Understanding understanding

Gadamer ( Truth and Method (Continuum Impacts) , p. 180 ) says, “We begin with this proposition: understanding means, first of all, understanding one another. Understanding is first of all having come to a mutual understanding. People understand one another immediately for the most part, or they communicate until they reach unity and agreement. Understanding, then, is always coming to an understanding about something.”

Seems pretty colorless, but Weinsheimer ( Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method , pp. 137-8) notes that this is a direct and fundamental challenge to the “romantic” hermeneutics deriving from Schleiermacher: “For Schleiermacher . . . understanding is not understanding one another: it is one’s understanding of the other – unilaterally. It is not coming to an understanding regarding a topic of common concern, but rather understanding the other regardless of what he is concerned about.” The problem is that Schleiermacher invokes hermeneutics because of common misunderstanding; he begins with “alienation.” What Schleiermacher describes is real: When after a long discussion, you and I still cannot come to a mutual understanding, you and I both begin to “reconstruct” how the other could have come to such a (mistaken) opinion. But this is not the process of understanding as such. Beginning with alienation, Gadamer charges, Schleiermacher can’t even understand understanding.