The Dialogue that We Are: Understanding as a Space for Politics

Abstract

This paper mainly proposes to point out some aspects that render hermeneutics pertinent within the context of political discussion, defending it from attacks mostly stemming from a philosophy of  critical consciousness such as Habermas’s, Adorno’s, and some of their followers. It will be shown, from Gadamer’s perspective, how hermeneutics responds to those critiques within its conception of understanding as a fundamental task and a primordial political space. Contrary to a philosophy that appeals to the need of “taking its distance” as a starting point of critique, only place of a true political philosophy and political action, Gadamer’s hermeneutics proposes an alternative that deserves to be considered: it is in dialogue, in the shared space of understanding, rather than in critique, that humans un-veil the possibilities of what is, where the openness of their freedom is given and, consequently, where the space of politics develops –thus in action rather that in reflection.