Hermeneutics is the
art of interpreting. Although it began as a legal and theological methodology
governing the application of civil law, canon law, and the interpretation of
Scripture, it developed into a general theory of human understanding through
the work of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Dilthey, Martin Heidegger,
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, and Jacques Derrida. Hermeneutics proved to
be much bigger than theology or legal theory. The comprehension of any written
text requires hermeneutics; reading a literary text is as much a hermeneutic
act as interpreting law or Scripture.
Without collapsing
critical thinking into relativism, hermeneutics recognizes the historicity of
human understanding. Ideas are nested in historical, linguistic, and cultural
horizons of meaning. A philosophical, theological, or literary problem can only
be genuinely understood through a grasp of its origin. Hermeneutics is in part
the practice of historical retrieval, the re-construction of the historical
context of scientific and literary works. Hermeneutics does not re-construct
the past for its own sake; it always seeks to understand the particular way a
problem engages the present. A philosophical impulse motivates hermeneutic
re-construction, a desire to engage a historically transmitted question as a genuine
question, worthy of consideration in its own right. By addressing questions
within ever-new horizons, hermeneutic understanding strives to break through
the limitations of a particular world-view to the matter that calls to
thinking.Ý
Hermeneutics opposes
the radical relativist notion that meaning cannot be trans-lingual. As the
speculative grammarians of the Middle Ages recognized, all languages are rooted in a depth grammar of human
meaning. This ontological grammar is not a meta-language in which everything
can be said. Rather, it is the single horizon of human understanding, which
makes speakers of various languages members of a human community. On the other
hand, hermeneutics opposes the rationalist tendency to downplay the uniqueness
of languages. Hermeneutics is not satisfied with translating
the language of the other; it wants to speak with the other in the
language of the other.
Hermeneutics is
philosophy in the original sense of the word, the love of wisdom, the search
for as comprehensive an understanding of human existence as possible.
The
Need for Inter-Disciplinary Collaboration
Hermeneutics cannot
happen without a level of inter-disciplinary collaboration that does not yet
exist on university campuses. The theologian needs the philosopher as much as
the philosopher needs the theologian; both need the literary critic.
Hermeneutics is a resolute break with the specialization that has isolated
academic disciplines, an effort to redress fragmentation without infringing
upon any science's unique area of inquiry.
The
Need for Inter-Linguistic Collaboration
On a certain level,
translation is impossible. What is said in a particular language is said in a
distinct form of life, a historical context of meaning. The only way to
understand a text is to read it in its original language; the only way to read
a language is to be familiar with its form of life. Nonetheless, as Walter
Benjamin put it, we must translate. Translation is not a simple
substitution of language, but a hermeneutic exercise of interpreting how a
meaning can be transposed into a historical-linguistic horizon different from
the one in which it originated. What emerges in the target language is not
identical to the original,
nor wholly different; it is a new expression of the meaning, an effect of its
history (Wirkungsgeschichte).
The
Need for Inter-Religious Collaboration
Hermeneutics has had
immense impulses from theology through the work of Roman Catholic theologians
Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Bernard Lonergan, Protestant
theologians Friedrich Schleiermacher and Karl Barth, and Jewish theologians
Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas. The philosophical and
literary traditions of the world are intimately bound up with the practice of
human religion. Understanding traditional texts is not possible without a
religious context. This understanding can be independent of an individual
religious commitment. Hermeneutics acknowledges that the meaning of a religious
text is uniquely disclosed within the horizon of a particular faith; however,
hermeneutics is equally interested in reading religious texts within the
horizon of un-belief. In the hermeneutic universe, no voice is excluded from
the conversation because of a faith commitment or a lack thereof. According to
Hans-Georg Gadamer, our pre-judgments do not impede understanding; on the
contrary, they make it possible.
The
Need for Inter-National Collaboration
The world of business
knows that the economy is global; the world of academia has been slower to
recognize the global unification of research through
communication technology. A university can no longer remain
content within its national boundaries; it must become a center for
inter-national collaboration. We only understand the other by entering their
horizon. We only enter the horizon of the other by acknowledging its otherness.
We must meet. We must interpret. The contemporary
university must become a center for inter-cultural and intra-cultural dialogue
if it is to remain relevant in the twenty first century.