I wonder if a good way to read a non-sacred text might not be the following. Read it once assuming it’s all true. Read it again assuming it is totally wrongheaded but wrongheaded in an interesting way. Then read it a third time, open to learning from the text the extent to which the text is true or false.

This issue is where Gadamer and I part company. He does not believe that there can ever be presuppositionless interpretation, which I partially believe. Gadamer maintains that allowing your prejudices full-play in the interpretive process will expose them and then you can eventually reject the ones that hinder interpretation. And yes, Gadamer’s view is that we have to try to expose as many as we can, and somehow we can yield good interpretations from this method. Gadamer does not, however, support the notion of objectivity in interpretation.

But I, on the other hand, think it quite curious that bad prejudices could ever yield good interpretations. If one’s starting point is misguided, then how can one’s interpretation be good? One way to avoid this dilemma is to allow the notion that maybe not all prejudices [or presuppositions] are in fact bad. For example, the Law of Non-Contradiction [it looks more authoritative when capitalized] is certainly a “necessary” presupposition for all thought, in my view. These types of laws, for Aristotle and Aquinas, are considered to be the first principles of study [and each field will have its own first principles]. First principles, for those who hold to them, are self-evident and undeniable; and they are necessary as a starting point.

I do think that Gadamer has given us some insight into recognizing our psychological prejudices against certain authors or systems. For example, in philosophy, people often assume they know where the author is going and then they quit reading. Sometimes they might actually be right. However, just because we believe Kant is an idealist, it does not follow that we understand everything about him because we have read some other idealists. This is where i believe that Gadamer has helped us in the field of hermeneutics. If we try to understand how someone’s view could be right, then we are better equipped to understand them.

hope that makes things more clearer.