INTRODUCTION
What does it mean to do justice to a text, be it philosophical, literary, or poetic? In this regard,
what is the task of philosophical hermeneutics, the discipline traditionally concerned with
explanation and interpretation? This is the question at stake in the ‘Gadamer-Derrida encounter’,
an intellectual debate that retains its relevance, not only because it has ‘animated contemporary
philosophy’ (Di Cesare 2004, 74), but also because the practice of reading and interpreting texts
makes up a large part of research and education in the humanities as such. By revisiting the
diverging hermeneutical strategies of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jacques Derrida, this paper seeks
to determine how we can engage in the practice of reading and interpreting in a righteous and just
manner.
The formal debate between Gadamer and Derrida started in April 1981, with a few exchanges at
a colloquium at the Goethe Institute in Paris.1 These exchanges are often considered to constitute
a failed encounter for at least two reasons. First, Derrida responded to Gadamer’s presentation
with several questions that testify to Derrida’s partial understanding of Gadamer’s intentions at
best; a response which Gadamer in turn had difficulty comprehending. Second, Derrida’s
presentation at the colloquium showed no interest at all in engaging in a dialogue with Gadamer,
despite the latter’s invitation. This ‘improbable’ encounter (Forget 1984), collected in the volume
Dialogue and Deconstruction (Michelfelder and Palmer 1989), has attracted many commentaries
that seek to redo the debate in a more constructive fashion (e.g., Dallmayr 1989; Bernstein 2008).2
Rather than adding yet another commentary to this already extensive literature, this paper aims to
shed new light on the Gadamer-Derrida debate by taking its starting point in the shared admiration
of both philosophers for the twentieth-century German poet Paul Celan. Since the debate between
Gadamer and Derrida has continued throughout their readings of Celan’s poetry (Di Cesare 2004,
abstract), it is justified to use these readings as a way of entry into the differences and similarities
between Gadamer’s and Derrida’s take on hermeneutics. In this endeavor, I focus on two closely
related texts: first, on a book-length essay by Gadamer ([1973] 1997) called Who Am I and Who
Are You?, that is nothing less than a running commentary on Celan’s poetry collection
Atemkristall from 1965; second, on a lecture presented by Derrida at a memorial conference in
Heidelberg in remembrance of Gadamer, who passed away in 2002. This lecture, which later
appeared under the title Rams: Uninterrupted Dialogue—Between Two Infinities, the Poem
(Derrida [2003] 2005), is interesting for a variety of reasons. It contains, for instance, a reading
of several poems by Celan that considers Gadamer’s comments on Celan in the aforementioned
essay. This choice of sources leads me to specify the guiding question of this paper: what does it
mean to do justice to a poetic text, i.e. to poetry, for Gadamer and for Derrida?
To find an answer to this question, it is necessary to discuss a number of issues, starting with
Gadamer’s (1997) and Derrida’s (2005) shared rejection of the intentions of the poet as the
decisive factor in interpreting poetry. This is followed by an extensive discussion of Gadamer’s
hermeneutical approach, as exemplified by his interpretation of Celan (Gadamer 1997), in direct
relation to Derrida’s main objections to this approach. After discussing how Derrida demarcates
his own hermeneutics from that of Gadamer, I take stock of my findings to articulate my own
position with respect to the question at stake in the Gadamer-Derrida debate. I argue that doing
justice to a philosophical, literary or poetic text means seeking to decipher its meaning, as
Gadamer argues, whilst accepting that no articulated meaning can ever be final, certain or
exhaustive, as Derrida emphasizes.
POET AND INTENTION
The classical answer to the central question of this article is that doing justice to poetry means
trying to find out what the poet meant to say in their poems (see Gadamer 2004, 175–95). For
Derrida (2005), however, this is not an option. For him, the essence of language is to be found in
written language, which is characterized precisely by the absence of the living presence of the
author. In the case of Celan’s poetry, Derrida argues, this means that we can never be sure what
Celan intended to convey with this or that poem. Even if we did know ‘what Celan meant to say,’
his poems would still be much richer than those intentions (Derrida 2005, 149–50). By embedding
these remarks in his discussion of Gadamer’s reading of Celan, Derrida gives the impression that
Gadamer also tries to guess at the intentions of the poet. However, this would be a false
accusation. In the preface to his Celan essay, for example, Gadamer clearly states that: ‘All that
matters is what the poem actually says, not what its author intended’ (1997, 68). A little later, he
adds that ‘it is the poem which speaks, and not an individual in the privacy of his experiences or
sensations’ (Gadamer 1997, 68). In fact, Gadamer remarks, ‘A poem that withholds itself and
does not permit further clarity always seems more meaningful to me than whatever clarity one
might obtain from the poet’s simple assurances about his intentions’ (1997, 68).
At first glance, Gadamer and Derrida thus seem to agree on the insignificance of the poet's alleged
intentions in determining the meaning of poetry, which seems like a somewhat exaggerated
conclusion. On closer inspection, however, their shared position in this regard is more nuanced.
Gadamer, for example, admits that ‘outside information’, such as Celan’s remarks on poetry in
The Meridian—a speech delivered when accepting the Georg Büchner Prize for literature— ‘can
be often valuable’ (Gadamer 1997, 133). In turn, Derrida notes that intentional meaning still has
a place, be it as one factor amongst many others (Derrida 1982, 326; 2005, 149). Hence a more
accurate conclusion of this preliminary comparison is that for both Gadamer and Derrida, the
poet’s intention does play a role in interpreting poetry, even though a poem can never be reduced
to the experiences and intentions of the poet. However accurate and valuable this insight is, the
question remains: what does it mean to do justice to poetry, for Gadamer, and for Derrida?
MEANING AND INTERRUPTION
For Gadamer, the essence of language is spoken language, that is, conversation or dialogue. In
Gadamer’s hermeneutics, this model of the dialogue serves to understand both spoken and written
discourse: whereas a living, real-life conversation is aimed at gaining a better understanding of
the issue under discussion, the interpretation of a text is like a dialogue with that text, aimed at gaining a better understanding of that which the text is about (Gadamer 1989, 33–6; Gadamer
2004, 384–91).3 An important precondition for such understanding, Gadamer emphasizes, is the
readability and decipherability of the text. ‘The text must be readable,’ he states in his lecture at
the 1981 colloquium (Gadamer 1989, 31), and ‘[w]hat is written can be deciphered. It means
something,’ we read in his Celan commentary (Gadamer 1997, 85). So, for Gadamer, doing justice
to poetry means that we should do our very best to understand it, to try to grasp its meaning in an
effort of reading and deciphering. The poem speaks to us, it tells us something, Gadamer often
says, and it is the task of hermeneutics to correctly understand this something ‘with uniform
coherence’ and ‘precision’ (Gadamer 1997, 133, 143).
At this point Derrida would already object by drawing attention to the importance of a certain
interruption in the process of understanding, as exemplified by the experience of encountering a
word or sentence we do not understand. This is actually one of the issues Derrida raised in Paris
in 1981, and which he recalls in his speech. ‘At that time indeed,’ Derrida (2005, 139) says, ‘I
called for a certain interruption [emphasis in original]. Far from signifying the failure of the
dialogue, such an interruption could become the condition of comprehension and understanding.’
So, whereas Gadamer puts forward the readability and decipherability of a poem as an
indispensable precondition for comprehension, Derrida argues the exact opposite, by designating
‘unreadability’ and undecipherability as that which understanding presupposes. Derrida’s
argument here is that if a poem does not also conceal its meaning, or leave its meaning in
suspense, and thus interrupts the process of understanding, it will not attract any hermeneutical
efforts in the first place. If the meaning of a poem were directly evident, there would be nothing
to read, reread, and interpret. Stated succinctly, the interruption of decipherment is what keeps
hermeneutics alive.
This diametrically opposed stance on the preconditions for understanding is also noticeable in the
tone of voice in the writings of both philosophers on Celan’s poetry. In the epilogue to his essay,
Gadamer (1997, 128) declares for example that ‘I believe I have more or less understood these
poems,’ whereas Derrida remarks that ‘I am not sure of anything, even if I am also sure […] that
no one has the right to be sure of anything here.’ To which he adds: ‘The certainty of a guaranteed
reading would be the first inanity or the worst betrayal’ (Derrida 2005, 148). Yet although
Gadamer (1997) does remark that some things are certain and can only be understood in a
particular way, Derrida would be wrong to accuse Gadamer of seeking such a final or ‘guaranteed
reading.’ ‘Conclusive interpretation simply does not exist,’ Gadamer (1997, 146) writes later in
the epilogue, not only because he admits to having adjusted his interpretations time and time
again, but also because the reader is invited to produce a different, and perhaps even ‘better’ interpretation. Gadamer (1997, 64) writes: ‘If the reader believes that he or she has understood
these poems differently and better, still more is gained. At that point such a reply will move us
along―closer to the poetic work.’ The question then arises, how does this relate to Gadamer’s
previous statements on the attainment of a correct understanding? Is Gadamer contradicting
himself here, or can these statements be reconciled? I believe that they can in fact be reconciled,
in the following manner: for Gadamer, the goal of hermeneutics is a correct interpretation, which
nevertheless functions as a regulative ideal, meaning that one should direct its efforts towards it
even though it can never be conclusively achieved. An example might clarify the refined position
of both philosophers in this regard.
YOU AND I
In the poetry of Celan, one encounters a lot of personal pronouns, like ‘we,’ ‘you,’ and ‘I.’ For
example, the line of verse that is central to Derrida’s memorial lecture states: ‘Die Welt ist fort,
ich muss dich tragen;’ ‘The world is gone, I must carry you.’ The poem does not clarify to what
or whom ‘you’ and ‘I’ refer here, making it a good example of what Derrida would call an
‘interruption’ in the decipherment of meaning. Hence in his lecture, Derrida is eager to point out
that Gadamer himself recognizes this uncertainty. ‘We do not know at the outset,’ Gadamer (1997,
70) writes for example, ‘what I or You means here, or whether I is the I of the poet referring to
himself, or the I that is each of us. That is what we must learn [emphasis mine].’ As the title of
Gadamer’s essay already suggests, his commentaries revolve around this central question, which
is taken up time and time again: ‘Who is I and who is you?’ (Gadamer 1997, 77).
The sentence italicized above is essential to the difference between Gadamer and Derrida. While
Gadamer’s interpretative efforts attempt to overcome the indecision of Celan’s poetry by seeking
to determine the referents of ‘you’ and ‘I,’ Derrida employs this indecision to illustrate his point
about the necessity of interruption in the process of understanding. ‘I admire the respect Gadamer
shows for the indecision,’ Derrida (2005, 145) remarks. ‘This indecision seems to interrupt or
suspend the decipherment of reading,’ he adds, ‘though in truth it ensures its future’ (Derrida
2005, 145–6). Why does interruption ensure the future of interpretation? Because it makes sure,
Derrida emphasizes, that we are never done with a poem or a text, and that it forever survives
every reading and interpretation. Hence, what ‘you’ and ‘I’ mean in Celan’s poetry is not what
we must learn, according to Derrida (2005), but what we must leave open. The task of
philosophical hermeneutics is rather ‘to leave the undecidable undecided’ (145), because ‘one
will never know, and no one has the power to decide’ (158), not even Hans-Georg Gadamer.
Gadamer does not really decide, however. At the beginning of his essay, he already warns the
reader that since Celan’s poems do not disclose their addressees, the meaning of ‘you’ and ‘I’
remains undecidable: ‘Who the You is,’ for example, ‘cannot be determined,’ Gadamer (1997,
68–9) remarks, ‘because it hasn’t been determined’ by the poems, and, as we already discussed,
‘one should not ask the poet.’ At the end of the day, Gadamer must thus agree with Derrida that
his guiding question, ‘Who is I and who is you?,’ must remain unanswered or left open (Gadamer
1997, 86), even though this does not absolve of the responsibility to venture an interpretative
effort. So, while Gadamer acknowledges the kind of interruption to which Derrida seeks to draw
attention and both philosophers reject the idea of one decisive interpretation, I conclude that their
positions diverge with respect to the status of this interruption. For Gadamer, interruption is an
obstacle to overcome in the process of striving towards a coherent understanding of a poem, whilst
for Derrida, interruption is rather ‘the gift of the poem’ that secures the future of hermeneutics.
As such, interruption functions as a starting point or end point, respectively. Now what we have
yet to discuss is Derrida’s own, positive view of doing justice to poetry.4
REMAINDER AND EXCESS
At one point in his speech, Derrida distinguishes two types of hermeneutics. Under the first type,
which is reminiscent of the discipline’s traditional self-understanding, Derrida groups:
indispensable formal approaches, thematic, polythematic approaches that are attentive, as any hermeneutic must be, to the explicit and implicit folds of meaning, to ambiguities, overdeterminations, to the rhetoric and to the intentional meaning of the author, to all the idiomatic resources of the poet, of the language, and so forth (Derrida 2005, 149).
Now these kinds of approaches are also employed by Gadamer (1997) in his reading of Celan:
the points of attentiveness mentioned above are all aspects he considers in his interpretations. In
addition to analyzing the formal structure of the poems in terms of transpositions, line breaks and
rhyme schemes, Gadamer (1997) discerns several recurring themes, such as ephemerality and
death, and language and poetry itself. And although he claims to disregard the intentions of the
poet, he does pay attention to the rhetoric and distinctive cultural resources of Celan, like his
Meridian speech, familiarity with Jewish mysticism and his ‘extraordinary knowledge of nature’
(Gadamer 1997, 71).5
Although this is all very important and we should indeed take all these factors into account,
Derrida argues, there is always more to a poem, something one cannot exhaust by any interpretative effort, and which forms a condition of possibility for interpretation as such. This
brings us to the second type of hermeneutics, which Derrida describes as:
a disseminal reading-writing that, endeavoring to take all this into account […], also directs itself toward an irreducible remainder or excess. The excess of this remainder escapes any gathering in a hermeneutic. This hermeneutic is made necessary, and also possible, by the excess (Derrida 2005, 149).
According to Derrida, it is precisely because a poem harbors an excess of meaning that it calls for
infinite (re)readings and necessitates recurrent hermeneutical efforts without ever exhausting this
remainder. So, for Derrida, doing justice to poetry means doing justice to this remainder, for
example by taking the words and lines of a poem out of their original context and inscribing them
into new ones to show how they can acquire a new meaning, time and time again.6 A hermeneutic
which seeks to expose this excess or remainder that produces the dissemination of meaning is
what Derrida here refers to as a ‘disseminal reading-writing’ strategy.
The difference between these two types of hermeneutics can also be perceived in the architecture
of Gadamer’s and Derrida’s discourse. Gadamer, for his part, neatly follows the sequence of
Celan’s poetry collection Atemkristall by repeatedly quoting an entire poem to be supplemented
with his own interpretation. His interpretative efforts reflect the hermeneutical circle in that he
continuously goes back and forth between a single line and the poem as a whole, and between the
poem and the whole of the bundle. Derrida, by contrast, takes just one line from a single poem by
Celan—‘Die Welt ist fort, ich muss dich tragen’—and takes it up again and again in different
parts of his lecture, so that it continuously appears in a new light and thus gains a new meaning.
These two hermeneutics thus correspond with ‘two infinities,’ one might say. Gadamer thinks of
interpretation as an infinite ‘process of approximation,’ which is directed at the ‘correct
understanding’ of a poem (Gadamer 1997, 143). ‘[T]he discovery of the true meaning of a text or
a work of art,’ Gadamer (2004, 298) says, ‘is never finished, it is in fact an infinite process.’
Derrida (2005), in turn, thinks of interpretation as an infinite process ‘going from meaning to
meaning, from truth to truth’ (152), which should always leave open the possibility of being ‘led
along a wholly other reading or counter-reading’ of a poem (157). Notably, this may be the most
fundamental point of divergence between the hermeneutical strategies of Gadamer and Derrida.
CONCLUSION
The aim of this paper has been to shed a new light on the influential Gadamer-Derrida debate by
comparing and contrasting two of their closely related readings of the German poet Paul Celan. This comparative analysis revealed several methodological differences between the
hermeneutical efforts of Gadamer and Derrida. Gadamer’s focus on living conversation or
dialogue, as well as the readability and decipherability of the written word, lead him to a
teleological reading strategy in which understanding serves to orient and attract our interpretative
efforts. In contrast, Derrida takes his starting point in the so-called death letter, which enables him
to draw attention to the unreadability and undecipherability of written language that—by means
of an interruption in the process of understanding—safeguard the continuation of interpretation.
These considerations lead Derrida to what he calls a disseminal reading strategy, which, rather
than seeking to approximate the ‘true’ meaning of a poem or a text, attempts to demonstrate the
multiplicity and possible alteration of meaning.
Reiterative comparisons have also revealed, however, that the characteristics of Derrida’s and
Gadamer’s reading strategies appear to mark a difference in emphasis rather than
acknowledgement. For example, whilst Derrida acknowledges the importance of seeking to
determine the meaning of the poetic word, Gadamer recognizes the existence of uncertainties and
the undecidable that interrupt the decipherment of meaning. Moreover, as diverging as the
hermeneutical strategies of Gadamer and Derrida may be, they find each other in decentralizing—
if not disqualifying—the alleged intentions of the author when it comes to interpreting texts, as
well as in their eventual dismissal of a conclusive or guaranteed reading and interpretation of a
poem. Notably here, Gadamer retains the notion of a correct understanding as regulative ideal,
whilst Derrida replaces it with an effort to disclose the variability and dissemination of meaning.
As such Gadamer’s and Derrida’s positions are not necessarily the result of two mutually
exclusive hermeneutics, but rather they are sufficiently refined to be considered as complementary
or reconcilable. In this sense, the distinctive analysis conducted in this paper supports a conclusion
widely shared in previous literature on the debate (see e.g., Bernstein 2008; Evink 2021).
This conclusion also paves the way for articulating my own position in this debate. To do so, let
me return to the guiding question of this paper: what does it mean to do justice to a text, be it
philosophical, literary, or poetic? Additionally, how should we understand the task of
philosophical hermeneutics in this regard? Now, of course, doing justice to a text means throwing
everything in the game to try to understand it, as Gadamer holds, and as Derrida acknowledges.
Usually, this is also done when we read a philosophical text, for example: the text presents itself
as meaningful to us. Gadamer can be commended for following up on this ‘experience of
meaning.’
Yet doing justice to a poetic, literary or philosophical text also means doing justice to the
remainder or excess of meaning that draws the reader to these texts in the first place. Those
notoriously difficult or even ‘unreadable’ texts that appear to leave their meaning forever in
suspense are often the ones most eagerly submitted to recurrent hermeneutical efforts. Derrida
should be credited for pointing us in this direction. Although doing justice to the inexhaustible
resources of meaning of a text can be accomplished by means of a ‘disseminal reading-writing’—
here lies the value of Derrida’s writings—this is not a necessity. It is enough to simply
acknowledge that interpretation is an infinite process which leaves open other readings that will
uncover new and unforeseen meanings in the text. The task of hermeneutics may thus be
understood as approaching an understanding of a text and an articulation of its meaning(s) that
can never be final, certain, or decisive.
REFERENCES
Bernstein, Richard J. 2008. ‘The Conversation That Never Happened (Gadamer/Derrida).’ The Review of Metaphysics 61 (3): 577–603. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20130978.
Cesare, Donatella Di. 2004. ‘Stars and Constellations: The Difference Between Gadamer and Derrida.’ Research in Phenomenology 34 (1): 73–102. https://doi.org/10.1163/1569164042404554.
Dallmayr, Fred R. 1989. ‘Hermeneutics and Deconstruction: Gadamer and Derrida in Dialogue.’ In Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter, eds. Diane P. Michelfelder and Richard E. Palmer, 75–92. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Derrida, Jacques. 1982. ‘Signature Event Context.’ Translated by Alan Bass. In Margins of Philosophy, 307–30. Brighton: The Harvester Press.
Derrida, Jacques. 2005. ‘Rams: Uninterrupted Dialogue—Between Two Infinities, the Poem.’ Translated by Thomas Dutoit and Philippe Romanski. In Sovereignties in Question: The Poetics of Paul Celan, eds. Thomas Dutoit and Outi Pasanen, 135–63. New York: Fordham University Press.
Evink, Eddo. 2021. ‘Gadamer and Derrida.’ In The Gadamerian Mind, edited by Theodore George and Gert-Jan van der Heiden, 304–17. London: Routledge.
Forget, Phillipe. 1984. ‘Leitfaden einer unwahrscheinlichen Debatte.’ In Text und Interpretation, edited by Philippe Forget. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1989. ‘Text and Interpretation.’ Translated by Dennis J. Smidt and Richard Palmer. In Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter, eds. Diane P. Michelfelder and Richard E. Palmer, 21–51. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1997. ‘Who Am I and Who Are You?’ In Gadamer on Celan: ‘“Who Am I and Who Are You?”’ and Other Essays, translated and edited by Richard Heinemann and Bruce Krajewski, 63–165. New York: State University of New York Press.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2004. Truth and Method. 2nd revised edition. Translated by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. London/New York: Continuum.
Michelfelder, Diane P., and Richard E. Palmer, eds. 1989. Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer Derrida Encounter. Albany: State University of New York Press.
1 For antecedents of this formal encounter, see Evink (2021).
2 A large sample of these commentaries is collected in Part III of the edited volume mentioned above. Part I presents a translation of the exchanges at the Goethe Institute, based on the original German volume edited by Philippe Forget, Text und Interpretation (1984), and Part II brings together Gadamer’s reflections on the debate.
3 For some critical remarks on this comparison, see Bernstein (2008).
4 In view of this discussion, one might be tempted to question whether Derrida would accept this criterion of ‘doing justice.’ On many occasions, however, Derrida has expressed his intention in these exact words, that is, as wanting ‘to do justice’ to a particular person, theme, question, or text.
5 Gadamer repeatedly emphasizes the fact that Celan was a ‘poeta doctus,’ an educated or learned poet. See e.g. Gadamer (1997, 71, 129, 186).
6 For a theoretical discussion rather than an application of this possibility of writing, see Derrida (1982).
This article’s first appearance was on JUNCTIONS.
Bio
Following a successful BA in business administration, Lucas shifted his focus to philosophy, completing both a BA and two MA programs in the field. His research explores the conflict between newly emergent subject-oriented and object-oriented theories of hermeneutic experience and their implications for the role and responsibilities of the interpreter. He specializes in contemporary continental philosophy, particularly the reception of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics within current debates on intercultural dialogue, new realisms and materialisms, and (post)critique.
Explore more of his work on his academic profile page and Google Scholar.
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