Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought forth a crisis in rational public discourse and trust in authoritative institutions. Given its many issues related to language, communication, and solidarity, this crisis can be considered a hermeneutic crisis. This essay turns to Karl Jaspers' lecture series, Reason and Anti-Reason in our Time, and to several works from Hans-Georg Gadamer, in order to develop a diagnostic concept of anti-hermeneutics. While Gadamer often discusses what it means to live hermeneutically, he rarely offers an explicit account of what it would mean to live anti-hermeneutically, namely, in a way that resists cultivating and acting from basic hermeneutic virtues. Jaspers' notion of anti-reason (Widervernunft) offers a model for thinking about what anti-hermeneutics would look like in Gadamer's hermeneutic project. Ultimately, the concept of anti-hermeneutics contributes to diagnosing the contemporary hermeneutic crisis as it has emerged over the last few years since the COVID-19 pandemic.