38. HERMENEUTICS

The conception of reason which dominated the western philosophical tradition involved the interplay between the interiorization of literacy as an interrogatory stance and the inner logic of the totalizing thrust of the continuous prose generated by alphabetical writing.

    (A)  Metaphysics:  From the very beginning, metaphysical inquiries were designed to provide objective grounds for imposing closure on the endless questioning licensed by an interiorized interrogatory stance.  For centuries, the focus of these inquiries was governed by the idealist and naturalist conventions designed by Plato and Aristotle.  (Plato's realm of interpenetrating Ideal Forms has the characteristics of a bounded, changeless, enduring text consisting of clear and distinct conceptions woven together by the logic of continuous prose.  On his part, Aristotle implanted those forms in a teleologically and hierarchically structured natural order.)

         The role assigned to metaphysical inquiries rested on the assumption that one must know the structure of reality in order to understand the workings of natural forces in contingent events.  Two examples illustrate the point at issue:  (1)  Aristotle's supposition that the natural order has a teleological structure led him to argue that objects thrown into the air fall to the ground because they seek their natural place.  (2)  The Hellenic fascination with form privileged universals over individuals, since individuals resist easy categorizations.

         Plato and Aristotle played leading roles in the triumph of literacy over orality as the foundation of culture.  That triumph generated an awareness that languages generated by literary traditions took on lives of their own.  At roughly the same time, exiles returning to Judea from the exile in Babylonia set in motion a process which led to a widespread characterization of adherents of an emerging Judaism as the People of the Book.  Centuries later, as Christianity spread throughout the Mediterranean area, Christians appropriated the Jewish Scriptures as an Old Testament in order to claim that the Christian Scriptures, as a New Testament, provided a code for laying bare how God was active in Israel's history.  And as they sought to reconcile a traditional belief in exclusive election with the belief that Christianity had universal import, they assumed that a creative tension between faith and reason could yield definitive readings of the text.

         In the Middle Ages, these assumptions and beliefs were woven into a metaphorical reference to Two Books, the Book of Nature and the Scriptures.  In this context, both were enduring, changeless, bounded texts governed by the logic of continuous prose.  Since the Book of Nature was supposedly authored by a rational and purposive Creator, anyone endowed with "natural light of reason" could read the moral will of God inscribed in a teleologically structured natural order.  And since the Scriptures supposedly spoke as God's own description of his saving activity in human history, they must be truth-telling. 

          Since medieval authors accepted without question the traditional dictum, "Grace builds on nature," they used this metaphor to validate a theory of interpretation which accorded primacy to the Scriptures as the revealed Word of God, but promised that a knowledge of God's creative will supplied by metaphysical inquiries would contribute significantly to the interpretation of difficult passages.

    (B)  Epistemology:  Ockham stood the medieval pre-dilection for metaphysical inquiries on its head with a simple assertion:  "There are individuals;  how do we form valid universal concepts?"  In its own right, that question asks:  "How do we move from noting similarities and differences between individuals to categorizations such as `human beings' and to conceptions which describe human beings as `rational animals'?"  And, more generally, "How do we know that we know?"

    (C)  Methodology:  At the dawn of the Modern Era, Descartes was convinced that his methodical doubt could resolve epistemological issues by providing a certain starting point for the acquisition of an equally certain knowledge.  In and through this method, he privileged the interrogatory stance inherent in the interiorization of literacy over the logic of the totalizing thrust of continuous prose.  As a mathematician, however, he regarded an intuition of the infinite as a positive notion and used that notion in an ontological argument for the existence of a God who authored the Book of Nature as an autonomous text written in the language of mathematics, not the language of Aristotelian metaphysics.    (Presumably, an infinite God would not create individuals who could be deceived by their senses.)  And in this context, he used the methodical doubt (1) to generate a geometrization of the universe which decisively undermined the medieval belief in a hierarchically and teleologically structured universe, (2) to posit a myth of pure beginnings on the part of solipsistic thinking beings, and (3) to support his description of medieval belief-systems as edifices erected on sand.

          (Supplementary addendum:  The Hellenic literary tradition interiorized the detachment inherent in literacy as an interrogatory stance.  To transform endless questioning into focused inquiries, it embraced the rule of a metaphorical One.  As the framework for analyses of the interplay among language, experience and reality, the One filled the hollow center of inquiries structured by a logical principle of identity with a fictive voice of reason.  Presumably, inquiries governed by reason would ultimately generate an ideal language which could be consigned to an autonomous text.

         In marked contrast, the Hebrew literary tradition interiorized the detachment inherent in literacy as an eruptive self-consciousness.  To explore the depths of newly self-conscious individuals, authors who used stories to process the belief that an incomprehensible God had been intimately involved with Israel's memorably unique patriarchs and matriarchs forged a literary form, the prose narrative.  This form inscribed a narrative rather than a timeless structure and a narrative voice rather than the dispassionate and disinterested voice of reason.

         Consequently, Descartes not only transformed the interrogatory stance into a methodical doubt.  Through his metaphorical description of medieval belief-systems as edifices erected on sand, he fused the restructuring of thought in the Hellenic tradition with the narrative structure of the Hebrew tradition.  Thus, as one applied the methodical doubt, one presumably eliminated one's own peculiar prejudices, pre-conceptions and assumptions as well as the conventions supporting the edifice to be deconstructed.  In the end, the promise that stripping all this away would yield a certain starting point effectively posited a timeless myth of pure beginnings, while the use of reason emerged as the guarantor of objectivity.  But rationalism's triumph was a hollow victory, since the introduction of the narrative structure evoked the emphasis on self-consciousness which was largely responsible for the unbridgeable Cartesian chasm between subjectivity and objectivity.)

    (D)  Hermeneutics:  In the twentieth century, Logical Positivism and Phenomenology took the fascination with methodology to its logical extremes.  (Logical Positivism claimed to delineate the scientific method.  Phenomenology was more indebted to the focus on self-consciousness encoded in the early stories in the Hebrew narrative tradition, but it, too, promised to lay bare the core of conscious experiences without interpretation.)  Despite the collapse of both Logical Positivism and Phenomenology from within, however, most academic philosophers ignore Nietzsche's exposure of the will to power hidden in the rule of reason over metaphysical, epistemological, methodological and ethical inquiries.  The reason is not hard to find.  If they acknowledged the validity of Nietzsche's critique, they would have to abandon the assumption that a literary construct provides a detached, disinterested, dispassionate, god-like perspective on the interplay between language, experience and reality which reasonable beings can occupy interchangeably.  By extension, they would have to abandon the pretense that they, as masters of the use of reason, speak anonymously, yet exercise a god-like authority over past, present and future readings of an inter-textual dialogue among the three strands in the western literary tradition, literature, philosophy and theology.

          In his re-readings of the western philosophical and theological tradition, Nietzsche exposed the literary origins of the assumption that the use of reason is morally neutral.  In effect, he revived the issues of infinite divisibility and infinite regress which the restructuring of thought centered in a metaphorical One had presumably resolved.  To expose the arbitrariness of distinctions and boundaries enshrined in everyday languages, he insisted that analyses of language and experience must address the implications of a dictum, "Nothing is true;  everything is permitted."

         In his Genealogy of Morals, in particular, Nietzsche deconstructed the literary foundations of Aristotle's correspondence theory of truth by advancing an evolutionary theory and filling the hollow center of its structure with an all-pervasive will to power.  In this and other texts, Nietzsche forged two distinctive literary forms, the archeology of knowledge and the genealogy of morals, which he used to show, beyond question, that the language which transmits western culture is the product of a literary tradition.  In their own right, these literary forms encoded a hermeneutical theory capable of competing with the hermeneutical theories advanced by nineteenth century Protestant biblical scholars.  To move beyond protests against the power-structure enshrined in the institutional Church at the dawn of the Modern Era, these scholars hoped to set forth transparent readings of the Scriptures which could speak as an immediate word of God, devoid of human interpretation.  In this vein, Nietzsche sought to set forth a reading of the western literary tradition which uncovered the pervasive workings of an impersonally operating will to power.  His goal was obvious.  If a reading of the literary tradition laid bare an evolutionary process propelled by a will to power, the reading strategies he authored would replace the literary conventions invoked by proponents of traditional metaphysical, epistemological, methodological, and ethical inquiries.

           To accomplish his purpose, Nietzsche wove critical conventions generated by the interplay between rationalism and empiricism into distinctive literary forms which supplement the interiorized interrogatory stance invoked by Descartes with a reading code designed to expose the literary origins of the languages which texture the experiences of inhabitants of western cultures.  In and through these literary forms, he (1) extended Descartes' description of medieval belief-systems as edifices erected on sand to include everyday languages, (2) derived strategies designed to "deconstruct" both the rationalist assumption that reason speaks with authority and the literary foundations of these languages, and (3) integrated these strategies in a hermeneutical theory.

        (Addendum:  To my knowledge, Nietzsche never acknowledged a debt to the hermeneutical inquiries of Protestant biblical scholars in the mid-nineteenth century.  These scholars were determined to "save the theory" inscribed in Luther's use of the slogan, sola Scriptura, to counter the Catholic tradition's emphasis on Scripture and Tradition.  Though few were aware of the fact, this slogan committed them to inquiries governed by the medieval metaphor of the Two Books.  And this commitment demanded that, if they hoped to live with intellectual integrity, they had to find a code for reading a sprawling text as a revealed Word of God capable of speaking timelessly and immediately, without ambiguity or interpretation, to human beings in any age or culture.

        Since they were thoroughly versed in the critical standards which governed research in German Universities at the time, they realized the magnitude of the project they embraced.  That project:  To show that the Judaic-Christian Scriptures were indeed a single text which contained within itself the means to strip away the interpretations imposed on it over the centuries and thereby allow the text to speak for itself.  In effect, they recognized the need to show that a sprawling text was self-interpreting and, if it were to speak the Word of God immediately, self-referential.

        In my scattered readings of the dialogue among them, I found no awareness of the issues raised by the transition from orality to literacy as the foundation of Christianity in the Modern World.  On the one hand, they embraced the immediacy of face-to-face communication celebrated in Luther's emphasis on Paul's dictum, "Faith comes through preaching."  On the other, they were confident that they could successfully replace traditional theories of interpretation with a hermeneutical theory capable of letting the Scriptures speak for themselves.  But their growing awareness of the role played by literary conventions in the composition of messages consigned to writing illuminated critical differences between face-to-face communications and proclamations inscribed in texts written by unique individuals for an imagined audience.

        Today, I can understand why they could not yet recognize that the conception of a self-interpreting and self-referential text was the product of the rule of reason over the western philosophical and theological traditions.  But I am also convinced that the polar oppositions between faith and reason, reason and revelation, faith and works, and the sacred and the profane posited by Luther provided a pernicious foundation for their belief that an understanding of the workings of literary conventions would enable them to set forth readings in and through which the Scriptures spoke for themselves.

         This belief was immensely fruitful, but only in the way that a bad theory is better than no theory at all.  In effect, the theory implicitly recognized that fact that the anxiety of authorship experienced by authors of original visions and projects was centered in the need to invent literary conventions to supply for the absence of the tacit clues that supplement oral-aural communication.  Implicitly or explicitly, these scholars hoped to identify the literary conventions utilized by biblical authors to guide and govern the understanding of their texts.  Presumably, they could use a knowledge of the workings of these conventions in any passage to lay bare a core message which spoke as an immediate Word of God without interpretation.

         One of the reading strategies they explored in depth was generated by the dawning awareness of the use of a variety of literary forms (genres) by authors whose texts were incorporated in both the Jewish and Christian Scriptures.  In its own right, the strategy promised that an understanding of the conventions inscribed in these literary forms would guide readers to the core message of the passage.

              (Addendum:  In the United States, Bultmann's promise that demythologizing the Scripture through the use of a hermeneutical theory indebted to Heidegger would enable the Scriptures to speak as an uninterpreted Word of God was gladly embraced by Christians held captive by the slogan, sola Scriptura.  Here, I merely note that Heidegger's hermeneutical theory was designed to evoke a stance of open responsiveness to a creative and gracious Being in which all somehow participated.  Understandably, a stance of open responsiveness seemed to provide a contemporary framework for Bultmann's revival of Luther's insistence that only those who were willing to stand naked before God through a confession of utter sinfulness could receive justification by faith alone,)

        Over time, this seminal project yielded the critical apparatus developed in greater detail in the theories which dominated literary criticism in the twentieth century.  In short, once they recognized the textualization of the polemics between Catholic and Protestant theologians, biblical scholars developed a sophisticated classification of distinctive literary forms (genres) used by the storytellers and prophets whose texts were stitched together by redactors in Babylon.  When readings governed by the use of these literary forms could not resolve all issues, they recognized that the choice of a distinctive literary form as the framework for a distinctive message forced them to speculate concerning the intention of the author.  From there, it was a small step to efforts to rescue objectivity through a theory of historical criticism, with its promise that the core message could be laid bare by a recreation of the workings of culture at the time when the passage in question was composed supplemented by a recreation of the concerns of members of the community addressed by this passage.

        Today, the collapse of the project from within forces biblical scholars who are honest searchers to admit the impossibility of forging a hermeneutical theory capable of showing that the Scriptures can be read without interpretation.  In effect, the collapse confirms that any pretense that the Scriptures can be read literally rests on polar oppositions between faith and reason and between reason and revelation.  On my part, I would add, quite explicitly:  The collapse also dramatizes the fact that abandonment of a search for intellectual integrity involves hidden exercises of the will to power exposed so relentlessly by Nietzsche.

    I suggest, therefore, that Nietzsche's critique of rationalism effectively replaced traditional metaphysical, methodological and ethical inquiries with a focus on a code for re-reading the western philosophical and theological traditions.  However, since few could share Nietzsche's worship of naked power, Heidegger was the continental intellectual who made hermeneutical issues respectable.  Heidegger did not deny that a will to power was at work in the evolution of the western literary tradition, but he replaced Nietzsche's use of a will to power as the god-term which lend coherence to his hermeneutical theory with the notion of Being forged by the pre-Socratics prior to the emergence of significant distinctions among language, experience and reality.  In his hermeneutical theory, he supplemented Nietzsche's concern with the textuality of experience with his own emphasis on the historicity of experience and used the participative character of human existence implicit in this notion to transform the Cartesian distinction between subjectivity and objectivity into an interplay between understanding and interpretation.  (The pregnant metaphor:  "Language is an abode in which we dwell suspended over an abyss.")

        Turning to an analysis of the workings of language, Heidegger fashioned a metaphor which depicted language as a vehicle for the revelation of the meaning of Being.  To support this metaphor, he noted that, when we struggle to express our deepest concerns, we find ourselves searching for words.  And to unpack the metaphor, he asserted (1) that language, not the language-user, speaks, (2) that language speaks Being, and (3) that "language reveals; language conceals".  And in this context, he transformed the search governed by Aristotle's correspondence theory of truth into a search for an authentically human stance toward Being.

         In effect, Heidegger replaced a privileging of a compelling power of reason with a reading code designed to voice prophetic calls for open responsiveness to the unfolding of a creative and gracious Being at work in the western literary tradition.  (The contrast with Nietzsche's call to welcome supermen who would live beyond good and evil is obvious.)

          Earlier, I noted Heidegger's influence on Rudolph Bultmann.  His influence can also be found in the writings of Karl Rahner.  But the postmodernists were the first to recognize that the use of god-terms by both Nietzsche and Heidegger offered ample evidence that their hermeneutical theories were indebted to a desire to escape from the rule of reason.  In their appropriation of Heidegger's hermeneutical theory, they embraced Heidegger's assertion that language speaks, that language conceals as well as reveals, and that the use of reason generates rationalizations that conceal as well as reveal.  And to support the pretense that they themselves speak from nowhere, they insist that their hermeneutics of suspicion does not invoke or require a god-term.

          For the workings of a reading code authorized by a hermeneutics of suspicion, see Reflection 39, on The Myth of Modernity.  In this Reflection, I suggest that the myth of Modernity is the primary target of deconstructive readings generated by a hermeneutics of suspicion.