Phenomenology & Hermeneutics Flashcards
Husserl, Gadamer, Heidegger
Exegesis
(from the Greek “to lead out”) is a critical
explanation / interpretation of the Bible.
Exegesis focused
on the written text
Hermeneutics is
a “classical discipline concerned
with the art of understanding texts.”
Typological reading
g interprets Old Testament events
as prefiguring the New Testament events.
A typological theory of poetry…
rests on the idea that
great poems are not random in structure, but are
both meaningful and purposeful.
Scripture operates on four levels of meaning.
1) literal (or historical); 2)
te allegorical; 3) tropological (or moral); and
4) anagogical (from Greek anagoge, meaning
“elevation, spiritual or mystical
enlightenment”).
the literal or historical level refers
to the event
itself;
the allegorical level relates
the literal event to
events in the New Testament;
the moral level refers to
the fate of the individual
soul;
the anagogical level refers to
universal history
and eschatology.
Modern hermeneutics, as a theory of
interpretation
has its philosophical roots in
phenomenology.
Phenomenology is
a school of philosophy which
studies the world’s phenomena as perceived by
the consciousness.
Phenomenology is concerned
with the
examination of consciousness.
Husserl
developed
phenomenology as a
philosophical method. The phenomenological
premise questions
our assumptions
about the world.
Phenomenology is the study of
the essential
structures of experience.
Husserl was interested in
what makes our
experience, our knowledge of objects possible,
what makes the necessary presuppositions of
experience possible.
Consciousness is
intentional (i.e. oriented towards
the world); it is a consciousness of something.
Phenomenology focuses on the issue of
perception
(i.e. the relationship between the individual
consciousness and the world).
Intentional consciousness is consciousness in
relation
to the Other (e.g. things of the world,
human beings, etc.).
In phenomenological reasoning
consciousness
constitutes the world and the world constitutes
consciousness.
Constituting
denotes a process in which
consciousness not only reflects creation, but also
participates in it.
The body is a meeting place for
self and the Other
(i.e. to be corporeal is to exist with others, to
understand one’s freedom and its limits).
The Other is also experienced
as a bodily manifestation.
Phenomenological reduction or epoche
Greek
epekhein “to pause, take up a position,” from epi-
“on” + ekhein “to hold.” - i.e. phenomenology
brackets off all preconceived ideas about the nature
of the world, suspends all judgment and simply
seeks to describe objects of experience.
Phenomenology analyses
the immanent
consciousness (cf. Formalism and Structuralism
approach texts as an immanent structures).
Phenomenology suspends objective relations…
and
studies intentional, rather than empirical objects.
Phenomenological analysis is concerned with
the
essences of the human experience of the world,
not the existence of things.
To understand a phenomenon is to….
understand
what is essential and unchanging about it.
Phenomenology aims to
return to the world as it is
before it is contaminated by either the categories
of scientific inquiry or the psychological
assumptions of the scientist.
Phenomenological reduction
brackets off our
assumptions about the world and inquires back
into consciousness.
Phenomenological determination of meaning
is
always tentative, incomplete.
Phenomenology is concerned
with possible human
experiences by holding universality and
particularity in tension.
In Derridean terms, phenomenology is logocentric
because
it is oriented towards essential meaning.
Phenomenological analysis
lays bare the deep
structures of the human mind and the
phenomena they perceive.
Heidegger
Heidegger formulates a
hermeneutical ontology.
The ontic dimension
is concerned with beings, i.e.
entities.
Ontology
is the study of Being as such, and it also
includes the study of the being through which
beings come into question
Heidegger reflects on human existence as a
Dasein,
man’s actual, historical being-in-the-world,
being-there.
Dasein
a place where being reveals itself (i.e.
man exists by engaging with the world)
Heidegger’s philosophy is interested in
what it
means to be alive.
Reality encompasses both
subject and object.
Epoche is unproductive because
man is always
engaged in the world.
Dasein (man’s being) is
hermeneutical because in it
and for it there unfolds the meaning of its being.
Dasein is hermeneutical
it interprets both itself
and the world.
World and Dasein
unfold their meaning in the
hermeneutic circle.
Language is that which brings the world to being,
the dimension in which human life moves. Dasein participates in language.
Human subjectivity unfolds in and through
its
intersubjective relations with the world.
Consciousness becomes accessible to itself….
only
by way of the Other: “consciousness has its
meaning beyond itself.
Gadamer (1900-2002)
rethinks Heidegger’s
ideas. Hermeneutical
interpretation shows
how understanding takes
place within tradition.
Gadamer’s hermeneutical approach is
rooted in
Heidegger’s observation that understanding is
man’s way of being in the world.
For Gadamer, hermeneutics is
an unfolding of and
reflection on understanding rather than a method
of ‘correct’ interpretation.
Hermeneutics rethinks
Kant’s ideas about art.
Rather than being a ‘purposeless purpose’ that
renders aesthetic pleasure, in Gadamer’s
reasoning…
art uncovers the truth about the world.
Art presents
an autonomous world.
Transformation into structure
raises
the question of the meaning of representation as
“transformation into the true”
Interpretation participates in bringing to light
“the
event of being that occurs in presentation”.
Our interpretation is always historically situated,
thus entailing a horizon.
Interpreting always involves
projections and
preconceptions.
Gadamer shows that the interpreter has a
horizon of
understanding which is defined by his or her
relation to the past.
Interpretation is a process based on
the structures of
pre-understanding (cf. Heidegger)
In hermeneutics, the anticipation of meaning
that shapes the understanding of a text is
rooted not in subjectivity, but in our binding
relation to tradition.
To understand a text is to understand it as an answer
to a question, where the answer leads to another
question, etc.
Interpretation, thus:
1) explains meaning;
2) claims a certain truth;
3) reconsiders the thing that the text is concerned
with.
Our understanding of meaning conforms to
the
logic of question and answer (i.e. meaning is
never static, uniform, or foreclosed).
A hermeneutic reading is
a process of
question and answer.
Understanding is based on that
which can be
articulated, can be expressed, i.e. shared with the
Other.
Gadamer’s hermeneutics brings out
the dimension
of trust
Understanding is based on
he premise of the
possibility of meaning (cf. deconstruction
highlights the principle of misunderstanding).
The hermeneutic circle
denotes a process of
understanding where individual features are
intelligible in terms of the entire context, and
the entire context becomes intelligible through
the individual features.
To access the hermeneutic circle adequately
is to
illuminate pre-understanding and use it in the
course of explanation.
The hermeneutic circle is not
a formal structure or a
methodological gesture.
Isotopy
a term referring to the semantic
redundancy in texts (i.e. certain semantic
elements are repeated in different variants).
The fusion of horizons is
like a form of play in
which the participants are absorbed.
As a theory of interpretation, hermeneutics
has
its roots in medieval exegesis, Husserl’s
phenomenology and Heidegger’s philosophy.
Phenomenological analysis focuses on
how
the world unfolds its essence in the human
consciousness through phenomenological
reduction.
Phenomenology postulates understanding as
an intersubjective relationship between
consciousness and the world, the Other.
Heidegger has shown that
human interactions
with the world are mediated through language.
Language has a hermeneutic function because
it is the medium through which the world
becomes meaningful to humans.
Language is intersubjective
(i.e. language is a
place where we meet the Other).
All interpretation is
situational, shaped and
constrained by the historically relative criteria
of a particular culture; there is no possibility of
knowing the literary text ‘as it is’.
Understanding is productive:
it is always
understanding ‘otherwise’, making a difference
to the text.
Understanding entails a
fusion of the reader’s
horizon with that of the text.
Interpretation is an unfolding
of the text’s
meanings in the course of our dialogue with it.
For Gadamer, to understand a text is to
understand it as an answer to a question, where
the answer leads to another question etc.
Interpretation of a text is a gradual build-up
of
understanding within the structure of the
hermeneutic circle.
The hermeneutic circle is a process of
understanding where individual features are
intelligible in terms of the entire context, and
the entire context becomes intelligible through
the individual features.
