Tales From The Reverend?????s Office: Why Won?????t Daniel Peterson STFU?

[Guest]

What follows is an account that was prepared without consultation of anyone. Any errors are mine alone and those posters mentioned (Kishkumen, Doctor Scratch, Doctor CamNC4Me, Gadianton) are welcome to confirm or deny anything mentioned herein.

Part 1: A Stoic Prelude

Reverend Kishkumen watched Alfonsy collapse into a wingback leather chair with some concern. The young man looked positively exhausted yet his odd mannerisms indicated the presence of frenetic energy. Assuming a pastoral role Kishkumen handed Alfonsy a sherry glass and advised him to drink its contents. He had seen this before, students at the final phases of their terminal degree often came apart at the seams several times just before the looming date of their defense. He didn’t envy Alfonsy at all. Cassius University was quite progressive in many respects and the forward thinking policies that Dr. Scratch implemented from his formidable perch upon the B.H. Roberts Chair were positively brilliant, yet the administration and some of the faculty still perpetuated draconian traditions of the past. No doubt the conditions of the current pandemic, a full online teaching load, and demanding preparations for what would no doubt be a grueling oral defense, were weighing heavily on the slender shoulders of Alfonsy.

Kishkumen took a seat opposite of Alfonsy. By this time Alfonsy had drained his refreshment and had begun to set the empty glassware down. The Reverend leapt into action and slid a bamboo coaster underneath the drink before it made contact with his favorite chabudai; it had been a charming gift from the late President of Keio University Tadao Ishikawa. Kishkumen quite liked the table and wanted to preserve it and the memory of their friendship. With the integrity of his furniture maintained Kishkumen voiced his concern for Alfonsy.

“You simply look afright Alfonsy, have you been getting much rest? I know this COVID business has made things particularly stressful for us all. Look, I can connect you to some of the University’s resources that can help you. If you don’t take care of yourself then all of this has been for nothing…”

Alfonsy looked perplexed for a moment before interrupting with a gesture and saying, “Oh no no. I was just at open mat and Dr.Cam is coaching us for an upcoming tournament against the Machodos. He had me in a cross side mount for about 30 minutes and nearly suffocated me. I’m still trying to get oxygen back.”

Kishkumen was pleased to see that Alfonsy was staying physically active, though he knew it was not by choice. Dean Robbers insists on maintaining a certain physical culture at Cassius. The Reverend could see his point, strong minds needed strong bodies to house them after all. Yet Kishkumen preferred his elliptical to the grappling mats or the rowing oars and liked green tea much more than protein bars.

“So what brings you here to my office? Surely it isn’t for my thoughts on pankration. I must admit to a few instances when I had to lay hands on some unruly louts, but what do I know about such contests?”

Alfonsy struggled for the words and after a moment he simply recited a distich.

“O si tacuisses,
Philosophus mansisses.”

If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher. The Reverend leaned back into his chair; he was now heading into familiar territory with Alfonsy and understood the nature of this visit. For some time Alfonsy has been expressing his guilt to Kishkumen over how he had chosen to express his disagreements with Mopologists. Not just disagreements, but also displays of public contempt for Mopologists themselves. Those draconian traditions of Cassius fostered an atmosphere of intellectual rigor that often instilled in students high expectations which are never met. The most legendary of Mopologists are often presented to the public as scholars of the highest pedigree who possess charm, wit, and an uncanny ability to synthesize Mormonism with the towering figures and great ideas of the Western canon. Mopologists never rise to the occasion because Mopologetics at its best is often pedestrian and at its worst disturbingly sexist, predictably racist, and palpably homophobic. The usual medium is a consistency of culture war rants by uninspired teachers railing against Darwin, Freud, and Higher Criticism with the less abled Mopologists targeting Evangelicals and Cult Ministries.

The Reverend knew how Alfonsy often struggled to initiate a train of thought and he could already see the young man hopelessly searching for a way to articulate himself. The Reverend opted to give his charge a prompt to aid him.

“I must confess that I was genuinely horrified you were going to drop a Lorenzo Snow couplet on me just then. Can I hazard that this has something to do with your calling and your inability to hold your pen when it comes to judging the merits of mopologetics?”

A sense of relief briefly flashed across Alfonsy’s face and Kishkumen immediately recognized it as a sign that his friend had gotten his mental bearings.

“I’ll start from the beginning. I was helping Professor Symmachus with his 'Latin for Nibley' course and we ended up having a disagreement concerning translation.”

The Reverend couldn’t help but chuckle. “Latin for Nibley” was a euphemism for the Freshman course of Classical Latin. To be admitted to the undergraduate program of Mopologetics, all students must pass a written Latin examination that requires a translation of two different pieces from antiquity with no lexical or grammatical aids. Typically only those who took Latin in a prepschool or took several semesters of Latin at another institution could stand a chance passing it.

Still, Symmachus was a BYU alum and Cassius’ foremost Grammarian. Kishkumen had to know what could have motivated Alfonsy to disagree with him.

“Disagreement you say? Over what?”

Alfonsy reached into a backpack and produced a spiral notebook and pencil. Opening to a clean sheet he wrote out a sentence in bold block letters and placed it before Kishkumen.

It read: “quis philosophum aut ullum liberale respicit studium, nisi cum ludi intercalantur, cum aliquis pluuius interuenti dies quem perdere libet?’

Alfonsy continued with his explanation while the Reverend studied the sentence patiently.

“It comes from Seneca and his ‘Naturales Quaestiones’. Professor Symmachus translated it as ‘Who takes any notice of a philosopher, or that of the liberal arts except when the games are delayed or when there is a rain and they feel like whiling away the hours?’. I guess I felt impelled to voice an objection.”

Kishkumen smiled to himself and heaved a small sigh. Seneca was dangerously underrated these days and the Reverend was pleased to see that Symmachus was doing his part to counter that. Kishkumen glanced up from the paper to make eye contact with Alfonsy and handed him the sheet back.

“What was your objection? Aside from some quibbles, I don’t see what would compel you to speak up.”

Alfonsy underlined the word philosophum several times before handing the sheet back, meeting the Reverend’s gaze.

“Why is philosophum assumed to be a noun? Why not adjectival? ”

Kishkumen sat back for a moment perplexed. Alfonsy filled the silence.

“Think back to the couplet: ‘Philosophus mansisses’. It is preserved in Medieval Latin.”

It was if the air around Kishkumen had become electrified. Thoughts were suddenly flooding his conscious and he began to make connections faster than he could properly understand them. He began to speak aloud and worked his way through the flurry of ideas.

“Well philosophus is a Greek loan word. Seneca would've course describe himself as pursuing philosophia or philosophy, and he would certainly use the verb philosophari, to philosophize, in describing what he and his companions did. Did Seneca ever use philosophus to describe himself or a contemporary?”

Kishkumen put the sheet on the table between them and Alfonsy’s eyes glanced down for a brief moment.

“Professor Symmachus argued he does not and would not have., though there was a possible counter example in ‘Naturales Quaestiones’ where Seneca compares himself to Anaxagoras. Professor Symmachus said I might have missed the joke in that particular passage.”

Kishkumen admitted to himself that Alfonsy had very much piqued his intellectual interest much more strongly than he did his pastoral concerns. He didn’t want to lose track of what was important, but he couldn’t help getting swept up in the intoxication of philology.

“So Professor Symmachus detects a semantic shift at some point after Seneca. Assuming you correct Alfonsy, what would be your proposed translation?”

Alfonsy quickly scribbled on the same paper that contained the Seneca pericope and handed it over to the Reverend. It read, ‘Who takes any notice of the study philosophy or of any of the liberal arts’. Kishkumen wasn’t convinced, but the aspiring scholar across from him wasn’t without ability; no student of Cassius ever is without. The faculty made sure of that. The couplet was still interesting to Kishkumen but Alfonsy never mentioned its origin.

“I’m not one to spend long hours in the Scholastics, but isn’t that couplet a crib on Boethius? He was a significant part of the Medieval curriculum.”

Alfonsy reached back into his backpack and pulled out a hardcover book that looked particularly old to be a textbook. Kishkumen instinctively moved closer to inspect the text and Alfonsy simply handed it to him. The dimensions of the book made it compact, but it felt dense in his hands. Upon inspection of the binding the Reverend let out a cry of surprise and delight. This book was part of the ‘Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum’ out of Vienna in the first half of the 20th century. This was none other than William Weinberger’s critical addition of Boethius’ ‘Consolation of Philosophy’. Say what you will about the high level of academic standards at Cassius, Kishkumen never ceased to be impressed by the University’s ability to put the best books in the hands of their students.

“Many suspect it to be a paraphrase from Book II Prose 7. I have a translation here from Richard Green that I’ll read to you.”

The Reverend quickly found the passage and his eye immediately detected the presence of philosophum. Alfonsy cleared his throat and began reading.

“Did you ever hear the joke about the folly of such arrogance? One man was ridiculing another who falsely called himself a philosopher; he called himself this not because he practiced true virtue, but because of vanity. The first man claimed that he would find whether or not the other was a philosopher by the way the other humbly and patiently put up with insults. The would-be philosopher bore the insults patiently for a while and then said, ‘Now do you think that I am a philosopher?’ His tormentor laughed and replied, ‘I would have thought so, if you had kept silent.’”

The Reverend listened carefully as Alfonsy read, only setting the Weinberger book down when the student had finished. He was always filled with a sense of reverence when ancient philosophy was being discussed and not just by Hellenic Pagans either; Christians, Jews, Muslims, all had recourse to mine the wisdom of the ancients. Especially when it was being read aloud, it almost felt like sacrilege to do anything else but listen closely.

Alfonsy allowed a brief period of silence to dominate the room, he knew the Reverend preferred to have periods of reflection after a reading. He counted to sixty in his head before continuing.

“Professor Symmachus asserted that adjectival use of philosophus may be established in Christian Latin but not for Seneca. I noted Boethius and asked does this mean his father must follow the example?”

Kishkumen snorted. Boethius’ adopted father was Quintus Aurelius Memmius Symmachus, one of the many Symmachi of the Late Roman Empire. Alfonsy must have baited Professor Symmachus with that remark. The Reverend stood up and walked over to a bay window on the east wall of his office, it offered a picturesque view of the river that wound its way through this side of the Cassius campus, especially now that the horde of hostile Geese that usually occupied its banks had fled south for the winter. During the last part of the spring semester the Reverend often had recourse to defend himself with an umbrella just to make it pass the creatures on his way home.

“It is like Seneca states my dear Mr. Stakhanovite, ‘illud autem te, mi Lucili, rogo atque hortor, ut philosophism in praecordia ima demittas. This is what I ask and urge, Lucilius, that you should let philosophy sink deep into your heart.’ A quarrel with Professor Symmachus is never a serious matter and I think you’ll find his humor to be in good balance. I’ll bet you a second glass of sherry that he has already forgiven you.”

Alfonsy immediately replied.

“I didn’t quarrel with Professor Symmachus, he seemed to welcome my objection. My only regret in bringing it up was his insistence that we now give Seneca a close reading. No, my actual predicament arose from what happened after my discussion. I was eating a sandwich for lunch and I pulled up the blog ‘Sic et Non’ on my tablet to read. There was something Daniel Peterson posted that bothered me.”

The Right Reverend Kishkumen gave a full body shudder. All the energy that had seeped into his bones from talking philology and philosophy had suddenly vanished and was replaced with a small twinge in his gut.

[_Gadianton]

What a dark turn to a lighthearted story. I assume there is more to come or did I miss something?

[_Doctor Scratch]

The two best parts of this (in my opinion) are: (1) the title, and (2) this passage:

“Did you ever hear the joke about the folly of such arrogance? One man was ridiculing another who falsely called himself a philosopher; he called himself this not because he practiced true virtue, but because of vanity. The first man claimed that he would find whether or not the other was a philosopher by the way the other humbly and patiently put up with insults. The would-be philosopher bore the insults patiently for a while and then said, ‘Now do you think that I am a philosopher?’ His tormentor laughed and replied, ‘I would have thought so, if you had kept silent.’”

There are some faucets that you simply cannot turn off.

And like Dean Robbers, I also hope there is a sequel to this.

[_Everybody Wang Chung]

Very interesting story. The Dean is correct about the dark turn it suddenly took towards the end. I’m looking forward to the next installment.

I just finished watching the movie Grizzly Man. The ending of the movie was devastating and left me feeling sad and a little angry. How could Treadwell be so ignorant of the dangers living with grizzly bears would bring?

Much like Treadwell, DCP has been metaphorically devoured by his pride, racism and arrogance. I feel true sadness watching DCP spend his waning days wallowing in anger, loneliness and ignorance.

His life is truly a cautionary tale.

[_Temp. Admin.]

I feel true sadness watching DCP spend his waning days wallowing in anger, loneliness and ignorance.

DCP? I see your DCP and raise you a Lou Midgley!

[_Kishkumen]

Bravo, Mr. Stak! You have done a fabulous job depicting my Cassius persona in such a manner that I hardly want to return to reality. There are some bits where the transcription has gone awry, but overall the verisimilitude and humor are quite invigorating for the soul. Would that I were Kishkumen as you imagine him to be!

Please tell me this will continue, and we will learn what the fictional counterpart to our Sic et Non is up to in the next installment.

[Guest]

The two best parts of this (in my opinion) are: (1) the title, and (2) this passage:

“Did you ever hear the joke about the folly of such arrogance? One man was ridiculing another who falsely called himself a philosopher; he called himself this not because he practiced true virtue, but because of vanity. The first man claimed that he would find whether or not the other was a philosopher by the way the other humbly and patiently put up with insults. The would-be philosopher bore the insults patiently for a while and then said, ‘Now do you think that I am a philosopher?’ His tormentor laughed and replied, ‘I would have thought so, if you had kept silent.’”

There are some faucets that you simply cannot turn off.

And like Dean Robbers, I also hope there is a sequel to this.

My favorite was the subtle adjustment to Seneca:

“It is like Seneca states my dear Mr. Stakhanovite, ‘illud autem te, mi Lucili, rogo atque hortor, Utah philosophism in praecordia ima demittas

Utah philosophism. What a phrase.

[_Physics Guy]

Ne mo me impune la cessit.

It only seems to work with ut. Hmm.

[_Gadianton]

Mr. Stak,

It seems like this story has been brewing for a while. What triggered the boiling point? Why now? was it this statement?

'I hate to always have this combative rhetoric--but I've described it as 'my little hand grenade to be tossed into the camp of the unbelievers.' Or, to put it another way, to cause them doubts about their doubts.'

I think I saw philo quoting it shortly before your thread.

[_MrStakhanovite]

Part 2(a): Epistle to The North African

Dearest Blixa,

I’m pleased you finally have access to the internet again. When people ask what you are getting up to these days they are often surprised to hear that you are no longer stateside, but instead found in Tangiers spearheading a joint venture between Cassius and the State Department. I’m not sure how you managed to secure such generous funding for the study and preservation of Berber languages, but it was an impressive feat. Captain Burton himself would be impressed.

I’ve taken your advice and decided to consult the Reverend Kishkumen on my current crisis with Mopologetics. The latest flashpoint is a blogpost from Daniel Peterson’s blog ‘Can the Study of History Yield Genuine Knowledge’ wherein he approvingly quotes Heidegger’s disciple Hans-George Gadamer’s ‘Truth and Method’; even Louis Midgley slithers into the comments and manages to get things assbackwards.

Truthfully I must admit with some sense of shame that this e-mail serves a dual purpose. I doubt the good Reverend has much familiarity with Gadamer or with ‘Truth and Method’ and will no doubt ask for details not only about the author, but also about the thesis of the work. I am meeting with him later today and I thought an e-mail to you would help organize my thoughts. I know Gadamer isn’t exactly the kind of philosopher that appeals to you, but I know you must have some sense of familiarity with him since he so publicly disputed with that villain Jurgen Habermas.

Please forgive this missive for seeking to explain issues to you as if you knew little about them. Think of this as more of a dress rehearsal on my part and you are sitting in the theater as a favor to me. You did after all ask me what had been on my mind since we last spoke and this has been at the forefront of it for the past 48 hours or so.

Daniel begins his post with the usual canard about the specter of scientism haunting his footsteps. I imagine this is another salvo targeted at a person known as “gemli” who frequents the wastelands of Disqus’ commenting software. I’m uncertain as to the beliefs of this gemli or know much about their conduct other than they seem to have this weird parasitic relationship with Daniel wherein gemli plays the villain and this allows Daniel and the other Mopologists the chance to dunk on gemli with all the fanfare that their amateur hour at Patheos usually has; a simplistic refutation or rhetorical question followed up by talk of victory. A great example can be seen from this comment that was lovingly crafted by Midgely:

You may recall that I have asked a certain dogmatist, who I expected would be posting up a storm on this blog item, if science is inductive or deductive or both. This fellow has never responded.

Forgetting momentarily the circus that is Daniel’s comments section, he goes on to handily dismantle the position “...that science is the only valid kind of knowledge, and that anything that isn’t scientific isn’t really knowledge” by quoting a paragraph from ‘Truth and Method’ but only after he provides his own exposition on Gadamer first. Predictably Daniel is so incompetent with texts that he completely misses Gadamer’s thesis and ends up reaffirming the very idea that Gadamer seeks to discredit. Surprise! Surprise! Midgely does the same but is able to pack in more egregious errors with less words. (The man can make his illiteracy manifest with the most economic use of space I’ve ever seen).

What Daniel failed to appreciate is that the entire project of Gadamer actually undermines a lot of work Daniel has put into his Mopologetics and not only introducing this “great German philosopher” but approvingly citing him actually creates a liability. To fully appreciate this requires one to actually read ‘Truth and Method’ and I highly doubt that Daniel Peterson or Louis Midgely have exerted any effort in doing so above and beyond purchasing the book.

My purpose then appears to be communicating to others what Gadamer was actually trying to accomplish while staying faithful to Gadamer’s actual words. The vast majority of people don’t have the time and inclination to read ‘Truth and Method’ (indeed not even Daniel Peterson or Louis Midgely could be bothered to do so) and perhaps this explains why the expected “dogmatist” never showed up. I don’t think it is actually that difficult to do, if I may be honest. There are many legendary texts in the humanities that have a reputation for being difficult, but I’ve come to discover that if one makes a good faith and concerted effort, these texts end up being quite manageable and even enjoyable. I only hope I’ve expended enough effort towards Gadamer to make his project understandable to others. So let me set Daniel Peterson aside for the moment and actually turn to ‘Truth and Method’.

The very first sentence of the introduction is probably the best place to start. If Daniel Peterson and Louis Midgely had bothered to read it for themselves, they might have had second thoughts. It begins thus (bolding mine):

These studies are concerned with the problem of hermeneutics. The phenomenon of understanding and of the correct interpretation of what has been understood is not a problem specific to the methodology of the human sciences alone. (p.xx)

While the term “hermeneutics” is usually confined to the academic study of texts, it can be broadly applied to any act of interpretation done by a human. Trying to extract religious doctrines from the Book of Mormon or a Judge deciding on a legal matter are obvious instances of hermeneutics, but other activities such as a physicist looking over a data set and coming to a conclusion is equally a hermeneutic act. A parent watching their misbehaving toddler and trying to figure out if they need food or a nap is just as much a hermeneutical activity as anything else previously mentioned.

While hermeneutics might be a universal human activity, how a person goes about hermeneutics is infinitely varied with little uniformity. This brings us to the issue of method because even though there might just be one thing being subject to interpretation (book, film, speech, etc) there will likely be multiple interpretations, some of which will be mutually exclusive. Thus there is often a desire to establish a formal method of interpretation that brings a certain sense of conformity to the practice of hermeneutics.

The problem of hermeneutics that Gadamer references in the very first sentence is multifaceted. Since there are so many different ways of doing hermeneutics, how do we go about trying to determine which method is better than another? Perhaps even more urgent is the gnawing concern that hermeneutics is nothing more than one big exercise in circular reasoning. When a scientist looks at a data set it often takes the form of an abstraction: dots on a Cartesian graph connected by a line for example. Taken as a whole the abstraction tells us something, but the whole can’t be understood without reference to each individual dot and each individual dot cannot be readily understood itself without reference to the whole.

Before moving on I’d like to address the term ‘human sciences’ because to an American audience that phrase can be misleading. Allow me to quote from the Translator’s Preface:

The German Wissenschaft suggests thorough, comprehensive and systematic knowledge of something on a self-consciously rational basis. Gadamer certainly contrasts what we would call the “the sciences” with the “humanities”...(p.xviii)

When reading Gadamer we will often come across the term “science” which is a generic term for a subject that has a body knowledge that can be reasoned about, it is not being used in the same sense as Bill Nye or Neil DeGrasse Tyson use it; it does not mean the modern scientific method. There will be qualifiers employed by the translators when something more specific is being intended.

When we read the term “human sciences” we should understand it to mean something that approximates what “Humanities” are in the English speaking world of higher education, exemplars being the disciplines of Philosophy, History, and Literature. The text will use the more familiar phrase “natural sciences” when Gadamer is speaking about that approximates the fields of Physics, Chemistry, and Biology.

Now let us consider a full paragraph:

Even from its historical beginnings, the problem of hermeneutics goes beyond the limits of the concept of method as set by modern science. The understanding and interpretation of texts is not merely a concern of science, but obviously belongs to human experience of the world in general. The hermeneutic phenomenon is basically not a problem at all. It is not concerned with a method of understanding by means of which texts are subjected to scientific investigation like all other objects of experience. It is not concerned primarily with amassing verified knowledge, such as would satisfy the methodological ideal of science—yet it too is concerned with knowledge and with truth. In understanding tradition not only are texts understood, but insights are acquired and truths known. But what kind of knowledge and what kind of truth? (p.xx)

Not to belabor the point, but the term “scientific investigation” means a rational and systematic investigation in a broad sense, not the narrow sense of the popular conception of the scientific method. Notice what Gadamer is telling us here, this project of his is not primarily about method. He doesn’t think the philosophical problems posed by hermeneutics can profitably be addressed by appeals to methods that are typically concerned with the accumulation of knowledge and the justification of beliefs. Gadamer is expressing his belief that the human sciences (i.e. humanities) are poised to deal with the problem of hermeneutics by other means. Gadamer claims that this other means is also concerned with ideas of knowledge and truth, but how?

Given the dominance of modern science in the philosophical elucidation and justification of the concept of knowledge and the concept of truth, this question does not appear legitimate. Yet it is unavoidable, even within the sciences. The phenomenon of understanding not only pervades all human relations to the world. It also has an independent validity within science, and it resists any attempt to reinterpret it in terms of scientific method. The following investigations start with resistance in modern science itself to the universal claim of scientific method. They are concerned to seek the experience of truth that transcends the domain of scientific method. Whatever that experience is to be found, and to inquire into its legitimacy. Hence the human sciences are connected to modes of experience that lie outside science: with the experience of philosophy, of art, and of history itself. These are all modes of experience in which a truth is communicated that cannot be verified by the methodological means proper to science. (p. xx-xxi)

You’ll notice the bolded phrase “phenomenon of understanding” above also appeared in the second sentence of the introduction, getting a grip on what Gadamr is trying to communicate will require me to return to the translator’s preface:

The central question of Gadamer’s investigation is the nature of “understanding,” particularly as this is revealed in humanistic study. The German term is Verstehen, and Gadamer stresses its close connection with Verständigung, “coming to an understanding with someone,” “coming to an agreement with someone,” and Einverständnis, “understanding, agreement, consent.” Instead of the binary implication of “understanding” (a person understands something), Gadamer pushes toward a three-way relation: one person comes to an understanding with another about something they thus both understand. (p.xvi)

The takeaway here is that Gadamer believes that what the human sciences actually do is facilitate an experience/encounter with their object of study that goes above and beyond method. Okay, but what does that even look like and where does it happen? Gadamer answering that question is actually what the bulk of ‘Truth and Method’ is about. There are three parts to ‘Truth and Method’ that receive lengthy treatment: aesthetics, history, and language.

Hence the following investigation starts with a critique of aesthetic consciousness in order to defend the experience of truth that comes to us through the work of art against the aesthetic theory that lets itself be restricted to a scientific conception of truth. But the book does not rest content with justifying the truth of art; instead, it tries to develop from this starting point a conception of knowledge and of truth that corresponds to the whole of our hermeneutic experience. (p.xxii)

The passage Daniel quotes is on page 4 under a section titled ‘Transcending the Aesthetic Dimension’ which means he isn’t even drawing on the nearly 300 pages dedicated to History, but at the very beginning of the section dedicated to Aesthetics. Gadamer has barely begun his analysis by page 4 and is in the midst of trying to explain the historical background of the problem at hand; so when Daniel speaks about what Gadamer “insists” about “History” is not even Gadamer’s view! Much more on that to come.

Hence these studies on hermeneutics, which start from the experience of art and historical tradition, try to present the hermeneutic phenomenon in its full extent. It is a question of recognizing in it an experience of truth that not only needs to be justified philosophically, but which is itself a way of doing philosophy. The hermeneutics developed here is not, therefore, a methodology of the human sciences, but an attempt to understand what the human sciences truly are, beyond their methodological self-consciousness, and what connects them with the totality of our experience of world. (p.xxii)

This passage best encapsulates Gadamer’s project in ‘Truth and Method’ and will be my final citation from the ‘Introduction’. From here I’d like to move on the portion that Daniel quotes from and do my best to capture how Gadamer develops his thesis.