Circular Foundations 303aesthetic judgement, Kant subjectivized it in notions such as ‘taste’. Thus, the aes-
thetic is denied anyrealcognitive value. In consequence, the methodically orientated
sciences are viewed as the premise of objective cognitive knowledge and all else is
subjective (non-cognitive). Kant thus unwittingly facilitates (via his judgement of
aesthetics) the exclusion of the human sciences (in general) from the realm of genu-
ine cognitive knowledge, unless, of course, they take on the truth-bearing properties
of the natural sciences. The history of the human and social sciences in the twentieth
century is then the sad tale of a desperate attempt to adopt method-based reason.
This is, for Gadamer, bound to fail, and thus the equation of method with truth is the
root to the decline in the human and social sciences.
The gist of the bookTruth and Method, therefore, is not concerned with introducing
a new or better method. It is rather focused on a deep rooted critique of the whole
association of ‘truth’ with ‘scientific’ or ‘empirically-based method’. Science-based
method is neither the truth, nor is it appropriate for the human sciences. The central
argument that Gadamer makes here is that the scientific method-based view, and
indeed the Enlightenment itself,are, in fact, unselfconscious deep-rooted prejudices.
To reiterate the point made earlier, in rehabilitating prejudice and reminding the
method-based sciences that they are also based on prejudice, Gadamer is not asking
us to be uncritical. He is, in fact, asking for a more thorough-going criticism, and it is
hermeneutics, which invokes this demand. The hermeneutical experience, as he puts
it, is ‘prior to all methodical alienation because it is the matrix out of which arise the
questions that it then directs to science’ (Gadamer 1977: 26).
Gadamer has no overt foundational claims to make concerning politics or ethics. He
is rather—in his own terms—describing human understanding. One important con-
sequence of this argument is that method-based reason and science, which is premised
on the rigid separation of prejudice and reason, logically implodes (see Gadamer 1977:
10).^13 Gadamer therefore resists the idea that we can wend our way around or repu-
diate our prejudices by using science-based method or universal reason. This is a
delusion, which the whole argument ofTruth and Methodis designed to counter.
However, Gadamer is also insistent that hermeneutics is not designed to undermine
the natural or social sciences.^14 Conversely, hermeneutics can act as a handmaid,
reminding science of what it can and cannot claim for itself. The paramount task of
hermeneutics is to encourage us to critically and rigorously reflect on our own pre-
judices (Gadamer 1977: 93). If the hermeneutic task is fulfilled, then it becomes clear
that natural science method is not the highest authority in knowledge. It is a valid
form of knowledge, but it is one amongst many forms. Thus, hermeneutical reflec-
tion tries ‘to preserve us from naïve surrender to the experts of social technology’
(Gadamer 1977: 40).
Dialogue and Fusion
What role does hermeneutics have in relation to ethics and politics? One of the
assumptions concerning hermeneutics is that it is just a way of interpreting and