Hermeneutics

From Sathish Thiagarajan, 8 July 2015:

Dear Fr.,

I know you are busy! I got your hermeneutics notes… 

I am choosing to treat you as my professor and so willingly disturb you, as a student. 

I am reading on hermeneutics these days. 

I got an article by Jean Grondin. I am attaching it with this mail. 

I get the development of the hermeneutical concern from Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger (hermeneutics of existence), Gadamer (hermeneutics (original problem with Heideggerian insights) language and tradition)! 

What is the problem of Habermas against Gadamer? Is Habermas unable to accept the necessity of language and tradition as the path to understanding? Is Gadamer losing hope in the possibility of systematically moving towards a fusion overcoming prejudice etc.. (Lonergan’s method of interpretation)

What does Habermas mean when he speaks of the possibility of ’self-transcendence’ of language? (does he mean to say that there is a way out… and is critical of the pessimism of Gadamer?) So does Habermas agree with Lonergan’s project? (I am sure they might not have seen each other or agree to each other in person. But I am asking conceptually.)

Grondin seems ignorant of Lonergan’s project in Insight and MIT. He switches to postmodernists and then projects Ricoeur as sorting out the problem between Gadamer and Habermas! 

What is ‘hermeneutics of trust’ and 'hermeneutics of suspicion’? I get something… but it is ambiguous. 

Gianni Vattimo (nihilism) and Rorty (pragmatism) make a renewed commitment to relativism as the choiceless option given the impossibility of reaching Truth of a given text or reality (combination Gadamer-Heidegger-Nietzsche-Postmodern concerns)! Finally, Grondin concludes with the Derridian suspicion of every hermeneutic project (good will of the reader to understand the other) as also stripping the other of its otherness? 

All along i see all these french, Italian, american, and german philosophers, suspicious of any attempts towards resolving the problem? I understand the depth of the hermeneutical problem raised by them… but don’t we have a way out? In our daily life, their problematisation has helped us to be cautious, sensitive in our judgements, humble about our opinions, etc. Is that only the fruit of this pursuit? 

These are some of my questions. 

Thank you!

Love,

Sathish.

Tuesday, 14 July 2015:

Dear Sathish,

What a lot of questions! 

I need to refresh myself by reading at least my own notes, but just now I cannot do that. 

from what i remember: 

Habermas feels that Gadamer allows tradition to overwhelm him. Gadamer feels this is an unjustified criticism. In fact, I am not sure that Habermas has any way out of this impasse. Gadamer has some way, which is perhaps the way discovered by Heidegger (the question is not jumping out of the hermeneutical circle, but entering properly into it = becoming aware, to the extent possible, of our situatedness). But Gadamer is more open than Heidegger to the dynamic / dialectic of questioning, and that is his salvation. It is the dialectic of questioning that is one of the ways out. Ricoeur also admits this, affirms this. But I find Lonergan to have given me most clarity on this matter: how questioning is an approach to truth (remember the absence of further relevant questions); the limitations of this approach (and hence the need for a remote criterion, which is authenticity in all its dimensions); how, therefore, our attainment of truth remains fragile in so many cases (except in the most ‘stupid’ ones - not really stupid, but the banal ones, the ones in fact without which we would not be able to live, catch trains, do anything at all…). 

Grondin’s book Introduction to Phil Hermeneutics I found good because of the way it made Heidegger and Gadamer intelligible. surely he has no idea of Lonergan. no one is God, no one can read everything - though people like Heidegger were amazing in what all they read. but then even Heidegger has his limitations, coming from his own background. “Everyone fights with his own demons.” 

Rorty realises our situatedness, and feels there is no way out of it, so he opts for what he calls ethnocentrism. within this kind of option, he still has many brilliant and useful things to say. he also does know the dynamic of questioning, as I try to show in my article on him. the dynamic of questioning is the dynamic of conversation or dialogue, and anyone who appeals to conversation is admitting the dynamic of questioning, and therefore has an approach to truth. you will find Rorty talking about a pragmatic approach, in which everything is conventional. and that to an extent, in the area of ordinary, everyday, commonsense life, is true! it works! that is how in fact we work! His problem is that he then universalises this fact which is valid in the area of common sense. 

About Vattimo I do not know enough. but he also, i am sure, has something from which we can learn. as far as I remember, he is not an out an out relativist. 

about Derrida i know even less, but the remarks i gathered in my notes might be indicative. even the most postmodern thinker is upset when he feels misrepresented. that is interesting for me. and then, I have discovered that there are many varieties of postmodernism. naturally. it is not a dogma, it is not a school. but it looks like everyone has an inbuilt tendency to absolutize what is no doubt true in some limited area of experience. 

so dear Sathish, i do not think there is no way out. I think hermeneutical philosophy and its postmodern daughters have done us a great service by bringing to the centre of our attention our situatedness, our “being already engaged”, the fact that there is no God’s eye view, there is no Hook from which we can Hang, there is no jumping out of our minds. Also that the subject is by no means an isolated cartesian individual something. the deep interconnectedness of subjects, of persons; the priority of the We, of community. the fragility of the community and of subjects and persons within it. but of course it is still groping its way. 

i am sure if I read Derrida i will find much that is fascinating. these are all great men! they have taken the trouble to think.

as for myself, I am happy with the little I have learnt from them. like in the case of faith: not that we have to think our way into it. it is that we have been already Loved, and that we need to take the time out to discover what it is that has happened / is happening to us… and so on. (see the paper I gave in Yercaud for the jubilee). (and also what Pope Francis is saying. worth reading, calmly, Evangelii Gaudium, and even the last chapter of Laudato Si’.)

thanks for that! I think I find philosophy easeir than formation!

Relations, real and logical and so on

Banzelao Teixeira asked a question about relations: "Would you be explain to me the difference between relatio secundum esse and relatio secundum dici????" 

My reply:

not sure of the Latin.

literally, it seems to translate: "relation according to being", and "relation according to saying."

perhaps it is a way of talking about "real relation" and "notional relation" or perhaps "logical relation."  

i think you should try asking JD...

Here's Lonergan, Insight, p. 514 of the CWL 3 edition:

in any pair of correlatives, we can distinguish between a relation, its base, its term, and the converse relation, base, and term.

E.g. the relation 'father' has Abraham as its base, and Isaac as its term.

the converse relation 'son' has Isaac as converse base, and Abraham as converse term. 

relations may be notional, problematic, real or mixed.

they are notional if they are merely supposed, merely objects of thought.

they are problematic if their affirmation occurs in a description or in a provisional explanation.

they are real if their affirmation would survive in a definitive explanatory account of the universe.

they are mixed if one correlative is real, and the other is notional. 

The correlatives Ivo and Amish.

relation uncle has Ivo as base and Amish as term

converse relation nephew has Amish as converse base and Ivo as converse term.

Is the father-son relation the same as the uncle-nephew relation?

Or better: is uncle-nephew notional, problematic, real or mixed?

Going by the above, it would appear that uncle-nephew is real, as real as father-son; since the reality or lack of it depends not on causality but on the reality of the terms. In other words, it is not only efficient causal relations (father-son) that are real. There are many other types of real relations. Father-son would be a relationship of efficient causality (efficient cause – effect). Uncle-nephew would not be a relationship of efficient causality, or at least not directly so.

Internal and external relations. (517)

Internal: when the concept of the relation is intrinsic to the concept of its base.

External: when the base remains essentially the same whether or not the relation accrues to it.

Both internal and external relations survive in a definitive explanatory account of the universe. (518)

Euphuia, discernment, and Aquinas' Plato-Aristotle option regarding knowing as identity

This has to do with the question, how did Aquinas know he had to choose Aristotle's theorem of knowing as identity over Plato's theorem of knowing as confrontation. (See also my Wisdom Epistemology article somewhere...). Pat Bryne, in his International Lonergan Workshop Jerusalem contribution, has something very useful on the point, in fact, he sheds great light on the matter, when he notes that for Aristotle, dialectic alone was not enough; something called EUPHUIA was needed, which can perhaps be translated as discernment. 

Question to Pat Byrne:

when Thomas makes a choice between Plato and Aristotle, between knowledge as confrontation and knowledge as identity, is he exercising euphuia? if he is, then your paper is casting wonderful light on what has been a little question for me for several years...

Pat Byrne's reply, 4 april 2015:

     As for Thomas’s choice between Plato and Aristotle, between knowledge as confrontation and knowledge as identity, that is a question beyond my expertise, but it sounds right. Strictly speaking, what Aristotle means by euphoria should be preceded by a meticulous dialectical analysis. That would mean that Aquinas himself should have done something like the questions and answers put to both Plato and Aristotle as sources of great acumen, come to the options of what confrontation vs. identity imply, and then chosen knowing by identity on the basis of the inner light (of both the unrestricted desire and faith). I don’t know how much Plato he actually read. In Verbum Lonergan is contrasting Aristotle’s knowing by identity with a Platonic knowing by confrontation, but he does not actually offer texts to show that Aquinas himself actually did that. Aquinas seems to have gotten the great insight from his careful reading of Aristotle’s De Anima. Whether Aquinas also saw that this posed a dialectical choice against Plato, I am not sure.
        Be that as it may, at some point Aquinas himself no doubt realized he had to abandon knowing as confrontation, because of the options it leads to, and that itself certainly would have been an exercise of euphuia.
        This was a great question. I never thought of applying it in this way. When I heard C.D.C. Reeve explain this, the lights went on for me also — a problem in Aristotle’s dialectics that has been also bothering me for years, and something I never found explained satisfactorily by any other Aristotle scholar.

Self-Knowledge, and Understanding

I am continuing here the point I was pushing in the previous chapter: the remoteness of serious understanding, and the problem, raised in the chapter on dialectic, of taking an honest stand about your stand regarding it. The honesty relates to the struggle towards genuineness, and it is sadly amusing to bring together two statements of Lonergan, one about the historian “at pains not to conceal his tracks,” the other talking about the self who “keeps matters some entirely to oneself, and refuses even to face others.”135 The “outer rind of the persona” 136 may well be eager to take a stand on the importance of understanding’s “bloody entrance,”137 but some hidden layer rejects this and, oddly, that hidden rejection can be quite manifest in that self’s attitude towards the effort to seriously understand, even going to the extreme of a certain stand about the inevitability of C.P.Snow’s two culture, a stand that fits nicely with “the substitution of pseudometaphysical myth-making for scientific inquiry.”138 So, one talks of feelings with disdain for chemistry.  

Such an exclusion of serious understanding is presently supported by the dominant traditions of contemplation, which are anaphatic. The new systematics, on the other hand, is to be increasingly kataphatic. Systematic searchings, in a later maturity, will, as a “Language of the Heart”, “as central feature of the world of sense, intimate its finality, its yearning for God.”139 (Philip McShane, http://www.philipmcshane.ca/method-02.pdf p. 77) 

The Salesian titanothore?

“But we are not there yet. And for society to progress towards that or any other goal it 78 140For a New Political Economy, 20. must fulfil one condition. It cannot be a titanothore, a beast with a three-ton body and a ten-ounce brain. It must direct its attention .... to the overhead product of cultural implements. It must glory in its deepening, in the pure deepening that adds to aggregate leisure, to liberate many entirely and all increasingly to the field of cultural activities .... It must lift its eyes more and more to the more general and more difficult fields of speculation, for it is from them that it has to derive the delicate compound of unity and freedom in which alone progress can be born, struggle, and win through.” [n.140: Lonergan, For a New Political Economy, 20.] [P. McShane,http://www.philipmcshane.ca/method-02.pdf, "Systematics."]

I am jotting this down, this fantastic comment from Lonergan, because it has all to do with my / our being Salesian at this moment in history. Is there or is there not place for the 'intellectual,' the theoretical, the mind? True, I have been emphasizing the Way of the Heart, which is what we miss. I have been saying that we have shored up enough the Way of the Mind. And that is true, but only in a sense: we have the structures, and by now the average provincial does not think twice about having to set aside persons for 2 or 3 years for a master's degree or a doctoral degree in philosophy or theology and sometimes salesianity and spirituality. But: as a congregation, do we really think, reflect, and allow intelligence under faith to guide us? Is there a place for the graced mind in our being and acting? Are we running the risk of being a beast with a three-ton body and a ten-ounce brain?

Lo Groi Memorial Lecture, Salesian College, Sonada

"Know yourself."
"Aham dashasmi."
"Me"
But not an atomic individual.
A person. In relation.
Being is communion.
The We is prior to the I.
Friendship is important.
Harmony is important.
peace between peoples is important.
Living together in peace is important.
this is a non-negotiable value in a Christian school.

The I is important.
But even here, some funny things
I can decide to get up and sit down.
I can decide to be a Salesian or a diocesan priest, a worker or a teacher.
I cannot decide to understand.
though I can make it probable by what I do.

The importance here of Reading.
Reading is encounter
it transforms
the lighting up of the text is at once the lighting up of the self.

The importance of Reflection
Happiness
Freedom
Beauty
Truth

The importance of Respect
The ability to Listen and to Dialogue

Don Bosco: a pedagogy of freedom
an education to freedom
not a question of rules and imposition
but helping / accompanying a young person to become truly free, happy, beautiful.

Heidegger and the Jewish Question

1942 NOTEBOOKS PUBLISHED IN GERMANY

Heidegger - “Jews Self-destructed”

New Black Notebooks reveal philosopher’s shocking take on Shoah

di Donatella Di Cesare

shadow

The Shoah was an act of self-destruction by the Jews. This is the view that emerges from the new volume of Heidegger’s Black Notebooks, edited by Peter Trawny and soon to be published by Klostermann (Gesamtausgabe 97, Anmerkungen I-V). The 560 pages of new material date from the crucial 1942-1948 period and contain the notebook for 1945-1946, which was thought to have been lost but was in fact located last spring.

The final years of global conflict, Germany’s defeat and the Allied occupation of Germany form the backdrop to what Heidegger elsewhere calls the “history of Being”, philosophy’s way forward to the salvation of the West. After 1945, there is no break. Instead, the path twists on itself in a series of sharp turns and diversions. Heidegger continues to seek a new beginning, the dawn of Europe, despite the near impossibility of finding any bearings. The ruins of Germany bear unequivocal witness to the failure of the mission entrusted to the German people. In the midst of this historic disaster, Heidegger was living through his own academic downfall. In 1946, the former rector of Freiburg university was banned from teaching.

Volume 97 of the Black Notebooks offers a fresh insight into Heidegger’s thought. Like earlier volumes, it combines philosophical reflection with detailed analysis of historic events. But Volume 97 is destined to be remembered primarily because it belies one of the platitudes of 20th-century philosophy regarding Heidegger’s “silence” after Auschwitz. If the Jews play a leading role in the earlier Black Notebooks, which cover 1931 to 1941, and if the Jewish question is closely bound up with the question of being (as I attempted to show in my recent book), it is no surprise that Heidegger should discuss the Shoah and consider it from both philosophical and political viewpoints. Selbstvernichtung - self-destruction - is the key word. The argument is that the Jews destroyed themselves and no fingers should be pointed at anyone except the Jews themselves. The term “self-destruction” made its first disturbing appearance as early as the 1940 and 1941 Notebooks, when the need for a “purification of Being” was advanced.

Rigorous and coherent, Heidegger does no more than draw his conclusion from everything he has said previously. The Jews are the agents of modernity and have disseminated modernity’s evils. They have besmirched the spirit of the West, undermining it from within. Accomplices of metaphysics, the Jews have everywhere brought about the acceleration of technology. The charge could hardly be more serious. Only Germany, with her people’s iron cohesion, could stem the devastating impact of technology. This is why the global conflict was primarily a war of Germans against Jews. If the Jews were annihilated in the death camps, it was because of the mechanism that they fomented by plotting to achieve world domination. The link between technology and the Shoah should not be disregarded: it was Heidegger himself who alluded to it elsewhere. What is Auschwitz if not the industrialisation of death, the “fabrication of corpses”?

In line with his metaphysical anti-Semitism, Heidegger sees extermination as “self-destruction”. In 1942, he wrote that the Judenschaft, the “community of Jews”, is “in the age of the Christian West - the age of metaphysics - the principle of destruction”. A little further on he adds: “Only when what is essentially ‘Jewish’, in the metaphysical sense, combats what is Jewish is the peak of self-destruction in history reached”.

The Shoah is presented as playing a decisive role in the history of Beingbecause it coincides with the “supreme fulfilment of technology”, which consumes itself after devouring everything else. In this sense, the extermination of the Jews represents the apocalyptic moment when that which destroys ends up destroying itself. As the peak of “self-destruction in history”, the Shoah makes possible the purification of Being.

But is this peak reached? Did world Judaism self-destruct at Auschwitz? In the end, there should be no victors or vanquished, which are again metaphysical categories. Instead the Jew is simply the end that must simply come to an end. Only in this way can a new beginning emerge and the new European morning be glimpsed. When Heidegger was writing in 1942, Hitler’ death factories were working flat out. Yet after the war, the peak of self-destruction did not appear to have been reached. The self-destructive mechanism’s agents could even, despite the millions of deaths, appear to have won. In that case, they would constitute a mortal danger for the Germans by drawing them into the mechanism of death. After 1945, Heidegger observed that “extraneous elements” continue to disfigure “our defrauded essence”. He asks himself about the Germans, about the “ease with which they allow themselves to be seduced by foreigners”, about their “political incapacity” and about the “radicality with which they make the most glaring errors”.

At the end of the day, Heidegger’s position is not dissimilar to that of Carl Schmitt and many other Germans who feel defeated, but only in a military sense and only temporarily. The Jews, now purged from the body of the nation, are perceived as a ghostly, awkward-to-handle presence. In this regard, Volume 97 of the Black Notebooks contains a lengthy note by Heidegger that is bound to create controversy. The cue comes from the leaflets handed out to the people of Germany by Allied High Command which said, under photographs of the liberated concentration camps: “This is Your Fault!” Heidegger replies: “Is not the failure to acknowledge this destiny (the destiny of the German people), and repressing our will for the world, a ‘fault’, and an even more essential ‘collective guilt’ whose enormity cannot be measured against the horror of the ‘gas chambers’, a guilt more terrible than all the officially censurable ‘crimes’, for which no one will apologise in future? It can already be perceived that the German people and German territory are a single concentration camp (ein einziges Kz) such as the world has never seen and never wants to see, a not wanting much more willed and consensual than our absence of will in the face of the feralisation of national socialism”.

The Allies failed to understand the Germans’ mission and stymied their global project. This crime is held to be more serious than all the other crimes. This guilt has no term of comparison, not even the “gas chambers” [quotation marks in the original!]. For the history of Being, the real immeasurable misdeed is the one committed against the German people, who were supposed to save the West. But Heidegger does not think that all is over, precisely because the “peak of self-destruction” has not been reached. There is still a future for Germany and for a Europe led by the German people. At this point, the questions come thick and fast. Did Heidegger contemplate a Fourth Reich? Why was he planning to publish the Black Notebooks in the mid Seventies? What did he expect from the Europe in which we live today?

It would be all too easy, as Emanuele Severino appears to suggest, to set the Black Notebooks to one side. But Heidegger himself rules this out. Here we are looking not at historical documents, as in the issue raised decades ago by Victor Farías), but at the philosopher’s own writings with intimate links to the rest of his oeuvre. We can now understand the need to reread, for example, Being and Time, as the young Israeli philosopher Cédric Cohen-Skalli did at the Paris convention, comparing Heidegger to Walter Benjamin. This does not mean, as some would argue, that we should proscribe or ban Heidegger but it does entail dealing with the complexity of his thought in an open, critical fashion. It could perhaps be an opportunity for philosophy to contemplate the Shoah in all its bottomless profundity.

English translation by Giles Watson

http://www.corriere.it/english/15_febbraio_09/heidegger-jews-self-destructed-47cd3930-b03b-11e4-8615-d0fd07eabd28.shtml