Interpretation Explanation and Interpretation The natural sciences explain

Interpretation

Explanation and Interpretation The natural sciences explain things. • To explain an object is to subsume it under exception-less laws of nature. To explain why rocks fall (on earth) requires showing that rocks are subject to the law of gravity. The human sciences (anthropology, history, political science, literature, etc. ), in contrast, understand things by interpreting them. • We cannot explain human behavior, texts, art works, equipment, and social phenomena, by subsuming them under a natural law. We cannot because they are meaningful objects. • An example: My friend does not come to my party. Why not? Perhaps they were just busy. But I know that they have been a bit cold to me for the last several weeks. Perhaps in not coming they are sending me a message. What message? In asking these questions I an interpreting the behavior of my friend. I am tying to make sense of it, give it meaning. We can ask the same interpretive questions about Napoleon’s or Hamlet’s behavior. Heidegger is going to argue that interpretation is not just a local technique used in the human sciences, but is a basic feature of Dasein’s being.

Understanding, Projection, and Meaning • To understand an entity is to disclose its being by projecting it into a space of possibilities. I understand a piece of chalk when I understand what I can do with it (hold it, write with it, etc. ) in light of my ability or potentiality of being a teacher. • The chalk shows up as chalk in light of this projection, it makes sense or has meaning in terms of it.

Meaning The meaning of an entity is determined by this projection. Meaning is not the entity ‘itself’, but its possible roles in a ‘space of possibilities’. This space is the ‘upon-which’ we project, it is the ‘wherein’ in which something’s intelligibility maintains itself. – Meaning is “the ‘upon-which’ of a projection in terms of which something becomes intelligible as something, ” and it “is that wherein the intelligibility of something maintains itself” (193). Nonetheless, in understanding, I understand the chalk, not its meaning or sense. This is because the background space of possibilities into which it is projected is for the most part only tacitly grasped. The meaning recedes to the background while the entity which is understood as something, stands out as what is understood.

The As-Structure To demonstrate, Heidegger uses the example of our dealing with ready-to-hand things. In using something, we always already understand it as something. • “That which is disclosed in understanding. . . is already accessible in such a way that its ‘as which’ can be made to stand out explicitly. The ‘as’ makes up the structure of explicitness of something that is understood. It constitutes the interpretation. In dealing with the environment readyto-hand by interpreting it circumspectively, we ‘see’ it as a table, door, a carriage, or a bridge; but what we have interpreted need not necessarily be also taken apart by making an assertion which definitely characterizes it” (189)

The as-Structure and Assertion Heidegger argues that our taking something as something is prior to an act of assertion, and act where I assert explicitly that something is something. • In an assertion, I assign a concept to a subject, for example the assertion: ‘The car is red’. In saying this, I take the car as a car already. Because I already understand, am familiar with, the Being of cars, I can say specific things about cars.

Interpretation • In understanding something as something by projecting it into an already understood background of possibilities, we interpret it. We interpret something whenever we take it as something. • Interpretation is a part of, or a moment of, understanding. “In interpretation, understanding does not become something different. It becomes itself” (188). • It is the moment of understanding when something holds itself out to us as manifest against a tacitly understood background of possibilities. Interpretation is a process of making the implicit explicit.

Interpretation and Subjectivity Many think of interpretation as a subjective process. For instance, one might say that an interpretation of an art work is subjective: we give it a meaning by taking it to have a meaning. But Heidegger thinks this is wrong. “In interpreting, we do not, so to speak, throw a ‘signification’ over some naked thing which is present-at-hand, we do not stick a value on it; but when something within the world is encountered as such, the thing in question already has an involvement which is disclosed in our understanding of the world, and this involvement is one which gets laid out by the interpretation” (190 -191). There is never a moment in which something is not already understood as involved with other things and within in a space of possibilities, never a moment in which it is a bare thing. Rather, it already fits, and is interpreted as fitting, into the world and our way of being-in-the-world. The as-structure can fail, things can becomes meaningless or absurd (193). But this is a kind of limit experience which illuminates our normal dwelling within meaning.

Self-Interpretation Given that Dasein’s Being is Being-in-the-world, in interpreting the world we are also interpreting our existence, and vice versa. – In understanding a piece of chalk by projecting it into a space of possibilities (its ability to be held, written with, etc. ), I must already understand these possibilities, and to understand this I must understand things like classrooms, blackboards, as well as activities like lecturing, drawing diagrams, etc. I must understand the world in which the chalk dwells. – But to understand these things and activities I must understand how they fit into possible ways for me to be or exist, for instance being a teacher. My understanding of the world in which chalk fits, classrooms, blackboards, etc. makes sense because it also discloses a possible way for me to be, a teacher. While we interpret things, the primary object of interpretation is actually Dasein and its way of Being. I exist interpretively, I am a self-interpreting Being; a Being whose Being is disclosed through my interpretation of the possibilities of my Being. In interpreting myself as a teacher I free things and activities to be interpreted as something, and my interpretation of things as the things they are reflects my self-interpretation.

The Understanding of Being The most encompassing background understanding of things, world, and existence Heidegger calls one’s understanding of Being. • “Understanding of Being has already been taken for granted in projecting upon possibilities. In projection, Being is understood, though not ontologically conceived. An entity whose kind of Being is the essential projection of Being-in-the-world has understanding of Being, and has this as constitutive for its Being” (187 -8). In projecting into possibilities one already has a tacit understanding of those possibilities, which depends on understanding the entities and activities which make up a world, which depends on an interpretation of one’s existence or way of being, all of which depends on one’s understanding of Being.

Meaning and Being What we understand in understanding Being is the way that world, existence, and things in the world most fundamentally make sense or have meaning. • “If we are inquiring about the meaning of Being, our investigation does not then become a ‘deep’ one, nor does it puzzle out what stands behind Being. It asks about Being itself insofar as Being enters into the intelligibility of Dasein. The meaning of Being can never be contrasted with entities, or with Being as the ‘ground’ which gives entities support; for a ‘ground’ becomes accessible only as meaning” (194). We interpret entities in light of their potential role in a space of possibilities. which details their meaning. But this meaning means what it means only in light of our tacit understanding of a more encompassing meaning, the meaning of Being. This is nothing deep, is just details the outer extent or most general horizon of what we tacitly understand in understanding how things generally are.

Example • Lets say that I interpret things not in terms of the possibility of being a teacher, but in terms of the possibility of being a shaman or holy person. In this case, I would interpret myself in a radically different way, and I would accordingly disclose a very different world. • Within that world which is already tacitly understood, I would interpret things as things very differently than the teacher because the space of possibilities that I would project things into would be radically different.

Structure of Interpretation I understand something as something because I grasp the totality of its involvements in advance, and I grasp this because I grasp how it fits into the world and into possibilities of my Being, and I grasp this because I grasp Being. As such, “an interpretation is never a presuppositionless apprehending something presented to us” (191 -2). My interpretation is always “grounded in something we have in advance” (191), in a ‘fore-having’, ‘fore-sight’, and a ‘fore-conception’. - Fore-having: - Fore-sight: - Fore-conception:

Presuppositions or Prejudices • My making sense of something by interpreting it is based in an already given background understanding of Being. We can never understand things from a neutral position, for in that position we have no basis upon which to mount an interpretation. Presuppositions or ‘prejudices’ are necessary conditions for interpretation. • I can only interpret my friends behavior because I already know a lot about their character and typical behavior. Without these prejudices, I could not interpret him. • The question is not whether to have prejudices or not, but to have one’s prejudices not be informed by “fancies or popular conceptions, ” to “[work] out these fore-structures in terms of the things themselves” (195).

The Hermeneutic Circle • I interpret particular things in light of my general understanding of things, and my general understanding of things is articulated through my interpretations of particular things. • Here we have to circle, the hermeneutic circle, mentioned in the Introduction. See 194 -195.