This chapter concerns the appropriation and realization of values by persons living with others in time. Optimistically, time might be seen as the opportunity for one to become aware of the good received in creation, to be attracted in turn to creative action, and therein to exercise one's freedom. More pessimistically, the history of human freedom has never been a tale simply of the good, for the human possibility to do good is correlatively the ability to fail and to do evil. Consequently, the task here is not simply to draw from history a vision of the good and of values, but to determine how to decipher these from a history of human ambiguities and to work with persons of other outlooks in applying these in new and creative ways. In a word the task is one of interpretation, that is to say, of hermeneutics.
DIMENSIONS OF THE PROBLEM
The term `hermeneutics' is derived from the son of Zeus, Hermes, the messenger of the Olympian gods. This etymological root with its three elements--(1) a messenger, (2) from the gods and (3) to mankind--suggests three corresponding dimensions of our problem, namely, hermeneutics, values and historicity.
Hermeneutics. The circumstances of the Greek messenger make manifest the basic dilemma of hermeneutics and interpretation, which has come to be called the hermeneutic circle. This consists in the fact that any understanding of the parts requires an understanding of the whole, while the grasp of the whole depends upon some awareness of its parts. This appears in four ways. First, the herald had not merely to pass on a written text, but to speak or proclaim it. This could be done only by reading through all the parts of the message in sequence. But grasping these as parts requires some understanding of the whole message from the very beginning. How can a whole of meaning depend upon parts, which for their very meaning depend upon the whole? Secondly, the message had to be conveyed in a particular historical time and place, and with specific intonation and inflection. But this would convey only one particular sense from the many potentialities of the words. Thirdly, the messenger had not only to express, but also to explain the message and its ramifications or meaning. This required a certain awareness of the broader context of the issue and of the language as the repository of the culture within which the message was composed. In sum, in order to interpret, convey, or receive a message, some sense of the whole is required for assembling and interpreting its parts; but how can one know the whole before knowing its parts?
This appears also from the task of the messenger in translating or bearing the meaning of the text from the source in its own context, to others in their distinctive set of circumstances and with their projects and preoccupations. The etymology of the term underlines this task. `Interpret' combines praesto: to show, manifest or exhibit, with the prefix inter to indicate the distinction of the one from whom and the one to whom the message is passed.1 This difference could be between past and present, as when an ancient text is being reread today; between one culture and another, as when a text in another language than one's own is being interpreted; or indeed, between persons, even in the same culture and time, provided full attention be paid to the uniqueness of each person. But given this difference, how is communication and its implied `community' between the two contexts possible? And were it not to be possible we would be left with never-ending violent clashes between persons, classes and values.
Values. The term `value' was derived from the economic sphere where it meant the amount of a commodity required in order to bring a certain price. This is reflected also in the term `axiology,' the root of which means "weighing as much" or "worth as much." This has objective content, for the good must really "weigh in"; it must make a real difference.2
But the term `value' expresses this good especially as related to persons who actually acknowledge it as a good and respond to it as desirable. Thus, different individuals or groups, or possibly the same but at different periods, may have distinct sets of values as they become sensitive to, and prize, distinct sets of goods. More generally, over time a subtle shift takes place in the distinctive ranking of the degree to which they prize various goods. By so doing they delineate among objective moral goods a certain pattern of values which in a more stable fashion mirrors their corporate free choices. This constitutes the basic topology of a culture; as repeatedly reaffirmed through time, it builds a tradition or heritage.
By giving shape to the culture, values constitute the prime pattern and gradation of goods experienced from their earliest years by persons born into that heritage. In these terms they interpret and shape the development of their relations with other persons and groups. Young persons, as it were, peer out at the world through cultural lenses which were formed by their family and ancestors and which reflect the pattern of choices made by their community through its long history--often in its most trying circumstances. Like a pair of glasses, values do not create the object, but they do reveal and focus attention upon certain goods and patterns of goods rather than upon others.
Thus values become the basic orienting factor for one's affective and emotional life. Over time, they encourage certain patterns of action--and even of physical growth--which, in turn, reinforce the pattern of values. Through this process we constitute our universe of moral concern in terms of which we struggle to achieve, mourn our failures, and celebrate our successes.3 This is our world of hopes and fears, in terms of which, as Plato wrote in the Laches, our lives have moral meaning and one can properly begin to speak of virtues.
The reference to the god, Hermes, in the term `hermeneutics' suggests something of the depth of the meaning which is sought and its implication for the world of values. For the message borne by Hermes is not merely an abstract mathematical formula or a methodological prescription devoid of human meaning and value. Rather, it is the limitless wisdom regarding the source--and hence reality--and regarding the priorities--and hence the value--of all. Hesiod had appealed for this in the introduction to his Theogony: "Hail, children of Zeus! Grant lovely song and celebrate the holy race of the deathless gods who are forever. . . . Tell how at the first gods and earth came to be."4
Aristotle indicated this concern for values in describing his science of wisdom as "knowing to what end each thing must be done . . . ; and this end is the good of that thing, and in general the supreme good in the whole of nature." Such a science will be most divine, for: "(1) God is thought to be among the causes of all things and to be a first principle, and (2) such a science either God alone can have, or God above all others. All the sciences, indeed, are more necessary than this, but none is better."5 Hence, rather than considering things in a perspective that is only temporal and totally changing--with an implied total relativization of all--hermeneutics or interpretation is essentially open to a vision of what is most real in itself and most lasting through time, that is, to the perennial in the realm of being and values.
Historicity. In undertaking his search for unchanging and permanent guides for human action Socrates had directed the attention of the Western mind away from the temporal and changing. In redirected attention back to this changing universe, the modern mind still echoed Socrates by searching for the permanent structures of complex entities and the stable laws of change. Nevertheless, its attention to the essentially temporal character of mankind and hence to the uniqueness of each decision, individual and corporate, opened important new horizons.
In the term hermeneutics, the element of translation or interpretation by stresses the presentation to the one who receives the message. This makes their historical situation, and hence the historical character of human life, essential. It brings into consideration not merely the persuit of general truth, but those to whom truth is expressed, namely, persons in the concrete circumstances of their cultures as these have developed through the history of human interaction with nature, with other human beings and with God.
This human history sets the circumstances in which one perceives the values presented in the tradition and then mobilizes his or her own project toward the future. Given the admixture of good and evil in human action the process of realizing the good in human history always has been compromised with evil. Consequently the past as well as the present must always be deciphered or interpreted in order to identify its value content--as well as the contradictions of that content. Projections towards the realization of values in the future must provide also for encountering and overcoming evil.
THE CHALLENGE TO HERMENEUTICS
In working upon these three themes: hermeneutics, values and historicity, there are two major problems. One concerns truth; it is the rationalist/enlightenment ideal of clarity for all knowledge worthy of the name. The other concerns the good as the object of our will; it is our penchant for considering either only what is good or of value, or only what is evil.
Truth
The enlightenment ideal focuses upon ideas which are clear and distinct both in themselves and in their interconnection. As such they are divorced--often intentionally--from existential or temporal significance. Such an ideal of human knowledge, it is proposed, would be achieved either through an intellect working by itself from an Archemedian principle or through the senses drawing their ideas from experience and combining them in myriad tautological transformations.6 In either case the result is an a-temporal and consequently non-historical ideal of knowledge. This revolutionary view was adhered to even by the romantics who appeared to oppose it, for in turning to the past and to myths they too sought clear and distinct knowledge of human reality. Thinking that this could be attained if all was understood in its historical context and sequence, they placed historicity ultimately at the service of the rationalist ideal.
In the rationalist view any meaning not clearly and distinctly perceived was an idol to be smashed, an idea to be bracketed by doubt, or something to be wiped clean from the slate of the mind as irrational and coercive. Any type of judgment--even if provisional--made before all had been examined and its clarity and distinctness established would be essentially a pre-judgment or prejudice, and therefore a dangerous imposition by the will.
This raises a number of problems. First, absolute knowledge of oneself or of others, simply and without condition, is not possible, for the knower is always conditioned according to his or her position in time and space and in relation to others. But neither is such knowledge of ultimate interest for the reality of human knowledge, as of being, develops in time and with others. This does not exclude the more limited projects of scientific knowledge, but it does identify these precisely as limited and specialized views: they make specific and important--but not all-controlling--contributions.
Secondly, as reason is had by all and completely according to Descartes,7 authority could be only an entitlement of some to decide issues by an application of their will rather than according to an authentic understanding of the truth or justice of an issue. Further, the limited number of people in authority means that the vision of which they disposed would be limited by restricted individual interests. Finally, as one decision constitutes a precedent for those to follow, authority must become fundamentally bankrupt and hence corruptive.8
Hermeneutics will need to relocate knowledge in the ongoing process of human discovery as taking place within a still broader project of human interaction.
Good
A second problem area for hermeneutics concerns the good, for it is important to avoid the danger of attempting to take either the good or the bad--values or their negations--in isolation one from another. In considering only the good, or values, there is danger of abstracting from human life; one loses the sense of the struggle to realize values and tends to supplant this with an idealistic simplicity and inhumane rigor. Ultimately this can only discourage and then destroy authentically human efforts toward the realization of values. Further, recognizing that the values we experience have been embodied in our traditions, by considering only values we are in danger either of considering as an absolute norm a tradition which in human history can only be ambiguous--thereby continuing its disvalues as well--or upon recognizing evil therein of rejecting the tradition as a whole.
Finally, it is sometimes observed that the tendency to turn to tradition gives a priority to conservatism in personal ethos or public politics. Those who by privileged education have been able to become familiar with that tradition are constituted thereby as an elite in relation to which others, rather than being encouraged in their freedom, are pressed into a state of dependency.
Other problems derive from treating the negation of value without the broader context of the good--that is, of making evil the context for the consideration of the good. The meaning of evil is dependent upon the good and cannot be understood without some notion thereof. On the one hand, one might surreptitiously suppose a pattern of values which, being unarticulated and uncriticized, is in danger of being partial or false--and later disasterously misleading in our effort to realize a society worthy of mankind. On the other hand, and still worse, one might have no notion of the human good and thus reduce the description of evil to the simply factual. In that case, it would be no more than a structure described by a value-free theory, without relation to the area of human freedom or responsibility. The antithesis, evil, without its thesis, good, is either blind to, or devoid of, value concern.
Finally, where all, including evil, is a mere state of affairs, one cannot hope to generate a sense of the good or of value. When the horizon becomes one of mere psychological manipulation of the ego, the response can be only by further manipulation. This allows the ego to dominate the self and thereby excludes human freedom. Politically, for lack of an horizon adequate for the appreciation of freedom no progressive liberation can occur. Instead socio-political changes become mere substitutions of one manipulator for another until there arrives one whose permanence is due to his or her success in repressing others.
The problem then is how to understand or interpret human values in a tradition, which, in its human ambiguity, contains not only its classical ideals, but its historical contradictions. This enables one, in the words of John Dewey, to discover
in thoughtful observation and experiment the method of administering the unfinished processes of existence so that frail goods shall be substantiated, secure goods be extended and the precarious promises of good that haunt experienced things be more liberally fulfilled.9
The response here will follow a dialectical pattern. The thesis will concern the hermeneutics of value discovery in history and tradition. The critique or antithesis will look at the way contradictions of value also are integral to the dynamics of human social structures and the problems this generates for deciphering the values in one's tradition, for sharing in the vision of other people and for working together toward a future which more fully realizes human values. The final step will look for the ways in which tradition and critique are mutually interdependent, working as thesis and antithesis toward the elaboration of a synthesis in which each person can make his/her full and proper contribution to life in our times.
TRADITION
This section will attend: first to tradition as the normative locus and summation of the ambiguous human experience of values; second, to the notion of application as the progressive revelation of meaning and of value in the concrete circumstances of history; and third to hermeneutics as a method for making positive use of the distinctiveness of one's own point in history in order more broadly to appreciate this content of human experience.
To situate and emphasize the relation of meaning to tradition John Caputo, in Act and Agent: Foundations for Moral Education and Character Development, notes that from its very beginnings before birth one's experience is lived in and with the biological rhythms of one's mother. Upon birth there follows a progressively broader sharing in the life of parents and siblings; this is the context in which one is fully at peace, and hence most open to personal growth and social development. In a word, from its beginning one's life has been historical: it has been lived in time and with other persons. In the family human life and learning is realized in relation to prior life and learning upon which it depends for development and orientation. This is the universal condition of each person, and consequently of the development of human awareness and knowledge.
In terms of this phenomenological understanding interpersonal dependence is not unnatural--quite the contrary. We depend for our being upon our creator, we are conceived in dependence upon our parents, and we are nurtured by them with care and concern. Through the years we depend continually upon our family and peers, school and community. Beyond our personal and social group we turn eagerly to other persons whom we recognize as superior, not basically in terms of their will, but in terms of their insight and judgment precisely in those matters where truth, reason and balanced judgment are required. The preeminence or authority of wise persons in the community is not something they usurp or with which they are arbitrarily endowed, but is based upon their capabilities and acknowledged in our free and reasoned response. Thus, the burden of Plato's Republic is precisely the education of the future leader to be able to exercise authority, for while the leader who is wise but indecisive may be ineffective, the one who is decisive but foolish is bound upon destruction.
From this notion of authority it is possible to construct that of tradition by adding to present interchange additional generations with their accumulation of human insight predicated upon the wealth of their human experience through time. As a process of trial and error, of continual correction and addition, history constitutes a type of learning and testing laboratory in which the strengths of various insights can be identified and reinforced, while their deficiencies are corrected and complemented. The cumulative results of the extended process of learning and testing constitute tradition. The historical and prophetical books of the Bible constitute just such an extended concrete account of one's people's process of discovery carried out in interaction with the divine.
The content of a tradition serves as a model and exemplar, not because of personal inertia, but because of the corporate character of the learning by which it was built out of experience and the free and wise acts of succeeding generations in reevaluating, reaffirming, preserving and passing on what has been learned. The content of a long tradition has passed the test of countless generations. Standing, as it were, on the shoulders of our forebears, we are able to discover and evaluate situations with the help of their vision because of the sensitivity they developed and communicated to us. Without this we could not even choose topics to be investigated or awaken within ourselves the desire to investigate those problems.10
Tradition, then, is not simply everything that ever happened, but only what appears significant in the light of those who have appreciated and described it. Indeed, this presentation by different voices draws out its many aspects. Thus tradition is not an object in itself, but a rich source from which multiple themes can be drawn according to the motivation and interest of the inquirer. It needs to be accepted and embraced, affirmed and cultivated. Here the emphasis is neither upon the past or the present, but upon mankind living through time.11
But neither is tradition a passive storehouse of materials to be drawn upon and shaped at the arbitrary will of the present inquirer; rather, it presents insight and wisdom that is normative for life in the present and future. Just as prudence (phronesis) without law (nomos) would be as relativistic and ineffectual as muscular action without a skeletal substructure, so law built simply upon transcendental or abstract vision, without taking account of historicity, would be irrelevant idealism. Hence, there is need to look into historicity to see if human action in time can engender a vision which sufficiently transcends its own time to be normative for the present and directive for the future.
This would consist of a set of values and goals which each person should seek to realize. Its harmony of measure and fullness would suggest a way for the mature and perfect formation of man.12 Such a vision would be both historical and normative: historical because arising in time and presenting an appropriate way to preserve and promote human life through time; normative because presenting a basis upon which to judge past ages, present actions and options for the future. The fact of human striving manifests that every humanism, far from being indifferent to all, is committed to the realization of some such classical and perduring model of perfection.
It would be erroneous, however, to consider this to be merely a matter of knowledge, for then it would engage, not entire peoples, but only a few whom it would divide into opposing schools. The project of a tradition is much broader and can be described only in terms of the more inclusive existential and phenomenological horizon of Samay and Caputo in Act and Agent13, namely, as including both body and spirit, knowledge and love. It is, in fact, the whole human dynamism of reaching out to others in striving toward ever more complete personal and social fulfillment through the realization of understanding and love, and thereby of justice and peace.
Finally, the classical model is not drawn forward artificially by overcoming chronological distance; rather, it acts as inspiration of, and judgment upon, man's best efforts. Through time it is the timeless mode of history. We do not construct it, but belong to it, just as it belongs to us--for it is the ultimate community of human striving. Hence, historical and cultural self-criticism is not simply an individual act of subjectivity, but our situatedness in a tradition as this fuses in us past, present and future.14
As mentioned in the introduction, the sense of the good or of value which constitutes tradition is required also in order to appreciate the real impact of the achievements and deformations of the present. Without tradition, present events become simply facts of the moment, succeeded by counter-facts in ever succeeding waves of contradiction. This would constitute a history written in terms of violence in which human despair would turn to a Utopian abstraction of merely human origin--a kind of 1984 designed according to the reductive limitations of a modern rationalism.
This stands in brutal contrast to the cumulative richness of vision acquired by peoples through the ages and embodied in the figure of a Bolivar or Lincoln, a Gandhi or Mother Theresa, or a Martin Luther King. They certainly were not mere matters of fact, but eminently free and unique. As concrete universals they exemplified the above-mentioned harmony of measure and fullness which is at once classical and historical, ideal and personal, normative and free. Living in their own times, they emerge out of history to judge and inspire peoples of all times and places.
APPLICATION
In entering upon application we turn, as it were, from the whole to its parts, from tradition to its particular meaning for each new time as we turn to ordering the present and sconstructing the future. This is a matter, first of all, of taking time seriously, that is, of recognizing that reality includes authentic novelty. This contrasts to the perspective of Plato for whom the real is the ideal, the forms or ideas transcending matter and time, of which physical things and temporal events are but shadows. It also goes beyond rationalism's search for clear and distinct knowledge of eternal and simple natures and their relations. A fortiori, it goes beyond method alone without content.
In contrast to all these, Gadamer's notion of application15 means that tradition, with its inherent authority or normative force, achieves its perfection in the temporal unfolding of reality. Secondly, it shows human persons, not as detached intellects, but as inextricably enabled by, and formative of, their changing physical and social universe. Thirdly, in the area of moral values and human action it expresses directly the striving of persons to realize their lives, the orientation of this striving and its development into a fixed attitude (hexis). Hence, as distinct from the physical order ethos is a situation neither of law or of lawlessness, but of human and therefore developing institutions and attitudes which regulate, but do not determine.16
There are certain broad guidelines for the area of ethical knowledge which can serve in the application of tradition as a guide for historical practice. The concrete and unique reality of human freedom when lived with others through time constitutes a distinctive and ever-changing process. This is historicity and means that our responses to the good are made always in concrete and ever changing circumstances. Hence, the general principles of ethics as a philosophic science of action must not be purely theoretical knowledge or a simple accounting from the past. Instead, they must help people exercise their conscious freedom in concrete historical circumstances which as ever changing are ever new
Here an important distinction must be made between techné and ethics. In techné action is governed by an idea as an exemplary cause which is fully determined and known by objective theoretical knowledge (epistéme). Skill consists in knowing how to act according to that idea or plan; and when it cannot be carried out perfectly some parts of it are simply omitted in the execution.
In ethics the situation, though similar in the possession of a practical guide and its application to a particular task, differs in important ways. First, in action as moral the subject constitutes oneself, as much as one makes the object: agents are differentiated by their action. Hence, moral knowledge as an understanding of the appropriateness of human action cannot be fully determined independently of the subjects in their situation.
Secondly, adaptation by moral agents in their application of the law, does not diminish, but rather corrects and perfects it. In relation to a world which is less ordered, the law is imperfect for it cannot contain in any explicit manner the response to the concrete possibilities which arise in history. It is precisely here that the freedom and creativity of the person is located. This does not consist in an arbitrary response, for Kant is right in saying that without law freedom has no meaning. Nor does it consist simply in an automatic response determined by the historical situation, for then determinism and relativism would compete for the crown in undermining human freedom. Human freedom consists rather in shaping the present according to a sense of what is just and good, and in a way which manifests and indeed creates for the first time more of what justice and goodness mean.
Hence, the law is perfected by its application in the circumstances. Epoché and equity do not diminish, but perfect the law. Without them the law would be simply a mechanical replication doing the work not of justice, but of injustice. Ethics is not only knowledge of what is right in general, but the search for what is right in the situation and the choice of the right means for this situation. Knowledge about the means then is not a matter of mere expediency; it is the essence of the search for a more perfect application of the law in the given situation. This is the fulfilment of moral knowledge.17
It will be important to note here that the rule of the concrete (of what the situation is asking of us) is known not by sense knowledge which simply registers a set of concrete facts. In order to know what is morally required, the situation must be understood in the light of what is right, that is, in the light of what has been discovered about appropriate human action through the tradition with its normative character. Only in this light can moral consciousness as the work of intellect (nous) rather than of sensation go about its job of choosing the right means.
Hence, to proceed simply in reaction to concrete injustices as present negations of the good, rather than in the light of one's tradition, is ultimately destructive. It inverts the order just mentioned and result in manipulation of our hopes for the good. Destructive or repressive structures would lead us to the use of correspondingly evil means, truly suited only to producing evil results. The true response to evil can be worked out only in terms of the good as discovered by our people, passed on in tradition and applied by us in our times.
The importance of application manifests the central role played by the virtue of prudence (phronesis) or thoughtful reflection which enables one to discover the appropriate means for the circumstances. This must include also the virtue of sagacity (sunesis), that is, of understanding or concern for the other. For what is required as a guide for the agent is not only technical knowledge of an abstract ideal, but knowlege that takes account of the agent in relation to other persons. One can assess the situation adequately only inasmuch as one, in a sense, undergoes the situation with the affected parties. Thus, Aristotle rightly describes as "terrible" the one who can make the most of the situation, but without orientation towards moral ends, that is, without concern for the good of others in their situations.
In sum, application is not a subsequent or accidental part of understanding, but co-determines this understanding from the beginning. Moral consciousness must seek to understand the good, not as an ideal to be known and then applied, but rather through discerning the good for concrete persons in their relations with others.
This can contribute to sorting out the human dilemma between an absolutism insensitive to persons in their concrete circumstances and a relativism which leaves the person subject to expediency in public and private life. Indeed, the very statement of the dilemma reflects the deleterious aspect of the Platonic view of ideas. He was right to ground changing and historical being in the unchanging and eternal. This had been Parmenides' first insight in metaphysics and was richly developed in relation to human action through the medievals' notion of an eternal law in the divine mind. But it seems inappropriate to speak directly in these terms regarding human life. In all things individual human persons and humankind as a whole are subject to time, growth and development. As we become increasingly conscious of this the human character of even our abstract ideals becomes manifest and their adapted application in time can be seen, not as their rejection, but as their perfection. In this, justice loses none of its force as an absolute requirement of human action. Rather, the concrete modes of its application in particular circumstances add to what can be articulated in merely abstract and universal terms. A hermeneutic approach directs attention precisely to these unfoldings of the meaning of abstract principles through time. This is not an abandonment of absolutes, but a recognition of the human condition and of the way in which it enriches our knowledge of the principles of human life.
What then should we conclude regarding this sense of the good which mankind has discovered, in which we have been raised, which gives us dominion over our actions, and which enables us to be free and creative? Does it come from God or from man, from eternity or from history? Chakravarti Rajagopalachari of Madras answered:
Whether the epics and songs of a nation spring from the faith and ideas
of the common folk, or whether a nation's faith and ideas are produced
by its literature is a question which one is free to answer as one likes. .
. . Did clouds rise from the sea or was the sea filled by waters from the
sky? All such inquiries take us to the feet of God transcending speech
and thought.18
HERMENEUTICS
Thusfar we have treated the character and importance of tradition. This bears the long experience of persons interacting with this world, with other persons and with God. It is made up not only of chronological facts, but of insights regarding human perfection which have been forged by human efforts in concrete circumstances, e.g., the Greek notion of democracy and the enlightenment notions of equality and freedom. By their internal value these stand as normative of the aspirations of people's.
Secondly, we have seen the implications of historicity for novelty in the context of tradition, the continually unfolding circumstances of historical development, and the way in which these not merely extend or repeat what went before but constitute an emerging manifestation of the dynamic character of the vision articulated by the art, religion, literature and political structures of a cultural tradition.
It remains for us now to treat the third element in this study of tradition, namely, hermeneutics. How can earlier sources which express the great achievements of human awareness be understood in a way that is relevant, indicative, and directive of our life in present circumstances? In a word, how can we draw out the significance of tradition for present action?
First of all it is necessary to note that only a unity of meaning, that is, an identity, is intelligible.19 Just as it is not possible to understand a number three if we include but two units rather than three, no act of understanding is possible unless it is directed to an identity or whole of meaning. This brings us to the classic issue in the field, described above as the hermeneutic circle in which knowledge of the whole depends upon knowledge of the parts, and vice versa. How can we make this work for, rather than against us?
The experience of reading a text might help. As we read we construe the meaning of a sentence before grasping all its individual parts. What we construe is dependent upon our expectation of the meaning of the sentence, which we derived from its first words, the prior context, or more likely a combination of the two. In turn, our expectation or construal of the meaning of the text is adjusted according to the requirements of its various parts as we proceed to read through the parts of the sentence, the paragraph, etc., continually reassessing the whole in terms of the parts and the parts in terms of the whole. This basically circular movement continues until all appears to fit and to be clear.
Similarly, as we begin to look into our tradition we develop a prior conception of its content. This anticipation of meaning is not simply of the tradition as an objective or fixed content to which we come; it is rather what we produce as we participate in the evolution of the tradition, and thereby further determine ourselves. This is a creative stance reflecting the content, not only of the past, but of the time in which I stand and of the life project in which I am engaged. It is a creative unveiling of the content of the tradition as this comes progressively and historically into the present and through the present, passes into the future.
In this light time is not a barrier, separation or abyss, but rather a bridge and opportunity for the process of understanding, a fertile ground filled with experience, custom and tradition. The importance of the historical distance it provides is not that it enables the subjective reality of persons to disappear so that the objectivity of the situation can emerge. On the contrary, it makes possibile a more complete meaning of the tradition, less by removing falsifying factors, than by opening new sources of self-understanding which reveal in the tradition unsuspected implications and even new dimensions of meaning.20
Of course, not all our acts of understandings are correct, whether they be about the meaning of a text from another culture, a dimension of a shared tradition, a set of goals, or a plan for future action. Hence, it becomes particularly important that they not be adhered to fixedly, but be put at risk in dialogue with others.
In this the basic elements of meaning remains the substances which Aristotle described in terms of autonomy and, by implication, of identity. Hermeneutics would expand this to reflect as well the historical and hermeneutic situation of each person in the dialogue, that is, their horizon or particular possibility for understanding: an horizon is all that can be seen from one's vantage point(s). In reading a text or in a dialogue with others it is necessary to be aware of our horizon as well as that of others. It is precisely when our initial projection of the meaning of a text (which might be another's words or the content of a tradition) will not bear up under the progressive dialogue that we are required to make needed adjustments in our projection of their meaning.
This enabled us to adjust not only our prior understanding of the horizon of the other with whom we are in dialogue, but especially our own horizon. Hence, one need not fear being trapped in one's horizons. They are vantage points of a mind which in principle is open and mobile, capable of being aware of its own horizon and of transcending it through acknowledging the horizons of others. The flow of history implies that we are not bound by our horizons, but move in and out of them. It is in making us aware of our horizons that hermeneutic consciousness accomplishes our liberation.21
In this process it is important that we retain a questioning attitude. We must not simply follow through with our previous ideas until a change is forced upon us, but must remain sensitive to new meanings in true openness. This is neither neutrality as regards the meaning of the tradition, nor an extinction of passionate concerns regarding action towards the future. Rather, being aware of our own biases or prejudices and adjusting them in dialogue with others implies rejecting what impedes our understanding of others, of texts or of traditions. Our attitude in approaching dialogue must be one of willingness continually to revise our initial projection or expectation of meaning.
There is then a way out of the hermeneutic cycle. It is not by ignoring or denying our horizons and prejudices, but by recognizing them as inevitable and making them work for us. To do so we must direct our attention to the objective meaning of the text in order to draw out, not its meaning for the author, but its application for the present. Through this process of application we serve as midwife for the historicity of a text, a tradition or a culture and enable it to give birth to the future.22
Method of Question and Answer
The effort to draw upon a text or a tradition and in dialogue to discover its meaning for the present supposes authentic openness. The logical structure of this openness is to be found in the exchange of question and answer. The question is required in order to determine just what issue we are engaging--whether it is this issue or that--in order to give direction to our attention. Without this no meaningful answer can be given or received. As a question, however, it requires that the answer not be settled or determined. In sum, progress or discovery requires an openness which is not simply indeterminancy, but a question which gives specific direction to our attention and enables us to consider significant evidence. (Note that we can proceed not only by means of positive evidence for one of two possible responses, but also through dissolving the counter arguments).
If discovery depends upon the question, then the art of discovery is the art of questioning. Consequently, whether working alone or in conjunction with others, our effort to find the answer should be directed less towards suppressing, than toward reinforcing and unfolding the question. To the degree that its probabilities are built up and intensified it can serve as a searchlight. This is the opposite of both opinion which tends to suppress questions, and of arguing which searches out the weakness in the other's argument. Instead, in conversation as dialogue one enters upon a mutual search to maximize the possibilities of the question, even by speaking at cross purposes. By mutually eliminating errors and working out a common meaning we discover truth.23
Further, it should not be presupposed that the text holds the answer to but one question or horizon which must be identified by the reader. On the contrary, the full horizon of the author is never available to the reader, nor can it be expected that there is but one question to which the text or tradition holds an answer. The sense of the text reaches beyond what the author intended. Because of the dynamic character of being as it emerges in time, the horizon is never fixed but continually opens. This constitutes the effective historical element in understanding a text or a tradition. At each step new dimensions of its potentialities open to understanding; the meaning of a text or tradition lives with the consciousness and hence the horizons--not of its author, but of persons in history. It is the broadening of their horizons, resulting from their fusion with the horizon of a text or a partner in dialogue, that makes it possible to receive answers which are are ever new.24
In this one's personal attitudes and interests are, once again, most important. If our interest in developing new horizons is simply the promotion of our own understanding then we could be interested solely in achieving knowledge, and thereby domination over others. This would lock one into an absoluteness of one's prejudices; being fixed or closed in the past they would disallow new life in the present. In this manner powerful new insights become with time deadening pre-judgments which suppress freedom.
In contrast, an attitude of authentic openness appreciates the nature of one's own finiteness. On this basis it both respects the past and is open to discerning the future. Such openness is a matter, not merely of new information, but of recognizing the historical nature of man. It enables us to escape from what had deceived us and held us captive, and enables us to learn from new experiences. For example, recognition of the limitations of our finite planning enables us to see that the future is still open.25
This suggests that openness consists not so much in surveying others objectively or obeying them in a slavish and unquestioning manner, but is directed primarily to ourselves. It is an extension of our ability to listen to others, and to assimilate the implications of their answers for changes in our own positions. In other words, it is an acknowledgement that the cultural heritage has something new to say to us. The characteristic hermeneutic attitude of effective historical consciousness is then not methodological sureness, but readiness for experience.26 Seen in these terms our heritage is not closed, but the basis for a life that is ever new, more inclusive, and more rich.
CRITICAL HERMENEUTICS: ANTITHESES OF VALUE
As was noted above one major fear arises regarding the hermeneutic project as described by Gadamer, namely, that recognition of the authority of tradition might undermine the freedom of those to whom the tradition is mediated. This could be the result of a romantic attitude towards the past as having had a complete grasp of the meaning of human life and of the structures for its realization. In that case the past would rule the present: text would become dogma.
H.G. Gadamer's response focuses rather upon new and unique applications of the tradition for the present and future. It is neither desirable, nor even possible, to attempt simply to reconstruct the text objectively according to its original horizon. Instead, from its perspective the text challenges us to live up to its insights and values in our own circumstances, while from our perspective we question it in order to draw from it new implications for our life. Gadamer considers this questioning to be a matter of understanding, and the type of fore- or pre-understanding of meaning it implies to be an essentially contemplative act. Thus, it is the task of the human sciences (Geisteswissenshaften) to correct any misunderstanding.
In contrast, critical hermeneutics focuses upon the material conditions which causally shape our awareness. It is concerned, not with understanding and hence judgments and prejudices, but with interests and ideologies, and their correction through the social sciences. Its task is to identify the material causes and thereby to make possible action to remove or adjust those material factors which by impeding the proper flow of dialogue and communication give rise to misunderstanding and conflict.27
There is real continuity between the hermeneutic efforts of Gadamer and critical hermeneutics. Both are directed ultimately towards understanding, both search for theoretical truth, and both oppose dogmatic acceptance of the "text." However, where Gadamer seeks this through understanding, critical hermeneutics seeks it through an explanation of the conditions for misunderstanding and their correction. Yet, even in this, the positions are still not as far apart as at first they might seem for, if today's interests lie less in the materials for production than in the techniques thereof, it is not so much material possessions as knowledge and its implementation that now hold the keys to power.
The roots of critical concern lie deep within the development of modern vision, and indeed within the nature of intellectual knowledge. As reflexive, the person had been understood classically to be self-aware and hence capable of reasoning, language and self-responsibility. This self-consciousness was not undermined by the distinction between subject and object as long as, with Aristotle, in the act of knowledge the subject was understood to become the object and all was received according to the mode of the receiver.
With Descartes, however, the object of knowledge came to be seen as ideas rather than things. Conditions of knowledge, which previously had been within consciousness but were not distinctly attended to, did not figure in his clear and distinct ideas of natures. In this situation it became crucial to know these conditions of knowledge, that is, to have critical knowledge.
Kant thematized as categories factors which had been actually, but only implicitly, in knowledge. Hegel articulated them in a developmental pattern through which the subject is progressively realized in and for itself and for us. He saw this as taking place, not through pure theoretical reason or practical reason acting in separation, but in the lived process of the socialization of the person in the universal history of mankind.
In search of a real, rather than an ideal, basis for his dialectic, Marx turned to labor in interaction with others-- social labor--as the mechanism for the evolution of the human species through history. This works by creating the conditions for the reproduction of social life. Indeed the very identity of the social subject is altered with the scope of his or her power of technical control. This, in turn, determines the epistemological order by constituting the conditions for apprehending the world.28
In this way Marx was able to integrate much in his understanding of history. By adding to the forces of production the institutional framework or relations of production his analysis encompassed both material activity and a critique of ideologies, both instrumental action and revolutionary practice, both labor and reflection.
Unfortunately, in increasingly focusing upon work alone as the self-generative act of the species, he lost the ability to understand his own mode of procedure. Though he did not eliminate the structure of symbolic interaction and the role of cultural tradition, they were not part of his philosophical frame of reference for they did not coincide with instrumental action. Yet, it is only in these terms that power and ideology can be comprehended and dissolved by a mode of reflection to which Marx applied the Kantina term "critique."29
Since instrumental action by the forces of production responds only to external stimuli, communicative action is required for liberation from the suppression of man's nature by the institutional framework of socially imposed labor and socially determined rewards. For when progress renders this work no longer objectively necessary for the common good, in continuing to demand the state reflects only the private interests of the class in power.30
THE SYNTHESIS OF TRADITION AND CRITIQUE
We are then in an essentially dialectical situation which reflects the hermeneutic circle. On the one hand, the pattern of interests can be evaluated only in the context of a tradition and its sense of human life and meaning. On the other hand, tradition must continually be critically examined in order to avoid, by mechanical repetition, becoming an instrument of repression rather than of liberation. As both tradition and critique are required and both are interrelated, it becomes important to look more closely into this dialectic. There are two ways in which tradition must draw upon critique if it is to respond to what Habermas refers to as an "interest in emancipation" which surpasses technical or instrumental and practical interests. First, Gadamer's hermeneutics concerns the application of our cultural heritage in the present by a renewal and reinterpretation of tradition in order to draw out its new implications. The means for this are especially the humanities in which the tradition--through texts in their literary form, and as values and ideals--is articulated. Here, the emphasis is upon appropriating the tradition, identifying with it, and acknowledging its presence as fore-understanding in our every question.
In social critique the sciences must not only describe regularities as do the merely empirical sciences, but must identify also the controlling relations of dependence at a deeper level which have become fixed ideologically. Self-reflection, governed by an interest in emancipation, subjects these to a critique which, in turn, allows the real implications of the tradition to emerge.
There are roots in Gadamer's thought for recognition of the importance of this critical element, for he sees historical distance and a consequent new horizon for questioning as a prerequisite for drawing out new implications of the meaning of the text or tradition. This, in turn, reflects the importance of distinguishing the text from the intention of its author(s), for the text transcends the author's psychological and sociological context. This emancipation of the text--its psycho- and socio-cultural decontextualization--is a fundamental condition for hermeneutic interpretation: "distanciation now belongs to the mediation itself."31
This is reflected both on the essential or structural level and on the existential level. In the former it becomes necessary to go beyond Gadamer's description of discourse as a spontaneous conversation of question and answer and to begin to consider discourse as a product of praxis by which it is crafted from smaller units. Here meaning takes place in structures: "the matter of the text is not what naive reading of the text reveals, but what the formal arrangement of the text mediates."32 Hence, structural analysis is required in order to understand the depth semantics of the text as a condition for grasping its matter.
If the sense of the work is its internal organization, the reference of the text is the way in which being unfolds in front, as it were, of the text. This is the existential reality of being emerging as temporal and historical--as the power to be. In sharp contrast to a deadening repetition of the past frozen in a fixed ideology, the creative space opened by reference to the "power to be" makes a critique of ideology.
This implies not merely a liberation from the structures of our environment, but a liberation of the self as well. Hermeneutic understanding is not an imposition of the reader upon the text; rather, the text provides an interlocuter which enables the reader consciously to examine his or her own subjectivity. By making possible imaginative variations of one's ego, one can achieve the distance required for a first critique of his/her own illusions and false consciousness, and of the ideology in which he/she has been reared.33
Critical distance is then an essential element for hermeneutics. It requires an analysis by the social sciences of the historical social structures as a basis for liberation from internal determination by, and dependence upon, unjust interests. The concrete pyscho- and socio-pathology deriving from such dependencies and the corresponding steps toward liberation therefrom are the subject of the chapters by J. Loiacono and H. Ferrand de Piazzia below. Critical distance also has an existential dimension which is made possible by the temporality of being and man's projection toward the historical future (see the chapters of O. Pegoraro and M. Dy also in this volume.) Together these open up the possibility of a liberation of the subject.
Dependence of Critique upon Tradition
The relation between hermeneutics and social critique being dialectical, just as the distancing characteristic of the critical social sciences can make possible some dimensions of awareness essential for emancipation in a world of increasingly technical and convoluted structures, so also tradition provides other dimensions of awareness essential for the critique to which these sciences contribute. Paul Ricoeur has attempted to codify these contributions in his article, "Hermeneutics and the Critique of Ideology."34
First, a critique must recognize that it is carried out in the context of interests which establish a frame of meaning. The sequence of technical, practical and emancipating interests reflect the emergence of man out of nature and correspond to the developmental phases of moral sensitivity. Habermas studies Kohlberg closely on this and employs his work. But to the question of the basis of these interests no adequate answer is provided. They are not empirically justifiable or they would be found only at the level of technical interests. Neither do they constitute a theory as a network of working hypotheses for then they would be justified at most by the interest in emancipation, which in turn would fall into a vicious circle.
The only proper description of these interests as truly all-embracing must lie in Heidegger's existentials, which are hidden only in being so present as to be in need of being unveiled by hermeneutic method. Thus Gadamer's hermeneutic project on the clarification of prejudices and Habermas's suggestion of critical work on interests through the social sciences--though not identical--share common ground.
Secondly, critiques of ideologies appear in the end to share characteristics common to those of the historical hermeneutic sciences. Both focus upon the ability to develop the communicative action of free persons. Their common effort is against a reduction of all human communication to instrumental action and institutionalization, for it is here that manipulation takes place. Hence, success or failure in extending the critique of interests beyond instrumental action determines whether the community will promote or destroy its members.
Ricoeur moves from this concern regarding the general horizon of social critique to the observation that it is unlikely ever to be successful if we have no experience of communication with our own cultural heritage. This can be required in a dialogue, for the effective basis for any real consensus must be not only an empty ideal or regulative idea, but one that has been experienced, lived and shared. "He who is unable to interpret his past may also be incapable of projecting concretely his interest in emancipation."35
Thirdly, today communicative action needs more than a model to suggest what might otherwise not occur to our minds, for the rationalization of human life has become such that all of its aspects are controlled pervasively in terms of instrumental action. Whereas Marx could refer in his day to surplus value as the motive of production, this is true no longer. Instead, the system itself of technology has become the key to productivity and all is coordinated toward the support and promotion of this system; this is the ideology of our day. As a result the distinction between communicative action and instrumental action has been overridden and control no longer can be expected from communicative action.
This raises a new type of question, namely, how can the interest in emancipation be kept alive. Undoubtedly, communicative action must be reawakened and made to live if we are not to be simply subjects--indeed `slaves'--of the technological machine. But how is this to be done; whence can this life be derived if the present situation is pervasively occupied and shaped by science and technology as the new, and now all-encompassing, master? The answer of Ricoeur and Gadamer is that it can be done only by drawing upon our heritage in the manner suggested by Heidegger. We need--now as never before--to reach back into our heritage in order to retrieve contents which were present seminally, but never developed. These are the resources of our traditiion, which can give rise to the radically new visions needed for the emancipation of mankind living in an age of increasing domination and manipulation, not primarily of economy and politics, but of minds and hearts.
Finally, there is a still more fundamental sense in which critique, rather than being opposed to tradition or taking a questioning attitude thereto, is itself an appeal to tradition. Criticism appeals unabashedly to the heritage of emancipation as an ideal inherited from the Enlightenment. But this tradition has longer roots which reach back to the liberating acts of the Exodus and the Resurrection. "Perhaps" writes Ricoeur "there would be no more interest in emancipation, no more anticipation of freedom, if the Exodus and the Resurrection were effaced from the memory of mankind."36
According to the proper norms of communicative action, these historical acts should be taken also in their symbolic sense according to which liberation and emancipation express the root interest basic to traditional cultures. In this manner they point to fundamental dimensions of being, indeed to Being Itself as the unique existence in whom the alienated can be reunited, to the logos which founds subjectivity without an estranging selfishness, and to the spirit through whom human freedom can be creative in history. Remembrance and celebration of this heritage provides needed inspiration and direction both for any in power who might be indifferent to the needs of the poor and alienated and for the alienated poor themselves. It enables both to reach out in mutual comprehension, reconciliation and concern to form a social unity marked by emancipation and peace.
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.
1. Richard E. Palmer, Hermeneutics (Evanston: Northwestern Univ. Press, l969), pp. 12-29.
2. Ivor Leclerc, "The Metaphysics of the Good," Review of Metaphysics, 35 (1981), 3-5. See also Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie, ed. André Lalande (Paris: PUF, l956), pp. 1182-1186.
3. J. Mehta, Martin Heidegger; The Way and the Vision (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press, l967), pp. 90-91.
4. Hesiod, Theogony trans. H.G. Everland-White (Loeb Classical Library; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, l964), p. 85.
5. Aristotle, Metaphysics,I, 2.
6. R. Carnap, Vienna Manifesto, trans. A. Blumberg in G. Kreyche and J. Mann, Perspectives on Reality (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, l966), p. 485.
7. R. Descartes, Discourse on Method, I.
8. H.G. Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Crossroads, l975), pp. 240, 246-247, 305-310.
9. John Dewey, Existence as Precarious and Stable, see J. Mann & G. Kreyche, Perspectives on Reality (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, l966), p. 379.
10. Gadamer, pp. 248, 250-25l.
11. Ibid., pp. 252-253.
12. Ibid., p. 254.
13. See n. 4 above along with Ch. III by S. Samay, "Affectivity: The Power Base of Moral Behavior," pp. 71-114.
14. Gadamer, p. 258.
15. Ibid., pp. 281-286.
16. Ibid., pp. 278-279.
17. Ibid., pp. 281-286.
18. Ramayana (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, l976), p. 312.
19. Gadamer, p. 262.
20. Ibid., pp. 263-264.
21. Ibid., pp. 235-242, 267-271.
22. Ibid., pp. 235-332.
23. Ibid., pp. 225-332.
24. Ibid., pp. 336-340.
25. Ibid., pp. 327-324.
26. Ibid., pp. 324-325.
27. J. Bleiker, Contemporary Hermeneutics: Hermeneutics as Method, Philosophy and Critique (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, l980), pp. 143-151.
28. J. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests (Boston: Beacon, l971), 28-35.
29. Ibid., p. 42.
30. For a more extended treatment of the character of the critical hermeneutics of J. Habermas see G. McLean, "Cultural Heritage, Social Critique and Future Construction" in R. Molina, T. Readdy and G. McLean, eds., Culture, Human Rights and Peace in Central America (Washington: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy and The University Press of America, l988), ch. I.
31. "Hermeneutics as the Critique of Ideology," Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, ed., J.B. Thompson (New York: Cambridge, 1981), pp. 81.
32. Ibid., pp. 93.
33. Ibid., pp. 93-95.
34. Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, J.B. Thompson, ed. (New York: Cambridge, l981), pp. 82-91
35. Ibid., pp. 97.
36. Ibid.. pp. 99-100.