Gadamer's Verdict on German Philology

Gadamer, who was born in 1900, explains how his generation escaped the spell of the Idealistic, Nation-building, project of 'German Philology'.  To my mind, this explains why the cretin Heidi had salience.

Above all, it was the intensity with which Heidegger evoked Greek philosophy that worked on us like a magical spell. The fact that such a spell was more a counterexample than an example of what his own questioning was intending to do was something we were scarcely aware of at the time. Heidegger’s Destruktion of Greek metaphysics was concerned not just with the consciousness-based idealism of the modern age, but likewise with its origins in Greek metaphysics. Heidegger’s “de- struction” and radical critique also called into question the Christian character of theology as well as the scientific character of philosophy.

But the method used by this 'radical critique' was bad philology- lying about what words mean or how they came to be. In other words, Heidi's spell, as 'counter-example', was that of, not an utile Medea, but unequivocal Circe. German Philology could either cut off German theology from Christianity, German philosophy from Science, or it could have its swinish throat hermeneutically slit to make blutwurst.

The truth is, Blood and Iron had failed Germany. So had philology. But blutwurst is high value added. Surgical Steel is high value added. Could German Hermeneutics be high value adding? Sure. Provided it kicked, Karl Lachmann type, historicist Philology in the goolies not once but again and again.

What a contrast to the bloodless academic philosophizing of the time, which moved within an alienated Kantian or Hegelian language and attempted once again either to bring transcendental idealism to perfection or else to overcome it!

Bloodless, yes. But, precisely for that reason, hermeneutically transparent. No great philological mischief was being worked. 

Sadly, hermeneutics ought not to merge horizons. Where there is a coordination game there will be a cheap talk pooling equilibrium. Discoordination games- for hedging & capitalization of income effects- generate costly signal based separating equilibria which are useful. Even God's mysterious economy depends on a volatile chrematics such that, for Poetry as Socioproctology, Beauty's ontological function is, as Gadamer says, to bridge the gap between ideal and real. 

In my case, this is done by a well-timed fart.