ments on his interlocutors, treats Gadamer as if the two have
little to say to each other. At least this is how Gadamer took
Derrida’s words.^3
The debate between Gadamer and Derrida, which has
often been called a nonencounter, founders on the gap be-
tween these two remarkable thinkers. Derrida constructs a
version of Western thought in which consciousness wants to
have meaning under full control (the logocentric imperative).
Such control can only be broken, according to Derrida, by a re-
alization of the radical, ungovernable drift of language. Meta-
physics is answered by skepticism: or, rather, an image of it is
answered, since skepticism has remade metaphysics for its own
purposes.
For Gadamer, in contrast to Derrida, the philosophical
tradition begins with and ultimately comes back to Socratic
dialogue: a format in which conversational partners, even as
they strive against each other, try together to establish a shared
sense of an important subject (say, justice or virtue). We can-
not lock up meaning, and we do not really want to. What we
want instead is to subject ourselves to an ongoing process of
discovery: the dialogue with a book or person that remains
guided by a shared interest. Even the most obscure works of art
enter into such a conversation with us, according to Gadamer.
Despite Gadamer’s hostility toward psychoanalysis, which is
motivated by his wariness concerning displays of expertise, he
believes in the therapeutic power of interpretation. The work
of art knows, and imparts this knowledge without insisting on
mastery (as the psychoanalyst does, according to Gadamer).
Gadamer’s Heideggerian emphasis on the uncanny power
of the work of art is not completely foreign to Derrida. Indeed,
Derrida’s essays on the poet Paul Celan share a patient angle of
approach with Gadamer’s dignified meditation on Celan, en-
188 Gadamer, Celan, de Man, Heidegger