorbs the social and historical nature of Hegel's philosophy.People's acquisition of theory is embodied in their activities of participating in the theory.In the practice of participating in the concept of reason,people fulfill self-understanding and self-enrichment.The inheritance of history also provides human beings with theoretical basis in alternating their knowledge in tradition.On the other hand,historically effected consciousness absorbs the concrete universality of dialectics.As a practical philosophy,hermeneutics is to explain a certain kind of paradigm nature of human society.People enjoy commonality in the process of participating and sharing this theory,and people get freedom by enriching and developing themselves as well.At the same time,the truth of hermeneutics itself is a kind of fusion of horizon,an unending state which is always in progress due to the existence of foresight and prejudice.Gadamer thus criticizes the conformity view of truth,and inherits the absolute truth of Hegel's dialectics in the form of system in the real world.As Gadamer said,"The basic merit of hermeneutics is to transform a meaning relationship from another world to our own world." In the philosophical concern of reality,Gadamer opposes the technical arbitrariness of the technological age.Resting on the understanding of modern society's alienation,he refuted Marx's theory of alienation and criticized Marx's practical concept on the basis of material practice.In fact,Gadamer opposes the domination of technical rationality in human life.Marx opposes the abstract labor-to-human rule in the capitalist system.They all aim to expound on free people and people in communicative relationship.That is the real basis for Marx and Gadamer to be in dialogue with each other.Through double dialogues,this dissertation compares Gadamer and Marx's view of practice from the understanding of Hegel's dialectics and the understanding and answering of the theory of alienation.In the practical sense of theory,perhaps in the era of science and technology,we are more likely to accept the practical wisdom advocated by Gadamer in the late period,but when we use Marx's practical ideas,especially the practical way of thinking,to understand Gadamer's Hermeneutics we will find that Marx's view of practice emphasizes the human subjective initiative to understand the existence of man and the relationship between man and the world.Marx emphasizes seeing all the problems from the negation and unity of man to the world,including a series of questions of hermeneutics while overcoming abstraction,simple representational thinking is also overcome.According to Marx's practical point of view,in understanding the specific universality of Hegel's dialectics,Marx pointed out that people should not merely participate in and understand history."The reason why people have history is because they must produce their own lives,and must do it in a certain way." [Marx,Engels,Selected Works of Marx and Engels,Volume I [M].Beijing: People's Publishing House,1995: 81.] People create their own history.To be exact,the subjectivity of man is embodied in the fact that man creates his own history under the conditions he has chosen.The existence of human beings in the world is an existence that denies unity.Marx's view of practice is not only an understanding of practice,but also a way of thinking in a practical point of view.The way of thinking from the perspective of practice absorbs the rational core of dialectics.He emphasizes the impact of the subjective initiative of man in the law of history,by which he “overturns” Hegel's philosophy."History is nothing but the activities of people who pursue their own purposes." [ Marx,Engels,Selected Works of Marx and Engels,Volume I [M].Beijing: People's Publishing House,1995: 250.] It provides ontology,namely,human beings' social existence with vitality,and gives philosophy a true vitality by the goal of achieving the freedom of the whole.At the same time,although Gadamer's historically effected history also has dialectical implications,he did not base his theory on the negation of the unity of man and the world,but laid his foundation on the historicity and limitations of human cognition in understanding and participation.In this respect,perhaps the practical philosophy of hermeneutics can only play a step-by-step role in promoting human freedom in its way of a comprehensive development.Gadamer's theory of alienation in modern society points out that people lose their free and independent practical rational judgment of existence and behavioral selection,which were fully handed over to experts and authorities representing science and technology.Gadamer offers us a gentle “dialogue”-“solidarity” path to see the dilemma of modern technological civilization.However,the theoretical nature of hermeneutics as a practical philosophy ignores the role of material production as the fundamental driving force of historical advancement as.As a matter of fact,it cannot solve the problems that arise in the course of historical development,and can by no means solve the the social problem of human alienation by taking the fundamental path of internally uniting human purposes and social law.From the practical point of view of theory,Gadamer's practical philosophy provides an effective experience for the construction of human cultural community,which could also be considered as an extension of philosophical hermeneutics.By rethinking hermeneutics from the perspective of practice,we can better understand the true meaning and limitations of Gadamer's hermeneutics,make positive response in the face of new problems,and better promote the theoretical construction and dissemination of Marxism in the new situation in China.