{"id":1074,"date":"2012-04-10T13:01:21","date_gmt":"2012-04-10T13:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/phaidon.philo.at\/qu\/?p=1074"},"modified":"2018-11-18T10:47:37","modified_gmt":"2018-11-18T10:47:37","slug":"a-fusion-of-horizons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quatsch.philo.at\/?p=1074","title":{"rendered":"A Fusion of Horizons?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\"\"<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

Andreas Kirchner proposes some guidlines concerning the hermeneutic problems<\/a> raised by Alain Badiou’s philosophical procedures. He has a suggestive way to describe what a (supposed) inconsistency found in a given text does: it triggers a plan B on part of the reader who supposedly wanted to “consume” the text “as is”. Now, there can be a great number of reactions to being faced with (partial) incomprehensibility. One can be confused, angry or overwhelmed. Hermeneutics is a plan<\/em> B inasmuch it is a rule-governed enterprise, following an established methodology. One of its main rules is the “principle of charity” we have been discussing as applied to Badiou.<\/p>\n

I want to make two points: (1) on the charitable view of Badiou’s use of mathematics and (2) on Gadamer’s “fusion of horizons” as an additional hermeneutical principle.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Formal milieu<\/strong><\/p>\n

Badiou, as quoted by Andreas, abandons a position that is explicitly antagonistic towards hermeneutics, namely rational reconstruction<\/em>. Starting from a formal setting and proceeding by carefully regimented steps reconstruction tries to get to the analytic core of the phenomenon. It is on the side of Methode<\/em>, not Wahrheit<\/em> in Gadamer’s terminology. Putting a concept into a “formal milieu” is somewhere in between. It could be likened to Wittgenstein’s attempts to start with simply language games in order to capture some of the complexity of a given language use. (Alas, Badiou abhors Wittgenstein.) It is a strong point that this procedures matches the view that philosophy is in the business of arranging concepts.<\/p>\n

Fusion<\/strong> <\/p>\n

I never liked Gadamer’s “Horizontverschmelzung”. Take a sophisticated philosophical text like the opening of Hegel’s “Ph\u00e4nomenologie des Geistes”. These sentences are incredibly powerful, suggestive – and enigmatic. Hundreds of scholars have written about them, drawing dramatically diverse conclusions. Does it help to describe an individual’s understanding of these lines as “Horizontverschmelzung”? Some arrangement between preconditions of the reading of the text and (stipulated) preconditions of its writing has to be found. But does the term do anything else but suggest a feel-good attitude, disregarding the fruitful challenge remaining<\/em> after an attempt of understanding has been made?<\/p>\n

… but the possibility of expanding one\u2019s horizon by looking beyond \u201cthe close and all-too-close, not to look away from it, but to see it from a greater whole\u201d seems reasonable. (Andreas Kirchner)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In order to open up a narrowly confined situation I sometimes prefer a molotov cocktail from Badiou’s workshop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andreas Kirchner proposes some guidlines concerning the hermeneutic problems raised by Alain Badiou’s philosophical procedures. He has a suggestive way to describe what a (supposed) inconsistency found in a given text does: it triggers a plan B on part of the reader who supposedly wanted to “consume” the text “as is”. Now, there can beRead more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[34,94,95],"class_list":["post-1074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophie-klassisch","tag-badiou","tag-hermeneutics","tag-horizon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quatsch.philo.at\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quatsch.philo.at\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quatsch.philo.at\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quatsch.philo.at\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quatsch.philo.at\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1074"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quatsch.philo.at\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2270,"href":"https:\/\/quatsch.philo.at\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074\/revisions\/2270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quatsch.philo.at\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quatsch.philo.at\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quatsch.philo.at\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}