ABSTRACT
Hans-Georg Gadamer begins the chapter in Truth and Method entitled “The Rediscovery of the Hermeneutical Problematic” with a significant tactic: he cites the eighteenth-century Pietist J. J. Rambach’s definition of hermeneutics as tripartite, as a subtilitas intelligendi, explicandi, applicandi, or subtlety in knowing, interpreting, and applying. Dilthey’s contribution was the linkage of philosophical seriousness and hermeneutic perspicacity. But Peirce also combines philology and philosophy; he demonstrates a genial philological virtuosity in his brilliant critique of contemporary (German!) philology, “The Logic of Drawing Testimony from Ancient Documents.” Peirce’s primary devotion is to inquiry itself: when he claims that “the sole motive, idea and function” of thought is to produce beliefs and that “the soul and meaning of thought can never be made to direct itself toward anything but the production of belief,” he immediately engages rhetorical interests.
