Dasein - Monoskop

BETWEEN SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS - GADAMER'S HERMENEL'TICS
"an instrument of subjectivity". 86 Whereas the copy "does not gain
its function of referring or representing from the sign-introducing
subject but from its own content" 87 , "the sign acquires its meaning
only in relation to the sign-introducing subject". 88 In other words,
because the relation between signurn and signatum is arbitrary, it
must be stipulated by a sign-introducing subject. This can indeed
be seen clearly in Wittgenstein: Wittgenstein writes that the sense
of the picture he is employing is precisely that of "something which
is intended to be a picture of another ... That it is a picture consists
in intention". 8 ®
Following Heidegger's lead, Gadamer also proposes that the sign
conception of language is connected to the idea that the human
subject-agent can control the world around it. For instance, Leibniz
hoped that the system of exactly defined signs would correspond
to "the totality of beings understood as the totality of controlled
objects" 90 , to wit, that his "analysis notiorum" would ultimately
reflect "the universe of beings ... The creation of the world, as the
calculation of God, who calculates which is the best among all the
possibilities of Being, would be calculated again by human reason." 91
Even though modern philosophy has given up the theological ingredient
in this conception, the idea of a perfect sign language has not,
according to Gadamer, been given up. 92 Gadamer does not discuss
modern analytical philosophy anywhere in any detail, but he tells
us that he takes, for instance, modern semantics to be linked to the
sign conception. 93 He also claims that the philosophy of language,
especially starting with von Humboldt, has gone astray in regarding
language as a pure form, in separating form from content.
Turning from Gadamer's critical discussion of the copy and the
sign conception to his own positive account, it seems surprising at
first that Gadamer does not give us very much to go by. His own conception
is not even explicitly termed "picture theory"; what suggests
this label is rather, on the one hand, that Gadamer places, in the
quotation above (p. 253), the picture between sign and copy as the
forgotten alternative, and, on the other hand, his pronouncements
with respect to the language-world relation being strongly reminiscent
of the characterization of the picture as a unity of rcprcsentans
and representatum. The following two passages can serve to illumi-
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