obeys the essential nature of speaking: it says.” 16 This speculative element
obtains both in language where hermeneutic experience happens, and as
language acting upon the hermeneutic agent.
Language is not an object “but instead comprehends everything that
can be an object” ( TM , 404). For Gadamer this means “all that is and can
be for us is language.” 17 One accesses the world of things in, through,
and by language. Words manifest the being of the things about which
they speak. 18 Language, then, is a medium but not a mere conduit; it
is the space and time in and during which Being happens. To this end,
language performs an “advance work” ( TM , 430–431). 19 Present speech
is grounded in prior speech that is always already dependent upon and is
an outgrowth of speech—and all this happens in language, or is an event
of language as the medium of one’s being-in-the-world. Thus, human
being-in-the-world is “primordially linguistic” ( TM , 443). World presents
itself in language; world is not mediated by language as though coming
from somewhere outside language and leading toward somewhere else
outside language ( TM , 452). Rather, world presents itself , is made present
in language; language is the medium and also the site where world hap-
pens. Language provides a clearing where world comes to expression in
language. World, then, is not objectifi ed in language but has its being and
existence as world in language. “Whoever has language ‘has’ the world”
( TM , 453).
That which comes through language in tradition announces itself
personally ( TM , 358). 20 “Whatever says something to us is like a person
who says something ... It is this way with all speech. Not only does it say
something, but someone says something to someone else.” 21 Hermeneutic
encounters are possible “only because the word that has come down to
us as tradition and to which we are to listen really encounters us and does
so as if it addressed us and is concerned with us” ( TM , 461). In this way,
the interpreter becomes the interpreted; the one who questions tradition
is now questioned by it. Wright highlights the personal character of this
interplay: “Language, as conversation, is the medium ( Mitte ) that joins
the I to the Thou and the Thou to the I as a we.” 22 Tradition addresses
one who lives within it as a Thou who speaks and makes a claim upon the
I who listens.
Gadamer’s perspective yields the following ontological fruit: fi rst, every
human experience is dependent upon as happening within language–
one cannot get around, behind, before, or beyond language. Second,
experiences in language are not under the control of those who endure
36 C.C. EMERICK