Pragmatism, pluralism and the healing of wounds

TLDR: In this article, a good fortune message from Hans-Georg Gadamer is used to summarize his lecture and epitomize his philosophy, "Sometimes to understand the present, one needs to study the past."

Abstract: Several years ago, Hans-Georg Gadamer visited my college and gave an eloquent lecture on hermeneutics. After the lecture, several of us took him out to dinner-to a local Chinese restaurant. We concluded the meal by reading the messages of our fortune cookies. The art of writing a good fortune message is to be sufficiently vague and ambiguous so when it is read it seems to have specific and unique relevance. But in this instance, Gadamer's fortune message was especially apt. For it summed up his lecture and epitomized his philosophy. When his turn came, his 'fortune' read: "Sometimes to understand the present, one needs to study the past." In preparing this address that message kept intruding itself. For I want to try to understand and gain a critical perspective on our present situation in philosophy. To do so one must study the past-the traditions that have shaped and still are shaping us. For I agree with Gadamer that we belong to traditions before they belong to, and are appropriated by, us. But as soon as one speaks in this manner, treacherous problems come pouring in. Not the least of which is, who is this "we"? Even if one limits oneself to philosophy in America, or more specifically, to philosophy in the United States, we are an extremely heterogeneous bunch, perhaps more so today than at any time in our past. And "we" have been shaped by conflicting rival traditions. Alasdair MacIntyre has given one of the best succinct characterizations of a tradition when he tells us that a tradition "not only embodies the narrative of an argument, but is only recovered by an argumentative retelling of that narrative which will itself be in conflict with other argumentative retellings. . . ."1 Today I want to sketch an argumenta-