Common Knowledge

Common Knowledge 9.3 (2003) 545-546

Jeff Malpas, Ulrich Arnswald, and Jens Kertscher, eds., Gadamer's Century: Essays in Honor of Hans-Georg Gadamer(Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002), 363 pp.

In this festschrift for Gadamer's hundredth birthday—he died in early 2002, presumably after the book went to press—the editors have not focused on a particular theme and have included both Continental philosophers whose métier is assertion (what is it about European philosophy that allows this?) and analytic philosophers like John McDowell whose work exemplifies how Continental breadth of interest can be combined with analytic focus of argument. Charles Taylor's "Understanding the Other: A Gadamerian View on Conceptual Schemes" is perhaps the most noteworthy contribution. Taylor eloquently explicates Gadamer's concept of the "fusion of horizons," a fusion famously requiring openness to the world of the other. But Taylor converts that sort of openness from an epistemic principle into an ethical one—almost, in fact, into a metaethical [End Page 545] principle. He provocatively contrasts the conquistadors' interpretation of Aztec human sacrifice as devil worship with a more sophisticated understanding in which it is understood as a mode of religious worship. And he concludes that "the crucial moment is the one where we allow ourselves to be interpellated by the other; where the difference escapes from its categorization as an error, a fault or a lesser, undeveloped version of what we are, and challenges us to see it as a viable human alternative." For Taylor, an apostle of multiculturalism, understanding must lead to acceptance and tolerance. But this conclusion seems a mistake. Openness is a prerequisite for authentic interpretation but not a conclusion to be drawn from every interpretation. Moreover, our appreciation and understanding of the other always involves a fusing of horizons, whether it is an ethnocentric understanding or a sophisticated multicultural one. An interpretation founded on openness is to be preferred on epistemic grounds in that it better appreciates the perspective of the other. Understanding does not, however, preclude moral judgment of the other's behavior. Given a choice between suppressing the ritual slaughter of thousands of prisoners on the grounds that it is devil worship and the acceptance of human sacrifice that may arise from the more sophisticated understanding that Taylor proposes, one might well want to stand with the epistemically naive. But that choice is fortunately not the one we face. Not all human ways are "viable human alternatives"—some, even many, may be categorized, at least morally, as faults, errors, or corruptions. Tolerance, important as it is, can never be the highest moral principle, if we are to be moral agents at all.

 

Joshua Amaru

Joshua Amaru teaches at Yeshivat Bat Ayin in Israel.