The hermeneutic tradition and its transformation

Ormiston and Schrift make a connection between Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer, Betti, Habermas and Ricoeur, and propose that Nietzsche challenges this tradition. (Gayle L. Ormiston and Schrift, "Editors' Introduction," Transforming the Hermeneutic Context: From Nietzsche to Nancy, ed. Gayle L. Ormiston and Alan D. Schrift [Albany: SUNY Press, 1990] 14.) This is an interesting reading! The book itself deals with the transformation of the hermeneutic context, meaning the transformation wrought by Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva, and so on, of the tradition represented in the companion volume The Hermeneutic Tradition: From Ast to Ricoeur (Albany: SUNY press, 1990).

Which means that my notes are more centred on the tradition; I still need to get familiar with its breakup or transformation.

A different interpretation of Schleiermacher's hermeneutics

Jean Grondin challenges Gadamer's interpretation of Schleiermacher's hermeneutics. Today I discovered that Klemm agrees with Grondin, and in fact points out that Dilthey, Gadamer and Ricoeur have all contributed to the misunderstanding of Schleiermacher:

“Serious errors of understanding occur when one side or the other is given such arbitrary preferential treatment. I need only mention the names of Dilthey, Gadamer and Ricoeur to refer to some of these errors, which cannot be attributed to Schleiermacher. Recent scholarship, led by Manfred Frank, has seen through the one-sided interpretations of each of these otherwise great thinkers who have influenced generations of Schleiermacher interpreters.” (David E. Klemm, "Schleiermacher's Hermeneutic: The Sacred and the Profane," The Sacred and the Profane: Contemporary Demands on Hermeneutics, ed. Jeffrey F. Keuss [Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003] 68.) 

Arthos' The Inner Word in Gadamer's Hermeneutics

Just received for review John Arthos' The Inner Word in Gadamer’s Hermeneutics (Notre Dame, Ind: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009). Wonderfully brought out, a pleasure to see and feel. As Pradeep Sebastian says: "The book is a physical object. And I see it as a work of art, where binding, typography, edition matter." (The Groaning Shelf, Hachete, cited in Suresh Menon, "A Modest Miracle: The Groaning Shelf is a stylish, cultural landmark communicating one man's passion to a larger audience," The Hindu, Sunday, 3 October 2010, p. 2.)

To his credit, Arthos notes that De natura verbi intellectus is possibly spurious, even though Gadamer regarded it as a genuine work of Aquinas. 

Again, interestingly Lonergan’s Verbum and The Way to Nicea are cited in the Bibliography, though not in the (very short) Index. Fred Lawrence is not, however. 

Pickstock is mentioned in the book (p. ??), though neither in the Bibliography nor in the Index. 

Linguistic spheres not monadic

Habermas writes that hermeneutics shows that linguistic spheres are never monadically shut but are, rather, permeable from without as well as from within. From without, because a language is open, and can in principle express everything that can be said and understood. its horizon therefore is in continuous expansion. From within, because linguistic agents can distance themselves from their own expressions in order to interpret them, reflect on them, etc. All this, Habermas learned from Gadamer: that language can transcend itself and thereby exhibits potential for rationality.

This in contrast to Wittgenstein. In Wittgenstein's thesis that linguistically constituted life forms were closed, as if each agent were monadically trapped in its language world, Habermas discerned traces of positivism.

(Jean Grondin, Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1994, 130)

Hume and common standards of taste

We have been reading Hume on beauty and art these days in the Aesthetics course. Once again, I am struck by how different Hume is, from what we usually make him out to be. I had gone to Hume fully expecting him to support the 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder' thing, skeptic and relativist that he was. But I found a Hume who, while admitting the subjectivity of the aesthetic judgment in the sense that 'beauty' is not exactly a property of things, still goes on to defend a sophisticated theory of how there can and are common standards of taste. No one in his right mind, he points out, will simply equate the great Milton with a middling other poet.

Hume certainly has not the sophisticated distinction that Lonergan makes between experiential and explanatory conjugates, but what he says above seems to fit well, at least at first sight, into this kind of thing. Or perhaps we might distinguish between 'beauty' as an experiential conjugate, and the aesthetic judgment as, precisely, a judgment, and therefore capable of being true or false.

Hume, at any rate, goes on to point out that the judgment of taste is conditioned by a series of factors: delicacy of taste, practice at discrimination, comparison; serenity; etc. And while it might in practice be difficult to agree about who exactly is a man of good judgment, it is, at least in theory, quite sensible to point out the qualities in a man of good judgment, and to say that such men of good judgment or taste can be relied on in making good aesthetic judgments.

Hume does admit that (1) personal factors and (2) cultural factors are difficult to assimilate into the above theory. Cooper feels that on these points Hume needs to be questioned. Standards of taste, he seems to suggest, and men of good judgment, are culture bound. Such standards and such men function well within a particular culture and age, but not across cultures and ages.

It might be interesting to transpose all this into a Lonergan context. From what I understand, Lonergan does not quite enter into questions of aesthetic judgment.

Then of course there is Gadamer with his treatment of art as a way to truth, a playful way to truth, in a manner not unlike the functioning of phronesis or common sense.

Poetry, history and philosophy

In contrast to Plato, who spoke of the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry, Aristotle makes poetry closer to philosophy than to history. Where history deals with the particular and contingent, poetry deals with the probable or necessary - and so it approaches philosophy which, according to Aristotle, deals with the necessary.

The essential difference [between history and poetry] is that one tells us what happened and the other the sort of thing that would happen. That is why poetry is at once more like philosophy and more worth while than history. (Poetics ch. 9, 1451a - 1451b)

What is interesting is that Gadamer thought it fit to look to art as a way of conceptualizing the approach to truth in the human sciences - including, I suppose, history.

But keep in mind also Lonergan's distinction between human studies and human sciences. History would be part of the former, while sociology part of the latter.

Art and truth

It is only when one recalls Plato's repudiation of art, one of the grounds being that it is doubly removed from the real and the true, that one begins to appreciate the significance of Gadamer's turn to art in order to discover there an approach to truth.

But then Gadamer, Plato scholar though he was, is relying here on Aristotle's phronesis, and Aristotle was, according to David Cooper, the first philosopher on record to appreciate the distinctive functions of art, and its value and claim to truth.

Understanding and explanation

Gadamer places a premium on understanding, Habermas on explanation, while Ricoeur wants both. Ricoeur: "understanding without explanation is blind... explanation without understanding is empty." (Ricoeur, "The Conflict of Interpretations: Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur," Phenomenology: Dialogues and Bridges, ed. Ronald Bruzina and Bruce Wilshire [Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1982] 307. D'Souza, DJPE 19 [2008] 177.)

Under explanation Ricoeur / Keith D'Souza include devices such as structuralism and historico-critical methods - what I have been calling 'lower blade' methods such as those taught by Henrici. (D'Souza 177)

There is a hermeneutical arc between explanation and understanding: "to explain is to bring out the structure, that is, the internal relations of dependence that constitute the statics of the text; to interpret is to follow the path of thought opened up by the text, to place oneself en route toward the orient of the text." (Ricoeur, "Discussion: Ricoeur on Narrative" 122. D'Souza 177.)

Heidegger and Lonergan

Heidegger and Lonergan: that is a work that remains to be done. But there are tantalizing openings: the theorem of knowing as identity, and the 'overcoming' of the subject-object split; understanding as pati, and the decentering of the subject; and so on. I guess some of these themes were mentioned in my article on Fred Lawrence. It is certainly Fred who has opened up these pathways for me.

Nelson Falcao was just telling me that the second chapter of his dissertation on Thomas Stephens' Khrista Purana was largely dependent on Heidegger's understanding of understanding. Francis de Sa is, of course, a Heidegger and Gadamer and Pannikar enthusiast. Johnson Puthenpurackal used to say that Panikkar is not original, which I gather is a way of saying that he has drawn much of his original insights from Heidegger and Gadamer: remember logos and mythos, the Spirit bearing witness as the 'third' speaking in us and inspite of us, and so on. But a rather fascinating 'inculturation', I must say. I find both Heidegger and Pannikkar fascinating in a way that Gadamer and Lonergan are simply not. Lonergan gives precious little foothold to the imagination, which is his bane. He cuts the umbilical cord tying man to the maternal imagination with a vengeance that most of his readers have still to forgive.

And of course I cannot help remembering De Smet's story of how Panikkar had sent him the manuscript of the first edition of The Unknown Christ. De Smet had taken time out and sent back 30 pages of Indological corrections, none of which were incorporated into the published text.... I think I have a copy of those corrections. It would be a fascinating study. That says nothing about the originality and the apport of an author such as Pannikkar, of course. One does not have to be an interpres fidelis in order to make a contribution or a mark. One puts things into one's pot, and one speaks in oratione recta; without footnotes, as it were.

Or else, one allows Being to speak through. So I said to Nelson this evening: perhaps the Khrista Purana emerged like that through the instrumentality of Thomas Stephens. Perhaps it just flowed out, from his deep familiarity with his own tradition, with the Hindu puranic tradition, and certainly from a deep communion with God....

Hermeneutics of trust

Keith kept calling Heidegger and Gadamer 'conservative' and 'traditionalist,' contrasting them with people like Habermas who are 'critical.'

But what of their - especially Heidegger's - efforts at Destruktion, deconstruction? Is that not a critical appropriation of the tradition?