‘CONTEMPORANEOUS WITH EACH PRESENT TIME’ Gadamer on Understanding Across Contexts Word count: 4983 One of the central aims of Gadamer’s hermeneutics is to answer the problem of understanding across contexts. By this I mean the problem of explaining how an interpreter situated in one social and historical context can understand the words of someone writing from a different such context. To an extent, cross-contextual understanding poses a challenge to any theory of interpretation, but the challenge is particularly pressing for thinkers who, like Gadamer, subscribe to a radical version of ‘contextualism.’ According to this view, meaning is fundamentally context-dependent, and this means that we cannot eliminate the contextual differences that separate interpreter and text by analyzing their words down to some timeless, context-insensitive meaning. Context-sensitivity is not an unfortunate quirk of human language, but an essential feature of our mode of making sense of things. The loosely-defined hermeneutic tradition that Gadamer calls ‘historicism’ shares his affirmation of radical contextualism and thus is similarly pressed by the problem of understanding across contexts. Its solution to the problem, as Gadamer presents it, appeals to the possibility of an interpreter “transposing” herself into the alien context from which a text arose through the careful application of a historical method. The historicists argued that it is only through such a transposition that one can grasp the true, original meaning of a text, and thus only through it that one can arrive at a correct interpretation of a text, as opposed to an anacronistic one distorted by one’s own historical prejudices. Gadamer rejects this solution on two grounds. The first and most obvious problem is that the complete transposition of ourselves into an alien world is impossible. The supposed objectivity achieved when an interpreter transposes himself “conceals the fact that historical consciousness is itself situated in the web of historical effects” and thus fails to “recognize the presuppositions … that govern its own understanding.”1 Secondly, Gadamer argues that even if we could completely transpose ourselves into alien contexts, the result would not be understanding. This is because to understand something is to grasp the truth claim that it makes—a claim capable of challenging what one antecedently thinks. To say that I can only understand a text by leaving my own context behind and taking up its context is to say that the text has nothing to say to me ; it cannot challenge, or even confirm, my non-transposed understanding of the world. Thus “acknowledging the otherness of the other in this [historicist] way, making him the object of objective knowledge, involves the fundamental suspension of his claim to truth” and the abandonment of the attempt to understand him.2 It is clear that Gadamer means to offer an alternative response to the problem of understanding across contexts in Truth and Method, but it is less than fully clear what this response is supposed to consist in. There are at least two different responses that can be identified in the text. The first, which I will call the ‘canonical account,’ since it is by far the one most frequently highlighted by Gadamer’s later interpreters, focuses on his discussion of the ‘fusion of horizons.’ The second takes its point of departure from Gadamer’s claims in parts I and III of Truth and Method about the distinctive temporality of meaning. This latter response has not been discussed in any depth in the secondary literature—at least not as a response to the problem of understanding across contexts. 1 2

Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, 2nd, Rev. ed. (New York: Continuum, 1989), 300–301. Ibid., 304.

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My thesis in this paper is that the second account, though less popular than the first, is actually a much better answer to the problem of understanding across contexts. By way of preview, my basic contention will be that the canonical response misidentifies the assumption that gives teeth to the problem of understanding across contexts. According to the canonical response, the main problem lies in the mistaken assumption that horizons are fixed limits on our understanding. When we jettison this assumption, we recognize the possibility that we can understand alien texts by fusing our horizons with theirs. I will argue that, while the assumption that horizons are fixed is indeed mistaken, it is not the mistake that engenders the problem of understanding across contexts, and thus the problem remains even after the mistake is rectified. The better Gadamerian solution, by contrast, challenges the idea that texts have ‘horizons’ in the first place. Gadamer contends that, by virtue of being written, texts are not bound to any one historical context, and are in fact ‘contemporaneous with every present.’ This account explains how genuine understanding is possible despite differences—even dramatic ones—between the text’s original context and that of the interpreter. In doing so, it provides a compelling response to the problem of understanding across contexts. THE LIMITS OF FUSION Gadamer agrees with the historicists that a successful interpreter cannot simply force the text she aims to understand into the framework of her own pre-existing concepts and assumptions. However, he rejects the idea that avoiding this requires her to leave her own horizon behind and transpose herself into the horizon of the text. Instead, he famously argues that what understanding requires is a ‘fusion’ of the interpreter’s horizon with that of the text. Gadamer argues that through the dialogical backand-forth of interpretation, the interpreter can be made aware of and suspend some of her prejudices (though never all of them at once) and come to recognize possibilities of meaning that were previously hidden from her view. The result is that she acquires a new, expanded horizon from which she can understand the subject matter of the text. This new horizon is still her own (thus there is no ‘transposition’ involved here) but it is also different from the horizon with which she initially encountered the text. Thus the fusion of horizons allows her to respect the alterity of the text while simultaneously allowing its claims to reach her. What I am calling the ‘canonical’ reading of Gadamer takes his discussion of the fusion of horizons to constitute his response to the problem of understanding across contexts. So construed, the response can be broken down into three main components. The first is the claim that the problem of understanding across contexts arises only on the assumption that historical contexts or horizons are something fixed, that is, that one’s historical situation locks one in to a particular way of understanding or conceptualizing the world. Second, the response claims that this assumption is false. Our historically-informed views of the world are not set in stone, but rather change and expand as we learn new truths and question old assumptions. Lastly, it is claimed that these changes and expansions can, under the right conditions, lead to an aufhebung of the differences between historically separated horizons.3 The interpreter achieves a new, broader horizon in which both her previous horizon and that of the text are included. This basic structure appears, in part or in whole, in a number of secondary works that discuss the fusion of horizons. Since my time today is short, I will focus on just one of them, David Vessey’s recent paper “Gadamer and the Fusion of Horizons.”4 Vessey’s task in that paper is to defend 3 4

This language is Gadamer’s own. See ibid., 307. David Vessey, “Gadamer and the Fusion of Horizons,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 17, no.

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Gadamer against E.D. Hirsch’s claim that Gadamer has failed to answer the fundamental question that guides his hermeneutics, namely “how can it be affirmed that the original sense of a text is beyond our reach and, at the same time, that valid interpretation is possible?” Hirsch argues that Gadamer not only does not, but cannot answer this question so long as he remains committed to “radical historicity,” the view that understanding is always bound to a historical context, and therefore limited.5 This objection is quite clearly a version of the problem of understanding across contexts. Hirsch’s contention is that Gadamer’s commitment to ‘radical historicity’ (i.e., what I have been calling ‘radical contextualism’) renders him unable to explain how it is possible for one to validly (i.e., correctly) interpret a text from an different historical context. After an illuminating discussion of the Husserlian roots of Gadamer’s notion of ‘horizon,’ Vessey explains why Hirsch’s criticism misses the mark. He writes, Horizons fuse when an individual realizes how the context of the subject matter can be weighted differently to lead to a different interpretation from the one initially arrived at. Either new information or a new sense of the relative significance of available information leads, at the very least, to an understanding of the contingency of the initial interpretation, quite possibly to a new understanding of the subject matter, and ideally to a new agreement between the two parties about the subject matter. In any case, the original understanding is surpassed and integrated into a broader, more informed understanding. Our horizons are broadened; we have a new perspective on our old views, and maybe new views as well. This is the meaning of ‘the fusion of horizons’. It should be clear, then, how Hirsch is mistaken. He has taken horizons to be fixed limits on understanding, and although it is true that at any moment the horizon is a limit on what can be understood, it doesn’t require extraordinary effort for the horizon to change and new understandings arise. The problem with thinking of horizons as limits is that one thinks of surpassing limits as crossing the horizons. In fact, as we’ve seen, to know what lies beyond a horizon doesn’t require crossing the horizon: it simply requires moving toward the horizon, or more aptly, moving to higher ground so that the previous horizon is included in a broader horizon.6 Here we have all the central features of the canonical account. The problem of understanding across contexts arises from the assumption that horizons are ‘fixed limits,’ but, Vessey explains, this assumption is false. Our horizons can be ‘broadened’ through fruitful encounters with the text. When all goes well, this can lead to an Aufhebung: the interpreter can acquire a new, ‘broader’ horizon that includes both her own previous horizon and that of the text. 7 As I said above, I think the canonical account to which Vessey gives voice here is inadequate, but I want to be clear about what I am not claiming. First, I am not siding with Hirsch over against Gadamer. I think Gadamer is right that understanding requires an expansion of our horizons, and I

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4 (2009): 531–542; Cf. Joel C. Weinsheimer, Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), 183–84; James Risser, Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other: ReReading Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1997), 80–81; Lauren Swayne Barthold, “Hans-Georg Gadamer,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, June 8, 2017, http://www.iep.utm.edu/; Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor, Retrieving Realism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 110–13. E.D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1967), 254; Qtd. in Vessey, “Gadamer and the Fusion of Horizons,” 526. “Gadamer and the Fusion of Horizons,” 534. Vessey’s example of what interpreting Descartes involves is illustrative here. See Ibid., 533.

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agree with Vessey that Hirsch (and the historicists) are mistaken in thinking of horizons as fixed limits. Second, I am not claiming that the canonical account rests on a misinterpretation of Gadamer. Gadamer really does say the things that the canonical interpretation attributes to him. Rather, my claim is that, regardless of what other merits is might have, and regardless of what Gadamer thought it could accomplish, the fusion of horizons is not a good response to the problem of understanding across contexts. Why not? The problem I see comes to the fore when we consider the fact—which neither Gadamer nor any of his later interpreters would dream of denying—that the aufgehoben of an alien horizon can never be total. However much I might expand my horizon in the course of dialogue with a historical text, this expanded horizon will never completely include the text’s original historical horizon. Thus, even after the fusion of horizons has done all the work it can, there will remain contextual differences between myself and the text I aim to interpret. The differences might be less pronounced, but they will be genuine differences all the same. So if I was worried that contextual differences would make it impossible for me to understand a text before the fusion of horizons began, then I will still be worried after it is complete. This problem stems from the fact that the canonical account does not address the heart of the worry raised by the problem of understanding across contexts. The problem arises from two ideas: (1) that meaning is ineliminably dependent on context, and (2) that interpreters occupy different contexts from the texts they interpret. These seem to entail that there must always be a disconnect between what a text means and what an interpreter takes it to mean. The meaning of the text will be a function of its context, and the meaning of the interpreter’s thoughts or words will be a function of her context. The former and the latter can never completely coincide, and thus, it would seem, an interpreter can never correctly understand what a text has to say. The idea that horizons can (partially) fuse simply does not reveal what is wrong with this line of thought. Defenders of the canonical account are not without a response to this objection, however. According to one common reading of Gadamer, the fact that the fusion of horizons reduces the differences between the interpreter’s horizon and that of the text is sufficient to respond to the problem at hand. A complete elimination of the differences is not necessary. Merold Westphal, for example, attributes to Gadamer the view that interpretation can never yield more than an approximation of the meaning of a text,8 and that our human attempts at understanding are, in this respect, always “imperfect.” 9 Nevertheless, Westphal argues, this imperfect understanding can be and frequently is good enough for practical purposes. It is is “sufficient for cooperative life together”10 and for “making it possible (sometimes) for us to live together without violence.”11 Westphal suggests that all we ought to mean by calling an interpretation ‘correct’ is that it is sufficient for these purposes. If Westphal is right, then the fusion of horizons really does address the problem of understanding across contexts. For, while the fusion of horizons cannot eliminate contextual differences, it can Merold Westphal, “Hermeneutical Finitude from Schleiermacher to Derrida,” in Between the Human and the Divine: Philosophical and Theological Hermeneutics, ed. Andrzej Wierciński (Toronto: The Hermeneutic Press, 2002), 54. 9 “Father Adam and His Feuding Sons: An Interpretation of the Hermeneutical Turn in Continental Philosophy,” in Overcoming Onto-Theology: Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001), 152, 158. 10 “Positive Postmodernism as Radical Hermeneutics,” in Overcoming Onto-Theology: Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001), 137. 11 “Father Adam and His Feuding Sons,” 2001, 157. 8

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mitigate them, and it is plausible to think that this mitigation will be sufficient in many cases for the social purposes Westphal highlights. However, there are reasons to be skeptical of Westphal’s proposed solution. His view might seem to be supported by Gadamer’s famous claim that “we understand in a different way, if we understand at all,”12 but this support is merely apparent. As Gadamer later clarifies, “every appropriation of tradition is historically different: which does not mean that each one represents only an imperfect understanding of it.”13 On Gadamer’s view, each correct interpretation of a text is different from every other, yet each is ‘perfect.’ Gadamer admits that this view is paradoxical, and we will examine this paradox below. For now it is sufficient to note that ‘understanding differently’ should not be read as meaning ‘understanding approximately’ or ‘imperfectly.’ Further, in order to approximate, there must be something that is approximated. So Westphal’s claim that even our best interpretations are only ever approximations implies the existence of a ‘real’ meaning that lies always beyond our understanding. But, we might ask, what is the status of this ‘real’ meaning? If we say that it is something known to the speaker or author, then we end up with a Cartesian conception of what meaning is—meaning turns out to be something essentially private to the speaker or author. Or, on the other hand, we might say that not even the speaker or author herself can do better than approximation. But now we have turned meaning into something essentially Kantian—we have a meaning-an-sich, which can exist only for a divine mind, never for ours.14 Both of these conceptions face serious philosophical difficulties, and Gadamer explicitly rejects both. He denies the intelligibility both of private languages and of meanings-in-themselves. 15 Thus, while Westphal’s interpretation makes sense of how the fusion of horizons might constitute an answer to the problem of understanding across contexts, it does so only by appeal to ideas that Gadamer rejects. Thus, however viable approximatism might be as a solution to the problem (and I have serious doubts about its prospects), it is not a viable account of Gadamer’s solution to it. At the same time, though, absent Westphal’s approximatist addendum, it is hard to see how the canonical account can function as a solution to the problem at all. I suggest that this should lead us to seek out a different sort of solution. THE CONTEMPORANEITY OF MEANING Discussions of the fusion of horizons have dominated interpreters’ attempts to explain Gadamer’s view on cross-cultural understanding. However, there is another, very different sort of response to be drawn from his work which avoids the difficulties we have noted with the canonical account. The heart of this response is an account of the temporality of meaning—that is, of what it is for a meaning to be ‘the same’ across time. Allow me to first explain, in some detail, what this temporality consists in, and then after doing so I will consider how this account of meaning’s temporality addresses the problem of understanding across contexts. Gadamer argues that meaning’s unique temporality comes to light most clearly when we consider the fact that language can be written. He explains, 12 13 14 15

Truth and Method, 297. Ibid., 473, emphasis mine. This appears to be Westphal’s view. Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Man and Language,” in Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. David E Linge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 65; Truth and Method, 473.

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The detachability of language from speaking derives from the fact that it can be written. In the form of writing, all tradition is contemporaneous with each present time … A written tradition is not a fragment of a past world, but has already raised itself beyond this into the sphere of the meaning that it expresses. The ideality of the word is what raises everything linguistic beyond the finitude and transience that characterize other remnants of past existence.16 Gadamer’s use of the term ‘ideality’ might conjure up Platonic ideas, but Gadamer takes care to dispel them. Meaning is ‘ideal’ in the sense that it is not bound to any particular time and place, but this does not mean that it occupies an eternal, changeless realm. Meaning is raised ‘beyond finitude and transience’ not by being outside of time, but by belonging to all times, by being ‘contemporaneous with each present time.’ Meaning is not ahistorical, but rather speaks directly into every historical context in which it might be encountered as if that context were its own. In invoking ‘contemporaneity’ here, Gadamer is hearkening back to an earlier discussion in Truth and Method, and this discussion helps shed light on his conception of meaning. In his treatment of the ‘temporality of the aesthetic’ Gadamer identifies two other examples of things that are “contemporaneous with every age:” artworks (especially works of performance art) and festivals. 17 Consider an instance of the latter: Marti Gras. The first thing to note here is that, like all festivals, Marti Gras exists only in being celebrated. You might read a book about the history of Marti Gras, or sit in on the meetings of the planning committee, but in neither case will you experience the festival itself. To do that, you have to be there and participate. That being said, there’s no one celebration of Marti Gras that you would need to attend to have experienced it. If you went to the one in New Orleans in 1975, then you’ve experienced it; so too if you celebrated Carnival in Rio last Spring. Though some celebrations may be more faithful to the spirit of the festival than others, there is no one celebration that, in principle, has priority. Importantly, this is true even of the first celebration of Marti Gras. Subsequent celebrations are not “a mere remembrance of the one that was originally celebrated.” Rather “from its inception—whether it was instituted in a single act or introduced gradually—the nature of the festival is to be celebrated regularly … It has its being only in becoming and return.”18 Thus this year’s celebration will be no less a celebration of Marti Gras than the very first one. If we are feeling metaphysical, these observations might tempt us to conclude that Marti Gras must be some sort of abstract object. For instance, we might think that Marti Gras is actually a group or set: it is the sum total of all its particular celebrations. This, however, would imply that each particular celebration is only a part of Marti Gras, and that is clearly not right. If you’ve been to Marti Gras just once, you’ve experienced the festival itself, not just a part of it. Alternatively, we might think that Marti Gras is a genus of which each particular celebration is a species. But that’s not right, either. For Marti Gras to be a genus, there would have to be some set of necessary and sufficient conditions in terms of which it can be defined, but with Marti Gras there are none. Each celebration of Marti Gras is different from every other, and, while it’s true that to count as a celebration of Marti Gras an event must have some features in common with previous celebrations, there is no one feature that must be present in all of them. A party can constitute a celebration of Marti Gras even if it is not overtly religious, even if there’s no booze, even if it does not occur on Shrove Tuesday. A festival, then, exhibits the “highly puzzling temporal structure” that Gadamer (borrowing from 16 Truth and Method, 390. 17 Ibid., 120. 18 Ibid., 123.

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Kierkegaard) calls ‘repetition.’ Every celebration of a festival is a “repetition of the same;” it is the same festival that is celebrated in each instance, despite the fact that every celebration is different from every other.19 The festival exists not behind or above these different celebrations, but precisely in and through them. The same, Gadamer says, is true of the symphony, which exists in and through its different performances. And—to return to the main line of thought—it is also true of linguistic meaning. Meaning exists only in being understood, and by dint of its occurring in different historical contexts, every understanding will be different from every other. Yet it is same meaning that comes to presentation in each case. This, Gadamer says, is “the paradox that is true of all traditionary material, namely of being one and the same and yet of being different.”20 Gadamer argues that the unique sort of temporality that characterizes meaning is deeply intertwined with a unique sort of normativity that governs interpretation. On Gadamer’s view, there can be no one ‘correct’ interpretation of a text. Irreducibly different interpretations, occurring in different contexts, may all be correct—not in the sense that they are all equally good approximations of the ‘real’ meaning, but in the straightforward sense that they all get it right. It is imperative to notice, however, that this does not entail that every interpretation is correct. To say that meaning exists only in the understanding of particular interpreters is not to say that a text means whatever the interpreter takes it to mean. To make meaning subjective in this way, Gadamer argues, would destroy the identity of meaning; it would leave us without any basis for saying that it is the same meaning that appears in each of the different understandings. As he explains with respect to the ‘repetition’ of artworks, To be dependent on self-presentation belongs to what it [the artwork] is. This means that however much it is transformed and distorted in being presented, it still remains itself. This constitutes the obligation of every presentation: that it contain a relation to the structure itself and submit itself to the criterion of correctness that derives from it . Even the extreme case of a completely distortive presentation confirms this. It is known as a distortion inasmuch as the presentation is intended and judged to be the presentation of the structure.21 What makes a performance of an artwork a performance of that artwork is the fact that it holds itself accountable to a certain norm, a ‘criterion of correctness.’ This is what allows us to identify a bad performance of, for example, Beethoven’s 5th Symphony as such. It is a performance of that symphony because it is attempting to accord with the norm that derives from the symphony’s structure; it is a bad performance because it fails in this attempt. Thus, if we gave up on the idea that performances could be good or bad, if we said that all of them are equally good, we would leave ourselves unable to account for the idea that different performances are performances of the same work. The same is true of textual meaning. We can account for different interpretations being interpretations of the same text only if we see them as answerable to some criterion of correctness that stems from the text itself. 22 In seeing meaning as essentially normative in this way, Gadamer agrees with Hirsch and the historicists. However, his view differs from theirs in two crucial respects. First, for Gadamer the relevant norm is rooted in the text itself, not in the intentions of the author or expectations of the original audience. What makes an interpretation right or wrong is that it fits the text, or does not fit it. It is irrelevant whether the interpretation corresponds to anything in the mind of the author or original audience. Second, on Gadamer’s view whether a given interpretation counts as having fulfilled the norm of the text will depend on the context in which the interpretation is offered. 19 20 21 22

Ibid., 122. Ibid., 473. Ibid., 122, emphasis mine. See ibid., 397.

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Interpretation is always motivated by particular concerns and questions, and these constitute the background against which questions of ‘fit’ must be evaluated. To use an oversimplified, but hopefully illustrative, example: suppose I say that Heidegger argues for anti-realism in Being and Time. Does this interpretation fit the text of Being and Time, or not? It seems clear that the answer to this question will hinge on the context in which my claim is made. In the context of a discussion about the differences between Heidegger and Descartes, it might well be correct. Offered as evidence of Heidegger’s deep affinity with Quine, probably not. Thus, on Gadamer’s account, successful interpretation requires not only careful attention to the language of the text, but also a phronesis-like attunement to how that language bears on the concerns of the situation in which one finds oneself. Gadamer’s account of correctness, therefore, consists neither in rejecting the demand that understanding be correct (ala subjectivism), nor denying that the demand can ever be met (ala Westphal). It is more radical than this. Gadamer does not accept the traditional understanding of correctness as correspondence with an context-insensitive norm, but rather reinscribes correctness withing a philosophy of finitude. To interpret correctly is not to correspond to some eternal standard, but to construe the text in a way that is appropriate given one’s unique context. With all of this in place, let us return to the problem of understanding across contexts. The radical and innovative picture of meaning just sketched provides a very different solution to the problem than the one envisaged by the canonical account. The problem, as we have seen, stems from the idea that interpreters typically occupy different historical contexts from the texts they aim to understand. However, on the account just rehearsed, this assumption is not true. There is no context that is proper to a text, so it cannot be the case that the text’s proper context differs from that of the interpreter. Whatever the interpreter’s context might be, it is one with which the text, simply in virtue of being a text, is ‘contemporaneous.’ Of course, most texts have an author and a time and place at which they were originally composed,23 but this original setting does not constitute a horizon for the text. The text’s historical origin does not place limits on what it can say in the way that our horizons (despite their malleability) place limits on us. The ideality of meaning entails that a text can ‘detach’ itself from context in a way that we cannot. This amounts not so much to a solution to the problem of understanding across contexts as a dissolution of it. If we accept Gadamer’s account the temporality of meaning, then there simply can be no special problem of understanding across contexts. The task of rightly interpreting Plato, for example, is not essentially different from that of interpreting a paper written last week by a good friend. In both cases, the correctness of my interpretation hinges on types of demands: those made by the text itself, and those made by my particular interpretive context, and if I live up to these demands then my interpretation is correct. But neither of these commands stems from the text’s original context. Put bluntly, the original context need not factor into things at all. This is not to say that facts about the original situation are never relevant to interpretation; in many cases, they are.24 But whether the original context matters, and, if so, which aspects of it, is determined by my horizon, not the original horizon of the text. The text’s original horizon makes no demands of its own; it does not constitute an independent norm to which understanding is answerable. 25 Thus 23 Though not all texts—consider the Bible. 24 Gadamer cites poetry (especially lyric poetry) as an example of a case where the importance of the original context is at a minimum. This ability to completely sever ties to original context is what makes poetry a ‘statement’ [Aussage] par excellence. See Truth and Method, 469–70. 25 As Gadamer puts it, “if emphasis has been—rightly—placed on the fact that all meaning is related to the I, this means, as far as the hermeneutical experience is concerned, that all meaning of what is handed down to

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there is not, as the problem of understanding across contexts supposes, some special philosophical problem raised by the question of how this norm can be met. There is no historical chasm over which understanding must leap. CONCLUSION The canonical account is right in thinking that the problem of understanding across contexts arises from a faulty assumption, but it misidentifies what this assumption is. It is not the assumption that horizons are fixed, as opposed to movable, limits on understanding, but rather the assumption that texts have horizons in the first place. Gadamer’s considered view is that this assumption is false, however much his talk of ‘fusing horizons’ with the text might muddy the waters, and his considered resolution of the problem to note the peculiar historicity of language. Language, to be sure, is historical. If it exists at all, it does so only in the ‘event of a moment’ that is understanding. But, as ideal, language is not historical in the way that flesh and blood human beings like you and I are. Meaning achieves a historical infinity in being contemporaneous with each present time—one that transcends our historical finitude while at the same time making itself present within it.

us finds its concretion (i.e., is understood) in its relation to the understanding I—and not in reconstructing the originally intending I. (Ibid., 473.)

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