On Pol Vandevelde’s A Critique of Gadamer's Critical Pluralism : Some Questions

Perhaps it is not more than four or five decades that the hermeneutics of Heidegger and Gadamer is recognized by the scholars, but during this short period, we have seentempestuous critics and objections against their hermeneutical thoughts. Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, after publication of Wahrheit und Methode in 1960, has metwith many criticisms. One of the major areas in which Gadamer has sustained criticism is epistemology. Although the topic of epistemology is not the central point of TM, hishermeneutics does call to mind the question, what can we know? And how isunderstanding possible, not only in the humanities but in the whole of man’s experience of the world? Does Gadamer’s hermeneutics lead to relativism, the very thing heappears quite ardently to fight in his critique of historicism? Pol Vandevelde1 is someone who has recently criticized Gadamer’shermeneutics from the perspective of traditional hermeneutics. He published a book entitled: The Task of the Interpreter: Text, Meaning, and Negotiation . The firsttwo chapters of this book, especially the second chapter, with the title Interpretation as Event: A Critique of Gadamer’s Critical Pluralism, is devoted to attacking some aspects of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. I will state the general schema ofhis book and his critiques of Gadamer as they have been put forward in the first 62 pages of his book. In my conclusion, I will raise five questions or contradictions in Vandeveld’s theory of interpretation.

Keywords:

Gadamer , Philosophical hermeneutics , Vandeveld , The fusion of horizons , Language , Understanding , Interpretation , Author’s Intention , Relativism , Pluralism