Active Hermeneutics (Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies) [1 ed.] 9780367028909, 9780429019340, 0367028905

Citation preview

Active Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics, as a discipline of the humanities, is often assumed to be in thrall to the same subjectivity of every interpretive method, in direct contrast to the objectivity prized by the natural sciences. This book argues that there is a false dichotomy here, and that ancient and modern ideas of knowledge can be utilized to create a new active form of hermeneutics. One capable of creating a standard by which to judge better and worse models of understanding. This book explores decisive aspects over which the future of hermeneu­ tics—a future inexplicably tied to a history of hermeneutics—will continue to struggle, namely the limits and possibilities of situated human under­ standing. This book is located in the middle of a number of major, con­ verging discussions within contemporary intellectual discourse. Drawing upon a wide range of ancient and modern hermeneutical thought, including Aristotle, Bernstein, Heidegger, Kant, and Gadamer, the result is a her­ meneutical approach that pushes beyond the traditional limits of human understanding. This is a bold attempt to move hermeneutics into a new phase. As such, it will be of significant interest to scholars and academics working in General Hermeneutics, Theology, and the Philosophy of Religion. Stanley E. Porter is President, Dean, and Professor of New Testament at McMaster Divinity College, Canada. His many other books include Idioms of the Greek New Testament, Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Tes­ tament, and, as co-author, Hermeneutics: An Introduction to Interpretive Theory. Jason C. Robinson is a faculty member at York University and Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada. He has written in many areas including philos­ ophy of education, philosophy of science, ethics, theology, and hermeneu­ tics, including co-authoring Hermeneutics: An Introduction to Interpretive Theory.

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Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies

The Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies series brings high quality research monograph publishing back into focus for authors, international libraries, and student, academic and research readers. This open-ended monograph series presents cutting-edge research from both established and new authors in the field. With specialist focus yet clear contextual presentation of contemporary research, books in the series take research into important new directions and open the field to new critical debate within the discipline, in areas of related study, and in key areas for contemporary society. Sustainable Development Goals and the Catholic Church Catholic Social Teaching and the UN’s Agenda 2030 Edited by Katarzyna Cichos, Jarosław A. Sobkowiak, Radosław Zenderowski, Ryszard F. Sadowski, Beata Zbarachewicz and Stanisław Dziekoński The Use and Abuse of Spirit in Pentacostalism A South African Perspective Edited by Mookgo S. Kgatle and Allan H. Anderson Active Hermeneutics Seeking Understanding in an Age of Objectivism Stanley E. Porter and Jason C. Robinson Proclaiming Holy Scriptures A Study of Place and Ritual David Pereyra Reactions to the Law by Minority Religions Edited by James T. Richardson and Eileen Barker For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge .com/religion/series/RCRITREL

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Active Hermeneutics Seeking Understanding in an Age of Objectivism

Stanley E. Porter and Jason C. Robinson

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First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Stanley E. Porter and Jason C. Robinson The right of Stanley E. Porter and Jason C. Robinson to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Porter, Stanley E., 1956- author. | Robinson, Jason,

1976- author.

Title: Active hermeneutics : seeking understanding in an age of

objectivism / Stanley Porter and Jason Robinson.

Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. |

Series: Routledge new critical thinking in religion, theology

and biblical studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020036163 (print) | LCCN 2020036164 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780367028909 (hbk) | ISBN 9780429019340 (ebk)

Subjects: LCSH: Hermeneutics. | Criticism. | Interpretation

(Philosophy) | Objectivism (Philosophy)

Classification: LCC BD241 .P66 2021 (print) | LCC BD241 (ebook) |

DDC 121/.686--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020036163

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020036164

ISBN: 9780367028909 (hbk)

ISBN: 9780429019340 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon

by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

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Contents

1

Preface

vi

Introduction to another volume on hermeneutics and why this one is different

1

Objectivity and the legacy of

epistemic-foundationalism

10

Ancient wisdom and the self-understanding

of philosophical hermeneutics

58

3

The active hermeneutical horizon

99

4

Transcendence and the kenotic person

139

Conclusion

184

Index

186

2

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Preface

This volume has been some time in the making, but was always intended as the result of our work together on hermeneutics. We have been discussing hermeneutical issues together for longer than we would like to imagine. The process began almost 20 years ago when, because of a particular set of circumstances, our paths crossed in a variety of ways, resulting in our first conversations over topics of hermeneutics. These were continued in the subsequent years and eventuated in our first book on hermeneutics, Stanley E. Porter and Jason C. Robinson, Hermeneutics: An Introduction to Interpretive Theory (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011). We were pleased with this volume and have been gratified by its success both within herme­ neutical circles, where it seems to have established itself as a standard text, and within other academic areas, where it is often mentioned. However, this volume was not intended to be more than a useful introduction to the variety of interpretive theories of significant hermeneutical thinkers over the last several centuries. Rather than offering a generalist text on the sub­ ject, we chose to highlight major figures and describe their contributions to interpretive theory. We included people not often seen in such treatments and introduced some of these figures into the hermeneutical discussion. We had the idea for this second volume soon after we finished and pub­ lished our first joint volume. We had numerous conversations in which we wondered what such a volume might include and how we would go about addressing the topic. We also had a surprising amount of agreement on how we would make our argument, although the final execution is significantly different than what we first discussed. We hope that the changes are for the better. Whereas the first volume was descriptive, we wanted the second vol­ ume to be more programmatic. That is, we had surveyed the major thinkers in interpretive theory, and now we wanted to try to make a contribution to hermeneutics that addressed what we see as some of the major issues. The volume you have in your hands is our attempt at that effort. We will leave others to decide whether we have succeeded. We recognize that we could have said more at almost every point, and we are asking our readers

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Preface vii to accept our generalizations as we extrapolate from them to present our proposal for what we are calling an active hermeneutics. We are thankful to a variety of people and institutions that have made it possible for us to continue to do the work that we do, even if sometimes it is under difficult constraints. The finalization of this manuscript has taken place during the Covid-19 pandemic, which has meant that we have had to work in constrained circumstances without access to many of the resources that we would normally have had available. We have persisted nonetheless in order to delay this project no further. Stan would like to thank McMaster Divinity College for the continuing opportunity to work in an intellectual atmosphere that allows the explo­ ration of issues, including theological issues, within a supportive yet open theological environment, with colleagues who readily know the value of good scholarship. The opportunity to serve as President of such an institu­ tion for nearly 20 years, as well as being Professor of New Testament, while holding the Roy A. Hope Chair in Christian Worldview, has been beyond his imagination when the adventure began. He also wishes to thank, again and with unceasing love and joy, his wonderful wife, Wendy, for everything. In the closing stages of this volume, Wendy created the necessary space for this work to be completed, and did so with imagination, grace, and love. Thanks, Wend. Jason would also like to thank his family that afforded him the muchneeded practical support throughout the entire writing process, including editorial suggestions and revisions. Thanks, Cynthia. In fact, it is my fam­ ily that is the hidden subject matter of active hermeneutics. From my expe­ riences with them—e.g., the trials, tribulations, and infinite joys of being a father of young children—a hermeneutical philosophy is crafted. Learning to see (and feel) the world in a more vulnerable and open manner through their eyes has meant a radical rethinking of the nature of ethics, transcend­ ence, and experience. This work is in large measure a phenomenology of love, although we have not used the terminology explicitly. We trust that this volume addresses some of the issues that were raised in our earlier hermeneutical volume, but this time with at least our proposal for a way to cultivate active hermeneutical understanding, our proposal for seeking understanding in an age that is bound by ideals of objectivity.

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Introduction to another volume on hermeneutics and why this one is different

There are many books on hermeneutics and interpretation. We ourselves have contributed a volume to the growing array, as well as a number of articles and chapters that have appeared in a variety of publications.1 In the course of our research and writing, we observe that there are three major kinds of books that address matters of interpretation and hermeneu­ tics. These three types are books on interpretation, those on hermeneutical people and theories, and those that make positive proposals. Each of them bears brief description in an effort to position and situate this particular volume in relation to the others. The first type of work is on interpretation. The concept of interpreta­ tion may take a variety of forms in such volumes. This range of forms of interpretation may run the gamut from various theories of interpretation to various individual interpreters, with a mix of the two, usually found some­ where in between. The distinguishing feature of these publications, how­ ever, is that they concentrate upon interpretation. For works within this category, interpretation involves both some kind of mechanism and a simi­ lar kind of practice. Many such examples also demonstrate how such inter­ pretation is done. That such volumes are included within a discussion of hermeneutics is probably predicated upon the fact that hermeneutics itself is a discipline—if in fact it should be called a discipline, a topic that merits discussion, but probably not here—that is grounded in interpretation, and more particularly the interpretation of the Bible. If we look at the origins of modern hermeneutics, they are found in Enlightenment development of theories of interpretation that arose out of concern for how the Bible was to be interpreted in light of the rise of rationalism and naturalism. As the Bible is not a book unique from others (so the theory goes), it therefore should not be interpreted simply as a repository of Christian dogma, as it had been viewed for previous centuries. However, if that is the case, then one needed to develop new avenues for reading the Bible as well as any other book that was a natural product of human endeavor. This accounts for the rise of interpretation as a field of exploration. There were many ramifications of such a development. One of the major ones was the notion that interpre­ tation was a process that results in a product, and hence the definition of

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Introduction to another volume on hermeneutics

interpretation in terms of theory and practice, and volumes dedicated to one or the other or both, with the latter often seen as an exemplification of the former. Books on interpretation vary in their sophistication and technical grounding, depending upon the nature of the discipline and those involved in it. As a result, some of them are much more theoretically informed and draw upon divergent types and varied theories regarding how interpreta­ tion is done within their discipline, while others are reasonably theoreti­ cally naive or even uninformed with regards to the intellectual foundations of their discipline. We are probably all aware of books on interpretation within different intellectual disciplines. However, the majority of such publications on interpretation usually share a commitment to the quest for objectivity (a topic that we take up in Chapter 1), with the authors aware to some degree of their explicit or implicit commitment to it. The quest for objectivity, and the resulting orientation toward it some­ times called objectivism, is rooted in the Enlightenment question for finding the solid, unimpeachable ground of knowledge, regardless of the discipline. The quest for objectivity continues to be the dominating par­ adigm in most natural and social sciences, and even still some humani­ ties disciplines (although many of the humanities disciplines have been affected by purportedly relativistic approaches). Out of this quest for objectivity arises a natural predilection for method. If objectivity is dis­ coverable (so the assertion is made), then there must be objective methods by which this objectivity is identified. Such principles are often found in volumes on interpretation, where interpretation is seen as a scientific pro­ cess by which one arrives at an objective and often quantifiable result. If one has an appropriate method, then one must have an appropriate practice that results from such a method that ensures that one arrives at objective results. The practical component of interpretation is the second major part of it. Many volumes on interpretation, especially those that end up as textbooks, are designed to give the reader the experience of not only acquainting oneself with the methods that are associated with the discipline but, through various means, introducing the reader to how the discipline is done in practice, either through exercises or experiments or other suitable means of demonstration. Volumes on interpretation are a mix of method and practice, depending upon the priorities of the volume and author. Methods and practice often work hand in hand with clear steps as to how they are to be performed so as to arrive at objective results. We both believe in such things as reality, truth, and similar notions, so, as we attempt to make clear in this volume, we are not relativists—far from it. We are committed to the notion of truth and that there is reality to be discerned. We are just not nearly as sanguine as are some others who write books on interpretation that we can have the kinds of meaningful unme­ diated and validated experiences of reality as others claim to have. This volume is, at least in part, a critique of such an approach and, with it, a critique of the notion of interpretation.

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Introduction to another volume on hermeneutics

3

The second type of volume concerns hermeneutical theories and people. There has been a recent major expansion of research and publication in this area. We are well aware of this, because our first volume made a contribu­ tion to this field. Before we describe such hermeneutical volumes in more detail, we must admit that there is a relatively high degree of confusion and hence overlap between understandings of interpretation and herme­ neutics, to the point where there are many who use the terms interchange­ ably or who constantly confuse them. We understand why such confusion occurs, to some extent because of the rise of hermeneutics out of bibli­ cal interpretation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However, if interpretation is as we have described it in the previous paragraph, then there are particular features of interpretation that distinguish it from her­ meneutics and features of books on interpretation that distinguish them from hermeneutics books. We wish to make a distinction between inter­ pretation and hermeneutics on the basis that interpretation is concerned with all of the things that we mentioned above, especially the attempt to find objectivist methods at determining meaning, which is the definition of interpretation, whereas hermeneutics is much more broadly concerned with various theories of understanding. There is no doubt that a relationship between interpretation and understanding exists. One hopes that the result of a process of interpretation is a greater understanding, but of course such is not necessarily guaranteed. We make the distinction because we think that it is important to distinguish between interpretation as a more instru­ mental view of knowledge and understanding as a much broader process of coming to terms with reality that is not necessarily discovered through a single process. As a result, one may have existential understandings that are not based at all upon methods but upon experiences, even if one may also have existential interpretations, which are something related but altogether different (we leave aside the question of whether existential interpretations can have existential genuineness or integrity without the experience). This necessary detour to discuss the difference between interpretation and understanding helps to explain both the title and subtitle of our first volume, Hermeneutics: An Introduction to Interpretive Theory, and the nature of publications that appear in this second category. Our volume was concerned with hermeneutics and therefore with broader questions of understanding. Such questions of understanding have been present in the hermeneutical literature from its first exponents to the present and are usu­ ally focused upon the human as the one seeking after more than simply knowledge but a greater understanding of oneself, the other, the world, and even possibly the beyond. Hence our first volume was concerned with such larger questions, but, as the subtitle suggests, it focuses upon the proposals made by a variety of hermeneutic practitioners, who varied considerably in their own understandings regarding the hermeneutical enterprise, hence, use of the specification of interpretive theory. We surveyed major herme­ neuts from Friedrich Schleiermacher to Wilhelm Dilthey, from Edmund

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Introduction to another volume on hermeneutics

Husserl to Martin Heidegger, from Hans-Georg Gadamer to Paul Ricoeur, from Jürgen Habermas to Jacques Derrida, from Karl Barth to Rudolf Bultmann to Daniel Patte, from Anthony Thiselton to Kevin Vanhoozer, and from Alan Culpeper to Stephen Moore. Those familiar with interpre­ tation and hermeneutics will realize that this range of authors includes a wide variety of approaches, methods, and understandings, with a notewor­ thy inclusion of biblical and theological figures. This was intentional, as it was meant to show how those in biblical studies continue to be involved in the hermeneutical agenda that was instigated by Schleiermacher and con­ tinues to be relevant today. It would be a mistake simply to call all of these people hermeneuts, as if hermeneutics itself had a univocal understanding of the enterprise. All of them are at least to some degree involved in inter­ pretation, even if many of them also aspire to address larger hermeneutical issues. This mixture typifies the second type of volume, in which there is a mix of theory and people discussed. A number of the standard works in hermeneutics are of this second type, with surprising consistency through the years of the individual fig­ ures who are discussed. As a result, the now classic volume by Richard Palmer on hermeneutics treats a very similar list of people as is treated in a much more recent volume by Lawrence Schmidt.2 The rationale for such an approach seems to be that hermeneutics as a quest for understanding, not just for interpretation or a method to arrive at such, takes a variety of forms. These forms are highly influenced by the philosophical issues of the day, and hence many of the leading hermeneuts have also been signif­ icant figures in philosophy. In that regard, hermeneutics, while it is often thought of as a discipline that crosses many boundaries (and it does, as it is found at the center of many disparate disciplines), is a branch of philoso­ phy concerned with addressing some of the most fundamental questions in an integrative way, including metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. More than that, however, hermeneutics reflects how the self understands, and so hermeneutical theory is often grounded in and attached to particular individuals. In this regard, hermeneutics often advances beyond philoso­ phy, with its tendency to generalize schools of thought, and focuses upon the hermeneutic theories of individuals. Even if some of these individuals share common ideas or even origins—such as the influence of phenomenol­ ogy upon not only Husserl but Heidegger, Ricoeur, and Gadamer, possibly among others—their hermeneutical stances are often quite different and they bear examination in their own rights. As a result, this second type of work focuses upon hermeneutical approaches but also the persons who hold to them, embodying these approaches in the realia of their advocates. The third type of hermeneutical and interpretive work attempts to make a constructive contribution to the field of hermeneutics. Whereas the sec­ ond type, described above, is concerned with hermeneutics and its her­ meneuts, laying out their theories as we did in our first volume, this third type of volume is concerned to make a constructive or generative proposal

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regarding the field of hermeneutics. This type of volume seems to be less common than the previous two types. The first may be the most common, as we live in an age, ever since the Enlightenment, concerned with method and practice. The second type of work is also relatively common, as such a volume is instructive in offering critical presentations of various schools of hermeneutical thought as embodied by their advocates. The third type of vol­ ume is least common because of what it demands. This third type demands more than critical reading and presentation of the positions of others, even if in the course of making such a presentation one makes a contribution of one’s own—and that is a valuable contribution not to be minimized— but the third sets out from the start to say something different, something that has not been said before, or at least that has not been said in that particular way before. Writers of such volumes are nevertheless aware of the thought of others within the discipline of hermeneutics. It would be hard to imagine one making a constructive proposal who is not at least rea­ sonably well-informed of what has been said before and the shortcomings of such approaches. A work such as Gadamer’s Truth and Method is an excellent case in point of this third type of work. 3 Even a cursory reading of Gadamer’s tome shows that he was incredibly well-informed of the history of western intellectual thought from the ancients to his present time, and he drew upon a wide range of such authors in his work. This wide reading and interaction with the thought of others provided the context for his own thoughts, as well as offering insights and arguments that helped him in his analysis of the contemporary hermeneutical situation. The volume would have been much poorer if it had not shown such wide reading and serious contemplation with the western (and wider) intellectual tradition. Nevertheless, for all of its intertextual appropriation, Gadamer’s Truth and Method is not a hermeneutics book about particular theories as they are held by others, with the goal of presenting them to others. Such presenta­ tions as he makes are made with the intent of furthering his hermeneutical goals in the volume, which are, as many have somewhat jokingly but also seriously observed, not about proposals for truth or method, but critiques of the notions within an understanding of the influence of effective-history. We realize that Gadamer has been accused of being a relativist because of his resistance to method and truth, but that question is beside the point for our discussion, although our fourth chapter might provide some further insight into Gadamer’s position on truth. In any case, we affirm the notion of reality and truth, even if we also believe that access to them is always mediated, especially by language. This provides the purpose for this book. We hesitate to mention our own volume after singling out Gadamer’s, but with all due caveats for what our volume intends, ours also fits within this third category. We acknowledge that we are not nearly as expansively intertextual as is Gadamer in his work, but our work follows in the tra­ dition of attempting not just to summarize the thought of others, but to make a thoughtful and reflective contribution to hermeneutical theory.

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Our advocacy of an active hermeneutics with the goal of transcendence fits firmly within the hermeneutical arena, as well as being a work of theolog­ ical hermeneutics. We must admit from the outset, however, that our work has been highly influenced by Gadamer. It is often difficult to know exactly one’s intel­ lectual and cultural influences, but Gadamer’s views of the influence of influence, especially within the rise of the scientific project (with science broadly defined), have formed a significant backdrop to our own work, as will be readily apparent throughout. We probably could not have arrived at our notion of active hermeneutics without Gadamer, or at least if we had attempted to do so without him the formulation at which we arrived would have been substantially different and probably impoverished. However, having said that, we are not merely mouthing the words of Gadamer after him. We have found his thought to be provoking, but in Chapter 4, read­ ers will note that some of the final words of Gadamer have taken on a disproportionately large influence in our thought, to the point of helping to transform our hermeneutical program into one that has a particularly theological bent to it. For this, we do not apologize. We simply note that hermeneutics, as we mentioned above, emerged from the field of theology and in particular with interpretation of the Bible, and it is to some of these same theological concepts and the Bible itself that we return in our final chapter. Nevertheless, we would also argue that our active hermeneutics provides not a method, for in that we share Gadamer’s concerns, but an orientation to understanding that offers promise for every human being, regardless of belief. The course of our argument is relatively simple and straightforward and does not need to be presented in detail here. In the first chapter, we define the major issue that we attempt to deal with, and that is the notion of objec­ tivity. One of the major hindrances to effective hermeneutics, what we call active hermeneutics, is the overriding confidence in objectivity and with it determining the nature of reality. This confidence pervades the sciences, both natural and human, and is also seen to have had a huge influence upon twentieth-century philosophy. The rise of the scientific method, and with its emphasis upon reason, rationalism, and empiricism, has been equated with rising confidence in objectivism, and this is seen most clearly in logical posi­ tivism and logical empiricism. Most people have relatively naïve views about objectivity that belie the fact that, even if reality itself is not necessarily a problem, methods by which one speaks objectively about it are highly prob­ lematic. Such problems are found in disputes among scientists, and especially among philosophers of science, who have to face up to scientific theories that appear to be both correct and incommensurable with each other, such as rel­ ativity and quantum mechanics. Of more concern than simply the objectivist approach, and with it disputes over various methods to arrive at objective knowledge, however, is the result of such an approach, whereby efforts to seek understanding become battles of “Truth,” with a capital T, a concept

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that takes on a life of its own and divides rather than creates understand­ ing. Rather than such an approach leading to hermeneutical understanding, the result has often been increased contention and disagreement and failure to communicate, such that various people within respective communities of belief simply build walls to block the opinions and methods of others and dogmatically assert their positions. This forms the basis of our undertaking to define a more reasoned approach to hermeneutics. In the second chapter, we turn to Gadamer to help us understand her­ meneutics. Like Gadamer, we go back to ancient Greek thought, where we discuss the difference between theory and practice and argue instead for neither but for an informed practical reason that is found in the ancient conception of the wise person. We draw upon Aristotle, especially in his Nicomachean Ethics, but also upon Socrates and his notion of wisdom. They both provide helpful insights into the relationship between theory and practice, within the context of wisdom and knowledge. We argue, informed by Gadamer, against the dichotomy of objectivity and subjectiv­ ity tied so closely to theory and practice, and instead argue for a mutual relationship between the two. In light of how the notion of practical reason has been greatly misunderstood, we revisit this concept. We do not see it as simply a form of technical control, but instead as an integrative hermeneu­ tical stance that should be pursued in our attempting to live the good life, as Aristotle first described it. Out of this, we turn directly to Gadamer’s revaluation of the theoretical life in light of Aristotle’s concept of practical knowing or wisdom. This is not simply a reappraisal of Aristotle’s descrip­ tive categories of knowledge, but instead we offer a new and, we believe, helpful conception as “play,” to use a Gadamerian term. This mediation of theory and practice by means of practical wisdom offers further depth to what we mean by practical or hermeneutical understanding. It is only when all of these elements are in place that the larger picture of an active hermeneutics comes into appropriate focus. It is this active hermeneutics that we are concerned to further define, refine, and exemplify throughout the rest of this volume. Chapter 3 serves as a fitting interlude between the second and the fourth, because it addresses examples of the kinds of opponents to active herme­ neutics that one may encounter. Our overall purpose is to explain how we might differentiate hermeneutics as a description of universal understand­ ing and active hermeneutics as a description of hermeneutical virtues and excellence of thinking. There are a number of other attempts to come to terms with these issues, and we treat some of them in this chapter. One of these is the notion of interdisciplinary research or interdisciplinarity. Although there are many strengths of interdisciplinarity, and even some apparent similarities with active hermeneutics, as a field it reveals a number of problems that render it ill-equipped as a hermeneutical stance, especially to confront the problem of dogmatism that we also address in this chapter. The problem of dogmatism relates to the notion of thinking, and so we here

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Introduction to another volume on hermeneutics

discuss several approaches to thinking. We draw upon William James’s approach to living and dead hypotheses and this leads us to Immanuel Kant’s views on what constitutes enlightenment. Kant saw thinking as a means of addressing the problem of oppressive authorities, and this pro­ vides the setting for discussion of Hannah Arendt’s reaction to Adolf Eichmann. In this sad yet telling account, it is clear that Eichmann was in many respects all too ordinary, but that he suffered primarily from a fail­ ure to think wisely and well regarding living over dead hypotheses and to engage his ability to do so rather than succumb to the dominant authorities in an unthinking manner. Our discussion of dogmatism is one of the most important, especially in light of Eichmann, as it shows that the dogmatist may be anyone who allows the dogma of belief, formulas, or culture to dominate one’s approach to knowledge in an unhealthy way. Whereas the dogmatist may even at first glance appear to have some of the character­ istics of the active hermeneut, the limitations are soon seen in the dogma­ tist’s recognition of only its perspective on reality, rather than admitting to limitations to knowledge and experience. This discussion prepares us to consider the meaning of openness, as a precondition for understanding. Openness is one of the most important concepts in philosophical and active hermeneutics and prepares us for the fourth and final chapter. In the fourth and final chapter, we draw upon an unusual turn in Gadamer’s thought regarding transcendence that pushes our program in new and further directions. The notion of transcendence provides an important means of putting Gadamer’s thought into perspective that opens up new horizons for an active hermeneutics, as well as opening up new possibilities regarding religion that enhance an active hermeneutics. The relationship of religion to hermeneutics is made clearest in this chapter. In a major section that explores the notion of transcendence as an unexpected revelation, where one is confronted with mystery, we reach the furthest reaches of hermeneutics and touch upon theological topics not normally even considered within a hermeneutical program such as this. In support of our proposal, we cite three historical examples of people confronted by transcendence and the effect that it has upon them, each in his own dis­ tinct way, Thomas Aquinas, Isaiah the prophet, and the figure of Job. In each, we see an active hermeneutics of self-consciousness subdued by the transcendent in ways that provide productive models for examination. In our final section, on the kenotic person, we draw upon a passage from the New Testament on kenosis. We define and illustrate the kenotic person as one who exemplifies a hermeneutics of transcendence by emptying oneself of those encumbrances that hinder self-consciousness and understanding of the other and the divine. This section on the kenotic person closes the chap­ ter with a discussion of forgiveness and forgetting, as a way of bringing our transcendent thoughts back to earth in light of the reality that we pursue our hermeneutics of transcendence in the face of adversity that requires not just forgiveness but reconciliation for productive life.

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Our argument is a simple one, as we have said. The foremost paradigm of contemporary thought and understanding is dominated by unattainable methods for achieving objectivity. Rather than continue to chafe at the conflicts that result from such unreachable goals, we offer an active herme­ neutics of transcendence in the face of the divine, in which human beings pursue the question self-consciously as they empty themselves of their dog­ matism and pursue the good in dialogue with the other. We believe that, although advocacy of such a program is a lofty goal, it has the power to overcome many of the current hermeneutical confrontations and stalemates that presently obstruct our quest for genuine human understanding and growth in knowledge as understanding human beings. We invite our read­ ers to engage with us in such a worthy human endeavor.

Notes 1 Stanley E. Porter and Jason C. Robinson, Hermeneutics: An Introduction to Interpretive Theory (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011). 2 Richard E. Palmer, Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1969) and Lawrence K. Schmidt, Understanding Hermeneutics (Utrecht: Acumen, 2013). 3 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method , 2nd rev. ed., trans. Joel Wein­ sheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 2002).

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Objectivity and the legacy of epistemic-foundationalism

…. alas a scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, —a mere heart of stone. — —Charles Darwin1

Introduction This book explores decisive aspects over which the future of hermeneutics—a future inexplicably tied to a history of hermeneutics—will continue to struggle, namely the limits and possibilities of situated human under­ standing (esp. self-understanding). 2 We see this as the major purpose of hermeneutics, and so this constitutes a fundamental question not just for hermeneutics but for other disciplines also concerned with the human subject. In that sense, this book is situated in the middle of a number of major, converging discussions within contemporary intellectual discourse. The task of this chapter is to develop a coherent picture of scientific self-understanding that has defined and explained itself through the ill-defined and enigmatic, though frequently invoked, concept of “objectivity” since the early stages of the Scientific Revolution, which began with the rise of the Enlightenment and proceeded especially through the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries. Historians of science will note that an objec­ tive science, or at least what appears to be an object-focused or object-based science, existed as the cornerstone of the development of scientific enquiry long before the unique period called the Scientific Revolution, finding a home most obviously in Socrates, the great observer of human behavior, and then in Aristotle’s examination and empirical taxonomies of the natu­ ral world. This is, therefore, one of the first great challenges for those who wish to think about the nature of truth. To which historical era or epoch does one point in order to better explain objectivity? Which of many dif­ ferent and conflicting culturally manufactured conceptions of objectivity does one wish to unravel? The initial answer, perhaps counterintuitively, is that it does not matter much which of them one picks. This present discus­ sion is possible because of historical and cultural change, not the specific

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changes themselves, in notions of objectivity, science, experience, nature, etc. Of course, the changes are important but only as symptoms of a larger problem to be diagnosed, namely, how an idea (really many ideas) about the highest form of truth may become and be so many different things to different people and yet claim to be universal, necessary, and certain—that is, objective. And why has it persisted across place and time as a belief sys­ tem that has proved to be consistently problematic and has yet to deliver on its unique and important promises? The fact that we are addressing it here in this book is one more piece of evidence that the notion of objectivity has yet to satisfy its many enquirers. What this historical and cultural change regarding notions of objectiv­ ity means for hermeneutics is intriguing for, as we shall see, there is need to rethink the nature of thinking and to challenge how we understand understanding, much like there has been a need to rethink objectivity from one epoch and culture to the next. The recognition that there is need for re-imagining understanding in a non-reductionist manner is a widely shared belief among hermeneuts, as is evidenced in virtually every serious treatment of the subject written within the modern era of hermeneutical discussion, but nevertheless there is much more work to be done. Such a situation might at first appear to be either hopeless or at best circular— hopeless in that one constantly returns to the same problems without their resolution or circular in that the same posited solutions continue to be debated without commanding general or widespread consent, so that the debate endlessly continues. Rather than simply examine the same posited solutions or immediately pose new ones, there may be another way forward in the discussion. Progress may be possible by first identifying the oppres­ sive ideas and practices that unnecessarily limit understanding. From that vantage point one may begin to describe an active hermeneutics. In this chapter, we first set the stage for discussion of objectivity, then outline the three major tenets of objectivity, before offering a definition of objectivity, recounting a brief history of it, describing the goal of objectivity in relation to the self, and finding its manifestation in logical positivism, which leads to a final major section on applied scientific reasoning. This chapter provides the starting point for our constructive hermeneutical pro­ posals in the subsequent chapters.

Setting the stage for objectivity Hans-Georg Gadamer famously and pointedly confronts natural science in his Truth and Method (1960), a text that forever changed hermeneutics because of his redefining the major issues involved and offering descrip­ tion rather than prescription or solution. 3 In it Gadamer chooses to focus on understanding (Verstehen) more so than knowledge (Erkenntnis) and as a consequence he had no need to focus narrowly on objectivity, as a concept outside of what it means for the human subject to understand.

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Objectivity and the legacy of epistemic-foundationalism

This chapter explores science in a narrower sense by focusing on a sin­ gle concept, “objectivity,” that reveals the limits of knowledge, Erkennen (which is really many concepts and practices conflated into the appearance of one), for the larger purpose of thinking about a hermeneutics of under­ standing. However, to be candid, the distinction between knowledge and understanding seems somewhat forced and artificial, even though it may be found in many conversations about hermeneutics—“knowledge” is typ­ ically defined as having to do with objects and “understanding” typically defined as having to do with the subject matter through dialogue and ques­ tioning the world. The problem with “knowledge” is its often being equated with the notion of objects and hence with objectivity, that is, attempts to find unmediated means to know objects. As we shall see, such a distinction between the two is more problematic than it at first seems, more because of the notion of objectivity than of understanding. This fixation on objectivity does something of a disservice to some important earlier hermeneuts like Gadamer and Martin Heidegger,4 both of whom purposely step beyond the misleading relationship of object and subject, preferring instead to offer a way of thinking about understanding that avoids talk of both in any sustained way. The moment one begins to use the vocabulary of objectivity one risks becoming entrenched in a specific conversation from which modern hermeneutics is trying to escape. Even so, the weighed risk is merited and ultimately advantageous to imag­ ining the future of hermeneutics—although the bridge from Chapter 1 on objectivity to Chapter 2 that rejects and attempts to displace objectivity is challenging. To help smooth the conceptual gaps between the first two chapters, each chapter will focus on only one main concept. Chapter 2 responds to “objectivity” by appealing to an often misunderstood, or in the very least rarely considered, concept of great importance to herme­ neutics—practical reason. Richard Bernstein, in his seminal work Beyond Objectivism and Relativism (1983), 5 identified in the early eighties the need to go beyond objectivity and relativism with a hermeneutical description of understanding (including practical reason) but he struggled to clearly articulate his interlocutor’s (objectivity) idiosyncrasies, as have many her­ meneuts. Objectivity is often taken for granted in the literature as if it were self-evident. It is far from obvious and yet it contains much of the poison modern hermeneutics wishes to remedy. By clearly naming the toxin, it is hoped that practical reason may then facilitate the healing process. One sees reference to objectivity in a range of disciplines, from the hard sciences to the softer social sciences and even to various other human sciences. Once one observes how often reference is made to objectivity, it is easy to believe that objectivity is something that exists and, therefore, can probably be ably even if roughly defined. After all, such a widely held notion must, one might think, have a reasonable clarity within the minds of those who regularly invoke the term. So, what is objectivity? That is, in fact, something of a trick question, for there is no such thing as objectivity

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in the singular—only objectivities and ideals of convenience, stipulative definitions if you will (definitions created in the moment to serve a purpose for that epoch). One of the great claims of modern hermeneutics is that truth claims are relative, so a universal concept is not expected nor even really very engaging. Even so, as one can see in its continuing use, as well as its fundamental importance as at least a concept in a variety of intellectual discussions, such a notion cannot so easily be dismissed. In fact, there is much to be said about objectivity that will help contextualize discussions for the next developmental stage of hermeneutics. One of the most important observations to make—and one that we will discuss in greater detail below—is that within the sciences, there is a sig­ nificant disjunction between the claims that are made for objective science, that is, the kinds of claims to objective methods, procedures, and findings, that is not self-evidently commensurable with the practices of scientists them­ selves, whether in the laboratory or in the field. Scientific results are the products of hypotheses that are filled by assumptions regarding data and method that often build upon previous such hypotheses and assumptions, so that the purported results are often less secure than one imagines. While the claims of objective science may not correlate with what scientists prac­ tice in the laboratory or field—an observation that aligns with the claims of hermeneutics, for scientists are human beings who must always think inter­ pretively just like everyone else—this does not free one from the burden of the conversation regarding the claims and aspirations of objectivity. Why criticize an “ideal” (a hope or goal) that very few expect to live up to in real life? This may appear to be a way of creating a straw-person argument, of criticizing scientists for claiming an impossible standard that most realize in practice is unachievable. That is not our intent here. The sweeping and persuasive power of objectivity resides not in its actual fruition (achieving complete and unchanging knowledge), which has so far eluded science of every kind and will no doubt continue to elude it, but in the devotion it demands from its adherents and the unhealthy ways it controls understand­ ing and action, often imposed upon others as a standard by which their judgments must be assessed. The motivation of this chapter is to persuade readers that the power of objectivity is not that it is the means of achieving certainty and accurately describing the world, but that it embodies cultural legitimacy, authority, and power for other reasons, far more human reasons than one should expect of a “god’s eye view of reality” concept such as objectivity. Objectivity is, however, more than an ideal, at least the way that it is treated in both scientific and non-scientific discourse. It has assumed a much greater place of importance within intellectual debate, to the point that it has become a moral standard by which we (scientists and non-scientists alike) judge ourselves and the world. Whether in the lab, court of law, healthcare, journalistic media, biblical interpretation, business, as just a few exam­ ples, objectivity is considered and even propounded and heralded as the

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Objectivity and the legacy of epistemic-foundationalism

gold standard, both as that which is sought and the standard by which everything is judged. Or, rather, the pretense of having the means and desire of achieving objectivity is the gold standard. “Bias” and “prejudice,” to which every human is susceptible, are the great devils of intellectual discourse, whether that occurs in any courtroom or in the political sphere or even in the laboratory, not because participants are interested (as they are) or not able to critically confront such biases or prejudices meaningfully (they are not, at least entirely), but because these are convenient means of dismiss­ ing the other as somehow faulty, polluted by contagions that prevent an objective relationship. In other words, “objective” has become a battle cry not for the pursuit of truth but for an emblazoned red letter that marks hostilities toward one’s enemy. The social and political abuse of objectivity will be addressed in subsequent chapters. The initial claim here, however, is a simple one. If scientific objectivity is misguided or dangerous then it is imperative that we revalue its role. To that end, this chapter: 1 develops and explains what might be meant by objectivity in the nat­ ural sciences; 2 traces the historical developments of objectivity since roughly the 17th century; 3 identifies reasons from the perspective of the philosophy of science for why there has been a failure to deliver on foundational-epistemic promises; 4 considers the main ways in which theory is defined and used today; and 5 lays the ground for the next chapter by showing that while objectivity remains the pretext for every scientific investigation, as well as domi­ nant cultural discourse such as journalism, media, politics, medicine, textual interpretation of various sorts, there is a growing and neces­ sary receptivity to a chastened and informed hermeneutic response to objectivity. Philosophers of science who are by discipline steeped in the history, com­ plexity, and controversy surrounding objectivity are unlikely to find this first chapter to be ground-breaking, except perhaps where hermeneutical connections and challenges to the natural sciences are established. For most other readers, however, this chapter may open up new ways of seeing how intellectual discourse occurs and the aims and goals that govern it. This chapter is not meant to provide a complete history of notions of objectiv­ ity, empiricism, and related philosophical concepts. Instead, this chapter is meant to offer a snapshot of history that is often overlooked in conver­ sations about truth and understanding, and one that is most controversial when tackling matters of reason, knowledge, action, and understanding. This chapter is designed to challenge the very notion of credible and author­ itative understanding, one currently based on what is for better or worse called objective knowledge.

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The trinity of objectivity There are at least three core claims made today by those who hold to robust notions of objectivity: 1 an ontological claim that there is a reality in itself, existing inde­ pendently of the human mind (there are mind-independent facts); 2 an epistemological claim that this reality may be accurately known by the human mind (the mind may connect with said facts without dis­ torting them); and 3 a semantic claim that our language or discourse is connected with knowledge of reality in such a way that we may make literal and increasingly accurate descriptions and explanations of this reality (we may collect, share, and meaningfully codify the “facts” of the material universe). These three claims are so interdependent that to violate any one of these would be to make objectivity in the modern scientific sense impossible. There is no wiggle room for compromise if the claim is an objective one. And yet, as we shall see, the history of objectivity is one of doing precisely this—of selectively manipulating one or more of these three pillars of the concept to better accord with the various insurmountable complexities experienced in either applying the notion of objectivity or formulating it as a foundational principle. Maintaining all three in a sustained and practical way has proven impossible and, as a result, so too has objectivity. Before proceeding to define objectivity and offer a critique of how it has developed and how we should think of it, we must examine these three pil­ lars in more detail. Each one of the claims bears further scrutiny. Initially these three claims of objectivity appear straightforward, as they are formu­ lated in terms of standard philosophical categories familiar in contempo­ rary discussion, such as ontology, epistemology, and language.6 The very difficult and ancient philosophical debates that lie behind them and rest within them, without resolution, are easy to overlook. For example, these claims mean that any discussion of objectivity must include an exploration of our beliefs about the nature of humanity (What is a human being—body, spirit, reason? What are we capable of doing and knowing—facts, spiritual truths, ourselves?), the nature of reality (Is reality material, spiritual, imag­ inary?), and questions of application (How might we apply the fruits of our interactions with reality? How ought we apply knowledge?). The question of objectivity is expansive in breadth and brings us to the heart of so many of our most cherished—and frustrating—questions about life, questions that remain unresolved and still debated among interested people. These questions can hardly be said to be under the purview of science alone, but in fact they are questions that have been debated by philosophers, theolo­ gians, artists, musicians, and a variety of other serious people throughout

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the course of human intellectual exploration. It is only recently that science has appeared to provide both the question and the answer to (material) life. This is due in large part to how questions have become flattened to an aesthetic anti-thesis in which metaphysics, spirituality, and art have been hollowed out from the inside. The history of the intellectual exploration of our species has been one far greater than contemporary questions anchored to a peculiar epistemic-foundationalism would suggest. Humanity has grappled with these same questions (epistemic, metaphysical, value the­ ory) since before Socrates (470–399 BCE) stood in the middle of the town square of ancient Athens, staring into the sky and contemplating the nature of an unchanging (objective) reality that he so desperately wanted to find. Humans of various sorts ever since Socrates have been asking the same question, arguably with similar but probably no better results. The quest for objectivity cannot be said to be uniquely modern, scientific, or settled, then or now. These three claims, or easily recognizable forms of them, pervade higherorder (hard) sciences, but are also to be found in varying forms of expression, often in diluted ways, in all other (soft) sciences, i.e., social and professional (applied) sciences, and in the wide variety of humanities disciplines, even those that have been affected by the post-modernist or post-structural turn. In its most rudimentary expression objectivity says either one has the facts or one does not (being “fact-approximate” is unworthy of being called a “fact”). One may begin to sense here how easily a straw-person dichotomy that seems overly (and unfairly) reductive may be manifested and then may be used as a way of derogating and even dismissing contrary views, with the pre­ vailing view not necessarily more substantial than the one that is dismissed. The well-known structuralist binary oppositions the post-modernists follow­ ing Jacques Derrida famously found distasteful become evident (right/wrong, good/bad, heaven/hell),7 as they are used both for offensive and defensive purposes in the assertion of objectivity. For the moment, at least for the sake of discussion, let us grant the assumption that objectivity pervades the sciences in this bifurcating fash­ ion (fact vs. fact-adjacent or approximate) and that true objectivity must, by definition, be an all or nothing scenario—at least that is the way that it is often framed by those who hold to such a position. As we shall see, the house of cards objectivity builds is frail, for either knowledge is certain, necessary, and true, or it is not, and if it is not, then the entire enterprise collapses. If such a strict bifurcation is even partially true we may also begin to wonder about the possibility of interdisciplinary communication and interdisciplinary research more generally. Given that objectivity seems to create an exclusionary hierarchy in which only objective sciences may meaningfully interact with equally objective sciences, then we arrive at a very tenuous situation. Only those able to achieve objectivity or, better, the right kind of objectivity, itself a product of a given community trained in the right procedures, sufficiently and accurately know the world (at least

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part of it) in order to speak credibly about it, and they must avoid the lesser-sciences that risk polluting that knowledge with knowledge that is, by definition, not objective because it is the wrong kind of knowledge or is incomplete. Further, intuition, interpretation, feeling, and whatever else may be labeled as “non-objective” all become the enemy of credible knowl­ edge and understanding. While often taken as an openness to the world, in that objectivity is supposedly a reflection of that world or at least the facticity of the world, objectivity is in reality hostile (by design) to the self, world, and other, both in the way that it is used and in relation to the fact that the self, world, and other do not provide the kind of unmediated cer­ tainty required of objectivity. It is hardly controversial to assert that how one plans, executes, and interprets scientific research will depend on one’s response to one’s claims of and beliefs about objectivity. Physicists approach objectivity differently than do chemists than do biologists, and sub-groups within each of these approach objectivity differently from others. The most obvious case con­ fronting modern science is the acknowledged incompatibility of general relativity and quantum mechanics, even if both of them find their origins in papers written by Albert Einstein in 1905. As one reporter states in an article published as recently as 2015 that brings this commonly known problem among scientists to the awareness of the general public, “relativ­ ity and quantum mechanics are fundamentally different theories that have different formulations. It is not just a matter of scientific terminology; it is a clash of genuinely incompatible descriptions of reality.”8 At this point, the scientific community is genuinely divided over which of these theories provides a better description of the scientific data (“reality” may not be the best term to use as it is reality that is being debated), but in any case, scientific objectivism does not provide an answer to the problem among the competing explanations. As this example illustrates, objectivity has become more than merely a conditioning factor or stimulus toward truth for practicing scientists, as is sometimes commonly or popularly thought. Objectivity is a profoundly powerful interpretive paradigm that deter­ mines how we all see, think, and talk about truth. This is what is meant by the use of the term “discipline” within the academic world. The very notion of being “disciplined” (following the rules of reason within one’s community) has become synonymous with the achievement of objectiv­ ity. This applies to the so-called hard sciences, as the example in physics above shows, as much as it does within the humanities, where communi­ ties of interpretation gather together those with similar interpretive para­ digms or perspectives.9 All three core claims of objectivity work together to create a specific inter­ pretive theory—a hermeneutics—of science in which a privileged kind of knowing is possible through it and through it alone. Objectivity is believed to be superior to all other hermeneutical models of human understanding. Scientists and others contemplating such issues have, of course, recognized

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18 Objectivity and the legacy of epistemic-foundationalism that human beings are involved in the interpretive process, so one of the goals of objectivity is to create interpretive paradigms that remove the human self and hence the subjective human factor from such interpretive theories. In its most hubristic forms, it is said to provide a non-interpretive human understanding, that is, human understanding that does not involve human interpretation or human involvement in interpretation so that only understanding remains (e.g., logical positivism or the more modern logical empiricism), and thereby to cease being a general hermeneutics because it is a receiver of pure knowledge about the natural world. Objectivity, according to this proposal, is at odds with contemporary hermeneutics that claims to be universal, in other words, that all human understanding is necessarily interpretive. Such attempts to formulate and identify such theo­ ries of understanding that are non-interpretive have been surprisingly many and have had a disproportionate influence upon not just the sciences but other intellectual discourses as well, with often unrealized consequences. To force a binary opposition once more (because the subject matter requires it), one that is compelled by such formulations, either one is interpreting or one is not; either one is allowing subjectivity to infect knowledge or one is free of such distortions. While the term “objective” may describe accepted conventions of the means of the journey, the fullest expression of it is the destination—objective truth. Such truth is unmediated human understanding apart from human interpretation. Hermeneutics rejects this bifurcation or hierarchy of understanding that exists at the heart of science and the various and common cultural assimilations of it. It also rejects the tri-lateral spectrum in which objec­ tivity is placed at one extreme, pure relativism on the opposing end, and some concoction of quasi-successful-objective truths (hermeneutical truths) scattered in between. This tri-featured spatial metaphor is often assumed in the identities of the Human, Social, and Natural Sciences. Only in the purported “objective” sciences might this binary opposition flourish as a quality-control dualism that measures truth against error in a clearly defined and incontrovertible fashion. A moment’s thought will reveal, how­ ever, that such notions are fatally flawed delusions about the world and our access to it, making them convenient but dangerous conventions. They nev­ ertheless continue to thrive in such circles and are often seen to have influ­ ence beyond their own disciplinary boundaries. The usual current notions of objectivity remain egregiously over-simplistic and frustrating in relation to one’s experiences of the world. The inherent claims of credibility often associated with slides to one side over the other on the objectivity spectrum are highly problematic. One may readily admit the benefits of standardized experiments, codified or universalized scientific language, and scientific consensus—especially for imposing control over nature, for example, cur­ ing disease, building infrastructure, both contributing to and perhaps one day reversing climate change—while not necessarily conceding or granting the definition of objectivity that often is thought to lurk in the background

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of such claims, and thus also simultaneously challenging the very measure of progress and success as faulty and as failing to speak meaningfully to what we understand as lived experience. As a measure of successful under­ standing then, hermeneutics argues for a revaluing and reconditioning of what is meant by objectivity, especially as such concepts are often extrapo­ lated into dominant standards of truth, in which objectivity and truth are equated and used to reinforce each other. Readers will no doubt become increasingly concerned with ideals of objectivity that seep into other areas of study. For example, we see this movement when philosophy begins to resign its power to radically question and critique existence, and, instead, becomes a willing partner in the for­ tification of science and rejection of other ways of being—as is often the case in analytic philosophy today. This move of objectivity-in-science to objectivity-in-culture (and disciplines) may be called an “objectivity by dis­ placement” and it has degenerative effects on culture and society by push­ ing out alternatives. It may seem trivial to point out that objectivity is predicated upon there being an external world (a world of objects), and, more than that, that we may know and discuss that world in a particular way that is beyond human interference such that the objects are unmediated in their experience by humans. Yet when challenged—as so many philosophers have shown—it becomes very difficult to defend this view in a strict sense. The reason is that all of these first three claims about objectivity, especially the third (lit­ eral or discursive knowledge), are far more problematic than our everyday experiences of the world might suggest. While I may pick up a baseball and hold it in my hand, and be able to describe its nature in vivid detail, my per­ ception is far from being complete and certainly exhaustive (e.g., I would be guessing at its exact weight, unsure of its color except as my own imperfect eyes assess it) and its reliability is even suspect for many reasons (e.g., my memory may be an issue, perhaps my language of expression is unclear). What has been obvious to philosophers (of science) for quite some time now has failed to make its way through the scientific community in a thorough and effective way, and has also failed to change the cultural assimilation of scientific ideals. The contrary is in fact the case. Science is seen to have contributed so much to our knowledge of the world in which we live that it is commonly accepted that this indicates an almost unquestionable grasp of the objects of our world. Recent discussion of some of the failed experi­ ments of scientific progress, such as climate change or poverty and starva­ tion, in which science has not solved the problem but has been a major part of creating the problem, makes readily apparent that the notion of science in relation to objectivity is problematic. Achieving a pure and unchanging connection to reality (knowledge) is fraught with difficulty. The claims of objectivity are so widely shared and assumed by culture that they appear benign, but such claims should be seen as highly controversial, much like the claims of divine revelation (truth) have become to many today. Who are

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these people that claim access to pure knowledge and what is the substance and degree of success of their craft? We would be wise to be cautious in how we answer this question. The move from conceiving of objectivity as a conscious strategy imposed on or a methodological approach to the world (the textbook spirit of scien­ tific investigation) to living as an objective person as if it were the pinnacle of enlightened thinking and genuine understanding is easy to overlook. Is objectivity a helpful tool to use on occasion for specific reasons? Or perhaps a lifestyle for a superior kind of thinker, or even a superior type of living or being? It is a somewhat subtle difference to some, something hardly worth noticing for others. However, a moment’s reflection in light of what we have discussed above shows that there is a significant differ­ ence between the two, with major consequences for understanding and living. Part of the success of objectivity has been its dual nature of being an abstract and idealized notion with recognizable limitations even if the­ oretical uses, while also being something actionable, something “lived” in practice through methods and techniques. In traditional terms, it exists as both a theory and a practice. Metaphorically speaking, objectivity occupies two separate spaces or realities, or so would its followers have outsiders believe. As a consequence, no matter how many times the ideal fails to be realized in practice, or worse, no matter how many times it perverts and distorts understanding, as a concept or as an unassailable truth it remains safe, immune from criticism as a theory—as the true spirit of genuine sci­ ence. To push the metaphor a little more, perhaps objectivity might not really exist as a theory or practice but be something that cheats by running between the two realms whenever it is challenged, either on grounds of its practical results or its foundational concepts—it is always retreating to the safety of either extreme (abstraction or lived paradigm). The next chapter will explore why theory and practice must be brought much closer together, joined (more accurately “dissolved”), if we are to articulate a vision beyond objectivity. This “rejoining” argument is hardly new—finding home first in Aristotle and then in later more contemporary hermeneuts—but its expres­ sion in the next chapter is formulated in a way that catalyzes later discus­ sions in novel fashion.

Defining objectivity Having articulated several initial concerns surrounding the questionabil­ ity of objectivity, we now turn to the remaining task of defining it in greater detail. This is necessary because of both our direct address of what it is and, perhaps more importantly, the contextual nature of the concept itself. Objectivity is a term used for a generalized way of think­ ing about the ideals, practices, and meanings of what is purported to be genuine knowledge. Like so many concepts and practices, objectivity has different descriptions with varying degrees of acceptance depending upon

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one’s historical epoch. One need only recount how the notion of objectiv­ ity has changed within physics from a Newtonian to an Einsteinian and then quantum reality to see how objectivity has had different descrip­ tions, appealed to differing bodies of evidence, and had varying degrees of acceptance. Other disciplines are the same, even in humanities and text-based disciples where the locus of meaning has shifted from author to text to reader over the course of the nineteenth century to the present. As the modern standard for knowledge, the definition, or perhaps bet­ ter definitions, of objectivity continue(s) to develop and change as new ways of thinking about reality are introduced and challenged. Objectivity therefore is an adaptive and amorphous ideal. This means that it is uniquely adaptive to the needs and desires of its contemporaries who uti­ lize it (a hermeneutical claim about all meaning), but, ironically, elusive or opaque when one attempts to describe its nature. As a result, one might well argue that no science, natural or otherwise conceived, has ever been “objective,” unless we mean by objective something narrowly defined by a specific time and place—this or that example, such as Newtonian physics or author-centered readings, but never a trans-local objective. To accept this far more relative definition would prima facie seem counter­ productive, even negative, given that objectivity is supposed to provide knowledge of what cannot be otherwise (to paraphrase Aristotle’s defini­ tion of science as non-contradiction; see Aristotle, Metaphysics 4.3–6). It would be a turning of objectivity into something hermeneutical, that is, something that exists as a thing that “must” adapt and change to its time and place precisely because it does not univocally connect with an unchanging existence but is in constant play, tension, or dance to repre­ sent reality through our interpretation of life. Giving objectivity a her­ meneutical cast would mean that saying that something is objective is not for it to be really objective (as if that might be a thing) but rather to be something relative and as such would extinguish the concept as it is popularly conceived. If objectivity is always relative to a time and place, and hence a context of understanding, then the term itself is misleading and dangerous if it is meant to indicate something stronger or firmer or more in line with the way it is popularly and even often technically used. As we shall soon see, the history of objectivity reveals exactly this type of hermeneutical-objectivity, something that changes and adapts, something that is inextricably interpretive and experiential and contextual. The contemporary notion of objectivity, with its plurality of manifesta­ tions, is marked most visibly by its loss of promising and inscrutable posi­ tivist foundations. The ideals of objectivity look different today than they did even a few decades ago, in relation to the changing landscape of con­ temporary thinking. Nevertheless, despite this historical perspective and recognition of this by those concerned with the history and philosophy of science, as well as many other disciplines within the social sciences and humanities, objectivity remains the notional and purported cornerstone

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of the natural sciences and of scientific progress. Thomas Nagel famously speaks of objectivity as “the view from nowhere,”10 which itself poses an interesting, if not incomprehensible, take on how objectivity is expected to function (one cannot help but think of the preposterousness of Archimedes’s lever). Martin Eger calls it “the morality of science,”11 introducing a per­ sonal and even evaluative dimension that appears to be disharmonious with the major tenets of objectivity itself. However one portrays it, objectivity is currently the most valued way of knowing.12 Eger, however, probably has formulated it correctly, without exaggeration. Objectivity forms the ethos of the entire scientific enterprise, determining what is good and bad, right and wrong, worthy and worthless, all involving moral and ethical judgments on purported dispassionate evidence. Objectivity indeed is the habituated and inculcated way of seeing and understanding the world, the other, and the self. It not only conditions but at least partially determines one’s worldview. It is more than merely the lens through which one sees and knows. It is the most strongly encouraged and, in scientific circles, enforced mode of understanding. It is accepted as the most reliable way of knowing because of its self-professed blind sight, inference-free seeing, and its pre-interpretive and perspective-free, universal view of reality. This is truly an odd and even contradictory situation, for the instilled value of objectivity resides chiefly in its ability to secure value-free understanding— knowledge for its own sake, beyond the realm of human valuation and usefulness (at least initially). Some view objectivity as the characterization of genuine knowledge, while others believe it to be the means and procedures through which we secure such reliable knowledge.13 In both instances, it is taken to be a prop­ erty of correct understanding about the world. In addition to describing various views of knowledge and reality, objectivity is also promoted as the standard characterization of specialized styles of investigation used by select groups of individuals. The objective concept of how the natural scien­ tist ought to see the world is not widely shared by all people at all times, but it is reserved for a small segment of people. For just as not all people are cul­ turally astute, all possessing common knowledge, not all (scientific) people are able to see objectively, especially if they are not observing within their specialized area of expertise. Rather, objective sight is formed by select individuals through controlled and limited practices performed within sci­ entific communities with trained attitudes. In other words, these people have been acculturated to the kind of objectivity that is sought within that particular field of scientific endeavor, with its own standards of objectivity and procedures for arriving at it. Objectivity describes norms and accepted boundaries of what counts as possible knowledge as well as the appropri­ ate means by which we may achieve that knowledge, for example, how we must describe, construct, and validate empirical and theoretical claims. Whether one studies the movements of celestial bodies or the particularities of social networks, the distinction between what gets counted as genuine

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and reliable knowledge, versus what is seen as non-scientific knowledge, is most often judged by whether it meets what are (at that time) claimed to be objective standards by that group of scientists, even if those standards change over time and from one context to another. There are many other claims popularly bundled into objectivity worth briefly considering as well. Objectivity sometimes means: 1 making a distinction between knowledge and experience, since the subjectivity of experience is said to corrupt genuine knowledge; 2 valuing only knowledge that is discovered, not constructed, because objective models and theories must match phenomena as they are and not merely our experiences of them, that is, meaning resides in objects with which our knowledge corresponds or that our knowl­ edge mirrors; 3 gaining clearer access to reality through controlled observations and reproducible experiences made possible by the use of unique, valueneutral, and universal methods, techniques, procedures, and the rep­ resentation of reality through unchanging laws and principles; 4 controlling experience in such a way that we may collect data unob­ structed by our biases and prejudices, and make fair and neutral assessments;14 5 standardizing and sharing of knowledge, thereby making it under­ standable and testable by others, and allowing for accurate judgment between competing knowledge claims, such as facts, theories, etc.; 6 achieving progress through the accumulation of increasingly complete and accurate descriptions of reality, that is, facts.15 One notices, above all, that definitions of objectivity are many and var­ ied, and that they cannot all mean the same thing when they are used in this variety of ways. This itself is a major problem, as it is not always clear what is meant when the term objectivity is invoked. One further notices that there are a number of common elements within the varied definitions, most of them designed to position the concept of objectivity in relation to something that is less desirable and hence suspect in relation to objectivity, whether this is experience or constructed reality or the like. The question is framed in such a way as to make objectivity the preferred option, even if there is nothing more to substantiate its claim than the formulation of the proposition. Objectivity thereby gains interpretive weight by not being the other that is seen to be less desirable. To this point the discussion has been designed to introduce readers to generalized concepts and problems. Thinking historically in the next section will provide a means of concretiz­ ing matters, as is limitedly feasible given the volatility of the subject matter. Even a brief history of objectivity will reveal its nature(s) to adapt to chang­ ing views of truth all the while finding acceptance because of its presumed permanence.

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A brief history of objectivity and epistemic-foundationalism The conceptual roots of objectivity may be traced back to the philosophy of pre-Socratic Parmenides (late sixth–mid-fifth century BCE), who described the highest form of knowledge—as well as of being and existence—as unchanging and objective truth, separated from the world of appear­ ance, change, corruption, and becoming.16 The view that accidental and contingent truth is fundamentally different than essential and necessary truth proved to be very significant for Plato, whose appeal to the absolute and unchanging as knowledge sparked over two millennia of controversy concerning what is real and true. As Plato demonstrated, the challenge of finding “the real”—the objective—lies in locating certain, universal, and necessarily true knowledge, as opposed to probable, particular, and contingent knowledge.17 Following in line with Plato, this knowledge has taken the form of an archē or principia, a beginning or basis, for what­ ever else exists, whether that be ousia (substance), eidos (form), or esse (being). For the early Greek philosophers, it was obvious that the world is always changing. Leaves, rivers, people, geography, all are in a state of flux, growth, decay, rebirth, etc. Having a fixed or certain knowledge about such a world is very problematic. Which maple leaf is the true representation of the ideal or objective leaf? Of the countless trees and countless leaves, which one represents the fullest version of a maple leaf? No one may say, except that one speaks in generalities and with a degree of relativity. The belief that there is such knowledge meant for Plato (who is follow­ ing Socrates), that there must be a world behind this world, an entirely different realm (one of Forms), by which one might make sense of this world. In other words, that which he desired, objective knowledge, was not self-evident when he looked at the world. It needed to be demonstrated or proven through philosophical skill. To possess it he developed a complex metaphysics of reality for which another existence (and objective existence) is required. Today, in a similar way as for the ancients, objectivity relies on methods and techniques said to pierce the world of change and appearances to disclose a hidden static truth. Like Plato and Socrates, scientists do not merely look and find objectivity (a self-evident world of permanent truths) but they must develop systems that allow for its disclosure. Since its birth in ancient Athens, the search for objective knowledge has become synonymous with epistemological foundationalism. This founda­ tional knowledge relies on a secure and infallible basis such as a model, cause, origin, or principle that acts as an absolute and irreducible starting point for all understanding. Genuine knowledge becomes justified or war­ ranted true belief because of its relationship with a given foundation—an accepted truth that supports all others. Whether one is an objectivist or a foundationalist (and for the sake of our discussion they are tantamount to the same thing) there is, at least in principle, an ahistorical and non-social­ ized starting point for certain knowledge. Historically informed or socially

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contingent knowledge may be helpful in varying ways and to certain degrees, but these types of knowledge cannot serve as solid or irreducible grounds for the most reliable and foundational knowledge. The knowl­ edge individuals accept on a routine basis is often only “likely the case” or “probably certain,” not “necessarily certain” and hence foundational in the best sense. In addition, such routine or everyday knowledge is accepted because of other tentative beliefs or truths, and those because of still other tentative beliefs, ad infinitum. They too require that they be founded on foundational knowledge if they are to be certain. More recent debates have focused on whether experience (for empiricists, e.g., Locke) or reason (for rationalists, e.g., Descartes) should be founda­ tional. An obvious problem with foundationalism, and one that is often not fully recognized for its implications regarding claims made for foun­ dationalism, is that in order to know if something is truly worthy of being foundational, one would need some way of neutrally evaluating it, that is, evaluating it outside of and apart from the foundation itself. Otherwise, claims regarding foundationalism would appear simply to be assertions rather than demonstrations of proof. A means of neutrally evaluating instances of foundationalism seems improbable given the need to suspend the way in which one already understands (interpretively, hermeneutically) to evaluate the foundation from a distance. This would mean that, in fact, there is another foundation other than the foundation that is being asserted as certain upon which such claims for certainty are being made. This seems to be an illogical claim—to attempt to prove the claims of foundationalism on the basis of other and hence competing foundational claims. In other words, arriving at a meaningful foundation always begs the question as to which foundation one is already understanding, thereby stacking assump­ tions upon assumptions, and beliefs upon beliefs, without really arriving at an infallible and indeed neutral and uncompromised beginning point. This may be fine for any hermeneutical account of understanding but not for one that claims to have objectivity. As a consequence, for over two millennia there has been a race to the bottom (of reality), fueled by the conviction that the right method, technique, or math (or some other foundational claims) would clear the way to the objective truths of reality. And yet competing claims, and the lack of neutral grounding of these claims, continue una­ bated, even within scientific fields of inquiry, to say nothing of the social sciences and humanities disciplines, where the same kinds of absolutist claims are often not made so boldly. A further serious problem arises when foundational beliefs are subjected to scrutiny and testing, for they must often be changed, modified, or dis­ carded, both in the course of the history of thought from the ancients to the moderns and within various areas of contemporary intellectual discourse. This raises a very important question. How then might we generate a reli­ able body of knowledge that does not change or suffer an infinite regress of tentative beliefs justifying other beliefs? For objectivists there must be at

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least some self-justifying knowledge that is not justified in any substantive way or degree by anything else, knowledge that is secure outside the system of knowledge of which it is thought to be the support. Only then may we confidently judge all other knowledge claims without relying on induced or inferred premises. Such fundamental or basic beliefs have traditionally taken the form of intuitively obvious, innate, or self-evident rational and/or empirical knowledge claims, that is, realism—which, in its various forms, is subject to the same set of critiques as has been noted above in discussion of objectivity. Stephan Fuchs notes more recent attempts to define various forms of foundational-objectivity, that is, to provide the basis of realism: Some of the most prominent attempts include the Kantian transcenden­ tal Subject, the Cartesian Cogito, the neutral and invariant protocol sentences of Logical Positivism, the elusive demarcation criterion sep­ arating science as a natural kind from other knowledge, the internal/ external distinction between the context of justification and the con­ text of discovery, the ideal speech situation of formal pragmatics, and the rules of scientific method.18 These various attempts at providing foundational-objectivity address the three fundamental claims of objectivity noted above, including ontol­ ogy, epistemology, and language, even if they do so in differing ways and focus mostly upon epistemology and more specifically the problem of the human subject within such an epistemological formulation. Ontology in such recent attempts tends to fade to the background, as epistemological claims are pushed to the fore, often framed in terms of problems resolved by language or other means of minimizing the role of the self or conceptu­ alizing the self in a way that moves outside of the foundationalist claims. The claims for objectivity of modern science have most often been made as empirical and fact-oriented, in which the permanency of knowledge is secured through changing methods in relation to immutable, value-free facts about the world. This securing of knowledge is most visible in the reli­ ance on reproducible experiences, controllable observations, and the dual characterization of knowledge in terms of mechanism and materialism.19 Modern scientific objectivity is merely the most recent manifestation of a quest for a particular kind of knowledge handed down through the many centuries from the Greeks. However, if we examine the various proposals, even in more recent attempts to find a foundational-objectivity, with their varied and disputed results and limited capability of arriving at a neutral basis for such claims, we must ask ourselves: has the quest for objectivity sufficiently progressed? Are we as a species in greater contact with reality— the Book of Nature? Or perhaps we, like the natural philosophers (or scien­ tists as we call them today), continue to stumble about with limited access to reality, even if we label such limited means by different names, able to manage with what we have, but believing in something that cannot serve as

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a foundation for understanding in the sense of an objective foundation as we have been describing and as has been sought. From all that we have said, we can see that the major problem with all such proposals is that what is being sought is something outside of and beyond the realm of understand­ ing in a realm that by definition must deny personal involvement of those who seek after such knowledge. The acceptance of objectivity amounts to a sustained denial of our self-evidently hermeneutical mode of existence and even existence itself, rather than being an attempt to engage the world meaningfully.

Objectivity as freedom from the self The problem, as we have defined it, is not with the quest for understanding or even knowledge. The problem instead focuses upon what the object of the quest is and what it entails regarding the self. As we have described the foundationalist-objective search, we have noted how the subject has been held in check even though, whether as Kant’s transcendental Subject or Descartes’s thinking subject, or whether as participant in the language game, the subject keeps re-emerging in consideration, only to have its role minimized. Objectivity requires a distinction between our ideas and what our ideas are about. To be objective is possible only by first dividing the world into subjects and objects, that is, to use a variety of ways in which this might be and has been formulated, mind/world, consciousness/objects of perception, internal/external, and by then directing attention only to those potential phenomena of examination that are reducible to being stud­ ied as objects in universal and value-free ways. This dichotomy between subject and object is seen as a precondition for the possibility of scien­ tific knowledge. For objectivists, we must not only recognize the division between the conscious mind and the world, we must actively regulate and police those separate worlds by maintaining these as mutually exclusive spheres. Only then, it is said, may we purge corruptive influences that cloud our perceptions and lead to errors and misunderstandings. The application of objectivity through theory development and testing, experimental meth­ odologies, and so on, is first and foremost a matter of generating freedom from subjectivism—or, to phrase it more dramatically, from our humanity, from our very self. As we shall see, the objectivity of science is more than merely a buffeting of self, it is the overlooking or seeing past of self or even the negation of self. It offers little practical support for correcting or chas­ tising corruptive ideologies, passions, prejudices, or short-sightedness, the kinds of recognized limitations and hindrances on the self. It is primarily an act of dismissiveness and bracketing out of consideration. Objectivity attempts to get behind individuality and experience to the realm of universal knowledge, a universal knowledge that is thought to exist apart from instances of the self, because to involve the self would imply something less than knowledge being universal, timeless, and unchanging.

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28 Objectivity and the legacy of epistemic-foundationalism It is not enough to let observations and evidence speak directly for them­ selves. Such speech from nature is too easily contaminated, manipulated, and distorted by human involvement. Science must create a space in which the truth may be received without human interference so that this truth may be unmediated. Human involvement threatens this entire enterprise, because humans are not the things that are sought after in universal knowl­ edge. Each person, however, is conditioned by circumstances, histories, and biased perspectives, is changing and subject to human limitations of time, space, and context. Each is limited to variable and contingent ways of seeing and interpreting the world through prior experiences and under­ standings that give rise to more or less private experiences of what things mean in specific socio-historical contexts. For hermeneutics this condition is the positive grounds for understanding. Objectivity considers such first­ hand conditioning to undermine, impede, and limit the apprehension of universal, necessary, and certain truth. As systemized indifference, disin­ terestedness, and detachment, objectivity is said to surpass the instability of subjectivity by eradicating both the self and the self’s situated selfunderstanding. Karl Popper describes objective knowledge as “knowledge without a knower,”20 if such a concept is possible. Purged of our inhibiting subjectivities, interpretations, and wills, desires, hopes, anticipations, etc., all that goes to make up what it means to be human, our minds are better able to mirror reality without distortions and encumbrances. Thus the goal of every scientific investigator must be to become a dispassionate observer, one who has removed oneself from that which is being investigated so as to be open in such a way that phenomena may be seen as they truly are in themselves. In other words, knowledge is attained by those capable of expe­ riencing extraordinary openness by possessing a heart of stone. Reality is accessible only when humanity vanishes. A number of common techniques are often propounded for securing this objective structure of understanding and communication. They are rarely formulated in terms of elimination of the self, but are often stated with reference to models and theories that claim to minimize the distortion of human involvement. Eliminating personal and social distortion is often said to be achieved through implementing models of theory-formulation and testing, value-neutral and universal methods, and standardized forms of measurement. Knowledge claims are typically justified through developing specific conceptual frameworks and then demonstrating how various data derived from experiments, observations, random sampling, double-blind trials, triangulation, and so on, may or may not properly fit within those structures. Through theory development and testing, we are thus engaged in a “self-forgetting” that allows us to see correctly. In this way, theory formation is a matter not only of trying to accurately describe the struc­ ture of reality but also of trying to control and even minimize our experi­ ences. Theories are said to be correct to the degree that they are said to be objective, that is, match reality as disclosed through experimentation and

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selective observations. More specifically, they are said to be correct when they achieve a specific kind of objectivity in which the hypothetico-deductive model systematically excludes our subjectivities. When it is stated as baldly as this, it seems difficult to accept the sci­ entific method as a system of self-abnegation, when an essential part of existence is bracketed from the equation. Nevertheless, scientific method is still regarded as providing objective truth, despite its personal and herme­ neutical limitations. There are reasons for this. Part of the social credibil­ ity of objectivity is gained because of the relative mystery that surrounds the application of scientific reason to the world. Demystifying science goes hand-in-hand with demystifying and assessing the practices surrounding objectivity. We can plainly see this in basic application of the scientific method. Consider the basic structure of the experimental science project. It is surprisingly simple: (1) identify an aspect of the natural world for study. (2) Identify or create a theoretical model that will fit, that is, describe or explain what is observed. (3) Make predictions regarding what should be obtained through an experiment if the theoretical model is correct. (4) Perform the experiment and assess whether the data obtained support the theory. (5) If there are grounds to think the theory is supported by the data, ask whether other models might also work with the data or whether this one is superior. Ideally, any important experiment will be subsequently repeated and confirmed by other scientists in other regions of the world, thereby creating a consensus of experts. In practice, repeating experiments, especially complex ones, is unlikely given the cost and lack of incentive for scientists who would be served better working on their own original findings. Such a procedure is routinely repeated in the scientific community. As an example, assume for the moment that we wanted to study the climate. We would lean toward using the “greenhouse model” (theory), given its popularity, as a way of explaining what we see happening in the world. The greenhouse model says that the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that surrounds planet earth contributes to a disproportion­ ately higher rise in temperature than would otherwise be expected. With this model in mind we would then need to clarify what predictions need to happen if the model is true. This too is well-known, namely that the earth would be increasingly hot “if” the theoretical model were correct. The next step would be to find as much relevant data as possible. Is there data to show an increase in temperatures? The consensus of experts is that the answer is “Yes.” Thus, we may conclude that there is credibility to the theory. However, the job of being objective is far from over. There are other mod­ els that seem to predict the same basic data but for very different reasons and with different concerns, for example, the Lorenz model. 21 One must then determine which model best fits reality, which includes revisiting the data and one’s predictions. Moreover, determining which data are relevant and which are not poses another major difficulty in achieving objectivity

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in the context of judgment. Anyone who has heard of the “global warming hiatus” or “pause” since 1998, for 15 years, 22 knows that the data, model, and predictions made by the greenhouse model do not match. The world did not heat up as it must under the predictions of the model along with the continued increase of greenhouse-gas emissions. There are various ten­ tative and rather unsatisfactory explanations as to why this was the case but the basic problem of a mismatch between data and model has yet to be resolved. Does this defeat the greenhouse model? If our description of the scientific method above is accurate, it should. However, such has not been the case, as the consensus of experts remains committed to it, even if they do not have a satisfactory explanation of its failure. (One is tempted to note that this indicates, among other possible explanations, that even scientists find it very difficult to put their personal interests and involve­ ment aside, even when the evidence does not confirm their theories; why let a good theory go to waste, even if the facts do not uphold it.) In the very least, we must conclude that science is a muddy affair. There are an unde­ niable number of competing interests at play in even the most apparently straightforward scientific theory, including not only the model and the data but the self-interests of the scientists themselves. If we demanded a “purely objective” account, it is unlikely that the greenhouse theory would remain the dominant model, at least without significant revisions. Scientific method, however, is rarely as simple as the seven-step analysis presented above would indicate, even if it is an accurate indication of the theoretical framework that ideally governs scientific research. Correctly designing experiments to test theories, correlating data, and doing an hon­ est analysis are far more complex than a modest step-by-step description of scientific experimentation would suggest. In fact, the real world of exper­ imentation is very difficult to describe in straightforward and clear terms. The basic reason is that few scientific experiments stand by themselves as the starting and ending point of exploration, but such experiments have relationships both with other experiments of which they are a part and with the larger history of scientific research itself as a point along a con­ tinuum of continuing research. There are several different ways of view­ ing this. One way is to recognize that scientific investigations begin with problems most often recognized based on prior observations and experi­ ments, that is, problems and how they are conceived exist within contexts and communities that have already determined relevance and importance. Once a scientific question is clarified (based upon a direction ordained by a larger scientific or interpretive community), a model (theory) is developed, and then the task is to apply methods and procedures (also agreed upon by the scientific community, differing with each epoch as well as each type of science) to secure a more or less predicted experimental end, thereby gaining data to (dis)confirm the feasibility of the theory within the context of what was presupposed. This fosters further theoretical expression, revi­ sion, novelty, and so on, within the confines of acceptable practice within

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the scientific community. How free are communities of scientists to see beyond their own contexts, beliefs, and prejudices? The common human predicament of being human is no less real for scientists than it is for other human beings. Human proclivities function at every stage in the scientific process. Not only does human interest determine that one becomes a sci­ entist, and many scientists are willing to admit that personal interest plays a significant role in formulating one’s research question and how one goes about doing one’s research, but those more reflective on the process realize that science is not merely a matter of induction or deduction but of abduc­ tion, in which personal interest plays a major role. Human interests, beliefs, contexts, and even biases and prejudices, cannot be so readily set aside within the experimental process itself. In fact, it is arguable that communi­ ties of scientists, by means of how they define their communities, may help to encourage certain sets of biases even if they are claiming to limit others. In other words, it is difficult for anyone, scientists as humans included, to realize and then minimize their personal involvement, especially when communities of practice tend to blind us to many of our prejudices because they are accepted within that community. Another way to describe how these strategies or methods of science are said to achieve objectivity is to think in terms of logical phases or mod­ ules (not models). Experimental science hinges on the proper application of self-contained and logical steps to concrete situations where observation, theory, and application are all distinct movements following in a logical and (more or less) linear fashion. To the extent that one wants reliable data, one must avoid using methods that might allow the intrusion of biases, prejudices, and assumptions into the data—even though scientists may be forced to admit, and may even agree, that these personal proclivities have led to the experiment in the first place and condition how the data are to be interpreted and used. Objective data and presuppositionless methods for gathering such data are cardinal virtues for the practice of research science, and, more importantly, for the eventual labelling of a “fact.” This description is an overly simplified caricature, of course, but the basic pres­ entation is sound, namely, that the best kinds of knowledge gained are those achieved through methodical “isolation of discrete steps” which are possible only through the trained “skill” and “technique” of the scientist, designed to minimize personal involvement. Hermeneutics questions the modular way of thinking and acting, raising concerns about the nature of understanding a unified whole—not simply in terms of its parts. It seems obvious, at least to us, that scientific exper­ imentation requires deliberation, choice, control, and the adjudication of prejudices and biases, among many other normal human activities, and as such remains hermeneutical from start to finish. Being human is unavoida­ ble, even in a scientific experiment, since such experiments involve humans. Scientific methods are advantageous in part, but in so much as the prac­ ticing scientist refuses to acknowledge the non-objective character of the

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32 Objectivity and the legacy of epistemic-foundationalism scientist’s own actions there are grounds for serious concern. The history of objectivity bears witness to this time and again. Lorraine Daston, Peter Galison, and other important historians of sci­ ence have shown that objectivity has a history that is closely related to the history of science and its own changing practices and ideals. 23 For instance, the emblem of genuine science as the abdication of “self” from knowledge—the assumed bifurcation between what is stable and enduring from what is individual and transitory—has not always been the defining hallmark of objectivity, even if contemporary conceptions insist that it is. In fact, the customary scientific polarization of subjectivity and objectivity, in which “freedom from” secures our knowledge of reality, is a relatively new way of seeing the world. Modern scientific objectivity is a new expres­ sion from within the larger historical backdrop of objectivism (a term used as inclusive of all forms of objectivity). The conceptual roots of objectiv­ ity go far deeper into history than the scientific revolution, but even more historically important and revealing for us is that objectivity has changed radically since the birth of modern science in the seventeenth century. The distinction between object and subject is traceable to at least the fourteenth century, but the concepts were not framed in opposition to one another as they are today. By the seventeenth century, we begin to see a notion of objectivity in which the term “object” does not refer to exter­ nal objects existing independently of the mind and the mind’s distorting influence, but refers instead to concepts of the mind. 24 An object was not external to the human but a concept held in the mind. Knowing an object, objectively, was not a matter of directly perceiving and knowing an object or thing in itself as other than the human self, as if the meaning or “Truth” of a thing was entirely within an object itself, but of having “objects of thought”—a concept in the mind. 25 The seventeenth-century version of the “subject,” to the contrary of what one might expect, had much more in common with our current use of the concept of “object,” as that which has meaning in itself. The main point to be noticed about this early sense of objectivity—as that which is conceived—is that we find a notion of truth that is potentially distinct from what is real, if by “real” we mean some­ thing independent of the mind. Truth was a matter of relating formal and objective “concepts.” The formal concept was the idea of a given thing within the mind—the form or essence as present to the mind. The objective concept was the thing as it is known or experienced. “Objective” was not the thing itself but a concept that does or does not relate to the formal con­ cept. If they relate to each other, then a given statement is said to be true, if not, then it is false (very similar to truth-conditional tests of statements). To the extent that the idea of the thing somehow attaches accurately to the thing itself, the thought is said to be objectively true. 26 The development of the notion of objectivity as something outside the self is directly related to the rise of Enlightenment thought, with its emphasis upon rationalism and empiricism and natural explanations. By

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the second half of the seventeenth century, there was growing acceptance of the distinction between a matter of fact and a hypothesis, as well as there being a growing reliance on disinterestedness, as a criterion of truth. 27 Disinterest was the notion that a person did not have personal involvement in a situation or state of affairs. This was part of the larger move away from accepting the testimony of individuals and the acceptability of statements by virtue of a person’s known character. 28 Truth as a “matter of fact,” itself a product of “a subject’s disinterestedness”—what is lacking in a person, who is by nature an interested being—became a socially accepted standard of truth. By the eighteenth century the criterion of being disinterested was still more esteemed, for it was said to represent freedom from self-interest and the fear of social repercussion. 29 To be in the service of truth, one must be immune to provincial desires and concerns. However, to be disinterested did not yet mean that one was free of a particular perspective. 30 In the late eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant undertook in his Critique of Pure Reason to offer a critique of the notion of reason on the basis of reason itself and alone, thus arguably reaching the highpoint of expression of Enlightenment thought and its objectives.31 Kant is therefore responsi­ ble for fully reversing the meanings of subject and object and for making the division between the subjective and objective popular. 32 By roughly the 1840s objective and subjective had begun to relate to one another in terms of the bi-polarized and antagonistic relationship in which they are held today.33 Even so, as of the early part of the nineteenth century, objectivity still had several significant changes to undergo. It was not yet strongly asso­ ciated with concepts of personal detachment, measurement, method, and empirical certainty, nor was its antithesis seen to be subjectivity in the strict sense.34 By the turn of the nineteenth century, objectivity still retained its original conceptual meaning as “that which is conceived” but began to be associated more with impartiality and external physical objects. 35 It is not until the nineteenth century and the widespread implementation of the scientific method, however, that the concept of objectivity reaches its full form. Daston’s research reveals that the ideal of aperspectival objectiv­ ity in the natural sciences as the freedom from the influence of one’s subjec­ tivities is first accepted into the natural sciences only in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, due in large part to the need for impersonal communication of the results of scientific endeavor. 36 The international standardization of scientific procedures further supported the globalizing of scientific communities and the ability to communicate data across bar­ riers of culture, language, and specialized training as just the facts without localized and intruding personal factors, an increasingly important factor as science became an enterprise of the western world. This served to foster the ideal of modern objectivity and to reinforce the growing concern to avoid errors caused by avoidable idiosyncrasies.37 By the end of the nine­ teenth century, aperspectival objectivity was widely lauded by science as the transcending of individual subjectivities. 38 Thus objectivity had come to

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34 Objectivity and the legacy of epistemic-foundationalism serve science as both the structure of understanding and the basis for com­ munication and explanation (the explanation being a product of its ability to predict and control).39

A brief history of logical positivism The discussion of objectivity would be incomplete without a treatment, even if only brief, of logical positivism as a very influential expression of foundationalism. Arising in Vienna and Berlin in the first quarter of the twentieth century as part of the larger analytical philosophy movement, logical positivism refers to what became the standard view of the philos­ ophy of science through the middle of the twentieth century—thriving in Europe during the 1920s and 1930s, and maintaining a measure of influ­ ence in Britain and America and elsewhere until at least the early 1960s.40 Logical positivism addressed and had answers for all three of the major pillars of objectivity, including ontology, epistemology, and language, and so proved to be very popular and robust as a philosophy of science. By the late 1960s, logical positivism had become widely rejected insofar as the cohesiveness of the movement had been lost and other competing philosoph­ ical approaches emerged on the scene, but it has remained a widely assumed view about the purpose and nature of true scientific thought until the pres­ ent. Every alternative to positivism simply seems to lack the robust sense of interpretation-free science assumed by objectivity. While the positivists had disagreements among themselves, there was considerable agreement on many key matters. For example, science, they claimed, is the only true form of knowledge. Moreover, it was generally agreed that language and mathematics were the tools needed to provide a robust empirical and objective account of reality, to the point that language became a means of capturing and representing objective reality, its own form of logical calculus. The basic claim of the positivists was that mean­ ingful statements are either analytic (true by virtue of their meanings, i.e., “All bachelors are unmarried men”) or claims about observable or poten­ tially observable phenomena (synthetic, i.e., “All bachelors are employed”). We do not need science to understand analytic propositions, as they are seen to be self-evident. We need science to explore the synthetic ones (are all bachelors really employed?). To secure scientific knowledge, the positivists drove a wedge between facts and value judgments or interpretations. Knowledge, they argued, comes from uninterpreted observation. We may access the world neutrally through observations for, they believed, interpretation could be eliminated from every level of scientific knowledge. To that end, part of their efforts included the development of value-free or neutral scientific language. Positivism also made a sharp distinction between theory and observation statements, with priority given to observation. Theories and concepts are said to rely on observation statements only. A theory is true if it successfully

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predicts observed events. Thus, legitimate scientific knowledge offers direct recourse to particular observable events, for the basis of “real” inquiry is empirical validation. Explanation, then, becomes a matter of logical order­ ing and verifying observation. The now famous verification principle of the logical positivists played an important role throughout their program. Verification meant that to be meaningful a statement must be true or false, and the truthfulness or falsity of any statement is dependent upon correct methodological testing. Something is meaningful and therefore scientific if, and only if, it is empir­ ically verifiable or if it is an analytic statement of mathematics and logic. Analytic truths are knowable a priori and non-experientially, and are nec­ essarily true or false without the need for reference to empirical evidence. Synthetic statements are true by virtue of fact or empirical meaningful­ ness, and may be verified by locating possible observations and considering how well the statement matches or deals with experience. In contrast to both synthetic and analytic statements, all other claims, specifically meta­ physical claims, which are about the unobservable and hence unverifiable, are simply meaningless. They are neither true nor false.41 With this single move, positivism swept away the great majority of human experience as epistemic meaninglessness. Recall our earlier claim about the bifurcation of objectivity in which one either has the facts or does not. Logical positivists proposed that meaning is either analytic, synthetic, or absent (nonsense). Scientific knowledge must be legitimized, i.e., verified by observation. Thus ethics, an example of a profound human conversation about the very nature of living a good life, cannot provide knowledge any more than poetry and theology (which itself is a derogation of poetry and theology). We now see that logical positivism was egregiously myopic, reductionistic, and isolating (verifying and testing without context), even solipsistic in that its major assumptions were themselves not verifiable by their own criteria (why are only analytic and synthetic statements potentially true, and how would one verify this empirically?) and yet this did not seem to bother logical positivism. Instead it was enthusiastically celebrated as a superior means of thinking scientifically. The early logical positivists were—from the perspective of the history of western thought—revolutionary, seeking to reshape philosophy in a way that it might be a method for analyzing statements and theories. One can see the reasons for the appeal of logical positivism within the tumultu­ ous world of the early twentieth century, in which the social liberalism of the nineteenth century had been decisively set back by a world war and then ensuing financial turmoil. The logical positivists seemed to provide a philosophical method that, rather than being extraneous to its contem­ porary world, was ideally suited and supportive of contemporary scientific method, and the two were thus in support of each other. However, it is also widely accepted today that positivism failed to deliver on its promises. Willard Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951) is a classic example

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36 Objectivity and the legacy of epistemic-foundationalism of a major objection that helped usher in positivism’s end.42 In this article, written by Quine who was himself an analytic philosopher, he attacked two of the basic assumptions of logical positivism, the ability to be able to dis­ tinguish analytic and synthetic statements and its reductionism. This article remains one of the most important philosophical papers of the twentieth cen­ tury as it revealed a major flaw in the entire positivist program. The failure was due primarily to the recognition that few, if any, statements are verifia­ ble in the positivist manner, including its own claims regarding the basis of truth. It proved to be a grand theory without its own verifiable foundation. Despite its failure to stand up to scrutiny, the spirit of positivism—to possess meaning that is noninterpreted—lived on within scientific circles and set the benchmark for all subsequent discussions of scientific knowl­ edge and objectivity. Today most of what goes on in the philosophy of science is done against the background of logical positivism. Moreover, it remains influential not only as a foil for philosophical ways of thinking but as a means of characterizing many of the current practices of laboratory research science. How science gets done and is justified is often cast in a positivist light, regardless of the radical undermining that positivism has suffered during the last century. The reason for this residual influence of a seriously undermined philo­ sophical school of thought merits further exploration. The reasons seem to be relatively straightforward in light of our discussion of objectivity. One might very well appreciate the value of reason, clarity, and precision of lan­ guage that the logical positivists desired and simultaneously disagree with their ideals and beliefs regarding what is possible. For now, the important distinguishing features of positivism to note are that: 1 objective science is about observation and the use of interpretation-free language, logic, and mathematics; 2 observations ground theories, and facts are independent of theories, thereby enabling their testing; and 3 to be cognitively meaningful a statement must be literal and either true or false. Taking a larger cultural–historical perspective for a moment, there is also the historically telling matter of what the logical positivist episode represents in relation to philosophy, the history of western intellectual thought, the destruction of liberal optimism, and the resulting political movements that divided the western world. Seen in this light, the distin­ guishing features of logical positivism seem to present a way forward for a world troubled by the decline and even inhumanity on all sides. An attempt to formulate precise and unbiased statements that reflect objective reality had a high appeal. There are also the arguments concerning the nature of logical positivism that have continued to be debated by those attempting to justify objectivism. Perhaps even more important than the content of

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the debate itself is that there was, and remains, considerable controversy over the meaning of the concepts of meaning, knowledge, understanding, and interpretation. The realization that well over two-thousand years has passed since Parmenides and there still lingers the problem of connecting humanity to reality in a necessary, certain, and universal—objective— fashion is more than enough justification to question the feasibility of the quest, no matter how it may be represented in relation to ontology, epis­ temology, and language. In that sense, it was doomed from the start and its strenuous critique revealed and reinforced its failure to deliver what it promised regarding objectivity. That alone should have been sufficient to mark its demise. There are other movements one might draw attention to as important turning points in history but this one is important if only because it both succeeded and failed to be such a turning point. It was itself a grand failure as an explanation of objectivity but failed to end the debate once and for all over objectivity in that it failed to finally shake the pursuit of objectivity from its foundational power. Of course, many learned from this episode and plotted new courses away from it, and yet the ship as a whole, certainly including practitioners of science, seem oblivious to the practical consequences of its philosophical failings. In this way one sees that it is not only the intellectual pursuit of constancy (the dismissal of change, the persistency of the illusion of progress in spite of failure) but its practice especially in the scientific realm that supports modern objectivity. That the question of achieving (absolute) objectivity remains a legitimate one for any given scientific context, including both the hard sciences but also the social sciences and even humanities in many instances, is evidence that the question has a power and authority that must be challenged. The death of positivism seems to be excruciatingly slow. In Kuhnian terms, the history of science is not linearly progressing (as objectivity requires in some generalized manner), but is something else far more fluid, malleable and, when perceived honestly, changing in a way that deconstructs its founda­ tional claims.43 The obvious failure of positivism should have given way to a hermeneu­ tics of science which would give respect to and maintain the integrity of the changing world, including humanity, rather than abandoning fallible human experience in an effort to dislocate (isolate, codify) the unchanging. It is no wonder that objective science seems like a mistaken metaphysical project (attempting to find the hidden structures of reality) more so than the literal reading of the Book of Nature. To be clear, hermeneutics has no interest in denying that there is an external world independent of the mind. However, the practice of accessing, that is, experiencing, such a world in an objective manner as described above represents a rejection of both the self and the world—as evident by those who embraced positivism, for they accepted an illusionary view of knowledge and interpretation. This is the cycle of western thought—namely, to repeatedly create projects believed to secure unmediated knowledge of the unchanging world, only to discover

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Objectivity and the legacy of epistemic-foundationalism

that they cannot be fulfilled and do not work, only to then reinvent similar— typically, but not exclusively, anti-interpretive—strategies. Hermeneutics rejects the overtly exclusionary approach to other modes of experiencing the world. To echo Friedrich Nietzsche’s sentiment, posi­ tivists and like-minded objectivists (e.g., neopositivists who wish to retain the same objectives of positivism despite its repeated shortcomings) fail to affirm life (Nietzsche would include religious as well as scientific believ­ ers).44 They cannot say “Yes” to nature because they cannot say “Yes” to their raw or organic experiences of it. Instead, what is created is a bizarre world in which experience is distorted to fit various paradigms or expec­ tations of what “it should be.” The more genuine, albeit difficult, task is to be open to existence as interpretive creatures that must wrestle with incomplete, changing, and distorted ideas and experiences. In truth, this is how scientists already act but because of the indoctrinated need to reject subjectivity the task of greater science is frustrated by self-denial and the persistent assertion of foundational-positivism. Part of the unwarranted credibility of science is the appearance of a mon­ olithic objectivity. The popular acceptance of the concept of objectivity seems to dispel any rumors that, at heart, it remains highly problematic and contested. As we have seen, objectivity is a faith in a promise yet to be fulfilled. While much work has been done in the name of positivist and now postpositive science there is as yet no greater agreement on how to know the world than there was after positivism fell (at least on paper, if not in practice). If one takes anything away from this brief treatment of objectivity, it must be that because the same struggles have persisted for so long one must at least be sympathetic to the likes of radical thinkers such as the so-called pragmatists John Dewey and Richard Rorty, as simply two among many examples, both of whom abandoned traditional thought (including recurring questions, problems, theories, language, etc.), espe­ cially the view that knowledge is a “mirror of nature,” for something new that rejects the trajectory of historical objectivism.45 Hermeneutics likewise represents a much-needed alternative. Debates like the one with positiv­ ism seem relentlessly to persist without resolution. For some, the pursuit of objective knowledge remains a sign of devotion to be applauded. For others, there comes a time when serious consideration of radical alternatives must be given. This volume is a proposal for a radical alternative hermeneutics.

Applied scientific reasoning Before we turn to this proposal in subsequent chapters, we must conclude this one with consideration of the persistent problems that any philoso­ phy, including a philosophy of science, must address in an attempt to envi­ sion and describe the world. Following the likes of Parmenides, Plato, and Descartes, modern science continues to divide the world in two—one a world of variable inner being, dreams, hallucinations, intentions, and wills;

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the other a stable world cut off from corruptive passions, ambiguities, and contradictions of the first world. Modern science does this so that it might know the second world more fully and confidently. Despite this fragmenta­ tion into two unequal parts, the world continues to frustrate seeing it “as it is.” Problems with objectivity in the philosophy, sociology, and history of science have driven some to abandon objectivity all together, while others have continued feverishly to revive and rehabilitate it. There are several persistent problems facing any attempt “to see things as they really are.” We shall briefly consider four of these problems from the perspective of the philosophy of science: the fallibility of knowledge; the social character of knowledge; the theory-ladenness of observations; and truncated progress. The fallibility and falsifiability of knowledge claims and theories Fallibilism claims that knowledge cannot be certain. There must always be a degree of questionability, if one is willing to look deeply enough. Knowledge may be very reliable, actionable, even affirmed universally by experts, but like so many beliefs throughout history, its true character remains provisional. This has led some to believe that skepticism—that one cannot have knowledge—is the only alternative. If one assumes an objective worldview as we have described it above, this may indeed be the resulting case. For hermeneutics, fallibilism does not necessitate skepticism but, instead, frees the character of knowledge, by allowing it to be engaged as dynamic and irredeemably linked to context, new data, creativity, per­ sonal involvement, etc. In the practice of science, knowledge claims are taken in this sense as open to revision, that is, they are seen as fallible. This is not necessarily a shortcoming of a hermeneutical view. An openness to alterity (otherness) is a sign of hermeneutical health rather than weakness. If the two positions are as clear as we have stated them, then we must ask: why, then, persist with objectivity? This raises a very intriguing and not necessarily straightforward question, for which there are various possible answers. In examining scientific practice, one must be suspicious about whether objectivity is the real goal of the enterprise and the underlying justification for knowledge. Introductory science textbooks and rudimentary science courses (even if the evidence is only anecdotal) confirm this. Most science students are taught that the interplay between data in terms of evidence and observation in relation to theory is continuous. Even when all the evidence seems to support a given theory or knowledge claim, further data may reveal it to be in error. Fallibility is a routine expectation of good scientific practice. In the case of human and social sciences, this is especially clear when we consider that social systems are not closed systems and are there­ fore not controllable in the same manner as physical entities we may isolate and try to control for. Moreover, while a theory may work and offer ways

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40 Objectivity and the legacy of epistemic-foundationalism of controlling, predicting, or reliably describing phenomena, and thereby meet many criteria of objectivity, this does not secure its truth. The history of science bears witness to this difficulty, for example, the superseding of Newtonian mechanics by quantum theory is a well-known example. There are many other very successful but ultimately superseded theories once widely accepted, including the phlogiston theory, the luminiferous aether or ether theory, and so on.46 Science has a fascinating and thoroughly her­ meneutical history, by which we mean that human experience provides numerous examples where apparently controlled variables within a larger theory that appear to provide convincing explanations of the data often give way to other theories that undermine the truth of the previous theory and themselves await a similar fortune. The common-sense assertion that evidence and theory are in constant negotiation has consequences for strong notions of objectivity. Scientists and non-scientists alike share in this truism that knowledge and under­ standing are unstable, and are always in a state of (re)negotiation in so much as we are experiencing a world (and its worlds within worlds). The suspicion that a great majority of scientists, at heart, accept some form of fallibilism in practice is hardly controversial anymore. The widespread acceptance of inductive logic and the reliance on probability in science con­ firms this claim. In the very least one must conclude, as stated earlier, that there is a significant difference between the ideals of (unchanging) knowl­ edge and how the job of science is lived every day by scientists who con­ front uncertainty and ambiguity. From a hermeneutical perspective, such a manufactured schism between evidence and theory gets in the way of better science and better living. This matter should be controversial but has become swallowed up by an apathy that assumes that the problem is inherent in the scientific situation and therefore will never go away, and so one may simply ignore it. There have been a handful of creative approaches that attempt to integrate an acceptance of fallibilism within the scientific method while maintaining a strong sense of objectivity. One of the most suggestive and promising, even as it does not go far enough, was proposed by Karl Popper. Popper— one of the most famous philosophers of science and, uncommonly, also well known by practicing scientists—argues that the best approach to fal­ libilism within scientific theorizing is in terms of what to expect from our theories. Popper contends that we must seek to falsify theories, not to verify or prove them.47 This may at first seem to turn the process on its head, but there is good reason for Popper’s approach even if it is ultimately an unsus­ tainable assertion that is itself an unfalsifiable hypothesis. Popper’s thought moves along these lines. Proving something seems all too easy according to Popper. We find many theories for which there is supporting evidence that purportedly proves it to be true. If what makes something scientific is its supporting empirical data, and yet theories with supporting data are often later shown to be false, then supporting data cannot be the ultimate

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test of a theory. We should not be impressed when a theory is confirmed by data—as per our earlier conversation about experimental science—but only if the theory survives persistent attempts to falsify it. Good science, Popper argues, wants not to confirm but to disconfirm theories. By elimi­ nating the bad theories, what remains must be better. What this means is that a theory will always be open to possible dispute. Popper believes that genuine scientists are those who welcome criticism and openly interrogate their own theories. Therefore, scientists need to be creative and somewhat independent, looking for new ways to falsify their own beliefs and avoid any herd mentality in which there is uncritical acceptance of consensus. Popper’s description of science is both intuitive in some respects, for example, that good science provides theories that may be refuted by obser­ vation (hence a theory that cannot be refuted cannot be scientific), and is also counterintuitive in others, that is, for Popper surviving theories are not proved (a common term in pop cultural references to science) but, instead, offer an approximation of objectivity. “Verisimilitude” as the approxima­ tion of truth—truth-likeness or resemblance—has become an important and suggestive term for philosophers of science and represents a move toward a (neo)objective truth. Popper’s own definition of verisimilitude was initially criticized (on justified grounds that he accepts) yet the idea of truth-likeness remains an important one. Scientific progress is possible, a rational core of science remains intact, but the means of doing science must demonstrate (deductively argue based on observations) why a theory is wrong. Popper is an example of someone who recast science in a different light, describing it in terms quite unlike those used by anyone before him, so that the core of scientific reasoning might be maintained. His was not a herme­ neutical task of demonstrating how interpretation and inductive reasoning exist at the heart of science, but a justification of science that offered a scien­ tific theodicy of sorts. He reconciled the obvious scientific failures to prove theories in an unchanging manner while maintaining belief in scientific reason (deductive scientific reasoning). Popper believes scientific knowledge is objective in a real way—it offers true descriptions of the world—and yet his approach calls for a revaluation and redefinition of scientific reason. Verisimilar theories become a matter of confidence in a theory because it has survived critique. However, this formulation raises a number of ques­ tions of its own. What is the proof that falsifiability is a better approach than supported theories? What about theories that are not obviously falsi­ fiable, such as various theories regarding relativity and quantum mechanics that continue to remain theoretical? What if scientists fail to be radical enough to critique themselves and to see the failings of their own theories? There are many problems with Popper’s proposal even in light of contem­ porary science. A question that brings hermeneutical questions to the fore, however, is this: What if Popper is overlooking very strong, indoctrinated forms of scientific dogmatism, even religious devotion of sorts, by scientists

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to maintain the status quo? Thomas Kuhn made this last, among many, assertions in his Structure of Scientific Revolutions.48 Popper has it wrong, for Kuhn, who sees most practicing scientists as obedient to their trained communities without question and critique, so that they are content to do their “normal science,” even in the light of evidence that is not correlated to their governing theories. Kuhn’s view of practicing scientists describes an uncritical, uncreative community of those thinking within the same par­ adigms. Kuhn’s criticism is damning, as it describes two traits necessary for the routine practice of science, being uncritical and uncreative, that are usually thought to be antithetical to the scientific spirit, and instead implies that scientific communities value obedience over such characteristics as inquisitiveness or willingness to test boundaries. Kuhn’s argument cannot be easily dismissed. Hermeneutics agrees with Kuhn regarding the role that scientific com­ munities as socializing contextual environments play in the scientific enter­ prise. Hermeneutics also agrees with Popper on at least two themes. First, if one accepts that knowledge is always underdetermined, as Popper does in his formulations regarding verifiability and falsifiability, this does not mean the world is unknowable, only that one must focus efforts on attain­ ing plausible, approximate, and credible accounts, not absolute and final representations of reality. And second, a healthier understanding of the world (theories) is one in which critical thought and honest self-critique exist within a context of creativity and an openness to new ideas (some­ thing to which Kuhn would presumably agree). The social character of knowledge A growing acceptance of the unavoidability of social influence has resulted in scientific knowledge, broadly defined, being redefined as a social phenom­ enon.49 The shifting conceptions of objectivity, for example, have helped support the rise and spread of social sciences, concerned with the science of society or social groups, and have given them greater authority to speak in the science-oriented age in which we live. The social sciences repre­ sent the need to bring together qualitative and quantitative strategies for understanding—that is, both interpretive and methodological or numerical approaches. Social scientific reasoning appears to be a sustained and contin­ uous disciplinary effort to wrestle with the hermeneutical nature of human existence and the authority of objectivity. “Hermeneutics” does not appear nearly as threatening a term for social scientists, for they expect interpreta­ tion to play a key role in their discipline and subject matter. This is perhaps readily seen in the fact that there continue to be a number of viable, com­ peting models of social science that play a significant role in the discipline.50 There is also greater acceptance in the philosophy of science for not only “softer” sciences (a term still used pejoratively by some to draw attention to the lack of objectivity), but a fundamentally revised view of

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hard science in which one does not observe the world in an unmediated fashion or know it in discrete isolation. 51 We rely on our prior knowledge and social, cultural experience to make sense of things. Kuhn, Michael Polanyi, Paul Feyerabend, among many others, argue for the inevitability of subjective judgment in the strictest of natural sciences. 52 For example, in recording data one must rely on a language and conceptual framework rooted in social and historical understanding. It is inconceivable to imagine any science without a language. Given that all language is hermeneutical (interpretive), one must accept “a matter of fact” to be a social-linguistic construction of reality that reflects a scientific community’s situated social existence (itself bound to language and history, and therefore encompassing specific prejudices and perspectives). In other words, scientific accounts of the world are bound to local standards belonging to particular communi­ ties and are therefore social and at least partially relative. Scientific practice is an inherently social activity and its knowledge is gained by virtue of personal choices and decisions. These personal decisions are found in all areas of scientific practice, including theory development, hypothesis formulation, data selection, question choice, and so on. The personal choices reflected in these decisions rely on evaluations and judg­ ments that reflect both scientific and other values, in particular social values. Moreover, models, theories, experiments, etc., only make sense because one sees oneself in them, that is, one’s familiar language, history, goals, and pur­ poses are reflected in the choice and implementation of these scientific endeav­ ors. Stephan Fuchs summarizes this well: “Science is indeed ‘objective,’ but in a sociological [hermeneutical], not philosophical sense. Sociologically, objec­ tivity is an internal accomplishment of cultures committed to objectivity. It does not fall out of the sky, but must be accomplished or not. Objectivity is contingent; it either is made to happen or not.”53 The theory-ladenness of observation Closely associated with the previous set of observations is the widely discussed problem of “the theory-ladeness (or dependence) of observa­ tion.” This formulation refers to the presence of interests or involvement (sometimes even bias) or interpretive backgrounds for all observations. Observations cannot be neutral disclosures of reality that confirm or negate a theory for they are always determined by the theories used to describe how things are in the world. Perceptions of reality are conditioned by theories that encompass a set of expectations regarding perception itself, through which one thinks about and hence sees the world. This is admittedly a strong hermeneutical claim, but it is one that has become commonplace in scientific literature. Science and scientific theories, contrary to how they may have attempted to fashion themselves or represent themselves to those outside the scientific community, have historically and always been creative activities of those involved in the science, performed within historical and

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cultural contexts. These contexts reflect different and changing historical periods that accept certain changing presuppositions within the scientific community or communities. They are all dependent upon language as the means of description of the observed phenomena. Patrick Heelan goes further in his description of the notion of theory­ ladenness when he focuses upon the role that language itself plays within science, as an element that is not itself a part of the science itself but that reflects the world in which science is located, and how that mediates knowl­ edge of the world: …. whatever is observed (inside or outside of science) involves things which are not directly observed but are implied by the semantic net­ work of the language. Such semantic connections are not of themselves scientific (i.e., explanatory-theoretical) connections, and do not con­ stitute a theory, for they are to be found in natural language which is not a theory about the world but a description of it. A theory is rather about what underlies—“explains”—the objects of a descriptive seman­ tic network. 54 Heelan is a founding figure of the hermeneutics of the natural sciences. Since 1970, he has distinguished himself for his work in the philosophy of science. In 1983, he received wide audience with his Space-Perception and the Philosophy of Science.55 With this and later works, Heelan has contin­ ued to explore science from both a hermeneutical and a phenomenological framework. Not only is human knowledge interpretive through and through, according to Heelan, but so too is perception, even scientific perception. The role of personal interest or prejudice continues to be an area of con­ cern for science. In a more passive sense, theoretical prejudices may be seen to influence perceptions by merely conditioning how an otherwise objective observation is described. However, it is difficult to determine how one might isolate and distinguish prejudice from so-called objective observation. More controversially, prejudices may be part of what it means to be human and hence inseparable from observations and may thereby negate the possibility of objective and neutral evidence, theory-free facts and observations, and objective decision-making between competing theories. In a broader sense, philosophy of science has come to recognize that all objective-oriented methods and procedures may be said to rely on tacit, assumed, and locally, socially, accepted means-to-truth, not only to justify their use but to make sense of what one sees through them.56 Theories do not just passively suffer from selective priorities and being made to fit the data; they actively influence perceptions themselves in an inextricable and inseparably intertwined way.57 In light of this situation, it has been suggested by many that a better and more suitably broadened objectivity might consider observation to be more like the practice of interpretation guided by theory, rather than a direct correspondence or mirroring of reality in itself. In his “Achievements of the

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Hermeneutic-Phenomenological Approach to Natural Sciences,” Martin Eger writes, “Awareness of this [interpretation at the stage of observation] has been growing at least since the 1950’s when Polanyi’s writings started coming out. It reached a watershed with Kuhn. Since then more and more explicitly hermeneutic and phenomenological treatments have made their appearance ….”58 Kuhn, Polanyi, Feyerabend, and Hanson, among others, are all historically important figures who have argued that, at the least, scientific observation is influenced by the theoretical assumptions of the observer, that is, by the model or scheme one predicates upon reality for an experimental or merely hypothetical purpose. Within such a scientific model, it is further hard to deny that perception itself is based upon the social location of the observer. Truncated progress One often reads that objectivity is central to the notion of progress as cumulative scientific knowledge. The more one is able to secure objective facts, themselves products of objective methods and techniques—possi­ ble because of a disciplined community—the more one is said to know the world. As science grows in knowledge about the world, older theo­ ries and models are adapted, refined, and modified to better represent reality. Thus science is described as a history of taking one step after another on the progressive path toward universal, certain, and necessary truth—as if walking up a flight of stairs. And yet this does not seem to be the case. There are many elements of the above characterization that are subject to question. These include the notion of a disciplined community, objective methods and techniques that imply impersonal development and application, and the building upon older theories and models into better ones without recognizing the many superseded models. Each could be discussed at greater length, but has already been at least suggestively cri­ tiqued in our previous discussion. We wish here to concentrate upon the notion of objectivity and its relationship to these notions. The picture of objectivity as part of the ongoing linear disclosure of reality appears to be historically inaccurate. We have already seen that the concept itself is highly problematic, to the point where it is highly questionable as it is used in the description above. Science (and technology) may be said to progress, but only if the term is meant in a hermeneutical sense. Ernst Von Glasersfeld provides insight into the inadequacy of “steady growth and expansion” as being characteristic of scientific knowledge when he writes about various superseded theories: The history of scientific ideas shows all too blatantly that there has been no over-all linear progression. The shifts from the geocentric to the heliocentric view of the planetary system, from Newton’s spatially stable to Einstein’s expanding universe, from the notion of rigid atomic

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Objectivity and the legacy of epistemic-foundationalism determinism to that of a static basis and the principle of uncertainty, from an Earth with permanently arranged land masses to Wegener’s continental drift—and other upheavals could be mentioned—are incontrovertible signs that fundamental concepts are relinquished and replaced by ideas that were incompatible with earlier pictures of the world.59

While supporters of objectivity see the perpetual activity of theory rejec­ tion, revision, and adaptation as achieving progressive and more accurate correspondence with new evidence and data about the world, many sociol­ ogists, historians, and philosophers see such supersession as evidence that the real world is continually escaping objective disclosure. Such a claim is not hard to substantiate, especially within recent scientific discussion. Since the nineteenth century, virtually all that was believed to be true about the nature of the universe has been overturned, including fundamental theories of space, time, heat, and light. The transition from Newtonian mechanics to special relativity was not an increase in precision over the older conception but a new understanding that did not merely build on the old. As Werner Heisenberg, the person often credited, along with Niels Bohr, with formulating quantum mechanics, realized, the ideal of objectivity presented by classical physics is in many ways at odds with their developments in quantum mechanics. Heisenberg’s famous 1925 paper, “On the Quantum Theoretical Re-interpretation of Kinematic and Mechanical Relationships,” widely recognized as the watershed moment in quantum mechanics, was not a new way of looking at the world “within” the old mechanics, but an entirely new perspective in which observable quantities alone were insufficient for explaining atomic dilemmas.60 As the title of the paper indicates, the split between classical and quantum physics was caused by a new interpretation, not the revision of an old one. While classical physics characterized an object by what was real and objective, the new mechanics defines a physical object by what may be simultaneously measured. However, as Heisenberg is perhaps most famous for arguing through his Uncertainty Principle, simultaneous measurement of both the position and the momentum of a particle cannot be done with equal pre­ cision.61 It is worth noting that there is an ongoing debate as to whether this principle is caused by the disturbances of observation or whether it applies merely to measurement alone. Perhaps not as widely debated as it once was, many still see a close relation of the Uncertainty Principle and the “observer effect” in which an observer’s measurement, that is, the instruments used, changes the phenomenon being observed. For example, to detect an electron a photon must first interact with it. This interaction will change the path of the electron in question. Similarly, to discern temper­ ature using a mercury thermometer, an exchange of energy between the substance measured and the mercury must take place, thereby changing the temperature (energy) being measured. In quantum physics then, one could

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argue that what is discovered in terms of measurement is at least partially a product of the human interaction, by way of instruments, with the object. With this basic “observer effect” in mind, some, such as Heelan, have seen fit to make the hermeneutical claim that measurement itself has a context, as a socio-historical process that is bound up within the measurements themselves and the various selected means of collecting them.62 We will not concern ourselves with this argument here. The point to notice is that progress in physics, at least that which characterizes the division between classical and modern, cannot be said to be linear and progressive, that is, a redevelopment of what was. The emergence of quantum mechanics is an example of something new that is in significant ways contrary to the old. One ought to also consider the presence of hermeneutical themes in phys­ ics by looking at the many ways in which today’s dominant physical theories are being interpreted. That there are different interpretations is an indica­ tion of hermeneutics at work. Without going into detail about the theories themselves, it is enough to point out that there continues to be debate as to the correct interpretation of quantum mechanics, as there are a number of different understandings and applications of the theory, to the point that one might call it theories. The hermeneutical and scientific question is how quantum mechanics shapes our understanding of the world. Should we regard quantum mechanics as deterministic or indeterministic? How are we to interpret experimental results? As merely one quick (and partially anecdotal) point of reference, according to a poll by Max Tegmark of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University taken at a quantum mechanics workshop in 1997, the Copenhagen interpretation, attributed to Bohr along with Heisenberg and others, is an indeterministic perspec­ tive and the most widely accepted interpretation of quantum mechanics, followed by the Many Worlds interpretation that is deterministic in that phenomena are said to exist in some world, both of which are far ahead in popularity to the Consistent Histories interpretation, a probabilistic the­ ory, and Bohm interpretation, named after the physicist David Bohm and an objectivist approach.63 One notes that indeterministic and deterministic views are the two most popular, while the strongest objectivist theory is least of the four. More importantly perhaps would be to ask the question of those polled how many have actually studied the theoretical foundations and history of quantum mechanics to arrive at their preference, rather than simply answering according to the model that governs their own research. Describing the role and type of interpretation in physics is a difficult issue. There is a sense, for physicists at least, in which one might readily agree that a vague kind of instrumental interpretation is required within physics but nothing more, that is, that only instrumental questions are rel­ evant to physics, those that can be measured by instruments. Interpretation in this sense is a matter of how to relate the accepted mathematical for­ malism to experimental practice. Instrumentalist interpretation does not explain so much as (pre)describe the measuring process of, say, calculating

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statistical regularity. Interpretation in this sense is about the semantics of mathematical application. This limited form of interpretation does not fully describe what is occurring among competing interpretations of quantum theories, which raise much larger questions about the nature of the uni­ verse, its determinism, and the possibilities of assessing these phenomena. The hermeneutical claim is that there are far more radical interpretations at work in the physical sciences than those of mere instrumentality. The major point to be noticed in this discussion of progress and objec­ tivity is that the history of objectivity is not simply one of gradually earned breakthroughs that add to former knowledge, which do indeed appear to have occurred during times that Kuhn characterizes as “normal science,” but also of local achievements and revolutions that overturn previously accepted knowledge, those moments that Kuhn characterizes as leading to “paradigm shifts.” To again apply the metaphor of scientific progress as moving up steps, it cannot be said that a science has progressed, certainly in any linear fashion, when its previous steps have been refuted, seriously revised, or simply abandoned. Revision, refutation, and abandoning pre­ vious knowledge (and understanding) are all healthy hermeneutical prin­ ciples, not virtues of objectivity for which the removal of a step signals failure. To extend the metaphor, the removal of numerous steps calls into question the metaphor of a staircase, as there is no reason to suppose a subsequent step if one cannot assume past ones. The history of objective progress becomes radically complicated when we realize that many once widely accepted, tested, and applied theories and knowledge claims have been replaced by others, equally widely and firmly held and asserted. Such disclosures are not further steps up the ladder of progress but often new starts. Objectivity has not secured linear progress but has been a part of the sporadic punctuations and achievements on the road to a still changing picture of reality. Scientific progress exists hermeneutically not objectively.

Conclusion We bring this discussion of objectivity to a conclusion by noting that the rethinking and revaluing of objectivity persist for four main and varied reasons. First, many scholars desire an adaptable objective concept that accords with their belief in unchanging laws of the universe, and are at unrest over the spread of thinking that has moved beyond positivist claims into what might be called post-positivist thinking. We need, they believe, a foundation for knowledge and its dissemination. Second, others are merely unhappy with the failures of more traditional notions of objectivity to pos­ sess facts about the world as it is “in-itself.” They continue to struggle to fill in the gaps of what is believed to be an otherwise accurate representation. All we need, they contest, is more time to clear away the ambiguities that infect foundational knowledge, to solve the minor issues of an infallible way-to-truth that, like all understanding, suffers from correctible errors.

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Third, others are discontented with the classical notion of objectivity but wish to retain its goal of securing sure and reliable knowledge, but in a way that does justice to the social influence of all knowledge. One cannot, they argue, have a foundational concept except that it offers an account of social conditioning. This is a radical redefinition of objectivity that attempts to encompass that which objectivity was originally designed to exclude. The danger is that it may potentially turn into a conception of social practice wherein objectivity becomes whatever enough experts practice as objec­ tivity.64 Finally, still others seek to save only a vague sense of objectiv­ ity by pointing out the critical stance within the hermeneutical event of understanding. Science, and understanding in general, according to this fourth position, will benefit from abandoning objectivity in the modern sense by introducing a suitable hermeneutic conception of self-understand­ ing. However, none of these is a satisfactory response to the problems of objectivity, especially in relation to hermeneutics. A hermeneutical response to objectivity must rethink what we mean by science, including all of the sciences and humanities within its purview (we have concentrated upon the hard sciences as the most difficult case), responding to its history, especially that of the hard sciences, by challenging its own vocabulary, conceptual schemes, paradigms, and goals. We do not wish to be misunderstood at this point. Such a proposal is not an attempt to make science into some­ thing else, that is, to make science hermeneutical and therefore somehow less “scientific” as it knows itself, but to draw out its already hermeneutical nature—thereby making it more itself than before. Objectivity is a paradoxical notion. Its realization in scientific communi­ ties has a schizophrenic (“to split” + “mind”) character of being and not-yet being. It is something of an eschatological coming-of-age, a truth that is here but not yet here, something that is now—a kingdom in this present age—but not yet now. As the goal and means of every genuine scientific investiga­ tion, it remains unrealized and unseen as the guarantor of truth. Reality is always a promise, always coming. The neutral foundation needed to begin remains absent. For hermeneutics this is not a necessary problem, indeed it is expected. For the sciences this produces a great deal of difficulty. The con­ sensus among philosophers of science, especially among sociologists of sci­ ence, is that science is no longer free to abdicate from the profane, that is, to abjure from its responsibilities toward the subjectivities of human existence. To the contrary, it must recognize and even fully encompass them. The role of objectivity for hermeneutics is that it challenges one to recon­ sider what counts as reliable, accurate, and true forms of knowledge. Active hermeneutics denies that one must worry about justifying beliefs through fixed or absolute standards, but this does not contradict the potential role for some type of critical-rational stance. It remains to be seen just what kind of hermeneutical “skill” is needed that might parallel the desires of objectivity, if only in part. To make sense of applications of objectivity, sci­ entists have increasingly been forced to reconsider the concept and practice

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of objectivity in light of the demands of situated self-understanding. This is the implicit hermeneutical character of understanding at work in science whether or not it is known by that name. Yet while science may not be a neutral explication of reality in itself—and many philosophers of science no longer feel obligated to claim scientific knowledge to be objective in an absolute sense, whatever that might mean in this context—this does not leave objectivity out in the cold. The “critical attitude” of objectivity as one that holds the self in question very much has a place in scientific research of all sorts and in understanding generally. Revaluing objectivity hermeneutically does not mean science is therefore merely subjective and relativistic. That reflects an “objective” bias that exists only if one accepts the regulated bifurcation of objectivity between self and world. Researchers in all fields, from the hard sciences to the social sciences to humanities, must still aim for attainable goals of being rigorous, explicit, thorough, and accurate, while remaining open to revision and adaptive to real-life contexts. If the ever-popular goal of science is no longer absolute and final representation, that is, universal, necessary, and true knowledge, but plausible, approximate, creative, and credible accounts, then the emerg­ ing neo-objectivity in the natural sciences further encourages a need for the hermeneutic reconstruction of all scientific knowledge, a revaluation of the self-understanding of science, as well as of general understanding. This results in a fundamental distinction regarding objectivity. Foundational-objectivity draws distinctions between theoretical and prac­ tical reason, between reality as certainty and the lesser reality of subjectiv­ ity as probability. Hermeneutic-objectivity does not correct this by drawing together or mediating two worlds, one scientific and objective and the other social or human. To mediate science and other forms of human experience would unduly restrict our self-understanding, besides derogating one to the disadvantage of the other. Rather, active hermeneutics claims that, in each sphere, theory and practical reason co-determine one another. Neither knowledge nor understanding in a broader sense begins by having a heart of stone. Errol E. Harris comes close to articulating something satisfying in terms of a hermeneutical objectivity: It follows that, if by “objective” we are to understand the most complete and concrete, the most fully coherent and self-sustaining reality, we must expect to find it much more adequately expressed in the most complex and developed forms of the scale than in the elementary, purely physical, forms. And the most developed are the mental, the fully purposive, the actively teleological, the conscious and intellectual, the personal forms. According to the true bent of 20th century scientific thinking (as yet but dimly recognized) objectivity does not lie in any barely self-external, mechanical world excluding all life and mind, but rather in personal, self-conscious awareness, realizing itself intellectually, in a coherent and self-sustaining comprehension of the nature of the real; and realizing

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itself practically in the achievement of values which express its own nature as actualized in that comprehension.65 Such a hermeneutical objectivity and how to achieve it is the subject of the subsequent chapters of this volume.

Notes 1 From a letter Charles Darwin sent to Thomas Huxley on 9 July 1857. Full let ­ ter available at Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 2122,” accessed on 30 April 2019, http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/DCP-LETT-2122. 2 A previous discussion of some of the topics in this chapter is found in Jason C. Robinson, “Objectivism,” in Encyclopedia of Case Study Research, 2 vols., ed. Albert J. Mills, Gabrielle Durepos, and Elden Wiebe (Los Angeles: Sage, 2010), 619–23. Similar themes are also discussed in Jason C. Robinson, A Gadamerian Approach to the Natural Sciences (unpublished PhD, Univer­ sity of Guelph, 2010); and Stanley E. Porter and Jason C. Robinson, Herme­ neutics: An Introduction to Interpretive Theory (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), esp. 74–104 but throughout. 3 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd rev. ed., trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 2002). Although Gadamer is best-known for this work, he pursued similar interests in a number of other works that address the issue of hermeneutics, questions of knowledge and understanding, and the role of reason in science. Some of these works include Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, trans. Robert R. Sullivan (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985); Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, ed. and trans. David E. Linge (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977); and Gadamer, Reason in the Age of Science, trans. Frederick G. Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981). See also the chapters below for further consideration of Gadamer. 4 See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time , trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962). 5 Richard J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Herme ­ neutics, and Praxis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983). His major ideas were anticipated in Bernstein, Praxis and Action: Contempo­ rary Philosophies of Human Activity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971). 6 As an example, the three pillars are found in Paul Helm, ed., Objective Knowledge: A Christian Perspective (Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 1987). The three pillars, ontology, epistemology, and language, as well as some other related topics, such as morality and ethics, are addressed in this volume, all from an objectivist standpoint. 7 Most famously and perhaps most influentially in Jacques Derrida, “Struc ­ ture, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” delivered at the Johns Hopkins University symposium “The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man” held in 1966, published in Derrida’s Writing and Differ­ ence, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 178–93, amongst other essays along a similar vein. The lecture is a direct attack upon the structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss. 8 Corey S. Powell, “Relativity versus Quantum Mechanics: The Battle for the Universe,” The Guardian 4 November 2015 (online at https://www.theguard­ ian.com/news/2015/nov/04/relativity-quantum-mechanics-universe-physicists).

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Albert Einstein is better known for his contribution to relativity, but he also pioneered work in quantum mechanics. See John Stachel, ed., Einstein’s Miraculous Year: Five Papers that Changed the Face of Physics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), including his papers on relativity and a translation of Einstein, “On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Pro­ duction and Transformation of Light,” 177–98, Einstein’s early contribution to quantum mechanics for which he received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics on the photoelectric effect (not relativity). See also Barry Parker, Albert Ein­ stein’s Vision: Remarkable Discoveries that Shaped Modern Science (Amh­ erst: Prometheus, 2004), 153–69. 9 An important work in this regard is Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), where he lays out the basis of interpretive communi­ ties setting the parameters for interpretive options. 10 Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). 11 Martin Eger, “Hermeneutics as an Approach to Science: Part I,” Science and Education 2 (1993): 1–29. 12 Put another way, we might see this in terms of the greater value that is placed on epistēmē over technē and praxis. 13 Lorraine Daston sees at least three distinct historical and conceptual cate ­ gories of objectivity: aperspectival, ontological, and mechanical. She writes: “Whereas ontological objectivity is about the fit between theory and the world, and mechanical objectivity is about suppressing the universal human propensity to judge and aestheticize, aperspectival objectivity is about elim­ inating individual (or occasionally group) idiosyncrasies. It emerged first in the moral and aesthetic philosophy of the late 18th century and spread to the natural sciences only in the mid-19th century, as a result of a reorganization of scientific life that multiplied professional contrasts at every level, from the international commission to the well-staffed laboratory.” See Lorraine Daston, “Objectivity and the Escape from Perspective,” Social Studies of Science 22 (1992): 597. 14 Moreover, we may discern potential distorting influences that our methods might have on our objects of study, e.g., strategies of isolating and interrogat­ ing elements of nature. 15 “Complete” includes a number of scientific values such as consistency, scope, reliability, testability, repeatability, and falsifiability. 16 For the fragments of Parmenides, see G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 239–62. 17 For Plato’s most significant statements on the real and the ideal, see Plato, Cratylus 389–390, 439–440, but he discusses these ideas throughout his works, including Meno 71–86; Parmenides 128–35; Phaedo 73–80; Phaedrus 265–66; Philebus 14–18; Republic 394–403, 472–80; Sophist 246–59; Sym­ posium 210–12; Thaeatetus 184–86, as those most commonly referred to. 18 Stephan Fuchs, “A Sociological Theory of Objectivity,” Science Studies 11 (1997): 5. 19 The picture of the world as both a grand mechanism and material has been largely rejected by contemporary physics. However, the approach to nature through mechanisms meant to purge it of subjectivities is another story. Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison have drawn attention to this feature of objectiv­ ism, which they call “mechanical objectivity.” “[I]t replaces judgment with data-reduction techniques, observers with self-registering instruments, handdrawn illustrations with photographs. Mechanical objectivity strives to elim­ inate human intervention in the phenomena, to ‘let nature speak for itself.’”

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See Lorraine Daston, “Fear and Loathing of the Imagination in Science,” Daedalus 127 (2005): 28. See also Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, “The Image of Objectivity,” Representations 40 (1992): 81–128. 20 See Karl R. Popper, Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973); see especially Chapters 3 and 4. One is uncer­ tain how to respond to the idea of knowledge that does not have a knower, if by knowledge we mean—as we assume that most mean by the term—knowledge that is commonly discoverable and held. Knowledge by definition and common use requires a knower, and it is hard to imagine knowledge without a human knower. Without a knower, indeed there may be no such thing as knowledge itself. If this is the case, then the hermeneutical perspective is an inbuilt require­ ment of knowledge. To have knowledge is not just to imply but to require a knower, with the knower being an inescapable requirement of knowledge. 21 The Lorenz model is named after the initial work of the MIT professor Edward Lorenz, who discovered how non-linear equations might be used in weather prediction, and led to the development of chaos theory, among other implications. The gist of his discovery was that even the slightest difference in variables may have major long-term effects (hence the difficulty of long-term weather prediction). 22 Global temperature patterns are often seen to occur in thirty year cycles, but from 1998 to 2013 there was a period of relative temperature stability, dis­ turbing the typical pattern of 30-year temperature increase. This was not the only such exceptional period within this pattern. 23 On this point specifically, see Daston, “Objectivity and the Escape from Per ­ spective,” 598. For a more prolonged discussion see Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity (Boston: Zone Books, 2007). This volume probably pro­ vides the best overall estimation of the notion of objectivity and how it has been variously defined and treated from the seventeenth century to the present. 24 For a helpful historical introduction, see Peter Dear, “From Truth to Disin ­ terestedness in the Seventeenth Century,” Social Studies of Science 22 (1992): 619–31. Dear writes: “[I]n the seventeenth century and earlier, this central word ‘objective’ referred, not surprisingly, to objects …. In medieval and ear­ ly-modern philosophical parlance …. objectus meant something ‘thrown up’ for consideration by the mind …. The problem concerned the correct way to express the relationship between the representation of something in the mind and the thing itself” (620). 25 Daston points out that Duns Scotus, Descartes, and Berkeley use “objective” to mean an “object of thought”—an object perceived in the mind. She offers an interesting example found in the 1728 edition of Chambers’s dictionary where we see “Objective/objectivus” described: “Hence a thing is said to exist OBJECTIVELY, objectivè, when it exists no otherwise than in being known; or in being an Object of the Mind.” See E. Chambers, “Objective/objectivus,” in Cyclopaedia: or, An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences 2 (London, 1728), 649. Originally cited in Lorraine Daston, “How Probabilities Came to Be Objective and Subjective,” Historia Mathematica 21 (1994): 333. This con­ cept of objectivity as an object of the mind had a major influence upon phenom­ enology, in which the emphasis was on the phenomenon as a thing itself. 26 See Dear, “From Truth to Disinterestedness in the Seventeenth Century,” 619–31. 27 Dear traces the shifting association of disinterestedness with trustworthiness in “From Truth to Disinterestedness in the Seventeenth Century.” 28 The famous text that gives testimony to this point is Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985). This point is part of the

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larger interest in early modern experiments that replace personal credibility. See also Peter Dear, Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific-Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). 29 For an excellent and comprehensive introduction to the historical concept of objectivity in science, see Daston, “Objectivity and the Escape from Per­ spective”; Daston and Galison, “The Image of Objectivity”; Daston, “How Probabilities Came to Be Objective and Subjective,” 330–44; Daston, “The Nature of Nature in Early Modern Europe,” Configurations 6 (1998): 149–72; Daston, “Fear and Loathing of the Imagination in Science,” 16–30; and Daston, “Scientific Error and the Ethos of Belief,” Social Research 72 (2005): 1–28. Daston’s ongoing research interest is the historical character of objectivity in science. She has been director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin since 1995. 30 Daston, “Objectivity and the Escape from Perspective,” 605. 31 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason , trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan, 1929). 32 Most notably this is seen in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason . Daston traces the use of the notions of objective and subjective in a number of her works. In her “How Probabilities Came to Be Objective and Subjective,” she notes how the Grimm brothers’ etymological dictionary cites Kant as responsible for the new use of “objektiv” and “subjektiv.” See Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, “Objectiv/Objektivisch,” in Deutsches Wörterbuch (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1889), 1109; and “Subjectiv, Subjectivität,” in Deutsches Wörterbuch 10 (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1942), 813–14. 33 On this point see, for example, Daston, “Fear and Loathing of the Imagina­ tion in Science,” 25–6. 34 Daston, “Objectivity and the Escape from Perspective,” 602–03. 35 On this point, see specifically Daston, “Objectivity and the Escape from Per ­ spective,” 601. 36 Daston makes this point in “Objectivity and the Escape from Perspective,” 600. She argues that “the divergence, integration and transcendence of individ­ ual perspectives were the province of moral philosophy and aesthetics” (603). 37 Daston draws out this point of scientific objectivity and its close association with (international) communal standardization and solidarity. See Daston, “Fear and Loathing of the Imagination in Science,” 23. 38 Daston, “Objectivity and the Escape from Perspective,” 607. 39 Richard Rorty questions the role of prediction and control: “What is so spe ­ cial about prediction and control? Why should we think that explanations for this purpose are the ‘best’ explanations? Why should we think that the tools which make possible the attainment of these particular human purposes are less ‘merely’ human than those which make possible the attainment of beauty or justice? What is the relation between facilitating prediction and control and being ‘nonperspectival’ or ‘mind-independent’?” Richard Rorty, Philo­ sophical Papers Volume 1: Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 58. 40 A. J. Ayer and Herbert Feigl use the term “logical empiricism.” For an example text on positivism, see Ayer’s edited collection of essays, Logical Positivism (New York: Free Press, 1959); and his personal statement, Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic, 2nd ed. (London: Gollantz, 1946). 41 By the mid-twentieth century, logical empiricism, an arguably more modern form of logical positivism, began to shift the focus of science to the development of theoretical explanations in the form of covering or general laws. To explain an event one would appeal to a law. This approach focused on logical and inter­ nal aspects of scientific knowledge as a covering law model of explanation.

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42 Willard V. O. Quine, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” The Philosophical Review 20 (1951): 20–43. Some of the other major figures who argued against logical positivism were Otto Neurath, Norwood Hanson, Karl Pop­ per, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Thomas Kuhn, and Hilary Putnam. 43 Thomas S. Kuhn famously challenged and changed the way scholars think of the history of science in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962; 2nd ed., 1970). Kuhn’s influence is to be seen throughout this chapter. See Steve Fuller, Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophi­ cal History for Our Times (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). 44 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and Richard Hollingdale (New York: Random House, 1967), 532–33. 45 See John Dewey, with others, Studies in Logical Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1903); and Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). 46 Scientific superseded theories are to be found in abundance in all of the major areas of science, including biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, geogra­ phy, geology, psychology, and medicine, as well as superseded theories being found in areas outside of the hard sciences, such as the social sciences and humanities. Many of the theories now seem simply odd, because later sci­ ence has moved so far from the earlier theory. However, the best known superseded theory is probably Newtonian physics, which, although super­ seded by relativity and quantum mechanics, is still operable at certain levels of investigation. 47 See, for example, Karl R. Popper The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Hutchinson, 1959), a translation of Popper, Logik der Forschung (Vienna: Julius Springer, 1935). According to Popper, unless a theory makes testable predictions it cannot be considered scientific, and certainly not objective in any meaningful sense. We may have useful or helpful hypotheses which are not falsifiable or testable, but such are not the subject of science proper. This itself is an untestable hypothesis, as Popper himself realized in his presenta­ tion of it. 48 Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, esp. 23–34, but throughout. On the relationship between Kuhn and Popper, see Steve Fuller, Kuhn vs. Popper (Cambridge: Icon, 2003). 49 There are a number of texts we could draw attention to. One of the more interesting is Patrick Baert, Philosophy of the Social Sciences: Toward Pragmatism (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2005). Having accepted the social influence on knowledge, Baert proposes a pragmatist project in response to well-known thinkers such as Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, Popper, and Rorty. His work raises several important contemporary concerns about the nature of knowledge in the social and natural sciences. 50 See, for example, Keith Web, An Introduction to Problems in the Philoso ­ phy of Social Sciences (London: Pinter, 1995) and the variety of essays in Harold Kincaid, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Social Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 51 See the works of well-known scholars such as Paul Feyerabend, Norwood R. Hanson, Michael Polanyi, and Stephen Toulmin, as well as Kuhn. For exam­ ples, see Paul Feyerabend, “Problems of Empiricism,” in R. Colodny, ed., Beyond the Edge of Certainty (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1965), 145–260; Feyerabend, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Method, 4th ed. (London: Verso, 2010 [1975]); Norwood R. Hanson, Pat­ terns of Discovery: An Inquiry into the Conceptual Foundations of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958); Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago: University of

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Chicago Press, 1958); Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (New York: Doubleday, 1966); Stephen Toulmin, Human Understanding: The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972); and Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 52 In regard to Kuhn it should said that there are striking similarities to Ludwig Fleck’s model of scientific practice which predates Kuhn’s, i.e., Fleck’s con­ cept of Denkstil is similar to Kuhn’s concept of “paradigm.” See Fleck, The Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979). 53 See Stephan Fuchs, “What Makes Sciences ‘Scientific’?,” in Jonathan H. Turner, ed., Handbook of Sociological Theory (New York: Kluwer Aca­ demic/Plenum Publishers, 2002), 26. 54 Patrick Heelan, “Hermeneutical Phenomenology and the Philosophy of Sci ­ ence,” in Hugh J. Silverman, ed., Gadamer and Hermeneutics: Science, Cul­ ture, Literature (New York: Routledge, 1991), 226. 55 Patrick Heelan, Space-Perception and the Philosophy of Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). 56 Hanson and Kuhn are commonly credited with calling attention to the the ­ ory-dependence of methods and observations. See N. R. Hanson, Patterns of Discovery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958), his most impor­ tant work in this area. It should be noted that the logical empiricists were not in the dark about this issue. As many others have pointed out, Kuhn’s contri­ bution is due in large part to the timing of his publication, which coincided with social attentiveness to this particular problem. 57 Errol Harris offers a particularly helpful insight into the nature of trust and objectivity: “The theory-ladenness of observation in science follows from this interpretive character of perception and is apparent if only from the fact that every piece of scientific apparatus, every scientific instrument and every meas­ uring device is a product of scientific theory. If we look at the moon through a telescope, we can accept what we see as evidence only if we tacitly accept the conclusions of optical theory. If we hear clicks in a Geiger-counter we find them significant only if we accept the theory of radioactivity. Vapour trails in a Wilson cloud chamber convey little to one who knows nothing of the ioni­ zation theory. The reading of any pointer in the laboratory gives information only to those who know or presuppose a whole complex of scientific theory.” See Errol E. Harris, “Objective Knowledge and Objective Value,” Interna­ tional Philosophical Quarterly 15 (1975): 46–7. 58 Martin Eger, “Achievements of the Hermeneutic-Phenomenological Approach to Natural Sciences,” Continental Philosophy Review [formerly Man and World] 30 (1997): 346. 59 See Ernst Von Glasersfeld, “The Radical Constructivist View of Science,” Foundations of Science 6 (2001): 32. 60 Werner Heisenberg, “Über quantentheoretischer Umdeutung kinematischer und mechanischer Beziehungen,” Zeitschrift für Physik 33 (1925): 879–93. 61 Werner Heisenberg, “Über den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheore ­ tischen Kinematik and Mechanik,” Zeitschrift für Physik 43 (1927): 172–98. For an interesting paper on Heisenberg’s struggle to make sense of objectivity, see Cathryn Carson, “Objectivity and the Scientist: Heisenberg Rethinks,” Science in Context 16 (2003): 243–69. Carson argues that Heisenberg weak­ ened the then standard version of objectivity in self-conscious ways. Hei­ senberg looked to “intersubjective concordance” in order to save what he thought remained of objectivity. Carson writes of Heisenberg’s view, “In intersubjective exchange, particular points of view were, if not reconciled, then at least coordinated. This made quantum mechanics more stable than

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pure anything-goes. The social process of communication allowed him to hold onto something at least quasi-secure: if the view from nowhere was no longer tenable, robust intersubjectivity was the best replacement” (248–49). 62 For example, see Patrick Heelan, “The Scope of Hermeneutics in Natural Sci ­ ence,” Studies in the History of the Philosophy of Science 29 (1998): 273–98. 63 See Max Tegmark, “The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: Many Worlds or Many Words?” Fortschritte der Physik 46 (1999): 855–62. 64 For a helpful example of someone working out objectivity while refusing to emulate the natural sciences, consider E. Montuschi, “Rethinking Objectiv­ ity in Social Science,” Social Epistemology 18 (2004): 109–22. 65 See Harris, “Objective Knowledge and Objective Value,” 45.

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Ancient wisdom and the self-understanding of philosophical hermeneutics

Where “praxis” becomes the object of “theoria,” and such is the case in “practical philosophy,” the “method” of conceptual analysis is grounded upon the commonalities that bind us all—these represent the real thing for which we are one and all called to account as human beings: our own practical reasonableness. —Hans-Georg Gadamer1

Introduction As we showed in the previous chapter, objectivity as a concept is in trou­ ble, and attempts to rely upon it in scientific or other discourse result in insuperable problems regarding knowledge and understanding, to the point where it cannot deliver on its purported goal of providing truth without interpretation, but is itself laden with interpretation. 2 What ought one to do given that the notion of objectivity across the centuries has failed to fulfill the promise of a world without interpretation—that is, to provide necessary, certain, and universal knowledge? What ought one to think about this peculiar belief system that exercises its means of arriving at truth principally as a rejection of its own hermeneutical nature and the erasure of self, finding unattainable fulfillment in the unrealized goals of its practices? Objectivity boxes with shadows created by its own imagination, claiming victory over them as if this were proof of its claims instead of evidence of its failures. In agreement with the hermeneutical tradition stemming most visibly from Hans-Georg Gadamer, this chapter argues that a renewal of appreciation for hermeneutical understanding is needed if there is to be a surpassing of the inflexibility and narrowness of the self-professed blind-sight of idealized methods and techniques, and the self-assuring self-denial of objectivity. We need a deeper appreciation of the moral and practical nature of hermeneutics, a virtue-hermeneutics that embraces the role of the self in interpretation. This chapter answers the questions about what one ought to think and do about objectivity by arguing for an ancient conception of wisdom that finds its present and current fulfillment in healthy action and the “good” of healthy

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interpretation, made possible by learning to live a certain way by having determined to live a certain kind of life. Hermeneutics is “the art of reaching an understanding” (die Kunst der Verständigung), to use Gadamer’s term.3 It is an art available to any person willing to experience the radicality of openness of genuine conversation. It is relative to every moment of understanding but does not reside, as has been charged by some detractors, in absolute relativity, in mere social con­ struction and convention, or in a random play of arbitrary signification. On the contrary, hermeneutics—specifically Gadamer’s philosophical herme­ neutics—is a form of rational realism that holds everyone accountable for finding “the better” interpretation. The rational realism of hermeneutics must be heavily qualified, of course, given how such terminology has been used with varying and often conflicting meanings. The terminology pre­ ferred here is “practical reasonableness.”4 As we shall see, “the good” of hermeneutics is possible only in so much as one is willing and able to allow “the other” (the world, person, work of art, etc.) to “have a say,” even when it is uncomfortable. Understanding (i.e., connecting to the “real” world) comes to those able to practice the art of listening. For Gadamer, rational self-responsibility emerges to the degree that we recognize the dialogical nature of all our praxis5 in the world and find “the paths of solidarity and of reaching understanding.”6 Such a task is no simple feat, for solidarity and understanding are the enemies of tyr­ annies and authorities that require our devotion made possible by partici­ pation in thoughtlessness and opposition to any receptivity to the other. In other words, the rational realism of hermeneutics is frustrated by the hos­ tilities of dominant intellectual prejudices that oppose interpretation—the very well-source of human action. This chapter explains some of the most important features of philosoph­ ical hermeneutics by exploring practical reasonableness, a particularly healthy form of interpretation that forms the basis for morality. This prac­ tical reasonableness is essential to our later discussion of active hermeneu­ tics and notions of hermeneutical progress in general. When the question is asked as to what constitutes hermeneutical progress and understanding, the answer must be given in terms of whether or not one has adequately “applied” understanding. Such an application is far more complicated and organic than that pictured by quests for objectivity. When one frames appli­ cation, that is, practical action—as a moral rather than merely technical activity—a new and far more nuanced account of understanding emerges. This present conversation also enables the later exploration of what it might mean to say some people are more moral than others, and what it means to interpret the world in a superior—healthier—manner. What might a virtue hermeneutics look like? Such considerations also allow for the possibility of moving from a generally descriptive (phenomenological) hermeneutics, which Gadamer famously embodied, toward something more normatively prescriptive.

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As we shall see, the practical nature of human understanding lies at the very center of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, yet his stress on practical reasonableness and his use of Aristotle remain relatively neglected by the secondary literature. This neglect is due in part to a failure to see the great extent to which Gadamer relies on the Aristotelian concept of practical knowing or wisdom, often referred to by the use of the word phronēsis, and to a lesser extent on the Hegelian concept of the concrete universal. The purpose of this chapter is to show how the proper under­ standing of Aristotle’s use of the two concepts of practical knowing or wisdom (phronēsis) and theoretical knowing (theōria)—which are central to Gadamer’s notion of “game” or “play” (Spiel),7 itself a key concept in his hermeneutics—have been obscured by traditional readings of Aristotle that posit absolute distinctions between practical and theoretical understand­ ing. The result of such a misunderstanding has given way to unwarranted theoretical pursuits of understanding that typically characterize modern epistemology, along with one-sided accounts of scientific and interpretive understanding focusing upon the theoretical. In other words, bifurcated and separate concepts of theory and prac­ tice have been used to frame thought and action since the Enlightenment and the rise of the scientific method with negative results. This bifurca­ tion has contributed to the development of the notion of objectivity. Now entrenched as deeply in philosophy and interpretive disciplines as they are in the natural sciences, one must seriously question whether the entire scheme has inhibited and been counterproductive to development of under­ standing and morality as the action taken toward the good. Gadamer’s unique appropriation of Aristotle allows, we believe, for a much greater description of hermeneutics as an active-moral enterprise in which one seeks the good by developing a sense and sight that technical or formulaic contemporary modes of “application” fail to comprehend. This topic is also important for reversing two of the most popular mis­ characterizations of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, and herme­ neutics more generally: first, that it is ultimately anti-scientific and against anything that has a scientific dimension to it because it is against meth­ ods, and second, that the notion of critical reason or rationality plays only a minor role within his hermeneutics. Once we have made the case for Gadamer’s unconventional reading of Aristotle, we will be in a better posi­ tion to understand: why Gadamer is cautious of method but is not antiscientific; why he shares the widely held concern that a properly human way of understanding is being usurped by technical and instrumental fas­ cinations; and, finally, how it is that rationality plays an indispensable role in his hermeneutics, and by extension the active hermeneutics of practical reason that we are presenting here. To those ends, in this chapter we will argue that, first, following Gadamer, and against the strict dichotomy of objectivity and subjectivity tied so closely to theory and practice, there is very good grounds for acknowledging the

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reciprocity of theory and practice as inseparable and dependent, especially when one pursues the question of living “the good life”; second, any talk of practical reason is difficult for it has become largely misunderstood as simply a form of technical control and isolation, rather than an integrative hermeneutical stance; third, Gadamer’s revaluation of the theoretical life in light of Aristotle’s concept of practical knowing or wisdom (phronēsis) is not simply a reappraisal of Aristotle’s descriptive categories of knowledge, but in fact supplies a new and helpful conception in its own right, that is, as “play” (Spiel); and, fourth and finally, Gadamer’s use of Aristotle and Hegel to describe a third mediating event between theory and practice adds an unappreciated depth to his account of practical or hermeneutical understanding. Only when these elements are in place is the larger picture of active hermeneutics possible. One of the great hermeneutical tasks of the present age, in Gadamer’s words, is the “reconstruction of the objective world of technology, which the sciences place at our disposal and discretion, with those fundamental orders of our being that are neither arbitrary nor manipulatable by us, but rather simply demand our respect.”8 The challenge is to “reconstruct” a notion of our dialogical self-understanding (the structure of our under­ standing and the way in which we live, the way we are beings) such that we disclose the healthiest possibilities for a relationship with and through tech­ nology, science, and disciplines that purport to use their methods, whether formally labeled as sciences or not. This superior relationship is hermeneu­ tical, of course, but more specifically phronetic or practically wise. While the emphasis in this book is not technology per se, one might correctly read it as a hermeneutical development of technoethics—of learning to live in a world consumed by the technical or scientific mediation of life as demon­ strated by the quest in all quarters for objectivity.

Wisdom and the birth of philosophical hermeneutics As we have previously considered, since before Socrates the most important knowledge was said to be that which is “true”—certain, necessary, and universal. As a result, the tendency is to be consumed with the perceived need to overcome the unstable knowledge of a changing world so as to move beyond the world of mere appearance and interpretation to one that is immutable. To possess such an understanding requires limited access to special rules and laws of existence that only a select few are able to exercise in order to glimpse behind the proverbial veil of existence. Once a domain for philosophers (via reason and the soul’s connection to objective reality) and theologians (via reason and revelation from God), their role has been reduced to commentators from the periphery. Instead, it is now natural science that purports to have special access to unchanging and immuta­ ble truths, about which the masses know little or nothing. “Truth” is a privilege, and hence a means of power, for the relative few rather than an

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enforceable right for all to have equal access. Access to truth does not exist equally or freely but in direct measurement to a hierarchy of authorities able to claim it as their own domain. The “Truth” guarded by the privileged today is analogous to that of the literate clergy of the medieval period who alone possessed the Word of God, while the illiterate masses were of necessity reliant upon clerical interpre­ tation and their good will to provide access. The protestant upheaval that resounded in sola scriptura and sola fide, along with development of the printing press and as a result growing literacy rates, meant that each person could have access to theological truths without the need for an authority who controlled interpretation. The control over “truth” reflected control over an entire people. It would appear, at least at first glance, that today’s prevalence of abundant information and easy access to it would seemingly correct this problem. It has not done so, because the “truth” in question is not about the information or knowledge claims made by credible experts, but about the authority and power to claim to have and know and even control “truth” (objectivity). Scholarship is well known—from Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Richard Rorty, and many others9 —on the role played by Enlightenment promises of freedom through knowledge provided by science and technology that have yielded their own forms of domination and control over individuals and cultures, while simultaneously claiming to free society from the grips of religious dogmatism and authority. It remains to be seen in what ways hermeneutics might claim its own authority and whether it too succumbs to the temptation to claim privileged access. Before we are able to determine the fortunes of hermeneutics, we must see whether hermeneutics provides a way out of the current situation. Does her­ meneutics offer a way out of the conundrum in which the control over “Truth” is a control over an entire people? It is widely recognized that Gadamer breaks with the philosophical, theological, and scientific search for timeless conceptual essences and universally binding knowledge. Although he cannot be given credit for introducing radical skepticism regarding a priori projec­ tions and capitalized “Truth,” he is responsible for the influential hermeneu­ tical description of truth. This description holds that truth, while true in a very real sense, is itself relative, historically mediated, and characterized by a perpetual open-endedness. In other words, knowledge and understanding remain at the level of interpretation, if only because everything that may be understood is a form of language, and as such shifts in meaning in the same ways that human language is subject to varieties of use and interpretation. One might from this assume that traditional ideas of truth and authority would then have no place in Gadamer’s philosophy. It may seem strange and even possibly inconsistent, but Gadamer does not eradicate the overar­ ching power or authority of science nor the influence of privileged “Truth” as indisputable powers in our lives. To the contrary, Gadamer believes these forces are even more powerful than they are given credit for being. Philosophical hermeneutics argues that these forces are real, in so much

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as they exist through the power of our historical, cultural, and linguistic prejudices. Everyone naturally assumes some unchanging knowledge about reality but without recognizing these assumptions as authorities for how we see the world, ourselves, and others. While philosophical hermeneutics denies the ancient quest for certain, necessary, and universal “Truth” as Plato sought, this denial of Plato’s quest in no way detracts from its power over life today. In important ways, philosophical hermeneutics makes understanding more problematic than if we divide the world cleanly in two—one objective and the other subjective. If there is no such bifurcated world of divided entities—neither in reality nor as a description of inter­ pretation—as Gadamer strongly agrees, then privileged seers and knowers must learn to see past the superficiality of objectivity to the violent stir of meaning that makes understanding. What one means by knowledge must be radically re-imagined. In its place this chapter argues for a hermeneuti­ cal wisdom that incorporates fluidic forms of knowing and understanding while encouraging the need for clarity and the search for good. Before we explore Gadamer more fully, we must examine a much earlier example. After speaking to an unnamed politician, after being called the wisest man alive by the Oracle of Delphi, the philosopher Socrates strug­ gles to understand how this might be true. He thinks to himself: I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know.10 This is one of the most famous declarations on the nature of wisdom and knowledge that exists. Through the life example of Socrates we are meant to glean an important truth about how to live and think about the good life. This passage introduces readers to an ethical claim about the philosopher’s disposition of humility and openness to life. A good person, a wise person, accepts when knowledge is lacking. Instead of knowledge residing at the heart of wisdom, the good is mediated by a peculiar form of knowing one’s unknowing, by an awareness of one’s limited knowledge, made possible by a lifetime of experiences and failures. Socrates is capable of knowing only one thing, his ignorance, and nothing else. It is tempting to see this as a form of false humility. After all, it is the very nature of Socratic dialogue to question and answer, to plumb the depths of arguments to learn more than one did before, and not to reveal a hidden nothingness at the root of all truth claims. Socrates is not a nihilist by any stretch of the imagination. Why, then, claim to not know anything worthwhile, but to at least know that? Socrates is claiming to be free in a way that others cannot. He exists in a superior state because he has achieved a mode of existence that has a bet­ ter relationship with this elusive thing called knowledge—the thing others

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believe they possess when they do not, which is a strange enough claim in its own right. His self-understanding is such that it prevents the false knowing to which others gravitate because of their acceptance of partialor half-truths that a more thorough investigation would dissolve, leaving behind the real truth of the matter. Socrates admits that others know more about certain things than he does. Craftsmen, for example, obviously know more about building houses than he does. However, the potential failure of the craftsman is to begin to think of his knowledge as a means of gain­ ing wisdom—or some other form of important knowledge beyond mere knowledge of construction. Socrates is wise because his knowing does not over-reach by mistaking what is possible. In merely recognizing the differ­ ent types of knowledge (e.g., “know how” of building), Socrates demon­ strates that his understanding may be said to expand meaningfully, while also maintaining his ignorance. Those who believe they know something “worthwhile” about life are blind to the limited relevance and substance of their knowledge. Socrates remains free of such hubris, or so he believes. The philosopher—or any person seeking knowledge—must try to know what is worthwhile by first embracing one’s ignorance. Only then may the search for greater understanding and wisdom progress meaningfully. This typical reading of Socratic wisdom is highly inspirational, especially as it is so counter to our typically human response to questions of knowl­ edge, and yet it is also deeply frustrating from a hermeneutical perspective. In his Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (1872), Nietzsche decries the Socratic view of knowledge as a betrayal of life, for such a view hates anything that cannot be codified or rationalized in some manner.11 The Socratic view narrows all understanding by carefully demarcating and lim­ iting the very notion of knowledge and what is possible in its name. What kind of person would claim that the knowledge of others is not worth­ while? One convinced that what is worthwhile must meet a certain stand­ ard. Nietzsche realizes that this standard means Socratic knowing cannot understand an experience of art, for example, because it demands a peculiar kind of rationality, much like what one finds in modern empirical sciences. Socrates believes he is wise because he acknowledges his ignorance, which is indeed a sign of hermeneutical skill. And yet his epistemic-foundational conviction that the universe is knowable and that his ignorance will be overcome by an objective truth, rather than sustained indefinitely, is a major reason to doubt the sustainability and radicality of his openness. On the one hand, the Socratic view seems to suggest that genuine under­ standing begins by accepting a mystery about knowledge and ignorance, and that to explore the world in wonder—the philosopher’s way—one must be radically open. The wise person, Socrates, realizes that confidence in knowl­ edge should be displaced by a sense of doubt or aporia, meaning puzzlement, perplexity, or impasse. While others have yet to realize the internal aporias (or aporiai) of their knowledge claims, Socrates is already aware of his. Having achieved a measure of wisdom, he lives undecidedly with sustained doubt

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about everything. Indeed, life reminds us each day that it is too vast and complicated to be fully comprehended. This tentative approach toward truth, a persistent perplexity about the world, drives one to want to know—to seek perfection, beauty, and the good life. However, ignorance must be overcome and something more meaningful must be put in its place—that something is knowledge. Mystery and ignorance cannot be terminal, for Socrates, but serve as the catapult into truth and away from falsehood. And so, on the other hand, what we find is that the Socratic fixation on knowledge and a preconception of the universe as rational may hold us back from mystery and the importance of a sustained role for ignorance. True mys­ tery cannot be displaced by knowledge or by the wisdom produced by one’s awareness of ignorance. The assumption of knowledge is the assumption of an orderly and coherent world, that is, the assumptions of objectivity. The trajectory of Socratic wisdom does not generate a radical disposition of openness to the other but is a highly selective sense of expectation—it represents a prejudgment about how life is. What is important to realize in this description of the interpretive sit­ uation is not merely that the craftsman, politician, or Socrates lacks an objective fact or unchanging truth and that the search for it must go on until it is discovered. Instead, from a hermeneutical perspective, Socrates would do well to consider the truth he “does” know but thinks he “does not.” That is, the truths he assumes and believes about himself, others, and the world are very much a form of knowing that makes his wisdom of self-ignorance (im)possible. The hermeneutical problem at hand is simply that Socrates is so deeply prejudiced about knowledge that he ignores his own assumptions—and these assumptions are binary ones at that. Either the mind has knowledge or it does not have knowledge. Socrates could not affirm his own ignorance as a form of wisdom without these assumptions that lead him to this untenable result. A hermeneutical perspective on Socrates’s quest for knowledge reveals more than Socrates perhaps intended. From a hermeneutical perspective, Socrates cannot really know that he does not know anything else worth­ while. Knowledge in a living sense is not binary, either a bucket (or, in this case, mind) filled or empty, but knowledge is instead fluidic, developing, unfolding, progressing, regressing, and perpetual. In Socrates thinking that he knows that he does not know—he exists as a being with insubstantial knowledge—he misses the nature of his own understanding and its con­ stant interjection of his cultural–historical worldview as the framework for his own self-proclaimed ignorance. The hermeneutical knowledge that makes his declaration possible is most “worthwhile.” Even so, the spirit of perplexity hinted at by Socrates serves an important hermeneutical role that, as we shall see, transformed Aristotle’s conception of wisdom. Gadamer relies upon elements of both for his description of understanding. Gadamer’s search for wisdom begins by denying that understanding has distinct elements such as theory, then observation, then analysis, then

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66 Ancient wisdom and self-understanding application, and so on (recall the logic modules discussion in the previous chapter on objectivity). Rather, all understanding is, according to Gadamer, “one unified process”12 where we do not know something first “in itself,” as if the knower is at a distance from the known, and then apply that knowledge as needed, but come-to-an-understanding all at once. While we may focus on matters in different ways, labeling our direction “theory development,” “knowledge acquisition,” “knowledge dissemination,” and the like, what is really happening in every experience of understanding is a convoluted and messy mixing of all of these and more. Two key themes for hermeneutics, application and interpretation, do not accompany our knowledge of the world as supplementary activities. Interpretation and application constitute understanding in its fullest sense. Human beings live as interpreting creatures that are constantly applying their previous understanding to the present situation, most often without even thinking about what they are doing. Interpretation is our way of being as thinking and acting creatures. Hermeneutics, then, describes not just a technique of interpretation but our way of life as perplexed creatures trying to live well, to be wise and good. Gadamer describes this kind of understanding by means of his now famous metaphor of a “fusion of horizons.”13 A consequence of this “fusion of horizons”—imagine a great melting-pot over a fantastic heat source, and within it violent chemical reactions as metals fight to maintain their dignity but are forced to give way and become something new—has been the col­ lapsed space within Gadamer’s notion of understanding into which meth­ ods are interjected to purify knowledge—with methods being interposed between our subjectivities and the object of study, such as a text, exper­ iment, or work of art. The fused horizon of understanding is threatened by the introduction of an element that forces them apart. On Gadamer’s account, the imposition of artificial distance by means of method frustrates understanding. The result is that reliance on methodical practice, meant to overcome the fallibility of our subjectivity, misdirects more encompass­ ing means of human understanding. More controversially, if one accepts that human understanding is always both interpretation and application, both of which depend upon our prior understandings and experiences (that comprise an impossibly complex web of changing meanings that one can­ not control), then there can be no unbiased neutrality or objective starting point from which to begin to understand the world. How might one sep­ arate fused metals? It follows, then, that human understanding is always, to use Gadamer’s term, Selbstverständnis, self-understanding (which is not self-consciousness or self-interpretation), for we know the world through ourselves, our own traditions and experiences. By holding out for knowl­ edge that is “worth while”—objective—Socrates lost touch with the world and himself, the very things that his wisdom was said to provide. Gadamer’s notion of self-understanding must be further clarified. Gadamer’s self-understanding is not self-consciousness, as if he were an ego

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or “I” aware of itself as an entity separate from the world. Self-understanding does not refer to a self-conscious subject looking at itself in detail in a mir­ ror, conscious only of itself. The term “self-understanding” draws attention to the situated-historical self that precedes, even pre-exists, all understand­ ing and that “is” understanding. It is the self we are without knowing our­ selves as such. We live this self through every action and thought that we are as humans, and only glimpse it when we reflect upon its multifaceted and ever-elusive nature. The self is mysterious and perplexing, unable to know itself or even to know the degree of its own ignorance about itself, as Socrates demonstrates. We are not concerned here with what the subject or self “is,” for such a question draws out too many paradoxes and metaphys­ ical demands that go beyond our hermeneutical interests. The claim here is that “Truth” must always be understood as conditional upon our beliefs, pasts, desires, and even moods, that is, all that it means to be human. There are, of course, degrees of understanding, some poorer and others better, with self-understanding being the locus or aperture of all of our vision for all pos­ sible understandings. Moreover, this is a social self, a political animal, that exists as one among many, situated in social, historical, and other necessary and relevant contexts. Human self-understanding cannot, nor should try to, escape the self within the broader context of humanity as many selves. Relocating “Truth” (hereafter merely “truth,” without a capital T, to reflect its hermeneutical nature) beyond the reach of an objective and exter­ nal world as something that emerges through (and, recognizably, because of) self-understanding may initially sound very limited, as it does not prom­ ise even the hope of finding ultimate truth, and hopelessly relativistic, as it does not make exclusivistic and absolutist claims grounded in objectivity. This has been the reaction of some who have considered the hermeneutical interpretive situation. For some critics of hermeneutics, hermeneuts seem to be little more than lazy thinkers who have given up on the rigors of real science, and they have simply given up on knowing the world because they are unable to make objectivist claims. What if, in fact, the tables are turned on this interpretive situation, and what we once thought was the path to understanding is not by means of science? What if the more rigor­ ous approach was not one of locating an external reality and its many com­ ponent parts (fragmented and compartmentalized as “facts”) but one of disclosing reality through a disciplining of our nature as interpretive selves? What if hermeneutics, as an active interpretive endeavor, could offer depth, clarity, and solidarity, where the sciences, whether hard or otherwise, and Socrates keep failing? Gadamer directly speaks to this situation by means of his hermeneutics. Gadamer argues for situated self-understanding as the positive ground for all new experiences, rather than for a hopelessly insulated and solipsistic world, as if self-understanding were a prison. We know the world, accord­ ing to Gadamer, because we already know the many worlds within worlds that have given us understanding of that world. The freedom Socrates

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seemed to possess is thereby frustrated but also rehabilitated by Gadamer. In the case of Socrates, believing that one knows that one does not know is as much an inhibiting illusion as one’s having confidence in knowing. To understand the world, we must allow ourselves to return to it as interpre­ tive selves, without interjecting artificial structures and synthetic means to truth (methods, techniques, or obtrusive objectivity). By giving up a meas­ ure of control and domination over the inhibited self and world, we gain something worthwhile in our interpretive selves. To that end, Gadamer turns to Aristotle’s description of practical wis­ dom to clarify the central hermeneutical principle that understanding is always a matter of interpretive “application” (Anwendung)—that is, understanding is a matter of intuitively applying something universal to a particular situation. For Gadamer, interpretation relies on an inherent application where there is a necessary reciprocity between theory and prac­ tice. Both theory and practice are necessary for interpretation and hence understanding to occur. In order for interpretation to take place, one must relate theory to one’s context in a practical act of application if one wishes to understand. The Aristotelian underpinning of Gadamer’s project is evi­ dent already in his first major work, Truth and Method,14 published in 1960, and becomes increasingly pronounced in his works published over the next two decades.15 In Part II of Truth and Method, under the heading “The Recovery of the Fundamental Hermeneutical Problem,” we find an important part of Gadamer’s exploration of the problem of application and its grounding in Aristotle. Gadamer’s reading of Aristotle enables him to model his own description of human understanding as a dynamic or inter­ active and lived realization that emerges through experience. There is no simple way, he believes, of bringing the concrete particular (the situation in which one finds oneself) under a universal law or principle. Rather, the concrete particulars of our experience must fuse or melt together in the rich play and dance of our moral deliberations—the practical reasonableness of our self-understanding.16 This leads to Gadamer’s more controversial argu­ ment that, in so much as theoretical knowledge guides and determines our actions, it too must be said to be moral knowledge in some sense, namely, it must be said to be historical self-understanding. A successful hermeneutical paradigm must include a description of self-understanding and practical reasonableness.

Theory in the life of the practically wise person (phronimos) Gadamer’s view of human understanding as a dynamic and lived practice is grounded in his reading of Aristotle. His reading of Aristotle leads to his own description of human understanding and the role of self-understanding and practical reason. Therefore, in this section we turn to Aristotle as the foundation of Gadamer’s proposal. This section will briefly characterize Aristotle’s conceptions of theory and practice, and take note of the most

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salient features needed to map the terrain for a discussion of Gadamer’s use of Aristotle’s notion of wisdom. In Book 6 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle describes three modes of activity (energeiai) or categories “within” knowledge. These three are: the “theoretical” (epistēmē, knowledge of the universal, necessary, eter­ nal, and true, that is, the ideal science mathē), the “productive” (technē or poiēsis, such as the making of objects, works of art), and the “practical” (praxis, which is intimately related to practical wisdom, phronēsis).17 In Book 10, Sections 7–8 of Nicomachean Ethics, after having spent most of his time exploring our human practical way of being, Aristotle describes what he believes to be the most excellent way of the “theoretical life” (bios theōrētikos), which is the contemplation of necessary objects as an end in itself that never progresses to any ancillary form of deliberation, produc­ tion, or action. In so describing the theoretical life, Aristotle makes explicit an already pronounced tension between “theory” (theōria) and “practice” (praxis). Through theōria Aristotle believes we naturally seek the excellence of the divine or eternal, while, by an ostensible contrast, he also believes we are social or political animals, leading “political lives” (bioi politikoi), who must reason and relate practically (cf. Politics 1253a3). An enduring problem in the interpretation of Aristotle is whether, not just in formu­ lation but in exemplification, these two activities of theory and practice are contrary, mutually exclusive, or somehow overlapping in nature. What kind of a relationship exists between the two? Does one override the other or is the relationship more complex, such that there is a dialectical relation between knowledge and virtue, that is, between knowledge of eternal truth and living the good life? According to Aristotle, in the process of pure contemplation one does not modify or produce anything in the world but participates in the divine by thinking the eternal and immutable, that is, “what is” and cannot be other than what it is, and what is to be loved for its own sake, such as mathe­ matics. Theoretical contemplation is unique in human existence in that it stands above all other human activities as an expression of what he calls nous, which is intellection and understanding as the highest knowing— intuition—or recognition of first principles. Conversely, when one exer­ cises “practical wisdom” (phronēsis as integral to our way of being18) or is engaged in “production” (technē and poiēsis as the modification or cre­ ation of something exterior to our being, namely when one knows “what may be” and seeks the most efficient means of getting it), then one is no longer participating in the highest and most excellent awareness, for these lesser activities deliberate on the contingent and malleable elements of the world. Unlike the practically wise person engaged and active in the world, doing one’s best to appropriate the good life, the one participating in the­ oretical contemplation knows the most useless and disinterested (note: not uninterested) knowledge, that is, knowledge that is not necessarily trans­ latable into practical wisdom of production. Participation in the divine or

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eternal cannot be permanent, however, even among the rare individuals who attain this state of theoretical contemplation, for none of us are gods. Within a given “character” (ēthos, which refers to character or way of life, whether personal or communal), Aristotle believes there will be rare individuals with a heightened perceptive ability that he calls phronēsis (akin to the much later term from the Latin prudentia, French prudence, and English something like “rational choice” or “practical judgment”). He writes that “practical judgment [phronēsis] is a state of grasping the truth, involving reason, concerned with action about what is good or bad for a human being” (Nicomachean Ethics 1140b5–6). Practical wisdom is the soul’s ability to reflect on choices that need to be made and the proper means to achieve given ends. This wisdom is unlike mere cleverness (deinotēs) in that it “is a state [habit or disposition] of grasping the truth” (hexis alēthēs meta logou), or perhaps, more accurately, “a habit of truth in accordance with reason/logos.” To be practically wise relies upon an ability to reason about practical matters. This wisdom, itself, requires a faculty or an ability to see the particulars of life in accordance with right reason in each individ­ ual circumstance, and therefore to see things differently each time one sees them. This ability depends in large part on our moral character having been developed through proper ethismos (“habituation,” Nicomachean Ethics 1103a14–16), and not merely on our having become clever or knowledge­ able of principles.19 To be characterized as wise requires that an organism adapt to its situation in a healthy manner, which requires a sense of what is good for itself and the world around it. More to the point, it requires the ability to act toward the good. Practical wisdom, for Aristotle, is different from moral virtue, although they are intimately related to each other. Aristotle tells us that “we fulfill our function insofar as we have intelligence [practical wisdom] and virtue of character; for virtue makes the goal [or decision] correct, and intelli­ gence makes what promotes [the right means to] the goal” (Nicomachean Ethics 1144a5–10). Practical wisdom presupposes moral virtue and vice versa. While knowing what ought to be done and doing what ought to be done are not synonymous, it is clear that practical wisdom is meant to be in the service of action beyond itself. In brief then, the practically wise person is able to consider the proper relation of moral virtues in one’s life and how one ought to strive toward a good end even if one does not attain it, while moral virtue is appropriately acting upon practical wisdom in regard to particulars, given one’s own immediate interpretation of the good (Nicomachean Ethics 1141b14–16). For Aristotle, knowledge of universals cannot alone guide our actions or direct our lives in a detailed sense, for we cannot know the right way to act upon those principles until we are experiencing the unique demands made by a situation. Besides “theory” (theōria), which is an activity in itself, there is need for “practical wisdom” (phronēsis) as an interactive “participatory” activity of recognizing or seeing what is required for the good to flourish.

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Strictly speaking, this kind of seeing cannot be taught for, again, it is an ability to recognize specific situations as needing appropriate moral action conducive to the good life in general (Nicomachean Ethics 1140a25–29). Thus, moral excellence is interdependent and partially contingent upon practical wisdom (phronēsis) as a mediating perception enabling one both to adapt to unpredictable changes in relationships and situations requiring ad hoc responses and to grasp the right measure of a situation (the logos). One who expresses practical wisdom—the phronimos who is compe­ tent to judge—is responding to an indeterminate situation without merely invoking absolute normative prescriptions or conceptual theories, as if one is applying a method or technique. That person must risk acting “in the moment,” thereby living life in its manifold contingency and particularity. For Aristotle, as we experience particulars and become oriented toward a certain kind of behavior (at first simply doing it because we are told to), we begin to realize our capacity to deliberate appropriately and consistently, and through this process of deliberation to attain excellence (Nicomachean Ethics 1142a14). We become better able to grasp the measure (logos) of a situation and to act reasonably, not merely because we have rehearsed specific acts of virtue or memorized certain universal truths, but because we have had experiences and have been habituated and trained into a char­ acter (ēthos) that enables us to subdue corruptive passions, drives, and emotions (pathē). Within this character (ēthos), we gain a sense of what is worth doing, believing, desiring, and imitating, and therefore gain clarity of “self-understanding” in relation to the concrete particulars and demands of life. Aristotle thus believes that we may become wise through different means. These include: (1) being educated in teachable universals; (2) being habituated into a particular character and society; and, finally, (3) hav­ ing experienced life. The one who uses practical wisdom (the phronimos) recognizes given claims that require an original and contextual response guided by what is universally good and, simultaneously, particular to the situation. Truth, knowledge, and the good, in this sense, are neither strictly social constructs nor abstract universals. What is right for the practically wise person (phronimos) is more than mere correspondence, clever “know­ how,” and arbitrary whim. The life of the wise person is characterized by openness to each situation, this openness a product of both having learned through experience and having lived well. This wise person (phronimos) possesses a kind of vision and decision-making ability for what is appro­ priate or good, here and now, because one who possesses it is able to see both what the good is and how it is to be achieved. Again, one does not have a single or simple principle or doctrine that is then applied but has an understanding of what is happening when one does what is right at a given moment. 20 Rosalind Hursthouse helps clarify the potential understanding of the practically wise person (phronimos) by describing some of the traditional

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72 Ancient wisdom and self-understanding models used to describe and depict it. Two of these models are particularly helpful. What she calls “‘the perceptual model’ takes the special knowl­ edge the phronimos has to be akin to a perceptual capacity to see cor­ rectly what [one] is to do or what acting well is in a particular situation.”21 She proposes that this model stresses a moral perceptual ability—practical thinking or intuition (nous)—in which one has knowledge of how general moral principles are to be applied. This contrasts with what she calls the “generalist model,” which views knowledge of the good life or a life lived well as propositional knowledge, wherein gaps of knowledge are filled with moral principles.22 Hursthouse appreciates that the first view acts as a cor­ rective to the second, but finds both perspectives wanting. For instance, the dominance of the perceptual model has led to a relative neglect of impor­ tant features of experience that must be addressed. To that end, she argues that most of what the practically wise person (phronimos) encounters in life is worldly knowledge and that we should value this sort of experience rather than despise its profane nature. With this in mind we should not, she believes, be surprised that clever and morally corrupt people may often seem to mimic the wise person (phronimos) in so much as they excel at doing things well, even though they ultimately fall short of the mark. Why should this be the case that clever, morally corrupt people are able to mimic genuinely wise people? The reason is that the clever are also aware of what it takes to get things done, even though the good escapes them. Indeed, it seems that a great many successful business, political, and religious lead­ ers of the world are undoubtedly clever (effective, able to achieve goals through complex actions, etc.) and yet utterly terrible people without any obvious discernible understanding of moral good of what it means to be truly healthy. Examples are numerous—as obvious as the latest news sto­ ries—of those who perpetuate radical economic and social inequality for their own gain or who exploit political position or power in the name of justice or who proclaim messages that result in their own gain rather than the benefit of others. It can be very difficult to know the wise (who are implicitly clever) from the merely technically clever (and/or corrupt), for the clever may be suc­ cessful in terms of specific productive activities, while the naturally vir­ tuous, especially when inexperienced, appear lacking in particular areas and hence unsuccessful. The implied, though faulty, logic of this argument is that truly virtuous people must also be excellent at all types of activity, or at least the activities in which the technically clever engage, as a sign of validation or success. The reality may in fact be quite different. The natu­ rally virtuous person who has a sensitivity for what is good and desires it for oneself and others may decide to avoid some, if not many, of the activ­ ities heralded by others as signs of success, including, as a contemporary instance, excessive indulgence in certain forms of technology, for example, social media, because of their interpretation of health. Such a person rec­ ognizes the dangers where others do not, and so seems clumsy and out of

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place in a culture that values efficiencies and expediency over thoughtful deliberation, and technical proficiency over moral conscience. The clever person, by contrast, fits into culture very well and perpetuates its practices for one’s own gains. Even though this clever person may even realize that their practices are damaging in the long run, such a person lacks a sense of obligation to the good, and so cannot motivate such relevant action. This clever though unwise person lacks the necessary perceptive-interpretive ability to see what is good, and therefore creates forms of “success” that ultimately hurt oneself and others. It is not merely that this person is short­ sighted or lacks imagination to understand obvious consequences. Such a person has failed to think morally, and as a result to relate more fully to the world as a healthy creature ought. We shall return to a consideration of the source of such failure in subsequent chapters. Such a characterization of the differences between the practically wise and morally virtuous person and the clever person is not meant necessarily to denigrate a particular set of practices or behaviors. In the case of mod­ ern business, as an example, both a morally virtuous person and a clever person may build great empires of commercial success, but the merely clever will undoubtedly skirt social responsibilities in terms of such areas as equity of pay, environmental concerns, fair and safe working conditions, etc., to increase profit margins or power or control. The clever are trapped by ambitions and interests by which the moral person is not, for that per­ son is able to relate to values, fame, and riches in a way others cannot. Morality matters to the healthier person (making that person healthier), who can act upon its set of possibilities. In this way, wisdom provides a lib­ erty unknown to the clever. It is not hard to see the difference between the two based on the character of the business that is created—one will reflect health for the world, the other a peculiar disinterestedness (unless a moral interest might sell well and hence enhance the business) that acts morally only in so much as it appeases social norms and laws, but never with genu­ ine vision for the good. These are obvious points to make, and many more could be contemplated in an age such as ours, where it appears that practi­ cal wisdom and moral behavior are all but absent from the mainstream of politics, business, religion, and even culture, but it is worthwhile to make these points nevertheless. Experience is needed to develop both wisdom and technical skill, while the former profits the flourishing of human good at large and dissolves means and ends into a particular mode of living as the practically wise person (phronimos).

Mediating theory and practice In the previous section, we discussed the relationship of practical wisdom to the highest ideal of theoretical knowledge, although we concentrated upon the relationship between practical wisdom and merely being clever, focusing upon the moral good of the practically wise person versus the

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74 Ancient wisdom and self-understanding moral pragmatism of the clever. At this point, we wish to return to the relationship, or even opposition, between practical wisdom and theoreti­ cal knowledge. Is practical wisdom somehow antithetical or contradictory to the highest ideal of theoretical knowledge? Most commentators take Aristotle as offering a restrictive and unbridgeable hierarchy between the­ ory and practice. Nonetheless, there is still widespread disagreement among analysts regarding what the practically wise person (phronimos) knows and how we should read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. 23 The problem lies mostly in that, throughout most of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle is describing something resembling an organic understanding with different faculties, or activities within knowledge without autonomous parts, but this is at apparent odds with Chapter 7 of Book 10, where he unambigu­ ously states that the highest life for humans is in the contemplation of the divine. 24 The dissimilarity of this latter claim from the rest of Nicomachean Ethics has led some to suggest that Book 10 does not belong to the larger work and that it may have been added later by mistake. 25 We know that ancient texts, such as Homer, were edited and augmented by later readers, and this is a possibility here. However, this is not the only or the most plau­ sible explanation in this instance. We believe in fact that the text yields a coherent sense of the whole. Like Heidegger before him, Gadamer believes there is room for reading Aristotle as describing different activities within knowledge. 26 This complex of activities within knowledge provides a more satisfactory understanding of how Aristotle envisions the relationship between prac­ tical wisdom and theoretical knowledge. There is certainly a hierarchy in Aristotle that privileges theoretical contemplation, and he has plenty to say about theory (theōria). However, within Aristotle, it would be a mistake, and certainly an oversimplification, to place theory (theōria) in opposition to practical wisdom (phronēsis). The problem seems to reside, at its heart, in how the different terms are framed, whether it is an opposition or some­ thing else. The reason for not opposing theory and practical wisdom is that contemplation is itself the highest form of genuine action—of being— not its antithesis, and it depends upon knowing the good-as-action. We must remember that Aristotle noteworthily argues against Socrates, who claims that theoretical contemplation of the Good is sufficient for doing the Good—that theory must be understood apart from practice. 27 For Aristotle, to the contrary, we must perform good actions. The “theoretical life” (bios theōrētikos) presupposes the virtue of practical reasonableness, for healthy individuals cannot fail or ignore their practical orientation to the world and still be said to be good. And practical wisdom (phronēsis) presupposes the “theoretical life” (bios theōrētikos) because it is also an inclination toward the ultimate good, that is, what Aristotle calls eudaimonia (happiness).28 For Aristotle, healthy living is not only a way of knowing but also something that is manifested through experience and one’s character (Nicomachean Ethics 1105b5–15), itself something revealed through moral

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excellence (aretē) mediated by practical wisdom (phronēsis). To the degree that the action of theoretical contemplation may be said to depend on prior experience or one’s circumstances (language, history, culture), it certainly cannot be said to be autonomous, but is itself deeply grounded in practical wisdom. That is a factor that Socrates apparently misses in his seeking after the ultimate Good at the expense of recognition of his situated self, and is a very important recognition to make as we further contemplate the role of hermeneutics. Although we might well say more on this topic, we suffice to summarize that to strongly dichotomize practical wisdom, as the best activity possible in practical affairs, and contemplation of the divine or theoretical, as the best activity possible for leisure time, with little or no relation between the two, not only goes too far in relation to Aristotle’s thought but creates an unsustainable imbalance. As we have shown, both in Chapter 1 and already in Chapter 2, the contemplation of the divine and practical wisdom cannot be divided but are inseparably intertwined in both conception and execution, to the point that theory implies practice, and the reverse as well. Even if we are prepared to accept that practical wisdom is secondary to the­ ory (theōria) in light of Aristotle’s descriptions, this does not eliminate the kind of reciprocity that Gadamer envisions and is needed for a hermeneuti­ cal understanding. The important point to note is that there is good cause for describing theory and practice in such a way that they codetermine one another. As we shall see, the case for codetermination is even clearer when discussing contemporary scientific and philosophical renderings of theory and practice.

Hermeneutical consciousness At this point, we return to the relationship of Aristotle and Gadamer, to take up how Gadamer appropriates Aristotle in his philosophical herme­ neutics. Like Aristotle’s “practice” (praxis), which relies on practical wis­ dom to attain moral excellence, Gadamer’s description of the sciences, both human and natural, presupposes application. In place of pure theory and the dichotomy of subject and object, Gadamer offers us a phenomenologi­ cal description of self-understanding as, what he calls, a Seinsvorgang, an “event of being.” There is no autonomous subject standing over a selfcontained object or world for which a purely theoretical or objective account of understanding is warranted. Rather, it is we who become the quasi-objects of interrogation in human understanding and it is we who are responsible for “finding the right measure” as is required by the unique­ ness of every truth-event in which we participate. By merely being awake, that is, by being conscious, one is participating in truth and is therefore experiencing it as an event of immersion into an interpretive mode of exist­ ence. As it is with Aristotle, the question is whether our participation is aimed at the good.

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As a result of his formulation, Gadamer’s use of the notion of practical wisdom (for which the Greeks would have used phronēsis) is not simply a revival of the Aristotelian concept of practical wisdom, but serves as a model for his description of understanding as the problem of application and self-reflection proper to hermeneutical consciousness. 29 Gadamer, like Aristotle, considers rationality to be something that must obey the unique demands of one’s life-world or, to use Gadamer’s term, Lebenswelt. This is a world that one must critically reflect upon from within as a dialogue conditioned by one’s pre-judgment or Vor-urteil. Gadamer describes what he means in this way: Aristotle was well aware that practical philosophy could do nothing other than contribute to this striving for knowledge and self-understanding that is always already in human action and decision and bring greater clarity to what hovers vaguely, as in his pointing to the goal that helps the archer hit his target …. or in a more precise articulation of a goal that is already known.30 Inspired by Aristotle’s overarching description of the good in terms of action—knowledge in regard to the immediate concrete situations of life—Gadamer approaches practical wisdom (phronēsis) as largely the problem of “historical” self-understanding.31 This is a universal problem, he claims, and one we cannot righty ignore. Gadamer interprets the Greek term phronēsis as “the reasonableness of practical knowing,” that is, a sense of sight developed not in terms of a virtue but in dialogue that raises us up from our finite condition as human beings situated in place and time and even socially.32 Gadamer writes of this location in this way: The genuine meaning of our finitude or our “thrownness” consists in the fact that we become aware, not only of our being historically con­ ditioned, but especially of our being conditioned by the other. Precisely in our ethical relation to the other, it becomes clear to us how difficult it is to do justice to the demands of the other or even simply to become aware of them. The only way not to succumb to our finitude is to open ourselves to the other, to listen to the “thou” who stands before us. 33 Unlike the freedom of Socrates in which an individual, standing in rel­ ative isolation from others (who likely do not possess anything “worth­ while”), achieves knowledge about the underlying principles of reality, hermeneutical freedom is a rising above one’s finitude (the conditioned historical-linguistic-cultural self or situated self). To be more than our fini­ tude, if only in part, means finding a moral relationship to the other that changes each of us in ways we cannot control once we open ourselves up to it. Understanding means an openness to our own limited understanding (as in the case of Socrates) as well as our attentiveness to the uniqueness of

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every situation (as we see in Aristotle), but the higher ethical calling is to be shaped by the other, to become selves-in-solidarity with others, rather than simply to remain individual “knowers.” We are the creatures created in conversation with the other. If we allow ourselves to be changed by truly listening to each “thou” around us, new interpretive possibilities emerge that were previously impossible to realize or even imagine. Hermeneutics in this sense is the pursuit of understanding-as-connection with the truth of the other, made possible by our many prejudgments, experiences, and histories. The spirit of hermeneutics is a hopeful one, believing that we may do “justice to the demands of the other” even though our finitude tirelessly works to separate us all through culturally ordained beliefs such as objec­ tivity that shield us from the rawness of wanting and needing to listen— that is, not just to listen but to find the other, and as a result, to become different ourselves. The knowledge sought is one of developing personhood and connection beyond finitude. As a result and consequence, one of the greatest hermeneutical tasks for our dialogical self-understanding today is, in the words of Gadamer, writ­ ing in the middle of the last century in words that are as timely today, the “reconstruction of the objective world of technology, which the sciences place at our disposal and discretion, with those fundamental orders of our being that are neither arbitrary nor manipulatable by us, but rather simply demand our respect.”34 This challenge of “reconstruction,” of finding our way, of discovering the right measure of science and technology such that we do not surrender our self-understanding but learn to use it as supple­ mentary to our daily lives, will mark how we conceive of progress in the present and for the decades to come. The paths between Gadamer’s prac­ tical reasonableness aimed at a dialogical reconstruction of our life-world, with its openness to the influence of the other, and the contemporary land­ scape’s dominating form of scientific sight which relies on detachment, neu­ trality, and disinterestedness are literally and metaphorically worlds apart. We are able to observe the contrast between Gadamer’s practical reason­ ableness and the preponderance of contemporary thought regarding knowl­ edge. This will make clear the contrast with Gadamer’s thought. As we observed in Chapter 1, first, the concept “theory” in contemporary science, whether social or natural, is not at all settled. As accomplished philoso­ phers of science such as Martin Eger have pointed out, some have under­ stood “theory” to mean something literal, others metaphorical, and still others instrumental.35 Second, it would be a mistake to assume one domi­ nant and universal set of scientific practices. Serious debates still challenge any settled views on scientific methods. Let us agree that the consensus among practitioners of science is that the pursuit of theoretical knowledge is one that, like Aristotle’s, desires knowledge for its own sake. It does not understand itself, at least initially, as guided by a desire to solve complex social problems nor to better locate the individual in a socio-historical set­ ting nor to foster clarity of self-understanding. In addition, let us agree that

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talk of “scientific practice” or “what it means to be scientific” must be done with generalities. The hermeneutical consequence to be noticed is not whether scientific theory speaks reliably about reality, for it would be difficult to deny that it does in great part, even if not in its entirety or as completely as it would sometimes appear, but that there is an implicit and unbridgeable gap between theory and practice, data and the researcher, needed for there to be any worth to experimental results that are seen to fulfill the require­ ments of objectivity. For the researcher, theory and practice do not seem to be mutually dependent contrasts or dialectical tensions “within” knowl­ edge but must be taken as individual and even exclusive entities. To clarify the point further, consider the many university departments and courses (even entire schools or programs) devoted to “applied ethics” or “applied sciences” as the combination of distinct elements, that is, the combination of first an ethical theory or scientific concept with, second, its concretiza­ tion or practical manifestation—first thinking, then doing. Gadamer’s objection, therefore, is clear that the two, thinking and doing, not just should not, but cannot, be divided or separated, especially when we realize that they must then ultimately be brought back together (even if in admittedly awkward ways, such as applied courses). The relationship of thinking and doing is made especially evident in considering ethical ques­ tions. Consider the following ethical questions. Are we as individuals free to simply apply a pre-formulated utilitarian theory to our duties toward a homeless person on the street corner? Are we as responsible citizens able to apply a deontological analysis as to why we should avoid downloading pirated software or music? Or are we as ambitious individuals able to apply a eudaimonistic analysis that seeks the greatest good to determine which job advertisement is best given personal interests? Gadamer’s answer would be an assertive “No!” Even just saying “no” reveals that that our answer is superficial. The reason is that all of these examples presuppose at least two distinct components to their formulation: a theory and a concrete moral problem. They cannot be separated, and any attempt to do so by specifying our theory as if it were something separate from the practice renders the formulation almost laughable. We might be tempted to think, at least in these instances, that our practice precedes the theory. This would probably be wrong as well. For Gadamer, we experience the concrete problem as already informed by our beliefs, opinions, and moral theories. There is always a pre-existing sense or direction that makes us feel a certain way about the homeless, pirated media, and jobs. We may try to apply said theories, and perhaps with some success, but they are already a part of our decision-making, itself a part of an ēthos, that is, a tradition, a lan­ guage, before we ask the questions for which we seek answers. In a similar way, as Marcel Merleau-Ponty and others have shown, the immediacy of “embodied” perception is not a matter of combining two distinct steps, one of observation and the other of interpretation, since perception is part

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of what embodiment entails.36 The notion of “combining” adds distance and disparity where there should be none. The hermeneutical concern is not whether the research scientist or ethicist might be successful with an ahistorical consciousness—for they clearly may in some awkward and self-isolating sense—but the degree to which the objectivist’s presumption of a particular sort of access to reality flattens the range of possible expe­ riences of truth.37 Since we are speaking of what might be called technical knowledge, one might object that moral and scientific knowledge make distinct claims on our actions and that “application,” however intimate with interpretation and understanding, must be understood differently depending upon con­ text and use. Such a distinction ignores Gadamer’s claim, reinforced by our discussion in Chapter 1, to the universality of the hermeneutical prob­ lem in which the scientist’s theoretical knowing is seen to be rooted in the same self-understanding (culture-laden understanding) that mediates the reflection of the non-scientist. Gadamer’s claim is that one cannot know anything in theory without applying what is already known, assumed, and experienced. As Gadamer writes, “For we can only apply something that we already have; but we do not possess moral knowledge in such a way that we already have it and then apply it to specific situations.”38 We have concentrated upon the consequences of knowledge for scientists or others with specialist knowledge of a field, and rightly so as they often provide a model that others look to for guidance in their own behavior, rightly or wrongly. A major social consequence for hermeneutics is that widespread acceptance of specialized knowledge achieved by experts has tended to free non-experts from feeling obligated to exercise their own practical reasonableness. It only makes sense to consult an expert when his or her understanding exceeds our own, for example, doctors or law­ yers. But when supposed true knowledge is accepted as a means to an end prescribed and then performed only by the informed, such as is often the case in the “hard sciences,” many tend to naturally give way to the auton­ omous authority of the experts. The danger is that we give up on achieving a measure of hermeneutical freedom by allowing the replacement of our common-sense judgment, our practical reasonableness, and our own sense of responsibility in finding the “right measure” by the knowledge of often anonymous authorities on truth. Gadamer appropriately writes in response to such a situation: “Theory now means an explanation of the multiplicity of appearances, enabling them to be mastered. Understood as a tool, it ceases being a properly human action, and in contrast to such, it claims to be more than a relative truth.”39 In attempts to be all-embracing ways to truth, methodological, scientific, and philosophic practices that perpetuate schisms between thought and action, knowing and doing, knowledge and practice, create barriers to historical self-understanding. Practical knowledge (what the Greeks would have called phronēsis) represents a way of reclaiming the hermeneutical experience of human

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understanding and the human sciences generally. It offers a view of reason that is both interested and involved, without the pretense of presupposi­ tionless ideals. In “On the Possibility of a Philosophical Ethics” (1963), Gadamer writes, “Even the noblest ideal of human existence, pure con­ templation—toward which the whole structure of Aristotle’s ethics, like Plato’s, always gravitates—remains tied to governing well the life of action on which that very ideal itself depends.”40 If we are to live the good life today, we must overcome the artificial schism between universals (theory) and particulars (situation) and find a practical reason that realizes both. Since the first publication of Gadamer’s Truth and Method in 1960, a great deal of post-positivist change has occurred in the sciences, and espe­ cially in the philosophy of science. It is unclear just what will come of the current circumstances, but for now we are witnessing an increasing appreciation and acceptance of the hermeneutical dimension of human understanding within such discussions in the philosophy of science. In his “Perceptual Reasoning—Hermeneutics and Perception,” Don Idhe, an accomplished scholar in techno-science, writes: Today philosophers characterizing science no longer depict it as primar­ ily a theoretical-conceptual exercise, a utopian expansion of a unified knowledge, or a value-neutral and exceptional human social-cultural activity. Instead, science is seen as both more pragmatic, finite and lim­ ited, and socially culturally constituted, even up to and including pos­ sible deep gender biases and Eurocentric features.41 This is perhaps true for philosophers of science such as Idhe, but this rec­ ognition and acceptance is far less evident inside the so-called hard sciences themselves. And this seems to be less evident throughout popular culture on science, which is not a commentary on science itself, but on the role of the “idea of science” in culture—something the natural scientific commu­ nity ought to participate in far more. Of the two, it is the “popular idea” of the superior discourse of science that frustrates potential hermeneutical understanding most, because it leads to perpetuation of some of the worst traits of traditional scientific objectivism and bifurcation between theory and practice, without non-scientists participating in the dialogue because they believe that they are excluded from it.

Concretizing the universal in human understanding The role of experience in human understanding has not only been der­ ogated in the rise of modern science, but the role that it plays in human understanding has been widely underestimated. It is not that human expe­ rience can be excluded, as we have seen, but that the role that it plays is a far more productive one that requires acknowledgment. The gravity of the problem of historical self-understanding is revealed when we accept that

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context not only affects truth but generates it. In other words, truth in an objective context—with a vacuum of interests, beliefs, desires, all that con­ stitutes human experience and historical situatedness—makes no sense. As a result, the question follows: how might we appropriately concretize the universal (for example, a text) to a present socio-historical situation?42 In other words, what is it to genuinely understand if understanding is always an interpretive Seinsvorgang (event of being)? Gadamer responds with his concept of “play” or “game” (Spiel).43 The notion of “play” or “game,” perhaps less pejoratively in German (although not altogether free from such a charge), seems like an odd, or certainly an unusual, one to use to describe the seriousness of interpretation and arriving at understanding. The use is intentional, not only to lessen the impact of the straightforward and almost inevitable force of linear scientific method but also to emphasize the inter­ play and connectedness of the elements of theory and practice that together function in an elaborate and not easily distinguished game or play or even dance. This provides support for Gadamer’s claim that human understand­ ing inherently overcomes theory–practice distinctions, as well as the charge of radical relativism, by means of an intricate interconnection that brings various elements into necessary play. Truth and Method begins with Gadamer’s examination of the experience of art and its challenge to popular notions of understanding. It then turns to an analysis of such concepts as culture, common sense, judgment, and taste, in which he argues that the Enlightenment’s ideal of scientific knowl­ edge has divorced the natural sciences from practical knowledge. As the human sciences, including not just the social sciences but also humanities fields, began to model themselves after the natural sciences, thereby reject­ ing notions such as common sense for more objective certainty, our sense of responsibility to rationally deliberate upon truth claims evident in our daily experiences was lost to a prejudice against prejudice.44 By contrast, the main premises on which Truth and Method rests are the historical­ ity (Geschichtlichkeit) and linguisticality (Sprachlichkeit) of understand­ ing. Through the linguistic and historic conditionedness of thought, Gadamer describes the event of coming-to-understand as a fusion of hori­ zons (Horizontverschmelzung). Following Heidegger, as we have already discussed in Chapter 1, Gadamer argues that one’s present horizon (one’s knowledge and experience) is the productive ground of understanding. We are not confined to our own horizons but may transcend our subjectivities through exposure to another’s world of linguistically mediated tradition. Unlike Heidegger, who emphasizes our orientation to futurity, Gadamer is more concerned with our historical awareness and how we belong to its pre-reflective effects. He believes that any “person who does not admit that he is dominated by prejudices will fail to see what manifests itself by their light.”45 On the surface, this amounts to saying that when one does not admit prejudice, one does not admit prejudice. Gadamer’s insight, however, is that if one is unwilling to admit prejudice or bias then distinguishing

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between helpful and harmful pre-judgments will be unlikely, thereby leav­ ing one dominated by mere opinion (what the Greeks would have called doxa) without the critical stance necessary for clarifying understanding and generating insight. In other words, Gadamer is appealing to phronetic insight as the creative ability to find the right measure in light of one’s own situated understanding. As we will see, there is considerable crossover between play, which serves as Gadamer’s model for all understanding, and his view of Aristotle’s use of phronēsis as a fusion of means and ends in a single event of working out our moral self-understanding.46 Gadamer contends that it is through the fusion of the interpreter’s cur­ rent horizon and their emerging experience, itself an effect of exposure to “the other,” that the subject matter (Sache) is experienced, and that it is a universally apparent experience of ceaselessly coming-to-understand as contingent on the pliable pre-judgments of one’s horizon. That is, as one gains an understanding of the other (person, text, work of art, etc.), one is also gaining self-understanding—not in an objective or fixed fashion but in one that is true nonetheless.47 While one’s character (ēthos) is a histori­ cally mediated disposition that conditions the activity of practical wisdom (phronēsis), one reciprocally gains self-understanding in striving toward the good in a given situation.48 Gadamer writes: Universalization, then, does not involve distanciation into the theoreti­ cal, but belongs essentially to the rationality of moral experience itself. This is the decisive thing, however: all universalization presupposes the normative validity of a ruling ethos and one’s being raised in it; it is not something of which one becomes aware in a theoretical manner, but rather by entering into the concrete logos of moral awareness and choice.49 Gadamer’s response to the finite historicity of our being offers fertile ground for his position that practical reasonableness does not play an auxil­ iary role in hermeneutical understanding but “is” understanding. Gadamer often describes the experience of truth in terms of our dialogical interaction with the other, where to be successful in our encounters we must give our­ selves freely, willingly admitting that we may be wrong in our established views and beliefs. Only then, according to Gadamer, will we be able to allow the truth of the subject matter to emerge and to change us. 50 He describes this by means of a dialogical dialectic or a play in which particulars dissolve into the experience and a new and unexpected subject matter that belongs to no one emerges. This to-and-fro movement between universals and particulars must not be allowed to become a one-sided con­ versation. It must involve a give and take between ourselves and the other. For example, when reading a text we are challenged in unexpected ways as it asks questions of us and, in return, we of it. The text is the universal and our present horizon the particular, and each conditions the other.

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How, then, do we arrive at truth if we acknowledge there is an indetermi­ nacy in whatever universal is being acted upon? He describes the experience structurally as “play” or “game” (Spiel).51 Gadamer’s notion of truth-event is greatly indebted to Hegel’s view of the dialectical character of “applica­ tion.”52 In Hegel’s Logic we find his discussion of concrete universality that consists in the holding together of three simultaneously existent elements: universality, particularity, and singularity.53 The agreement of “universality” and “particularity” is mediated by what Hegel sees as a “singularity” in which the universal and the particular are grasped. W. T. Stace writes: “The universal, the particular, and the singular, are not three categories. They are the three moments or factors of the one indivisible category, the Notion. Each moment is itself the whole Notion, and is absolutely identi­ cal with the other two.”54 For Hegel, in the very grasping of something in thought—“a fusion of horizons” for Gadamer—one understands by vir­ tue of a tripartite singular moment or individuality. In Gadamer we find a similar notion, “play” (Spiel), wherein the universal and the particular are indivisibly bound “through” application in such a way that understand­ ing cannot proceed in a logical and linear procession. “Play” (Spiel), like practical wisdom (phronēsis), is not the application of general principles to practical situations, but a living dialogue that is always already mediated by the application of universality and particularity. “Play” (Spiel) is Gadamer’s ontological explanation of what is happening as an event of truth. It is the structure of the dialogue by which we under­ stand the world. We experience this in art where “play” is “the mode of being of the work of art itself.”55 In the truth-event, one becomes subsumed in a trans-personal dialogue that is not just about one’s own subjectivi­ ties but requires both the challenge of self-exposure and the risk of being wrong.56 For instance, in an experience of the work of art, according to Gadamer, we do not approach it as a thing “out there” any more than we play a game of chess, baseball, and the like, as if they were simple con­ structs to be manipulated at whim. Rather, we enter into them, and like the experience of art we find a structure that “permits—indeed even requires— the application of a standard of appropriateness.”57 We participate in the work of art or game and its truth by becoming submissive to its rules and structure.58 Thus, it is largely we that become played by the game, all the while we are aware that the rules are not arbitrary or without consequence if they are violated. This is no less true of life itself. Unlike in most games, however, in life we do not find explicit rules prior to our participation, namely rules required in order to play in the first place. This does not mean that there is no right or wrong, better or best, appropriate or inappropriate interpretation, only that the structure of the game naturally emerges prior to our critical reflection and attribu­ tion. Gadamer writes: “The particular nature of a game lies in the rules and regulations that prescribe the way the field of the game is filled. This is true universally, whenever there is a game.”59 One’s concrete situation,

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84 Ancient wisdom and self-understanding the field, is reacted to in the context of the being of the game itself, that is, the general principles, rules, and regulations one accepts pre-reflectively. To play appropriately we cannot manipulate and try to control the game through cleverness, method, and the like, but must allow the experience of understanding to be free. Genuine play is finding “the right measure” as practical wisdom (phronēsis), which allows the subject matter to emerge without being monopolized and forced. In every event of truth we have a relational obligation to find the good, the substance (logos), as afforded by the game’s rules not our own. We are changed for the better in our experi­ ence of truth, where “better” is an appropriate relation with our context, situation, and culture made possible by achieving a measure of hermeneu­ tical self-understanding. Again, following Hegel, Gadamer acknowledges that genuine play, even for the wisest among us, is susceptible to being a negative experience insofar as the conversation is unpredictable and often contradictory to our expectations.60 This summary of Gadamer’s notion of practical wisdom, including the importance of both theory and practice, resulting in playing of the game of interpretation as a dialogue with the other, provides a concise, even if somewhat abstract, accounting of the means by which hermeneutical understanding may be achieved, in a means contrary to the often-heralded quest for objectivity heralded within the natural and human sciences. The reality of seeing such hermeneutical understanding exemplified in practice is often something entirely different.

Play and objectivity in contemporary hermeneutics At this stage in our argument, it is perhaps helpful to apply these two ways of thinking about human understanding—one wisdom (and play) and the other objectivity—to a contemporary example. This is an example that is bound to arouse interest and even visceral reaction, as it did at the time of its recent occurring. However, the example we are including—the testi­ mony of former FBI agent Peter Strzok before the House of Representatives Judiciary and Oversight Committees—provides a cornucopia of examples to illustrate the usefulness and frustrations of practical wisdom in search of understanding, or not. Special Agent Peter Strzok’s work with the FBI represents an interesting example that focuses on the nature of human interpretation and how views of objectivity are applied for questionable reasons. Strzok was a senior FBI official who worked on the Hillary Clinton email investigation, as well as on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of possible connections between Russia and the Donald Trump presidential campaign. Strzok made international news when, after 22 years with the FBI without problem, he was fired (after first being removed from the high-profile Mueller investi­ gation without explanation) when it was discovered that he had sent per­ sonal text messages to FBI lawyer Lisa Page (with whom he was having an

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extra-marital affair) that were profane and hostile to Mr. Trump. Strzok was critical of many others such as Chelsea Clinton, Eric Holder, and Bernie Sanders, but none of these people were under FBI investigation at that time. It was obvious from the texts that Strzok had strong views about who should win the 2016 Presidential race. For example, Page wrote Strzok, “[Trump is] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” He responded “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.”61 What “We’ll stop it” meant became something of considerable interest. Strzok argued that “we” meant the American people not the FBI. This text, as well as others, was ample justification that both Strzok and the rest of the FBI were so biased that a fair investigation of con­ nections between Russia and the Trump campaign were impossible. Prior to being fired from the FBI, but after being removed from the Mueller investigation, Strzok gave testimony before a joint hearing of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees (July 2018).62 The hearing is impor­ tant for many reasons. Televised and streamed online, the world was given access to the inner workings of the most powerful government in the world—and for many, one of the greatest democracies in the world. It represents an “event” of understanding in which individuals came together to gain understanding. Such committees are imperative to a healthy democ­ racy. Important truths need to be clarified and the interests of society need to be protected. To do these requires committees that investigate and main­ tain oversight of important social institutions. As we shall see, however, when committees of any stripe fail to recognize their own hermeneutical obligations the outcomes are often disastrous, even embarrassing. What took place in the Strzok hearing is an example of a lack of under­ standing generated by a leveraging of objectivity (esp. facts and procedures) over and against genuine dialogue and play. This leverage is meant to create and control particular interests that rely largely on “not” understanding the other, especially Strzok. That politicians sometimes lie, act in anger, and otherwise treat others on the other side of the aisle disrespectfully is hardly new—even in Congress. But what we find in the hearing on Strzok is a high-profile case in which prejudice, authority, the nature of truth, and, ultimately, how one conceives of running a democratic society, are all put on trial, though often unbeknownst to the members. In other words, we must look past the political banter as typical or normalized and realize that what is happening hermeneutically in the hearing has widespread social implications for how people live and rightly expect others to live. From the beginning, the hearing suffered from a credibility issue with some congressional members openly calling it a circus, misguided, parti­ san, etc. Democrats tried to discredit Republicans for using the hearing to support President Trump through their discrediting of the current Mueller investigation (through Strzok). Republicans insisted that Democrats were attacking the presidency and allowing bias and prejudice to infect major social institutions, for example, the FBI. Talking points were estab­ lished early on and defended in earnest without compromise or anything

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approaching dialogue in a Gadamerian fashion. After nine hours there did not appear to be anything new, that is, the subject matter did not evolve into a conversation in which “the other” became better known or some new truth was revealed. Assuming this is true, consider the magnitude of this achievement—namely hours of talking without ever really hearing the other. It must have taken an enormous effort to listen just enough to enact a hostile response, while never allowing that same content to confront one­ self with meaningful questions—to hear the words but to reject the per­ son’s meaning and intent within the words. (Self-)deception and distortion of this sort requires an uncommon measure of commitment. Instead of rising above the finite, each side worked to maintain control and to dom­ inate favored talking-points. It is the nature of talking-points to be overly simplistic and reductionistic, with the purpose of connecting with a select audience. In this case the audience was not the party on the other side but viewers at home. This speaking past oppositional members meant that communication was impossible from the start. After asking Strzok some question, waiting for answers, one member simply dismissed them by saying “that rates four Pinocchios.” In other words, “Strzok, you are a liar!” The issue that rated as a lie four times over had to do with Strzok’s meeting with FBI lawyers and their determination of the technical meaning of two terms, “grossly negligent” and “extremely careless,” pertaining to Hillary Clinton’s email use. Strzok maintained that this was a legal issue that he had no control over because it was outside of his expertise. Attorneys at the FBI made such a determination. Strzok answered Congressman Sensenbrenner with a perfectly rational answer, one supported by long-standing practice at the FBI. Lawyers must make such legal distinctions, not agents like Strzok who are not lawyers. And yet this was used as an opportunity to dismiss and publicly accuse “the other” as intentionally lying. Strzok, a career FBI agent, was characterized as little more than a liar, even though there was no reason to fault Strzok. As Strzok attempted to more fully explain his answer, the congressional member sat back in his chair, crossed his arms, and chatted with the member beside him, all the while in full sight of Strzok who was giving a response. This kind of contemptuous dismissiveness is seen by some as a strength. The questioner, apparently believing he had the truth (or worse, knew he did not), judged Strzok to be a threat, and so he no longer merited any attention. Another interesting feature of the hearing is that while the members were universally well educated, many having served for years in legal professions in which giving arguments is a necessary part of the job, even basic critical thinking skills that use argumentative reason to move from plausible prem­ ises (evidence/reasons) to sound conclusions were virtually nowhere to be heard. Members relied on simple declarative sentences as if the declarations were self-evident and without need of any support or reflection. Moreover, logical fallacies abounded, for example, ad hominem (argument against the person), Red Herring, Straw Person, Begging the Question, and Appeal

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to Emotion. Instead of a sense of obligation to reason with one’s opponent there was an overwhelming drive to misrepresent, mischaracterize, sabo­ tage, and defame, and all that as if it was perfectly normal, even politically virtuous. Have democratic institutions such as this succumbed to the most banal version of the human—one who believes strength is found in bully­ ing, and truth belongs to whoever is loudest? Another important part of the hearing that made the “event” impossible as an “event of understanding” was its predetermined format. Each mem­ ber was given a very short window of five minutes in which to question the witness. However, the questioner controls the time so if one does not want to let the witness answer a question or speak on their own account, then one may simply talk over the respondent by declaring something like, “I control the time.” Invariably the witness is cut off long before any serious argument can be created and expressed, therefore entirely frustrating mean­ ingful engagement once more. It is then left to the discretion of the chair whether to allow “additional” time for an answer. Consider the extent of control and hostility in the phrase “I control the time.” This phrase means something very similar to: “I control you” and “I control the subject matter.” Of course, there is limited time in which to conduct such a hearing so limits must be imposed. But such limits, without the skill of play (of giving oneself over to the conversation to allow new truth to be seen), without goodwill, without a sense of equality, without respect and a desire to find an actual relationship with the other, cannot be said to be moral or good in a meaningful way. Do such things not strike us all as terribly sad? Yet for the aggressors, the antagonizers, and the angry, dismissal of the other is perceived as a proper goal—the good. The stakes were high given that issues of integrity, credibility, and trust in social institutions were in question. Some members argued that the American people had lost trust in the FBI because of Strzok’s texts. Others accused him of not feeling any regret, which he rejected, repeating several times that he wished he had not written the texts. While FBI agents are allowed to have and express political opinions as individuals, and to use their phones for personal reasons, if Strzok had refrained from using an FBI phone none of this would have occurred. On Strzok’s own account the revelation of his personal political beliefs challenged the credibility of the investigations he was on. While his beliefs did not impact any investigation, he argued, merely the appearance of conflict justified his removal from the investigation. Of course, following that logic would mean that every person whose beliefs were made public would require similar treatment, making public office of any kind impossible. Strzok clearly did not like Trump nor did he like the idea that Trump might be elected. Many of Strzok’s texts were hateful and angry. For example, while walking through a Walmart, he texted that he could “smell” Trump support­ ers. For all of his clear bias against Trump, there is no evidence to suggest that he acted improperly. In fact, as an FBI agent on the Russia investigation that

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the public had “not yet” learned existed, Strzok could have leaked that infor­ mation and thereby frustrated the election for Trump. Everyone knew about the Hillary Clinton email scandal, which was no doubt very damaging to her campaign, but no one outside the FBI yet knew about another investigation into the Trump campaign, which would have been even more devastating. No doubt it would have been tempting to leak it, especially if one believed he was serving the public good. If he acted on his political beliefs, he would have violated his professional obligations to his peers and the public—the larger good to which he thought himself accountable. Moreover, while acting in his official capacity, despite wanting Hillary Clinton to be elected president, he nonetheless suggested that the FBI take stronger measures in investigating her email scandal. His actions, all of which are well documented, ran counter to his own political views. He said: To suggest somehow that we can parse down the words of shorthand textual conversations like they’re some contract for a car is simply not consistent with my or most people’s use of text messages. …. The sug­ gestion that I, in some dark chamber somewhere in the FBI, would somehow cast aside all of the procedures, all of these safeguards, and somehow be able to do this is astounding me. It simply couldn’t hap­ pen. And the proposition that it is going on, that it might occur anyway in the FBI, deeply corrodes what the FBI is in American society. During the hearing, one congressman asked an important hermeneutical question. “How do you square that? [rules, laws, policies of the FBI to pre­ vent bias] In other words …. How do you take that, compartmentalize …. and then, when you walk into that room and be neutral, independent, or live up to your oath?” We might rephrase it as, “Given your obvious biases, how are you able to be objective?” Strzok’s response was that personal belief is anathema in any investigation in the FBI. The pursuit is for facts and applying the law, he argues. “There is no room for personal belief,” he said. In addition to the suspending of one’s views he argued that there are numerous policies, procedures, laws, guidelines, outside checks and balances, and various outside reviews to prevent such bias from infecting professional activities. As we have discussed with the natural sciences, and likewise at the FBI, the individual cannot offer a complete sense of integrity as an individual, but only as part of a community that acts as an external control over one’s bias. As Strzok said, “Our job at the FBI is to compe­ tently and independently pursue the facts wherever they are and I cannot stress to you enough that is exactly what is done day in and day out.” In Strzok’s account, success in one’s professional life means leaving bias behind. The FBI may be trusted because they act objectively. They apply rules, laws, and policies to the human that exclude subjectivity. Strzok seemed to oscillate between claiming that he has no bias, specifically that no bias had an impact on his actions, and also admitting that everyone

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has bias; “every American has political belief,” he said.63 He argued at one point during the hearing that there is a false conflation of “bias” with “personal political views.” “Bias,” he seemed to mean, has the extra fea­ ture of applicability to an investigation while “personal political views” do not have that character. In other words, “personal political views” are theoretical (beliefs in abstraction from action) while “bias” is the application of personal views, whether intentional or otherwise, that get in the way of truth. Given our earlier discussion, Strzok adopted the traditional western assumption of theory and practice, which is central to the creation of objec­ tivity. Unfortunately, this dualism was ill-asserted, and some of his antago­ nists were able to use its perceived failings against Strzok, that is, it seemed obvious to them that his personal beliefs were “not” only theoretical but also part of his practice. His critics simply could not believe that he had compartmentalized such strong views. From a hermeneutical perspective this dualism is a problem. He could not compartmentalize his beliefs. And yet despite the persistent attacks, this non-compartmentalization does not necessarily mean his views nega­ tively influenced his work. An entirely different line of questioning about personal moral conviction, the pursuit of wisdom and the common good, and a willingness to engage in dialogue could have been asked. None of these questions occurred to members who were consumed with the dan­ gerously misleading notion of theory or practice. Strzok took the bait, of course, having already accepted the unbridgeable bifurcation as a work­ ing hypothesis for genuine understanding, and so the hearing spiraled ever downward and away from a sound hermeneutics. There is no leaving bias behind, only a holding of one’s beliefs in criti­ cal account, and only then in part. The majority of the evidence indicates that Strzok was successful at the FBI precisely because he did not leave his bias behind but learned to pursue the good as it pertains to his immediate and extended community. Despite his own philosophy (and shame) on the nature and role of bias, he had apparently learned to be wise because of his pre-understandings about life. Congressman Gowdy argued the case for bias when he said to Strzok: You used the word “impeachment” on May the 18th, 2017. And you used the word “impeachment” on May 22, 2017. And your testimony is that you can’t recall a single interview you would have done [prior to using the word] as part of that investigation that was supposed to lead to impeachment. …. When you prejudge not just the result but a punishment, which is what impeachment is …. When you have not conducted a single solitary interview …. that is letting your bias impact your professional judgment. Did bias impact his professional judgment? The hermeneut would respond “Of course it did.” More than merely “impact” judgment, it is

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the very basis of making judgments. Pre-understandings, however, are not absolute. If one is skilled at moral action, inclined toward seeking the good of every situation, then beliefs may be modified and updated wisely. This updating may often be irrational and in the service of more inhibiting biases, or it may be benign, but the wise among us are able to partially overcome this failing. In so much as Strzok challenged his own biases and discerned inhibiting from enabling ones, he may be said to have been suc­ cessful in his professional conduct. The mistaken belief that such prejudg­ ments are “left at the door” serves to provide a pseudo-confidence in one’s actions only, and worse, may provide grounds for allowing such judgments to infect action negatively. Neither the committee members nor the witness may move forward without a hermeneutical grounding of their actions. This contemporary example illustrates what can—and in fact did—go wrong when strong lines are drawn between competing views of objectiv­ ity, rather than engaging in a hermeneutics of understanding. Such a her­ meneutics in no way meets an objective standard but creates a new model of understanding—a hermeneutical one of play and practical reason, one of vulnerability to the other and the world.

The morality of reflective hermeneutics We do not mean to belabor the example above, but it does provide a recent example that well-illustrates the tension between objectivity and a herme­ neutics of understanding. More than that, it shows that there are important consequences of our view of the other, especially in relationships that have grander significance. We also realize that not every conversation has the consequences of testimony before the US Congress, and that superficial relationships are common and perhaps even necessary. In the name of expe­ diency and standardization, we settle for simple interactions such as when buying products, greeting neighbors, and setting dinner plans. However, even in these arenas, we should be attentive to the other and should consider that regard for the other might enhance these interactions, as humans learn to respect and listen to each other in the interest of human understanding even in conversations that might not rank highly on the world stage. We may not regard such common or casual contacts as significant, but our failure to appreciate them as such does not mean that they are not signif­ icant for the other. If mutual understanding is valuable between human beings, then it is valuable at all levels of our human contact. If this is true for relatively less important human interactions, then attention to herme­ neutical understanding is vital for more important relationships. To meet the broader needs of social health and well-being, we must learn to engage in dialogue with others, especially those with whom we do not agree. As we discussed in Chapter 1, the sciences, especially the hard sciences, have been taught to think of knowledge as facts and objectivity as the goal of enquiry. The veneration of the scientific method has translated into similar

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values in a much broader range of spheres, including not just other sciences but all levels of human contact. Because most westerners have been taught to think of knowledge as facts and subjectivity as compromised, it too often follows that people themselves are viewed with suspicion as tainted subjec­ tive entities, to be treated with caution and suspicion and even superficiality in our relationships with them. As a result, the basic moral and practical skills we need to meet with others escapes us because our values are mis­ placed, and we end up talking at or past people rather than listening to and engaging with them. If we use the congressional hearing as a compressed and focused example of what all too often occurs in our wider society, a culture now given to “cancel culture” of the other, then we see that neither side in the debate can believe the other, because they do not understand themselves and the nature of their own biased and prejudiced worldviews not as barriers to communi­ cation but as the potential positive grounds of new understanding. Although living through their pre-judgments and biases, few seem sensitive enough to that truth to give each other the same liberty. They are unable to imagine that by denying each other common regard for humanity in order to leverage a particular kind of political force, they are violating each other’s humanity. What is needed is for everyone involved to imagine how the two demands of one’s humanity—one’s bias/personal beliefs and one’s professional/social ethical obligations—might co-exist in relative harmony and health. What is needed is a new orientation to understanding that recognizes the limitations of a quest for an unattainable objectivity and asks how one might work and live wisely with and in recognition of pre-understanding. The congressional hearings show that, even if there may have been some intuitive recognition of the importance of overcoming inhibiting bias, all seem to have mistaken how this might be done. Rather than either side standing on concepts of “profes­ sionalism,” created by a scientific view of understanding, we see that per­ sonal, professional, and numerous other factors are constantly at play with one another that demand that we are involved in meaningful dialogue of give and take, assertion and compromise, and confidence and humility. The congressional hearing venue—unfortunately, in principle, not unlike many venues in which human confrontation occurs, including conferences, work environments, and even personal discussions—involved individuals on both sides of the table vying for credibility and authority, but they were all relying on models of understanding that have proven not to work successfully in the advancement of human understanding, instead adding to the turmoil and dehumanization of those involved. The enemy, however, is not our humanity, our biases and beliefs, but it is the refusal to ask genuine questions and to give our greatest efforts to meeting the other—no matter how different and con­ trary they may be. The enemy is a lack of care and compassion that connects us in solidarity-toward-truth. As a result, the focus on the now highly questionable notion of objectiv­ ity has been transformed into a moral problem, insofar as it is considered a

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92 Ancient wisdom and self-understanding theoretical basis for understanding and action and as the goal of all good practice. In so much as it forms the basis of a moral imperative, the sense of “ought,” in our social and individual orientations to life, objectivity serves as a moral precept. However, as we have also noted, objectivity is oppres­ sive and exclusionary, as can be seen in contemporary scientific and other discussion and debate. It seems to dominate all other forms of understand­ ing as a superior means of accessing reality but it fails to deliver what it promises, except in limited instances that remain isolated from living life as an interpretive being. Insofar as its proponents fail to promote objec­ tivity through the rejection of hermeneutical interpretation and aligned subjective considerations, they cannot be said to be truth followers. As a result, a vacuum is created that is filled by various other motives, such as power and domination rather than consideration of the other and without a sense of the larger good as the practically wise person would envision it. The “apparent” moral authority of objectivity is a dangerous one that promotes, at best, a form of cleverness and seeming wisdom that is at best stifling to hermeneutical progress and at worst constitutes something dehu­ manizing. The moral wisdom of the wise person is to live well, see well, and promote general wellness, because such a human does not deny human interpretive modes of existence but lives through it and allows others the same privilege. In such a construal of the morality of objectivity and hermeneutics, one is tempted to make the overly simplified statement—but one that seems to ring true—that if the motivation is moral it cannot be objective. The reason is that the ethical person tries to move closer to the other—a precondition for allowing the subject matter to emerge and to create a healthy relation­ ship with existence—by listening in earnest, despite innumerable and even perhaps uncomfortable and difficult hurdles, including one’s own desire to be right and to be seen to be right. Much of contemporary debate and discussion, whether in the political, business, religious, academic, or other arenas, holds the scepter of objectivity that has no intention of greeting the “thou” of another, and hence becomes destructive and immoral. It is done under the guide of “facts” and “truth” but such social creations are achieved only through conversation with the other. The moral power of objectivity, bestowed upon it by various respective disciplines and venues of engagement and grounded in the misunderstanding of science, knowledge, and truth, threatens us all. What we find in an objective-focused cultural environment is a blindness to its own moral impositions. That objectivism is used to achieve a measure of power—control over others—should be frightening. However, even if with difficulty, it is avoidable, but only by the embrace of a dialogical hermeneutics of consideration and respect. It is not hard to discern whether dialogue has occurred. When one allows the other to be met and engages in fair play that risks surprise, minds are changed, and humans end up being closer to one another, even if they still disagree with each other, because they have acknowledged the other.

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Conclusion This chapter provides an important positive hermeneutical answer to the problem of objectivity that we defined in Chapter 1. Rather than trying to reject outright or even rescue or re-invent objectivity as a concept within contemporary thought, grounded in the scientific method, we have taken a radically different approach. We hinted at some of the components of this approach in Chapter 1, but we have gone back to basics in this chapter by revisiting some of the fundamental hermeneutical ideas that underlie notions of knowledge and understanding. We have used Gadamer as our point of orientation, because of the significance of his hermeneutical program within the development of western hermeneutical thought. In his hermeneutics, he addresses what we believe to be the major issues involved in understanding. These include the relationship of theory and practice in which he does not reject either but brings them together in a way that calls for and encourages their constructive and probative interaction, what he calls “play” (Spiel). In order to understand how Gadamer arrives at his position, we have gone back to Aristotle as the basis of Gadamer’s conception of what it means to integrate theory and practice, that is, to recognize that in fact there is no theory with­ out practice and no practice without theory, as they are mutually informing, even if this factor is not commonly recognized, even in science. Aristotle’s view of practical wisdom (phronēsis) brings these two elements into mean­ ingful contact. The hermeneutical appropriation of Aristotle’s concept of practical wisdom serves several ends. The most important of these ends is that it enables us to locate the knowing person within what is known rather than over and against it, as is done in objectivism, thus finding an ancient but also contemporary means of addressing one of the major problems in the scientific method. Gadamer’s emphasis on our historical self-understanding revives Aristotle’s interest in the nature of universals and particulars, which in turn raises the important question of application—relating the indetermi­ nate, that is, general principles, to the determinate, that is, the facts under consideration within the world of experience. Gadamer’s hermeneutical reas­ sessment of Aristotle’s categories of knowledge is not meant merely to show that hermeneutics has an implicit practical-participatory element, although it certainly does have this. Hermeneutics as practice (praxis) and play (Spiel) describes the structure of our practical, reasonable, and participatory way of being. Knowledge is not something we possess as divorced from the immedi­ acy of our experiences but that which emerges through them. As a result of laying out this proposal regarding practical wisdom as the basis of hermeneutical understanding, this chapter has drawn attention to the ontological priority of practical philosophy. We are not making a claim here for the priority of the practical over the theoretical, but instead offer­ ing a description in which practice and theory are inseparably mediated within every event of understanding. As we have seen in our discussion of Aristotle with reference to Gadamer, Gadamer is not simply reversing

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94 Ancient wisdom and self-understanding Aristotle’s hierarchy of excellence, where, instead of philosophical prac­ tice falling to second place behind pure theoretical contemplation, it is our practical or moral excellence that possesses priority.64 This would be as large a mistake as the reverse, in which, as is the case of objectivity, theoret­ ical contemplation is given supreme and unequivocal authority. Gadamer’s approach is less a reorienting of Aristotle’s categories of knowledge and more a revaluation of the traditional interpretation of Aristotle in the con­ text of present-day theory and practice. This theory and practice appropri­ ates Aristotle within the categories of the play of the variables, taking into account human involvement, with all of its prejudice and bias as recognized and needing to be considered and dealt with, as a means of arriving at knowledge and understanding. There is no knowledge, at least no human knowledge, that does not involve human participation in understanding, and there is no understanding that does not involve the human subject as active knower, located in a particular space, time, and context. Human situatedness, in all of its complexity, possibilities, and especially its limita­ tions, is part of and a necessary part of the human situation. In order to fulfill these interpretive hermeneutical purposes, we must also recognize that interpretation of life and seeking after the good occurs in an interpretive environment. To what do we look as a guide for our choices, our right reasons? We need a healthy space for free and living conversation that exposes us not only to the finitude of our own situated self-understanding but to other horizons as well. The goal of hermeneutics is to encourage the wisdom needed to bring about a happening of truth for one’s own epoch, unobstructed by artificial concepts of truth and right living. It calls each of us back to our own practical responsibilities as social beings. And it warns us that self-understanding is increasingly threatened by a loss of freedom to act, a loss of insight, and a loss of critical judgment because the normative character of practical reasonableness is being displaced. Gadamer offers his analysis of play as a hint as to how we may approach a reconstruction of our relationship with science, technology, and the rest of our being, and as to how we may responsibly return to the world of lived experience.

Notes 1 Hans-Georg Gadamer, “The Ethics of Value and Practical Philosophy” (1982), in Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hermeneutics, Religion, and Ethics, trans. Joel Weinsheimer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 118. 2 Some of these topics were discussed earlier in Jason C. Robinson, “Prac­ tical Reasonableness, Theory, and the Science of Lived Experience,” The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms 13.6 (October 2008): 687–701, reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd., www.tandfonline.com on behalf of International Society for the Study of European Ideas. 3 Hans-Georg Gadamer with Carsten Dutt, Glenn W. Most, Alfons Grieder, and Dörte von Westernhagen, Gadamer in Conversation: Reflections and Commentary, ed. and trans. Richard E. Palmer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 79.

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4 Gadamer’s first lecture at Marburg in 1928, “On the Concept and History of Greek Ethics,” shows his early interest in “how philosophical research in value could justify itself in contrast to the normative character of practical reason.” See Gadamer, “Ethics of Value and Practical Philosophy,” in Hermeneutics, Religion, and Ethics, 101. 5 “Praxis” for Gadamer is not merely “this” or “that” specific activity but encompasses all that we do, think, say, feel, and so on. It may refer to both action and understanding inclusively, or draw attention to one or the other depending on its use. 6 Hans-Georg Gadamer, A Century of Philosophy: Hans-Georg Gadamer in Conversation with Riccardo Dottori, trans. Rod Coltman and Sigrid Koepke (New York: Continuum, 2004), 80. 7 Gadamer notes in Philosophical Hermeneutics how his first studies under Martin Heidegger in 1923 were on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and the notion of phronēsis. See Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, ed. and trans. David E. Linge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 201–2. Heidegger’s “violent reading” (Philosophical Hermeneutics, 202), according to Gadamer, may have been somewhat exaggerated but greatly served Heide­ gger’s early project by revealing a way of knowing from within one’s concrete situation that could not be made objectifiable in the scientific sense. 8 See Gadamer, “The Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem” (1966), in Philosophical Hermeneutics, 3. 9 For example, see Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (London: Routledge, 2002 [1969]), along with numer­ ous critiques of the institutional control of ideas, such as sex, sanity/insanity, psychiatry, etc.; Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, trans. David B. Allison (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973 [1967]); Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974 [1967]); Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978 [1967]); and Richard N. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). 10 Plato, “Apology,” in Plato: Complete Works , ed. John M. Cooper, trans. G. M. A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 21. 11 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy , trans. Shaun Whiteside (Har­ mondsworth: Penguin, 2003). We note that the volume is typically sold with­ out its full, original title, although the title was revised in Nietzsche’s later second German edition of 1886. 12 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method , 2nd rev. ed., trans. Joel Wein­ sheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 2002), 308. 13 This metaphor is used at various places throughout Gadamer, Truth and Method. On the use of this metaphor and its history and development, see Stanley E. Porter, “A Single Horizon Hermeneutics: A Proposal for Inter­ pretive Identification,” McMaster Journal of Theology and Ministry 13 (2011–2012): 45–66. 14 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 312–23. 15 See, for instance, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Reason in the Age of Science: The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy, trans. P. Christopher Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986); Gadamer, Praise of Theory, trans. Chris Dawson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). 16 Ironically, while Gadamer turns to Aristotle in order to combat the prior ­ ity given to thinking over doing, it is Aristotle that many credit as one of its greatest proponents. Moreover, the very finitude and immediacy of every event of understanding that Gadamer describes in explicitly non-metaphysical terms is, according to Gadamer, based in Aristotle.

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17 Citations and references from the Politics and Nicomachean Ethics are from Aristotle: Selections, trans. Terence Irwin and Gail Fine (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1995). 18 Aristotle uses phron ēsis both in reference to understanding in general and also in a more limited sense, such as in Nicomachean Ethics, as the delibera­ tive virtue of practical intellect. 19 For a provocative paper on the role of emotion in phronetic deliberation, see Arash Abizadeh, “The Passions of the Wise: Phronesis, Rhetoric, and Aristotle’s Passionate Practical Deliberation,” The Review of Metaphysics 56 (December 2002): 267–96. 20 See Gadamer, Reason in the Age of Science, 163.

21 Rosalind Hursthouse, “XI—Practical Wisdom: A Mundane Account,” Pro­ ceedings of the Aristotelian Society 106 (2006): 285. 22 Hursthouse, “Practical Wisdom,” 284. 23 There are a number of conflicts we might draw attention to in order to show some of the disagreements and debates concerning interpretation. Joseph Dunne’s Back to the Rough Ground: “Phronesis” and “Techne” in Modern Philosophy and in Aristotle (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993) is one of the most accomplished and accepted of contemporary works devoted to understanding phronēsis in both Aristotle and contemporary phi­ losophy. In it, he considers the relationship between practical wisdom and poiēsis, understood as a kind of technē, as a way of clarifying phronetic insight, rather than focusing on the relationship between theory and practice as we do here. Yet others, such as John Wall, have responded to Dunne by claiming that he has failed to appreciate the full nature of phronēsis. Wall argues that scholars continue to place too much emphasis on phronēsis as knowing the right ends and the human good itself, to the exclusion of the means of achieving them. A fuller sense of phronēsis, for Wall, must con­ sider its inventive dimension. See John Wall, “Phronesis as Poetic: Moral Creativity in Contemporary Aristotelianism,” The Review of Metaphysics 59 (2005): 317. Similarly, in his “Art, Practical Knowledge, and Aesthetic Objectivity,” David Carr argues that “a suitably modified notion of phronesis may provide the key to understanding the relationship of aesthetic sensibility to artistic knowledge.” See David Carr, “Art, Practical Knowledge, and Aes­ thetic Objectivity,” Ratio n.s. 12 (1999): 240. 24 Hursthouse, “Practical Wisdom,” is helpful because it highlights some of the remaining confusion surrounding just what it is that the phronimos per­ ceives. Confusion persists, she argues, because Aristotle simply is not clear, especially on nous in Book 6. Her main argument is that those who seek to be wise must pursue knowledge of all kinds, including that which will foster our “technical deliberation.” See Hursthouse, “Practical Wisdom,” 283–307. 25 See, for example, Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 26 The primary work in this regard is The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy. See also Reason in the Age of Science, 89. On Heidegger, see, for example, the interesting piece by Michael Allen Gillespie, “Martin Heidegger’s Aristotelian National Socialism,” Political Theory 28.2 (2000): 140–66. In it, he shows how from 1919 to 1933 Heidegger worked out a notion of praxis and politics, based in Aristotle, that was meant to instill a renewed appreciation for practical wisdom, over and against the domination of technoscience and theory. For another helpful paper on Heidegger and phronetic wisdom, see Daniel L. Smith, “Intensifying Phronesis: Heidegger, Aristotle, and Rhetorical Culture,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 36 (2003): 77–102.

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27 We have discussed Socrates above in this chapter. However, he further dis ­ cusses the Good in such places as Plato, Republic 454 and 508. 28 Walter Brogan proposes that the highest happiness attained through con ­ templation, for Aristotle, should be understood practically and politically. Brogan argues that, in Aristotle’s notion of friendship, theory and practice come together. See Walter Brogan, “Gadamer’s Praise of Theory: Aristotle’s Friend and the Reciprocity Between Theory and Practice,” Research in Phe­ nomenology 32 (2002): 141–55. 29 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 315. For a different set of approaches to some of the same issues that we raise here, see Lawrence K. Schmidt, ed., The Specter of Relativism: Truth, Dialogue, and Phronesis in Philosophical Her­ meneutics (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1995). 30 Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Aristotle and the Ethic of Imperatives,” trans. Joseph M. Knippenberg in Action and Contemplation: Studies in the Moral and Political Thought of Aristotle, ed. Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), 59. 31 For an example of how Aristotle has been reread after Gadamer, consider Joseph Dunne, “Aristotle after Gadamer: An Analysis of the Distinction Between the Concepts of Phronesis and Techne,” Irish Philosophical Journal 2 (1985): 105–23. 32 Gadamer, Century of Philosophy, 21. 33 Gadamer, Century of Philosophy, 29. 34 See Gadamer, “The Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem” (1966), in Philosophical Hermeneutics, 3. 35 Martin Eger, “Hermeneutics and Science Education: An Introduction,” Science and Education 1 (1992): 337. 36 Marcel Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception , trans. D. A. Landes (London: Routledge, 1945). 37 The further concern is to what degree this leads negatively toward mastery and control. See, for example, Gadamer’s discussion in The Enigma of Health, trans. Jason Gaiger and Nicholas Walker (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996). 38 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 317. 39 Gadamer, Hermeneutics, Religion, and Ethics, 19. 40 Gadamer, Hermeneutics, Religion, and Ethics, 32. 41 Don Ihde, “Perceptual Reasoning—Hermeneutics and Perception,” in Her ­ meneutics and Proceedings of the First Conference of the International Soci­ ety for Hermeneutics and Science, ed. Márta Fehér, Olga Kiss, and László Ropolyi (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer, 1999), 14. 42 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 323. 43 See Gadamer, Truth and Method , 103. 44 See especially Gadamer’s “Theory, Technology, Praxis,” in Enigma of Health , Chapter 1. 45 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 360. 46 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 321. 47 “To be situated within a tradition does not limit the freedom of knowledge but makes it possible” (Truth and Method, 361). For Gadamer’s views on the scope of hermeneutical reflection, see, for example, Philosophical Hermeneutics, 18–43. 48 Gadamer makes this point in reference to Aristotle’s belief that the beginning principle from which one should begin deliberation about the good is “the that”—recognizing a given norm. See Gadamer, “Ethics of Value and Practi­ cal Philosophy” (1982), in Hermeneutics, Religion, and Ethics, 108–9. 49 In Gadamer, “The Ethics of Value and Practical Philosophy,” in Hermeneu­ tics, Religion, and Ethics, 115.

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50 He makes this point in a number of places, including Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, trans. Nicholas Walker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) and Truth and Method. 51 See, for example, Gadamer, “The Ontology of the Work of Art and Its Her ­ meneutical Significance,” in Truth and Method, 101–69. Gadamer’s notion of play is not the same as either Kant’s or Schiller’s, for both of whom play also holds an important role respectively. 52 We owe the insight into Gadamer’s analysis of the ontology of the experi ­ ence of understanding as being far more Hegelian than prior commentators have suggested to Jeff Mitscherling. See Mitscherling, “Hegelian Elements in Gadamer’s Notion of Application and Play,” Continental Philosophy Review [formerly Man and World] 25 (1992): 61–67. 53 See G. W. F. Hegel, The Science of Logic , trans. George di Giovanni (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010 [1812–16]), vol. 2, Section 1, Chapter 1, “The Notion.” 54 As quoted by Mitscherling, “Hegelian Elements in Gadamer’s Notion,” from W. T. Stace, The Philosophy of Hegel (repr., London: Dover Publications, 1955), 228. 55 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 101. 56 Concerning the experience of the work of art, Gadamer says “Everything familiar is eclipsed.” See Gadamer, “Aesthetics and Hermeneutics,” in Philosophical Hermeneutics, 101. 57 Gadamer, Enigma of Health, 95. 58 “My thesis, then, is that the being of art cannot be defined as an object of an aesthetic consciousness because, on the contrary, the aesthetic attitude is more than it knows of itself. It is a part of the event of being that occurs in presentation, and belongs essentially to play as play” (Gadamer, Truth and Method, 116). 59 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 107. 60 Agreeing with Hegel, Gadamer argues that all “experience has the structure of a reversal of consciousness and hence it is a dialectical movement” (Truth and Method, 354). Later on, he argues that “[e]very experience worthy of the name thwarts an expectation” (ibid., 356). 61 John Bowden, “FBI agent in texts: ‘We’ll stop’ Trump from becoming presi ­ dent,” The Hill, June 14th, 2018. 62 For an example of the online version see YouTube https://youtu.be/ulexR_e7yJI last accessed June 17, 2019. NBC News live streamed it July 12th, 2018. Also, PBS News Hour https://youtu.be/UAr2nktLbXk last accessed June 17, 2019. 63 He argues at one point that there is a false conflation of “bias” with “personal political views” but the distinction is not entirely clear. Presumably “bias” has the extra feature of applicability to an investigation that “personal polit­ ical views” do not possess. 64 For an example of secondary literature that implies Gadamer emphasizes our practical understanding “over and against” our theoretical understanding, see Jeff Malpas, “Hans-Georg Gadamer,” Stanford Encyclopedia online: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/gadamer. For an example of secondary lit­ erature that does emphasize practice over theory, see Lazare Benaroyo and Guy Widdershoven, “Competence in Mental Health Care: A Hermeneutic Perspective,” Health Care Analysis 12 (2004): 295–306.

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The active hermeneutical horizon

What man needs is not just the persistent posing of ultimate questions, but the sense of what is feasible, what is possible, what is correct, here and now. —Hans-Georg Gadamer1

Introduction In Chapter 1, we seriously questioned the extraordinarily influential and persistent beliefs about objectivism (concepts of objectivity throughout his­ tory) that continue to threaten quality of life, in other words, the herme­ neutical self which includes social and political relationships far beyond the confines of natural science. In Chapter 2, we expanded upon the often over­ looked nature of the hermeneutical self in terms of the morally attuned life of the wise person (phronimos). This chapter directly builds on the previous one in order to make advances on the active hermeneutics defined there. In this chapter, we ask and then attempt to answer the question: how does “active hermeneutics” conceive of healthy-human thinking and how might we do it better? The question “What is active hermeneutical thinking?” is basically the same question asked before under “What is understanding?” Both questions ask how human beings experience the world. Only hermeneutics may respond universally and without reliance on dogmatisms about the nature of truth that have supported most of western thought. In the larger context of history, both the concept of objectivity—inspired most visibly by Socrates—and the herme­ neutical spirit of practical reason—articulated first by Aristotle—were born out of a similar place and time. From Ancient Greek origins we find two great roads that are dissimilar in almost every way. The major road leading from Socrates passes through scholastic philosophy to Renaissance scien­ tific advances to the Enlightenment to the present scientific age in which we live. This is a broad highway and well-traveled. Active hermeneutics asks us to consider the moral road less traveled, and that is the road that we will traverse in this chapter. Self-evident to most readers of contemporary hermeneutics is that not all understanding is of equal life-affirming value. “Of course,” readers

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no doubt believe, “some interpretations are more and some less accurate, meaningful, relevant, and such.” Indeed, it is very hard if not impossible to find die-hard relativists—except in principle or naïve presumption—who believe that truth is always whatever one makes it and that beauty is only ever in the eye of the beholder. Most people most of the time probably accept as routine that they are judging the quality of interpretations of reality of various sorts—trying to connect themselves meaningfully and effectively through these interpretations with reality. Philosophical her­ meneutics has been unfairly criticized, and even earned the reputation, for failing to offer a prescription for doing hermeneutics better—that is, for failing to provide a means of judging among many meanings and relevancies— because it shies away from methods and teachable techniques. In one of the most famous twentieth-century confrontations between twentieth-century philosophers, hermeneutics was famously criticized as lacking concrete or practical courses of action, and thereby as amounting to little more than unhelpful thoughts.2 In this estimation, which we soundly reject as we will show, hermeneutics fails to provide “quality-control” over understanding and therefore needs to be supplemented by a critical mechanism of some kind. This criticism fails to recognize the value of the phenomenological description and the centrality of practical reason, but perhaps even more importantly it fails to appreciate the implicit normativity within philo­ sophical hermeneutics, something active hermeneutics brings to the sur­ face more visibly. Once we have a picture of how humans understand the world, we also have a clearer picture of human health—of how to live phronetically, that is, as wise persons. This portrait is the model or proto­ type for judging all subsequent understanding along a spectrum of healthy understanding. While sounding “foundational,” the basic claim is hardly controversial. The debates emerge regarding which model or prototype is truly best, that is, which is healthiest in the sense of creating a flourishing humanity. For “healthiest” one might supplement the phrase “best state of possible completeness.” Active hermeneutics is a convenient title for living life well through the exercise of a healthy hermeneutical consciousness. The health of active hermeneutics is neither a lack of infirmity nor a mark of achieving perfection (proper only to the divine and fanatical, though unachievable, concepts of objectivity). “Health” is a name for the sincere effort to live in the best state possible given one’s unique lifeworld. In that sense, “health” and “active hermeneutics” ultimately reveal themselves to be synonymous in that what it means to have health is to be engaged in active hermeneutics and active hermeneutics is the only means of such human flourishing. All hermeneutical actions may be said to be active in a general way—for it is the very act of understanding that characterizes our participation in life. This chapter is designed to show how active hermeneutics is of a better quality than other forms of thinking. These others may also be character­ ized as “active,” although often they are in effect actively anti-hermeneutical

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and actively unthinking. It is important to note that while the term “herme­ neutics” has conventionally been used by scholars to highlight the unique­ ness of their respective projects in the context of a greater community, this chapter develops a tension between a largely pejorative characterization of “hermeneutics” and the more successful form, referred to by the expression “active hermeneutics.” Changes in phrasing are not uncommon, of course, for scholars like to name their projects differently. The emphasis here is not on the titles or names themselves but the possible legitimacy of using the phrase “active hermeneutics” to characterize a willingness to demarcate or judge between healthy and unhealthy possibilities for understanding, with “hermeneutics” the term for what happens to us all regardless of degree of hermeneutical success and “active” describing something harder to achieve. Our belief is that active hermeneutics will be useful not just in the field of hermeneutics but more generally in most human and social science and humanities disciplines, as a way of encompassing more normative expec­ tations and judgments about human thinking that have often failed to be robustly manifested in the past. Nevertheless, we must be cautious and remember that active hermeneutics is not about thinking correctly so as to arrive at the correct answers. Hence, active hermeneutics is not merely about determining which views are or are not socially acceptable, such as, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, but it is about developing an understand­ ing of how it is possible that certain ways of thinking and living may be socially appropriate in the eyes of a group and nevertheless immoral—that is, failing to seek the good of the situation and health overall. The ques­ tion of why humans continue to hold views and beliefs that are hurtful remains ever-present. This is the implicit question raised by the wise per­ son (phronimos) and remains at the core of hermeneutics to this day. An incredibly important distinction exists between hermeneutics as something entirely wrapped up in tradition and culture, and hermeneutics as some­ thing capable of challenging the status quo and generating health. To that end, this chapter interweaves five sections, with several invoking the thought of earlier thinkers in aid of our argument for active herme­ neutics. We attempt to explain how we might differentiate hermeneutics as a description of universal understanding and active hermeneutics as a description of hermeneutical virtues and excellence of thinking, includ­ ing character and action. In order to do that, we must begin by setting active hermeneutics in the context of a growing field of intellectual thought that tries to mimic many of the same values we espouse but with a dif­ ferent name—interdisciplinary research or interdisciplinarity. As we shall see, while interdisciplinary thought represents an important change in the rigid and ever-isolating disciplines, even a cursory consideration reveals its problematic and contradictory nature as it is usually practiced in the mainstream. Such practices are ill-prepared to deal with the grand power of dogmatism that must be challenged by the kind of life-affirming skill that should belong to the wise person. We next consider the hermeneutical

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importance of the ability to perceive life possibilities as either living or dead. This part, which relies on William James, is especially relevant to the larger and subsequent discussion of dogmatism, opinion, and open­ ness. James’s simple categorization of live and dead hypotheses helps us to imagine how one might separate banal forms of interpretation from active hermeneutics in which thinking reaches out into the world in a special and engaged manner. We next explore Immanuel Kant’s views on Enlightenment thought and Hannah Arendt’s depiction of Adolf Eichmann to set out a more nuanced and descriptive account of “hermeneutical unthinking.” Our interest is less Kant’s unique views on reason and more his refinement of the nature of thinking, especially as it is important as a means of challeng­ ing dominating authorities—to find a freedom of self to think and act as humans are naturally capable. This discussion of Kant’s view of thinking in aid of challenging authority leads directly to consideration of Eichmann. Following from discussion of the influence of authorities, the next section offers a generalized treatment of dogmatism and especially with what we call the “dogmatist.” Whereas the dogmatist at first appearance resembles the active hermeneut, further examination reveals that their superficial similarities give way to fundamental underlying differences. Whereas the dogmatist appears to encourage recognition of the situatedness of experi­ ence, the more important factor is that the dogmatist recognizes only its perspective on this reality, rather than admitting to limitations to knowl­ edge and experience. This discussion prepares us to consider the meaning of openness, filling out Gadamer’s famous appeal to openness as a precon­ dition for understanding. Openness is one of the most important concepts in philosophical and active hermeneutics and crucial within social relations that tend toward some wanting to dominate and subdue others, whether physically or ideologically.

Interdisciplinary thinking Following Martin Heidegger, we agree that thinking cannot be reduced simply to a process of using one’s mind rationally, as if thought were a mere tool at our disposal and reason is the correct application of method, technique, and logical principles.3 “Thinking” is more than a rationality that provides a means to an end in which one produces some effect with the mind as a cause (in other words, the more rational and/or empirical the mind the better the knowledge). When this thinking becomes instrumen­ tal and/or calculative—for surely most thinking in contemporary culture is of this form—it is merely another type of pedestrian thought activity. To illustrate the point as well as shock his students, to whom he gave the lecture version of his subsequent text, What is Called Thinking?, Heidegger claims simply that “Science does not think.”4 For Heidegger, instrumental thinking, which is most strongly associated with the sciences, although it pervades other areas as well, does not “think the way thinkers think.”5

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This statement by Heidegger is not an anti-science statement but a demar­ cation between the vernacular idea of science and a fuller, more rarified sense of thinking. What he means is that received notions of thinking are incomplete and misconstrued, and they fail to reach into the matter far enough. One might even call them superficial. There is, for Heidegger, much more to thinking than we realize. Of course, we need not follow Heidegger all the way to his poetic vision in which poetry and thinking need each other, but his basic thoughts on thinking are instructive in many respects. Defining “thinking” has proven difficult for all who desire such an accomplishment. Heidegger begins his famous text on thinking with the frustrating claim that there is no point in trying to define it. Many analytic philosophers, for whom rationality regarding self-evident or analytic state­ ments is paramount, would surely stop reading at that point. Heidegger writes, “We come to know what it means to think when we ourselves try to think. If the attempt is to be successful, we must be ready to learn think­ ing.”6 In a similar sense, active hermeneutics cannot be defined but must be learned by trying to engage in active understanding. For Heidegger, the assumption is that thinking is not everywhere obvious or routine. While the world is abuzz, indeed frantic, with a vast array of thinkers thinking about this or that, problem-solving, formulating, synthesizing, and what not, there is a distance or alienation between the self and the world caused by a forgetfulness or perhaps refusal to genuinely “think” as is proper to our being. The possibility to think is yet unrealized for most human beings. To draw a parallel, while all must think hermeneutically, not all think active-hermeneutically. In the introduction to the English version of What is Called Thinking?, Glenn Gray comments on Heidegger’s views: “Only the thinking that is truly involved, patient, and disciplined by long practice can come to know either the hidden or disclosed character of truth. …. Thinking defines the nature of being human and the more thoughtless we are, the less human we are.”7 It is not merely that a certain efficiency of the mind is overlooked or that humans are often lazy thinkers. Rather, the perpetua­ tion of thoughtlessness is a loss of humanity, the loss of our very being. We are the beings that think and in so much as we abdicate this possibility we cease to be human. This is a profoundly troubling argument and, if true, is something of great urgency to remedy. To whom, then, ought we to turn on the subject of thinking? Today’s experts on “thinking” are most often identified as belonging to the fields of cognitive science or psychology. These two fields have both come to prom­ inence within the twentieth century, even though both are relatively recent indirect extended branches off the trunk of philosophy. They are the cur­ rent experts at the end of a seemingly infinite list of subdisciplines on “the mind”—that tricky thing, the ghost in the machine, existing physically but acting mysteriously—derived originally from philosophy. Despite the com­ mon, even if now remote, origins, today’s de facto authority to ask and

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answer “What is thinking?” has shifted far away from the speculative and spiritual disciplines of philosophy, into the arms of the natural sciences as a form of objective investigation. It comes as little surprise that this objec­ tivist authority, which has the privilege (a right given by society) to ask the question regarding what thinking is, is the same authority that frames possible answers, thereby implicitly even if unconsciously reflecting its her­ meneutical self-understanding, that is, its idiosyncrasies, preconceptions, and paradigms. Hence, thinking is widely assumed to be material, quanti­ fiable, and reducible to constituent parts or elements (electrical pathways, biochemical formulas, and such). Thought, then, defined as material, is something identified by, although not entirely reducible to but meaning­ fully evidenced by, the representative colors of a PET scan on a computer screen. Such a claim is widely made and widely held. However, a moment’s thought will indicate that such a description may describe the organism and chemical activity of the thing we call the brain, with the results ana­ lyzed according to programmed, materialist beliefs about reality, but it says virtually nothing about thinking. The same brain activity is produced by a person who is hermeneutically closed as one who is hermeneutically open, but with radically different hermeneutical results. As a result, such a description is in fact of little value from a hermeneutical perspective and not helpful for development of an active hermeneutics. A hermeneutical description of thinking cannot be an objectivist summary of material data, as if the thought was itself somehow reducible to substance, a machine without a ghost or spirit. Rather, we must think about the spirit within every event of understanding. The empirical and hermeneutic accounts of experience are openly antag­ onistic rather than complementary. Consider a strict mechanical account of how the brain works when one eats an apple. If done well, such a descrip­ tion must accurately describe many different electro-chemical and biological mechanisms such as intentionality, muscle movement, hand–eye coordina­ tion, tasting, and the sending of electrical signals along a complex nervous system to the brain for processing (with the results no doubt couched in complicated jargon and neuroscientific language). One might read every scientific account of eating apples and spend a lifetime in careful analysis of the processes involved, only to be surprised that eating an apple has nothing to do with the scientific explanation of the same act. The empirical–causal is always at an insurmountable distance from the experience. It no more pro­ vides taste and texture to the actual apple than it does meaning. Readers might readily and rightly object that the scientific account of experience cannot be experience itself, but only a mediated representation of experi­ ence. Any musician who claimed an experience of their music made sense first and foremost by studying the notes on a page would be sadly mistaken, as the music is the hearing of the music as lived experience. The language and means of thinking scientifically cannot reveal the life of thoughtfulness that is so removed from it. A neurology of thought makes no greater sense

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of thinking than if a chef was said to know a cake after reading the list of ingredients, estimating its calories, and describing its chemical formula. Nevertheless, that is exactly what has happened within the realm of human thought. Why, then, have we given authority to science to speak about matters that are interpretive, immaterial, even unquantifiable, such as human thinking? Heidegger’s answer is that we have forgotten to ask the most important questions. Disciplinary titles such as “Cognitive Science” and “Psychology”—while overlapping in many practical and ideological respects—are useful because they help to differentiate scholarly emphases, highlighting how each field (and subfields within a field) selectively reduces its own worldviews and questions into manageable parts. Cognitive science, for example, will often emphasize many of the physical dynamics of the brain and its “processes” (or computational procedures), with an emphasis upon material factors. This is somewhat, though not always, differentiated from psychology which, as a discipline, is more comfortable including the study of social and (un)conscious forces within its scope. The latter appears to some to be more subjective and interpretive and therefore less scientific, while the former, because of its materialist orientation, appears to be more objective. What is interesting about both disciplines is that, while they are branches far removed from the trunk of philosophy, they share in the com­ mon notion that they function as interdisciplinary disciplines, that is, they rely on other disciplines, such as linguistics, neuroscience, artificial intel­ ligence, computer science, anthropology, and of course, each other.8 Each represents a hermeneutical self-understanding that accepts the need for oth­ ers as a precondition for success. Disciplinary work must transgress disci­ plinary boundaries by correcting expected deficits in one’s own paradigm (subject matter knowledge, methods, theories, perhaps even language). On the surface, this interdisciplinary orientation seems to be a positive step toward a hermeneutical openness to the other. This is unfortunately not the case, as several factors indicate. The first is that interdisciplinarity for these disciplines entails a narrow definition of interdisciplinarity that draws only upon disciplines that are seen already to have overlapping inter­ ests, that is, they are contiguous disciplines that reflect similar interests and orientations. A second factor is that all of the disciplines involved are similarly based upon various versions of modern empiricism grounded in firm concepts of objectivity. If our criticisms of objectivity (see Chapter 1) are valid, as we believe they are, then simply increasing the group of disci­ plines that are firmly grounded in objectivity and seeking after absolutist conclusions does not create genuine interdisciplinarity, but instead only cre­ ates varying versions of the same broader disciplinary orientation. Many, if not most, forms of contemporary science are relatively recent in their development, and so follow the precepts of modern empiricism. Any claim they make to interdisciplinarity is either ignorant of or, worse, dismissive of the two millennia of prior intellectual thought before the fragmentation

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of scientific disciplines occurred. The contemporary claims to interdisci­ plinarity are, instead, attempts to rebuild disciplines that have been frac­ tured and fragmented with increased specialization, rather than engaging in actual interdisciplinarity that crosses genuine boundaries of thought. As a result, these newly refashioned supposedly interdisciplinary areas appear to believe that they, as sciences, see the truth of the matter most compre­ hensively, due in part to their claims to interdisciplinarity. Such is simply not the case. If, for example, the thinking-experts are experts apart from a larger historical conversation and non-empirical sciences, in what ways might we meaningfully call this truly interdisciplinary? It is not. This form of interdisciplinarity tends to heighten intolerance of those disciplines that fall outside its purview, while at the same time doing so while claiming to be functioning in the name of openness. The argument must be made that a strong interdisciplinary approach must be an active hermeneutical one, for it alone is capable of overcoming the growing disciplinary entrenchment and isolation across all disciplines, not just those concerned with thinking machines but those concerned with all of the natural sciences and even many if not most social sciences, and even humanities disciplines. While we are unqualified to speak in depth about disciplines other than our own, the general observation of the prolif­ eration of radically specializing disciplines across the sciences is anecdotally instructive on its own account. It is an indication of the complexity of the ques­ tion(s) involved, the persistent reliance on reduction through disciplinari­ anism (creating worlds apart from worlds), and objectification of concepts of thinking.9 A more helpful conception of interdisciplinary study must begin with the assumption that disciplines are necessary and useful, because they bring together inquisitive people with common interests, while simul­ taneously being limiting and fragmentary, because they isolate them from other potential collaborators on the basis of a variety of disciplinary and non-disciplinary factors. Interdisciplinary investigation must also assume a general internal logic and modus operandi for each, that is, that there are boundaries between each to be crossed. In this way interdisciplinarity is born out of an acceptance of limiting paradigms and the conviction that academia needs some type of trans-disciplinary thinking as it relates to practical problems. There is a dual role for hermeneutics to perform in cre­ ating a genuine and more robust interdisciplinarity. Active hermeneutics, by definition, does not focus upon and hence is relatively free of methods and theories, and hence attempts to overcome divisions that characterize disciplines by uniting others in conversation that challenges the dogmatic beliefs that prevent openness. Because it is not a discipline per se and does not subscribe to a particular method, active hermeneutics, quite unlike the formalized and codified disciplines as they exist today, crosses artificially imposed boundaries and is able to bring disparate disciplines into dialogue. One of the problems in such a program for active hermeneutics is the radical differences among intellectual disciplines today, with it difficult

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to know just what the term “discipline” represents. “Truth” in geography is different than in physics. “Objectivity” in chemistry is different from that in biology. “Knowledge” for the biologist looks much different than that of the poet. Disciplines are sources of authority for the ways in which questions are asked and answered, including the measure of correct seeing, speaking, and hearing. To specialize in a discipline is to take on its measure of right and wrong and to internalize its beliefs systems, that is, its rules of behavior regarding thought and practice. Like religion in many ways, a discipline demands of those who belong to it to be joined to something that gives purpose and meaning. With their own language, worldviews, ethics, and established (internal) cultural practices, disciplines are micro­ cosms of worlds of thought. Each expresses a particular mode of being or life. The challenge of interdisciplinary thought, then, is nothing short of a cultural and religious revolution—if what we mean by interdisciplinary is truly boundary crossing, open, and integrative so as to create something new through conversation with the other, rather than simply involving spo­ radic borrowing and sharing among the like-minded (perhaps better called multi-disciplinarity). It is the very nature of being disciplined, that is, to be a member of a discipline and to follow its habits of thought, to protect the integrity of one’s lifeworld. The belief that genuine interdisciplinary work—thinking beyond oneself as part of an active hermeneutics—is possible after rigorous habituation into a specific discipline, or even a purported interdiscipline that does not practice hermeneutical openness, is counterintuitive and rep­ resents oppositional habits of living. In the next chapter we will explore “thinking beyond” as an experience of transcendence, asking the question of how one might move beyond many years of practicing, for example, history, psychology, or biology in order to think other than or outside one’s self-understanding, that is, go beyond one’s academic finitude. Are the dis­ ciplines capable of producing interdisciplinary thought and practice? The prejudices of “thinking” sciences seem counter to genuine interdisciplinar­ ity for many reasons. Each discipline that attempts to identify the nature of thinking and the mind simultaneously isolates that description from other possibilities. If we agree that thinking is objective and materialistic, for example, neurological or computational or chemical, we exclude other avenues of explanation and description, such as non-material or immaterial or even spiritual. If we believe that thinking is structured and with various processes that may be mapped with a computer, we have already accepted a very specific kind of thinking-possibility as an objectifiable function (a cal­ culation of our calculability if you will). Hermeneutics reminds us that none of us think within a vacuum; none of us are blank slates. However, the tra­ jectory of intellectual disciplines is quite unlike hermeneutics, which makes thinking and questioning synonymous, while disciplines make thinking and questioning align (by disciplining them) within an established order. This is not simply a question of degree of radicality in questioning, as if

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hermeneutics asks more radical and far-reaching questions, but also a ques­ tion of motivation and direction (metaphorically speaking) of thought. The term “interdisciplinary” is usually employed in current academic parlance as a form of academic political correctness, rather than being a legitimate attempt to bring differing worldviews together. For example, institutions of higher education have become almost exclusively built upon the practice of thinking being “about” this or that subject, often with the straightforward goal of producing students for gainful employment, rather than being built, as they once were, upon the habits of thinking as our mode of being in the world. Heidegger too was concerned with what think­ ing is about, but for him the problem is that we have forgotten the biggest questions (those of being) and replaced them with technocratic, pragmatic, and instrumental questions. It is not “thinking” that disciplines are con­ cerned with achieving—even cognitive sciences—so much as thinking about X and Y and so, for Heidegger, those involved in these disciplines fail to be thinkers and to ask the greatest questions.10 As a result, the sciences, whether natural or human, do not develop those who think like thinkers but those who find themselves swept up with other occupations. The claim that science does not think is overly simplistic, as Heidegger realized, and is meant to evoke questions rather than to answer them. To support Heidegger’s view, however, we do not need to go much further than the claim that disciplines are by design meant to shape and control the thought, as well as the action, of participants in a discipline-specific and hence idiosyncratic way, as the subject matter requires; in other words, specific theories and methods are developed and then applied (or so goes the accepted logic, which we have already challenged in Chapter 1). Disciplines are a “thinking about” through narrow, prescribed lenses. This artificial and forced thinking lacks an understanding of its own prejudices. This insight would be possible only by challenging self-understanding, which would make the task of teaching “textbook” biology or physics far less efficient, even if more self-informed. This disciplinary thinking also lacks a sense of the larger picture of the scope of human intellectual endeavor, including espe­ cially other academic disciplines. Both activities of thought—self-interrogation and questioning, and the creative ability to see the other and its possibili­ ties—are essential to hermeneutical and genuinely interdisciplinary thought. In the simplest way, then, we might say that the rigor and devotion required in a discipline to achieve expertise, and therefore to support the needs of career and social standing, stand in the way of thinking in all except the most limited fashion—a disciplined or disciplinary fashion. How, then, might genuine interdisciplinary thinking open to active her­ meneutics help heal the fractures of thinking? In what ways are active hermeneutics and interdisciplinary thought comparable and compatible? While scholarship on the nature and role of interdisciplinary thinking has found wide reception in recent decades, first as “area studies” and now supported by “interdisciplinary” scholarship more specifically, we remain

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skeptical about its real-world role and practice. A robust interdisciplinarity must be done hermeneutically and yet there are strong reasons to suggest that this is not the case among academic disciplines. Rather, greater dis­ ciplinary devotion as a selective interpretive paradigm seems, at least to us, to be gaining ground. We are, of course, speaking in generalities and relying upon our own experiences, which are anecdotal, but the literature on the topic seems to support interdisciplinarity as an ideology that has yet to be realized in a broad sense. There is need to incorporate an active hermeneutical paradigm of thinking into the very fabric of the full range of disciplines and across disciplines that seek greater interdisciplinarity. The primary means by which active hermeneutics supports a genuine form of interdisciplinarity is its emphasis on the nature and role of “the question,” in which “the” is used to indicate questions “generally,” rather than a specific question. This contrasts with the disciplines that emphasize specific questions, specifically regarding their subject matter, relying on dis­ ciplinary methods, theory, and language, for the purpose of predisposed outcomes, typically quantifiable “scientific” outcomes. Active herme­ neutics seeks a robust interdisciplinary understanding by acknowledging and, when possible, resisting disciplinary bias, rather than relying on it to determine a measure of success. Moreover, active hermeneutics is also well suited to encouraging “creative integration” of ideas, a concept that has taken center stage in the literature on interdisciplinary research.11 In a statement that reflects some of our concerns for genuine interdisciplinarity, Julie Klein and William Newell, pioneers in the field, define “interdiscipli­ narity” as follows: A process of answering a question, solving a problem, or addressing a topic that is too broad or complex to be dealt with adequately by a sin­ gle discipline or profession …. Interdisciplinary studies draws on disci­ plinary perspectives and integrates their insights through construction of a more comprehensive perspective. In this matter, interdisciplinary study is not a simple supplement but is complementary to and correc­ tive of the disciplines.12 More recently Klein offers this further definition: Interdisciplinary research (IDR) and interdisciplinary studies (IDS) integrate content, data, methods, tools, concepts, and theories from two or more disciplines or bodies of specialized knowledge in order to advance fundamental understanding, answer questions, address com­ plex issues, and broad themes, and solve problems that are too broad for a single approach.13 Notice the role given to process, integration, the importance of its inher­ ent antagonism with the disciplines mentioned earlier (because individual

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disciplines are insufficient on their own), as well as its reliance on disciplines as the source of ideas. We notice in these definitions that interdisciplinary thinking is a twentieth-century term, in some ways tied to Ancient Greek thought and our interest in the life of the wise person in its search for uni­ fied, integrated, and general knowledge14 and its crossing of boundaries and engaging in disciplinary sharing.15 Interdisciplinary thinking is supposed to rely upon, supplement, and correct disciplines, for example, disciplinary bias and reductionism, to “advance fundamental understanding,” to use Klein’s terms. Such thinking seems reluctant, however, to recognize the antagonism between thinking as creative integration and reliance on pro­ cess and disciplinary paradigms, even if they produce the knowledge and perspectives that fuel integration. In so much as interdisciplinary thinking offers a richer, more dialogical interaction among the disciplines, we are in favor of it, with the caveat of reluctance regarding its ability to achieve these ends deeply and radically. In its most modern incarnations, interdisciplinarity seems rather intel­ lectually tame, even though it claims to be a critical catalyst for thinking differently. For example, interdisciplinary studies are often, though not exclusively, problem-based and rely on established multi-step processes to manage ideas and disciplines, as intimated in Klein’s definition above.16 This is a recognizable problem in so much as it becomes a crutch instead of a catalyst for productive questioning. While modern interdisciplinary studies accept the notion of knowledge as often vague or ambiguous, there appears to be a lingering sense that the true alterity of the other is rarely appreciated. Instead, there is a persistent expectation that something will be solved rather than experienced as it is—in other words, there is a utilitar­ ian bias throughout, a means to an ends rationality that prevents the kind of transcendental experience we will discuss later, especially in Chapter 4. While interdisciplinarity may encourage dialogue and critical questioning, its reliance on established disciplines makes it very difficult to move beyond multi-disciplinarity that maintains the relative integrity of each siloed disci­ pline of thinking to offer something genuinely integrated and new. Active hermeneutics relies on integration and established paradigms as well, but it is uniquely capable because of the spirit of the question it embodies. By contrast, current interdisciplinary paradigms emphasize practical problem-solving not through the question but through answering. This orientation of formulaic question–answer may seem subtle but it is an important bias to notice. An active hermeneutics also seeks answers but without obligation to received notions of disciplinary problems as they are framed. What happens when interdisciplinary studies encounter more and more questions without answers and obvious resolution of a problem? Does one abandon the project? Does one settle on a temporary solution? Surely, this must be seen as a problem, without ready resolution, for the inter­ disciplinary activity prejudges its worth by the ability to solve problems with answers. Active hermeneutics expects and anticipates more questions,

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and a temporary solution, with tentative answers, to address the good of the situation. We might say that instead of being interdisciplinary, herme­ neutics is transdisciplinary and includes a much greater degree of freedom of thought—itself still historically conditioned through and through, but nonetheless more broadly integrated and dialogical than the alternatives. For our purposes, “integration” is another way of conceptualizing dialogue, the dialectical activity through which one experiences the world as ques­ tion and answer. The basic logic of integration is that disciplines rely upon a measure of dogma and conformity that frustrates creative integration and open questioning, while a robust form of interdisciplinarity requires an extra-disciplinary conversation. It is the very nature of hermeneutics, through the openness of the question, to be in a constant state of creative integration—allowing those actively engaged in it to be pulled into worlds not known of before. Its vulnerability to the other partakes in the creation of something new, with the possibility of a new understanding emerging. While interdisciplinary thinking has set itself up to be something like hermeneutics—universally relevant and radically open to the other—in its most common forms it fails to be truly active and therefore is incomplete as the healthiest form of thinking possible. It is not enough, in other words, to simply interject interdisciplinary methods and practices—that is, to apply interdisciplinary strategies and ideologies—as a form of meta-critique or meta-practice on disciplines, especially as a means of addressing discipli­ nary biases. The radical reorientation of genuine interdisciplinary thinking requires that one must learn to be without an intellectual home—a govern­ ing paradigm—and like a nomad traveling from place to place, from idea to idea, as the occasion demands. It is unclear how one might achieve such a state given that we are each housed in language, paradigms, cultures, and traditions that restrict our ability to productively wander. Hermeneutics instead presupposes the power of our disciplines—whether in a specific form of scholarship or merely in our historical and cultural situatedness— in such a way that generic interdisciplinary thinking does not. While inter­ disciplinarity and active hermeneutical thinking share in the same basic belief about how to think about truth, namely, that we must move beyond the world we have been inculturated into—a divided, specialized, siloed world of individual disciplines—we also must realize that, if we wish to see more clearly and broadly, hermeneutics offers greater promise, if only because it accepts a greater pessimism about the power of our finitude and a more realistic view of our self-situatedness within our worlds of discourse.

Living and dead hypotheses The question, “What is active hermeneutical thinking?,” is a broad one that includes everything we might consider as belonging to the human condition insofar as we consciously engage the world. In that sense, we might just as readily ask, “What does it mean to be human?” However we answer the

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question about our human nature, that answer involves acknowledging the uniqueness of a thinking nature. It is an odd question, to be sure, for it asks us to act like the disciplines mentioned above and think “about,” and in this manner the question-answer becomes theoretical and detached from the natural action of thinking itself during which we forget we are thinking beings and simply act. Thus, active hermeneutics presupposes a mindful­ ness about ourselves that may feel awkward but becomes instructive for our development of hermeneutical habits and virtues. In this section we rely primarily on the word “thinking” instead of “understanding.” The relevance of shifting terminology from “understanding” to “thinking” becomes important when we explore the dangers of unthinking, inspired by Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the banality of evil, discussed later in this chapter. The seemingly simple word “unthinking,” however, proves somewhat difficult to explain. “Mis-understanding” fails to convey the same moral condemnation as “unthinking,” which implies a loss of some­ thing uniquely human. When one ceases to think, one has not lost con­ sciousness nor have the synapses of the brain failed to pass electrical signals from one neuron to the next. The unthinking person’s brain is very much awake and aware and yet it has failed to question and thereby refused to relate adequately to others and the world. This way of being violates the human—both the self and other. What seems possible and beauti­ ful decays under the burden of thoughtlessness. “Unthinking” tells us something has been robbed from life, while “misunderstanding” implies that something needs to be supplemented—filled in or corrected—as if we might simply remedy the situation by taking another look or shifting our perspective. “Misunderstanding” awaits a remedy, a healing touch, while “unthinking” implies a purposeful act—a shutting out or concealing. Thoughtlessness is a far more problematic state of being, as we see in the contrast between being clever and wise (phronetic) that demarcates action from good action. Active hermeneutical thinking describes what it means to think (and live) well—to be skilled in the art of questioning and the openness it requires, connected to moral health and openness. Every language-bound individual is a hermeneut by some measure, but the ability to truly question oneself, one’s history, the other, in a persistent and fruitful manner, is a form of human excellence that is hard to achieve. Active hermeneutics sets its sights on key indicators of health as a measure of moral excellence. Active herme­ neutical health is possible because of a certain kind of thinking born out of wonder and curiosity. Active hermeneutical experience is mediated by provocations and even antagonism by which one is prodded, poked, and set at unrest. It is the experience of thinking through uncomfortable and alien questions because they matter not only to the survival of the self but the life of the self in the context of a larger sense of good (sometimes called flourishing). Active hermeneutics is paradoxically natural and present as a thing we do moment by moment because we must. It is also something

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ongoing—drawing together the past and an anticipated future—that we decide to do, for one must be willing to learn to risk self-understanding and to be vulnerable to the world. Thus, active hermeneutics has a present and not-yet, a synthetic and organic character, and a disquieting expectation for success. In this way we arrive at a fairly obvious claim. The most natural state of the interpreter is deficiency. We need help and guidance if we wish to become stronger and healthier. We must learn to develop our active-hermeneutical perspective if we are to experience the world most fully. How does one become an active hermeneut in such a way as to achieve a better measure of understanding, wisdom, and the fullness of experience? Our own active hermeneutics finds its first orientation in Chapter 2—the life of the wise person (phronimos). Active hermeneutics must enact a normative ethics, bringing into question the relative worth and importance of the world. It is not sufficient merely to describe phenomenologically the event of under­ standing. Active hermeneutics is the name given to the manner and degree of radicality one is able to experience through the question, and the sub­ sequent character development, in the form of wisdom, that reflects such efforts. It is this wisdom that enables us to attempt to see beyond the lim­ ited possibilities provided by one’s culture, when many of the important questions we must ask are hidden from view. In his now famous essay, “The Will to Believe,” William James relies upon the invocation of insightful and unusual terminology to discuss the problem of choice.17 Discussing the nature of a genuine choice, James begins with one of three criteria. A genuine choice must be between two living options or hypotheses. A living option has an internal and emotional appeal, that is, it matters for all sorts of reasons, both rational and non-rational. In so much as one is willing to act on a given hypothesis it may be said to be living. This contrasts with a dead option, which simply has no connection to the individual. A choice between a living and dead option would not really be a choice according to James, for one would simply act on the living option—ignoring the dead one outright. Genuine choice exists in tension between at least two meaningful options. To phrase this differ­ ently, a live hypothesis appears to someone as possible, for example, there may be a god, my wife loves me, or it is going to rain. A dead hypothesis does not seem intuitively possible nor attractive and so it is ignored, even forgotten: for example, whether or not there is a god, whether my wife loves me, and whether it is going to rain no longer provoke an internal or external dialogue. Dead hypotheses are buried under a cultural malaise, subsumed by indifference and apathy. We may accept this death because the given question may have been satisfactorily answered (e.g., my wife does love me), or perhaps because we have decided there cannot be any greater resolution than agnosticism (e.g., I cannot know if god exists or whether it will rain). The power of context to determine options is a strong hermeneutical claim. Another possible reason we may think something is

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114 The active hermeneutical horizon dead is that it contradicts what we want, what makes us feel good, or what will work to secure a preferable end. “Dead” is therefore not truly dead, only treated or made “as if” dead. We may be mindful of it in a way, but we arrest its power over our thinking, having quickly predicted where such a question might take us as threatening and dangerous. How do living options becoming living or active? An obvious herme­ neutical answer is that the difference between living and dead options has much to do with our instinctual judgments about right and wrong, good and bad—all of them prejudices based in an effective historical conscious­ ness. If one is raised in a culture that enjoys football, then football is a viable, that is, living, career option. The possibilities presented by one’s immediate life context create living hypotheses. Holding fast to living hypotheses may be a survival mechanism in dire circumstances, for exam­ ple, “This boat may be leaking even though I cannot see water, so I will put on a lifejacket,” and a hindrance in others, for example, “No one can ever love me because I am unlovable, so her gestures of care are disingenuous.” From a hermeneutical perspective the problem with this dichotomy between living and dead hypotheses is that many options—living possibil­ ities—get overlooked because the interpreter’s world treats options “as if” dead, saying “No” to reality in the name of truth. Active hermeneutics, when done correctly, contends not only with living options but also tries to goad or prod the hidden and dead options into life by paying attention to the weird and strange hypotheses we brush up against every day. We must consider how dangerously fragmented the world would be if we only experienced our own living options, never having been challenged to see the world differently. We are free to engage the dead and make them living at will, inhibited only by our lack of creativity, itself a pervasive stultifying force. As social creatures, we are in the midst of a stew of oddities and peculiarities from which we may be inspired to revalue our horizon of possibilities. The wise person does not dismiss them out of hand or avoid them because they are odd. Instead, the wise person goes out of one’s way to invite them into a conversation about why one thinks this or that is possible. The very nature of asking questions, of thinking, is such that what was distant and irrelevant a moment ago may suddenly grasp us as supremely engaging because of the power of the subject matter to turn our attention when we give ourselves over to the play of experience. The moral depth expected of an active hermeneut means that impossible questions may say something to us because we give them value by paying attention. We allow the other to be possible, if only tentatively. These Jamesian categories direct our attention to how certain people at certain times fail to ask questions that seem obvious to others. We cannot be always open to all questions, to be sure. To suggest otherwise is counterproductive. More realistically, the hermeneutical virtue is trying to make ourselves available to experience the other as much as our strength and ability permits, which we do by paying attention to the thing we do not currently acknowledge or understand.

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In the age of science, with all of its claims regarding providing for the good, material life, traditions that have historically informed how we ought to act—religion, theology, and philosophy in particular—are increasingly seen by many as dead hypotheses. Insofar as these modern sources of living hypotheses may incorporate ideals stereotypically “traditional” they may be said to blend possibilities and to offer a richer well from which to draw, but that is still not the same as allowing other hypotheses to remain living ones as well. We are in agreement with Herbert Marcuse, who observes that there seems to be a great flattening of worldviews, with the result of a one dimensionality to human life, in the modern scientific age.18 The result is that the number of living hypotheses is limited, as many, including traditional ones, are presented and treated as dead. One has only to exam­ ine the latest primary school curriculum to find evidence of the strange lopsidedness and mechanical thinking “disciplined” to be modern. How is it that we might have so many prominent and well-educated citizens who are unwilling to ask whether certain behaviors are moral, and whether their own interpretive way of life might be dehumanizing? Morality as we have described it is no longer in style; it is no longer a living hypothesis. “The good” has been flattened, along with everything else, so that they are indistinguishable. Racism, as merely one relevant example, is such an outcome of thought­ lessness. Having decided that only some human beings are worthy of equal status and relationship, the racist must ignore any questions that might reveal the other as a genuine human being. In other words, the racist must treat the other as a dead hypothesis. The refusal to experience the world as it is, with its racial diversity, or to question how it is that the other is regarded and treated is to refuse to act with integrity and respect with regard to the other. Active hermeneutics occurs when one begins to view one’s own self-worth as largely based in the strength of openness to alterity, rather than in the persis­ tence of comfortable delusion. Interpreting well is intuitive—as humans, we want to know—and yet the world swells with individuals acting with impu­ nity toward the good, as if respect and care for the other were dangerous or disadvantageous and therefore ignoble. In fact, care—human connection generally—is often dangerous and disadvantageous, even burdensome, but also a part of virtue-building. Is care for others a dead hypothesis today? We believe that an active hermeneutic that is not only aware of living hypotheses but that has the courage to examine dead hypotheses has potential for increasing self-understanding and, with it, greater commu­ nal understanding. As we move beyond our disciplinary restraints, and also our cultural or other biases and prejudices, those engaged in dialogue with others will come into contact with hypotheses that they have not con­ sidered, have failed to examine, or have never encountered before. Active hermeneutics is not just interested in living hypotheses but in exploring dead ones as well, especially as these may reflect the kinds of traditional hypotheses that form the background of productive human thinking.

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Thinking and thoughtfulness In this section, we develop further questions related to thinking and thoughtfulness, following from the discussion of James regarding living and dead hypotheses. In this section, we bring together two unlikely con­ versationalists, Immanuel Kant and Hannah Arendt in her analysis of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. Kant asks the question regarding what thinking is and Arendt presents an example of thoughtlessness. Kant and enlightenment During the midst of the Enlightenment, or Age of Reason as it is sometimes called, Immanuel Kant wrote a famous essay, “What is Enlightenment?”19 In it, he asks and answers a question that had proven difficult to answer by many scholars and laypersons alike. The question he asks is apparently a straightforward one: what is enlightenment? His response takes shape around his understanding of the Enlightenment motto “Dare to be wise!” (Sapere aude, sometimes translated “Dare to know!”). Kant interprets this to mean, “Have courage to use your own understanding.”20 This appears at first to be an odd claim, for it seems self-evident that each of us must use our own understanding, as we do not physically share minds with others, as if another’s decisions or choices controlled our biological mechanisms of thought. Nor do we have any direct control over how other minds think, as if through telepathy or some kind of electro-chemical device. Our perceived distance and disconnectedness from others constitutes persuasive grounds for assuming our own autonomy (and, along with it, space for objective authority). This assumption is considered a mistake by Kant, who argues that because of our own laziness and cowardice we allow ourselves to be controlled by authorities of all kinds. The result is a loss of that which makes us most human. From a hermeneutical perspective, one must expand authorities to include historical and cultural influences of all kinds, espe­ cially the power of one’s own language as an authority. His answer to “What is enlightenment?” is that it is an emergence from “self-imposed” “non-age” or immaturity. Kant believes that we are each at a crossroads of animal instinct and rationality. These are opposed to one another, creating an internal conflict. We want to be free, so as to make autonomous choices, but we find ourselves routinely besieged by internal and external forces that dominate our wills. Kant believes that the most profound sense of self is one that exists through rational reflection and thought. Unfortunately, as he sees it, people often prefer the comforta­ ble lifestyle of immaturity. Our daily routines may include innumerable choices and decisions, such as what to wear, what to eat, and what time to go to bed, and yet our lives as a whole are subject to a higher authority that determines what is meaningful and true. We exist as choosing creatures— which creates a feeling of power and autonomy—but only in a superficial

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and ultimately empty sense. The big questions get asked and answered by a surrogate force or power. Immaturity, for Kant, is possible for the young and old. It is the ina­ bility, due to a lack of resolve, to use one’s understanding (by which he means reason, wisdom, and intellect) without guidance from another, that is, without some form of either internalized or externalized authority tell­ ing one what is right and wrong. Immaturity, for Kant, does not mean a lack of knowledge. The immature may be very knowledgeable and able to function well in society, performing complex tasks as needed. “Immature” refers to a lack of courage to think for oneself and is therefore a privation of something good, for example, lacking bravery to act on an understanding that conflicts with the status quo. Thoughtlessness, by which Kant means the human fear of self-autonomy, then, is the great enemy of enlightenment. He writes, “If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay; others will readily undertake the irksome work for me, and so on.”21 In addition to “pastor” and “physician” we could add “self-help guru” and “celebrity,” as well as “politician,” “talk-show host,” “commentator,” “financial advi­ sor,” and other influencers one might think of. “Book” could be replaced with “online blog” or “website.” These updated authorities would then sound like the world of digital natives today. Kant is not arguing against books and experts, only our reliance on them as substitutes for our own thinking. If we avoid critically engaging with them then they become our guardians, even our rulers. From a hermeneutical perspective, immaturity is the refusal to question for oneself and the ready acceptance of answers to questions we have not sincerely asked. The immature being, whether an individual person or an entire cul­ ture, suffers from cowardice that, for Kant, is a form of fearfulness. The modern world is full of anxious people who would very much like to avoid making certain decisions for fear of negative consequences in their lives (financial, health, family, etc.). In addition, Kant believes the imma­ ture are lazy, in that they are indecisive. Reluctance to act, to think, to question follows naturally from our fears of negative consequences. The inherent risk of thinking requires a measure of uncertainty that unthink­ ing, or being immature, does not. “Lazy,” for Kant, is a mental rather than physical description. The immature are not simply physically inac­ tive “couch potatoes,” although that may be true in some circumstances. They may act with a great deal of energy and still fail to think autono­ mously, as one might discern in the frantic pace of contemporary culture. When we refuse to act on our own understanding because of any number of different potentially inhibiting reasons—such as, we are afraid or per­ haps overwhelmed—we cannot walk with confidence, as Kant believes we ought. Fear, passivity through indecision or laziness, and the urge to default to the will of others, whether they are teachers, politicians, pop

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culture, self-proclaimed experts, partners, etc., characterize the “easy” life of the immature that live at the behest of their guardians as “domestic livestock” and “docile creatures.”22 Kant further writes, “Rules [also translated “dogmas”] and formulas, those mechanical aids to the rational use, or rather misuse, of his natural gifts, are the shackles of a permanent immaturity.”23 Our shackles that chain or tie us to immaturity have something to do with the degree of our belief in dogmas and formulas. Dogmas and formulas are beliefs we teach one another because they are supposed to represent or correspond to deeper ideas, thereby giving us access to hidden realities. For Kant, however, the following of dogmas and formulas is often an excuse that allows us to be lazy and cowardly, to deny our natural abilities of thought in favor of resigning ourselves to the control of ideologies and authorities. Kant is not arguing that dogmas and formulas, like books and experts more generally, are inherently evil and immoral. His concern is with our uncritical accept­ ance and reliance on them that supplants our thinking. To place this in the context of our earlier conversation, the belief in objec­ tivity is the kind of authority Kant’s lazy person would whole-heartedly welcome, for it promises the supreme representation of reality without the exercise of difficult hermeneutical virtues, such as interpretation. Added to our tendency toward cowardice and laziness, Kant notes that our “beneficent guardians” have long encouraged our dependency upon them, which is for their gain, by exaggerating the dangers of doing otherwise and thinking for ourselves. There is little need of corroboration, falsification, or debate when one’s own powers of thought have been suspended. Instead, what we find is a world of opinion, talking past one another, and the rule that whoever holds the mechanisms of power is the victor. Hannah Arendt and the banality of evil In such an environment, it is not necessarily the case that one makes a deliberate choice among competing live options but one has simply sur­ rendered to thoughtlessness or senselessness, and, thereby, has limited choice and little moral motivation toward the good for oneself or others. Hannah Arendt’s analysis of thoughtlessness and her connection of it to the “banality of evil” in Nazi Germany is of importance in this regard. The temptation is to think that an entire culture turned evil when we think of Nazi Germany. That would be a mistake in light of our hermeneutical stance, and it provides too easy a means of moral escape for those involved. Cultures may indeed have characteristics, but it is the individuals within it who commit the unspeakable atrocities in the name of patriotism, cit­ izenship, and such. In light of that, we must ask, what power so over­ whelms individuals—even educated, civil, highly cultured, technologically sophisticated, and industrialized people, such as the Germans of the early to mid-twentieth century—that good is turned to bad, and bad to good?

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In her Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), Arendt famously contests conventional wisdom about the nature of evil in her examination of the Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann at his trial. 24 After the Second World War, Eichmann escaped Germany, eventually arriving in Argentina where he was kidnapped by Israeli agents and taken to Israel to stand trial. Charged with organizing the deportation of Jewish prisoners to extermination camps, Eichmann pleaded not guilty to 15 charges including crimes against humanity and the Jewish people. Eichmann, the oldest of five children, lived a “humdrum life without significance and consequence” as Arendt puts it. 25 A failure in his own eyes and those around him, Eichmann struggled to find a successful career until the Nazis recruited him. As a Nazi officer Eichmann was finally given the opportunity to be successful by following orders and diligently attending to his daily tasks, even if those tasks included finding creative ways to efficiently support the murder of millions of people. And succeed he did. Initially tasked with emigration, simply getting Jews to leave voluntarily, he was eventually responsible for their forced deportation, and then finally transportation to death camps and ghettos. While a major organizer of the holocaust, Eichmann argued that he was not to blame for murder. If he had not followed the law he would have been replaced and punished, without changing anything, he argued. Eichmann never pulled a trigger nor lever in a gas chamber, so how could he be a criminal? He was following orders as his country’s leaders demanded. On Eichmann’s own account, he was disturbed by the conditions of those transported to the death camps, as well as the conditions within camps themselves, but it is clear from his own correspondence during that time that his true concerns were with the efficiency of the operation, specifically that it be economical and minimally disruptive to the ongoing war efforts. In other words, Eichmann recognized something was disturbing—more strongly, that something was wrong—but such an understanding was sup­ planted or overridden by other interests, namely bureaucratic success. In the name of such success and as a law-abiding citizen, the value of those being transported needed to be re-valued. In his concern for efficiency, it made no sense to invest in warm clothing in winter or food for the starv­ ing when they were on their way to death in any case. Suffering and death meant little to Eichmann when compared to the glories of supporting one’s authorities. As a consequence of Eichmann’s “efficiencies,” up to one third of those on his trains died terrible deaths, with the trains full of preventable suffering. If only he had the capacity to connect as a person to the other, he might have considered sacrifice of career as a small measure of health demanded by virtue. No gun, no gas, but utter disregard for human worth—they had the same result. We see this same thought process working itself out around us today. Even if thankfully the results are not as extreme in numbers or drastic in their consequences, the outcomes so far as individual people is

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concerned sometimes have the same effect. The bureaucratic apparatus is seem to be a grand machine of more value than people, where insurance claims may be rejected for what appear to be inhumane reasons, where wage disparity seems to be inbuilt into the system, and where healthcare inequalities are governed by income or nationality rather than access and compassion. Pity and compassion are often seen as forms of weakness that threaten the proper and efficient working of social order. For Eichmann, making a personal connection with those on his trains would have made his job far more difficult, possibly even impossible. To perform the tasks that he did, a new type of person is needed, one able to follow orders instead of acting morally—or even having common empathy. To obey authority, not to question, and to achieve efficiency becomes the virtue of an unthinking society. We must remember that, while Eichmann held a privileged office, he was just one of millions to follow similar orders, many of whom did use guns and pulled levers. At trial, sitting in a protected glass booth, Eichmann showed no remorse. He seemed to be truly “humdrum” in almost every way. Numerous mental healthcare professionals (at least six) examined him and found no signs of sickness or perversions: he had no history of psychopathy and no incli­ nation of murderous rage, and was not harboring any hidden vendettas. Everything about the man seemed normal. He was a career bureaucrat for whom little else seemed to matter but climbing the Nazi corporate ladder. Eichmann said that while he admittedly did not like the Jews he did not believe their complete extermination was necessary. No remorse, no guilt, no hatred, or so it seemed. Eichmann’s conscience revealed little about his actions. Why, if he truly did not hate the Jews or receive some sick satisfac­ tion from their murder, would he do what he did? Eichmann was following orders—he was obeying the law. And he was doing so just as Immanuel Kant would have him to do, or so he argued at trial. Having read Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason, 26 Eichmann argued that his whole life had been lived according to Kant’s moral pre­ cepts. The rational person, for Eichmann, must obey the law, and that law is promoted by the government, no matter what the circumstances. Even if one disagrees, so Eichmann asserted, there must be obedience. When pressed, Eichmann gave the court “an approximately correct definition” of Kant’s categorical imperative, according to Arendt. 27 He understood the part about one’s will becoming a universal law but he made the cru­ cial and unfortunate mistake of replacing one’s will—that is, one’s faculty of judgment by which one might in fact oppose authority—with that of the Führer’s own will and authority. Eichmann confessed at trial that upon enacting “the Final Solution” he ceased following Kant, but “he consoled himself with the thought that he no longer ‘was master of his own deeds,’ that he was unable ‘to change anything.’”28 Eichmann left all responsibility for his actions at the feet of his “benevolent guardians” as if he were merely a puppet. He became the lazy-coward Kant predicted,

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one satisfied with self-imposed immaturity so long as it was comfortable and rewarding. Arendt argues that Eichmann, and the court, failed to see the inverted Kant manifest in Eichmann. For Kant, one must act by using one’s own understanding by challenging authority that attempts to displace one’s rea­ son. For Eichmann, one must act by giving one’s will to another, even if that means looking behind the law to discover what Hitler really wanted of his followers. Eichmann was not merely following orders, but the spirit of those orders—thereby supplanting reason or thinking, compassion and pity, with authority. Over time Eichmann had become unable to think for himself, or so she argues. Even though he thought and performed complex tasks each day, his single-minded devotion erased any questionability and therefore “thinking” in its most robust sense. So what should we make of this? Calling Eichmann and Nazis radi­ cally evil somehow misses the nature of truly immoral people, for Arendt. He was no monster with extra-human abilities, powers, or intelligence bent on destruction, even though the radically destructive consequences of his actions might be called monstrous. He lacked in power, including the power to think, and as a dogmatic follower, produced unimaginable miseries and injustices. Focusing on individuals such as Eichmann risks missing how a whole society went insane; how a people turned right and wrong upside down in a relatively short time. Germany was one of the most industrialized, educated, and ostensibly Christian nations in the world. Understanding what went wrong there may very much help us understand ourselves here. Arendt sees in Eichmann an archetype for a certain kind of human being. Eichmann had the appearance of moral deliberation but, in fact, had none. He had the appearance of reason but was, in fact, very sick for he could no longer think. Her now famous term “banality of evil” describes one’s modes of existence as emerging from a lack of thinking. Eichmann, who readily embraced the propaganda of the Nazis, according to Arendt, was simply unable to judge right from wrong, beautiful from ugly. And in sur­ rendering that part of himself that is most precious, he ceased being a per­ son. We will return to discussion of such individuals in the section below on the dogmatist. What does it mean that Eichmann was unable to think? This is a dif­ ficult thing to articulate. For Arendt, there are at least two major indica­ tors. First, Eichmann lived with a distorted morality, and at some point he could no longer question goodness and justice from his place in the world. The particular perception available to the wise person (phronimos) became impossible for Eichmann given his surrender to the authority of another. Second, Eichmann was unwilling to imagine the perspective of another, that is, to take a hermeneutical view of the other. This requires a high degree of thoughtfulness, including imagination and compassion needed to step inside another’s shoes. The inability to question and recognize the

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122 The active hermeneutical horizon existence of others, in its extreme form, results in a lack of responsibility and care more generally. Eichmann was possible because of a community that sustains and supports thoughtlessness by endorsing virtues of collec­ tivity, obedience, efficiency, and orderliness. Moreover, the idea that those who cooperated with the Nazis were somehow different from ordinary peo­ ple today must be rejected, according to Arendt. The normal banality that so infected Eichmann is a pervasive presence throughout all cultures and times. The belief that we are immune is further evidence of our own apa­ thy, perhaps even our own cowardice and laziness, toward the question of whether or not we are ourselves willing to question authoritarian thought. Many conversations about Eichmann have centered on whether or not he “really knew” what he was doing. On the one hand, if he was so vapid a thinker, so out of touch with anything other than the immediate national religion—bureaucratic efficiency and the authority of his beneficent guardians—then he cannot be held accountable for “following orders.” On the other hand, would a normal person, for surely the title “normal” applied to some if not most of those who turned against humanity during the war, ever be absolved from such an obvious set of questions about right and wrong? Orchestrating the transportation of human beings to their deaths, and being responsible for so many terrible deaths during transport, is the sort of activity that is “beyond the pale” (beyond the boundaries of basic human morality) so to say. There is no way to ever really know what was going on inside Eichmann’s head. At the very least, we may agree that the failure to question, to think, has profound consequences for the world. It is important that we do not get caught up imagining the specifics of his thought processes, and remind ourselves that the widespread phenomena of thoughtlessness is a very real possibility not only in each and every culture but in each and every human being, and any counter-movement must be purposeful and grounded in active hermeneutical virtues such as openness and giving priority to the question. From an individual and active hermeneutical perspective, it is not merely that our authorities are acquaintances and if we were to leave them—to deny them power over our lives—we would miss them, but eventually for­ get about the relationships. Our authorities are not distant cultural con­ structs but are the “family” we live with without calling them family, and we will use the family metaphor as a means of talking about our opera­ tive authorities to emphasize the close and necessary relationships that we have with them. They provide the substance of our identities. There is no “I” and “they,” no obvious “I” and “It.” To separate a person from one’s family is to irrevocably destroy one’s established identity. Merely to sug­ gest that familial authorities are questionable is to encourage a troubling uncertainty, not that “they” might be wrong but that “I-as-a-royal-We” might be wrong—lacking in health and perhaps even dangerous. To ques­ tion familial authority is really a matter of questioning oneself and one’s self-understanding. The argument that one might make a rational or

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reflectively informed decision to challenge—and, in essence, to separate from—one’s family at first might appear to be extreme. The motivation for such an act would need to be profound. What would it take for one to sacrifice oneself and one’s family in order to demand change? At heart, the choice to challenge authority is a decision to make new possibilities living, while surrendering old possibilities to the grave (e.g., social concern for others that is actually patronizing control, liberal-mindedness that is thought control, patriotism that is really racism, capitalism which is an excuse for exploitation, faith used to control others, social concern that is dehumanizing social engineering, economic welfare that cripples initiative, etc.). Why would one jeopardize a loving, supporting family? Why would one willingly entertain the possibility that a family member might need to be wrenched free of relationship? Up to this point, we are in general agreement with Kant’s analysis, but Kant here makes a major mistake. The mistake that he makes is perhaps one that could be expected in light of the rise of Enlightenment thought and its emphasis upon reason and rational­ ity. Kant’s mistake is assuming that something like reason might be able to drive a wedge between self and family necessary for the freedom and devel­ opment of critical judgment on the part of the self. This Enlightenment belief is an insufficient catalyst for change, as history has shown. Only the moral drive toward the good is able to reform from within. The animus for sacrifice resides both within the self and within a perceived need within one’s family. Placing one’s family at risk is only possible when one realizes that one’s family might already be at risk, that something is already wrong that might get worse. Whether there are cues of physical or social or political hostility, a generalized dissatisfaction and unhappiness, or some persistent challenge that causes grievance, highlighting ways in which one’s family (such as the surrounding culture) has failed to cope adequately, a natural impulse to heal and protect emerges, what we are calling a desire for the good. Care demands of us a loving response, an active response to the injury or sickness, whether that be caused by the authorities we instinc­ tively obey or the literal families we love. Thinking of active hermeneutics in terms of care and love is a natural extension of our drive for solidarity and compassion, so as to form a connection and relationality common to humanity. Why risk myself and my world? Because the world matters and my community or family needs my help. If we assume for the moment that one is able to break free of authority to ask questions that take risks, the ability to pursue such questions then becomes a matter of activism and degree of openness. When this impulse to love is understood in an active-hermeneutical fashion it is possible that activism is possible, in the name of saving one’s family. This is more than a matter of mere loyalty or feeling of obligation. We fight for (and with) our families when we fight for their health. Still, while one may wish family well, this desire cannot itself facilitate healing. If one’s families as surro­ gates for authorities have habituated one to fight against the good since

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birth, by instilling a deep-seated desire to work against active hermeneu­ tical skill such as meaningful dialogue, vulnerability, and the search for solidarity, then an existential crisis may be needed to provoke the proper questions needed to disrupt the status quo. We must be cured of our imma­ turity that is, contrary to Kant, far more inter-relational than merely a self-imposed state of being by exercise of the will. It is conceivable, in the case of the truly immature, that one might be simply too weak to recognize the signs of illness and to act. And so, sadly, there is a perpetuated lack of health and humanity to all involved. The main point to be noticed is that there is a possible mechanism, that of active questioning, to energize the most difficult action of re-valuing and re-thinking in the context of cher­ ished familial or authoritarian relationships, where some are to be saved, others to be lost; some options to be made living, others rejected. How, then, are we to break free of controlling authorities, traditions, institutions, and the “great unthinking masses,”29 as Kant phrases it? Hermeneutics has long argued that complete freedom from them is impossi­ ble. These forms of control are also the means by which we understand the world. Activism, despite the emotive nature of the term, must be incremen­ tal if it is hermeneutical. We must dare to be wise by thinking as situated beings. Any attempted denial of the power of history, culture, and language over one’s thinking confuses our thinking, and denies it the freedom that is made possible by first accepting our finitude. Relying on “family” as a metaphor draws attention to our natural state as belonging-to-others, whether we want to or not. A mark of active hermeneutical “enlightenment” is the ability to question persistently such that alternatives become visible that were not evident before, making the impossible viable for even a brief moment.

Dogma and the dogmatist At this point, we wish to turn to a particular element of Kant’s critique of enlightenment and thinking. Kant’s lazy-coward description of the unre­ flective person, seen exemplified in Adolf Eichmann in Arendt’s account, is no doubt harsh but nonetheless a fair analysis of how fear and indecision potentially infect us all. Rather than use such pejorative terminology to describe such a person, for reasons that will become clearer as we pro­ ceed, we prefer to use the title “dogmatist” (“dogma” from the Greek, “an opinion or judgment about what is true,” is used here in a pejorative sense) in our diagnosis of someone who is hermeneutically immature and less free in thought, and thereby less free in life. How is it that the dogmatist experiences the world in such a simultaneously shallow and yet devoted way? How is it that such a person might claim both to know the truth and so obviously to avoid questioning or pursuing it? Why do so many oth­ ers gravitate to the dogmatist to the point that Kant tends to speak both about the immature person and the immature culture itself infected with

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dogmatism? What might it mean that we are living in a world awash with opinion without much conversation to support it—as if one was entitled to an opinion as if it were of substance merely because it has an owner, that is, as if the results of all thinking were of equal value? The dogmatist lives as a mirrored reflection of one’s own presuppositions about the nature of reality that are fixed and immutable. In hermeneutics, one would refer to this as a cultural consciousness, an effective-historical consciousness, or some other “belonging to” concept or consciousness. The dogmatist is right, such a one believes, because of having a perspective about life that works in one’s life. In today’s culture, this probably means believing in an external material world that may be grasped by the human mind and accurately shared through language. The strengths of this con­ viction flow from assumptions about the nature of the world, the possi­ bilities of human understanding, and the claims of authorities (cultural, local, and now online) one has accepted through unconscious internaliza­ tion as an unintended assimilation of ideas. It is unlikely that the dogmatist has invented much or any of this worldview, although a dogmatist may be tempted to think of itself as autonomous, self-reliant, and uncreated, and as having discovered the “truth,” not made it. In fact, the situation is very much otherwise. The dogmatist is a creation crafted by many years of innumerable and invisible forces that it now defends with its whole being as necessary, certain, and universal. The dogmatist lives the narrative that has been set before itself as something good, making alternatives always “less than” the course followed. To be fair, the call to live a situated life is a universal precondition for human life. We are all born into living contexts that demand our loyalty—our “Yes”—if we are to function within them. To fail to affirm them, at least in part, is to cease to be oneself. The her­ meneutical challenge is to respond to this overwhelming force from which we cannot extricate ourselves. The dogmatist, however, has no interest in finding the right measure of freedom from its finitude, for it believes it is already above it all. As a result of the situatedness of life in which we all find ourselves, it may initially be difficult to distinguish between the dogmatist and the active hermeneutical counterpart. The dogmatist is typically the one boldly declaring some optimal standard of correction, whether that is the need for social “balance,” “a return to a golden-age,” a “new future,” or some such hallmark—whether that be social, political, religious, cultural, scientific, or the like. The dogmatist recognizes, like most, that one’s cul­ ture is lopsided, and hence unhealthy, in its judgments and activities, in other words, its neighbor has political, religious, or economic views that are wrong and represent a threat to the health of the community. There is need for healing in this “divided” society and the dogmatist knows the best alternatives. The dogmatist’s insistence on change aimed at the better is very much a desire for the good, at least as envisioned by the dogmatist, aimed at a perceived notion of health and well-being. The dogmatist too

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would eagerly entreat Aristotle’s mean between extremes as a catalyst for reform, thinking of itself as already successful—that is, as being virtuous and wise. The dogmatist believes itself to have the means and measure of “better” or else would dare not speak in judgment about the ill-health of others. In short, the basic mechanisms of the dogmatic align with active hermeneutics. The dogmatist seeks the good and a correction of perceived vice. This, however, is where the similarities end. When pressed to explain what “balance” or “mean between extremes” might mean, the dogma­ tist’s answer is almost always simply a mirror of its lifeworld, that is, this desired balance is whatever the dogmatist believes and does. The dogma­ tist believes that “I am the arbiter of right and wrong” and so becomes an objective judge over the world. Rarely would the dogmatist admit that “balance” is what one is striving toward, for this would imply the need for reformation. The dogmatist’s political correctness is born of the solidifica­ tion of one worldview (its own) that cannot contextualize world experience or question beyond itself. The dogmatist has not thought through what it might mean except to parrot the truth of one’s immediate context with great conviction—as if the conviction itself was evidence of healthy judg­ ment and action. The dogmatist’s “balance” then is an empty phrase used to control the conversation and world, as if to imply greater understanding than exists. If “balance” had been born of active questioning, the sort that drives one to near madness as great questions must, the dogmatist would not be likely even to use the term “balance” for it realizes that the spatial metaphor implies an equal distancing and weighing of alternatives, rather than the often egregiously oversimplified forced binaries it often uses. The dogmatist must resist such a conversation for it would create an obliga­ tion to fairly articulate alternatives instead of merely imposing one’s own lifeworld. “Balance” is exactly what cannot be achieved, metaphorically speaking, and so the dogmatist’s own self-understanding is threatened when asked to articulate or define what constitutes “balance.” The belief in an uninterpreted world and unwavering devotion to authorities gives the dogmatist, at least in its own mind, an unmovable Archimedean vantage point from which to move the world. As a result, there may be no empathy for “the other” that challenges the dogmatist, for it has an unshakable faith that the world is as one sees it. To question the “truth” is to destabilize the world in which the dogmatist lives, and to defame its idols. Its insecurities and fears demand that its detractors, which often amount to nothing more than those who ask sustained ques­ tions, must be mistaken or, worse, they must be lying. The dogmatist’s pur­ view covers not only the natural but also the social, religious, and political realms, among others. Its science of “truth” is far grander in scope than that of the natural scientist but its spirit is the same. A great theme of the Enlightenment was to encourage skepticism, to provoke and prod not just the elite but everyone to think. And yet the dogmatist does not exercise this

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ability to see beyond. The dogmatist has not been cultivated to think, as Kant believes, and to exercise its natural ability, but has been made docile for so long that its being is a cultural self rather than an active hermeneu­ tical self. History has perfected spectacles of warring dogmatists against dogma­ tists, each with their own victim narrative, and of subsequent generations decrying the atrocities of the past, while continuing to enact their own in the name of “truth.” The trajectory of shame is almost always pointed backward through history. The weight of self-reflection is too great for the dogmatist who cannot see that it is its imposition of self that spurs hatred against the other who likewise seeks self-preservation and ultimate dominion under the banner of goodness and “truth.” In this way the dog­ matists’ wars create and fulfill destiny, by accepting the sovereignty of the self. Again, and again “truth” is used as a standard for good and right. The more of it one believes one possesses the more good is achieved. As a result, the more superior the dogmatist feels over others. We are not arguing for the rejection of a belief in truth, only a belief in the kind of “truth” that allows one to exercise dominion with certainty and conviction over the other without the discipline of questioning as its cornerstone and openness as its guiding ethos. While the dogmatist already knows the answer to any question—for one has a very limited number of options—walking with unearned confidence inherited from its finitude, the active hermeneut is positioned to earn a sense of confidence through struggle and risk. Gadamer argues that the “experienced person” is “someone who is rad­ ically undogmatic ….”30 The logic is hardly controversial, but it has impli­ cations for developing an active hermeneutics. An experienced person is someone characterized by an openness to the world and other. Such a per­ son does not maintain fixed views but anticipates change, allowing one’s most cherished beliefs to be challenged, and in this way encourages more experiences. So powerful is the dogmatist’s worldview that, for Gadamer, such an unreflective worldview frustrates the very experience of life, and it separates the dogmatist from a fuller relationship with reality. We wish that the reverse were true: so powerful is the nature of experience itself that it would dissolve the dogmatist’s resolve to maintain a rigid worldview. In such a case, genuine experience would dismantle dogmatism as a lesser form of life. However, active hermeneutics recognizes that in fact this is not the case, or else all dogmatists would end up as thinking wisely and well of the other. Experience tells us otherwise, that genuine experience requires active self-involvement and effort, not laziness or cowardice, as Kant put it. For Gadamer, the more “radically undogmatic” one is, the more one actively sees and hears the world. The truly experienced person has a broader sense of life, a creative sense as to what is possible, and an urge to resist set­ tled opinion. The experienced person has learned over a lifetime that being surprised is a sign of health, not weakness, and so this person needs less prodding to entertain dead hypotheses, for this one is accustomed to

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seeking living hypotheses and to living in a world that the dogmatist, when confronted by life’s greatest tragedies, struggles to imagine. The experi­ enced person gives oneself freely to the play of understanding that no one controls, and so draws nearer to the good by living it. In religion, science, politics, and in fact with all of the natural and human sciences and humanities, shifting perspectives and changes in belief should have the appearance of weakness only to those unaccustomed to the alter­ ity of questioning deeply. However, each of these disciplines has its influen­ tial share of dogmatists, and the need for more active hermeneuts. From an active hermeneutic perspective, change is most often a sign of strength and a willingness to pursue the good. It takes great courage to realize that one was misguided because one puts oneself at risk. When uninvited questions begin to press in on the dogmatist, for we are all inevitably challenged by experience, the dogmatist is presented with an opportunity. Either it acts in a sickly form of self-defense by actively opposing the question by asserting a worldview with prejudged answers or it becomes vulnerable by listening and questioning more, looking for new understanding and perspectives. If the dogmatist has any hermeneutical skill, it will realize the latter possibil­ ity as living. If not, then, as is the routine, it will act on the only option that it knows, which is to respond in a defensive and hostile way. The dogma­ tist’s survival instinct to preserve one’s position in the moment of upheaval is most powerful when most threatened. As a result, there are many dogmatists who have established great power in our contemporary society, to the point of becoming fashionable and even cultural icons. The dogmatist bears the cultural and historical truths of its time and place and feels suitably situated, that is, appropriate because of such a comfortable fit. Such a “fashionable self” is only possible by ignor­ ing history and the changing ideals of social life. Who among us has not looked at a photo of themselves taken long ago and wondered in disbelief at our terrible fashion choice, for example, a particular haircut, shirt, jacket, or even tattoo or piercing? At the time, each of us was sure of our “flock of seagulls” hair or leather pants. We were fashionable. This culturally relative truth soon changed and so did our attire. As with fashion, our own worldviews change through time, encouraged by events in time, and not necessarily as the result of reflective choice. The dogmatist, however, believes its worldview to be transhistorical and transcultural despite the overwhelming evidence of its own life to the contrary, just as we considered in our discussion of objectivity. Social media has brought this phenomenon to the fore of many conver­ sations. Opinion boxes are replete with chastising and disciplinary com­ ments, highlighting the ways in which others have failed to add up, to know enough, to say the right thing, to use the right terminology. Of course, the chastisers do not realize that they are merely the mouth-pieces for another authority they follow, itself baseless and without much hermeneutical virtue, but, instead, they think of themselves as the right kind of culture

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police. If they did not have the “truth,” their burden to safeguard others would be less onerous. The problem is not merely that some are politically incorrect or rude and therefore need gentle persuasion and reminders “to be good,” but that the perception of one’s worldview as superior to others now attempts to hold the other accountable in an oppressive manner— through censorship, lowering self-esteem through ad hominem attacks, and the like. The dogmatist instructs in what the good is and requires others to do it or be harassed and demeaned through name calling and vicious­ ness. The dogmatist is intolerant online because anonymity allows it to avoid questioning. Screened devices have become the catalyst for unbridled enthusiasm in opinion without the context of thoughtfulness and doubt. One would assume given the wild diversity of opinion that media partici­ pants would be more tentative and cautious in making assumptions, if only because there are so many more options available to them. Instead, what we seem to find is greater entrenchment. There are many techniques for maintaining one’s dogmatic convictions. Most are on display in social media daily, in other words, the proliferation of opinion and ethical judgment of others without explanation, conver­ sation, or any sincere attempt to understand the other. Opinion without understanding reigns supreme in the world of the dogmatist and as such stands in the way of asking questions. If we take Socrates seriously, we might be tempted to think it is relatively easy to help such a person. As Socrates does to his fellow Athenians, one has only to ask the right ques­ tions in the right way to reveal the internal inconsistency and irrationality at hand. When confronted with absurdity of their position the racist, white supremacist, political despot, will surely see the error of their ways—or so goes the logic. Unfortunately, the true dogmatist has not only lost the ability to ask questions but also to hear them. The dogmatist must shut its ears and mind if it is to maintain its grasp on reality, and thereby frustrate any attempt by Socrates or anyone else. Reasoned arguments, mountains of evidence, and persuasive reasons are often meaningless, like the lan­ guage the dogmatist uses to chastise its detractors. Instead, all is unnatural contortion of passion directed toward authority and delusion rather than reality. For obvious reasons this kind of person is extremely dangerous. Unmovable and unquestionable, the dogmatist usually cannot be reasoned with or conversed with except in the most futile manner. The vehicle for the spread of dogmatism cannot, by its very nature, be sincere questioning or dialogue, for these actions risk the creation of insta­ bility and correction. Dogmatism thrives on diatribe. Relying on the force of its own conviction, the dogmatist must appear strong and unwaver­ ing although secretly afraid of experiencing the world. This is a criticism offered by Friedrich Nietzsche to the religious and scientific alike, and it especially applies to the dogmatist. 31 So apparently sure of the truth, the dogmatist compels followers to believe it must have it. Many intuitively accept such a person prima facie for they are raised to trust others and

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their relative cogency and rationality. The dogmatist takes advantage of such good will and belief in the openness of others. If a single person com­ bines dogmatism and cleverness and is able to convince enough significant people, an entire culture may be directed toward disaster, as history has shown time and again. It would seem that our species finds dogmatism to be psychologically satisfying for we return to it time and again regardless of the radically destructive consequences. We recognize that we have painted a bleak picture of the influence of the dogmatist. The lingering question is whether the dogmatist is fixed in stone or may the dogmatist be jostled from its implacably high self-appointed heights? Might the dogmatist condescend from its own imperial worldview? Our belief is a hesitant yet encouraging “Yes” and our resolution is supported by the innumerable examples of those who, holding fast to specific beliefs, eventually change their minds and begin the eternal strug­ gle to question once more. The discussion must then shift to how one’s mind changes, that is, becomes flexible and malleable when once it seemed absolute and objective. This is a question of openness, itself a matter of a willingness and skill to see the world’s questionability. In relation to the dogmatist, the active hermeneut must seem weak, perhaps even apathetic. The wise person (phronimos) is tentative, questioning, seeking something the dogmatist claims to possess but does not. The wise person must take time to reflect before acting, and so sometimes appears to be without con­ viction, even if this could not be further from the truth. Existing in two worlds, one of thoughtful rumination and the other of action, the wise person acts with a fortified conviction only after grasping the good of the situation. What are we to do when many others refuse to experience the question, when they have allowed themselves to be overwhelmed by the ordinary? May we show them what is so obvious to the rest of us? May we “reason” with them? What healing might an active hermeneutics of the question offer? As we shall see in the next chapter, transcendence is one form of cata­ lyzing an urgency needed to push aside the synthetic instincts of dogmatism long enough for the question to set in and destabilize the ordinary, if only for a moment. Transcendence is able to help restore our humanness and relationality, specifically compassion and pity, having realigned the human with human, and human with existence—ideally creating a hermeneutical self-understanding we may describe as phronetic, virtuous, and wise. 32

Openness to experience over dogmatism At this point in our argument, before we incorporate the notion of tran­ scendence, we turn from the closedness of the dogmatist to hermeneutical openness, as a counter to behavior that restricts its focus rather than being open to experience. Gadamer is, of course, well known for his reliance on “openness” to describe an ideal hermeneutical experience. He summarizes

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the notion in this way: “The dialectic of experience has its proper fulfillment not in definite knowledge but in the openness to experience that is made possible by experience itself.”33 In other words, the best form of experience is one born out of openness that perpetuates more experience and simulta­ neously, the other way around, with experience leading to more openness. Being “experienced” refers not just to past events, although it certainly involves these, but also to one’s orientation to future ones, those that have not yet occurred. In other words, openness is not simply the observation that a person has experienced or lived life, with its accumulation of events, but it involves an orientation to life that appreciates and reflects upon expe­ riences of the past as part of an orientation to further experience of the future. If a person lives many years but learns and changes little—having insulated oneself from any provocations—we would hardly call such a per­ son experienced for the world remains at a distance from them. The person who is genuinely experienced reflects upon the past as responsive prelude to the future. As a spatial metaphor aligned with “expanding one’s horizons,” the con­ cept of hermeneutical openness seems somewhat self-evident. As it is with the physical ability of sight, it is generally better to be able to see more rather than less. By being open, one is able to experience the world by relating in a particular manner. Unlike vision by which one looks about the world to receive its truth as a more or less passive recipient, however, openness in the hermeneutical sense refers to a purposeful orientation or direction of one’s whole being that indicates a change of personhood and its worldview. Such openness is clearly far more complicated than merely looking about in a physical sense, because it involves our active response to the world in which we live, and hence in the actions that we contemplate and then ultimately undertake as what it means to be active in the world. Openness, therefore, draws together both a perspective and a responsibility that results in engagement with the world, not just our past but also our present and orientation to the future. In that sense, openness pays attention to our behavior as human beings and agents in the world and therefore also has a moral sense, in that it addresses our ethical response, what we “ought” to do. This moral sense, however, is not necessarily bound by dogmatism’s prescriptions, but by the finding of norms in self-conscious experience. Like so many phenomenologically driven descriptions, it is most obvious when we experience it, though far more difficult to explain in abstraction. Gadamer continues his description of openness by addressing both its strengths and its pitfalls: “Openness to the other, then, involves recogniz­ ing that I myself must accept some things that are against me, even though no one else forces me to do so.”34 Holding oneself open involves an active listening in the midst of experience that no one forces upon us. We con­ sciously choose to be open and to attend to our world. Listening is more than physical hearing, of course, but is an auditory metaphor to capture

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our openness to receiving the full range of experience, what Gadamer includes within the “some things that are against me.” Openness herme­ neutically refers in a more active sense to the ability to undergo new expe­ riences, which means seeing the questionability of the world and self, as an active participant in an experience of the world. This openness must be freely chosen, willed, and intended, because one accepts it as a living option, with all of its consequences of engagement in the world. That is, one is drawn to openness for some internalized reason(s) and so is willing to subject oneself to the likely antagonism of experience. Only then may the other “address us,” as Gadamer states. 35 He argues that experience “refers chiefly to painful and disagreeable experiences.”36 Gadamer compares such experience to what Aeschylus calls “learning through suffering” (pathei mathos).37 He does, however, not see this as pessimistic for “only through negative instances do we acquire new experiences.”38 We grow and learn by being open, but such openness invites suffering. To become wise then, to rise above what we were, finding new vision and understanding, is born of unpleasant experiences. No doubt joyful and happy experience also plays a role in life, but such joyful and happy experiences tend to reinforce what we already think and know about ourselves, our experience, and the world. Unpleasant experiences are those that, because of their antagonism, chal­ lenge us to rethink our understanding of the world. Hence the primary form of human development occurs by means of experience that is nega­ tive. Although openness at first appears to be a concept with productive possibilities—and it is—it does not come without a price, and that price is the painful growth that comes through adverse experience that challenges our prevailing view of the world. As a result of the varied experience of openness, there are strong prac­ tical grounds for resisting openness, as the dogmatist well knows. For the dogmatist, it is better to live by the aphorism that “ignorance is bliss,” because the pain of openness and understanding is too great to bear, as it challenges the dogmatist’s unreflective perspective. Listening is difficult because it is the admission of a responsibility to grasp hold of an unpleasant change of mind. Care and compassion, the undergirding passions neces­ sary for listening, are natural but demanding disciplines. With Kant, the lazy-coward would do well to simply tune out the world of the other and fall in line with the will of one’s guardians, as such a life involves much less effort, less turmoil, and far less moral obligation to others. Such a life also shields oneself from the possibilities of change and understanding and hence the challenge of being confronted by one’s own limitations. If one is conditioned to mistrust others, the world, even oneself, then the openness of listening is already a dead hypothesis. Consider the strange possibility of not even listening to oneself, in other words, not ever engaging in a mean­ ingful internal dialogue with oneself about one’s effected historical con­ sciousness, one’s prejudices and biases, or one’s moral compass or what one really should be and should be about. The hermeneutical argument is that

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an inability to understand oneself is matched by an inability or unwilling­ ness to be open to the world and other. There is no dissolution of subjective and objective, where there is only a focus upon the subjective. The inner and outer worlds, lacking in definitive barriers, are experienced as a unity for those who are beings-in-the-world. A failure to connect with one is very much a failure to connect with the other. In so much as the scientist may be said to be open to nature, its revelation of fact through consensus of method, technique, and codified language, this is a virtue of a limited kind. Scientific openness suffers not only from the blinders of historical and cultural prejudice, as we all do, but by its own conviction that openness must be based on a domination of the self and the isolation of parts of the world for scrutiny. As Darwin so tellingly observed, a scientist “ought” to have a heart of stone. 39 While a normative principle to this day, our own conviction is that scientists do not have hearts of stone, nor should they. The normative principle that the human must be closed to the self for the sake of openness to the world is troubling. That such a prin­ ciple prevents the scientist from entertaining the notion that one may be a hermeneutical being whose openness is compromised is likewise problem­ atic. Scientific openness is like a metaphorical straightjacket that restrains the human with impossible restraints and restrictions on what is possible. As we have discussed, its presuppositions and theories make openness and genuine question asking very difficult. While objectivity believes it is allow­ ing the book of nature to inscribe herself onto the scientist, what emerges is often less than that. Openness for scientific materialists is more like the physical act of vision than it is an orientation of the whole self toward truth for active hermeneuts. The open person acts with a hidden security, for that person does not need to defend anything because one is not under attack. The one open to experience knows already that thought is incomplete, a meandering jour­ ney, and that everyone lacks in clarity, some more than others. The con­ cern is to allow the moment to be honest and to find any truth that might become available for having had the experience with the hostile other. On one’s best days, the open person will see the truth of the other even when that person does not see it yet. As a social ideal, openness is often given priority as a standard for appro­ priate action and thought, whether in one’s professional or private life. And yet for all its acclaimed importance, the practice of genuine openness remains rarely visible, even in important public arenas such as politics and law, where one might think that openness would be considered a practi­ cable virtue. Active hermeneutics becomes more feasible when openness is better understood as a standard of appropriate conduct, which is made possible by first clarifying its nature and encouraging supportive habits. As we have discussed, it is the power of dogma that frustrates openness and experience of the world. As Gadamer writes, “It is the power of opin­ ion against which it is so hard to obtain an admission of ignorance. It is

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opinion that suppresses questions.”40 Openness is a measure of one’s free­ dom. Freedom is one’s ability to act contra-causally against not only the instinct to recoil from the negativity of experience but one’s desire for dog­ matism. In so much as one is able to rise above, if only momentarily, our shared finitude, pushing back against the comfort of close-mindedness and self-interest, there is freedom. Truly open questions are spectacularly diffi­ cult to experience, for each of us brings to a given question our prejudices and experiences, filtering each question through ourselves and language. The questions we ask are often merely an echo of our cultured interests and everyday life, just as scientific questions are in scientific communities or as are questions asked within any other community of like-minded people. We need to experience the other person, event, work of art, so that new possibilities may speak to us, rather than merely speaking empty loyalties to ourselves.

Conclusion Active hermeneutics is a counter-movement to thoughtlessness codified in objectivity but expressed through disciplinarity, partisanship, and dogma­ tism. It is the recognition that we live in and through and with our cul­ tures, histories, and experiences, and that our better selves may emerge in tension with these invisible forces. In the simplest and most obvious sense, the moral drive of active hermeneutics is the acceptance of our responsibil­ ity to engage meaningfully and deeply with the world—to use one’s own understanding as a wise person (phronimos). This may hardly be called a dictate or principle. It is our chosen mode of existence in the world. We have chosen to see this as a normative approach given its apparent rarity in the world, supported by the observations of many others beyond James, Kant, Arendt, and Gadamer, all of whom have had something constructive to say that has helped us to understand more fully an active hermeneutics, a minority voice in a world of competing voices and dogmatic assertions. In other words, natural modes of existence may be original, but nonetheless displaced, as we have argued. There is no voice of conscience without active hermeneutics as the pur­ suit of good. This is what defines the life of the wise person (phronimos). There are only the innumerable, often faceless voices of those who have not engaged the question. As we have examined in this chapter, there are a number of competing voices that nevertheless attempt to lure others into their way of viewing the world. Even though there are many appealing characteristics of interdisciplinarity, we saw that its promise was greatly compromised by its reliance upon authority that still functions within tra­ ditional conceptions of objectivity that do not include self-conscious inter­ pretation that moves outside the bounds of established authority. This led us to consider several other proposals regarding thinking that have poten­ tial for clarifying what it means to be a wise person. James’s concept of

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living and dead hypotheses was useful in distinguishing between the kinds of hypotheses that result in the failure to move outside the bounds of disci­ plinarity and authority, dead hypotheses, and the kinds of hypotheses that propel us to ask questions that probe the nature of existence, our world, and the other, living hypotheses. The further insights of Kant on the nature of thinking furthered our insight into the importance of thinking toward the proper goal. For Kant, this means moving away from a lazy-coward approach to thinking and toward thinking that calls authority and dogma­ tism into question. The example of Eichmann showed that a person who otherwise looked very ordinary could perform incredible evil, simply by being unwilling to think in other than lazy-cowardly ways. The lazy-cow­ ard does not question authority, but, as in Eichmann’s case, places priority on impersonal efficiency and industry and obedience that falls victim to the controlling cultural influences of our world. Thinking that questions authority is no doubt messier and more problematic, but it is the requisite thinking to break out of the bonds of objectivism and engage with the world and the other in productive ways. The dogmatist, in whatever form it may appear, serves as a living example of the person who may appear to be actively engaged in the world. However, the dogmatist is one who is firmly entrenched in the patterns of thought of its culture and so tends to exploit the positions of authority for its own gain rather than questioning them even at a cost. Whereas the dogmatist believes any flexibility of mind and action is a giving up of one’s power—whether this is of the will, of free choice, of liberty, of security, and such—the active hermeneut realizes that this is precisely where the power of the self is exercised, not in imposing an established worldview but through the creative challenging and mak­ ing of new ones. The instincts of the dogmatist work backwards, creating less freedom, power, and health. Its defensiveness compounds with ever increasing insecurities until the world all but disappears to it, and only its own “balance” and “truth” remain. We conclude the chapter by turning to Gadamer’s notion of openness as an important part of an active hermeneu­ tics that is engaged in the world. Openness is an orientation that does not dogmatically prejudge and hence foreclose opportunities and questions, but asks questions and does not demand final answers, but allows for flexibility and continuing access to further thought and self-conscious awareness and engagement. We make the decision to listen and insist that others be heard. It is not a method of engagement, although it might be called one in so much as it seeks to humanize conversations, to inject virtues of compassion and care where it is lacking, and advocates for active involvement by all wise persons. We closed with this discussion of openness as a fitting prelude to the major emphasis in the next chapter. Whereas Chapter 1 laid out the foundations of the environment that her­ meneutics must address, and Chapter 2 sketched out an active hermeneutics in response to it, Chapter 3 has attempted to flesh out the need for an active hermeneutics in light of some of its most persistent opponents, including

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136 The active hermeneutical horizon interdisciplinarity, faulty views of thinking, and especially dogmatism in all of its forms and expressions. We wish that this chapter could have been more positive in its perspective, but we believe that an active hermeneutics can only function well when the hermeneut is aware of the interpretive environment in which such hermeneutics is practiced. The pessimism of active hermeneutics is its realization of the possibility, if not the likelihood, of interpretive failure. It expects to be needed within the competing views of knowledge and understanding. And yet the persistent trajectory must be optimistic, for active hermeneutics exists because of the presumption that we want to connect with the world, others, and ourselves more meaning­ fully. The widespread intolerance of the other and reliance on objectivity threatens hermeneutical optimism, but without the goodwill and charity that comes from such an optimistic positioning there could be no progress toward wisdom. Active hermeneutics means entering the world.

Notes 1 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method , 2nd rev. ed., trans. Joel Wein­ sheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 2002), xxxviii. 2 The well-known debate was between Jürgen Habermas, of the Frankfurt School of Neo-Marxist social-scientific thought and an advocate of method, and Hans-Georg Gadamer, the philosophical hermeneut who was not an advocate of method. Their debate began with a book review by Habermas responded to by Gadamer, and eventually enmeshed a number of other phi­ losophers/hermeneuts. The debate is summarized well in Fred R. Dallmayr, “Borders or Horizons? Gadamer and Habermas Revisited,” Chicago-Kent Law Review 76.2 (2000) 825–51. See also Stanley E. Porter and Jason C. Robinson, Hermeneutics: An Introduction to Interpretive Theory (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 146–51. 3 See Martin Heidegger’s What is Called Thinking? , trans. Fred D. Wick and J. Glenn Gray (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), originally published in 1954 by Max Niemeyer Verlag, derived from lectures Heidegger delivered in 1951 and 1952. This volume, not nearly as well known as many of Heideg­ ger’s other, and especially earlier, works, is a robust introduction to his later thought, and worthy of more attention than it has received. 4 Heidegger, What is Called Thinking?, 8.

5 Heidegger, What is Called Thinking?, 134.

6 Heidegger, What is Called Thinking?, 3.

7 Glenn Gray, “Introduction,” in Heidegger, What is Called Thinking?,

xxii–xxiii. 8 On the history of each, see Margaret Boden, Mind as Machine: A History of Cognitive Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) and John G. Benjafield, A History of Psychology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 9 Even within the thinking disciplines, there are innumerable branches one might site as evidence of increased emphasis on disciplinary specialization rather than even empirically based interdisciplinarity, e.g., Experimental Psy­ chology, Neuropsychology, Cognitive Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Arti­ ficial Intelligence, Cognitive Biology, and Cognitive Linguistics. 10 Heidegger, What is Called Thinking?

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11 Allen F. Repko, Interdisciplinary Research: Process and Theory (Los Angeles: SAGE, 2008); Julie T. Klein and William H. Newell, “Advancing Interdisci­ plinary Studies,” in J. G. Gaff and J. Ratcliff, eds., Handbook of the Under­ graduate Curriculum (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997), 395. 12 Klein and Newell, “Advancing Interdisciplinary Studies,” 395. 13 Quoted in Julie T. Klein, Creating Interdisciplinary Campus Cultures: A Model for Strength and Sustainability (San Francisco: John Wiley and Sons, 2010), 181. This definition relies on two major texts in the area of interdisci­ plinarity, the National Academy of Sciences (NSA) report, Facilitating Inter­ disciplinary Research (2004), and Klein and Newell, eds., Handbook of the Undergraduate Curriculum. 14 Julie T. Klein, Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory, and Practice (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990). 15 Giles Gunn, “Interdisciplinary Studies,” in John Gibaldi, ed., Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literatures (New York: Modern Language Association, 1992), 239–61. 16 For example, see Repko, Interdisciplinary Research. 17 William James, “The Will to Believe,” The New World 5 (1896): 327–47, a lecture first delivered in 1896. As the title of the essay indicates, James is concerned to justify religious belief apart from compelling evidence, and thus show the rationality of religious belief before proof is found. In a number of ways, this essay is a prelude to both James’s Varieties of Religious Experi­ ence: A Study in Human Nature (London: Longmans, Green, 1902) and his Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014 [1907]). 18 Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Boston: Beacon, 1964). However, one need not attribute all the ills of “one-dimensional man” to capitalism. The problem is more complex and requires an active hermeneutical response. 19 Immanuel Kant, “Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?” is Kant’s December 1784 essay published in the Berlin Monthly (Berlinische Monatsschrift). See English translation by Ted Humphrey in Perpetual Peace and Other Essays on Politics, History, and Morals (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993), 41–48. 20 Kant, “Answering the Question,” 41. 21 Kant, “Answering the Question,” 41. 22 Kant, “Answering the Question,” 41. 23 Kant, “Answering the Question,” 41. 24 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin Books, 1963). 25 Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 33. 26 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 2nd ed., trans. Mary Gregory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 27 Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 136. 28 Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 136. 29 Kant, “Answering the Question,” 42. 30 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 355. 31 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1966). 32 By way of conjecture, it is possible that the dogmatic are more easily amend ­ able to transcendence than we might initially assume. For the more rigid the hermeneutical artifice—the more dogmatic the person—the more effective the force in toppling the structure.

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33 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 355. Gadamer, of course, was not the first to make a case for philosophical openness. For example, William James in Pragmatism dedicates his work to John Stuart Mill from whom he “first learned the pragmatic openness of mind.” 34 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 361. 35 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 299. 36 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 356. 37 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 356. 38 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 356. 39 From a letter Charles Darwin sent to Thomas Huxley on July 9, 1857. Full let­ ter available at Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 2122,” accessed on 30 April 2019, http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/DCP-LETT-2122, cited as the epigram of Chapter 1. 40 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 366.

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4

Transcendence and the kenotic person

…. if the four great world religions could reconcile themselves to acknowledging transcendence as “the great unknown,” then they might even be able to prevent the destruction of the earth’s surface with gas and chemicals. Besides, it’s the only way out—there is no other. We must enter into a conversation with the world religions. Maybe we have enough time; maybe we don’t—I don’t know. Hans-Georg Gadamer1

Introduction In the previous chapters, we have laid out the foundation for this final chapter. We have made clear our positive proposal regarding an active her­ meneutics, especially in Chapter 2, and then attempted to defend it against its adversaries in Chapter 3, but in this chapter we attempt to move beyond simply describing an active hermeneutics in relationship to what we believe are less human and productive means of approaching knowing and under­ standing. Instead, we attempt not just to show a comparative moral value that in itself argues for the importance of self-involvement in a hermeneu­ tics of openness and the question that attempts to engage with the other. We wish to put such an active hermeneutics within a much more important conception of how it functions as both theory and practice. We have treated the theory as it relates to others and we have demonstrated the practice by outlining how an active hermeneutics resists the oppressive practices of those that use the notion of objectivity as a means of establishing inter­ pretive authority. In a limited sense, as we shall see, this discussion has been concerned with the mundane world of understanding and experience, and how they relate to each other and the questioning subject. We wish here to move beyond the mundane and explore how an active hermeneutics mediates between the mundane and the transcendent, and thereby place an active hermeneutics within an altogether other frame of reference that takes it beyond simply being another approach to the questions of philosophical hermeneutics and questions of meaning and understanding.

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140 Transcendence and the kenotic person We are able to do this on the basis of moving outside of the boundaries of our previous thinking and research and exploring a personal dimen­ sion of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s work, as revealed in some of the final words that he uttered as he looked back on his incredibly productive life as a scholar and as a hermeneut responsible for so much of the important thought within philosophical hermeneutics. We readily admit our indebt­ edness to Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutical program, as we have, we hope, moved it along to a further level of development and engagement as a praxis for others. In light of this, we also wish to include within our development of his program and our development of it as an active hermeneutics what one might call an ultimate context for its develop­ ment, based upon Gadamer’s own reflections upon his philosophical her­ meneutical enterprise. Gadamer’s invocation of transcendence then sets the stage for our description—in opposition to several of the descriptions offered in Chapter 3—of the kenotic person as the embodiment of the active hermeneut. In this chapter, we expand upon our outline of an active hermeneu­ tics by following a line of thought in five sections. In the first section, we appropriate an unusual and unexpected turn in Gadamer’s thought regarding transcendence. The notion of transcendence, which does not figure into his earlier thinking, provides an important means of putting his thought into perspective that opens up new horizons for an active her­ meneutics. After discussing the notion of transcendence as an unexpected revelation regarding both Gadamer and hermeneutics, we then discuss the notion of religion within Gadamer’s thought. Once transcendence is introduced into the discussion, there are new possibilities regarding reli­ gion that are available to us and that enhance our active hermeneutics. The third section deals with the meaning of transcendence as a focus of an active hermeneutics, especially in relationship to a divine encoun­ ter and the sense of mystery. At this point, we are reaching the furthest reaches of hermeneutics and touching upon theological topics not nor­ mally included within a hermeneutical program. However, in the fourth section, we then single out three examples of those who have lived the active hermeneutical life of transcendence and give witness to their divine encounter. We single out here, in this order, Thomas Aquinas, Isaiah the prophet, and the beleaguered Job. In these three examples, we see an active hermeneutics subdued by the transcendent in ways that provide productive models for examination. This leads to the final section on the kenotic person. Using a passage from the New Testament on kenosis, we here define and illustrate the kenotic person as one who exemplifies a her­ meneutics of transcendence by emptying oneself of those encumbrances that hinder understanding of the other and of the divine. This section closes with a discussion of forgiveness as forgetting, in which we pursue in the face of adversity the kind of relationship with the other that brings potential reconciliation and new opportunities for life.

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Gadamer and transcendence In a 1995 interview published in Radical Philosophy, Hans-Georg Gadamer describes himself as intentionally vague about his religious views.2 Jean Grondin’s definitive biography of Gadamer supports the belief in a long-lived agnostic relationship between Gadamer and a confessional faith.3 The con­ sensus in the secondary literature on Gadamer’s relationship with religion also accepts a separation, despite his obvious scholarly contributions to and relevance for biblical and theological hermeneutics.4 And yet, despite these relatively strong assertions regarding Gadamer’s religious belief, there are a handful of instances in Gadamer’s work for which readers might rightly object that he is neither vague nor agnostic about his religious standing. While he may have rejected an institutional or confessional faith, except so far as to describe himself as having been a Lutheran in his youth, no doubt to dis­ tance himself from Martin Heidegger’s Catholicism, according to Grondin,5 it is impossible to read Gadamer’s many works in philosophical hermeneutics without a religious experience of transcendence at its core. While this claim may initially seem forced and out of touch with the larger context of his life and work, at least as it has traditionally been read, a re-reading of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics through this interpretive lens enhances our understanding of his major hermeneutical principles. This is especially the case when one imagines genuine religious experience as an asking of the question in its broadest and fullest sense, and an experience of transcend­ ence as the supreme experience of engaging with the question. Active hermeneutics should be seen as the full embrace of an implicit, even if yet unexplored, transcendence in philosophical hermeneutics. The religious experience of transcendence provides the archetype for superior hermeneutical health and well-being. In Gadamer we find a hyper-Socratic conviction to question that is compelled by an awareness of the world born out of the hardships experienced through life. This is perhaps best described in terms of a particular passion and sensitivity toward the other. As we shall see, it is a passion and sensitivity that may be hermeneutically characterized as a nameless religious experience.6 The correction to objec­ tivity, dogmatism, banality, so-called beneficent guardians, and all other forms of interpretive captivity that reject the self in its manifold possibilities is an experience of the beyond, that is, an experience of transcendence, that catalyzes a partial overcoming and forgetfulness of self and its limitations. A few short weeks before his death in 2002, at the age of 102, Gadamer gave an extraordinary interview to Jens Zimmermann that changes how we ought to think of Gadamer’s entire hermeneutical project.7 Readers of Gadamer are familiar with the importance of Christian thought for his hermeneutical project, especially his reading of Augustine and Aquinas, but his reliance on theology, and his discourse on divinity more generally, did not seem to run deep enough to label him as a religious thinker. Even in light of knowledge of Gadamer’s embrace of transcendence, one would be

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142 Transcendence and the kenotic person hard-pressed to speak of Gadamer’s “faith” per se. Thus, the Zimmermann interview requires some awkward readings and re-readings to conceptu­ ally align this new interpretation of Gadamer with the older, perhaps more comfortable, understanding, for, as Gadamer explains to Zimmermann, “his entire work can be seen as a sustained phenomenological description of transcendence.”8 This phenomenological description is not merely about the limits of human understanding, itself an extremely consequential theme in hermeneutics, but about a “religious” experience of transcendence that goes beyond the limits of human experience. What might we infer about this statement by the mature Gadamer and his use of transcendence to describe his life’s work in philosophical herme­ neutics? Or is it more than this? Is it a continuance of his many years of careful thought, even if now clothed in new language? Is it incommensu­ rate with his previous philosophical hermeneutics and therefore represent­ ative of something entirely new? Perhaps it was only in his later years that Gadamer found the boldness to speak forthrightly about that which he has always held to be important, although personally rather than publicly. Or perhaps, in facing his own mortality at an old age, Gadamer turned to religious comfort in transcendence, and so we ought not to read too much into it. If this is the case, then it would be improper—indeed, a genuine disservice—to reframe his life’s work, even though, by his statement, he invites us to do that very thing. These are difficult questions to answer, as we have so little upon which to base our enquiry. However, in light of the nature of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, we believe that a “hermeneutics of transcendence,” to formu­ late a phrase based upon his suggestive comments, most fulfills the implicit program of this formative thinker in the field of philosophical hermeneutics, even if he was not fully aware of its possible implications, and provides a necessary final expansive context for what we are calling an active herme­ neutics. Re-reading his philosophical hermeneutics after Gadamer’s super­ ficially diagnosed “religious turn” reveals a man’s quest for understanding that had always been driven by a search for God, grounded in an experience of transcendence, and so it was not really a “religious turn” after all, but the emergence of the fuller implications of this persistent quest. Referring to Heidegger, Gadamer says, “For his whole life, his radicalism was driven by an endless search for God. I also search in my own way, but with the dif­ ference that I did not have any important childhood influences in this direc­ tion.”9 What, then, is Gadamer’s “own way” as an endless search for God? And of what relevance is this to active hermeneutics?

Gadamer and religion More than a few readers of Truth and Method have been surprised by Gadamer’s discussion of language when he turns away from the Ancient Greeks—Gadamer is first and foremost a classical philologist, especially

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of Plato and Aristotle—and instead turns to early Christianity for inspi­ ration.10 His discussion of language is central to his overall project, as is evident by his now famous phrase, “Being that can be understood is lan­ guage.”11 In this formulation, we see Gadamer’s emphasis upon meaning over form in language. Formal views of language attend to its forms, often and persistently at the expense of meaning. Functional views of language are primarily concerned with the meaning of language in all that a person can and does do by using language, while recognizing that such mean­ ing must inevitably be conveyed through form.12 In one sense, Gadamer anticipates the so-called linguistic turn in philosophy in his recognition not only that language is the means by which reality is mediated, an advance upon the pre-linguistic notion that equated language and things, but also that language is the medium by which meaning is created and expressed through its utterance.13 However, the turn to the language of Christianity is an unexpected move on Gadamer’s part. In Christianity, Gadamer finds the conceptual and analogical means of explaining the relationship between language and thought. The result is an inherent functional way of thinking about language and thought that has the potential of radical hermeneutical consequences. For instance, if language and thought are inseparable, which Gadamer argues is the case whenever we understand, then a healthy lan­ guage cannot be turned into a tool for the delivery of thought as if it were a neutral medium especially for relating facts. While the view of language as existing only secondarily to thought—thinking or reason comes first, free of language, with language a secondary tool or medium used for its conveyance—may be credited largely to Plato, it is embodied most robustly today in the natural sciences and its attempts at the standardization of communi­ cation as an instrument for conveyance of information. Gadamer, however, believes that our very sense of self and the world is linguistic in nature. To narrow language to a set of fabricated signs and symbols, such as one might find in Kant’s authoritarian “formula” of the categorical imperative14 or in scientific signs (e.g., chemical names and formulas), would be to limit any possible understanding of the world, for it abstracts language from its living conversations with tradition, history, and culture. It is the incar­ nation, especially as formulated in Augustine’s discussion of the Trinity,15 that allows for Gadamer’s correction of this continued misunderstanding. If his hermeneutical approach did not already seem strange, then Gadamer appeals to the Christian notion of the incarnation. He appeals to the incar­ nation, in which the persons of the Trinity are intimately connected or consubstantial, that is, of the same substance (just as thought and language are connected), as a means of correcting the instrumentalization and objec­ tifying of thought and language. For all of the interconnections between theology and philosophical her­ meneutics in Gadamer’s work, one would be challenged to find any biblical studies, readings, or interpretations on Gadamer’s part.16 Reared by his father, an accomplished scientist, Gadamer never had a personal experience

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144 Transcendence and the kenotic person of faith as a child. On Zimmermann’s account, Gadamer’s father rejected religion as something people use to escape reality. The mature Gadamer, by contrast, views it as something that connects us to reality in the broadest sense. Grondin writes that Gadamer “had a sense of the importance and ineffable greatness of religious faith, but this sense he gained through the evocative experience of poetry and the work of art.”17 In this way, Grondin highlights the truly universal nature of transcendence that may be found in any church or place of worship, but may also be found in text, paint­ ing, sculpture, and theatrical performance.18 One fundamentally misunder­ stands the experience of religious transcendence when it is solely expected of and confined to institutionalized religion, that is, religion that is system­ atized, instrumentalized, codified, and exists behind walls, with defined and policed boundaries and names, with the word “spiritual” risking the same undue narrowing along similar lines. For Gadamer, “transcendence” is far more than a useful word to describe an experience of the limits of knowledge, as if one were selecting a clinical term for a medical diagnosis of a condition. The use of the term is an attempt to describe the experience of a truth-event like that provoked by a work of art, such as a symphony or a painting, that simply cannot be described in mere psychological, cultural, or even artistic terms. Such transcendence is somehow beyond not just comprehension but beyond reduction and limita­ tion to such descriptions. The paradox of transcendence, at least in a more explicitly religious context, is that it is an experience that compels us to move beyond experience and to attempt to understand and describe something that by its very nature repeatedly throws us back against our own ignorance and finitude as human beings. One might rightly wonder if an experience of transcendence is a divine conundrum created by an awesome and boundless God, teasing us to think the unthinkable of divinity. Or, to dare a more utilitarian description, transcendence is a way we learn to understand the world in the most open and virtuous manner possible. By reaching toward the beyond—the divine—we simultaneously, if often accidentally, find more of the world, for we are at our most sensitive and receptive to life when we experience what is beyond the mundane. Life is most intimately experienced as an open question and religious transcendence is our constant reminder of this inexhaustible ability and capacity and compulsion to question. In its most obvious form, transcendence is a name given to an awareness of the limits of human understanding and the boundary of the mysterious.19 It is more than merely an experience of puzzlement for which we hope to find a solution. The classic distinction between a problem and a mystery is helpful to understand the difference. A problem is a problem because it is perceived as solvable, while a mystery admits no such potential. A mystery is inviting and compelling, although terminal in terms of a fully satisfactory and exhaustive explanation. When there is still hope of full knowledge, we are presented with a possibility of resolution, some sense of complete comprehension. Problems exist because of an expected ability to

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resolve them and ultimately gain control over them. They are most mean­ ingful when solved—finding fulfillment by being resolved at some point in time. Problems are puzzles to be completed and perfected. When hope of mental domination, whether through cognition, awareness, compartmen­ talization, or some other means, is exhausted, we then encounter a mystery that must remain an open question. The mysterious is meaningful, at least in part, because it cannot be fixed in time, either completed or perfected. The mysterious persists and so draws us along a different temporal plane outside the simple linear logic of the puzzle. Western culture, most visibil­ ity scientific culture in all of its different manifestations, suffers a general impoverishment in these regards, expecting knowledge to fill any void of comprehension, and thereby dissolving mystery into its anticipations about the world. The sense of transcendence goes beyond the expectation of solu­ tions and retains the mystery of experience. If one were to ask the average person to describe the molecular structure of concrete, one might legitimately expect a peculiar look of curiosity and bewilderment. “Why would I know that?,” might be the normal response, for this is an irrelevant puzzle in the context of one’s life. In a similar fash­ ion, one often experiences the limits of understanding in terms of knowledge of facts, but without experiencing “a moment of truth” in any special way except to say “I do not know” with passing flippancy. What one is really saying is: “I do not know and I do not really care.” By contrast, those who experience transcendence share in an urgency—an existential-moral passion —to draw closer to the mysterious. “I do not and probably cannot know fully, and yet I must draw near to experience more!” The sense of having inadequate knowledge brought about by transcendence is of a par­ ticular sort that can create an insatiable appetite, a longing for the beyond, and a desire to seek after it. Gadamer recognizes that religion points us toward a natural and universal experience in which we are confronted by the impossibility of denying our inadequacy. In true religion, we find a joyful, if simultaneously sombre, embrace of inadequacy within transcend­ ence. We lean into it, so to speak, on the way to the divine. This is a mark of healthy hermeneutical experience in our daily lives. Transcendence, as a paradoxical and uniquely important moment of truth, moves us to accept the failure of understanding, and so too our own undoing, in a way that causes a shutter, a startle, perhaps even a fright—“I want to know, to understand and connect to something important.” The medieval scholastic philosopher and theologian Anselm of Canterbury famously writes, “I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but rather, I believe in order that I may understand” (Neque enim quaero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam).20 His related statement “faith seeking understanding” (fides quarens intellectum)21 likewise asks readers to imagine a reprioritizing of the role and value of belief, faith, and understanding. Both “apparent” religious dictums have been used by detractors as examples of the dangerously uncritical nature of

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146 Transcendence and the kenotic person religion and the need to give greater credence to rational deliberation over blind commitments. But are these statements by Anselm examples of an epistemology, setting a standard to guide the acquisition of reliable truth? And are they, therefore, possible examples of failed intellectual credibility? Is Anselm interested in explaining how belief works as a mechanism of the mind—willfully believe first, then subsequently discover understanding? If so, these short phrases represent the common mistakes of confusing theory and practice, thought and action, and the role of application, all discussed in Chapter 2. On the contrary, instead of their being dictums to be applied, the creation of an epistemological hierarchy, and the failure to understand the nature of application, we should read Anselm as offering “descriptions” of a hermeneutics of transcendence and the nature of belief that is common to all such experiences of the beyond. Anselm, following Augustine, realizes that one is possessed of a pas­ sional belief, a faith orientation or conviction of some sort, when one moves into new depths of understanding. Faith and belief, however we may try to define these experiences, are the preconditions for human understanding. As we have previously explored in our examination of active hermeneutics, Anselm argues that understanding is preceded by a lifeworld of assump­ tions and prejudices that form an effective history that makes belief possible. This recognition, for Anselm, is important if we wish to be available and open to and even in pursuit of new experience. Lacking a modern herme­ neutical vocabulary, although not lacking an adequate characterization, Anselm’s shift in conceptualizing the nature of belief and understanding is difficult to explain unless we imagine it as a phenomenological descrip­ tion along the lines of James’s option of choosing living hypotheses. While many await proof for an acceptance of the divine, for an experience of the transcendent, or for access to mystery, Anselm says that belief and faith provide the necessary disposition of openness for dialogue long before the empirical evidence might be discovered. It is not necessarily a claim to vir­ tue for the habituated character, then, to say that one believes, in the sense that one must have a place or point of initial commitment to begin the process of pursuit of transcendence. Of course, in a trivialized sense of what we mean by faith or belief—that of taking an initial step toward fur­ ther exploration—one cannot rightly say otherwise, whether that belief be ethical, political, theological, scientific, or so on, insofar as this is a faith or belief that constitutes the hermeneutical resting place, a position before one takes an active hermeneutical stance and makes an active hermeneuti­ cal move. The active hermeneutical virtue implied is not merely belief and faith—universal to our species, in that we are all located in space and time and oriented toward something—but the perpetuation of “open” belief as the willingness to seek. “I believe in order ….” is, to give it a hermeneuti­ cal bent, a description of an act of the will to overcome, to move beyond one’s finitude, to seek after understanding and transcendence. For some purposes, the notion of belief may even suit the dogmatist well, in that even

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the dogmatist has an orientation to life. Open belief that gives way to depth of understanding is another matter entirely. A hermeneutics of transcendence provides a useful and productive inter­ pretation of Anselm’s admittedly suggestive but not entirely transparent statements. For the active hermeneut, belief and faith are descriptions of potential openness to the revelation of the divine that refuse to be held bondage to objectivity and its epistemic-foundational zeal. One’s faith or belief conviction is driven to maintain a connection (relationship) with that which is already self-evident through an experience of transcendence. Like the much later theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich, Anselm dis­ misses the knowledge-fact orientation for a hermeneutical one in which meaningful experience—that is, understanding—needs to be described differently. 22 Active hermeneutics begins with a commitment of faith to understand that which is without clear reason (not necessarily that there is no reason), whether that be the reasons of others or of God. Dialogue is itself a commitment of faith—a willingness to push forward into the unknown, the beyond—in so much as its subject matter is ever forthcoming and undefined and inconcrete. In a more mundane but still life-affirming sense, when one commits to understanding another, it is always minimally something akin to enacting a faith that seeks understanding. A more accurate view of faith, not in the trivial sense of simply as a point of stasis but as an active orientation toward, is as a term used to describe one’s yearning for understanding that by its very movement into depth interrogates and dissolves prior understanding, even previous belief, by further questioning. In this sense, our hermeneutical description conflates “openness” and “faith” and sets up a perpetual tension between belief and one’s finitude. The process of growing closer to the target of one’s passion (God, the other) involves far more than simple ascription to current dogma, whether this is found in simple formulas or ascription to various authori­ ties—as if faith were simply about one’s epistemological commitments to a given theology, liturgy, or way of practicing a tradition—but also involves a commitment to an orientation to life and transcendence. The dogmatist experiences religion merely on epistemological grounds, “rationalized” by convenience and authority, by means of implementing the routine of wish­ ful thinking. A hermeneutical faith represents a courage to see the other, which, as with openness generally, means a self-understanding that is will­ ing to sacrifice ideas for something greater. As we shall explore further below, the kenotic person has learned to discipline one’s wishful think­ ing. “Faith seeking understanding” in no way implies a way of being that acts as the fortification of unthinking and eager subjugation to the banal. Everything about Anselm’s description opposes the dogmatist’s trivialized faith that yearns to disguise the inability to understand—the incapacity to experience shame and guilt generally—with platitudes born out of a culture of obedience and illusion. His confidence in his own truth closes off other worlds of beauty with a one-dimensional cartography that results in the

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148 Transcendence and the kenotic person assertion of simple fictions about life, meaning, and everything in between. Standard definitions of faith often simply demand agreement with given propositions and credal formulations of God and existence, but faith in its passional sense is more radical and uncommitted to the kinds of packed truths as convention dictates them. Faith as directed toward possible understanding should be taken as one way of characterizing a mode of being, a kenotic orientation to life that includes reason but also much more. The necessary trajectory of faith remains the same in Anselm as it does in active hermeneutics. We begin our search, because we must as creatures that desire to know, with the openness of faith in what is and is not yet. We have achieved neither reason nor understanding and yet we are compelled to search further. It is our passion—our faith—that pushes us into the unknown. The experience of transcendence is a gripping and compelling confrontation with the level of our ignorance that changes us in ways puzzles cannot. Our faith seeking understanding in the face of overwhelming mystery persists nonetheless because we must continue to seek after it. We are beings that want to know even when we realize knowing cannot be achieved. The fulfillment of this way of life in an honest and sincere way is the experience for which mystery and transcendence provide suggestive terms. At this point, an objection from even casual observers of religion may be that religion has failed to fulfill the mandate of faith compelled by tran­ scendence. Instead, religion has come to mean something disappointingly different than the admittedly idealized depiction we have offered above of faith seeking understanding. As a result, religion has come to be typi­ fied as the process of domesticating God, who has become a puzzle to be solved by formulaic means, where these are creeds, liturgies, traditions, confessions, or something else. There are many possible reasons. Perhaps this results from laziness and cowardice, if we look to Kant, or from the desire to appear credible to observers from outside, or from the desire to gain power over creation and culture, but in any case religion can be char­ acterized as having learned how to be objective or at least present itself as objective. Prayer, for example, is one such victim of a loss of transcendence. Sometimes prayer is not given a significant place at all, and other times when it is included it becomes encumbered with relatively trivial matters, such as using the correct formulaic prayers, knowing which of the Trinity one ought to pray to first, or knowing the right procedural application of words to appease God (balancing ingredients of contrition, adoration, thanksgiving, and supplication). We may also discern this shift away from mystery in the general distain for silence before God. Silence for many is terrifying for it represents a willingness to suspend cognitive control over the divine and oneself. Even the most empty chatter in the name of religion brings a sense of ownership and instrumentalization to religious experi­ ence. The active hermeneut must be comfortable with the necessary silence that comes from an experience of mystery as well as comfortable amid the many expressions of language for thankfulness.

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When religious experience is understood simply as an elevated cognition, a knowing instead of an embrace of finitude and ignorance, those involved in such religion cease being religious in a healthy sense, for their religion has become a process of objectification. Given the prevalence of this type of religion, many people, such as Gadamer, have been reluctant to speak of religion at all. This is why Tillich so earnestly tried to avoid proofs for the existence of God, as if God could be quantified by empirical under­ standing. 23 Even if Tillich may not have entirely succeeded in this regard, due to his concern for God and being, the question is not whether there are good reasons to believe in God’s existence, so much as how such argu­ ments reflect one’s orientation to God and transcendence. The question of whether one believes that one can definitively prove by empirical evidence whether or not God exists betrays the scientific and anti-transcendent sen­ timent. The orientation of such an attempt is to see God simply as a thing possessing some property we call “existence,” whatever we might mean by such a term. That so many are consumed with understanding the divine as embodied—as a thing, a person, a being to be observed—is one symptom of a reluctance to experience a divine mystery, that is, to experience an uncreated creator, immaterial and without discernible form. Gadamer and Tillich both realize that we must be appropriately wary of making transcendence an epistemological matter, that is, of making it a matter of merely what we know or do not know about the divine. An expe­ rience of transcendence is a genuine experience of conviction. One stands paradoxically resolute for having experienced it, the thing one cannot be resolute about. Zimmermann recalls Gadamer’s emphasis that the experi­ ence of transcendence is more than merely speculative or theoretical. When “genuinely experienced” we find that it “must have the power of religious conviction.”24 Zimmermann claims that Gadamer’s preferred description is, “the religious feeling of transcendence,” which is very strong language given his history of agnosticism regarding religion. 25 Gadamer uses the term “transcendence” and “the beyond” interchangeably to describe such an awareness. 26 Transcendence, according to Zimmermann, reveals “a limit that points to something greater and more mysterious than ourselves.”27 For Gadamer, transcendence is more than a feeling and more than a par­ ticular belief in a particular God, for it is “something incomprehensible.”28 This presents numerous hurdles, not the least of which is how to speak meaningfully of such an experience without domesticating it and thereby running the risk of negating it.

The hermeneutical relevance of transcendence Transcendence describes an experience that remains by and large ineffable, unspeakable, and incomprehensible. It possesses its own truth and mean­ ing that cannot be transmitted in the vernacular. The relevance of such an experience for broader social and global concerns is initially difficult to imagine until we return to our ongoing question regarding understanding

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150 Transcendence and the kenotic person as necessarily dialogical. Gadamer’s interests in transcendence offers a way of addressing the need for solidarity through a response to transcendence capable of addressing present world crises. 29 We need hermeneutics as a uniquely suitable form of thinking about dia­ logue and human solidarity, including cross-cultural and multi-faith con­ texts. Gadamer believes that neither theology nor the natural sciences are capable of facilitating such a conversation. The only non-marginalizing, non-partisan, non-epistemically biased approach is that of hermeneutics, for its authority is transcendental rather than confessional, bringing a mes­ sage without fixed content. This hermeneutics is possible because of an experience common to all forms of religion that builds solidarity and com­ monality in our shared sense of awe and wonder—a peculiar awareness of ignorance and mystery, as we peer into the beyond, that causes us to think and act differently. Hermeneutics challenges our assumptions regarding authority by giving everyone permission to talk—at least initially. This is quite unlike what we see playing out in cultures where there is a clear hierarchy of expertise and knowledge, giving credibility to some and not others, where the loudest and most often repeated truths tend to become accepted. As Kant recognized in his essay on enlightenment (see Chapter 3), these become the authori­ ties over our lives. An experience of transcendence returns each of us to a place of rebirth, in a sense, for it washes away the priority of authority and already determined answers, transplanting them with an enthusiasm for open questions. While never total, for, again, we are situated within our cultures, languages, authorities, and histories, it is the experience of transcendence that promises the greatest destabilization and potential for understanding. The inherent antagonism of transcendence repeatedly makes us aware of the inherent limitations of all experiences. Through our active hermeneutical engagement, we grow into new conversations never anticipated, often unwanted, and potentially enlightening. As we saw with the dogmatist, too many have been habituated into instinctively shutting out conversations, being unwilling, and possibly even, in certain circumstances or times, being unable (as in the case of Eichmann?) to listen to contrary and challenging opinion. We are sure of ourselves and confident in our worldviews, as if such a confidence was itself evidence of virtuous character rather than vice. Transcendence calls us all back to the virtue of dialogue by asking us to forget ourselves, if only for a few moments. Zimmermann writes of his conversation with Gadamer, “According to Gadamer, the pressing philosophical task is to prepare a dia­ logue between the world religions by discovering in each one a moment of ‘the great chain we call transcendence.’”30 Active hermeneutics represents just this type of impulse, to discover the shared experience of otherness. Where there has been an experience of transcendence, humility neces­ sary follows and, with it, new openness, conversations, and solidarity. Such living responses cannot be avoided except by those who are opposed to life.

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One sadly sees such denials each day in various walks of life, from indi­ viduals caught up in the dogma of popular culture to popular platforms, houses of justice, and political offices by those who claim to have a convic­ tion though bear no fruit because they do not practice hermeneutical vir­ tue. How different would the world be if our daily personal conversations were driven by seeking to know the other, rather than by assuming that we already know because of our preconceived ideas and inclinations? How different would the world be if our leaders and representatives knew the religious conviction of transcendence and its inspired willingness to listen? Of course, this is hardly the sort of thing one might prescribe to leaders and beneficent guardians. One still might imagine the ethical or political changes that might be possible by making these virtues an expectation of health. Gadamer shares with Zimmermann that he admires church-attending Christians, but “also fears the narrow-mindedness and defensive posture effected by institutionalized religion.”31 Gadamer is not the only one who has wondered and continues to wonder about the role of institutionalized religion, especially when it becomes dogmatically driven and intolerant of the other. The force of hermeneutics resides in its requirement that we abandon our self-secured dogmatism—the kind that blinds us to our own insecurities and to the truth of the other. The great hermeneutical goal that supports all our previous active hermeneutical posturing is to find an experience of transcendence that “touches us all” as Gadamer phrases it. 32 There are many institutional and societal structures within our globally connected world that attempt to unite us and bring the world together in a common bond. When they appear to be functioning, we are probably less aware of their existence, but it is when they fail to work—as they so often do—that we are made acutely aware of not just their existence but their lim­ itations and shortcomings. The modern world is in fact a disappointing tes­ timony to the failure of our greatest organizing forces of politics, religion, philosophy, reason, science, and even art, to provide a convincing means of uniting us, to provide a means of overwhelming our fractured self-interests and lack of imagination, and to connect us meaningfully as persons in a manner we might call “peace.” Each has probably attempted to added to the cause of peace in its own way but individually and collectively they have failed to dig deep enough into the nature of human experience to consist­ ently reveal that which “touches us all” without then quickly dressing it up to serve power and politics, money and comfort, egotism and all manner of vice. The problem appears to be both that such institutions are constitu­ tionally unable to address such a vital issue as human nature, as they them­ selves are not living entities, but corporate entities without a soul or will or even thought, and that the kind of experience that we are discussing cannot be corporately practiced but is a matter of individual self-consciousness and concern for the other. Saving the world from our self-imposed violence and hatred means creating a solidarity that is beyond institutional control, but

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152 Transcendence and the kenotic person will need to involve the healthy response of individuals who respond to the transcendent. We need the divine to reveal a better way. While we may not control our experience of transcendence, we may nonetheless encourage its manifestation personally and cross culturally in important ways. Solidarity begins by rethinking the heart of religion, self-understanding, and finitude, abandoning our idols and dogmatisms by challenging authorities, and, most of all, actively embracing what it means to be human as participants in the process of questioning and seeking understanding of ourselves and the other. It also means accepting the harshness of genuine experience and life itself, 33 before we can attempt to bring others together into solidarity with us. Gadamer’s description of transcendence is also unnerving. He states, “When I think of the cross [of Christ], it is like chills running down one’s spine.”34 Merely in contemplating the reality of the crucifixion of Jesus one may find an experience over which there may be no control or under­ standing. “Chills” is more than merely an epistemological claim: “I know something ….” It is an existential description: “I am moved to my core by something I cannot explain ….” If one reflects on the historical nature of the crucifixion of Jesus, perhaps the interesting and interlaced series of events that surround it or the ways in which scholars have interpreted it, there is plenty to think about and possibly even be repulsed by as one contemplates the gruesomeness of that form of Roman punishment. 35 Nevertheless, even if one is viscerally repulsed by this form of ancient torture, one misses something at the heart of it all. The hermeneutical experience means being changed for having encountered the notion of life and death, evil and suf­ fering, and divine forgiveness. To claim that one understands the mean­ ing of the crucifixion (whether one accepts this meaning as true or not) is absurd. The point is not that we call someone who makes such a claim to be wrong or in error, but that we recognize such a person as someone without religious conviction—without a living sense of transcendence. We might say, then, that an experience of transcendence reminds us of the seriousness of life and death, of the reality that living beings are fragile and temporary, that the finite rightly yearns for the infinite that reaches down to us, and that we characterize this as transcendence. An obvious problem emerges when we take transcendence seriously and engage in our conversations with one another. In the case of politics, reli­ gion, science, or any other area of human discourse, the affirmation of a particular revelation or observation, whether it is presented as a fact or creed or simply a declaration, becomes difficult, if not impossible, for it must in some very real sense be made as a provisional or tentative state­ ment—purposefully suspended as absolutely true—in order to make space for genuine conversation and questions. Must I deny my most cherished beliefs, and therefore deny my God, if I am to take the other (who wor­ ships another God) seriously? This is an important and pertinent question to ask, especially for the person who is attempting an active hermeneutics

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in light of belief in truth, even if it is a notion more lightly asserted than definitively declaimed. Zimmermann makes a similar criticism of Gadamer and asks how it is that individual religions may positively affirm their own uniqueness, given that Gadamer wants us to emphasize the most common denominator—the feeling of transcendence. If I as an individual say that I believe Jesus is the son of God and the savior of all humanity, am I not immediately threatening to shut down dialogue with my Jewish friend still awaiting the Messiah or my Buddhist friend who has no monotheistic con­ ceptions? In order to sustain dialogue, must I radically limit my secondary confessional or theological convictions? What, then, might I have to say to the other? More importantly, what might I be able to hear from the other if I am already convinced in the failure of my friend’s ways and ideas? Zimmermann raises an important point in relation to the position held not only by Gadamer but by many others as well. There are many ways to respond to such a situation, and some may well simply believe that denying one’s deepest held religious convictions, even in the light of transcendence, is asking for too much, and that there is an extent to human dialogue, at least in the area of religious beliefs. We may believe that we are able to continue to engage in dialogue with the other over politics, science, the arts, and even a variety of other personal matters, but our religious convictions may cause us to draw the line on an active her­ meneutics. However, we believe that there is, even within the scope of our most deeply held religious convictions, a role for active hermeneutics, espe­ cially if we turn the situation around and begin with our common human­ ity before we emphasize our ultimate differences. Zimmermann’s criticism seems to assume a failure to find initial human solidarity in the context of transcendence, thereby missing the transformative power of transcendence that reorients our previously privileged beliefs and doctrine. If I am already convinced of the failure of another’s faith or belief, whether this is found in the area of religious creed, politics, or even a particular business model, I am holding too strongly to something—at least initially in our conversa­ tion—as I have not yet taken the time to know the other. Indeed, such a failure must be expected given the nature of self-understanding. Progress is possible by accepting this universal flaw of premature categorization and realizing that there may be no genuine conversation when one persists in one’s own finitude. But having committed ourselves to a new ideal that is open to challenging our own beliefs and convictions about even the most sacred—based upon our mutual experiences of radical ignorance, questionability, and mystery—we are open to a profound way of life emerging in which new worlds are opened up that could not have existed before. The authenticity of the experience is measured by how much I forget myself in the encounter, caring less about finding credibility or strength for what I already believe and more about discovering something new about the other and about the world as it might be outside of my current worldview. In being genuinely attentive to the other, I fulfill a promise to share my

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154 Transcendence and the kenotic person humanity and welcome that of the other. Talking with my Jewish friend— indeed, having any friend worth calling friend—does not require my silence or animosity. In a practical manner, a difference in belief should make genuine dialogue easier, because we both begin from somewhere and I am not simply responding from a sense of unstable dogma. If I am truly listen­ ing to the other, I am not merely asserting myself or trying simply to win (which may be true), but must, as transcendence demands, be vulnerable to change. This vulnerability does not automatically and universally demand a rejection of my own theology in order to hear the other, and certainly not of my own self-understanding more generally, which is impossible, as I am the conditions of my finitude through and through, but only that I accept the truth of the event of transcendence that all of my knowing and under­ standing is potentially questionable and “like straw.”36

The experience of transcendence The active hermeneutical interest in transcendence draws attention to changes in personhood, that is, in our own self-understanding, that result in new linguistic and socio-historical interpretations that follow from an experience of “the beyond.” Transcendence shapes and conditions our per­ sonhood, encouraging individuals and, as a result, societies to be uniquely adaptive and healthy, having developed a phronetic orientation. Given the intensely personal and ineffable nature of the experience of transcendence, one cannot offer a specific or sustained examination with vivid detail, as each experience is different and beyond explanation, but one must be content to speak in generalities. To understand transcendence means to experience it, but, even then, to feel less capable of comprehending it. Transcendence presses one until there is an admission of a lack of under­ standing, making the topic uniquely opaque. Nevertheless, there are those who have experienced transcendence and who have attempted to describe such an experience of its mystery. Despite the recognized limitations of such experience, as they themselves might even be willing to admit, it is helpful to briefly consider three well known examples—Thomas Aquinas, Isaiah, and Job—being careful to frame such a discussion in a tentative manner, so as not to risk turning an experience of transcendence into an entity available to scholarly study in an objective sense. Aquinas Thomas Aquinas, whose theological reflections have had immeasurable influence for centuries, is well known for having had a life-changing expe­ rience of transcendence while celebrating Mass. History tells us little to nothing about the event itself, as is to be expected, but we know that it was so disruptive to him that he abandoned his tireless passion to write theology. When pressed by his assistant, Reginald, to continue with his

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enormous project, his writing of his Summa Theologica or summary of theology, Aquinas responded: “Reginald, I cannot, because all that I have written seems like straw to me.”37 Another rendition of the same statement by Aquinas, with slightly different phrasing, reads: “All that I have written seems to me like straw compared to those things that I have seen and have been revealed to me.” It should be noted that “…. compared to those things that I have seen and have been revealed to me” is probably an addition given by tradition rather than Aquinas himself to help to clarify what is, otherwise, an enigmatic statement that bears further scrutiny. “Straw” in this context implies something common and easily over­ looked and, by comparison with other things, such as the writing of great theological works as a leader in the church, of minimal value, something that is perhaps appropriate as food for animals rather than as edifying food for the soul. In a literal sense, straw is of some value, of course, for without it there would be numerous real-life consequences for those who raise it and feed it and the animals involved. Metaphorically the point is that Aquinas believed that his life’s work, which is still widely esteemed, suddenly seemed to him to be so common, so ordinary, and so relatively insignificant that it no longer merited his attention. There is no clear indi­ cation that Aquinas rejected his prior writings, and there is no obvious reason to believe that he suddenly wanted to revise or supplement his work. Instead, his experience forced him to simply stop, no doubt confronted by his own hermeneutical limitations that made him think that he could not continue: “I cannot” continue the work that I was doing, the writing that I was undertaking. In other words, his new sense of “worthwhile” was not a type of shame nor humiliation with what he had achieved, but a new awareness about the ineffability of his subject matter and a compelling need to reframe his life based on his new sense of what is possible and desirable. Having had an experience of the being to whom his writings were devoted created an irresolvable conflict between the nature of that being and his ability to speak of it. The resolution to abandon his work will forever mark a defining moment of clarity in the history of theology, when one of the greatest Christian theologians experienced a hermeneutical paradigm shift that brought his theological work to an abrupt halt. The new horizons forced open by transcendence create new values and meaning about the world and self. Interpretations following such an experi­ ence displace elements of one’s finitude, demanding an extraordinary adap­ tivity to life that did not exist previously. We may only take this story at its face value, delving into conjecture at some risk to the integrity of Aquinas’s actual life. Still, there are anecdotal lessons to be learned in our hypoth­ esizing about his experience. Why did Aquinas not attempt new ways of speaking of God, perhaps becoming an artisan of a different sort, a poet, a painter, anything that might help reveal the divine? If one medium did not work, why not try another? These are all at least possibilities that he might have tried, but he did not. A possible answer is that Aquinas simply

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156 Transcendence and the kenotic person recognized the unbridgeable disparity between his “straw” and the alterity of the being of his attention. In other words, Aquinas merely arrived at a healthy hermeneutical interpretation that so deeply respected the other­ ness of the other that words became wholly inadequate, insufficient, and even indignant and disrespectful. This is perhaps the most obvious conclu­ sion, but it bears modest scrutiny. What hermeneutical event could have the power to redirect such ardent, one might even say dogmatic, devotion to scholarship? Some readers may be tempted to explain away Aquinas’s abrupt change by appealing to his health, age, or simply lack of time given his other respon­ sibilities—no doubt all of these are relevant conditions to some degree, as he was already an older man at the time of this experience and only lived a short time after he uttered these words (he stopped writing in late 1273 and died in 1274). And yet, all of these explanations seem to gloss over the genuineness and risk of transcendence in which the individual experiences much more than a cognitive break but an existential disruption that gener­ ates dissonance and even alienation with one’s conditions. Acutely aware of and not able to break free from his finitude, Aquinas appears to have been brought up short into a realization of his own inadequacy that resulted in internal conflict and anxiety. A more contemporary means of expressing this may perhaps be found in Søren Kierkegaard’s description of “angst” generated by conflict within one’s religious experience, an anxiety between existential reality and the human condition of sinfulness and inadequacy. 38 Inviting this disruption and disconcertion in, allowing it to sweep over one­ self, and then acting on it by living life differently is a sign of active her­ meneutical grow and strength. Like Friedrich Nietzsche’s “will to power,” in which one is able to stand up under the brutal weight of honesty and an awareness of attempting to live life with the least lies, 39 Aquinas finds him­ self faced with an unimaginable decision. Like the dogmatist asked to give up on a family member in the name of hermeneutical health, Aquinas faces his own test of loyalty and love in relation to his own life’s work. The words “I cannot” from one of the most capable thinkers in history— the one who synthesized Aristotle and Christianity into what has become known as Thomist thought—must be seen as profoundly telling. The words “I cannot” are far more than a description of one’s inability. They are also more than merely a new way in which one might exert the will as simply the power of choice. “I cannot” is understandable only because of a new form of enlightenment. “I cannot” really says “I will not continue in the same way because I am now different.” Why would Aquinas say this? “I cannot” might mean something like “I cannot because I understand now what I could not understand before.” Or perhaps, “In the presence of the transcendent my actions will now proceed in light of my recognized igno­ rance of what is possible.” However we wish to phrase it, the leveling effect of “the beyond” equipped Aquinas to act differently by seeing the good differently.

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We must also take note of the fact that Aquinas did not hear the words “start over” or “fix it.” He was silenced by an experience of transcendence in which the perception of the unspeakable nature of his subject matter demanded life-altering changes in thought and action. In his own estima­ tion, no doubt, this new road was the superior among available options but nonetheless an unquestionably difficult one. Indeed, some conversations are not worth beginning and sustaining. Only a lifetime of experience helps us to know these instances. Some discussions are unhealthy and doomed to failure. Only a lifetime of failing helps us to know these occasions. We must learn to know when to close our books—whether these “books” are our set beliefs, formulas, opinions, authorities, or whatever are the dogmas that drive our being—when we are capable of moving beyond them, and when to abandon them altogether, even after we have fully mastered each and every line of them, in light of a confrontation with our own finitude in light of the transcendent. In this manner we might also discern how a healthy religion, like dialogue more generally, ought to seek its own super­ session so as to absolve itself of self-preoccupation. Just as the forgetfulness of oneself, as found in one’s creed, status, or desire, is necessary for the attentiveness to something new, something that did not exist previously, religion risks creating barriers to transcendence when it draws attention to itself and becomes an impediment to experience of the divine. True reli­ gion—as we learn from our greatest theologians—must work toward its own fulfillment in which an experience of transcendence might provide the kind of discontinuity that changes each of us and then the world. If Aquinas had perhaps lived longer, we might have learned how his new self-understanding would have benefited not only himself but also others. The living burden of transcendence for Aquinas would have been for him to learn to see the world and himself anew, and this would have taken a lifetime he did not have left to live. What we find in Aquinas is a form of transcendence that is meaningful because it provides a living example of experience that reorients an individual’s values and actions. Tradition emphasizes his experience for its distinctive and personal character, far more than its possible social relevance, even if there may have been greater social implications on the basis of his stature within the church. Gadamer pushes us to see transcendence in an even fuller light. In Gadamer, we see an emphasis on transcendence that is likewise distinct and personal, but meaningful also for its role in generating human solidarity. Whereas Aquinas’s mystical experience is of a sort typically understood, whether rightly or wrongly, as belonging to the private sphere, Gadamer’s view of transcendence must be shared, even celebrated, as something that may “touch us all.” Its power and relevance should not end with silence, as was the case with Aquinas, but begins with silence and then extends outward as a socially transmitted force for general ethical and moral health. The experience may remain very personal, even unspeakable, and yet retain a place at the heart of social interaction, as we live as creatures enlightened,

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158 Transcendence and the kenotic person not simply by reason, but by an awe and wonder that swallows us with a stupefying inadequacy that frees us to be more aware and sensitive. Isaiah At this point, we turn to the Old Testament prophet Isaiah whose experience of transcendence further illustrates the sense of mystery that we have been discussing. As we have seen, transcendence is alien to one’s sense of self and identity, and more importantly one’s self-understanding (recall the important distinction in Chapter 2 between self-understanding and self-consciousness). Transcendence counters the substance of our self-understanding, our lan­ guage, and our effective-histories as social beings in a manner that pushes us beyond the mundane. In keeping with the larger hermeneutical principle that genuine experience is often negative, an encounter with transcend­ ence is the supreme example of negation by which the self comes under attack in the presence of something greater, an invitation to new life. If we treat the prototypical human as a creature who lives in the moment, an essentially non-hermeneutical being, by which we mean a non-historical creature, for whom language is a semiotic system detached from tradition and the complexity of cultural beliefs, then the effects of transcendence would be limited, a fleeting disorientation in the moment. Such an unusual and distinct experience may give one personal pause and raise novel questions but its reach is shallow and temporary, as are the shifting conditions that make up one’s being in the present. The hermeneu­ tical description of understanding presents a far more radical possibility for it understands the human as potentially existing beyond the moment. When transcendence greets one in the moment, it flows throughout one’s hermeneutical being and its web of temporal-linguistic meanings. A reli­ gious experience of transcendence creates a new language and therefore a new person in an event of truth with potentially long-term consequence. One must learn to speak and act differently because the hermeneutical self is forced into a new world. That new person must now struggle to live and to understand in a foreign land in which the survival of “self” is a genuine question. Some parts of the self must die if one is truly in the presence of the divine, and one’s beliefs, perspectives, and values are placed in question. The imagery in the book of Isaiah has long fascinated readers. In the story of the ancient Israelite prophet, we find a superb description of a hermeneutics of transcendence captured in the words, “Woe to me!” and “I am undone!” (Isa 6:5). To understand these words, we must consider the violent nature of transcendence in the divine-human encounter in Isaiah 6. Isaiah is suddenly present before God who sits on a throne with angels (ser­ aphim) flying above. We are given detail about how frightening and pow­ erful the angels are—quite unlike the quaint cupid-like imagery of angels popularly conceived—each with three sets of wings, whose thundering

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voices shake the doorposts as they praise the divine. Isaiah stands by him­ self in God’s temple as it fills with smoke, giving readers a surreal and even haunting image that overwhelms the senses. How disturbing must it be to come before the divine and, instead of receiving a hand of friendship, to be subjected to awe-inspiring fear. Smoke billows and the ground shakes as the angels shout “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” This is an awkward sentence for, on the one hand, use of the word “holy,” given emphasis three times over, makes evident the clear separation of the divine from all crea­ tion, to the point that even the seraphim must cover their eyes while flying near the divine. On the other hand, this same separated being is somehow connected with creation by filling it with glory. This is an overly simplified binary, like immanence and transcendence more generally, but it is also an example of the play that dissolves the binary concepts in a unique experience that is important for Isaiah. Isaiah becomes the epicenter for this play and cries out “Woe to me!” and “I am ruined!” (NIV), or “Woe is me, for I am undone” (NKJV) before God sitting on the throne. Isaiah responds on two levels, the first level of visceral reaction and the second of realization and understanding. Isaiah experiences the sense of transcendence before he suf­ fers its full effects. Isaiah first responds with the pain of recognition, “Woe to me!” before he articulates his realization of what has happened. As if he is being punched in the gut in the overwhelming presence of the divine, he first exclaims “Woe to me!” as the force of his divine encounter falls upon him. He then declares that “I am undone.” Being “undone” represents the power of understanding that embraces this moment, that conceives of one’s place in the world, and that expresses the seemingly infinite possibilities made evident by the grandness of an unspeakable event. “Undone” implies a disassembly or deconstruction of what is. To paraphrase, “My person is dissolved, destroyed, broken apart.” The language of “I am ruined!” implies something similar but in a more diagnostic than descriptive fash­ ion—“my personhood is wiped out.” In both cases, the meaning seems to be that Isaiah’s established person has been completely overturned in the presence of the divine. The prophet’s moment of truth in transcendence is one in which he becomes aware of greatness so baffling that he chokes on his own state of being, first with his exclamation of woe and then his self-recognition. This is not a self-reflective moment in which his careful reasoning or social self-interpretation in light of how others judge him speaks meaningfully, but is a raw and instinctual act demanded by the situation. On the surface the passage sounds almost ego-centric. Isaiah has come in contact with the divine and yet recoils to a creaturely self-assessment—“Woe to me,” and “I am.” In fact, what we see in Isaiah’s proclamation is his ceasing to be. The exclamation of woe is because the “I” is “destroyed.” What initially appears to be an increase in self-awareness through greater self-reflection is more aptly seen as the last vestiges of self-defense and protection in order

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to preserve his sanity and self-understanding. Why do the angels, created to be in the presence of the divine, cover their eyes with their wings? They too recoil from the transcendent as all creatures must. Isaiah experiences a radical reorientation of his personhood as humility is forced upon him. “I am undone” is neither a choice nor a virtue of the humble. To speak of virtue in this moment implies a volition or habit that is out of place. When lightning strikes, one does not respond by custom or reasoned reflection. Before the divine throne one’s finitude is confronted in a hostile fashion. The holy levels us at the greatest moment of faith. We misunderstand reli­ gion when we conceive of its role as first and foremost a hierarchy of expec­ tations for access to God, making transcendence some sort of religious right required by the privileged on the basis of right belief and action, as if to invert Descartes’s aphorism into “I know, therefore I see.”40 The doctrine of a religious experience of transcendence consists in a struggle to survive transcendence, merely trying to hear the angels whose voices shake the ground, as we too try to cover our eyes from the pain of awe and humility that takes dominion. The sense of the holy as existential dissolution might initially present itself as a non-dialogical experience, something one cannot describe as dia­ logue and therefore as understanding if we accept the hermeneutical claim that all understanding is dialogical. If dialogue is about a subject matter that belongs to no one, then God too must risk in conversation with us. This is theologically problematic. Monotheistic conceptions of the divine might object on grounds that perfection is being challenged by our anthro­ pomorphic limitations in which we are projecting dialogical transcendence. If it is accepted that a perfect divinity (one with fullness and complete­ ness) knows all and cannot be changed in any way, God would then have been less than perfect before such an encounter or, in the very least, dif­ ferent than before. Like objectivity, God cannot change. God is the great unmoved mover, the uncreated creator, the unchanging source of change. It is no mistake that a belief in objectivity and concepts of the divine overlap. An experience of transcendence, then, seems one-sided, monological, and without the creative tensions of “play” as a game to which one surrenders for the sake of understanding. Is God, broadly defined, always “other” than a dialogue partner and in some sense necessarily discontinuous with life as we experience it? Moreover, if the purview of hermeneutics is human understanding as a dialogical activity, then transcendence risks falling out­ side a meaningful examination if it is truly meta-dialogical. A sustained examination of these issues requires a far more intricate discussion than we are able to provide here. It is enough at this point to highlight the obvious problem and to provide one possible way of thinking through the difficulties in the interests of retaining transcendence in light of the divine, especially as we see in Isaiah’s experience of it. The impulse to imagine how the divine, as the other, experiences creation is an interesting but entirely theoretical discussion. While it is one worth having—Does God

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think? Does God think hermeneutically?—it cannot be resolved except in the most provisional manner. We may, however, speak with a greater sense of confidence about the human condition. Regardless of how we answer the question regarding God, we as humans are hermeneutical and there is an assumed dialogue between ourselves and transcendence. Taking for granted that there is no change on behalf of God, our experiences must still be described as dialogical. As it is with objectivity and concepts of realism generally, while there may be an objective world with universal, necessary, and certain truths, and as we have said throughout this volume, we do not question that there are, our major point is that we do not experience objec­ tivity as such in an unmediated way, but in a way that requires an active hermeneutics of understanding. Instead, we experience reality, what we are inclined to call the “facts” of the world, in a way that is interpretive, play­ ful, and dialogical. Such a dialogue cannot be seen as prescribing a method, by which one overcomes interpretive distance and arrives at unmediated knowledge, far less understanding, and our encounter with transcendence similarly cannot be labeled with equivalent terms, such as rational, civil, a process, and other limiting names, for our dialogue with transcendence is free of means of control and social constraint and yet it is part of the conti­ nuity of life. Aquinas and Isaiah respond to transcendence by applying new meaning to subsequent interpretations of life and the self. Transcendence matters not because one encounters an unmovable and unchanging force, but because the self is moved to change. Job Our third and final example examines the book of Job, a story that has been variously interpreted as a drama, a moral tale, and an example of ancient wisdom literature. For us, the book of Job presents another pro­ vocative account of an experience of transcendence, in which God allows a good man to be tested through extraordinary suffering. Job encounters a metaphorical undoing by transcendence as well as a literal undoing in which every good in his life is robbed from him by the Satan, or tempter, and through natural occurrences, while God withholds intervention and allows these events to occur. It is a story that contradicts norms of right and wrong, good and evil, and therefore demands an awkward interpreta­ tion to fit within traditional accounts of the nature of a good God and his relationship with good people. Job is portrayed throughout the account as having ever stronger grounds for rejecting an experience of transcendence (often summarized in citation of the statement made by Job’s wife to him to “curse God and die”; Job 2:9),41 with the final plot twist being what appears on the surface to be a confrontation with a hostile God made angry by Job’s exercising the hermeneutical virtue of questioning, “Why?” Does the question come up short before transcendence? If so, what are the her­ meneutical consequences?

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The biblical account begins with God asking if Satan knows of his devoted follower Job who “feared God and shunned evil” and was “upright” and “blameless” (Job 1:8, NIV). Satan responds with a question: “Does Job fear God for nothing?” (1:9) and then goes on to argue that while Job looks devout, he will quickly become resentful if he suffers. In other words, life is too good for Job to really know his genuine degree of fear for God. Fear is a difficult concept, for we often experience it as a repulsion or aversion. In this context, and in most similar divine-human encounters in Scripture, fear describes a healthy relationship, even a hermeneutically productive one. As another wisdom writer of the Old Testament says, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understand­ ing” (Prov 9:10, NIV). This healthy relationship of fear is the necessary starting point for one who wishes to gain wisdom, and such knowledge then leads to understanding, a concise statement of an active hermeneutics grounded in faith seeking understanding. In the context of the book of Job, we might rephrase Satan’s question: “Does Job really love you as God, or as a utility-God for his own materialistic and even hedonistic ends?” Whether we read this story as an account of historical events or as a dramatic or wisdom take meant to illicit thought and reflection on God, wisdom, and human being, it remains a question about the nature of a good relationship with transcendence. As a reflection on the nature of transcendence itself, this account is not meant to offer answers. The book of Job is designed to move readers into a radical hermeneutical mindset by describing the ineffa­ bility of transcendence and the profound burden of dialogue when relating to the other is filled with apparent rejection and even malevolence. From the very outset, Job is described as someone who is in a good relationship with God. Any accusation against Job is purely hypothetical and without reason. So why, then, the rest of the truly terrible story? The same unwise thinking that compelled Eve to accept Satan’s logic in the Garden—whether we characterize her thinking as immature or even dogmatic in light of her understanding of God’s instructions —seems to be echoed here. This time it is God who allows for a corruption of what he has already judged to be good. In Job 1:12, God accepts the egre­ giously un-cunning logic of Satan’s challenge, “Very well, all that he has is in your power.” In quick order Job’s livelihood, consisting of his earthly possessions of sheep, oxen, and donkeys, his children, and his servants are destroyed by various means, both human and natural. One might even say that, whether they died by direct or indirect means, they were “murdered,” as the intentional killing of innocent victims. When he is told, Job mourns the loss profoundly but still remains pious: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised” (1:21, NIV). It takes very little time to strip Job of all his sources of meaning and value except his fear of God. He has nothing, life has lost most of its ostensive purpose, and yet he praises God.

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Despite the horrific circumstances, Job is depicted by God in the book of Job as remaining a man of integrity, “though you [Satan] incited me [God] against him to ruin without any reason” (Job 2:3, NIV). Though tested without reason, Job has remained steadfast in fear and awe of God. Not satisfied with the outcome, Satan again asks God to “strike” Job, who is then inflicted with torturous sores over his whole body. The only caveat that God imposes for the second round of punishment is that God instructs Satan to spare Job’s life, otherwise no end of depravity is per­ mitted. This command seems merciful on the surface, when, in fact, it only compounds Job’s misery, violating his own desire to no longer exist, again leaving readers to ponder the apparent malevolence. “Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb?,” Job asks (3:11, NIV). Still, despite his new loathing for life, he refuses to condemn God or to violate his fear of the divine: Why is life given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in? For sighing has become my daily food; my groans pour out like water. What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me. I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest, but only turmoil. (Job 3:23–26, NIV) These passages describe the reflections of one in an existential crisis brought about for unknown reasons—although the readers are privy to the terrible intent behind the scenes. It is important to note that these are not the words given in response to a direct experience of transcendence. No doubt Job, like any of us during times of suffering, yearns for an experience of the divine, as any hint of God’s attention to our suffering would offer a sense of relief. And yet, when Job does finally experience the divine in the final parts of the story, his suffering is only compounded. The bulk of the book of Job contains great questions of life and death, goodness and evil, the nature of God and the divine–human relationship, as Job and his associates wrestle with making sense of the situation that can­ not be easily understood. Given the absurdity of how he has been treated, Job’s friends encourage him to simply curse God, that is, to challenge God for his involvement in allowing evil, and then to die. Each person tries to think the unthinkable and hence to explain God, life, and even the nature of the self, but Job is quick to admit that understanding escapes them all, himself included. There are no ready-made answers or formulas for Job or his supposed comforters, no theological schemata or well-thought-through doctrines to apply. Job has only his fear of God.

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164 Transcendence and the kenotic person Given the truly terrible situation of pain and sorrow, Job would be well within his right mind to challenge God: “Why have you done this to me?” Instead of offering a theodicy, in which the author explains the co-existence of radical evil and a good God, however, the biblical author instead empha­ sizes Job’s judgment that he has been wronged. Job recognizes, as do the readers, that God has done something unfair, for Job is innocent, by God’s own admission. Job clearly states: “God has wronged me” (Job 19:6, NIV). And further, he continues: “He tears me down on every side till I am gone ….” (19:10, NIV). There is a sense that, for all of the philosophizing about his situation, there is a straightforward answer: God had done these things and unjustly so. It is in light of this situation that God finally responds to Job. The traditional reading of God’s response to Job’s assertation of being wronged is based on the belief that Job was stepping out of line and that God rebukes him for his impudent tone. Here is a short sample of God’s chilling response to the one he has relentlessly tormented, even if indirectly by means of the Satan: “Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone— while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God42 shouted for joy? Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt’?” (Job 38:2–11, NIV) God berates Job over and over, questioning him in ways that he cannot possibly answer. Job answers God: “I am unworthy—how can I reply to you?

I put my hand over my mouth.

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I spoke once, but I have no answer—

twice, but I will say no more.”

(Job 40:4–5, NIV)

After another set of criticisms by God, Job replies a second time: “You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’ My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:3–6, NIV) In ways similar to Isaiah, Job is undone, both literally and now hermeneu­ tically, in the presence of God. While it sounds like Job’s intelligence has been tested and his ignorance made manifest, these passages are about more than an intellectual humbling by God revealing some basic knowledge to Job. The emphasis is not on ignorance and a lack of knowledge about the creation of the universe, conditions that may be easily remedied if God were willing to instruct Job, as he in some ways does in the passage above. We are instead struck by a new degree of self-loathing on behalf of Job for having experienced a transcendental conversation, even if a forced one in which, though compelled, Job desires to avoid speaking. Despite the terrorizing he has experienced, God eventually gives Job “twice as much as he had before,” and he goes on to have a long life “full of years” (Job 42:10, 17, NIV). So what exactly are we to make of this story of Job and his final encoun­ ter with God? There have been numerous suggestions made as to how to understand this notoriously difficult biblical book. Are we to interpret this story as about how a good man was inflicted for no other reason than to appease God’s curiosity about Job’s fortitude to stand up under extraordi­ nary cruelty? Or perhaps we should focus on God’s desire to win a bet with the tempter, Satan, at the expense of the other, in this case, Job? Or ought we to recognize that asking questions of the divine annoys God and thereby defeats any sincere faith that seeks understanding and only catalyzes the notion of blind dogma as faith? We already know from the story that Job’s situation cannot be a matter of correction or discipline, as if Job had sinned in some way. He had already achieved God’s favor for being a good person, and God does not hesitate to say so. It also makes little sense to say that this is a theodicy, at least in the traditional sense of an explanation of evil in light of a merciful God. Reluctance to see God’s actions as profoundly

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166 Transcendence and the kenotic person upsetting misses the glaring need to rethink the nature of God and evil. Interpreting Job as grounds for a prosperity ethic also profoundly misses the mark. If God gives wealth and health to those he favors, as he does with Job, we must also admit the troubling problem of God treating his favored servant with utter contempt. Many have also used the story of Job as grounds for taking a stoic attitude toward trouble and used it as grounds for trusting God amid suffering, and thereby entirely overlooking the pur­ pose and source of such suffering within the book. Most of the possible meanings of the book of Job seem to be inadequate explanations even of the unfolding plot of the story, as it moves from its heav­ enly conversation over Job through his travail to the divine encounter and restoration.43 Along the way, the book of Job breaks the moral rules and nor­ mative expectations of divine encounter in the monotheistic traditions, as it opens up horizons regarding the divine–human encounter that are not easily explained. Attempts to tame it and hence to use it as an organizing principle for life provide another example of failed objectification. This is exemplified in the popular argument that this story describes God’s desired relationships with his creatures. Indeed Job seems willing to die long before he rejects God, but this explanation too misses the prominent meaning of the narrative. Job and God were already in a “good” relationship as defined by God. It is pure speculation and hypothesis on the part of Satan, accepted by God, that begins this experiment in killing, destruction, and torture. In what sense was Job’s relationship with God bettered? And why not stop with merely taking away Job’s possessions? Why kill his family and then inflict physical injury? Was his life not made unnecessarily tragic by the divine hand? Was this not gratuitously terrible? While there are a few tokens of appreciation given to Job for surviving the test, such as a new family and greater wealth, these in no way supplant the terrors he endured. One cannot merely replace family as if replacing consumer products. This kind of thinking does not seem to recognize the nature of human experience. In the final moments of testing, God finally comes before Job, who has long been desperate for any sense of resolution to his troubles. The final act of transcendence, which occurs in God’s second speech (essentially Job 40–41), is to deny answers,44 to deny Job any sense of intellectual or emotional satisfaction—with the major exception of God speaking to Job directly. God takes away what is left of Job’s sense of self-worth. Job declares: “I despise myself” (Job 42:6, NIV). It is at the moment of his greatest humil­ iation that Job experiences transcendence, and thereby gains a strange sort of freedom. God has pressed Job in the most extreme fashion. He has no resources by which to hold himself up; none of his pride, logic or reason, hope or promise remains. And God knows, of course, that Job believes him to be good, forcing Job to fight for answers he cannot find because his ques­ tions have failed to be radical enough, because they have remained within the established boundaries of what constitutes “goodness” and “evil,” and even the notion of transcendence. Job is caught in a paradox, convinced

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that God has wronged him but believing that God is good. God has not been playing by Job’s assumptions. And so, when Job finally sees God, he is unexpectedly denied consolation and satisfaction, whether these be in the form(s) of psychological, emotional, or spiritual remedies, or in the forms of providing some sort of rationalization and therefore justification for what he rightly objects to as unfair. Being right does not matter. Fairness and justice do not matter. Job is forced to move beyond simple categories of good and evil in his experience of transcendence, apparently at the cost of almost everything but himself. Are we to understand transcendence as not only shared ignorance and the destruction of normative concepts of right and rights, but also the devaluation of self? Cursory readings of the book of Job understand that speaking one’s mind, making moral judgments, and questioning life, are met with con­ tempt, as seen in God’s anger from the storm (Job 4:9–19). But what if we reframe this reading not as divine contempt but as an example of a truly radical experience of dialogical transcendence? This is a confrontational model of transcendence no doubt—emphasizing the negativity of experi­ ence—but it is also relational and dialogical, and ultimately hermeneutical. A truly radical definition of transcendence that both captures the essence of hermeneutical confrontation in relationship and dialogue, but that moves beyond our attempts to capture it within traditional human definitions of the divine–human encounter into new and disconcerting arenas, might offer us a new way of viewing Job. Job’s obvious tests take place through physical and emotional suffering. The less obvious test begins with God’s direct command: “Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me” (Job 38:3, NIV). This is perhaps the most chilling phrase in the entire book. Throughout the book of Job, Job has been seeking an explanation for all that he has confronted. At last, God appears to him and offers him what he has been seeking, but Job is entirely unprepared for the occasion. It is not merely that Job is ignorant of the vastly complex realities of life and God’s power. This is a challenge to converse with transcendence, to stand up under the extraordinary power and weight of divine questions—all the while rec­ ognizing the futility of any possible answers. This is a challenge that Job, no doubt out of fear and inadequacy, initially fails after the first round of divine questioning by refusing to engage meaningfully: “I am unworthy—how can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth. I spoke once, but I have no answer— twice, but I will say no more.” (Job 40:4–5, NIV) If we accept the hermeneutical claim that it is through dialogue that we flourish, becoming healthier for having come into contact with the other,

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then this forced dialogue in which no reasonable person would dare to undertake a dialogue with divine alterity, is perhaps the greatest reward given to Job, far more than his subsequent wealth. Knowledge is not the purpose of this divine–human encounter. The pur­ pose is the hermeneutical challenge to be strong and listen to God, then to marshal the strength to respond in relation to him. What appears by all standards to be confrontational remains an invitation to something more than adversity, but an invitation to dialogue and relationship. God appears, specifically for Job, and speaks with him, not merely at him, contrary to the typical interpretation. This is the most miraculous opportunity of all, an invitation to commune with transcendence. That there is a conversation at all—as ludicrous as the pretense for it appears—reinforces enthusiasm for a hermeneutical framework to develop a normative ethics that involves the presence of questions and answers, radical openness to the other, and recognition of the inability to control the conversation. God goes so far as to demand that Job respond instead of remaining silent: “Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him? Let him who accuses God answer him!” (Job 40:1–2, NIV). In the face of God’s challenge, Job would have wisely kept quiet rather than risk upsetting the divine. God is not interested in such passivity but imposes a hermeneutical principle of charity to invite Job into the play of meaning. Questions, even unanswerable ones, rightly require a response, as conversation partners are due attention and respect and engage each other. In Job 42, Job finally engages God more meaningfully. The story of Job is disturbing, and has been so within both the Jewish and Christian scriptural traditions, as well as within the range of the world’s literature. One cannot help but sense a bitterness throughout the book. But what if we read God’s behavior toward Job as a means of articulating a her­ meneutics of transcendence and its complete leveling of being that results in humility and vulnerability? The promise of transcendence is to challenge us to our very core. One should not expect transcendence to make sense, to be tame, and, especially, to elevate us in self-worth, whatever that might mean. Instead, Job’s example is one of living with absurd transcendence that cannot be rationalized except to say there may be no rationalization in a strict sense. Job is a supreme example of one who is undone, laid bare, even destroyed by an encounter with transcendence. Despising himself as a form of forgetting his finitude—torn from his entrenchment in the normal­ ness of every day—Job’s self-understanding is free to relate to God and the world in its most pure possible fashion.

The kenotic person This section, the concluding one of this volume, brings our discussion to a fitting close by introducing the notion of the kenotic person. The kenotic person is the one who is, by virtue of one’s own abnegation, prepared for

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the experience of divine transcendence. Based upon the model of Jesus Christ as found in the New Testament, the kenotic person, while not divine, reflects the ethical and moral being incarnated in Jesus as a model of hermeneutical virtue. Then, after presenting the model of the kenotic person in some detail based upon the New Testament passage found in Phil 2:6–11, we bring the section to a close with a presentation of the importance of forgiveness. Transcendence, the kenotic person, and Philippians 2 As we have seen in considering the examples of Aquinas, Isaiah, and Job, we need the force of transcendence to compel our vulnerability and to dis­ rupt our previous self-understanding. Transcendence has the possibility of deposing our idols—whether these are material things or conceptions of self—and our self-absorbed dogmatism, as well as challenging our herme­ neutical natures, virtuous or otherwise. Transcendence is no mere supple­ ment to the development of the phronetic way of being, but it provides, to turn the metaphor of transcendence on its head, the substrate that makes a life of wisdom possible. Transcendence in that sense is the foundation for living the wise life as we seek to move beyond that life in transcend­ ent encounter with the divine. We transcendentally turn to the divine not merely or solely as a means of finding comfort and assurance but as the development of our active hermeneutical radicality and strength. This section describes active hermeneutics in terms of a kenotic herme­ neutics that combines a phronetic way of being and the religious experience of transcendence. How might a person live who has achieved some sense of practical wisdom—the ability to live a healthy life through appropriate interpretations that act toward the good—and who has also experienced transcendence? We have chosen to call this the kenotic person. Philosophy, whether for good or for bad, is full of characterizations of the person who excels beyond others. Because of the grounding of such a person in a strong hermeneutical tradition, supported by the Christian tradition, we hope that our description of the kenotic person is not just another such figure. Nevertheless, like other prototypical or hypothetical descriptions of such a figure, for example, Nietzsche’s Übermensch, “Over-Man,” “BeyondMan,” or “Superman,”45 perhaps the best known, one speaks hopefully, perhaps naively, with a generalized goal in mind, rather than in terms of definite and concrete examples. As Aristotle’s wise person (phronimos) shows, one must find a way to live life in the moment filled with idiosyn­ cratic demands without a preprogrammed method or technique, possessing only hermeneutical virtues including a desire to pursue the good in relation to the other. Job represents a prototypical kenotic person, a contrast as we shall see to Nietzsche’s Übermensch, as one forced into an unimaginable depth of vulnerability by transcendence. By contrast, the dogmatist, to whom Nietzsche was also opposed, is filled with self-securities and delusions of

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perspective-less interpretation, willing to go to war, either figuratively or literally, to save a chosen ideology. For Job, the way forward provided by transcendental dialogue is one of courageous hermeneutical virtue. He is self-forgetting, reluctant to impose himself upon the other, living through the question, and retaining the courage to accept the negativity of dialogue. In so much as the kenotic person is a successful allegorical device, we learn how transcendence encourages human excellence, maximizing our capac­ ity to see and hear that which confronts and hurts us. Through the power of transcendence, the kenotic person, as we have seen in Aquinas, Isaiah, and especially Job, is a type of Übermensch, although not in a fully Nietzschian sense. By Übermensch we mean a Beyond-Man, or perhaps better “beyond” person.46 We use the translation Beyond-Man intentionally, not because we think that this is the best rendering of the term in Nietzsche’s philosophical program (it probably is not), but because of the provocative coincidence that Gadamer preferred to describe religious expe­ rience as “the Beyond.”47 This happy coincidence would almost assuredly have been seen as unfortunate by Nietzsche, who was more interested in the human will to power than that of human transcendence. Nevertheless, Nietzsche diagnosed a problem in nineteenth-century Germany regarding religion that has striking parallels to our contemporary situation and that reveal some parallels but also possibilities in comparing the two allegor­ ical figures.48 For example, Nietzsche diagnosed the religious climate in nineteenth-century Germany as a barren one that hollowed out the expe­ rience of transcendence (“killed God,” as Nietzsche phrases it).49 He denied religion’s contribution to self-understanding and subsequent character build­ ing, by instead preferring creeds and formulas to experience. The kenotic person, as we saw in Job, also denies the kind of contemporary religion rep­ resented by his various religious advisors or friends, or as dictated to him by simple religious formulations, in order to experience a direct encounter with God. Like Nietzsche, who labored to show how the Übermensch could bear the weight of reality without relying on lies and illusions to protect himself, the kenotic person bears the weight of transcendence, realized in a radicalized way that goes far beyond the Socratic devotion to the good that levels the self, opening the way toward the new. Of course, Nietzsche would reject such a kenotic person as not actually being “Beyond” or “Super” (as well rejecting Socrates’s epistemological assumptions), for such a person would, in Nietzsche’s view of our argument, simply be more committed to other delusions about life, such as embracing human projections of the divine and being held captive to an enslaved morality, rather than increas­ ing in one’s power to affirm life apart from or beyond conventional cultural religious constraints. Even so, whereas Nietzsche claims that his supposed Übermensch understands the world in its most raw and honest form, with­ out the pretense of the filters of religion, science, politics, and the rest, we believe there are strong grounds to claim the same and, indeed, more for the kenotic person who connects most robustly for having encountered the

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mystery of the divine. The kenotic person is the Beyond-Man. While it is tragic art, music, and suffering that gave birth to raw experiences of the world for Nietzsche, it is only a hermeneutical experience of transcendence that is uniquely able to disrupt the conditions that frustrate understand­ ing. Transcendence recognizes that tragedy and art and similar experiences encourage transcendence, but such transcendence moves beyond experi­ ence in terms of expanding horizons and creating new perceptions of pos­ sibility even in the midst of privation, humiliation, and suffering, what one might characterize as negation. We turn now to the passage in the New Testament, Phil 2:6–11, that pro­ vides the basis for our discussion of the kenotic person. The kenotic person, as we have already described, is a person who is contrary to the dogmatist who insists upon its rights but who negates oneself in acts of understanding. This notion is grounded in a passage that speaks of kenosis, a noun from the Greek verb, kenoō (κενóω), indicating an emptying out. Jesus’s self-empty­ ing in Phil 2:7 tells us that he “emptied himself” (NRSV) or “made himself nothing” (NIV).50 In Philippians 2, Paul sets the stage for the great kenotic passage by writing to the church in Philippi that, since they are united with Christ, they should be of the same mind, spirit, and love. In their relation­ ships, they are to have the same mindset as did Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2:6–11, NIV) This passage has been widely discussed among both biblical scholars and theologians. In some ways, the biblical issues are more straightforward than are the theological ones. There are some interpreters who see a two-staged Christology, beginning with Jesus Christ as the second Adam, reprising the role of Adam but with a redemptive outcome. However, the majority of interpreters see a three-staged Christology, beginning with Jesus Christ in

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the presence of God before descending into incarnation and then triumphing in exaltation.51 However, even if we accept this second interpretation, we are still faced with the theological implications of it. Some scholars see the passage as entirely theological as a description of the divine nature, while others see it as providing an ethical example or model in Jesus Christ as to how to live as a Christian. These need not be at odds with each other, if we understand that the ethical example is based upon the theological statement. For the sake of our discussion of the kenotic person, we must see this passage in the larger light of its hermeneutical implications, not just as a descriptive Christology but as a hermeneutical example. We may thus read the Pauline account as offering a theological explanation of Jesus’s divinity while we may also read it as a descriptive account of the nature of the per­ sonhood of Christ and its ethical implications, and, therefore, as a possible hermeneutical model. As a philosophical and theological concept of consid­ erable debate, however, kenosis is problematic for many reasons (not just as the idea of indicating some kind of emptying). The text in which it is prin­ cipally discussed, Phil 2:7, has provided the basis of numerous and diver­ gent theological interpretations.52 Some embrace the concept of kenosis as necessary for the development of a healthy religious consciousness guided by humility, while others reject it as a principle of human action, instead understanding it as a matter relevant to the divine-personhood of Christ alone. We may gain further insight into what kenosis means if we attend more closely to not just Phil 2:7 but to Phil 2:6. Philippians 2:6 says that Christ Jesus “did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage.” This translation makes it look like Christ Jesus’s rela­ tionship to God was fixed and he chose not to assert it, and then that the kenosis would be a giving up, or emptying, of this fixed status. A perhaps better way to interpret this verse is to say that Christ Jesus did not consider equality with God something to be seized with a death grip, as if there was something more to be gained by doing so, but that he gave up, or emptied himself, of this assertion of power and potentially enhanced position. Any argument by analogy requires that we look at both the similarities and dissimilarities. Given that the primary account of kenosis takes place in the context of a discussion of a divine being, it already frustrates its use as an ethical-normative criterion for active hermeneutics. An active human hermeneutical path toward humility clearly does not begin by relinquish­ ing equality with God, as it is commonly understood of Jesus (unless one acknowledges objectivity as a profane example of worship). And yet, we may adopt this for our purposes in a more generalized sense, emphasizing the ways in which the virtuous choices of an incarnate Christ who refused to see further status and aggrandizement offer hermeneutical guidance. For example, our humility is manifest in our relinquishing of “our” God or our “more than God,” that is, our particular interpretation of divinity, by rec­ ognizing that such a conception is always incomplete and clouded and say­ ing openly and honestly of God, “I don’t fully and completely know, much

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as I would like to!” If we are to entreat new understanding—new languages and invented symbols that allow us to experience new layers of reality—we must be bold enough to empty ourselves of an objective embrace of them. The active hermeneutical way forward is found in a courage to challenge beliefs about reality (our “gods”). For the kenotic person there is a simulta­ neous retreat and advance in this declaration—experience of humility and self-emptying—for in challenging understanding, pushing oneself into an openness to discover the divine, one is allowing for self-denying, forgetting, and negating. Christ’s humbling was surely of a similar kind of retreat and advance (an awkward spatial metaphor) in terms of a divine restraint from seeking to hold on to status and position that provided the means of liberating Jesus for a greater good. His restraint and letting go of his grip, his active emptying, highlights the necessity of self-limitation as the precondition for relationship. In the act of bridging humanity and God (also an awkward metaphor), Christ exists as the most humble being (having inconceivably bracketed or suspended his hold on the divine nature). It is by an active emptying that the world is given new relationship—humility as active and guiding, intentionally working toward God, seen as the good. There are many attempts to formulate a suitable notion of kenosis, many of them inadequate for both Phil 2:6–11 and a larger theological concep­ tion. Condescension is one of the wrong ways to articulate kenosis. It is not self-flagellation or personal harm, not humiliation or disgrace, but a determined and purposeful way of living, made possible by the exercise of profound virtue and strength of character. Kenosis as an informed choice is remarkable by almost any standard and provides an opportunity for emer­ gence of the new. The kenosis of Christ is his embodiment of God’s will, and the emergence of the divine desire and meaning. In Christian interpre­ tation of kenosis, had the Son, Jesus, resisted listening to the Father, God, there could have been no greater or more enhanced relationship. Something would have been irrevocably lost had the Son asserted himself over the voice of the other and exercised the power of autonomy over relationality, privileging self-understanding over a kenotic receptivity. The hermeneutical kenosis offers the possibility of the supreme mani­ festation of reconciliation and intimacy. In the kenotic event one listens to the other so well that the other’s meaning becomes evident in the one. The active hermeneut is seen by the other as a reflection of one’s intended meaning. The “I” of oneself must in some meaningful sense be taken over by the other. This is only possible if I possess within me a reverence—a deep respect—for the other. We recall Gadamer’s discussion of the play of meaning and understanding. Humility in this sense is a relentless desire to understand the other, so much so that we assume and embody the other’s meaning and intention, thereby allowing the other to co-habit with us. If only for a short period, we become someone else in the kenotic experience. In the case of Jesus, this relationship of kenotic oneness is expressed in

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the statement uttered at the outset of events leading to his crucifixion as “Father, if you are willing, take this cup [the torture of crucifixion] from me; yet not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42, NIV). We must be wary of conflating openness and kenosis, and yet the over­ lap is telling. Both are oriented to experience. However, whereas open­ ness is a positional orientation to the other and the world, kenosis is an active undertaking in the light of openness that seeks transcendence and the divine. We must also be careful to distinguish a Socratic-devotion from a Christological-kenosis. Bearing many of the same active hermeneutical virtues, the former is fulfilled in “the good” as heavenly forms, while the latter presupposes its fulfillment in a divine–human relationship in Christ. Kenosis is antithetical to the life of the dogmatist who seeks to make one­ self superior, regardless of any other, divine or otherwise. Kenosis as an acceptance of our finitude and interpretive nature—found in the realization that truth is something we must continually strive toward—is another way of describing the character of the wise person (phronimos) who is skilled at remaining open to the situation—one is sensitive to the good of the moment because of a lifetime of a kind of humility to existence—but whose orien­ tation is toward transcendence and the divine and so in that sense is the fulfillment of the ultimate goal of the wise person. Kenosis as humility is a call to relate to others—the world—in a par­ ticular way. Kenosis represents a hermeneutical virtue necessary for under­ standing. It is not a passive relinquishing, often implied in humility or the notion of becoming simply an empty receptable, but the self-emptying of kenosis requires an active hermeneutical strength to not retain what can­ not or should not be retained. The kenotic person is skilled at this, having learned to walk daily with this extraordinary possibility of invoking one’s power to empty oneself, if only to glimpse alternative realities. Not even the most skilled may sustain this way indefinitely. Akin to a mystical experi­ ence, it is more than a matter of practical skill, for it relies on the existence of a greater world than the sum of the person oneself. The kenotic person must learn to live symbiotically with negative experience and the frustra­ tions of surrounding delusions. The kenotic person commits oneself to the task of overcoming by suspending oneself through the question. The lan­ guage the kenotic person uses and the symbols at one’s disposal provide the apparatus for the greatest of quests, so that the more life is experienced as kenotic, the greater the divide one may leap. Forgiveness and forgetfulness We conclude with a brief treatment of the notion of forgiveness and forget­ fulness. This may appear to be an unusual way of bringing a discussion of transcendence and the kenotic person to a close. However, the life of the kenotic person invites the ability to forgive as a necessary means of actively engaging in the hermeneutical life. Gadamer uses the notion of forgetfulness

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as a way of speaking of overcoming of oneself. His treatment of language in the third part of Truth and Method offers an interesting example of for­ getting. Let us grant for the moment that thought and hence understanding happens through the medium of language, a topic that we discussed in the first part of this chapter. Gadamer observes that the more focus we put on the form of the language, its words, its clauses and how they are formed, the structure of the paragraph, in other words, the formal apparatus, the less we understand the meaning and message. The sooner we forget the medium the sooner we come to understand the meaning. Likewise, if in an encounter with a dialogue partner we are constantly aware of our need to assert our views or simply to refute the other, for whatever motivation, the truth of the subject matter is suppressed and less likely to be discovered, if for no other reason than that our world is not allowed to be challenged. In a very practical way, we must forget ourselves, including our ambitions, our desires to use or take advantage of the other, and our own needs, and seek out the matter at hand, even in the words of my partner. We must give up the desire to control and to dominate.53 This way of experience asks much of both persons. Strictly speaking, we may say that there is always a subject and an object—that is, there is always one person, the “I” of an encounter, and another—but in the moment of genuine dialogue such dis­ tinctions become obstructive and counterproductive. We invite the fullest forms of transcendental understanding when we forget ourselves, as well as that others are other, and overcome boundaries between them. Forgiveness is, at least in part, directly related to forgetfulness. If what we mean by forgiveness is a purposeful forgetfulness, rather than merely the easing of emotional weight over time or the absence of knowledge about the subject matter (one no longer has memory of the event), then the importance of the kenotic way of life is evident. The living of the life of the kenotic person is not guaranteed to engender a positive response in others. Rather than bringing others together in com­ mon experience, the kenotic person probably runs a greater risk of alienat­ ing others, especially those given to objectivity and who are content with dogmatism. In fact, the kenotic person is more likely to incite a strongly negative response and even hostility in others, to the point that we are tempted to respond in kind. It is at this point that we must exercise forgive­ ness as part of our kenotic hermeneutics. Given the power of hostility to grip us, to hold us focused on retribution and retaliation, a much stronger experience is necessary (to draw on a metaphor of physical strength) to overwhelm the anger and provide the means of acting in forgiveness. One might imagine political, cultural, religious, or merely personal grievances for which forgiveness is the primary (or only) way forward toward the good, happiness, and peace. Objectivity, and the popular appeal to “facts,” as the means of settling grievances is perhaps useful in limited circumstances. Knowledge claims, however, typically have little bearing on the dissolution of hostility. If there

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is a lesson to be learned from modern geo-politics it is that the hostility does not boil over and stop but continues as if fueled by limitless fury. It is a confusion of hatred with power. The dogmatic anger is an attempt to retain dominion and power, believing anger to be a sign of strength in maintain­ ing distance between oneself and the other. A hermeneutical forgiveness and kenotic freedom provide the means of living well where anger and hostility must fail. The hermeneutical claim is that transcendence affords each of us the opportunity to engage in a purposeful forgetfulness, in that we are able to revalue meaning in light of transcendent concerns, and that this provides personal forgiveness and, eventually, freedom to live well, individually and even corporately. Human nature being what it is, it is much easier to maintain grudges, carry chips on our shoulders, and remember historical wrongs that encour­ age resentment and antipathy and that close us off to the other and even ourselves. The experience of transcendence should allow us to move beyond our petty grievances—which should be easy enough—so as to enable us to hold more robust and sustainable grievances to account and to see them for what they are. Forgiveness in the latter sense does not absolve others of responsible moral action nor does it mean one literally forgets. Instead, transcendence compels an overcoming or elevation in which the wrongs of the past are recognized as inseparable elements of finitude—part of one’s very self-understanding—reimagined as different possibilities. Instead of resentment and threatening embarrassment, past wrongs become part of a new motivation to find the good. Forgiveness may be directed toward oneself when one finds peace with the failings of one’s finitude, as one remembers and then productively for­ gets and forgives the horrors and embarrassments of one’s own causes of grief and suffering in the world. Forgiveness must also extend to one’s other contexts, whether they are political, social, religious, economic, or the like, even though they may remain the productive ground of evil. It is one’s forgiveness that calls attention to human sickliness, what one might well call depravity, and arouses desire for change. This forgiveness in no way gives permission for such behavior but instead holds oneself and others to account. Transcendence also arrives at an acceptance, a forgiveness of self, that one feels guilty for being frail, needy, and unworthy. Forgetfulness in this sense is simply ceasing to give credence to pride and the need to find self-esteem through outward pressures, such as performance, pleasing of others, and social acceptance. Ultimately the forgiveness of a hermeneutical forgetfulness ought to lose focus on one’s personal finitude and the antag­ onisms of one’s culture just as one must lose focus on words and sentences when speaking meaningfully. When this is achieved, a greater solidarity becomes possible, when we have been freed of much of our anger, threats of embarrassment, and many possible and related insecurities. In its most basic form, forgiveness through transcendence is compelled by the acceptance of ignorance that is common

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to all people. This is no blank slate, of course, for we remain bound to our histories, and so a renewed sense of transcendence is needed. The sustain­ ing of a hermeneutics of forgiveness represents an ability to discipline one’s thinking. We can find encouragement in the humility of Socrates’s para­ dox—“I neither know nor think that I know” (Plato, Apology 21d)—as both an acknowledgment of emptiness and an affirmation of years of expe­ rience and awareness that are necessary for such a kenosis. The humble are able to listen. Likewise, the kenotic are able to listen for having moved into a state of forgiveness because of a new strength to see beyond, and thereby to overcome. We may be pardoned if we translate this into more personal, interactive terms, as the hermeneutical issues we are discussing are, after all, intensely personal. The more personal we realize that they are, the more productive they may well become. When you can hug another person, you can have a dialogue with them. It cannot be a polite and forced hug, as is common among family members united for the holidays. It cannot be a condescending hug, as a celebrity does for a child-fan. It is a hug that unites those who are meeting eye-to-eye to share in the world, not merely confront their individ­ ual worldviews. A hug that celebrates our shared brokenness and finitude is the most cherished kind. Born of innocence and tenderness, it is something experienced most commonly by a parent with a child. It is something most natural to the child and is encouraged in the parent by the child’s openness as a catalyst toward transcendence. The child does not want anything other than to be with the parent and to experience the world. The child has no self-esteem or status to defend nor status quo to honor. Its interests are simple and humble, if also limited in scope and depth. Active kenotic hermeneutics seeks a new form of dialogue in which the basis of reconciliation is a shared religious feeling, typified by the accept­ ance of ignorance and of a shared interest in the good, as a life well lived, happiness, solidarity, and cross-cultural peace, so as to learn about the vulnerability and self-forgetting of the other evident in a hug. A good word to use of this is reconciliation. Reconciliation is used here in the sense of the re-joining of two or more people. The basis of rejoining is not agreement of belief and/or perception—there is no erasure of the self to secure immuta­ ble facts—but a shared experience. Moreover, it is not merely fulfilled by agreeing that we have limited knowledge. Rather, reconciliation is achieved when dialogue partners are overtaken by a particular subject matter that does not belong fully to either one. To be reconciled does not demand agreement or acquiescence. One need not submit to another’s worldview as superior to one’s own, although this might be a routine experience on the road to maturity. In reconciliation, we should expect to find an ever expanding and evolving conversation. Quite simply, talking is allowed to happen freely and its content can be surprising. Talking may end in dis­ agreement and it may be heated, but at least there are voices heard and sustained in an atmosphere of solidarity.

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Gadamer, responding to the topic of religion, says “I simply cannot pro­ tect myself from these questions.”54 Religious questions cannot be avoided for they are a necessary part of trying to make sense of oneself, the other, and the world. Religion must ask the important questions inspired by transcendence. And so, for these reasons, active hermeneutics looks to the experience of transcendence as the supreme experience of questionability needed desperately to save us all.

Conclusion This chapter has provided the final stage in our exploration of the topic of an active hermeneutics laid out over the course the last chapters. In this chapter, we have moved even further than we have in our previous explora­ tion by introducing several important concepts: the importance of religion, transcendence, kenosis, and forgiveness. Each of these is an important topic that we cannot hope to discuss fully here, but each also provides an important plank in our developing notion of an active hermeneutics. When Gadamer suggests that his entire hermeneutical program had been motivated by the notion of transcendence, he releases a drop of liquid into the body of his work that makes all of the individual components line up, and with it provides a major way forward that distinguishes our proposal of an active hermeneutics from other proposals regarding how the wise person should think and act. The more we explore the notion of transcend­ ence within Gadamer’s thought, the more we realize that it opens up pos­ sibilities regarding religion that he perhaps anticipated but that were not fully explored, but that bring our hermeneutical stance into meaningful relationship with our wider agenda and its usefulness within contempo­ rary thought, especially theological discourse. There is a tension within the notion of religion between the kind of dogmatism that often dominates religious discourse and the kind of active hermeneutics that attempts an experience of transcendence and contact with the divine. One would think and even hope that the two would work hand in hand, but the human ten­ dency has been to domesticate transcendence into a set of creeds or dogmas that subdue and stifle transcendence, often as part of the quest for objec­ tivity in the guise of objectivism. Nevertheless, the power of transcend­ ence and mystery that can lead to divine–human encounter is such that they cannot be completely overwhelmed even by dogmatism. We explored how this mystery may be observed in three experiences of transcendence. We were not attempting to create a historical argument, so we took our examples in opposite chronological order. We began with Aquinas when he came to that point in his life, after devoting a huge portion of it to writing the Summa Theologica, that he realized that the transcendent was beyond his grasp. This does not mean that his life’s work was lost, but that his hermeneutical questioning had brought him to the point of understand­ ing that the divine surpassed his anticipations. The prophet Isaiah in his

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human–divine encounter responded by expressing his woe and exclaiming that he was undone, that is, that all of his conventions and structures for the living of life were dissolved in the face of divine transcendence in all of its glory. In concluding with Job, we examined an unusual example, in which all of the dialogue and wisdom of Job’s friends, as sincere and ear­ nest as it might have been, is seen to be inadequate and to fail to answer the question. The effort at dialogue even with God is curtailed until a final encounter, in which God makes clear the limitations of human reasoning and understanding in the presence of divine transcendence. At this point, we turned to the kenotic person. There have been many archetypal figures suggested in the history of philosophy, and we do not wish simply to sug­ gest another without offering one with a difference. This one, the kenotic person, is based upon the depiction of Jesus Christ in Phil 2:6–11 not grasp­ ing to hold on to divine prerogatives but engaging in an act of self-emptying that leads to final divine exaltation. This provides an ethical and moral example for us of the human response of emptying, in which our privileges and self-confidence and dogmas are emptied out so that we might be filled with transcendent understanding. This kind of active hermeneutics is not always going to be welcome, even within intellectual and academic circles, not least because it does not propose a method or a technique for interpre­ tation but an orientation to understanding that is grounded in the question and human self-understanding of the other seeking transcendence. As a result, those who seek to be kenotic persons must be prepared to forgive both themselves and those with whom they enter into dialogue so as to form a genuine basis for active hermeneutics and human understanding.

Notes 1 Hans-Georg Gadamer, A Century of Philosophy: A Conversation with Ric ­ cardo Dottori, trans. Rod Coltmann and Sigrid Koepke (New York: Contin­ uum, 2006), 129. 2 Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Without Poets there is no Philosophy,” Radical Phi­ losophy 69 (1995): 35. 3 Jean Grondin, Hans-Georg Gadamer: A Biography (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011). 4 The literature on Gadamer within biblical and theological studies is already immense and growing, especially in journal articles. Many of the important volumes that introduce Gadamer in constructive ways into biblical and theo­ logical studies have been written by Anthony C. Thiselton, beginning with his initial major volume, The Two Horizons: New Testament Hermeneutics and Philosophical Description with Special Reference to Heidegger, Bultmann, Gadamer, and Wittgenstein (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), followed by some others, such as Brook W. R. Pearson, Corresponding Sense: Paul, Dialec­ tic and Gadamer, BINS 58 (Leiden: Brill, 2001). For a summary of such work, see David J. Fuller, “Gadamer and Biblical Studies: Retrospect and Prospect,” Dialogismus 2 (2017): 17–52. For an overview of Gadamer in such a context, see Stanley E. Porter and Jason C. Robinson, Hermeneutics: An Introduction to Interpretive Theory (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 74–104.

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5 Grondin, Hans-Georg Gadamer, 20. 6 There are two problems to be noted at the outset of our discussion of Gad ­ amer and transcendence in relation to religious experience. The first is the western preoccupation with trying to define religion, something done in highly intellectualized or scientific contexts that routinely fails to appreciate it as a phenomenological or experienced event. The very act of definition is to negate a breadth of meaning by means of imposing limits on experience. In the case of “religion” and “transcendence” this is highly problematic, as these are concepts that appeal to the broadest issues of human nature. In so much as the word “religion” is used in this chapter, it is understood as something ubiquitous, that is, to be found everywhere, and uncertain as to its parameters. The second problem is that “transcendence” is often only understood in binary terms, as the opposition to “immanence.” And so, like objectivity and subjectivity, the meaning of terms rests on opposition instead of a meaningful connection with experience. If there were other terms available in English with less negative connotations but with the same general trajectory of meaning we would use them. We will have to suffice with these terms. 7 Jens Zimmermann, “Ignoramus: Gadamer’s ‘Religious Turn,’” Symposium 6 (2002): 203–17. 8 Zimmermann, “Ignoramus,” 209–10. 9 Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jean Grondin, “Looking Back with Gadamer Over his Writings and their Effective History: A Dialogue with Jean Grodin (1996),” Theory, Culture, and Society 23 (2006): 97. 10 For an earlier version of the discussion on Gadamer, religion, and tran ­ scendence, see Jason C. Robinson, “The Hermeneutical Grounds for Ethical and Political Action: Imagination and Transcendence in Global Reconciliation,” Didasklia 25 (Fall 2015): 79–104, used with permission of the publisher; cf. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd rev. ed., trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 2002), 418–28. 11 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 474. On the importance of language in Gad­ amer’s philosophical hermeneutics, see the various discussions in Lawrence K. Schmidt, ed., Language and Linguisticality in Gadamer’s Hermeneu­ tics (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2000), especially the chapter by Gadamer, “Boundaries of Language” (1985), 9–18, but others as well. 12 For discussion of some of these differences, see Stanley E. Porter, “Linguistic Schools,” in Linguistics and New Testament Greek: Key Issues in the Cur­ rent Debate, ed. David Alan Black and Benjamin L. Merkle (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2020), 11–36. 13 The first identification of the linguistic turn is attributed to Richard Rorty, ed., The Linguistic Turn: Essays in Philosophical Method (Chicago: Univer­ sity of Chicago Press, 1967). An excellent essay on the various manifestations of the linguistic turn is found in Nicholas Birns, “The Three Phases of the Linguistic Turn and Their Literary Manifestations,” Partial Answers 15.2 (2017): 291–313. On the linguistic turn in a variety of disciplines, includ­ ing biblical studies, see Stanley E. Porter, “What is a Text? The Linguistic Turn and Its Implications for New Testament Studies,” in a forthcoming Fest­ schrift. The role of language in mediating reality is a complex one, in which language must be used to describe reality, but then one is bound by language to comment upon language, a use of meta-language, with language folding in upon itself. 14 Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals , trans. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969), 437. 15 Laid out in Augustine, De Trinitate (On the Trinity).

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16 On this point, see Jean Grondin, “Gadamer and Bultmann,” in Philosophical Hermeneutics and Biblical Exegesis, ed. Petr Pokorný and Jan Roskovec, WUNT 153 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 121–43. 17 Grondin, “Gadamer and Bultmann,” 5. 18 This characteristic of transcendence is very similar to discussion over the nature of inspiration. The Christian tradition affirms the special inspiration of its Holy Scriptures. However, the question must be raised regarding the nature of artistic or poetic inspiration. Homer (Odyssey 1.1–20) acknowl­ edges the inspiration of the Muse as he writes his poem, and there have been varying theories of poetic and artistic inspiration down through the centu­ ries. The question revolves around whether scriptural and poetic inspiration are degrees of the same inspiration or differing types of inspiration. 19 Zimmermann, “Ignoramus,” 207. 20 See St. Anselm, Proslogion , trans. M. J. Charlesworth (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1979), ch. 1. 21 St. Anselm, Proslogion , proemium. 22 See, for example, Paul Tillich, My Search for Absolutes , ed. Ruth Nanda Anshen (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967). Cf. Jerry H. Gill, “Paul Tillich’s Religious Epistemology,” Religious Studies 3.2 (1968): 477–98. 23 Whether Tillich was entirely consistent is disputed by William J. Wainwright, “Paul Tillich and Arguments for the Existence of God,” JAAR 39.2 (1971): 171–85. What Wainwright ends up showing is that the very act of seeking after understanding of God is bound to result in formulations that point to reasons for God’s existence, even evidence in a logical sense, whether we wish to label these as formal arguments or not. See further Houghton Craighead, “Paul Tillich’s Arguments for God’s Reality,” The Thomist 39.2 (1975): 309–18, who shows that Tillich’s arguments regarding being end up provid­ ing arguments for the being of God. 24 Zimmermann, “Ignoramus,” 209. 25 Zimmermann, “Ignoramus,” 205. 26 Zimmermann, “Ignoramus,” see endnote 7. 27 Zimmermann, “Ignoramus,” 208. 28 Gadamer, A Century of Philosophy, 78. 29 Zimmermann, “Ignoramus,” 207. 30 As cited in Zimmermann, “Ignoramus,” 207. Original Gadamer quotation from Hans-Georg Gadamer, Die Lektion des Jahrhunderts: Ein philosophis­ cher Dialog mit Riccardo Dottori (Hamburg: LIT Verlag, 2002), 80. 31 Zimmermann, “Ignoramus,” 207. 32 Zimmermann, “Ignoramus,” 208. 33 “Are we not, with this tremendous objective of obliterating all the sharp edges of life, well on the way to turning mankind into sand? Sand! Small, soft, round, unending sand! Is that your ideal, you heralds of the sympathetic affections?” Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, ed. Maudemarie Clarke and Brian Leiter, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 175. 34 Zimmermann, “Ignoramus,” 209. 35 See John Granger Cook, Crucifixion in the Mediterranean World , WUNT 327 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), who traces the use of crucifixion by the Romans to the time of Constantine, when it was abolished. 36 These are words attributed to Aquinas who was reflecting upon his own work at the end of his life. See below. 37 The phrasing is imprecise and exists as part of the Catholic tradition. It is said that Bartholomew of Capua was told by John del Guidice, who apparently heard this from Reginald himself, that these were the words of Aquinas. The wording appears in several different forms within the tradition.

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38 See Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Dread , trans. Walter Lowrie (Prince­ ton: Princeton University Press, 1944). 39 Like some others of Nietzsche’s major ideas, such as the Übermensch (see below), the concept of the “will-to-power” is not fully transparent in its mean­ ing. A major work in which the concept plays a part is Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Adrian del Caro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006 [1883–85]). 40 This sentence plays upon Descartes’s well-known “I think, therefore I am” as a foundation of knowledge based upon rationality, in which one cannot reduce existence to less than the thinking self. See René Descartes, Discourse on Method, 3rd ed., trans. Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998 [1637]) and Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, trans. R. P. Miller (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1982 [1644]). 41 This statement by Job’s wife may also be translated as “bless God and die.” The vast majority of translations render it with “curse” or an equivalent except for a few others, such as the Douay-Rheims translation. The transla­ tion “bless” might arguably be better. Rather than depicting Job as already alienated from the divine, a call for a statement of blessing would indicate that, even in the face of overwhelming pain and sorrow, Job’s wife calls for Job to be committed to relationship with God and engage in dialogue with him, in the form of blessing him. 42 The NIV uses the translation “angels” for “sons of God,” but “angels” has too many connotations that are misleading here, in light of reference to the sons of God gathering at the beginning of Job (see Job 1:6). 43 An earlier attempt to come to terms with Job is found in Stanley E. Porter, “The Message of the Book of Job: Job 42:7b as Key to Interpretation?” The Evangelical Quarterly 63.4 (1991): 291–304. 44 Cf. the comments in David Wolfers, “The Lord’s Second Speech in the Book of Job,” Novum Testamentum 40.4 (1990): 474–99. 45 Various translations have been used for Nietzsche’s phrase, with varying degrees of emotive and other attachments. See Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zara­ thustra, where the term is used in a prominent way. We note our preference below. 46 See the first English translation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (New York: Mac­ millan, 1896) by Alexander Tille for the use of “Beyond-Man.” “Over-man” is perhaps the best translation for the term in Nietzsche’s work because it gives a greater sense of one who realizes a will toward power, that is, the exercise of power. 47 See Zimmermann, “Ignoramus.” 48 Nietzsche was not the only one. Another who marshalled a telling critique of contemporary society, including the role and place of institutional religion, was Søren Kierkegaard, in a variety of his works, including his Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. Walter Lowrie and Joseph Campbell (Prince­ ton: Princeton University Press, 1941). 49 See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science , trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1974), in which he says that God is dead and we as products of Enlightenment thinking have killed him. This thought has been widely interpreted, with some later theologians taking Nietzsche’s statement literally as a statement about God’s death. 50 The Greek noun “kenosis” does not appear in the New Testament, only the ver­ bal form kenoō five times (Rom 4:14; 1 Cor 1:17; 9:15; 2 Cor 9:3; and Phil 2:7). 51 For a summary of the issues, although defending the two-stage view, see James D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making: A New Testament Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1980),

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98–128. For a recent discussion of the history of biblical discussion, see Greg­ ory P. Fewster, “The Philippians ‘Christ Hymn’: Trends in Critical Scholar­ ship,” Currents in Biblical Research 13 (2015): 191–206. A helpful chapter on the major interpretive issues is Stephen E. Fowl, The Story of Christ in the Ethics of Paul, JSNTSup 36 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990), 49–101. 52 See Stephen Pardue, “Kenosis and its Discontents: Towards an Augustinian Account of Divine Humility,” Scottish Journal of Theology 65 (2012): 271–88, as an introduction to contemporary scholarship on this topic. 53 “The great chain that we call transcendence” to use Gadamer’s words, points to a loss of control and domination. It feels as if at every turn there are new forms of control, whether socio-political, techno-scientific, or religio-political. As Gadamer sees it, “…. transcendence is a very good expression to use for saying that we aren’t certain what there is in the beyond or what it is like. None of us can say that we have any mastery over the beyond. We simply can’t say anything about a lot of things ….” Gadamer, A Century of Philoso­ phy, 74. 54 Zimmermann, “Ignoramus,” 207.

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Conclusion

We have reached the end of our modest volume on active hermeneutics, that is, on seeking understanding in an age of objectivity. Our proposal has been undertaken in four chapters, each one making a contribution to our overall development of our hermeneutical program. We realize that some of the ideas that we present in our first chapter on the notion of objectivity will no doubt trouble some of our readers, especially those who have been nurtured in an environment in which the quest for objectivity and clear and determinate realities has led to development of particular methods, and that with all of these called into question there can be unease and even distrust. We simply ask that one reflect on the following question: within the vast range of the sciences, whether natural or human, and the humanities, even after all of the Enlightenment thinking that has occurred, why is there greater intellectual fragmentation than ever before? We do not believe that the answer lies simply in developing more or different methods with the firm belief that they will be able to do what previous ones could not. As we have said from the start, we are not relativists and we believe in reality and truth, and we even believe in method, where appropriate and necessary. However, we also realize that our attempts to describe reality are always hermeneutical in nature and therefore given to various views of understanding. Whereas methods may help us in some respects to be able to say more things about our elusive reality, we believe that there is greater power in dialogue with the other, especially the other who does not hold to the same position, so that we may benefit from each other. We have written this volume at a particular time in history. As we have illustrated in the previous chapters, especially the second and third, there are a variety of contemporary pressures that argue for an increased reliance upon the traditional approach to knowledge. The resulting fragmentation, as various groups isolate from others and shout each other down as they assert their dogmatic stances, is clearly not advancing the hermeneutical enterprise. The world is full of dogmatists who claim to have clear thinking and the right answers to the pressing questions of the day, to the point where they end up excluding the other and with it productive dialogue on a variety of top­ ics. We see these situations—whether they occur in individual relationships

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Conclusion

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or play themselves out on a wider world stage—as counterproductive and hermeneutically suspect. In this volume, we have attempted to develop—in admittedly general and broad ways so as to encompass as many readers in various disciplines as possible—an active hermeneutics that is not simply about method but about a personal stance of the interpreter toward the good. The interpreter is to be a wise person who asks the question regard­ ing experience in self-conscious ways that include and address the other and seeks the good. Such enquiry, we believe, will inevitably ask questions regarding transcendence and encounter with the divine, as we have seen in some exemplary figures. Their encounters have been instructive, especially as they did not expect to engage in the kind of transcendent revelations that they experienced, and the effect of such encounters laid them low. However, they emerged from such encounters in ways that transformed their hermeneutical understanding of themselves and the other and, most of all, the divine and its mystery. We have no program or method or even specific practices to recommend at the end of this exploration, except for human beings to be wise in their thinking and to be open to the other and to the divine. We think that active hermeneutics that is open to the question and ultimately encounters divine transcendence provides a way of thinking about gaining genuine and enduring understanding. We challenge others to join the dialogue.

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Index

Abizadeh, Arash 96n19 adversity 8, 140, 168 Aeschylus 132 analytic statements 35–36, 103 ancients 5, 15–16, 24–25; Greeks 7, 99, 110, 142 Anselm of Canterbury 145–48, 181n21 Anshen, Ruth Nanda 181n22 application 15, 27, 31, 45, 47–49, 59–60, 66, 68, 75–76, 79, 83, 89, 93, 102, 146, 148 Aquinas, Thomas 8, 140–41, 154–57, 161, 169, 170, 178, 181nn36–37 Arendt, Hannah 8, 102, 112, 116, 118–22, 124, 134, 137nn24–25, 137nn27–28 Aristotle i, 7, 10, 20–21, 60–61, 65, 74–77, 80, 82, 93–94, 94n7, 95n16, 95n18, 96n23, 96n26, 97n28, 99, 126, 143, 156, 169; theory and practice 68–71; three modes of activity 69; wisdom 60–61, 65, 69–71, 76, 82, 93, 169 art 16, 59, 64, 66, 69, 81–83, 112, 134, 144, 151, 170–71 Augustine 141, 143, 146, 180n15 authorities 8, 59, 62–63, 79, 102, 116–19, 122–26, 150, 152, 157 authority 13, 37, 42, 62, 79, 85, 91–92, 94, 102–5, 107, 116–18, 120–23, 128–29, 134–35, 139, 147, 150 Ayer, A. J. 54n40 Baert, Patrick 55n49 Barth, Karl 4 Bartholomew of Capua 181n37 Bartlett, Robert C. 97n30 Benaroyo, Lazare 98n64 Benjafield, John G. 136n8

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Berkeley, George 53n25 Bernstein, Richard J. i, 12, 51n5 bias 14, 43, 50, 81, 85, 87–89, 91, 94, 109–10 Birns, Nicholas 180n13 Black, David Alan 180n12 Boden, Margaret 136n8 Bohm, David 47 Bohr, Niels 46–47 Bowden, John 98n61 Brogan, Walter 97n28 Bultmann, Rudolf 4 Carr, David 96n23 Carson, Cathryn 56n61 Chambers, E. 53n25 Christ 152, 169, 172–74, 179 Christianity 143, 156 Christology 171–72 Clarke, Maudemarie 181n33 cleverness 70–74, 84, 92, 112, 130 Collins, Susan D. 97n30 Colodny, R. 55n51 Cook, John Granger 181n35 Cooper, John M. 95n10 Craighead, Houghton 181n23 creativity 39, 40–43, 50, 82, 108–11, 114, 119, 127, 135, 160 Culpepper, Alan 4 culture 8, 11, 18–19, 33, 41, 43, 62, 73, 75–77, 79–81, 84, 91, 101–2, 111, 113–14, 117–18, 122–24, 128, 130, 135, 143–45, 147–48, 150–52, 175–77; assimilation 19; beliefs 158; change 10–11; consciousness 125; constructs 122; contexts 44; discourse 14; environment 92; experience 43; icons 128; influences 6, 116; interests 134–35; legitimacy

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Index 187 13; malaise 113; practices 107; prejudices 63, 115, 133; religious constraints 170; revolution 107; self 127; truths 128 Dallmayr, Fred R. 136n2 Darwin, Charles 10, 51n1, 133, 138n39 Daston, Lorraine 32, 52n13, 52–53n19, 53n23, 53n25, 54nn29–30, 54nn33–38 Dear, Peter 53n24, 53n26, 54n28 Derrida, Jacques 4, 16, 51n7, 62, 95n9 Descartes, René 25, 27, 38, 53n25, 160, 182n40 Dewey, John 38, 55n45 dialogue 9, 12, 63, 76, 80, 83, 85–86, 89–92, 106, 110–11, 113, 115, 124, 129, 132, 146–47, 150, 153–54, 157, 160–62, 167–68, 170, 175, 177, 179, 184–85 Dilthey, Wilhelm 3 discipline(s) i–ii, 1–2, 4–5, 10, 12, 16–17, 19, 21, 25, 42, 60–61, 92, 101, 105–12, 128, 132, 136n9, 147, 185 disciplined 17, 45, 103, 107–8, 115 disinterest 33, 69, 73, 77 divine 8–9, 19, 69, 74–75, 100, 141, 144–49, 152, 155, 157–60, 163, 165, 167–70, 172–74, 178–79, 185; encounter 140, 159–60, 162–63, 166–69, 178–79, 185 doctrine 71, 153, 160, 163 dogma, 1, 35, 106, 111, 118, 121, 133, 147, 151, 154, 156–57, 162, 165, 176, 178–79, 184; dogmatism 7–9, 41, 62, 99, 101–2, 131, 134–36, 141, 151–52, 169, 175, 178; dogmatist 102, 121, 125–30, 132, 146–47, 150, 156, 171, 174, 184 Dunn, James D. G. 182n51 Dunne, Joseph 96n23, 97n31 Duns Scotus 53n25 Durepos, Gabrielle 51n2 Durkheim, Émile 55n49 Dutt, Carsten 94n3 Eger, Martin 22, 45, 52n11, 56n58, 77, 97n35 Eichmann, Adolf 8, 102, 116, 119–22, 124, 135, 150 Einstein, Albert 17, 21, 45, 52n8

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embodiment 79, 140, 173 empiricism 6, 14, 18, 25, 32, 35, 105 Enlightenment 1–2, 5, 8, 10, 32–33, 60, 62, 81, 99, 102, 116–17, 123–24, 126, 150, 156–57, 184 epistemology 4, 15, 24, 26, 34, 51n6, 60, 146–47, 149, 152, 170 ethics 4, 51n6, 78, 80, 107, 113, 168 evil 112, 118–19, 121, 135, 152, 161–67, 176 faith 38, 123, 126, 141–42, 144–48, 150, 153, 160, 162, 165 fallibilism 39–40 Feher, Márta 97n41 Feigl, Herbert 54n40 Fewster, Gregory P. 183n51 Feyerabend, Paul 43, 45, 55n51 finitude 76–77, 94, 107, 111, 124–25, 127, 134, 144, 146–47, 149, 152–57, 160, 168, 174, 176–77 Fish, Stanley 52n9 Fleck, Ludwig 56n52 forgetfulness 103, 141, 157, 174–76 forgiveness 8, 140, 152, 169, 174–78 Foucault, Michel 62, 95n9 foundationalism 16, 24–25, 34 Fowl, Stephen E. 183n51 freedom 27, 32–33, 62, 79, 94, 102, 111, 123–25, 134–35, 166, 176 Fuchs, Stephen 26, 43, 52n18, 56n53 Fuller, David J. 179n4 Fuller, Steve 55n43, 55n48 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 4–9, 51n3, 58, 65, 69, 74, 77–80, 83, 86, 93, 94n1, 94nn3–8, 95nn12–16, 96n20, 97nn29–30, 97nn32–34, 97nn37–40, 97nn42–49, 98nn50–52, 98nn55–60, 99, 127, 136nn1–2, 137n30, 138nn33–38, 138n40, 139, 170, 175, 178, 179nn1–2, 179n4, 180n6, 180nn9–11, 181n28, 181n30, 183n53; effective-history 5; forgetfulness 157, 174–76; fusion of horizons 66, 83; knowledge 7–9, 11–12, 58, 61–63, 65–66, 68–69, 74, 76–77, 79–81, 83, 93–94, 144–45; openness 8, 63, 77, 102, 127, 130–35; philosophical hermeneutics 59–60, 62–63, 75, 102, 139–42; play 7, 59–61, 81–84, 93–94, 173; rationality 60, 76; transcendence

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188 Index 8, 139–45, 149–53, 157, 170, 178; understanding i, 11–12, 58–68, 74–77, 79–82, 93–94, 102, 173; wisdom 7, 60–61, 65, 69, 74–76, 83–84, 93 Gaff, J. G. 137n11 Galison, Peter 32, 52–53n19, 53n23, 54n29 Gibaldi, John 137n15 Gill, Jerry H. 181n22 Gillespie, Michael Allen 96n26 God 61–62, 142, 144, 147–49, 152–53, 155, 158–68, 170–73, 179 Gray, Glenn 103, 136n7 Grieder, Alfons 94n3 Grimm, Jacob 54n32 Grimm, Wilhelm 54n32 Grondin, Jean 141, 144, 179n3, 180n5, 180n9, 181nn16–17 Gunn, Giles 137n15 Habermas, Jürgen 4, 136n2 Hanson, Norwood 55n42, 55n51, 56n56 Harris, Errol E. 50, 56n57, 57n65 health 126–27, 135, 149, 151–52, 157, 162, 166, 172; hermeneutical, inter­ pretive 39, 48, 58–59, 94, 99–101, 111, 141, 143, 145, 156, 167, 169; morality 72–74, 112–13, 119; social 91, 125, 154 Heelan, Patrick 44, 47, 56nn54–55, 57n62 Hegel, G. W. F. 60–61, 83–84, 98n53, 98n60 Heidegger, Martin i, 4, 12, 51n4, 74, 81, 94n7, 96n26, 102–3, 105, 108, 136nn3–7, 136n10, 141–42 Heisenberg, Werner 46–47, 56nn60–61 Helm, Paul 51n6 hermeneutics vii, 8, 59–60, 62–63, 75, 100, 102, 139–43; of science 6, 14, 19, 34, 36, 38, 39–42, 44, 49–50, 77, 80 Homer 74, 181n18 human subject 1, 11, 26, 94 humanities i, 2, 16–17, 21, 25, 37, 49–50, 81, 101, 106, 128, 184 humility 63, 91, 150, 160, 168, 172–74, 177 Hursthouse, Rosalind 71–72, 96nn21–22, 96n24 Husserl, Edmund 3–4 Huxley, Thomas 51n1, 138n39

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hypotheses 13; living and dead 8, 102, 111, 114–16, 127–28, 135, 146 Idhe, Don 80, 97n41 immaturity 116–18, 121 incarnation 143, 171 inspiration 181n18 integration 109–11 interdisciplinarity 7, 16, 101–2, 105–11, 134, 136 Isaiah 8, 140, 154, 158–61, 165, 169–70, 178 James, William 8, 102, 113–14, 116, 134, 137n17, 138n33, 146 Job 8, 140, 154, 161–70, 179, 182n41, 182n42 John del Guidice 181n37 judgment(s) 13, 22–23, 30, 34, 43, 70, 79, 81, 89–90, 94, 101, 114, 120, 123–26, 129, 164, 167; pre-judgment 65, 76–77, 82, 91 Kant, Immanuel i, 8, 26–27, 33, 54nn31–32, 98n51, 102, 116–18, 120–21, 123–24, 127, 132, 134–35, 137nn19–23, 137n26, 137n29, 143, 148, 150, 180n14 kenosis 8, 140, 171–74, 177–78; kenotic freedom 176; kenotic herme­ neutic 169, 175, 177; kenotic person 8, 140, 147–48, 168–75, 179 Kierkegaard, Søren 156, 182n38 Kincaid, Harold 55n50 Kirk, G. S. 52n16 Kiss, Olga 97n41 Klein, Julie 109–10, 137nn11–14 knowledge 7–9, 11–28, 31–32, 34–35, 37–45, 48–50, 53n20, 61–66, 68–74, 76–77, 79–81, 90–94, 102, 105, 107, 109–10, 117, 131, 136, 141, 144–45, 147, 150, 161–62, 165, 168, 175, 177; foundational 25, 48; gen­ uine 20–24; objective 6, 14, 24, 28, 38; practical 79, 81; scientific 34–35, 41–42, 45, 50, 54, 79; theoretical 68, 73–74, 77; universal 27, 58 Kuhn, Thomas 37, 42–43, 45, 48, 55nn42–43, 55n48, 55nn51–52, 56n56 Leiter, Brian 181n33 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 51n7 liberalism 35

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Index 189 linguistics 43, 63, 76, 81, 105, 143, 154, 158 Locke, John 25 logical empiricism 6, 18, 54nn40–41 logical positivism 11, 18, 26, 54nn40– 41; features 36; history of 34–38 Malpas, Jeff 98n64 Marcuse, Herbert 115, 137n18 mathematics 25, 34–36, 47–48, 69 media 13–14, 72, 78, 128–29 Merkle, Benjamin L. 180n12 Merleau-Ponty, Marcel 78, 97n36 metaphysics 4, 16, 24, 37 Mill, John Stuart 138n33 Mills, Albert J. 51n2 Mitscherling, Jeff 98n52, 98n54 Montuschi, E. 57n64 Moore, Stephen 4 morality 22, 59–60, 73, 90, 92, 115, 121–22, 170 Most, Glenn W. 94n3 mystery 8, 29, 64–65, 140, 144–46, 148–50, 153–54, 158, 170, 178, 185 Nagel, Thomas 22, 52n10 Neurath, Otto 54n42 Newell, William H. 109, 137nn11–12 Newton, Isaac 21, 40, 45–46 Nietzsche, Friedrich 38, 55n44, 64, 129, 137n31, 158, 169–71, 181n33, 182n39, 182nn45–46, 182nn48–49 Nussbaum, Martha 96n25 ontology 15, 26, 34, 37, 51n6 openness 8, 17, 28, 39, 42, 59, 63–65, 71, 76–77, 102, 105–7, 111–12, 115, 122–23, 127, 130–35, 139, 146–48, 150, 168, 173–74, 177 Palmer, Richard 4, 94n3 Pardue, Stephen 183n52 Parker, Barry 52n8 Parmenides 24, 37–38 Patte, Daniel 4 peace 151, 175–77 Pearson, Brook W. R. 179n4 phenomenology vii, 44–45, 59, 75, 100, 113, 131, 142, 146 philosophy 4, 6, 13, 15, 19, 21, 24, 26, 34–37, 39, 46, 58, 60–64, 75–76, 79–80, 89, 93–94, 99, 103–5, 115, 145, 147, 150–51, 164, 169–70, 172, 179; analytic 19, 34, 36, 103

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physics 17, 21, 46–47, 52n8, 52n19, 55n46, 107–8 Plato 24, 38, 52n17, 63, 80, 94n10, 97n27, 143, 177 poetry 35, 103, 144 Polanyi, Michael 43, 45, 55–56n51 politics 14, 36, 63, 65, 67, 69, 72–73, 85, 87–89, 91–92, 99, 108, 117, 123, 125–26, 128–29, 133, 146, 151–53, 170, 175–76 Popper, Karl 28, 40–42, 53n20, 55n42, 55n47, 55n49 Porter, Stanley E. 51n2, 95n13, 136n2, 179n4, 180nn12–13, 182n43 post-modernism 16 Powell, Corey S. 51n8 practical reasonableness 58–60, 68, 74, 76–77, 79, 82, 94 practice(s) 1–2, 5, 7, 11–13, 20, 22, 29–32, 36–40, 42–44, 47, 49, 58–61, 66, 68–69, 73–75, 77–81, 84, 89, 92–94, 101, 103, 107–9, 111, 133, 136, 139, 146, 151, 185 prejudice 14, 23, 27, 31, 43–44, 59, 63, 65, 81, 85, 91, 94, 107–8, 114–15, 132–34, 146 psychology 103, 105, 107, 130, 144, 167 Putnam, Hilary 55n42 quantum mechanics 6, 17, 40–41, 46–47 Quine, Willard 35–36, 54n42 racism 101, 115, 123 Ratcliff, J. 137n11 rationalism 1, 6, 32 rationality 60, 64, 76, 82, 102–3, 110, 116, 129–30 Raven, J. E. 52n16 realism 26, 59, 161 reason 6, 14, 15, 17, 25, 29, 33, 36, 41, 61, 70, 80, 102, 116–17, 121, 123, 130, 132, 143, 147–48, 151, 158, 166; practical 7, 12, 50, 60, 61, 68, 90, 99, 100 reconciliation 8, 140, 173, 177 reconstruction 50, 61, 77, 94 relativity 17, 24, 41, 46, 59 religion 8, 73, 107, 115, 122, 128, 139– 41, 144–53, 157, 170, 178, 180n6 Repko, Allen F. 137n11, 137n16 Ricoeur, Paul 4 Robinson, Jason C. 51n2, 94n2, 136n2, 179n4, 180n10

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Index

Ropoly, László 97n41 Rorty, Richard 38, 54n39, 55n45, 55n49, 62, 94n9, 180n13 Schaffer, Simon 53n28 Schiller, Friedrich 98n51 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 3–4 Schmidt, Lawrence K. 4, 180n11 Schofield, M. 52n16 scholarship vii, 62, 108, 111, 156 sciences 6, 11–17, 19, 21, 26, 28–34, 36–45, 48–50, 55n46, 56n57, 61–62, 64, 67, 69, 77, 80, 91–94, 102–3, 105–8, 115, 126, 128, 151–53, 170, 184; cognitive 103, 105, 108; com­ munities 17, 19, 29–31, 42–44, 80, 134; experimental 29–31, 41; hard 12, 17, 37, 43, 49–50, 55n46, 79, 80, 90; human 12, 17, 39, 80–81, 84; modern 17, 26, 32, 38–39, 80; nat­ ural i, 11, 14, 18, 21–22, 33, 43–45, 50, 60–61, 81, 88, 99, 104, 106, 143, 150; objective 10, 13, 15–18, 27, 36–37; scientific method 6, 13, 26, 29–31, 33, 35, 40, 60, 81, 90, 93; social 2, 12, 16, 21, 25, 37, 39, 42, 50, 81, 101, 106 scientific revolution 10, 32 self-consciousness 8, 66, 151, 158 self-understanding 10, 50, 61, 64, 66–68, 71, 75–77, 79–80, 82, 84, 93–94, 104–5, 107–8, 113, 115, 122, 126, 130, 147, 152–54, 157–58, 160, 168–70, 173, 176 Shapin, Steven 53n28 Silverman, Hugh J. 56n54 skepticism 39, 62, 126 Smith, Daniel L. 96n26 Socrates 7, 10, 16, 24, 61, 63–68, 74–76, 99, 129, 170, 177 Stace, W. T. 83, 98n54 Stachel, John 52n8 subject and object 27, 33, 75 subjectivity i, 7, 18, 23, 27–29, 32–33, 38, 43, 49–50, 60, 63, 66, 81, 83, 88, 91–92, 105, 133 symbols 143, 173–74 technology 45, 61–62, 72, 77, 94, 118 Tegmark, Max 57n63

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theology 6, 8, 35, 61–62, 115, 140–41, 143, 146–47, 150, 153–55, 160, 163, 171–73, 178 Thiselton, Anthony 4, 179n4 Tillich, Paul 147, 149, 181nn22–23 Toulmin, Stephen 55–56n51 transcendence 6, 8–9, 107, 130, 139–42, 144–63, 166–71, 174, 176–79, 180n6; hermeneutics of 8, 140, 142, 146–47, 158, 168, 176 Trinity 143, 148 truth, 2, 5–6, 11, 13–15, 17–20, 23–25, 28, 32–33, 35–36, 38, 40–41, 45, 48–49, 58, 61–65, 67–71, 75, 77, 79, 81–87, 89, 91–92, 94, 99–100, 103, 106–7, 111, 114, 124–31, 133, 135, 144–51, 153–54, 158–59, 161, 174–75; objective 18–19, 24–25, 29, 41, 62–64 Turner, Jonathan H. 56n53 Uncertainty Principle 46 unthinking 8, 101–2, 112, 120, 124, 147 Vanhoozer, Kevin 4 Von Glasersfeld, Ernst 45, 56n59 Von Westernhagen, Dörte 94n3 Wainwright, William J. 181n23 Wall, John 96n23 Web, Keith 55n50 Weber, Max 55n49 western thought 35, 37, 99 Widdershoven, Guy 98n64 Wiebe, Elden 51n2 wisdom 7, 58, 60–61, 63–66, 73, 89, 92, 94, 113, 117, 119, 136, 162, 169, 179; ancient 58, 63, 161; practical 6–61, 69–71, 73–76, 82–84, 93, 169; the wise person (phronimos) 7, 63–64, 69–74, 92, 99, 101, 110, 113–14, 121, 130, 134, 169, 174, 178, 185 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 55n42 Wolfers, David 182n44 Zimmermann, Jens 141–42, 144, 149–51, 153, 180nn7–8, 181n19, 181nn24–27, 181nn29–32, 181n34, 182n47, 183n54

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