


H–G. Gadamer’s aesthetic reflection constitutes the previous step to a theoretical proposal, philosophical hermeneutics, which is released from the epistemic and ontological prejudices of modern scientific tradition. The aesthetic concepts of play, festival and symbol, intend to serve as a basis for an alternative description of the phenomenon of understanding. In this paper we aim to show how these notions are not just preparatory but ontological concepts since they give an account of understanding as the fundamental mode of being of each and every individual. We will focus in particular on the concept of symbol: to the extent that our understanding occurs through a language that reflects in a permanently unsuited way the whole of the tradition that constitutes us, the notion of symbol becomes a basic ontological concept since it expresses the tension between the sensible and the intelligible in which our hermeneutic experience occurs.



application/pdf
2036-542X
7996
1
it
Àlex Mumbrú Mora
Trópos
understanding
The Ontologization of the Concept of Symbol in H–G. Gadamer’s Hermeneutics
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unito.it/index.php/tropos
10
Saggi
2017-04-01
2023-08-01
2017-06-01
2023-08-01
185-200
1
Àlex Mumbrú Mora
2017/04/01
185
2036-542X
1
understanding
200
The Ontologization of the Concept of Symbol in H–G. Gadamer’s Hermeneutics
https://ojs.unito.it/index.php/tropos/article/download/7996/6721
10
                                                      trópos • anno X • numero 1 • 2017 – ISBN 978-88-255-0482-8
                                                      DOI 10.4399/978882550482811 – pag. 185-200 (giugno 2017)




          The Ontologization of the Concept of Symbol
                    in H–G. Gadamer’s Hermeneutics
                                                                     Àlex Mumbr˙ Mora⇤




   abstract: H–G. Gadamer’s aesthetic reflection constitutes the previous step to
      a theoretical proposal, philosophical hermeneutics, which is released from
      the epistemic and ontological prejudices of modern scientific tradition. The
      aesthetic concepts of play, festival and symbol, intend to serve as a basis for
      an alternative description of the phenomenon of understanding. In this paper
      we aim to show how these notions are not just preparatory but ontological
      concepts since they give an account of understanding as the fundamental mode
      of being of each and every individual. We will focus in particular on the concept
      of symbol: to the extent that our understanding occurs through a language
      that reflects in a permanently unsuited way the whole of the tradition that
      constitutes us, the notion of symbol becomes a basic ontological concept since
      it expresses the tension between the sensible and the intelligible in which our
      hermeneutic experience occurs.

   keywords: aesthetic, hermeneutics, symbol, linguisticity, understanding.




1. Introduction

Intuitively speaking we could define knowledge as that relation by which
we are able to attribute some defining feature to that which is presented
to us. We say we know an object when we institute certain characteristics
that allow us to identify and recognise it as a member of a group with
which it would share certain traits that diVerentiate it from other objects.
With regard to our knowledge we can distinguish between a particular
element (intuition) and another that would indicate the general conditions
of application of our words to objects (concept). However, this provisional
diVerentiation between intuition and concept does not seem to work as
clearly in the aesthetic field. In our encounter with a work of art we are
eVectively given an object although it is diYcult to find a concept which
   ⇤
       Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (alex.mumbru@gmail.com).


                                                                                                          185
186     Àlex Mumbrú Mora


fits it fully. Faced with artistic products we are left orphaned of concepts,
not so much because we are unable to recognise any object but because no
representation establishes univocal conditions of application for our terms.
In the aesthetic domain, the rigid borders between the intuitive and the
conceptual get blurred.
    Based on H–G. Gadamer’s theoretical proposal, in this article we intend
to show how the experience of the work of art compels to rethink the
diVerence we establish naturally between the intuitive and the conceptual
(section 2). In this sense, the specificity of the artistic field for hermeneutics
is that the concepts that account for our aesthetic experience (play, festival
and symbol) also describe our mode of being in the world (section 3). The
notion of symbol is fundamental in this context to explain the hermeneutic
dimension in the finite rational being. In the same way that during Ro-
manticism the concept of symbol became “a universal aesthetic principle”
(Gadamer 1989: 67), in H–G. Gadamer’s hermeneutics this concept turns
into a universal ontological principle. The author of Truth and Method ta-
kes the symbolic nature of the work of art as an explicative model of the
phenomenon of understanding, given that the sensible–intelligible tension
that is constitutive of the symbol allows us to think both linguisticity as a
fundamental feature of our understanding and the speculative character of
our language (section 4).



2. The Aesthetic Experience in H–G. Gadamer

One of the characteristics shared by most contemporary philosophical cur-
rents is the admonition of the constituted character of consciousness, its
being inhabited by elements “other” than reason hard to assimilate with
modern demands on clarity and distinction in our judgements. For contem-
porary thinking, consciousness goes from being constituent to being consti-
tuted. It is in the consequent pre–eminence given to the cognitive dimension
where we find philosophy’s main battlefield since the mid–nineteenth cen-
tury, especially with regards to the questionable reduction of rationality
to its scientific–technical aspect1 . Gadamer’s thought is part of this wide
critical tradition.

     1. As an example, here is this brief relation: a) the forgetfulness of Being, of the ontological
diVerence denounced by Heidegger, would constitute the first step in the progress to a predominance
of the technical model; b) for the Frankfurt School, the instrumental rationality proper to scientific
knowledge would lead to human history’s greatest aberration: Auschwitz; c) the recognition of
a cognitive interest characteristic of the historical–hermeneutic sciences, diVerentiated from the
natural sciences, in Habermas’ thought, etc.
          The Ontologization of the Concept of Symbol in H–G. Gadamer’s Hermeneutics                 187


    The fundamental assumption of Gadamerian hermeneutics resides in
the recognition of a specific model of knowledge and truth for the “human
sciences” (Geisteswissenschaften). Gadamer begins with the analysis of the
experience of the work of art with the aim of recovering a concept of
truth and a methodological ideal that are not polluted by the requirements
of modern science. The former intuitive description of the nature of our
knowledge, as the establishment of some defining characteristics of what
we are presented with, derives from this scientific–based model. In his
determination of our aesthetic experience through the concepts of play,
symbol and festival, Gadamer expects to win the ground to outline an
ontology and an epistemology suitable for the human phenomena2 . Let us
see how he proceeds.
    In the novel El árbol de la ciencia (1911), Pío Baroja describes various epi-
sodes of Andrés Hurtado’s journey through the Madrid of the end of the
nineteenth century. Although any reader of the book encounters the same
descriptions, not because of that we expect that the representation of the
different places of the capital is the same for everyone. Gadamer’s thesis is
that the work presents a series of conditions that establish the framework of
an «appropriate» reception, without this implying the existence of a sole inter-
pretation which could be identified with «the» content of the work (Gadamer
1980: 194). What the work of art would mean as such — its supposed «pure
aesthetical» content– can’t be differentiated from all of its possible receptions.
This approach does not imply any «hermeneutic nihilism» (Gadamer 1989:
82), i.e. that there be as many interpretations as recipients, since in the end it
is about «one» work, El árbol de la ciencia by Pío Baroja.
    Gadamer states that the artistic product establishes a dynamic «field»
(Spielraum) of reception. The concept of «play» (Spiel) defines a «space»
(Raum) which follows its own rules independently of who is making every
specific movement. The work of art presents its own set of rules that delimit
the space in which it is possible to gain a valid experience of it. An especially
intuitive example is the one referred above. In the literary work, words
provide us their universal meaning; that is to say, the specific visualization
that each reader could do is disregarded to therefore remain in the order of
what is essential to the objects in question (Gadamer 1977: 234).

     2. This is the precise opinion that Gadamer has on the reflection Heidegger makes about the
work of art, as a privileged place to access understanding of Being and Truth as event and un–covering:
“The fundamental significance of the essay on the work of art, it seems to me, is that it provides us
with an indication of the later Heidegger’s real concern. No one can ignore the fact that in the work
of art, in which a world arises, not only is something meaningful given to experience that was not
known before, but also something new comes into existence with the work of art itself. It is not
simply the laying bare of a truth, it is itself an event. This oVers us an opportunity to pursue one step
further Heidegger’s critique of western metaphysics and its culmination in the subjectivism of the
modern age”; Gadamer 1960b: 105.
188     Àlex Mumbrú Mora


    The characterization of the artistic product in terms of a play implies
reducing the weight of the subject as a privileged space for the aesthetic
experience (Orueta 2013: 80–98). The experience of the work of art does
not depend on who receives it; rather the subjects are the occasion that
the work uses to present its truth. While it is clear that there is no play
without players, its taking place does not depend on the participation of any
specific agent. The game is subject, it characterizes itself by its autonomous
being: “Play is really limited to presenting itself. Thus its mode of being is
self–presentation” (Gadamer 1989: 108). In the artistic experience, there is
an actualization of the potentialities of the work of art, so that it can be said
that it is the work itself what takes place or is constructed in its encounter
with the spectator (Gadamer 1992a: 386f ).
    The phenomenon of the «festival» (Fest) allows Gadamer to reveal another
feature of the aesthetic experience. In any celebration, one stops perceiving
the other as an individual with whom he competes for means of survival,
to recognise him as belonging to a same group. In the festival, it is the
community itself which appears, i.e. a series of mutually shared meanings
and expectations that transcend us as individuals. For the author of Truth and
Method in the work of art “it is the truth of our own world —the religious
and moral world in which we live— that is presented before us and in which
we recognize ourselves” (Gadamer 1986: 124). In the aesthetic experience we
recognize (it is made explicit to us in what it is essential to it3 ) that which
binds us as members of a community, something that provides us with a
knowledge of ourselves. The work of art acts as a mediator between the past
and a present world which inevitably points to the future.
    That the subject is the opportunity the work makes use of to present
the truth that we are implies that the intention of the author (mens aucto-
ris) does not provide a privileged access road to understanding (Gadamer
1958: 12). That which for Gadamer is characteristic of our own encounter
with art is the inexhaustible interpretative process, the infinite number of
considerations it raises. There exists, therefore, a residue of meaning in all
artistic product that impedes its complete and definitive subsumption under
the concept, the absorption of aesthetic by philosophy4 . The truth of the
work of art has to do with a display that conceals, where what is shown is

     3. „Es liegt im Wiedererkennen, dab man das Gesehene auf das Bleibende, Wesentliche hinsieht,
das von den kontingenten Umstände des Einmal–gesehen–Habens und des Wieder–gesehen–Habens
nicht mehr getrübt ist. Das macht Wiedererkennung aus, und so ist sie in der Freude an der Nachah-
mung wirksam. Was in der Nachahmung sichtbar wird, ist also gerade das eigentliche Wesen der
Sache“; Gadamer 1966: 32.
     4. At this point we find the radical diVerence between Gadamer’s and Hegel’s aesthetic proposal.
For the first, the artistic phenomenon and the truth that belongs to it can not be reduced by philosophy
(Gjesdal 2007: 366–369).
         The Ontologization of the Concept of Symbol in H–G. Gadamer’s Hermeneutics                 189


as important as what is hidden. The borders between the intuitive and the
conceptual are mitigated in the aesthetic experience:

    “«without determination» — that seems a proper description of the play with
    appearance that imagination produces in inner intuition. This does not presuppose
    the definiteness of any given concept and neither that imagination follows vague
    associations as it may occur with the beauty of nature, but that imagination, when
    playing with appearance, occasions thinking. What Kant here describes from the
    perspective of the subject as the result of the aesthetic judgment or as genius and
    spirit, can also be formulated from another perspective: the intuition of the world
    that is presented in every work of art. There is no determinate intuitive object that
    restricts this intuition. The self–produced image in inner intuition allows us to look
    beyond everything given in experience” (Gadamer 1980: 197f ).

    The artistic product is the sensible presentation of an endless number
of interpretations, each of which gives testimony and is in debt to the very
event of tradition. To the extent that it exposes a set of elements (the whole
of a transmission of meanings) which goes beyond every concept that is
proposed in the interpretative process, it can be said that the work of art
has a symbolic nature. It is not that the symbol constitutes a third order
of knowledge alongside the intuitive and the conceptual. The work of
art is symbolic in the sense that it discloses the impossibility of finding
any conceptual representation that fully fits the intuitive content which is
presented, although it constantly invites us to do so. The artistic product
refers to the whole of tradition which presents itself in a constantly elusive
way. In other terms, art renders sensible the intelligible and, therefore,
its ontological character is symbolic. The description of the work of art
in terms of symbol can be explained due to its metaphysical background,
which makes it especially suitable to enable the crossing from sensible to
non–sensible. As Kant points out in his aesthetic reflections5 , the symbolic
presupposes and expresses this link between the sensible and the idea,
which in the work of art implies for Gadamer a link of what is presented
and the depth of tradition.
    The work of art’s symbolic character should not be confused with its
understanding in terms of sign. All sign auto–cancels itself in presence of
that which is designated. Unlike our ordinary use of language with which
we refer to things (letters, once read, can be destroyed since they have

     5. “All hypotyposis (presentation, subjecto sub adspectum), as making something sensible, is of one
of two kinds: either schematic, where to a concept grasped by the understanding the corresponding
intuition is given a priori; or symbolic, where to a concept which only reason can think, and to which
no sensible intuition can be adequate, an intuition is attributed with which the power of judgment
proceeds in a way merely analogous to that which it observes in schematization, i.e., it is merely the
rule of this procedure, not of the intuition itself, and thus merely the form of the reflection, not the
content, which corresponds to the concept” (Kant 2000: 225).
190       Àlex Mumbrú Mora


already carried out their function), artistic language maintains itself without
external help (Gadamer 1981: 249f ). Art is fundamentally symbol because it
reflects the whole of tradition through the sensible mediation of the work:

      “In the case of the symbol, on the other hand, and for our experience of the
      symbolic in general, the particular represents itself as a fragment of being that
      promises to complete and make whole whatever corresponds to it. Or, indeed, the
      symbol is that other fragment that has always been sought in order to complete
      and make whole our own fragmentary life. The “meaning” of art in this sense does
      not seem to me to be tied to special social conditions as was the meaning given
      to art in the later bourgeois religion of culture. On the contrary, the experience of
      the beautiful, and particularly the beautiful in art, is the invocation of a potentially
      whole and holy order of things, wherever it may be found. (Gadamer 1986: 32).

    Understood from the concept of symbol, the work of art is tradition
itself. The aesthetic experience allows us to recognize our belonging to
a tradition that constitutes and exceeds us, from which our more or less
explicit anticipations of meaning take place. The symbolic element appears
precisely due to the insuYciency of the sensible to address the intelligible,
but from the awareness that there is no other access other than through
the sensible (Stambaugh 1997: 133). The rehabilitation of allegory by Ga-
damer aims to combat the reductionism of the aesthetic consciousness in
the disassociation of the work from the tradition that frames it, precisely
because the understanding of allegory requires a reference to the context
of creation and use. Allegories are the community’s reflection in which
these associations have been made, so that they enable the elucidation of
various aspects of the tradition in us, in the symbolic there is no arbitrary
or conventional coincidence between two elements, the image (sensible)
and what it presents (intelligible), “but the union of two things that belong
to each other” (Gadamer 1989: 67). The concept of symbol’s etymological
meaning is the document in which the members of a community are re-
cognized, that “relic of past life” (Gadamer 1989: 147) that would be shared
and given to the guest so that, in the future, his descendants could be able
to recognize the relation that had united them (tessera hospitalis). As we will
show in section 4, the concept of symbol allows us to understand not only
the work of art’s nature but also the functioning of understanding itself in
the finite rational being.


3. Aesthetics and Hermeneutics

Gadamer’s aesthetic reflection and, as we will see further on, the analysis
of the concept of symbol are crucial to hermeneutics as a philosophical
         The Ontologization of the Concept of Symbol in H–G. Gadamer’s Hermeneutics              191


proposal. In this sense, in the fifth edition of Truth and Method the author
points out that

    “the intention of the present conceptual analysis, however, has to do not with
    theory of art but with ontology. Its first task, the criticism of traditional aesthetics,
    is only a stage on the way to acquiring a horizon that embraces both art and history”
    (Gadamer 1989: 132)6 .

    The assimilation of the aesthetical and the historical under a more fun-
damental ontological project supposes that “Aesthetics has to be absorbed into
hermeneutics” (Gadamer 1989: 157). This aYrmation does not annul the speci-
ficity of the artistic in favor of the philosophical concept, rather it expresses
the will to conserve the ground won from the analysis of the aesthetic
experience as the vantage point from which to describe understanding as
the specific mode of being of the finite rational being, and this in a way phe-
nomenologically uncontaminated by the ontological presuppositions of the
modern scientific tradition (Fehér 1998: 25f )7 . In the following lines we will
elaborate the hermeneutical concepts of knowledge and truth introduced
by Gadamer from the standpoint of the notions of play and festival, so that
it becomes clear that they are not just aesthetic but ontological concepts.
The notion of symbol will be discussed in the next section.
    The analysis of aesthetic experience in terms of a festival enables us to
describe our interpretative relation to the world as the taking place of a
transmission of mutually shared meanings and expectations that both trans-
cend and constitute us. In art’s experience as a festival, i.e. as recognition of
the intersubjectively shared element that we are, the human rationality’s
element of finitude appears in the form of the past in us (Gadamer 1992b:
400–440). What we do, feel, say, and think is much more penetrated by
agreements, habits and tacit behaviours (a certain ethos) than we are able
to objectify8 . All that is understood (and, in particular, the work of art) is
inserted in the taking place of a series of events, it constitutes the eVect of a
certain transmission that conforms «tradition» (Überlieferung) (Figal 2002:
118f ). At the same time, the one who does the understanding finds himself

     6. In this sense, as has been defined by some authors, it can be aYrmed that in Gadamer we
find an “anti–aesthetic” proposal; (Grondin 1998: 268).
     7. The mathematical–physicist model of knowledge knows the singular as a case of a general
law and demands the methodical untying of the knowing subject with regard to the known object.
Science seems then to operate under the presumption of a Cartesian metaphysical dualism, where
subject and object understand each other as self–suYcient substances, transparent to themselves and
mutually diVerentiated. However, this understanding of the object as something whose presence op-
poses to the consciousness is a derived mode of our relation to things that conceals our non–thematic
understanding of the being of what is given and of our own (Heidegger 1927: §7).
     8. In this sense Grondin talks about the «immemorial character» of our reason, forwarding the
hermeneutic proposal to Schelling’s philosophy (Grondin 1999: 65–72).
192     Àlex Mumbrú Mora


immersed in a flow of tradition(s), in a way that the one who understands
“belongs to the being of that which is understood” (Gadamer 1989: xxviii).
    In other words, any interpretative process needs to be understood from
the «history of eVect» (Wirkungsgeschichte) principle, which establishes that
all understanding is the result of a chain of eVects that delimits the horizon
from where it takes place. However, the awareness of this principle does not
imply the possibility of a disassociation that allows us to obtain a transparent
image of itself. There exists no point exterior to the relation of knowledge
since, as a historical event, the act of understanding always occurs from a
certain hermeneutic situation in which past and present interpenetrate. The
universal character of the hermeneutical phenomenon, i.e. the finite nature
of the human and its own historicity, consists precisely in that, for who
understands, a point of view external to what is understood is not possible.
The fundamental mode of being of every individual is understanding, in
the sense that the elaboration of its relation with itself and with everything
that appears to it happens in the opening, exhibition, or ‘interpretation’
(Auslegung) of the being it already is. Precisely for being immersed in the
series of eVects of historical transmission, our relation to the object parts
from certain ‘pre–judices’ (Vor–urteile) that act as previous conditions that
make understanding possible (Gadamer 1981: 186).
    That understanding always comes interceded by our pre–judices does
not imply that any interpretation is equally suitable, since we also have false
pre–judices that can make it wrong. One of the fruits of dialogue, with
others and with our own tradition, is the substitution of our unsuitable
fore–conceptions. Experience in a hermeneutic sense consists in this modi-
fication of pre–judices with which the subject’s horizon of understanding
is broadened. Gadamer turns to the image of the traveller: when we come
back home from a voyage we are never the same, since in the journey there
is an experience that transforms us as subjects. We can never abandon our
starting horizon, but during the journey there is a certain expansion of it
that has to do with the questioning of our pre–judices as those conditions
that make understanding possible (Gadamer 1989: 445)9 .


     9. For this same reason Gadamer states that the formal accusation of self–cancellation or
contradiction between the relative or conditioned character of all truth and the truth claim of
hermeneutical proposal is not valid since: a) these are statements that are at diVerent logical levels; b)
it only makes sense if we presuppose a concept of truth as correspondence that is debatable by its
ontological assumptions; c) supposing that the uncovering of our finitude or contingency constitutes
the establishment of a foundation is contradictory since it is hardly possible to build something on the
basis of being–towards–death or existence’s finitude. Even if we accepted that there is a contradiction
between our understanding’s radically historical character and the establishment of the principle of
history of eVect, the only thing that this supposed contradiction would do is, once again, confirm the
finite character of our knowledge (Grondin 1999b: 190).
         The Ontologization of the Concept of Symbol in H–G. Gadamer’s Hermeneutics                 193


   Analogously to what happens on a trip, the contact with tradition allows
the clarification of our pre–judices since the past that we are challenges
us from its unyielding otherness. Interpretation positions itself in the di-
stance that mediates between strangeness and familiarity, closeness of an
understanding which is always given on the basis of pre–judices that make
interpretation possible, although the one who understands can only be
partially aware of them. Gadamer’s hermeneutics has the character of re-
membering (anamnesis) that in which we already are and that constitutes us
in what we are:

    “All self–knowledge arises from what is historically pregiven, what with Hegel
    we call “substance,” because it underlies all subjective intentions and actions, and
    hence both prescribes and limits every possibility for understanding any tradition
    whatsoever in its historical alterity. This almost defines the aim of philosophical
    hermeneutics: its task is to retrace the path of Hegel’s phenomenology of mind until
    we discover in all that is subjective the substantiality that determines it” (Gadamer
    1989: 301).

     In contact with tradition, distance in time is not the obstacle that histori-
cal understanding has to «save» (with the objective of positioning itself in
the personal and/or historical perspective of who produced the text), rather
it is what makes understanding itself possible by means of a distancing from
our own pre–judices (Grondin 1995: 327f ). The experience of art, especially
contemporary art, is again revealing: only temporary distance allows us to
consolidate our judgements on the aesthetic quality of a work (Gadamer
1989: 297). Beyond the eVect of the impression or the novelty, only deep and
contrasted reflection can allow us a suitable application of our pre–judices.
Here a key concept for hermeneutics and human sciences in general is
picked up again, and it is Bildung as the forming process of the individual
that consists in an integrating build–up of knowledge oriented to a practical
wisdom or ‘taste’, which is intersubjectively shared in a certain period, i.e.
the concept of ‘common sense’ (sensus communis). Taste is what should let
us value the aesthetic quality of a piece, precisely where there is no rule
which allows us to pass judgement on the object (Weinsheimer 1985: 111)10 .
     That human’s mode of being and his relation to the world happen
interpretatively implies that a text’s reception cannot be diVerentiated from
its interpretation (Gadamer 1989: 399). A clarifying example is that of the

    10. The historical analysis of the concepts of ‘common sense’ (sensus communis), the faculty
of judgment and taste in its reception by the humanistic tradition to the German Illustration in
the eighteenth Century, aims to show a type of knowledge about the singular that refers to a
generalization or a whole without it being given or it being directly applicable as a principle. That is
to say, a type of knowledge that does not hold on to the methodological demands and the ideal of
knowledge proper to the mathematical science of nature (Gadamer 1989: 19–36).
194      Àlex Mumbrú Mora


musical or theatrical representations, whose existence lies in its execution.
That which is characteristic in all understanding, and in this sense Gadamer
refers to legal and theological hermeneutics, is not the meaning of the text
in general or as a historical document, but the value that the document has
in relation to the situation in which it is applying to (Gadamer 1989: 328).
No understanding can occur without the application of the understood
in the moment or situation in which it is carried out11 . Immersed in a
constant process of historical transformation, the understanding of the
object (artistic or not) never occurs definitely. Both the subject and the
object are a part of a process that surpasses them (they belong to the
«game» of the tradition they «are»), therefore it does not make sense to
raise the question of knowledge from the Cartesian outline of the two
self–transparent and mutually independent substances:

      “The illumination of this situation—reflection on eVective history—can never be
      completely achieved; yet the fact that it cannot be completed is due not to a
      deficiency in reflection but to the essence of the historical being that we are. To be
      historically means that knowledge of oneself can never be complete” (Gadamer
      1989: 301)12 .

    The analysis of aesthetic experience in terms of a play enables us again
to describe this phenomenon. The experience of the work of art does not
depend on who receives it, rather the subject is the occasion that the work
uses to present its truth. In the artistic experience there is an actualization of
the potentialities of the work of art, so that it can be said that it is the work
itself what takes place or is constructed in its encounter with the spectator.
This infinitude of meaning is explained by Gadamer from the concept
of horizon, i.e. that vision which varies permanently with the observer’s
movement without there being any loss of unity. Understanding occurs
in the ‘fusion of horizons’ (Horizontsverschmelzung) of the reader and the
work. The concept of horizon expects to do justice to the historicity of
understanding in the sense that the horizon is never static or completely

    11. The concept of application allows to giving a common foundation to various hermeneutic
disciplines (law, theology, literature, and history) (Gadamer 1989: 336).
    12. Experience as an event that does not occur exclusively in consciousness but rather transforms
the subject into what it is, collects a negative moment which is consubstantial to the concept of
experience since it involves accepting the fallibility of our point of view: “experience in this sense
inevitably involves many disappointments of one’s expectations and only thus is experience acquired”
(Gadamer 1989: 350). The negative character implies the recognition of our existence’s fragility, the
past’s irrevocable character and the future’s unpredictability. Hence the hermeneutic primacy of
the question: all questioning implies being open to the truth of the other without reducing him to
previous expectations or being subdued by his claims. Hermeneutics is “the art of being able to be
wrong” since it accepts the contingency of the starting point, the possibility that our understanding
of things may be otherwise.
          The Ontologization of the Concept of Symbol in H–G. Gadamer’s Hermeneutics                    195


closed (a «horizon in itself») rather it moves forward and modifies with the
one who walks.
    The fusion of horizons does not imply a dialectical overcoming by which
an absolute identity of the subject is raised. It is rather a constant dislocation
movement that takes place in the difference between the text and its various
receptions. That is to say: this permanent transformation of the one who
carries out the experience of strangeness does not allow the establishment of
an ultimate foundation, of what we would truly be once we were stripped of
all our historical–linguistic coatings (Vattimo 1989: 90). Understanding is not
an activity we carry out but an experience in which we find ourselves and
endure:

    “We showed that understanding is not a method which the inquiring consciousness
    applies to an object it chooses and so turns it into objective knowledge; rather, being
    situated within an event of tradition, a process of handing down, is a prior condition
    of understanding. Understanding proves to be an event” (Gadamer 1989: 308)13 .

   As we have seen, the analysis of aesthetic experience in terms of play and
festival does not constitute a preliminary step towards hermeneutics but
serves to describe the phenomenon of human understanding itself. Let’s
see what the role played by the notion of symbol is in Gadamer’s proposal.


4. The Linguisticity of Understanding and the Speculative Character
   of Language

According to M. Heidegger’s hermeneutics of facticity, what characterizes us
as individuals is to find ourselves thrown into the world, inhabiting a language
that speaks through us, a language that we are. Expressed in Gadamer’s terms:
the relation of man to the world, others, and himself, always occurs from a
certain hermeneutic situation, it constantly sets off from some pre–judices.
Interpretation is the elaboration of understanding as the structural moment of
our existence, a phenomenon that happens linguistically insofar as language
is the way in which the principle of history of effect is specified or «embo-
died» (Gadamer 1989: 390f)14 . The linguistic character of our understanding

     13. In this sense, the tragic becomes a fundamental aesthetic category since it shines a light on the
historicity that is intrinsic to us as finite beings: “What is understood as tragic must simply be accepted”
(Gadamer 1989: 126).
    14. In this context it is interesting to recover Habermas’ concept of “transitory a priori” in reference
to language and history. Both elements are conditions from which understanding happens, although
we can not control the way and the extension in which it conditions our knowledge, since they are
inscribed in a web of historic references we do not understand fully, as well as in a frame of possible
variations subjected to human free will (Wachterhauser 2002: 57).
196      Àlex Mumbrú Mora


does not limit to texts in a strict sense: “Verbal interpretation is the form
of all interpretation, even when what is to be interpreted is not linguistic in
nature—i.e., is not a text but a statue or a musical composition” (Gadamer
1989: 400). Our experience is mediated by a certain language that embodies an
interpretation of the world, which does not imply any relativism to the extent
that the own concept «world itself» becomes problematic for what it has of
ontologically debatable. Unlike what happens with perception, where each
perception excludes and annuls the others to form the continuum of what the
object would consist on, in our relation with the world each interpretation
contains the others potentially (Gadamer 1989: 449).
    Understanding develops itself in the actualization of the tradition we
are in each time we are questioned by a text. It takes the form of a que-
stion and answer dialectic. Our experience occurs linguistically since all
encounter with the object needs to be read by the inner ear (Gadamer
1989: 551)15 . Linguisticity is the fundamental character of each individual’s
being–in–the–world. As the original trait of existence, linguisticity cannot
occur as an object of experience since it constitutes the totality in which
we are always in, hence its ontological character. There does not exist any
point of view from nowhere, no location external to our linguistic relation
with the world. The nuclear character of language in the hermeneutic cha-
racterization of our existence resides in that it constitutes the place where
the I and the world appear in their original unity:

      “Being that can be understood is language. The hermeneutical phenomenon here
      projects its own universality back onto the ontological constitution of what is
      understood, determining it in a universal sense as language and determining its
      own relation to beings as interpretation” (Gadamer 1989: 470).

    Language situates itself in the centre of our relation with the world to
unfold from there to the whole of tradition. This is what its speculative
character consists in, a trait that, for Gadamer, is extensible to the ensemble
of the real:

      “distinguishing itself from itself, presenting itself, language that expresses meaning
      is not only art and history but everything insofar as it can be understood. The
      speculative character of being that is the ground of hermeneutics has the same
      universality as do reason and language” (Gadamer 1989: 472).

    This reference to a totality which is characteristic to our linguistical
relation with the world excludes the existence of an infinite intellect before
    15. For Gadamer, the experience of the work of art implies reading it from the ‘inner ear’ (das
innere Ohr), in the sense that the recipient must linguistically appropriate and actualize its content
(Grondin 1995: 331–332).
       The Ontologization of the Concept of Symbol in H–G. Gadamer’s Hermeneutics          197


which this totality would be given in its finished form (Gadamer 1989: 457).
It is not about a being–in–itself which reveals itself in each new reception
or interpretation since the only unicity of understanding resides in what has
remained in the various receptions occurred (Gadamer 1989: 394). Expressed
in diVerent terms: the reference to tradition in Gadamer’s thought does not
imply authoritarianism or irrationality but an indication to the authority of
that we still consider binding (Grondin 1999b: 155).
    Each reception of tradition is “the experience of an “aspect” of the
thing itself ” (Gadamer 1986: 468), where by the “thing itself ” we need to
understand the logical presupposition of a unity that, as logical, lacks a
specific cognitive content. The speculative character conceals a reference
“toward the infinite”, “a relation to the whole being” (Gadamer 1989: 464f ).
Language acts as a mirror of tradition, in the sense that it reflects a whole
that, as such, always appears «displaced» in the image that it shows: “Every
word causes the whole of the language to which it belongs to resonate and
the whole world–view that underlies it to appear. Thus every word, as
the event of a moment, carries with it the unsaid, to which it is related by
responding and summoning” (Gadamer 1989: 454). Therefore, in each act
of understanding our relation with what appears implies a reference to the
ensemble of tradition.
    Expressed in aesthetic terms: the work of art renders sensible an un-
closed totality to the extent that it actualizes itself in each new reception.
The symbolic nature of the work of art resides in its serving as a bridge
between the sensible presence of the work and the whole of the tradition it
embodies. However, this outline does not only restrict to the artistic field.
The relation with the world which is intrinsic to the rational finite being
responds also to the conditions established by the symbolic in art. Our en-
counter with the object, as a sensible presentation of a certain transmission
of meanings, refers inevitably to a whole of meaning that actualizes itself in
this relation and that is elaborated discursively in our understanding. This
way, the concept of symbol does not only describe the work of art’s nature
but it allows to understand the fundamental structure of our being. In this
sense Gadamer states:

   In the last analysis, Goethe’s statement ‘Everything is a symbol’ is the most com-
   prehensive formulation of the hermeneutical idea. It means that everything points
   to another thing. This ‘everything’ is not an assertion about each being, indicating
   what it is, but an assertion as to how it encounters man’s understanding. There is
   nothing that cannot mean something to it. But the statement implies something else
   as well: nothing comes forth in the one meaning that is simply oVered to us. The
   impossibility of surveying all relations is just as much present in Goethe’s concept
   of the symbolic as is the vicarious function of the particular for the representation
   of the whole. For only because the universal relatedness of being is concealed
198       Àlex Mumbrú Mora


      from human eyes does it need to be discovered. As universal as the hermeneutical
      idea is that corresponds to Goethe’s words, in an eminent sense it is fulfilled only
      by the experience of art. For the distinctive mark of the language of art is that
      the individual art work gathers into itself and expresses the symbolic character
      that, hermeneutically regarded, belongs to all beings. In comparison with all other
      linguistic and nonlinguistic tradition, the work of art is the absolute present for
      each particular present, and at the same time holds its word in readiness for every
      future. The intimacy with which the work of art touches us is at the same time, in
      enigmatic fashion, a shattering and a demolition of the familiar. It is not only the
      ‘This art thou!’ disclosed in a joyous and frightening shock; it also says to us; ‘Thou
      must alter thy life!’ (Gadamer 1964: 7f ).


5. Conclusion

H–G. Gadamer’s aesthetic reflection aims to release our understanding of
reality (and, in particular, the interpretation that human sciences have had
of themselves since the second half of the nineteenth century) of certain
ontological and epistemological pre–judices rooted in modern scientific
tradition. In this sense, the notions used for this purpose (play, festival and
symbol) not only give an account of our aesthetic experience but hope to
reveal essential aspects of our being–in–the–world.
     Our existence’s radically historical character supposes the incapacity to
obtain absolute knowledge both from the object and from ourselves since as
individuals we are always located in a tradition that constitutes us (the festival
as a moment of recognition of the truth that we are as a set of mutually shared
meanings and expectations) and that exceeds us as a history of effects which
is linguistically specified (the subject is what the game uses to put its rules
into play). On the other hand, the speculative being of language implies that
in each act of understanding there is a reference to the whole that has settled
in it, so that hermeneutic experience takes place in the permanently open
breach between the sensible and the non–sensible. It is in this context where
the ontological concept of the symbol in the framework of hermeneutics
manifests itself, since it not only describes the nature of the work of art but
also accounts for our being’s fundamental character.


Bibliographical References

Baroja, P., 2005, El árbol de la ciencia [1911], Madrid, Alianza editorial.
Dostal, R., (ed.), 2002, The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer, Cambridge, UK,
  Cambridge University Press.
        The Ontologization of the Concept of Symbol in H–G. Gadamer’s Hermeneutics    199


FehÈr, I. M., 1998, Gadamers Destruktion der Ästhetik im Zusammenhang seiner philo-
   sophischen Neubegründung der Geisteswissenschaften, in Koch, D., 1998, Denkwege
   1, Attempto Verlag, Tübingen, pp. 25–54.
FehÈr I. M., Jacobs W. G. (eds.), 1999, Zeit und Freiheit. Schelling, Schopenhauer, Kier-
   kegaard, Heidegger. Akten der Fachtagung der Internationalen Schelling–Gesellschaft
   Budapest, 24. bis 27. April 1997, Budapest, Éthos Könyvek.
Figal, G., 2002, The Doing of the Thing Itself: Gadamer’s Hermeneutic Ontology of
   Language, in Dostal, R., (ed.), 2002, The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer, Cam-
   bridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, pp. 102–125
Gadamer, H–G., 1985–1991, Gesammelte Werke, 10 Bände, Tübingen [J.C.B. Mohr
  (Paul Siebeck)].
––––– 1958, „Zur Fragwürdigkeit des ästhetischen Bewubtseins”. In: GW 9
––––– 1960a, Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik,
   In: GW 1; English translation by Garret Barden and John Cumming, Truth
   and Method, revised by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, 2nd edition,
   London & New York, Continuum Publishing Group, 1989.
––––– 1960b „Die Wahrheit des Kunstwerks“. In: GW3; English translation by
   John W. Stanley, Heidegger’s Ways, New York, State University of New York
   Press, 1994.
––––– 1964, „Ästhetik und Hermeneutik“. In: GW 8; English translation by David
   E. Linge in Palmer, Richard E. (ed.), 2007, The Gadamer Reader: A Bouquet of the
   Later Writings, Evanston IL, Northwestern University Press.
Gadamer, H–G., 1966, „Kunst und Nachahmung”. In: GW 8.
––––– 1974, „Die Aktualität des Schönen. Kunst als Spiel, Symbol und Fest“. In: GW
   8; English translation by Nicholas Walker in Bernasconi, R., 1986, The Relevance of
   the Beautiful and Other Essays, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
––––– 1977, „Philosophie und Poesie“. In: GW 8
––––– 1980, „Anschauung und Anschaulichkeit”. In: GW 8
––––– 1981, „Philosophie und Literatur“. In: GW 8
––––– 1992a, „Wort und Bild – “so wahr, so seiend"“, In: GW 8
––––– 1992b, „Zur Phänomenologie von Ritual und Sprache”. In: GW 8
Gjesdal, K., 2007, Reading Kant Hermeneutically: Gadamer and the Critique of Judg-
   ment, Kant–Studien 98 (3), pp. 366–369
Grondin, J., 1995, Das innere Ohr. Distanz und Selbstreflexion in der Hermeneutik, in Hof-
  fmann, Thomas S., Majetschak, Stefan (eds), 1995, Denken der Individualität (Fes-
  tschrift für Josef Simon zum 65.Geburstag im August 1995), Berlin, De Gruyter.
––––– 1998, Gadamer’s Aesthetics. The Overcoming of Aesthetic Consciousness and the
   Hermeneutical Truth of Art, in Hanh, L. E., (ed.), 1997, The Philosophy of Hans
200      Àlex Mumbrú Mora


      Georg Gadamer (The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. XXIV), Chicago, Open
      Court Publishing Company.
––––– 1999a, Die späte Entdeckung Schellings in der Hermeneutik, in Fehér I.M., Ja-
   cobs W.G. (eds.), 1999, Zeit und Freiheit. Schelling, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard,
   Heidegger. Akten der Fachtagung der Internationalen Schelling–Gesellschaft Buda-
   pest, 24. bis 27. April 1997, Budapest, Éthos Könyvek, pp. 65–72.
––––– 1999b, Introduction à Hans–Georg Gadamer, Paris, Cerf; Spanish translation
   by C. Ruiz–Garrido, 2003, Introducción a Gadamer, Barcelona, Herder editorial.
Hanh, L. E., (ed.), 1997, The Philosophy of Hans Georg Gadamer (The Library of
  Living Philosophers, vol. XXIV), Chicago, Open Court Publishing Company.
Heidegger, M., 1927, Sein und Zeit, edited by W. von Hermann, Frankfurt a. M.,
  Klostermann.
Hoffmann, Thomas S., Majetschak, Stefan (eds), 1995, Denken der Individuali-
  tät (Festschrift für Josef Simon zum 65.Geburstag im August 1995), Berlin, De
  Gruyter.
Kant, I., 1790, Kritik der Urteilskraft, English translation by P. Guyer and E. Mat-
  thews, 2000, Critique of Judgment, New York, Cambridge University Press.
Kelly, M. (ed.), 1998, Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, New York/Oxford, Oxford Univer-
   sity Press, volume 2.
Koch, D., 1998, Denkwege 1, Attempto Verlag, Tübingen.
Orueta, S. D., 2013, Gadamer: el arte entendido a través del juego, “Scientia Helman-
  tica. Revista Internacional de Filosofía”, n. 2, pp. 80– 98.
Staumbaugh, J., 1997, “Gadamer on the Beautiful”, in Hanh, L. E. (ed.), 1997, The
   Philosophy of Hans Georg Gadamer (The Library of Living Philosophers, vol.
   XXIV), Chicago, Open Court Publishing Company.
Vattimo, G., 1989, Más allá del sujeto. Nietzsche, Heidegger y la hermenéutica, Barce-
   lona, Paidós, 1989.
Wachterhauser, B., 2002, Getting it Right: Relativism, Realism and Truth, in DO-
  STAL, R. J. (ed.), 2002, The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer, Cambridge, UK,
  Cambridge University Press, pp. 52–78.
Weinsheimer, J., 1985, Gadamer’s Hermeneutics, New Haven and London, Yale
  University Press.
––––– 1998, Gadamer and Aesthetics. A reading of Truth and Method, in Kelly, M.,
   (ed.), 1998, Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, New York/Oxford, Oxford University Press,
   volume 2, pp. 264–266.
