ABSTRACT
A recurring criticism of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics is that it is unable to account for the normativity of interpretation—in other words, that it provides no way to distinguish correct interpretations of a text or utterance from misinterpretations. This chapter focuses on the version of this criticism recently developed by Kristin Gjesdal and aims to defend Gadamer against it. It argues, first, that Gjesdal misunderstands what motivates Gadamer to reject traditional criteria of objective validity in interpretation. This rejection does not, as Gjesdal contends, arise from Gadamer’s ‘political humanist’ desire for authenticity, but rather from his ‘substantive’ account of the nature of interpretation. According to this view, the aim of interpretation is not to discover an author’s beliefs about a given subject matter, but rather to discover the truth about the subject matter itself. This account of interpretation is at odds with many traditional views about the norms to which interpretation is subject, but it is not at odds with interpretive normativity as such. On the contrary, it implies that interpretation is subject to a norm that Gadamer calls the ‘fore-conception of completeness,’ which enjoins interpreters to read a text in as charitable a way as the text itself will allow.
