308 The Nature of Political Theory‘method’, qua natural science, can be true in any absolute manner. We cannot put
aside our prejudices or tradition, since to speak, to analyse, to converse, to inter-
pret is to invoke them immediately. In one sense, prejudices and traditions are the
transcendental conditions of any dialogue. The major issue here is whether we actu-
ally recognize our situation and work self-critically and openly with our prejudices.
We need, therefore, to make our own fore-structure clear to ourselves and others.
This ‘making clear’ to others, in dialogue, situates us in an already interpreted world
of traditions. It is also a process of dialectic andBildung(growth and maturity of
the individual).
Further, the process of dialogue and conversation is understood as a ‘fusion of
horizons’, which implies that in dialogue our own prejudices mutate and potentially
fuse with other prejudices. In this sense, the circle is productive and creative for indi-
viduals, it continuously reminds us not only of our fallibility, finitude, temporal, and
historical character, but, it also offers us the possibility of change and creative growth.
For Gadamer, genuine dialogue (as mentioned earlier) not only means the poten-
tial for fusing traditions and prejudices, developing new perspectives and growing
(Bildung), but it also gives rise to a form of momentary ‘loss of self’ or ‘I-lessness’.
Thus, he describes conversation as a form of buoyant play, where the play itself over-
takes and absorbs the players into itself. A fourth feature is the negative character
of human experience. To genuinely experience for Gadamer is negative. It means to
have one’s prejudices overturned or altered. Genuine experience therefore does not
confirm an established truth, but challenges it. Finally, to grasp the radical aspect of
language and experience is to be aware of the infinity of interpretations. Every word
we use, as Gadamer puts it, is surrounded by a ‘circle of the unexpressed’. It should
be stressed here immediately that, for Gadamer, these philosophical (phenomenolo-
gical) ‘devices’ of the hermeneutic circle, fusing horizons, intersubjective play (as loss
of self), negative experience and infinite possibilities for interpretation areuniversal
aspects of being human.
In my own reading, all of these claims in Gadamer have powerful ethical and
political implications. Ethics and politics, for Gadamer, cannot be simply reduced to
techniques or methods (travestied in the modern preoccupation with rational choice).
No universal principles can be deduced from foundational principles to show us where
to go. However, it is clear, on one level, that individuals do have a range of possible
substantive norms and practice available, via their own rich traditions and prejudices.
We can only reflect on what wealreadyknow as ethics or politics.^21 Gadamer clearly
wants to emphasize this. However, he adds a twist to this apparently conservative
and relativist appearance. Gadamer’s own theory works at a more subtle, pragmatic,
and complex level than simply the practice of existing moral or political prejudices.
His theory contends that it is thenatureof all human practice that judgements and
interpretations continuously circle back to our fore-understandings. Once we are
aware of this ontological circle, it makes us alert to our own fallibility and finiteness,
particularly in our ‘knowing’ within politics and ethics. It creates a predisposition
not to universalize combatively our moral or political prejudices. We are aware of our
own and all others’ fallibility.