The Uses of Aristotle in Garamer's Recovery of Consultative Reasoning: Sunesis , Sungnômê , Epieikeia , and Sumbouleuesthai

ions not just of French Cartesian subjectivity but also, as is our concern here, the English abstraction of private individuals as owners of "property," or what is proprius, their own, as opposed to communis, the community's. For Gadamer's differences from Heidegger in this regard, see P. CHRISTOPHER SMITH, The I-Thou Encounter (Begegnung) in Gadamer's Reception of Heidegger, in THE PHILOSOPHY OF HANS-GEORG GADAMER 509-525 (Lewis Hahn ed., 1997). 63. See GADAMER, supra note 1, at 301. 64. "Precedent and analogy" is, of course, language borrowed from Edmund Burke. For a correlation of Burke with Gadamer, see SMITH, supra note 4, at 210-11, 216-17. 65. See ARISTOTLE, TOPICS 1.1. [Vol. 76:731 THE USES OFARISTOTLE This is made explicit in Gadamer's next reference to Zugehorigkeit, when, having followed Aristotle in moving from phronesis, first, to the adjunct intellectual excellence of euboulia or being "well-advised" in one's taking counsel with oneself (Gadamer: Mitsichzurategehen),6 he follows Aristotle to a discussion of sunesis and sungn6M9.67 Sunesis, from the Greek verb suniemi or "to set together," generally means "understanding" in the sense of catching on to something or "putting two and two together." But clearly, as Gadamer recognizes, it has an additional, different sense in Aristotle's Ethics. In elaborating Gadamer's point we might say that, in the Ethics, sunesis (understanding), both in the judge and in the one giving counsel, corresponds to dikaste phron~sis and phronesis, respectively as, in the Rhetoric, eleos corresponds to phobos, as the pity of the audience, that is, corresponds to the fear of the tragic protagonist.6 For in feeling pity, someone who has nothing to fear for himself vicariously feels and experiences fear for someone else who is about to undergo something fearful. Analogously, in deliberations guided by sunesis, I am not, as in deliberations guided by phronisis, confronted with a decision or choice I must make myself. My task, instead, is to show "understanding for" someone else who either has now to decide and choose, as is the case in consultative reasoning, or, as is the case in judicial reasoning, has had in the past to decide and choose. Only sunesis allows me to judge his or her action and situation justly. The Heideggerian hermeneutical idea of understanding as "Verstehen" has modulated here in Gadamer to understanding as "Verstiindnis." "Plainly," Gadamer tells us, "one speaks of understanding (Verstandnis) at those times when, in passing judgment, one puts oneself into the fully concrete instance, into the situation within which the other person must act. ' 69 And for any fair and just understanding, he continues, there is a condition that must be satisfied, namely, that the one showing understanding "wants what is just too and thus, that he is bound to the other in this communality."70 To this observation Gadamer appends the following crucial point: The phenomenon of counsel (Rat) in 'matters of conscience' provides the concrete instance of this [communality]. Just as much as the one who asks for counsel, so too the one who gives counsel 66. See GADAMER, supra note 1, at 304; ARISTOTLE, NICOMACHEAN ETHics bk. VI, 9. 67. See GADAMER, supra note 1, at 306; ARISTOTLE, supra note 66, bk. VI, 10. 68. See ARISTOTLE, supra note 56, at HI.5. 69. GADAMER, supra note 1, at 306.