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This post is Part 4 of a series.
In this series of posts, I’ve been introducing Hans-Georg Gadamer’s conception of human understanding as an open-ended process of dialogical “play” between human beings — a back-and-forth communicative movement in which dialogue partners come to a shared grasp of some subject matter of our world. In my last post, I highlighted the ethical conditions of genuine dialogue and understanding, showing that there are certain ethical commitments and ways of approaching our dialogue partner that we must fulfill if we are going to develop a shared understanding.
First, we must take seriously what the other has to say as a “claim to truth” from which we can learn. We must approach the other with respect and a good will to understand, rather than trying to silence them, refute them, or make them believe our own point of view. We must also be ready and willing to risk our own prejudgments, have them tested and challenged, find out that our prior beliefs were incomplete, narrow, or wrong in some way, and revise them based on what we learn from the other. And, finally, we must be willing to lose ourselves in the conversation and let the subject matter and its truth be our guide, rather than attempting to direct or manipulate the outcome.
Gadamer refers to this approach as “openness to the other.” It is an approach that forms a “genuine human bond” or moral connection between human beings, which he contrasts with three approaches that have become quite popular in our culture, but are problematic in various ways. I’ve labeled them the scientific, psychological, and sophistic approaches to the other. These approaches destroy the moral bond, degrade dialogue-play, and cause the process of understanding to break down.
The Scientific Approach to the Other
In the “scientific” approach to the other, the other is treated as an object or a specimen to be observed and examined from a distance for the purpose of anticipating its future behavior and developing some sort of mastery or control over it.
By approaching the other as a thing, rather than as a person who has something significant to say, one immediately closes one’s ears to the other’s claim to truth and blocks the sort of conversation that would allow for a mutual understanding to develop.
The other, under this approach, is allowed to make sounds but not to speak meaningfully; they are used as a means to the end of one’s own knowledge and control, and denied the kind of recognition that is involved in taking seriously what they have to say.
In this approach to the other, to use Martin Buber’s language, as Gadamer does, the I-Thou relation (of subject to subject) is turned into an I-It experience (of subject to object, knower to known), which severs the basic moral relation. Gadamer says: “From the moral point of view this orientation toward the Thou is purely self-regarding and contradicts the basic moral definition of man” (Truth and Method, 358).
The other, in this approach, is not a person, but a body. We may encounter this objectifying approach in many areas of life today, including the doctor’s office, the job market, school, sports, the military, the “dating scene,” marketing strategies, population studies, and even voting analyses.
The Psychological Approach to the Other
The psychological approach to the other is a derivative of the scientific approach. Though the psychological approach appears to treat the other as a human being, rather than an object, it really just treats the other as a peculiar kind of object — a “psychological thing.”
In this approach, one hears what the other says as a meaningful statement — even as a unique enunciation of meaning other than one’s own — but one takes the other’s statement to be the expression of their personal biography (or perhaps childhood trauma), an expression of what they feel (not what they know), and just their “personal opinion” (not a claim to truth).
The problem, here, is that the “I” does not take what the “Thou” says seriously — that is, as a potential truth that could transform the way the “I” thinks and acts. In the psychological approach, the “I” is not trying to understand what the “Thou” says but is trying to know (and perhaps diagnose) the other’s psyche. The “I” may even claim to know the “Thou,” through a psychological-biographical study, better than the “Thou” knows himself.
There is an effort, here, to predict and master the other, and in the process, remain untouched by what the other says. Gadamer explains that “by claiming to know him, one robs his claims of their legitimacy…. The claim to understand the other person in advance functions to keep the other person’s claim at a distance” (TM, 360).
We encounter this psychologizing approach when our statements are treated as just expressions of (for example) who our parents were, whether or not we were an only child, a past relationship, or some set of passions that have taken over our ability to recognize and articulate truths about the world. Psychologizing the other has become incredibly common in our popular culture [1], as people quickly turn to psychological interpretations to try to understand those who are different from themselves.
The Sophistic Approach to the Other
Finally, the sophistic approach to the other is one of argumentative “attack and conquer.” The goal is to overpower the other in a debate and to “win” for the purpose of acquiring reputation, power, votes, money, or some other award (as the sophists depicted in Plato’s dialogues sought to do).
In the sophistic approach, the other is listened to only long enough to discover the vulnerable spot in their argument, so that they may be refuted. The sophist, instead of taking seriously what his adversary has to say and truly engaging with them, stands back at a competitive distance where he remains unaffected by the possible truth of his partner’s words.
This antagonistic approach saturates the world of politics, law, and academics and is a part of our everyday culture in homes, workplaces, and public spaces where “debaters” spar as if it were an Olympic sport.
But, for Gadamer, genuine dialogue is not about trying to discover the weakness of what is said by another, but about bringing out its real strength by referring to the subject matter. Genuine dialogue for Gadamer is a cooperative and collaborative, truth-seeking engagement with the other.
Final Thoughts
We can’t help but notice that the scientific, psychological, and sophistic approaches to the other have become cultural norms. They are forms of human interaction characterized by closedness, distance, control, and domination in which the ethical conditions of dialogue-play are not met. We should not be surprised, then, that dialogue and understanding so often fail for us. When we objectify the other, when we treat the other’s psyche as a specimen to be analyzed and known, or when we try to out-argue the other to win a debate, we break the mutuality of human-to-human relations and destroy the moral bond that is necessary for genuine connection, learning, and growth.
