Gadamer's Big Insight. In debates

Gadamer's Big Insight. In debates about interpretation in legal theory, the hermeneutic circle, holism (or Amar's intratextualism) is sometimes viewed as a methodology or normative view about how we should go about interpreting the constitution. Han Georg Gadamer's Truth and Method had an important insight about the hermeneutic circle. Holism is not an option; it is the way we understand. There is no such thing as "clause bound interpretivism," unless you literally deprive yourself of direct and indirect access to the whole text. This is not to say that one cannot pay more or less attention to the relationship between different parts of a text in the context of the whole, but the hermeneutic circle is inescapable.