Circular Foundations 297lifeworld. In Heidegger, it is the ‘fore-structure’, which is grounded in our existential
situation.^6 This fore-structure ‘is intended to be a hermeneutics of everything that is
at work behind statements. It is an interpretation of Dasein’s care structure, which
expresses itself before and behind every judgment’ (see Grondin 1991: 93). This
kind of pre-given ability with knowing is something that, for Heidegger, remains
underneath the whole process of scientific understanding through formal proposi-
tions. We should not assume though that all efforts at scientific understanding are
simply dealing with determinate (what Heidegger calls) ‘present-to-hand’ objects.
Such an assumption often leads to conceptual misunderstanding, that is, if it only
focuses on the formal propositions. In one sense, for Heidegger, the history of
Western philosophy has been a long litany of conceptual misrepresentations of ‘Being’.
There is therefore a crucial distinction in Heidegger between ‘Being’ and the diverse
‘representations of being’. Actual Being is distinct from ‘Being in thought’ or (as
Heidegger puts it) the ‘what of Being’. It is the latter idea, which has dominated
Western philosophy from the Greeks onwards and which distorts the reality of Being.
One additional facet of the idea of a fore-structure is that we do not create or
constitute it, we are rather ‘thrown’ into it (see Gadamer 1977: 49). It is here—at least
in the initial stages of Heidegger’s thought—that hermeneutic interpretation is seen as
the subtle elucidation of this fore-structure. Interpretation is about enabling the fore-
structured understanding to acquire translucence. Thus, in every valid interpreta-
tion, the aim is to become reflectively aware of the fore-structure of understanding.
For Heidegger, the elucidation is not concerned with conceptually grasping a state
of affairs, but rather with unfolding the possibilities of Being, or allowing Being
to disclose itself. In Gadamer, this idea of fore-structure becomes transmuted into
the concepts of prejudice and tradition. However, understanding, for Gadamer, is
not a rigorous conceptual analysis by an autonomous subject, it is rather about
a participating in a historical tradition of language and dialogue. The other issue
which arises here in the fore-structure—and within Gadamer’s notion of tradition
and prejudice—is the hermeneutic circle (which will be returned to). Essentially, the
circle implies that the interpretation moves back continuously to the fore-structured
understanding. This circular motion of interpretation and the understanding is not
an epistemological trap for Heidegger, it is rather ontological. It is of the fundamental
nature of all human understanding and interpretation. Every act of understanding is
conditioned by underlying prejudices or fore-structure. It is irremediablyhowand
whowe are. It therefore is not a logically vicious circle.
Language, History, and Prejudice
Hermeneutics therefore is not seen by Gadamer as just another method for the human
or social sciences. His central theme is the ‘linguisticality’ and ‘dialogic’ character of all
human experience.^7 Gadamer, in rejecting Dilthey’s hermeneutics, moves the discus-
sion away from the method-based study of the ‘cultural sciences’ and the psychology
of the reflective subject. Like Habermas, he rejects the idea of the subject in favour of