One thing leads to another, as usual. In the last thread we started talking about coming to an understanding of an author’s meaning. It seems there are more accurate interpretations than others, but who decides and how? Is it the author him/herself that determines their own meaning? Such was explored in the 2 chapters on literary theory in Ken’s Eye of Spirit and my own little essay at Integral World, “Who decides what Wilber means?” To introduce this thread I’ve selected a brief essay from a Christian theologian commenting on Derrida and Gadamer. I hope to explore Gadamer more fully in the comments to come.
Gadamer, Derrida and How We Read by Bruce Ellis Benson
The literary phenomenon of “deconstruction” is regarded by many as an irresponsible fad that has now become passé. Fortunately, most of the wild, irresponsible readings of texts that went under the banner of “deconstruction” are passé. Yet in the same way that the historical performance movement has so deeply influenced classical music that it has become virtually the norm, the work of Jacques Derrida and Hans-Georg Gadamer has so affected our ways of reading texts that we are no longer aware of it.
With the deaths of these two thinkers — Derrida in October at age 74 and Cadamer in 2002 at the remarkable age of 102 — we are in a position to reflect on that influence.
My joining the two figures may strike some as odd, since Gadamer and Derrida are often portrayed as polar opposites. According to the usual account, Gadamer is the conservative upholder of the traditional way of reading and Derrida the deconstructer of all that is sacred. If you’re for Gadamer, you must be against Derrida — and vice versa.
Yet the similarities in the way they’ve changed how we read and think about texts far outweigh their differences. Both, for example, stress the role of “play” in reading texts and the way in which we are controlled by (rather than in control of) history.
Derrida’s early work is particularly marked by a kind of Nietzschean playfulness. In Of Grammatology, for example, he gives a playful yet exquisitely subtle reading of Rousseau that brings the complexity of writing to the fore. Derrida recognized that writing has both advantages and disadvantages, and that it cannot have the one without the other On the one hand, writing can make an author’s thought present even without the author’s presence. On the other hand, the fact that in writing (unlike in speech) an author’s presence is unnecessary means that the author is no longer able to control interpretation. Charitable interpreters often make appeals to “what the author really meant,” but the absence of the author means that we are left with only the text. And texts can be understood in different ways.
For some early followers of Derrida, that recognition provided cover for sloppy ways of reading texts — as if a text could be read in any way. Derrida himself was an extremely careful, even scrupulous, reader of texts. That care is certainly evident in Derrida’s own writing. I found it also amply demonstrated in the seminars that I was privileged to take with him and the many times I heard him speak. Although a central theme in his thought is that texts can be read in various ways and at multiple levels, the depiction of Derrida as not believing in the possibility of an author’s ability to communicate by way of writing, or as giving license to readers to make texts mean whatever they want them to mean, is a caricature.
Not only did Derrida insist on the need for careful study of texts, using the appropriate “instruments of criticism,” but he was annoyed with those he felt had “avoided reading me and trying to understand” and so ended up with an interpretation of his texts that he deemed “false” (Limited Inc).
Yet Derrida was well aware that “this indispensable guardrail has always only protected, it has never opened a reading” (Of Grammatology), and that even a careful commentary is already an interpretation.
The recognition that there are no “purely literal” interpretations is just as much a theme in Gadamer, who claimed that we always bring our prejudices to a text and so read it in light of our own experience. He went against the grain in thinking that prejudices are not necessarily bad; he went so far as to say that they are absolutely’ essential for there to be any understanding at all.
However, Gadamer never suggested that we could or should rest on our prejudices. Truly entering into a conversation with a text means that we put both ourselves and our prejudices at risk. The text may have something to say to us that overthrows our prejudices, so that we find ourselves “pulled up short by the text” (Truth and Method).
Like Derrida, Gadamer thought that reading a text involves entering into a kind of play between text and reader in which the text has an effect upon us and we an effect upon the text. Of course, that play requires a certain degree of humility on the part of the reader. Gadamer himself radiated that kind of humility. In my encounters with Gadamer I found him to be just as interested in asking questions about my work as I was about his. When he agreed to read some of the early portions of my dissertation, not only was his critique gracious but also it was clear that he was interested in learning from me.
That kind of receptivity is precisely what Gadamer thought was necessary for understanding to take place. He thought of understanding as a kind of “event” that happens to us. For that event to take place, we have to be willing to listen. Given that willingness, events of understanding can take place continually. Not surprisingly, we are sometimes startled by these events of understanding, for they demonstrate to us just how little we are in control of texts.
This idea of being at the mercy not just of texts but also of history is a theme in both Gadamer and Derrida. Although Derrida is commonly read as either overthrowing or at least attempting to evade the effect of history and tradition, he made it clear just how much we are embedded in Western ways of thinking. Americans are usually amazed to discover that Derrida was often criticized in France as too conservative because of his insistence on studying classical texts. While Derrida was always trying to think beyond the bounds laid down by tradition, he realized that one can only go beyond those bounds in small ways and that, even in going beyond them, one displays a profound indebtedness to them.
Here we come to a point of difference between Gadamer and Derrida. Gadamer had a great respect for tradition and believed that being steeped in a tradition is what makes understanding possible. Derrida would no doubt have criticized Gadamer for being too positive about tradition. In turn, Gadamer would likely have criticized Derrida for not being sufficiently appreciative of the wisdom that tradition hands down to us. That difference is mostly a matter of emphasis, however, and not something fundamental.
Probably the most profound way in which Gadamer and Derrida have shaped hermeneutics is in how we think about texts. Both thinkers saw texts as constituted not by dead letters but by living words. Gadamer went so far as to claim that a text does not fully exist except in the moment in which it is read and understood. Further, the very reading and understanding of texts has an impact upon the texts themselves. Thus, rather than being static, texts are constantly in motion, since our interpretation of them affects their very being.
As living entities, texts have a history, and that history becomes so intimately connected to the texts themselves that there can be no clear distinction between text and interpretation history. Rather than their being merely an expression of an author’s thought, texts are mutually constituted by author and reader. That balance is one found in both Gadamer and Derrida, despite the fact that Derrida has often been (wrongly) read as saying that readers have the sole control of texts.
So what do these two figures mean for a pastor preparing a sermon on a biblical text? They call for rethinking the very essence of interpretation. Explicating a text requires a willingness to play with it, a willingness to hear what it has to say with open ears. While we all come to texts with our prejudices, engaging a text in a genuine dialogue means that those prejudices are put into question.
In reading a text like the Bible, one is well aware of its special authority and its peculiar way of questioning us. Yet, if we are to be truly faithful interpreters, we need just as much to question it. It is within this mutual questioning, this to-and-fro movement, that understanding takes place. Although Derrida is somewhat less sanguine about the ability of texts to communicate truth, Gadamer closes his magnum opus Truth and Method by saying that the “discipline of questioning and inquiring” indeed “guarantees truth.” We merely need to be willing to enter into dialogue and able to listen.
* * *
Bruce Ellis Benson, associate professor of philosophy at Wheaton College (Illinois). is a visiting scholar at General Theological Seminary and lecturer in philosophy of religion at Union Theological Seminary. He is the author of Graven Ideologies: Nietzsche, Derrida and Marion on Modern Idolatry (InterVarsity Press) and, more recently, The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue: A Phenomenology of Music (Cambridge University Press) This article appeared in The Christian Century, March 11, 2005, pp. 30-32. Copyright by the Christian Century Foundation; used by permission. Current articles and subscriptions information can be found at www.christiancentury.org. This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted and Winnie Brock.
[Thu 26 Apr 2007
On Different Species of Hermeneutics
Posted by larvalsubjects under hermeneutics
[6] Comments
Reading Dennett has led me to think that it would be both interesting and useful to produce a sort of taxonomy of different species of hermeneutics. Here’s a start. Perhaps readers can suggest better names and other editions to such a list.
Zoohermeneutics: Intepretation that traces all practices and social formations back to biological and evolutionary principles. Exemplars of this would be Dennett, Dawkins, and roughly anything from evolutionary psychology and sociology.
Theohermeneutics: This is a wide ranging field that requires further subdivisions. One variety interprets historical and political events in terms of Biblical prophecy. Pat Robertson would be an example of this. Other approaches interpret texts in terms of their religious symbolism. Paul Ricoeur would be a good example of this. Clearly Ricoeur and Robertson are doing entirely different things.
Econohermeneutics: This would be a form of interpretation that explains cultural phenomena in terms of economic conditions. Marx would, of course, fall here. As would Friedman.
Ontohermeneutics: The most famous proponent of this heremeneutics would be Heidegger who reads all of Western history in terms of different sendings of being.
Pathohermeneutics: This hermeneutics traces texts back to the lived body. Merleau-Ponty and Lakoff come to mind here.
Aestheticohermeneutics: This form of hermeneutics traces texts back to distributions of sensation. Logical positivism falls here as does Hume and other empiricists. Under one reading, Deleuze would fall under this as well, though in a very different way than logical positivism.
Historicohermeneutics: This interpretative approach traces texts back to their historical conditions of production.
Dunamohermeneutics(?): This would be that hermeneutics that traces texts back to distributions of power. Spinoza, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Deleuze and Guattari might be placed here.
Semiohermeneutics: This hermeneutics would look at texts as networks of relations among other texts. Certain aspects of Derrida and Butler fall here. Gadamer would fall here. Basically any intertextual approach would fall in this category.
Sociohermeneutics: Interpretative approaches that explain texts sociologically, e.g., Luhmann, perhaps Latour.
Biohermeneutics: Interpretative approaches that explain phenomena vitalistically, e.g., Deleuze, Bergson.
Any other suggestions?
Fri 27 Apr 2007
More Hermeneutics
Posted by larvalsubjects under hermeneutics
No Comments
Rene Daumal and Melanie have suggested some additional hermeneutics:
Technohermeneutics: This hermeneutics traces phenomena back to their technological conditions. Examples would be Kittler and Ong.
Libidohermeneutics: I’m amazed that I forgot this one. This hermeneutics traces phenomena back to drives, desire, and jouissance. Freud, Lacan, and Deleuze and Guattari would fall here.
Rene also suggests Geohermeneutics that traces phenomena back to their geography as in Braudel and certain moments in DeLanda’s earlier work.
To this I’d add Genderhermeneutics, that comprehends phenomena in terms of gender relations.]
hermeneutics: Archived Posts from this Category
http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/tag/hermeneutics/
Here’s another brief essay on Gadamer to broaden the context on this topic.
“The relational properties approach to a theory of interpretation” by David Weberman at http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Inte/InteWebe.htm
Gadamer’s theory of philosophical hermeneutics amounts to a sustained argument for a view that one might call “anti-objectivism” or “interpretive pluralism.” (1) This view holds that in understanding a text, historical event, cultural phenomenon or perhaps anything at all, objectivity is not a suitable ideal because there does not exist any one correct interpretation of the phenomenon under investigation. In Gadamer’s words, “understanding is not merely a reproductive but always a productive activity as well” (G 280; E 296); it is a “fusion of horizons” of the past and present, objective and subjective (G 289; E 306). At the same time, Gadamer wants to steer clear of an “anything-goes” relativism. In other words, in Gadamer’s view, understanding is a process that invites and even demands a plurality of interpretations, but not at the expense of giving up criteria that distinguish right ones from wrong ones.
What exactly are Gadamer’s grounds for denying the existence of a uniquely correct interpretation of a text, object, or event? I begin by showing the inadequacy of two arguments for his position. I then turn to a third more promising argument that objectivity is not possible because the object of understanding is not determinate, but rather constituted anew by each act of understanding. My goal in this paper is to provide a fuller justification for the third argument and thereby defend Gadamer’s position. I do so by reformulating this third argument in terms of relational properties so as to establish that the knower’s situatedness plays, as Gadamer himself insists, a positive, constitutive role in the process of understanding. A major advantage of this account is that it offers an explanation of how pluralism can recognize criteria for determining correct interpretations and thereby avoid a pernicious relativism.
The first argument in support of interpretive pluralism is rather simple. Objectivity is not possible because an inquirer’s prejudices or prejudgments (Vorurteile) are ultimately inescapable (see e.g. G260f.; E 276). The inescapability premise is one that many philosophers would regard as true. It does not, however, entail Gadamer’s conclusion because even if objectivity in the form of a total break with historically specific precommitments is an impossibility, one might still hold that it is a suitable regulative ideal for understanding, i.e. an ideal that permits not realization, but at least approximation. So the impossibility of overcoming historical situatedness does not itself entail that objectivity does not or cannot serve as an ideal. It fails to establish Gadamer’s anti-objectivism.
The second argument emerges from passages in Gadamer that stress the Diltheyan idea that our historical prejudices connect us to and make possible our understanding of the object in question. On this view, objectivity is not possible because understanding requires translatability and translatability requires a shared background of meaningfulness (or in Gadamer’s language: prejudgments and tradition). This argument is also too weak to establish Gadamer’s conclusion. An objectivist could concede that a common background of meaningfulness may be necessary for making sense of an object of understanding, especially for grasping all its nuances. But the objectivist could go on to argue that this common background of meaningfulness is a heuristic device that must eventually be isolated and subjected to impartial scrutiny. In other words, the process of understanding human phenomena might be thought to have two stages. The first stage consists in sharing or appropriating a set of background prejudgments. The second stage consists in taking distance or working oneself free from the operative precommitments and, in general, approximating the ideal of an unbiased, objective stance towards those very precommitments. It is the superimposition of distanced impartiality onto a shared background of meaningfulness that makes for a sensitive yet balanced understanding and that provides the ideal for the one correct interpretation for which inquirers strive. So the need for a shared background understanding is compatible with objectivism and the denial of interpretive pluralism. It too fails to give Gadamer what he wants.
I turn now to what I consider to be the best argument for Gadamer’s position. According to this argument, the inquirer’s historical situatedness plays a constitutive role in the act of understanding because without it there would be no complete, fully determined object to understand. This idea is suggested by passages in Truth and Method that deny the existence of any sort of “object in itself” underlying inquiry in the human sciences (G 269; E 284f.) or refer to the historical object as a kind of “phantom” (G 283; E 299). Here objectivity is not a possible ideal because the object of understanding is fundamentally underdetermined; it is constituted in part by the horizon of the specific historically situated knower and changes according to what that horizon is. If true, this third argument, unlike the first two, does in fact entail interpretive pluralism since it denies that there is any one unchanging object to be understood. But is it true and on what possible grounds?
Gadamer is not explicit about his support for the incompleteness claim. Yet consider the following passage from his discussion of the importance of temporal distance:
The important thing is to recognize temporal distance as a positive and productive condition. . . . [It] is what first lets the true meaning of the object fully emerge. The discovery of the true meaning of a text or a work of art is never finished; it is in fact an infinite process. . . . New sources of understanding are continually emerging that reveal unsuspected elements of meaning. (G 281f.; E 297f.)
Gadamer is saying that the object of understanding is incomplete because it, or its “meaning,” is revealed differently as a result of subsequent events that brings about different points of view. Consider, an artwork such as a Cubist painting by Picasso or Braque, a text such as the American Constitution, or a historical event such as the Russian Revolution. Our understanding of these “objects” is quite different in virtue of the temporal distance that separates us from them. The importance of temporal distance here consists not in any alleged growth in impartiality, but in the way in which more recent events have brought out new aspects of or “retrodetermined” the earlier phenomena. In the case of cubism, there is the subsequent development of increasingly abstract painting. In the case of the American Constitution, there is the two-hundred year history of new issues and cases and a continuing tradition of judicial interpretation concerning the Constitution’s original provisions. In the case of the Russian revolution, there is the occurrence of Stalinist totalitarianism, eventual economic stagnation and finally the collapse of Soviet Communism. The point is that the Cubist paintings, the Constitution and the Russian Revolution not only appear in a very different light, but have come to have different relational properties as a result. They have become phenomena that bear certain new (causal and non-causal) relations to objects and events that came after them. It is in this sense that the object of understanding can never be completely grasped. In Gadamer’s terms, the object itself is “constantly being formed” (“in beständiger Bildung begriffen”) (G 277; E 293). Now if the object or event grows or changes over time, this means that there is no single, enduring correct or objective understanding of it.
I would like now to give an account of this Gadamerian argument in terms of what have been called intrinsic and relational properties. I hope that this account will help to show exactly why it is that interpretive pluralism is defensible and why it is able to avoid the charge of pernicious relativism. Objects, whether artworks, texts, artifacts or natural-kinds, have properties. So do events. We can divide such properties into two types: intrinsic and extrinsic or relational. Intrinsic properties are those properties that an object or event has “in virtue of the way that thing itself, and nothing else, is,” such as shape, size, chemical composition, etc. Extrinsic or relational properties are those properties of an object or event that depend wholly or partly on something other than that thing, such as being an uncle, living next door to a judge, being loved by Joe, etc. (2) The implications of this distinction for Gadamer’s anti-objectivism are that it allows us to formulate more precisely Gadamer’s point about temporal distance: A given object or event changes as time passes because it comes to have new relational properties. Hence, temporal distance from past events enables (or obliges) us to recognize in those events what might be called their delayed relational properties. It is the existence of these ever-changing, ever-new delayed relational properties that provides the validation for Gadamer’s claim for the positive contribution made by the historical specificity of the knower.
Let me turn now to two possible objections to my reconstruction of Gadamer’s interpretive pluralism. First of all, a skeptic might contend that relational properties are not ontological properties of the object at all, but only epistemological items that merely introduce changes in the ways we describe an ontologically determinate object. On this view, when a later historical event leads us to see an earlier historical event differently, it is only our description of the earlier event that changes, not the earlier event itself. This position which denies the ontological reality of relational properties is mistaken for the following reason. It is true that our descriptions of earlier events change as a result of later events. Yet it is not just our descriptions that change. Relational properties are not features of our descriptive predilections, but of the events themselves. Our descriptions sometimes change because we have changed, but they sometimes change because the objects relational properties have changed. For example, if a person describes the Russian Revolution differently because she has undergone a political conversion, this descriptive change is a result of a change in that person’s epistemic or attitudinal makeup, not in the event itself. If, however, a person describes the Russian Revolution differently because the Revolution has come to bear new relations to new events, then it is not the person that has changed but the Revolution, insofar as it now has new relational properties (e.g. the property of having led to a 70-year failed alternative to capitalism). For this reason, relational properties must be regarded as ontologically real; though they may lead to new descriptions, they are not merely changes in the epistemic makeup or descriptive activities of persons.
I come now to the second, more important objection. In an early, widely discussed response to Gadamer’s work, E. D. Hirsch argues that Gadamer fails to pay attention to the difference between a work’s meaning and its significance. While the significance of a work does indeed shift, its meaning remains entirely stable. (3) To reformulate Hirsch’s criticism in terms of my reconstruction of Gadamer, the changing relational properties of objects of understanding show only that the significance of the object is in flux, not its meaning.
Two features of Hirsch’s theory should be noted here. First, unlike Gadamer, Hirsch is concerned not with understanding in general, but only with understanding literary texts. We can set this difference aside. Second, Hirsch interprets the stable meaning of a text to consist in the author’s intention. It is important to point out that the stable meaning of a text might be construed differently: not in terms of authorial intention, but in terms of the intrinsic properties of the text  a view sometimes called formalism. So the idea that a text’s meaning is fixed might be defended in two ways: either by identifying a text’s meaning with the author’s intention or with its formal, intrinsic properties. In either case, however, if Hirsch is right about the basic distinction, then Gadamer’s anti-objectivist, interpretive pluralism goes down with its conflation of the interpretation of fixed meaning and criticism’s interest in shifting significance.
Now how might one defend Gadamer (and my reconstruction of his position) against Hirsch’s point about the difference between shifting relational properties and fixed meaning?
My response is this: Although the distinction between relational and intrinsic is correct and essential to making sense of Gadamer, Hirsch is wrong to think that the object of understanding  the object that we seek to understand and eventually do understand (when our efforts are successful)  is the object shorn of all its relational properties. In other words, significance or relational properties are always operative in and constitutive of our encounter with that which we seek to understand. What is the object of understanding or interpretation? Is it, should it or can it ever be stripped of its relational properties? Or are these relational properties integral to it?
Let us begin with a (single-authored) text. Against Hirsch’s view, the following points can be made. First, as anti-individualist theories of mind have shown, the identification of something like an intention will depend on certain facts about the environmental context in which that intention is situated. So intentions already involve context. Second, and more important, it seems altogether odd to think that the meaning and uniqueness of a work is identical with and exhausted by the author’s intention. There are (at least) two reasons for thinking that there is more to the text than what the author intends. First, as Gadamer writes: “What expression expresses is not merely what is supposed to be expressed in it  what is meant by it  but primarily what is also expressed by the words without its being intended  i.e., what the expression, as it were, betrays.” (G 318; E 335f.). In other words, there can be much more in an utterance or expression than what a person had in mind. Individuals are not always the best judges of their own verbal behavior. The second reason concerns the reader not the author. Why do we try to understand what we try to understand? Why do we read Shakespeare or Max Weber? Is it really only in order to reconstruct their psychology, their thought or their will? Or is it not much more a matter of trying to understand the subject-matter that they address? In most cases a wish to reconstruct intention remains ancillary to understanding the subject-matter. Gadamer makes this point repeatedly. He states that understanding is always a matter of “coming to an understanding about something” (G 168; E 180; emphasis added) and that “the hermeneutic task automatically turns into a problematic about the subject-matter (eine sachliche Fragestellung)” (G 253; E 269). While it may be interesting and possible, to some extent, to reconstruct an author’s intention, the object of understanding is not limited to antiquarian interests. The text always exceeds the author’s designs.
The formalist view falls victim to similar difficulties. In order to identify a text’s formal semantic properties, social and linguistic context must be brought in. So intrinsic properties are never really wholly intrinsic in the first place. Second, our interests typically concern more than just a text’s intrinsic properties. Even if it is possible, to some extent, to perform a kind of phenomenological reduction by bracketing out the relations the text bears to other things in order to focus exclusively on its intrinsic properties, to do so is to engage in an activity quite different with the more common and more natural ways in which we understand. What we usually understand (or strive to understand) when we understand the meaning and uniqueness of a text is not the text divorced from but illuminated by its relations to what lies outside of it.
If we turn from texts to historical events, a critic of Gadamer might argue that the historical event consists solely in its intrinsic properties. But the anti-relationalist position seems even weaker here. Restricting our understanding of events (and actions) to intrinsic properties would make it impossible to refer to events in many of the ways that we typically do. Consider the following examples. We could not understand a shooting as a killing if the victim were to die some time after the shooting because the killing involves a relation between the shooting and another event, the subsequent death of the victim. Nor would we be able to understand the bombing of Pearl Harbor as the immediate cause of U.S. military involvement in World War II because this understanding of the bombing involves relating it to later events.
What we understand when we understand are objects in terms of their intrinsic and relational properties. The meaning and uniqueness of the phenomenon of interpretation is always (notwithstanding certain specialized efforts at grasping intentions and supposedly formal properties) bound up with its significance. And because relational properties vary for the reasons discussed above, the object of understanding is never once and for all determined.
Let me conclude by indicating briefly how my reconstruction of Gadamer’s interpretive pluralism saves it from an “anything-goes” relativism. First, as I have argued all along, the fixed intrinsic properties constitute one central source for rational constraints on validity in interpretation. As for relational properties, they are not at the whim of the interpreter but depend on the specific conditions under which an object is presented and are intersubjectively verifiable. The fact that the Russian Revolution of 1917 eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet state is a relational property that is there for all to see. The same goes for other relational properties. Whether they obtain is relative to the interpreter’s position, but not simply up to the interpreter. So, interpretive pluralism need not be anarchic. Indeed, it is thoroughly consistent with the ideals of impartiality, scrupulousness and fidelity to text and event.
Notes
(1) Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik, 4th ed. (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1975, originally 1960). Translated as Truth and Method, 2nd ed., by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Crossroad, 1990). “G” and “E” refer to the German and English editions respectively. I have sometimes modified the translations.
(2) See David Lewis, “Extrinsic Properties,” Philosophical Studies 44 (1983): 197-200.
(3) E. D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967).
You can see from Tusar’s post that some think hermeneutics is merely interpretation, and therefore one can have the historical, aesthetic etc. interpretations. But the quotes below from Sherman Hughes note that that is not what Gadamer means by hermeneutics. From http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/gadamer.html
Gadamer criticizes Schleiermacher for defining hermeneutics as an art or technique of interpretation.
Hermeneutics is not merely a method of interpretation, but is an ontological relationship between an interpreter and a language which is to be interpreted.
…hermeneutic consciousness has an open horizon. Hermeneutic consciousness has a horizon which is in motion, and which changes as our consciousness of the present merges with our consciousness of the past.
The question of interpretation involves categories or domains. A work of fiction is not the same as a ‘fact’. However, there is considerable confusion over these distinctions. Facts can still be interpreted, although I would suggest they are often misinterpreted.
I agree there is no one way to interpret a work of fiction. But in dealing with facts there is a discipline to follow. The repeatability of an experiment relies on this discipline, but such a discipline cannot be applied to a work of fiction.
When we are dealing with objective ‘facts’ it is perfectly reasonable to say that some interpretations are false and should be dismissed. It is harder to do so with subjective works, although it is reasonable to suggest that certain interpretations are wrong. Hamlet is not about the illusion of lust.
Not all interpretations are valid or sensible or have equal merit. The problem with hermeneutical relativism lies in giving all possible interpretations equal value.
[Sri Aurobindo's philosophy of integral non-dualism, as propounded by him in his magnum opus The Life Divine, is a landmark event regarding our view of reality. What we clearly see in it is that the a priori and unconditional application of the laws of formal logic, namely, Identity, Contradiction and Excluded Middle to propositions which express the nature of reality, is logically unwarranted and unjustified. When abstract or formal reason has to deny the reality of one or the other aspect of the Absolute in order to make it consistent with the laws of formal logic, laws which are empty of content and do not present a picture of reality, we have to go beyond reason or formal logic. There has to be the Logic of the Infinite. By R.Y. Deshpande]
http://www.sciy.org/blog/_archives/2006/11/10/2490035.html
Ray said: “The problem with hermeneutical relativism lies in giving all possible interpretations equal value.”
I’ll assume that you meant that there is a small sub-set within some hermeneutics departments that are relativist in assigning all intepretations with equal value, and not that this is the situation in hermeneutics by definition. Is that a safe assumption?
I hope so because as you can see above “in Gadamer’s view, understanding is a process that invites and even demands a plurality of interpretations, but not at the expense of giving up criteria that distinguish right ones from wrong ones.”
Very safe assumption, and yes, I do not include Gadamer. I refer to the misinterpretation of hermeneutics by some pomo folks ‘outside’ the discipline, especially those who seem to think a work of science can be treated like a work of fiction.
Recall that this charge was levelled by Habermas against Derrida and it simply was not the case. I can provide citational evidence later if necessary but don’t have the time at present.
For starters though one can see from the initial essay above:
“For some early followers of Derrida, that recognition provided cover for sloppy ways of reading texts  as if a text could be read in any way. Derrida himself was an extremely careful, even scrupulous, reader of texts. That care is certainly evident in Derrida’s own writing. I found it also amply demonstrated in the seminars that I was privileged to take with him and the many times I heard him speak. Although a central theme in his thought is that texts can be read in various ways and at multiple levels, the depiction of Derrida as not believing in the possibility of an author’s ability to communicate by way of writing, or as giving license to readers to make texts mean whatever they want them to mean, is a caricature.”
Nor do I include Derrida, but rather to all those who half-understand. But perhaps my remarks were misdirected and out of context.
One of the reasons I dance is to play, to just have fun, for no apparent reason other than to enjoy the moment of creative expression. And it’s not even “self” expression, as I fuse with the muse(ic) and it is just “the dance.” Granted from an outside perspective, and even an inside one, I’m “interpreting” the music, but not in so much a conscious way but more in a “felt” way. I can’t describe it well but I know that it’s different than most other ways of my typical “being” in the world, which revolve around analytics. It has to do with “art” and its appreciation, which has by many been limited to an idiosyncratic subjective experience. But is that all that it is?
It seems Gadamer (and Derrida, for that matter) is also into this notion of “play” regarding art. And play is associated not with epistemic subjectivity but with the very nature of existence.
“From Plato to Derrida and theories of play” by Simona Livescu at http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb03-4/livescu03.html
In “The Ontology of the Work of Art and its Hermeneutic Significance” in his Truth and Method (1960), Hans Georg Gadamer discusses play in the context of philosophy. His aim is to change the perception of this concept, freeing it from the subjective meaning purported by Kant and Schiller, which became too central in philosophy. Play means neither the orientation/state of mind of the author, nor of those enjoying neither the work of art, nor the freedom of subjectivity engaged in play, but “the mode of being of the work of art itself” (Gadamer Ontology, 101).
[Thoughts and Aphorisms: Sri Aurobindo
329 – There is nothing small in God's eyes; let there be nothing small in thine. He bestows as much labour of divine energy on the formation of a shell as on the building of an empire. For thyself it is greater to be a good shoemaker than a luxurious and incompetent king.
330 – Imperfect capacity and effect in the work that is meant for thee is better than an artificial competency and a borrowed perfection.
331 − Not result is the purpose of action, but God's eternal delight in becoming, seeing and doing.]
Document: Home > E-Library > Works Of The Mother > English > On Thoughts and Aphorisms Volume-10 > Karma-69-70 327
[Although in the Future Poetry Sri Aurobindo writes that a mantric quality of speech has long departed contemporary language and accepts the arbitrariness or signifier/signified as being proper to the current epoch, he elucidates this sensual (embodied) quality of the "word/vibration" in the Secret of the Veda, in a singular act of presentment (bearing all signifiers within itself) which instances Being in a play similar to Gadamer reference to the prescencing of art as aesthetic consciousness: "It is a part of the event of being that occurs in presentation and belongs essentially to play as play"] by Rich on Fri 11 May 2007 09:35 AM PDT http://www.sciy.org/blog/_archives/2007/5/6/2930584.html#914653
Thanks for the reference Tusar. I appreciate Richard’s writings and insights, especially since he seems to understand Derrida and now Gadamer.
This is a topic that I hinted at in providing a link in an earlier post to some dancers that “move” me. Art and its creative play do indeed seem to touch a part of us that is seemingly beyond the duality of the “mental realm,” as Alan puts it. Yet it certainly does so through that realm, i.e., language and objects and the physical “mediums” used in art, whether paint and canvas or the body in dance. I think this is why philosophers have always been fascinated with art and its “transcendent” qualities, to take us “beyond” ourselves into that great mystery of communion with the “life divine,” for lack of a better metaphor at present. So in that sense perhaps I’m more in agreement with Aurobindo, at least when I’m feeling artistic?
The challenge Edward, is how to integrate all these propensities of our be-ing into a coherent ontology. I don’t know why you have called yourself “a secular humanist” on the other thread and what exactly does it denote. But this sort of playing around is certainly not in accordance with the urgency for individuation that is incumbent upon us.
Just like we express hundreds of logical fallacies without being aware of them, uttering ontological incongruities impudently is also so common. Basically it is a question of good academics and intellectual rigor, like what Husserl insisted upon. Only then we stop being a hypocrite to ourselves and refrain from telling one thing here and another there.
I appreciate that you’re explaining yourself a bit now Tusar instead of just making overly general, blanket, devotional statements on the superiority of Aurobindo. But if you”re saying that my academics or intellectual rigor is lacking… well thems fighting words!
See you in the ring bud, gloves off, no holds barred.
Richard is engaged in a dialog at ARINA on Bonnie’s paper, and I’ve brought this issue of Gadamer, ontology and play into it. Here are some excerpts of our discussion there:
Richard:
In turning to art and symbol rather than the word Gadamer also skillfully avoids the Derridian trap of signifieds/signifiers, because art is sensual, enacted, art presences through the sensual. Unlike discursive practice it does not simply substitute an infinite chain of signifiers in its presentation, rather it bodies forth in the world through each performance. I’ve always admired his hermeneutic skills for interpenetrating seeming dualities through an interpretive process unique to every instance. His aim was never toward a static end state but involved continuous phenomenal (interpretive) transformations through the fusion of horizons (horizonverschmeltzung). More importantly regards process view he manages not to tie his project down to any single method or any one truth, since his interpretive method resists any one reifying hermeneutic scheme. This seems in accord with view as play.
I believe it is incorrect to refer to Aurobindian ontological levels. (e.g.in the plural, but I will qualify this) Sri Aurobindo posits only “One” ontological level and that is: Sat-Chit-Ananda. It is from this reality which Aurobindo terms the upper hemisphere of the Divine Mother (Shakti) that the rest of creation (in the lower hemisphere) proceeds. The boundary layer between lower and upper hemisphere is what Aurobindo terms Supermind.
But although there is ultimately only one ontology Sat Chit Ananda, in the context of the evolutionary play however, this original ontology enters the lower hemisphere through the process of involution and subsequently bifurcates into three contingent ontological levels or structures which Sri A calls: Physical, Vital, Mental. Additionally there is the psychic being who is the true actor of the play. The psychic being is not an ontological level but an entity, one could perhaps say an ontological being which seeks to recover its essence through its embodiment, in a game of hide and seek (involution/evolution).
(In a Heideggerian sense one could perhaps refer to the ontology of Being = Sat Chit Annanda, and the ontology of beings = psychic being)
But the psychic being (chaitya purusha) is not the only actor in the terrestrial play, there is a whole supporting cast, who perform within the horizons of the different “Koshas” of sheaths of Being which in Sri A number seven. In the lower hemisphere of creation there are three sheaths which are all inhabited by a being or a purusha (soul) proper to their (contingent) ontological level. There is the physical annamaya purusha, the vital pranamaya purusha, and the mental being proper to humanity called manomaya purusha. Sri Aurobindo unique contribution to this metaphysical schema is the disclosure of the chaitya purusha or psychic being as the integrating entity.
But what attracts the attention of most integral theorist, especially Wilber is the mental being, the manomaya purusha. Although this being (purusha) is particular to “man the mental being” and it is the mental being which takes the lead in evolution of the species making a vertical evolutionary/developmental ascent through the graduations of consciousness, the actual clearing of the horizon toward experience of Being and the integration of the super-conscient transcendent/mind with the inconscient immanent/physical, is accomplished through the play of the psychic being who topographically inhabits not so much the heights of Being but its depths.
The manomaya purusha (mental being) is described only an as ambassador of the psychic being, a minister of the true sovereign of our being. The reality or ontology of the mental being is somewhat contingent on the psychic being. The mental being and the psychic being also serve different function in the evolution. The function of the mental being is toward knowledge, while psychic being moves toward integration of knowledge with embodiment.
Additionally in Sri Aurobindo the graduations of consciousness are not ontological levels proper -although they each may each spawn countless worlds – but are stages of increasing knowledge, ways of knowing. These stages may appear ontological – as they do to Ken W who confuses Aurobindian structures with its stages – because to a certain extent one’s own consciousness assumes the structure and view of its epistemological backgrounding . But although these epistemologies background play these stages of consciousness begin to fray as ontologies as one understanding expands, (e.g. mental to higher mind to illumined etc).
Edward:
Would you consider what Gadamer is getting at with “play” to be more in line with this psychic being? Or more with the Supermind? Or more with Sat-Chit-Ananda? Or what?
Richard:
I relate play with the psychic being which presences sat chit ananda, I believe what is special in Gadamer’s idea of play, namely the individual presentment, and ontological difference is also what is unique in the psychic being “a single instance bearing all within itself”. But of course in general play would also be something which turtles all the way up and down..
Here are some of my edited, excerpted comments from the ARINA dialog:
One reason I bring play, art and specifically dance into this discussion is that, as I said, it feels to me that when I dance I enter into what Bonnie describes as “this process-aspect of experience.” Then in- between dances, when I’m watching the other dancers, a part of me thinks “well, they can not step back from their experience and understand it from the theoretical aspect of their dance being a process-aspect of experience. They are able to experience it yet unable to understand it. They are stupid.” Ok, maybe ignorant or innocent.
Yet still, it seems one has to have both the intellectual distance via cognitive levels to make this process aspect of experience into a critical theory, which is something I’m never going to get from “just dancing.” I’m even wondering if one can appreciate a “process aspect of experience” at all without such differentiation.
Part of what makes it “music” is that it is not random sounds that are completely “open.” Much structure is involved like the elements of rhythm, melody, harmony etc. Same with poetry, even “free” verse, as it is based in the structure of language. Or dance. Even the notion of playing a game includes the structured rules of the game; it isn’t completely free-form. So here we have structured play that takes one to an experience of unbounded freedom and wholeness. And it does so AS the structure, within the structure, within the dance. And it is this idea of the whole (ultimate) AS the parts (relative) that is the nondual realization of Nagarjuna, at least as I see it. And it is the same for critical theory AS ontological dimensiong (OD), with theory as one of its infinite forms. Or as Richard says, it’s the individual presentation of the psychic being AS the sat-chit-ananda.
On a personal aside, I once knew a man from Morocco named Azziz who played the conga drum. He joined a local band that decided to name the group Azz Iz, but pronounced As Is. And this “as is” is what I’m getting at above, but it cannot be as is until after the epistemological, cognitive differentiation of subject and object. It’s like HK cannot truly “know” the limitless world until she knows the limits of the word. It’s like the pre-trans fallacy. Yes, we can experience this OD before we know the word, but it’s predifferentiated and not at all the same OD until after we know the secret word. Shazzam!
[...] Sat-Chit-Ananda Sri Aurobindo posits only “One†ontological level and that is: Sat-Chit-Ananda [...]
In my research on deconstruction and hermeneutics I am continally amazed to find Christian theologians being often the ones that understand such topics the most accurately. And it further convinces me that such broad strokes of “altitude” that might otherwise place such theologians in a “blue” or “mythic” category are just so off the mark as to be useless. Anyway, this is from a Mormom Metaphysics blog on the Gadamer/Derrida encounter. http://www.libertypages.com/clark/10192.html
Gadamer’s position basically can be characterized as a charity of interpretation. Clearly we are able to understand one an other. Thus the main point Gadamer establishes is that hermeneutics functions on a “good will to understanding.” That is, we assume that the person we communicate wishes to be understand and attempt to understand them. Derrida critiques this view by suggesting that “good will to understanding” as a theory, depends upon a metaphysics of will. Clearly to have good will so as to understand, one must have a will. Regarding this statement of Gadamer’s, Derrida replies, “how could anyone not be tempted to acknowledge how extremely evident this axiom is?” The problem is, according to Behler, that if Derrida acknowledges this axiom, then the debate really is over. All the metaphysical implications Gadamer asserts follow rather logically. Thus Derrida, in tune with his critique of metaphysics and will, calls Gadamer’s position the “good will to power” with the obvious allusion to Nietzsche.
The basic point of contention between the two ends up being the nature of the expansion between the two speakers in a communication. Gadamer view it in terms of merging horizons (context) that allow a shared context – or close to it – in which communication becomes possible. Deconstruction, in contrast, appears to be based on a notion of interruption, breaks, and the suspension of mediation. In other words the two views are at polar opposites in terms of the functioning of the will. Derrida’s question of Gadamer thus becomes, how can a speaker come to know that he is understood if, to be understood they must share contexts? In other words, if a shared context is necessary to understand, how can one know when the context is shared? We might assume that we are converging on truth – much like the scientific realist who claims our answers get better and better with time. However it also seems fair to critique a view of evolution that depends upon only forward progress. Instead it may be that change is not continuous and not always in one direction. Rather we may take two steps forward and one step back. Progress may be interrupted by misunderstanding and radical miscommunication. We may arrive at agreement not via a continual line, but by false steps and many different ways of entry.
Some Principles of Phenomenological Hermeneutics at http://www.brocku.ca/english/courses/4F70/ph.html
Gadamer points out, by the way, that the enlightenment goal of eliminating all prejudices is a prejudice; it is a prejudice which cloaks our radical historicity and our finitude from us.)
As Gadamer says, “The idea of the original reader [and hence of a recoverable historical meaning] is full of unexamined idealization.”
The text embodies the ’style’ of the author, the inscription of his/her individuality, the unconscious as well as conscious understanding of and orientation toward the world and the subject area which is known as (in the broader, phenomenological sense) intentionality. Inevitably that style and the author’s being for-herself will also be cultural in that signification is a cultural calling-into-being of experience.
The History of Ideas Vol 2 :: Continental Philosophy at http://science.jrank.org/pages/8834/Continental-Philosophy-Hermeneutics.html
Since there are hidden presuppositions and cultural “prejudices” in each interpretation, Gadamer sees that hermeneutics does not focus on the isolated “true meaning” of a text or on the author’s intention. Rather, universal Hermeneutics focuses on the different suppositions and presuppositions of all interpretations in both the human and natural sciences.
“Artists are not always the best interpreters of their own works.†–Ken Wilber, Eye of Spirit, p. 120
Which of course goes for authors or any other creator. There are “hidden presuppositions†and “cultural prejudices†in every authorial perspective, regardless of their “altitude.†So for the author to claim that they have sole authority over the “correct†intepretation of their own work is not only ludicrious but indicative of hubris, to say the least. It literally takes a “village†to provide multiple perspectives with both “good will to understanding’ within a hermeneutic circle, as well as by disruption and disagreement outside it.
And even then, it is the best guess, collaborative interpretation within that specific time and context, with no final, correct and ultimately true meaning attainable. The notion that we can ever ascertain or experience such “truth†via enlightenment is a “goal of eliminating all prejudices [that] is a prejudice; it is a prejudice which cloaks our radical historicity and our finitude from us.”
Here’s an awesome bibliography on philosophical hermeneutics provided by a site called Biblical Hermeneutics. Many of these references are available online. I’m in academic heaven here.
http://www.biblicalhermeneutics.net/philos.html
Here you will see some of the same criteria that Ken uses in determining a relatively better interpretation from another. From “Are all interpretations possible?†by Alexander Kremer at http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Inte/InteKrem.htm
ABSTRACT: Two fundamental criticisms made by traditional hermeneutics against philosophical hermeneutics are that the latter deny the possibility of objectively true interpretation, as well as assert that all interpretations are possible on the basis that they cannot be measured. In my paper, I argue that the first criticism is well-founded, while the second is not. I contend that interpretations can be decided according to two relational criteria: (i) which interpretation has a more comprehensive horizon; and (ii) which one is derivable from the other.
In my view there are two basic ways to interpret any text or information: first hand and second hand, both essentially subjective.
First hand is the individual interpretation, or rather the interpretation of an individual, who thinks for himself, perceives and analyses the new input according to his own actual reality, and then synthesises it into his new, dynamic integral reality, that governs his thinking and acting. Important for him is not only the correct understanding of the information transmitted, but, maybe even more so, the additional intuitive thoughts triggered off by the information.
The second-hand-thinker does not analyse his informations, but looks, within his society or paradigm-sharing community, for the readily interpreted, into general opinion digested product. As his reality consists thus of unconnected information-fragments, the new information stays but another unconnected fragment as a closed system, to be called up as such as a quasi instinctive reaction; his reality represents no more than the sum of unrelated fragments.
This distinction is for me very vital, for which reason I have often made in my lectures and in my writings the following statement: “What is presented in these writings is my personal, self-generated, dynamic and actual truth. The reader cannot accept anything that is written here – or, for that matter, anything that anybody has ever said or has ever written anywhere – on face-value, but must work it all through his own mental processes, forming his own dynamic and actual truth; otherwise he will be living second-hand, travelling on piggy-back.”