Gadamer on Education & Tradition (1979)

Added: 2026-04-30

[00:00:01]Thank you very much uh for your works of introduction. As a matter of fact, I feel uh very very discomfortable in this moment. Uh I have just to open the mouth and you know the first reason for my discomfort. I mean this lack of competence in speaking in English. I learned it in very late years and the German accent I have is very hearable for myself but I cannot change it.

[00:00:32]The second uh point for discomfort is that I am a man of the classroom and not of the big audience and to speak about difficult things uh for a bigger audience is always a risk.

[00:00:50]I can just try uh to uh improvise it on the basis of notes because my English is much too bad to recite a well stylized text. Then you would feel in any moment how far I am from your language.

[00:01:09]Uh and the third point of course is that uh my job is a special difficult one. I have to do with concepts and concepts are in the eyes of most people uh something one has to use and to let beside and at least not to uh point to it and to deepen it in its own uh claims of truth.

[00:01:43]Uh so my situation is a little the situation of a man who recommends uh that there is just one way for thinking and clarifying our own mind and that is the dialogical way. and my situation is very discomfortable in this moment because the dialogue is not the form of speaking for a bigger audience.

[00:02:14]So I hope um you will uh I will find a way just to develop the outlines of my own reflection about uh the problem of tradition and education as it is practicized in this institute. I hope I can uh concentrate myself and uh your own attention even against this splendid sunshine of Texas which is so much more inviting to other things than to this pale form of conceptual thinking.

[00:02:59]Well, as an old philologist, I cannot avoid to begin with some reflections about the words education and tradition.

[00:03:14]education that I think when one learns to uh feel the music of the words, the connotations which have the evocative function of language to uh awaken the the matters which are announced by words. Education certainly gives us then a first very important import information.

[00:03:48]Education is not a form of making something.

[00:03:54]Education, as you know, means that one draws, that one leads some out of its unprofiled and unshaped um beginning stage so that it is in the end what it is real in the beginning, but not in an explicit form. So education indeed uh is something where we have always present our own limitation over against the pre-given conditions of human life, nature and its insuffinitude of our own living activities.

[00:04:51]And then liberal education.

[00:04:54]Indeed, liberal education is the key word for the way of our humanistic tradition which begins with the Greeks and which goes far beyond ourselves, far beyond our European culture, our American culture. I think it is a question of mankind to find ways of liberal education and of education to liberty.

[00:05:29]Well, the humanistic tradition of course and education by liberal education.

[00:05:40]Um that means to lead somebody to the point where he can accept or refuse what he learned and to which he was accustomed.

[00:05:58]It is in a way this special excellence of human beings that they are not fixed and uh streamlined in their reactions uh by the natural gift uh they have they are in a way squee to uh the natural lines of life. They have choice.

[00:06:30]And to have choice, you know, is a very difficult and torturing thing. To prefer one thing over against the other is always something what uh challenges us uh with the our feeling for the limitation of our insights and the redeem unredeemability of the given decision.

[00:07:01]So the anthropological background for education is indeed uh quite decisive for the ways in which we can hope to develop a human style of life.

[00:07:26]This way of education and of liberal education of course involves that uh it is not a learning for special purposes and not oriented towards a special usefulness of what one is learning and to which one is built up.

[00:07:51]Liberal means free from disrespect for the usefulness.

[00:08:00]And you know that the normal word for this the positive equivalent for this lack of usefulness is the beautiful is something where nobody feels motivation to ask why is it and why is it beautiful.

[00:08:27]There we are obviously confronted with an experience of overwhelming self evidence and I think to open our own mind and our own human stature for such experiences of overwhelming evidence is as I hope to describe in my lecture one of the deepest motivations for liberal education and for overcoming the temptations of tyranny, of desperatism, of lack of self-control and lack of humanity.

[00:09:16]Well, and of course tradition.

[00:09:21]I mean that we are not legislators in an empty space where we can form and build up following our own imagination.

[00:09:35]that we are not makers at all, but that we have to uh accept the pre-given conditions and that we will not claim to be wiser than former generations and the wise men of former time have been.

[00:10:00]Therefore, tradition uh paradosis as is the Greek word for it is always in a way doubled in between this preformationation of any beginning of human beings.

[00:10:22]the Greek word. I excuse me that I am always returning to the Greek original words but uh it is so much easier to think with words which are not uh transformed by a long history of a human culture but are abstracted immediately from the living use of colloquial language.

[00:10:51]And so you know the word ethos, the aristotalian word for this formation of human beings by their own doing by customs, by practice.

[00:11:10]So that what comes out is much more than what in the than what in the moment is present and is available and disposable uh for the particular individual.

[00:11:27]Ethos, the form of determining and to be determined before we begin to look around for the possibilities of the situation and of the next future. Ethos in this uh sense I think is indeed a basic structure of human life. We are following uh the line of our life. We are building up, coming from and going to. And all process of education is embedded in this broader context of ongoing process of human practice, human uh self formation.

[00:12:29]But tradition in a special sense includes even more than this uh form of predetermination in the moment and in the concrete situation.

[00:12:46]A tradition involves some reference to uh authority.

[00:12:59]And uh one of the main purposes of my presentation of today will be to rectify and uh to clean some as from some prejudices of modern times concerning the relevance of such things like authority and tradition.

[00:13:26]Certainly um this uh world and conscious reference to authorities to something what was seen and taught by former generations.

[00:13:47]this uh dedication to the possibility that our own uh judgment and our own information could be inferior to what uh the wisest men of human past had to teach us. I think such a primordial conviction is the basis for the acknowledgment of tradition.

[00:14:29]Tradition in this sense is of course closely connected with the whole formation of our social and political life.

[00:14:46]And it is a widespread error of modern times to think that uh this uh information and this learning in poy uh poetry and poy and uh in music and in sport and all that what was the content of Greek education is something not quite serious something more preparatory than basic for human social life.

[00:15:24]To free us from such a prejudice that uh the paid, this education in the word paida, you know it of course from the word pedagogic.

[00:15:41]Paya means um the formation or uh of of childs. Uh this uh uh form of learning which is more or less a free play, a game, something wi which attracts us by its own attractivity without uh being just uh stubborn or u dark effort. No, you see that we need uh such an introduction in our own possibilities by the imitation which is so in the basic view the kernel of our creativity in art and poetry that we need such things is I think well founded in human nature and we can learn from the Greeks why without such a form of education no liberty, no freedom, no free society can exist.

[00:17:10]The most radical counterfight uh of this uh connection of liberal education with social reality is I think uh the um image which Plato constructed in his ideal city in the strange and witty invention of a great thinker and joker in once at once who introduced uh the image of an ideal city on the point of view I think of the difficulty to overcome the temptations of power.

[00:18:03]I think that is the real definition of a politics that politics try to find and to develop the control of power.

[00:18:20]That's certainly true for modern democracy with a doubtful success of course because we are human beings and uh the ideal of self-control which would uh allow us uh to realize an ideal society is far beyond our own possibilities.

[00:18:46]But nevertheless, it is a a real uh challenge for us and it is a question how can we further the best the way of overcoming the temptations of power.

[00:19:08]And there I think Plato was right when he tried to demonstrate that it is just the enjoyment of the beautiful things. the things which have a pure theoretical interest and value which can help us to overcome the temptation of power.

[00:19:42]You know the construction of the ideal city was that there is a long long education 50 years until a young citizen of this ideal city should be elected for government and then he should spend I think five years for the function of governing and administration.

[00:20:13]And after 5 years or 10 years that may change he is permitted to return to the better job of theoretical life.

[00:20:26]This deep insight that uh there is just one chance for this uh driven structure of human beings. this exposure uh to uh ambition and to uh dominate uh to eagerness to dominate others. All this um structure of human life can be counterbalanced by sharing the beautiful.

[00:21:02]You see the beautiful that is not only what is self-evident but it has also another excellence and that is that one can participate in it and is in in in a way restrict restraining somebody else. That is a good which by itself increases in its own goodness by the participation of others.

[00:21:41]The beautiful, you know, uh the opposite of the beautiful in Greek words is what is a shame.

[00:21:53]Something which nobody likes to uh observe and to watch too, which one tries to ignore and to neglect as far as possible. The beautiful is something to uh towards which we are gathered.

[00:22:14]And so I think indeed it is also the basis for the common of common life for the possibility to uh share without ambition and without envy.

[00:22:33]So that indeed uh friendship I think yesterday we heard and I liked it especially uh that professor Norbert Schulz said it is a question of friendship which uh gives us the natural interchange uh with good and beautiful things world and environment and so on. Indeed, friendship it has a certain uh color uh of a rare of a rare thing and I remember that Kant said one day the authentic friend is so rare as a black swan.

[00:23:23]Uh but nevertheless there are approximations to this uh fact of friendship and friendship is nothing else I think than what is formulated by the old pithagorean slogan co between friends there is no question of ownership.

[00:23:52]they share or what they need. Well, of course to share in this way that means in the end what we would call in our own words, not friendship but the more abstract um structure of friendship. I mean solidarity and not and where we have not solidarity we can have the wisest institutions the best codifications of law the best regulation of education without this stream of interchange of a solidary feeling all the things are just uh stony patterns we have to vivify by the breath of our communication and our common life.

[00:25:03]Well, certainly uh that is a more uh formal description of the restrictions in which our conceptual thinking, our planned um planning, our ability to order and organize the forms of our common life. All that is in the end based On this presupposition that the application of this patterns and general rules of our living together are done uh on the basis of solidary feeling.

[00:25:53]That is what I would call the hermeneutical skill. this concretization of the universal and the general. So that in the situation and not in an abstract uh separateness from the challenge of the moment uh our life should proceed in following the orders of our common organization and certain it is true what uh professor Norbert Schulz said also yesterday and I like to quote in this case, Aristotle who said uh that uh the legislator and he means in this case the man who is responsible for the system of education and probably that is a metaphor to speak about such a legislator.

[00:26:59]Perhaps that is an extrapolation of the technical genius of the Greeks that they uh formulated a much more complicated giveness of our life conditions in the form of a technician, of a craftsman who knows to make something or to introduce in this case the right laws. and roots.

[00:27:30]But it may be that it is a metaphor of a craftsman in the place of our common destination and common task.

[00:27:42]But it remains true what Aristotle said when he said uh a legislator in education who did not uh teach and allow to the others to be in to be leisure to uh enjoy the free time of our life.

[00:28:11]is obviously wrong.

[00:28:14]So the presupposition of a good institution of our life is again this introduction in the enjoyment of what uh we can share as good as beautiful without a special.

[00:28:41]institution.

[00:28:44]Well, there are some outlines of this Greek image of a good education and of the handling of the problem. How to introduce uh social uh forms of life uh which allow to fulfill our human destination.

[00:29:16]education to lead us out of a confused life situation to the possible selfachievement of our own life.

[00:29:31]That indeed is the highest goal of such a form of life. Well, I think a second step we have to do is how far are we from this point and and what and what can it mean for us to refer to this image of liberal education and to try to continue in the way of liberal education with the same expectation and the same hope of humanizing our own existence in society and state.

[00:30:19]Well, certainly we that is now a very different situation. I will not give you the description of the humanistic tradition uh through the centuries. You know how late antiquity and young Christianism came together and how that formed and built up the o the westernal culture.

[00:30:48]You know how in the end of the medieval time with a new enthusiasm for the discovery of the world and of the persons in the in this age it was a real return to the ideals of Greek and Latin culture the humanism in this special sense of the word But our problem is of course that then and on this basis of uh the new start in the modern times sciences began this new turn and this new way.

[00:31:39]Uh it seems to me that it was a new form of human self insurance which was connected with a new ideal of method. You know that was the the slogan of the modern sciences to follow a method means in this modern sense to go the way of inquiry and of research so that we can avoid with reliability any mistake.

[00:32:23]It's true that in the long run modern sciences with their own uh institutional character of ongoing process of self-revision and selfcorrection uh fulfills in some degree this ideal of a reliable orientation about the world and a reli able application of our knowledge for mastering the powers of nature. And I am sorry that I am not very optimistic in this later point also to master the um explosive uh stuff of a human society.

[00:33:24]Well, indeed, participation seemed to me the basic character for liberal education, for this sharing the common which allows us to stay together without wrong forms of struggling and uh competition.

[00:33:53]No mastering, domination of the alien.

[00:34:00]That is obviously uh the problem of modern times.

[00:34:07]No question that this new start uh done by men of highest uh quality, moral and intellectual quality that this new start was not at all um a decision against the values of Christian society.

[00:34:35]Uh it was a certain form of coexistence with tradition which stimulated this research work of a Galileo or of a Hyans or of a Decart or whoever it was.

[00:34:56]And uh when we look to uh the facts of our history of ideas, we can realize for example in the um crucial paradigm of decart that this man who introduced this principle of method, this uh conviction that when we avoid void any um unreliable assumption.

[00:35:31]We can be sure that we can avoid error.

[00:35:35]That this man nevertheless made his meditations about first philosophy, about the existence of God and about the uh relationship of our self consciousness with the acknowledgment of the highest being.

[00:35:58]And we know also that this deart asked of course how will he order the moral and political life with this new principle of methodical approach to uh knowledge.

[00:36:22]uh restricted himself and recommended not to disturb the traditions uh with wise institutions.

[00:36:34]the provisorary moral morality that was the famous formulation of Decart. And even in his last years he did never really change this conviction that our start for research work for investigation for domination of nature should be supported by a wellordered uh social and moral life.

[00:37:10]Well, but you know what happened? Meanwhile, we had this first radical attempt of the French Revolution uh to uh reject past.

[00:37:25]We have a reaction on this uh French revol on this epoch of French rationalism by the romantic movement which uh shaped I think 150 years since the beginning of the 18th century and it is just the second half of our century.

[00:37:55]that we are for the first time, I think, exposed to an ongoing dissolution of the cement of traditional forms of life, religion, customs, education, step by step.

[00:38:15]And the result is what we heard yesterday. this homelessness of men in its own world, this deep alienation and disaection of modern life.

[00:38:34]And I think the most serious point that so far as I can judge it is the first time that even you the youth feels this dis disaection and this homelessness.

[00:38:55]The youth which is so powerful in its own imagination and it its own inrooted optimism for an open future.

[00:39:10]I think that is the reason why we are indeed in a crisis.

[00:39:17]Not that older people is disappointed and sees a decay and degeneration of a former forms of life. Old people is strange. We don't like change and even an improvement is not very pleasant for the eyes of an old man. Uh but then young people uh begins to ask for this uh future as for some dark and something uh without real promises.

[00:39:58]When there is a certain disaection in the sense uh that the things are in a way automatized.

[00:40:09]Nobody can change really. Uh we are just uh uh uh spe special particular uh minor links in such a network which uh uh leads us and also um imprisons us in the ma main line of the economic and of the technological development. Then I think indeed we begin to ask how what happened and is it really true that we cannot escape this perspective of a increasing bureaucratization of our life. an increasing lack of feeling at home in the world to in which we invested so much work, so much labor, so much imagination and so much genius.

[00:41:23]Well, I wouldn't think that the old recommendation of aesthetic education could uh achieve this goal and it would be I think an hopeless situation indeed if it would be just a question of uh some uh change in our educational system and in our institutions of life.

[00:42:04]My own conviction is that we are exposed to a bad philosophy.

[00:42:14]That it is not the reality as such which looks hopeless but indeed our perspective in understanding our place in this technological uh world.

[00:42:33]uh it is I think uh we have good reasons to say that the philosophy and philosophy fortunately has a very broad connotation in your use of the word in Germany philosophers are much more professionals and but you have a prof philosophy of kitchen and a philosophy of sport and so you have also a philosophy, I think, concerning the perspective of our future.

[00:43:10]And this uh philosophy seems to me um wrong so far as it is based on the extrapolation of the scientific approach of the 17th century and its consequences.

[00:43:34]That was indeed a great thing that Decart uh founded our confidence in our cognition on the uh doubtless uh reliability of our selfconsciousness.

[00:43:58]It was a great thing to underline uh this uh domain of uh our own self-conscious attitude, our power of will to control our illusions and to accept just what we can uh control and what we can indeed uh certify and verify by our methodical investigation.

[00:44:33]But this subjectivity as the general point of orientation of human life seems to me the root for all the impasses of our philosophy of today.

[00:44:56]We tried of course and that is unavoidable uh to overcome the narrowness of the such a starting point in the self-consciousness. We know that there is the other this monade which is so clothed in itself as we are in ourselves.

[00:45:22]Are we I think uh it is a little uh the prejudice of this start with our self consciousness. It is a structure of selfconsciousness that we underrate the common basis of our life.

[00:45:47]uh we tried thinkers tried of course to realize that it is a moral experience and Kant I think was a real uh brilliant uh messenger of this moral experience that it is against human reason to use somebody else just as a means and not to respect that he is an end in itself as everybody else as as myself am. I think that was a a good thing to remind us that uh the scientific uh advancement and progressism of the epoch of the enlightenment had its last limitation in the moral experience. And uh I found it always very uh speaking that in the notebooks of Kant there was founded one note which said Rouso corrected me.

[00:47:02]That means of course Rouso who answered to this famous question uh of the improvement of morality by the advancement of our scientific knowledge that Rouso answered no progress at all but decay.

[00:47:21]And so indeed Kant realized that uh the moral responsibility what he called duty it has nothing to do with with Prussian militarism. It's a strange prejudice of the anonian world to think that duty is just a Prussian invention. Um well Kant indeed um realized that that is a basis for our self understanding as reasonable beings which goes far beyond the possibilities of theoretical investigation and knowledge. The critic of pure pure reason remarkable work of thinking um is just the introduction in the moral basis of insight in metaphysical questions. And uh I could uh continue and say that also in the followership of Kant uh for example Hegel tried of course and to uh develop a more a broader concept of the basis of human life to go beyond the subjectivity of self-consciousness and to recognize that in the institutions and in the work of art and in religion and in philosophy, we share a common truth.

[00:49:06]But I think we must uh see that uh it is not sufficient just to try to break through the imanism of self-consciousness and subjectivism.

[00:49:30]the other the the thou. I remember that in my own youth it was a certain movement towards the recognition of the thou. So that idealism and theocantianism uh did no longer convince us. Martin Bou for example was one of the heroes messengers of this recognition of the vow. the G as a the Protestantic theology the so-called dialectical theology did something similar I think it was not radical enough to uh change our philosophy in I mean not the philosophy of the philosophers but the philosophy of the non- philosophers and the philosophy of the known philosophers is of course much more powerful as our own poor professional their job. Well, I think we should ask us how far is this subjectivistic background of modern philosophy, this extrapolation of the narrow field of sciences and the narrowness of the field of sciences.

[00:50:56]for the whole balance of human life should not be misunderstood.

[00:51:03]The real scientists are never so idolatric concerning the relevance of their own doing. I was a very good friend with some leading scientists of our epoch. No, that is more the bad philosophy of others that they think in physics or in genetics or in some other modern chances of knowledge and application of knowledge should be hidden the solution of our crisis.

[00:51:40]No, I think uh we should realize that is not the right way and that is not the real uh chance for our future.

[00:51:55]But we should ask what is the function of education in a situation as it was described yesterday as it is certainly uh true as a general view of our situation.

[00:52:24]Certainly we have to revise some of our deepest inrooted prejudices.

[00:52:34]One of them is I think the colony of imitation that indeed seems to me absolutely basic for education.

[00:52:49]Education is a certain process.

[00:52:57]We are not making it.

[00:53:00]Our teaching is a certain an element for this process of education of leading and developing the um destination of men.

[00:53:17]But I think Aristotle was correct in saying logos yes even logos even uh rationality contributes to the formation of human characters it contributes but much deeper impact is of course uh working in our style of life in our customs in our behavior and so on and in education. I think it is just the paradigm. It is just this uh personalization of knowledge which can elicitation.

[00:54:14]I don't know can we really teach without being imitators of our teachers and without uh uh offering our own efforts of uh insight and learning to the younger generation.

[00:54:42]I think imitation should be re evaluated.

[00:54:50]It should not be difficult in a Christian society. So far it is a Christian one. I know something about the imitation of Christ and uh I think uh I cannot see why uh uh mankind should not follow in its own educational way the wisdom of this tradition.

[00:55:15]Of course it means acknowledgment of superiority.

[00:55:25]Acknowledgement of superiority.

[00:55:28]Uh I am quite convinced that is the deepest hole and leure in our public system of today.

[00:55:40]It is much more eagerness for acknowledgment of superiority as is discovered by this uh younger generation which uh will form itself and of course it cannot inhy through the immense fields of learning and culture and tradition.

[00:56:10]It cannot do so without certain landmarks of personalized knowledge.

[00:56:24]Well, uh acknowledgment of superiority, it has nothing to do with a blind obedience to authority.

[00:56:36]That is one of the second a second deep error concerning the problem the the values of our epoch that authority is just seen in the um framework of power of repression of lack of freedom and so on. But authority uh which is just uh tool, a means in the hands of a dominating class or whatever it may be. That's not authority at all. That is an abuse of the world and conceals the lack of authority.

[00:57:26]I refer to your own uh school experience. A school master who referred to his authoritarian position had no authority.

[00:57:38]He needed this reference and of course it was not successful. But a teacher who has authority is not asked for his authority. He has it.

[00:57:51]Well, in this sense, I think uh authority is based on the acknowledgment of superiority.

[00:58:01]It is something uh a solidary between uh the follower, the admirer, the lover and the man or the woman who are leading him towards some better and deeper insight.

[00:58:24]Well, the bureaucratization of our life is of course a terrible uh impediment for this uh efficiency of the real interchange between educated and educator.

[00:58:46]certain and I gratulate you for this small institution where the personal contact between teacher and a student is maintained and uh efficient in uh uh all this approximations to the ideal which we call human. Um but uh certain in the broader um field of life it is certainly true. Education in public institutions is very rarely such a personalized thing.

[00:59:28]But we should not restrain education to this uh special institutions for learning.

[00:59:38]The first place for education is of course the family.

[00:59:44]And certainly it is one of the um most serious objections against the trends of our economic life and also against uh the development of the personality uh of the female sex. today that the mother is to such a degree distracted from its own work with the children. But I think here also we should find new ways and uh fathers exist also in the world. So they have their duties in the same climate of the family and it is not an ideal when a child asked his mother as I learn a story of my childhood who is a man he comes in the evening to beat me.

[01:00:52]Well, you see, uh, the reference to family is just one illustration for a general point I wanted to make, and that is that we should not be misled by philosophy to see what happens in reality. I know it happens very much in reality what we would not like. But we are always I think overrating the institutional uh renewals, reformationations, changings of systems and fortunately there is much more how should I say natural giveness of life conditions nobody can change and to recognize it again.

[01:01:59]That seems to me the way of improving our philosophy.

[01:02:05]It was a little the impact of the sciences and this optimism of progress and advancement in our discovery of nature in the world. It was and is certainly an indispensable um section of social organization that we have this bureaucracy and this administration and so but should we not recognize in our philosophy that all that is more or less based on some unchangeable structures.

[01:02:51]of our life and of our mind.

[01:02:57]As a matter of fact, I would not say that it is just poetry or fine art or creativity uh which can free us uh from the pressure of this bureaucratized system of our education.

[01:03:17]But I think when we begin to revise our thinking about what is valid and what is uh uh important for our life. When we begin to realize that our human wisdom is not just an application of uh the results of scientific investigation, but that we are sharing common experiences between uh in the family, in the profession, in all the institutions in which people comes together.

[01:04:06]I think we would also insert our cultural tradition in a more living form in what happens real.

[01:04:20]This uh aesthetic educ education uh which certainly has its values should be seen in the light of the paradise of this desire and eagerness to recognize superiority.

[01:04:44]That seems to me and that is what I call the hermeneutical message in our little chaotic cultural situation that uh we have to share the common world.

[01:05:01]We have to find always again the common language dialogue and not rhetoric or rhetoric in the uh just in uh in the subordination to the intensivation and personalization of knowledge.

[01:05:25]That is I think the main point for uh our uh self improvement.

[01:05:38]Perhaps uh we should u see that tradition and education and especially the role of tradition in education gives us a ongoing uh learning of the restrictiveness of our own sovereignty.

[01:06:06]So that in the end and that should be my concluding remark.

[01:06:11]So that in the end Plato remains true when he says and I think that is really um revealing that human knowledge and human insight and culture is not something like a stable result but it is like the conservation of the species by the reproduction of the individuals in the life of the animals.

[01:06:55]It is just by memorizing. It is just by reproducing.

[01:07:01]It is just by spending more and more. uh this uh uh deep uh encounter with what we know.

[01:07:18]To be homeless means not to love enough the own home and to become at home. I think that is indeed the main task for human beings.

[01:07:38]Plato in the symposium compares the self-rerodction of the species with this fin a finite character of human beings which nevertheless represents for us the chance of future and of immortality.

[01:08:00]Thank you.

[01:08:11]Heat.

[01:08:22]Heat. Heat.