The Hermeneutic Circle

Gadamer's discussion of the hermeneutic circle is meant to describe an experience that we've all had—the experience of understanding. As he notes, the hermeneutic circle—as a phenomenology of understanding—is meant to describe experience rather than prescribe technique.

This is a radical statement, if you think about it. He’s saying that understanding is something that happens to us just as much as it is something that must be sought and pursued.

My own version of Gadamer’s view of the hermeneutic circle can be viewed here.

The phenomenological tradition, stretching back to Hegel, has posited experience as the overturning of an expectation, a habit, or a routine. It is the eruption of the unexpected. It is the interruption of a prejudice (in the Gadamerian sense of that term).

Unfortunately, too much of our life is void of meaningful experience because we have become deadened to what the world has to say as it interacts with our expectations of it.
 
Good phenomenological practice involves a welcoming of surprise. It is also a welcoming of the risk that comes with realizing you are free to be different than you are. For if it is true that we openly and sincerely bring all of our fore-havings to our encounters with the world, then it is equally true that all of those things can be put into question by the world.

To have experience is to be honest about who we are and to be open to what the world has to say in response. It is, again, an essaying, a risking, a difficult conversation between myself, my projections, and the world’s response.

Imagine if we could be so open to what the world has to say that we were continually having meaningful experiences—ah, this is what a flower looks like, ah! Imagine the bravery that would take. Imagine the confidence it might instill.