in the shadow of hegel
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IN THE SHADOW OF HEGEL 8 7
m ark of dista nce lliaL docs no i constitute a rea l difference at all. U
can be argued that Gadamer's whole of tradition is bnt a vat^iation
on tlie Hegelian "truth is the whole," that dialogi-te remains wedded
to determination not utilikc Hegelian concrete univcrsalit)-, and that
the movement of tradition iy not unlike the tnovcment of spirit tiiat
wants to make itself at home in the world,
The problem with respect to the tiattire of this distance has much
to do with the fact that, unlike Heidegger, Gadamer continues to ref-
erence finitude in relation to infinity and to iink understattditig to a
process of mediatioti. C'onsider the way in which Gadamer annoutices
his project in the Preface to
Truth and
Method. As a philosophical con-
cern, the project of pliilosophical hermeneutics wants to "discover what
is common to all tnodcs of understanding"
{TM,
xxxi). VVliat is to be
diseovered is the fact that un de rsta nd ing is eattght up in an "effective
history'" that is prior to all conseioiis itiietiding of meaning. This con-
dition of always thinking from histoty is die mark of our finittidc:
'Historically effected eonsciousness," Gadamer writes, "iy so radically
finite that our whole being, effected in the totality of otir destiny,
inevitably transcends its knowledge of
it,self" {TM,
xxxiv). From this
condition of htiitude, ofthe infinite separation of being from its undcr-
.standing, Gadamer further claims that "the province of hermeneutics
is u n iv e rs a l and adds "thai: langua ge is the form in whieh unde r-
standing is aeliieved" (TAf, xxxiv). On the basis of Gadamer's snbse-
quetit analysis in
Triilh and
Method.,
we know that this achievement ol
understanditig by language enaets a peculiar tnediation: Uuough lati-
guage the strueture of experienee is formed and constandy changed
whereby the order of being comes itito existence as if for the lirst
time.
This dynamie of langitage, whieh in efiect is the self-retation of
language to its own differenee, occurs as dialogue. Thus Gadamei'
writes in the Preface that nnderstatiding is achieved in "the infinity of
the dialogne"
{TM,
xxxivj.
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9 0 JAMES RISSER
II
Let
us
begin here
by
recalling Hegel's idea
of the
spurious
or "bad"
infinite. It is an infinity that is not yet a true infinite. It functions by
being unable Losever its relation to the finite, wliicfi entails both lim-
itation and nonbeing. Finitude is at once determination as limitation,
i.e.. a determination determined by not being itsotlier, and that which
is negatively related to itself, i.e., a determination that alters sucii that
it ceases to be. Finite beings, Hegel tells us, "have the germ of pass-
ing away [Vergehens]
as
their being-vvithin-itself
the
hour
of
their birth
is the hour of their d ea th ." " C onsidered dialectieally, the infinite as
such emerges when the understanding attempts to grasp the limil of
the finite, but in holding on to a notion of limit, vanishes into this
other: the infinite is held fast to the finite. Such an infinity is spuri-
ous, an infinite diat is itself finite. Unable to escape limit, the spuri-
ous infiniLe progresses to infinity; it is an infinity of infinite progress,
an infinite related to transcending limitation.The tnie infinite for Hcgcl
overcomes limitation sueh that it is the relation of itself to itself
When Gadamer then acknowledges thathe wishes to save the honor
of the bad infinity, we have to locate first the context for this remark
and decide on its intended meaning before we let it elecidc the ques-
tion of an infinite dialogue. There are two places in Gadamer's writ-
ings where we find more than a passing reference to this idea.'- In
both places Gadamer introduces the idea in tlie context of recogniz-
ing the infiuence of Hegel on hisphilo sophica i p roject, while alsorec-
ognizing the infiuenee of Heidegger. From this context, I would not
argue, however, as a critic ofG adamer has recently done, ' ' that Gada-
m er is primarily drawn to the spirit of Hegel's philosophy, a philoso-
phy of spirit unfoldiug to its end, but under the infiuence of Heidegger
and the hermeneutics of" facticity. knows full well that the unfolding
can never complete itself. In other words, the very fact that Gadamer
is drawn
to
Hegel
in the
first plaee indicates that
the
function
of
fini-
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IN THE SHADOW OF HEGEL
91
theon' of essence and aeUiality'"'and ignore the distinctive way tliat
possibility an d self-difference function in G ad am er 's hcrm cne utics . Th a t
is to say, it is true that for Gadamer eveiy conversation is endless
thus the inhnite dialogue does indeed have a sense of being a bad
inh nity bu t it is not neeessarily an unfo lding (of t ie sam e), for as
G ad am er insists, wh en we unde rstan d we und erstand differently.'- '
G iven th e full im plications of this altern ative idea, 1 wo uld arg ue
that saving die honor of the bad inhnity is intended to recognize pre-
cisely the Heid egg erian radica l hn itud e that determ ine s l ie very cha r-
acter of an inhnite dialogue. But if this is indeed the case, then why
does G ad am er turn to He ge in the hrst place? T h e answer to this
question becomes clear when we follow Gadamer's own explanation
of w hat it m ean s to save the hon or o ft h e bad infinity. In "Reflections
on My Philosophical Jo ur ne y," G ad am er leads up to this ann ou nce -
ment by contrasting Heidegger with Hegel on the issue of tiie philo-
sophical thinking of being. Gadamer sees Heidegger, in teaching us to
think trudi as unconcealing and concealing at the same time, as pre-
senting a fundamental alternadve to Hegel's philosophical thinking of
being. For Gadamer himself, thinking in the tradition stands within
this tension, and thus he writes: "The concepts in which thinking is
formulated stand silhouetted like dark shadows on a wall. They work
in a one-sided way . . . in a process of which [they are] no t a w are .""'
On the basis of tliis remark alone we can say that if conversation is
endless, it is not, to state the matter precisely, because the end delays
its arrival, but because there is an occlusion in the heart oi all
conceptual tliinkinga blindness that cannot be confused with the
one-sidedncss that occurs in dialectical thinking. It is a blindness that
pertains to the veiy historical character of concepts in language. As
productions of language, concepts arc, for Gadamer, what they are
for Heidegger, not artifices of dehnitions, but determinations of the
historical life of being that undergo a self-alienation, the recovery from
which entails a step back from dialectic. In this step back, Gadamer
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9 2 JAMES RISSKR
Heidegger's in that he loo wants to "shatter the predominance of sub-
jectivism" and "the transcendental principle of the
self"
It is on this
po int, w hich, positively stated, pertain s to ihe self-presentation ol'b ein g
through the speculative element in dialectical thinldng, tliat Gadamer
wishes to align himscH' with H eg el.'" O n the basis of this alTinity,
Gadamer then tells us that as a first determination of the site of his
own effort at thinking, he wants to save the lionor of HcgePs bad
infinity, but with a decisive modification. Tiie key passage reads: 'Tor
in m y view th e inliniie dialog ue of the soul with itseii' which tliinldng
is,
is not properly characterized as an endlessly refined cletcrmiiiation
of the objects that we are seeking to know, either in the Neo-Kantian
sense ofthe infinite task or in the Hegelian dialeetieal sense that think-
ing is always moving beyond every particular limit. Rather, here I
think H eide gge r showed me a new p ath when , . . he turned to a cri-
tique ofthe metaphysieal traditionand in doing so found himself "on
the way to language'."'"' For Gadamer, ihe infinite dialogise of think-
ing is sometiiing thai is tmdcrgone from within the peeuliar spectila-
tive self-movement of language, a movement that Hegel does not fol-
low because he considers language, in Gadamer's eyes at least, in terms
of the statement. For Hegel the speculative movement of language is
nothing other than the dialectical mediation of the ,speculative
state-
ment.
In contra,st to this, G adam er insists that the speculative m ove-
ment of language doe.s not escape "the imilluminablc obscurity of our
factieiiy" from which we engage in an ""{ingoing reacquisition ihat pro-
ceeds into infinity."^"
Having said tliis, Gadamer still leaves us with the question witii
which we started: How are we to understand the infinite dialogtie as
unending that is not simply an unfolding as endlessly moving beyond
every partieular limit? To state the question positively: How does rad-
ical fmitude detennine the character of infinite dialogue? We are now
in a position to an sw er this ques tion , which 1 wou ld like to do by
summarizing the central analysis in part three of
Tmth and
Method.,
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IN THE SHADOW OK tlEClEL 9 5
which are always historically different. The infinite dialogue is a dialogue
of
being's ownpresenting otheiwise.
This presenting, this coming into lan
gua ge "bein g that can be understood is langu age" -does not mean
tbal a second bein g is acq uire d: first the diing, then second the thing in
langtiage. Since langiiage has a spectilative unity, the distinction between
being and its presentation is not a distinction at all. The inhnite dia-
logue is the event of langviage's own self-differing. And if, by virtue of
finitude, language has already begun, we can afso say that the infinite
dialogue is not really a matter of a postponement (of an end) at all,
but rather, to be precise, always a reenactment of beginning.' '^ Infinite
dialogtie, under the condition of finitnde of always having to go on,
is essentially a dialogue in which there is a
commencing
of the word.
flT
U nd er this third co nsid era tion f w ant to enga ge in a m ore far-
reaehing analysis that will in the end allow me to provide a furUier
determination of the character of inhnite dialogue in philosophical
henneneutic-s. ft can not go unn odc ed th at G ad am er is not alone in
being a proponent of infinite dialogue, that one finds at least in name
something similar in the work of Blanchot as well as Levinas. It would
appear natural, then, to want to attend to this similarity, despite the
fact that a vast distance often se])arates the French scene from the
German intelleetual tradition. Clcriainly all three share in common an
orientation to philosophy that stands under the shadow of Hegel. More
to the point, ail three, in relation to the distanee they wish to take
from Hegel, hold to a notion of infinite dialogue in wiiieh there is the
subverting ofthe puiported power of (Hegelian) self-mastery, tbus hold-
ing to a notion of infinite dialogue in which the speeeh of the other
appears.-*' Here, I want to limit this comparison by focusing primar-
ily on B lanchot an d on one specific issue. 1 w ant to consider with
respect to Blancbot the character of the movement of infinite dialogue,
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9 6 JAMES RISSER
overcome every ' 'unworking"
[distnivreineni] of itself. But
even Hegel
saw that the aeeomplishment of the system was suspect and the com-
pleted cUseoiirse.
in
which
the
enci
is
joined
to its
beginning,
was
held
only by philosophy in its abstracted existence. In his turn from Hegel,
Blanchot
is
interested,
not in the
work
of
philosophy,
but
precisely
in
its iinworking.
His
project
is
directed
at the
production
of a
work
of
the absence ofthe work, which he finds in the curious form of absence
that haunts
the
work
of
philosophy a non -absent absence interrupt-
ing the book of knowledge. Attending to this absence, Blanchot does
not engage
in
"work"
but in
"writing,"
as die
experience
of
language
unworking
itself. In
Blanehot 's words:
''To
write;
the
work
of the
absence
of
work, produ ction that produces nothing except
(or out of)
the absence
of the
subject, mark that uumarLs, infinitive
in
which
die
infinite would like to play itself out even to the neuter: to write does
not depend
on the
present
and
does
not
make
il
raise
itself."-"
Behind
this desciiption of writing lies Blanchot's claim that language has a
paradoxical eharaeter:
the
naming that takes place
in
language
is
always
undercut
by
language.
As
such, language
is the
producdon
of dis-
placement as well as proliferation.
If "writing'" beeomes the diought of the outside that carries out the
interruption
of
diseourse, then entertaining
a
question
in
writing
is to
interrogate an entertainment that is infinitean inlinitc conversado n
{L'Entretien infini).
Infinite conversation
is not,
properly speaking, infinite
dialogue, since diaiogue
is
understood
by
Blanchot
as the
reeiprocity
of words and equality of speakers in whieh one sees in the other
another
self.
Rather, infinite conversation
or
entertainment
is
plural
speech, a speech that prevents any possibility of symmetiy insofar as
it reverses
die
direction
of the
advent
of
meaning
in
direct commu-
nication. Within speech there slill occurs a movement to infinity, but
not
as die
unfolding
of
meaning; rather.,
the
movement
to
infinity
occurs
in the
dissymmetrical field
of
language,
in
language's irreducible
detour,
a
detour that Blanchot acttially finds
in
Hegel.
In his tum
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IN THE SHADOW OF HEGEL 9 7
a re a struggle tha t extends to de ath an d is history'.'" D eath is thus
not far from langua ge: the word in its perpetual disap pea ranc e earries
death, emptiness, absence. Infinite eonversation, plural speech, takes
up this speech witli eleath in a fundamental way. Within the giving
and receiving of meaning tliere is an interruption that escapes all mea-
sure,
an interruption that, relative to the issue of mastery, robs me of
my power. This interruption, this inhnite separator, is precisely what
I cannot get beyond, is not itself a beyond, and thus consliiutes the
elating of one to anotber, a relating as an involvement witb alterit\'."
Blanchot tbns reproduces the Levinasian dehnition of experience as
contact with alterity. Levinas deseribes this inhnite separator with respect
to language in die distinction between the Saying, as the element of
transeendence that cannot be represented in language, and the Said,
as discourse given over to idenrity. For Levnnas, too, language infinitely
defers from
itself;
it is excessive to the point that it eannoi coincide
with itself Communieation that involves alterity is, accordingly, no
lon ger un de r the reign of self-identical and self-sufficient be ing and its
truth. The dialogue with transcendence is a dialogue in which ""the
word in its very spontaneity is exposed to the response."'-
But unlike Levinas, Blanchot refuses the concept entirely and gives
the relating to alterity a very distinct character. In language
io
inhnity,
language ellaces every detenninate meaning, it is "always undone from
the outside"; language lo infinity is die impossibility of meaning.' ' '
Writing, inhnite entertainment, begins with the gaze of Orpheus, the
gaze that returns the recovciy from death baek to deatli. Euiydiee,
the object of tlie gaze, cannot be restored to the light of being.''^
Tf we tur n bac k to consider again G ad am cr 's notion of infinite dia-
logue primarily in light of Blanchot's position, we ean see tliat, in con-
trast to Blanehot, (iadamer does not want to give up on philosophy
and the work of recognition; be does not want to let being and its
death be consumed by die act of dying; be eannol let (he thought of
the outside destroy tlie movement of time with its peeuhar eoncealing
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IN THE BI-IADOW OK HEGEL
9 9
B ut let US also note tha t this retrieva l, wliich is actualiz ed iu th e Finite
event of tiic movement, does not separate the present moment from
its history.'"' In ihe finite event of the momeni then, there is a pre-
sentauon of time that, by virtue of finitude, is not a progression of
t ime.
Such presentation of time can oniy be regarded as a spacing of
tim e; tha t is to say, an even t of the difTerence o /t im e th e difference
that finitude makes. Infinite dialogue is a dialogue in whieh language
earries time. This means that in infinite dialogue, where one must
begin without beginning, there is not only the commencing of the
word, but in relation to infinity, there is always the word fbr whieh
it is nol vd time.
OT S
1
Th is rchil ion ni" Giid am er to Hcgcl has been taken u p r lscwhpfe. See M erold
Wesiphal, " 'Hegel and Giidamtr," in Henneneiilks and Modem Pkilosophy, cd. Brice
W achtcrhim ser (Aibany: SU NY Press, 1986), 65 -86 ; Fra nc isJ . Amb rosio, "(Jad am er:
On Ma king OiieselT at H om e wilh H egel," Owl of
Minerva
19, no . 1 (ftill 1987):
23-4(1;
R o d C o U m a n .
The Language of^Hermeneutics [iSlhany.
SUNY Press, 1998),
9 5 - 1 1 5 .
2. Haiis-Georg Ciadanier , Wahrheil und Metlwde._
\'(.>1.
1 ol'
(esamnwlti-
VVcrlw (TLihin
M oh r/S ieb ec k, 1990), 177; t rans la ted und er the l il lc Truth and Mellind by Joci
AVfiiisbdmo- liiid Donald Mar.shall {New York: Crossroads PiihlisUing, 1989), 173.
Hereafter
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100 JAMES RISSER
Century." Here Gadamer refers to Hegel along with Kant and the Greeks as thf
tliree great partners of "the language ofthe dialogue." With respect to Hegel, hf
first points out his reservation concerning Hegel's "speculative-dialecucal transcen-
dence ofthe Kantian concept of finiludc" and then adds: "This concept of spirit
that transcends the subjectivity of the ego has its true counterpart in the plie-
nomenon of language, which is coming increasingly to die center of contemporary
philo.sophy. The reiwon is that, in contrast to die concept of spirit thai Hegel drew
from die Chnstian tradition, the phenomenon of language has the meril of heing
appropriate to our finitude. It is infinite, as is spirit, and yet linite, as iaevery
event"
[Philosuphiml
Hi^nmeutki.trans. Da\'id Linge |Berkcley: Univer.siiy ol'Galiforjiia
Press,
1976]), 128.
5. See also Gadamer, "Man and Language," in Philosophical Hinmeneidics, 64.
6. The distinction I am trying to make here is similar to the one Thomas Sheehan
makes in his analysis of 74 ofBeingand Time.The way in which an entity ''lives
from" its essence can be understood in one of tlnt-e ways: \] perfecdon already
attained (God); 2) currently imperfect, but on the way to a future pcrlection (e.g.,
a table under construction); and li) pcrfeet in its imperfectioji (hnniaii being). In
this third way, Dasein is "ever rettirnitig" to itself-qua-lacking in-beiiig, hut with
no prospect of ever overeoming that lack. It is "a movement that, in its veiy
ineompleteness, is characterized by "pcrlecdve a.spect'." The lack of perfected under-
standing in infinite dialogue wiU Jieed tu be read along the lines of this tliird way.
See Thomas Sheehan and Corinne Painter, "Choosing One's Fate: A Rc-Rcading
of &Hiund ^eil 74," Research inPhenoimnohigy 29 (1999): 71.
7. "VVhai seems to be the diedc-like begiiniiiig ofthe inicipretation is in reality already
an answer, and like eveiy answer the .sense of an iiiterprtnation has been deter-
mined through the question ihal is posed. The thalectic of quesdon and answer is
already prefigured in the dialectic: of interpretation. It is this that causes under-
standing to be an event" (7^/, 476).
H. See Gadamer, "Sprache und Versleliai." in
Gesammelk
Werke, 2:196.
9. Gadamer, "Grenzen der Sprathe." in vol. 8 of Gesammelk WerkeiTiibingrn:
Mohr/Sieheek, 993), 361.
l(.).
For Gadamer, our awareness of ihis blindness is preci.sf'Iy what lie means when
he characterizes experience in general, which is the essential structure of iiermeneu-
tic experienee, as the experience of finitude: "The truly experienced person is
one . . . who knows that he is master of neither time nor the future" (T'l-/, 357).
11. Hegel, Science of
Lugk\
trans. A. V. Miller ['New York: Humanities Press, 1969).
129.
12. See Ciadamer, "ReHecUons on My Philosophical Jonrney." 37; and Rixmiii ui llie
Age of Science. 40 and 59-60. Gadamer also mcMitions this idea in his essay,
"Hermeneudcs and I^igocentrism," in
Dialogue ci?i/l
Decomlnjclion. ed. Diane A'lichelfelde
and Richard Palmer (Albany: SUN\' Press.. 1989" , 123-24.
13.
See Jtjhn D. Caputo,
More Radical
He.mie>milin- (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2000), ehapter 2.
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1 0 2 JAMES RISSER
SUN Y Press, 1990). Th is misreading is also present u ij o h n C apu to's earlier book
Radical Hemieneulics
but has been corrected somewhat in his more recent
More Radical
Henneneutics. But Gadamer himself eould not be elearer on this point. In Tnith and
Method,G ad am er writes: "Co nversation is a proce.ss of coming to an und erstand -
ing. Thus il belongs to eveiy true eonversation dial eaeh person opens himself to
the other, truly accepts his point of view as valid and transposes liimseif into Ihe
other to such an extent that he understands not die pardcular individual liut wliai
he .says" {TM, 38.3). An d a few page s laler in relation to the idea of iran slalio n,
Gadamer writes: "Reaching an understanding in eonversation presupposes that
hodi partners arc ready for it and trying to recognize the full value of what is
alien and opposed to them" {TM. 387).
27. Maur ice B laneho t , Tlie Infinite Conversation, t rans . Susan Hanson (Minneapol is :
Universily of Minne.sota Press, 1993), 15.
2%. Blanchot, llie Step.NotBeyond, trans. Lycette Nelson (/Mhany: SUNY Press, 1992),
55.
29. See InfmiteQinvermtinn, 35 .
.' 0. Set- Blanchot, The Space- oJLiteralure., irans. Ann Smock (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1989). 252.
31.
"T he O the r speaks to me and is only tiiis exigeney of speech. And when the O the r
speaks to me, speech is the relation of that which remains radically separate, die
rela tion of the th ird kind a flirming a rela tion with out UJtity, w itho ut ec|ua ily, . . .
W h e n Antrm speaks to me he does not speak to m e as a self W lien I caU up on
dif Other, I respond to what speaks to me from no site, and thus am separated
from him by a caesura such that he forms with me neither a duality nor a unit)'.
It is this [issurediis relation with the otherthai we ventm-ed to characterize as
an interruption of being. And now we will add: between man and man there is
an interval that would be neither of heing no r non -being, an interval borne by
the Difference of spee ch a difference p rece din g eveiytliing that is different and
everything unique" {Jr^inite Conversation, 69).
32. Em ma nuel Levinas, "Dialogtie: Sell-Consciousness and the Proximity of die Ne ighb or,''
in Of
Cod
W ho
Comes
toMind, tra ns . B ettino B ergo (S tanford: Stanfoi^d Univei'sity
Press, 199B), 48 . Althou gh L e\'inas uses the term "'dialogu e" her e, ihe term should
he put in quotation marks since dialogue as ihis is normally understood presup-
poses a "we " and reduces the proble m of eom inuniea tion to the problem ihat
truth be told. For Levinas the word "exposed to the response" stands in opposi-
tion to dialogue. See Olhemiise.
'Tlian
Beini^ or
heyond
Es.'nce, irans. Alphon.>;o Ling
(Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1987), 119-20.
33. B ecause of B lanchor's acknow ledged closeness to Levijias, ihe difference between
their positions is frecjuently discussed in the secondary literature. See especially,
Leslie Hill, Blanchot:
Extreme
Conteniporan' (New York: Routledge, 1997), and Gerald
Bruns , Maurice
Blanchot:
Tlie R efusal of
Philosophy
(Balt imore: T h e Joh ns Hopkins
University Press, 1997).
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