Modern Age - Spring 2016 - 81

THE POVERTY OF ANTIHISTORICISM

considered true," Gadamer precludes identification with the aspiration to stand outside or at the end of history (530).
At the same time, there is no reason to suppose that this modification of Strauss's premise results in a relativistic attitude toward
truth claims. Rather, it merely admits-and, in fact, is intent on
emphasizing-the limited nature of our knowledge of truth, echoing the long intellectual tradition in the West extending back
through medieval Christianity to the Socratic "docta ignorantia,"
which asserts the limited and finite nature of human knowing
(356). To recognize, therefore, that one's outlook may "no longer
be considered true" in no way touches upon the question of the
latter's status as truth-and Gadamer does not make such an
assertion. Indeed, Strauss could not be troubled by Gadamer's
remark here, unless he thought the truth status of one's claims
were contingent upon whether they were accepted or disputed, a
view that would itself have relativistic implications.
In the second place-and further developing this last point-
Gadamer sets out to distinguish his own form of historicism from
that which Strauss is actually criticizing in Natural Right and History and, presumably, in his correspondence with Gadamer. What
Strauss seems to have in mind as his target, according to Gadamer,
is the "naive historicism" of Dilthey and nineteenth-century historical positivism, which had inherited the epistemological assumptions of romantic hermeneutics and conceived of the present as
having a "superior perspective . . . to the whole of the past" (531).
Indeed, Gadamer says he actually agrees with Strauss's critique of
such varieties of historicism, insofar as they imply a "utopian ideal
of a present in the light of which the whole of the past will, as it
were, be entirely revealed" (531). However, Gadamer explains, such
criticism would be inappropriate for philosophical hermeneutics,
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Modern Age - Spring 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Modern Age - Spring 2016

Contents
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