In this paper, I explore ways in which metaphors contribute to hermeneutical resistance, that is, to practices that overcome and/or ameliorate hermeneutical injustice. I distinguish two aspects of hermeneutical injustice and two corresponding kinds of resistance: exoteric and esoteric hermeneutical injustice/resistance. The former injustice consists in unjust harm due to an inability to make one's experience understood to others. The latter consists in such a harm due to an inability to fully understand one's own experiences. In exoteric hermeneutical resistance, metaphors (...) can overcome resistances in others to understand oppressed agents' contributions because of its automatic processing and anti-deniability. In esoteric hermeneutical resistance, metaphors may highlight common structures in various aspects of marginalised agent's experiences, they can provide means of denoting social properties obscured by hermeneutical injustice and they can exhibit hermeneutical injustice by resisting interpretation. I illustrate these practices through works by Emily Dickinson, Ralph Ellison, Frantz Fanon, Paul Celan and Nelly Sachs. Those examples show the power of metaphors in hermeneutical resistance. (shrink)

Reacting against the turn to transcendence that heavily characterized the medieval worldview, the modern worldview is fundamentally exemplified by a threefold turn to immanence, consisting of a subjective turn, a linguistic turn and an experiential turn. Language plays a pivotal role here since it mediates between the subjective and the experiential. Ricoeur’s treatment of metaphor, significantly laid out in his The Rule of Metaphor, is crucial in bringing about this linguistic turn that mediates the subject and its experience (...) of the world. Through an analysis of “seeing as” as a poietic reconfiguration of reality in the subject’s experience, language transforms and founds the world as a “being as.” What is disclosed in this interpretative transformation of reality is not simply an hermeneutical ontology but possibly—also through language—an hermeneutical axiology. (shrink)

Taking as our starting point Plato'smetaphor of the doctor as philosopher we reflect on some aspects of the epistemological status of medicine. The framework to this paper is the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer which shows the paradoxical nature of Western medicine in choosing the body-object as its investigative starting point, while in actual fact dealing with subjects. Gadamer proposes a model of medicine as the art of understanding and dialogue, which is capable of bringing together its various constituent parts, (...) i.e. knowledge, knowing how to do and knowing how to be, in medical practice and in the physician'straining. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the dyadic figure of the physician as Platonic master of the living totality and wounded healer, capable of activating the patient'sself-healing capacity. (shrink)

Abstract:This article applies hermeneutics and conceptual metaphor theory to the cross-cultural encounter with China's philosophical metaphors. Philosophical hermeneutics draws attention to the fore-structures of understanding and the traditional horizons that condition interpretations of the world, and to a notion of truth as transformative experience. Conceptual metaphor theory draws attention to the ubiquity of cognitive metaphors as structures of anticipation and sources of meaning. Together they give us a notion of "fore-metaphors" that both condition and enable our (...) encounters with truth and meaning. Chinese philosophy's deeply embedded metaphors—such as water, family, and harmony—have profound implications. Thinking through the eff ects of our fore-metaphors can help overcome the cultural distance separating Western and Chinese philosophies. A hermeneutic attitude of openness and willingness to allow further truth to reform our fore-having could help us understand Chinese metaphors in a fusion of horizons that alters our way of being in the world. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the relations between hermeneutics, spirituality and imagination. The theoretical frame is formed by the notion of imaginative sets. These sets of dominant cultural images inscribe themselves into our understanding of the meanings of texts or spiritual contents. One such imaginative schema has undoubtedly been the image of reading as nourishment and the subsequent image of reading as pleasure or sweetness. The latter will be used here as an example of how from cultural images emerge metaphors (...) by assigning certain meaning to them. The basis of these images goes back to early Christian times and to the metaphor of learning as eating. Medieval hermeneutics adopted these images according to its cultural forms. However, the use of the metaphor of sweetness in the Middle Ages differs from the use of the similar metaphors in the early Christianity because of the changed meaning attributed to the image. The imaginative set of sweetness reached their peak with Cusanus, but it appeared sporadically afterwards and is still active today when people say about nutritious reading or the savouring of texts. Imaginative sets thus not only have their history of petrified metaphors, but also the history of reactivations of images. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on the notion of clinical medicine as a hermeneutical enterprise and to bridge the gap between the general perspectives of hermeneutics and the particularities of medical practice. The case of a patient with low back pain is analyzed. The discussion centers around the metaphor of the patient as a text and a model of five social discourses about low back pain. The problems addressed are: (1) the nature of a moral (...) experience, (2) the variety of available texts, (3) the difference between the doctor's and patient's narratives, and (4) the patient's and doctor's responsibility regarding the existential, biographical meaning of an illness. Although many problems are left unsolved, it is argued that from a philosophical point of view the notion of medicine as a hermeneutical enterprise opens up the possibility of gaining insight in the foundations of the clinical encounter. (shrink)

“Discourse, Metaphysics,and Hermeneutics of the Self” deals with the connection between the hermeneutics of the self, as constituted in the ethical-anthropological framework of _Oneself as Another_ (1990), and Ricoeur’s conception of a metaphysics of human agency as developed within this period of his work. It relates to his inquiries in the fields of ontology and metaphysics, from the lectures entitled _Être, essence et substance chez Platon et Aristote_ (1953-1954) – translated as _Being, Essence and Substance in Plato and (...) Aristotle_ (2013)—, up to “De la métaphysique à la morale” (1993) published in the _Revue de métaphysique et de morale _– translated into English as “From Metaphysics to Moral Philosophy” (1996)—, via the article “Ontologie” (1972) for _Encyclopaedia Universalis_, the last chapter of _The Rule of Metaphor_ (1975), and the first section of the conclusions to the third volume of _Time and Narrative_ (1985). Ricœur aims at determining a specific kind of philosophical discourse as a common ground for the perspectives stemming from a hermeneutic phenomenology and from a more speculative ontological-metaphysical research. (shrink)

“Discourse, Metaphysics,and Hermeneutics of the Self” deals with the connection between the hermeneutics of the self, as constituted in the ethical-anthropological framework of Oneself as Another (1990), and Ricoeur’s conception of a metaphysics of human agency as developed within this period of his work. It relates to his inquiries in the fields of ontology and metaphysics, from the lectures entitled Être, essence et substance chez Platon et Aristote (1953-1954), up to “De la métaphysique à la morale” (1993) published (...) in the Revue de métaphysique et de morale, via the article “Ontologie” (1972) for Encyclopaedia Universalis, the last chapter of The Rule of Metaphor (1975), and the first section of the conclusions to the third volume of Time and Narrative (1985). Ricœur aims at determining a specific kind of philosophical discourse as a common ground for the perspectives stemming from a hermeneutic phenomenology and from a more speculative ontological-metaphysical research. (shrink)

In this paper, I formulate an existentialist view on the dialogue with the past, based on the philosophy of Martin Buber. This view is meant to supplement the traditional, hermeneutical view on the dialogue with the past. In the first part of this paper, I argue that the traditional hermeneutic view on the dialogue with the past is somewhat restricted. In the work of people such as Schleiermacher, Dilthey or even Gadamer, dialogue is always regarded as a primarily cognitive event, (...) focused on the “I” rather than the “you.” I argue that this means that they take only one aspect of the metaphor into account, and ignore the more existential dimension of dialogue. As an alternative, I use the philosophy of Martin Buber to formulate a point of view that does embrace the existential side of dialogue. I also compare the Buberian view of dialogue with that of Gadamer, and I suggest in which a Buberian historian would differ from a Gadamerian historian. (shrink)

A distinct logic to Gadamer's early writings makes them more than mere precursors to the mature thought that appeared in _Truth and Method_. They contain their own, new and different, "philosophical hermeneutics" and are worth reading with a fresh eye. The young Gadamer began his publication career by arguing that Plato's ethical writings did not "express" doctrine but rather depended upon the "play" of language among speakers in an ethical discourse community. This was the key idea of _Plato's Dialectical (...) Ethics_, Gadamer's first book. Following the classical formula of seeing politics as the continuation of ethics, Gadamer's writings in the 1930s and 1940s concentrated on the Platonic idea of the state and argued two key points. First, the exiling of poets from the city was a way of banishing monologue and clearing the way for a dialogue as the language form appropriate to political discourse communities. Second, the Platonic state's defining task was the educational one of shaping the soul, and this could not be achieved monologically but rather had to take place as a dialogical play between the educator and the soul. The mature philosophical hermeneutics of _Truth and Method_ is a metaphor taken from the literary experience of constructing textual meaning out of the play of parts and whole. The philosophical hermeneutics of Gadamer's early writings rests on a play between the ethical whole initially the Gestalt figure of the "Platonic Socrates" but later the Platonic state and the individual soul in need of ethical guidance. There is no conflict between the early and the later hermeneutics, but the early hermeneutics retain a freshness of spirit and boldness of interpretation that is characteristic of the Weimar culture of Gadamer's Marburg youth.From beginning to end, Gadamer's early writings remind us that Plato's dialogues really do record the conversational essence of Western philosophy at its birth. (shrink)

This article presents Paul Ricœur’s hermeneutic of the productive imagination as a methodological tool for understanding the innovative social function of texts that in exceeding their semantic meaning, iconically augment reality. Through the reasoning of Rastafari elder Mortimo Planno’s unpublished text, Rastafarian: The Earth’s Most Strangest Man, and the religious and biblical signification from the music of his most famous postulate, Bob Marley, this article applies Paul Ricœur’s schema of the religious productive imagination to conceptualize the metaphoric transfer from text (...) to life of verbal and iconic images of Rastafari’s hermeneutic of word, sound and power. This transformation is accomplished through what Ricœur terms the phenomenology of the iconic augmentation of reality. Understanding this semantic innovation is critical to understanding the capacity of the religious imagination to transform reality as a proclamation of hope in the midst of despair. (shrink)

It is well known that philosophical hermeneutics has long been associated in political discussions with a conservative orientation. Many Gadamerians have sought to rebut this suggestion, convincingly emphasizing progressive political dimensions of hermeneutics in general and of Gadamer’s thought in particular. One version of the association of hermeneutics with conservatism has been overlooked, however, namely, Hans Blumenberg’s provocative claim that the predilection in the hermeneutic tradition for metaphors of hearing and listening indicates that hermeneutics passively heeds (...) and takes in tradition as we would unwillingly receive a loud sound, and is thereby politically conservative. This paper critically responds to Blumenberg’s critique of what I call the conservatism of listening, and aims to interrogate the extent to which Gadamer’s hermeneutics can be characterized by this form of conservatism. Through a consideration of ocular metaphors in Gadamer’s thinking, we will discover in Gadamerian hermeneutics a conception of dynamic, constructive, and embodied engagement with historical traditions that makes room for critique. In this way, Gadamer avoids the charge of adhering to the conservatism of listening. (shrink)

The article deals with Heidegger’s attitudes towards theology. Heidegger, stating that existential philosophy and theology are incompatible, advances a thesis of not objectivating poetic thinking. Whereas, Ricoeur’s biblical hermeneutics is based on his theory of metaphor. The lingual act here means the destruction of the old outlook for the sake of the new one. In this dramatic way cognition occurs as a meeting. The poetic thinking of the late Heidegger is also based on a meeting that covers both (...) horizontal coexistence and vertical direction. The author raises the question whether the poetic thinking of the late Heidegger is not theological? (shrink)

In this lucid and elegantly written book, Joel Weinsheimer discusses how the insights of Hans-Georg Gadamer alter our understanding of literary theory and interpretation. Weinsheimer begins by surveying modern hermeneutics from Schleiermacher to Riocoeur, showing that Gadamer’s work is situated in the middle of an ongoing dialogue. Gadamer’s hermeneutics, says Weinsheimer, is specifically philosophical for it explores how understanding occurs at all, not how it should be regulated in order to function more rigorously or effectively. According to Weinsheimer, (...) Gadamer views understanding as an effect of history, not an action but a passion, something that happens to the interpreter. Gadamer offers a new model of historical understanding that is based on metaphor: it fuses the different into the same but, like metaphor, does not repress difference. Similarly, Gadamer’s critique of the semiotic conception of language redresses the balance between difference and sameness in the relation of word and world. The common thread in the contributions of philosophical hermeneutics to literary theory is the multifaceted tension between the one and the many, between sameness and difference. This appears in metaphor and application, in the complex dialogue between the past and present, and between the interpretation and the interpreted generally. In the final chapter of the book, “The Question of the Classic,” Weinsheimer explores the implications of this analysis of Gadamer’s hermeneutics for the current debate concerning the study of the canon and the classic. (shrink)

Paul Ricoeur’s contribution to the theory of interpretation, or hermeneutics, is considerable: he ranks among the masters of this discipline alongside Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger and Gadamer. In addition to major works like _The Conflict of Interpretations_, he wrote many articles and shorter texts which deserve to be discovered and rediscovered. These allow us to gain a deeper understanding of the development of his work over time and to appreciate the full range of his contribution. Some of the texts examine (...) the nature of metaphor while others guide the reader through the many challenges of the hermeneutic problem - from the symbol to the text, then to the text as action, taking full account of the ethical implications. Here one encounters Ricoeur’s reflections on the future of hermeneutics and his abiding concern to explore the relations between hermeneutics and analytical philosophy. Ricoeur’s contribution to biblical hermeneutics has also been decisive. Two masterful studies in this volume attest to Ricoeur’s attempt to explore the relations between revelation and truth, on the one hand, and between myths of salvation and reason, on the other. This book - the second volume of Ricoeur’s writings and lectures - brings together texts which appeared between 1972 and 2006. It is published under the auspices of Le Fonds Ricoeur. (shrink)

I argue that imagination has an inherently paradoxical structure: it enables one to flee one’s socio-cultural reality and to constitute one’s socio-cultural world. I maintain that most philosophical accounts of the imagination leave this paradox unexplored. I further contend that Paul Ricoeur is the only thinker to have addressed this paradox explicitly. According to Ricoeur, to resolve this paradox, one needs to recognize language as the origin of productive imagination. This paper explores Ricoeur’s solution by offering a detailed study of (...) reproductive and productive imagination in the framework of poetic imagination. My analysis subjects Ricoeur’s distinction between reproductive and productive imagination to a critique that relies upon the principles of classical phenomenology. According to my central thesis, the imaginative powers of language are themselves rooted in perception. This thesis broadens the scope and significance of Ricoeur’s solution by enabling one to resolve the paradox of imagination not only at the level of language-based imagination, but also at the level of dreams and daydreaming as well as at the level of non-language based art. No less significantly, this thesis enables one to open a fresh dialogue between phenomenology and hermeneutics. (shrink)

“Discourse, Metaphysics,and Hermeneutics of the Self” deals with the connection between the hermeneutics of the self, as constituted in the ethical-anthropological framework of Oneself as Another (1990), and Ricoeur’s conception of a metaphysics of human agency as developed within this period of his work. It relates to his inquiries in the fields of ontology and metaphysics, from the lectures entitled Être, essence et substance chez Platon et Aristote (1953-1954), up to “De la métaphysique à la morale” (1993) published (...) in the Revue de métaphysique et de morale, via the article “Ontologie” (1972) for Encyclopaedia Universalis, the last chapter of The Rule of Metaphor (1975), and the first section of the conclusions to the third volume of Time and Narrative (1985). Ricœur aims at determining a specific kind of philosophical discourse as a common ground for the perspectives stemming from a hermeneutic phenomenology and from a more speculative ontological-metaphysical research. (shrink)

Hans Georg Gadamer is responsible for the re-emergence of hermeneutics in modern philosophy. This fourth volume of the Continental Philosophy series opens with an account by Gadamer of his own life and work and their relation to the achievements of hermeneutics. Gadamer and Hermeneutics then presents a series of essays that link Gadamer to other major contemporary philosophers. There are special sections on Gadamer's relationship to Heidegger, Ricoeur, Barthes, Derrida and Habermas. The volume concludes with three essays (...) around the questions of metaphor, science and the text, each essay shedding a special light on the hermeneutic process. (shrink)

The present paper is a commentary on an article by Drew Leder [1]. Leder identifies a series of texts in the clinical encounter, emphasizes the central role of interpretation in making sense of each of these texts, and articulates ordering principles to guide the interpretive work.The metaphor of clinical work as textual explication, however, creates the expectation that there is a text somewhere to be found. Such an expectation invites doctors and patients to search for the text and runs (...) the risk of conceptualizing patients as more static than they are. If one is to use the textual metaphor, one must appreciate the radical extent to which the clinical encounter is a mutually produced and shifting entity. The qualities of mutuality and indeterminacy are not those one usually associates with texts. One might ultimately be better served by a different metaphor based more directly on uncertainty. (shrink)

This study looks to the biblical parable in Matthew 9:17 about “new wine and new wineskins” as a symbolic lens for understanding Africa’s need to embrace progressive values and philosophies so as to break free from its developmental shackles. Employing an expository approach, the paper first analyses the meaning and symbolism of the new wine/wineskins metaphor, which warns against trying to contain new, transformative ideas within outdated, inflexible structures. It then surveys specific socio-political and economic obstacles hindering development across (...) Africa. The paper submits that the future of Africa lies in a profound reorientation toward openness to change and a willingness to continually renew its social, political, and economic “wineskins.”. (shrink)

This paper, originally given in Groningen, the Netherlands, proposed a ‘material hermeneutics’, or, metaphorically, an interpretation which “lets things speak” via new scientific imaging technologies. Such a material hermeneutics would add to, perhaps often displace the usual linguistictextual hermeneutics so refined by Paul Ricoeur. I outline several examples of such a hermeneutics here based on some 40 or more years of technoscience experience.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hegel’s Hermeneutics by Paul ReddingTerry PinkardPaul Redding. Hegel’s Hermeneutics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996. Pp. xvi + 262. Cloth, $39.95. Paper, $16.95.Following on the heels of fruitful reception of Kant at work in the last several decades in English-speaking philosophy, one of the most productive lines of interpretation of [End Page 327] Hegel has tried to reconstruct Hegel’s thought in light of its relation to Kantianism. (...) Paul Redding’s new work carries this line further. As Redding sets matters up, Hegel builds explicitly on the unfinished “Copernican” move in Kant’s work, which, as the “Copernican” metaphor suggests, stresses the way in which our particular perspectives on the world must be understood as located within a set of conditions that, although not themselves experienced, are conditions of that experience. It calls, that is, for an investigation of how and whether “subjective” and “objective” points of view relate to each other. The “communicative” interpretation of Kant’s “Copernican” move sets up the Hegelian development of it: For one agent to be able to understand the claims of another’s experience, he must be able to conceive the other as an object-agent in the world and a subjective-agent that has a point of view on the world, and the other must likewise see him in the same way. Redding’s thesis is that Hegel appropriated the way that Kant, Fichte, and Schelling tried to provide such an account, and without falling into the pitfalls they did, developed a recognitive, “intersubjective,” theory of consciousness that successfully gives the proper account of how these two points of view are both necessary and relate to each other.Redding’s interpretation thus lays great weight on the short section of “master and servitude” in the Phenomenology as the key to the structure of all of Hegel’s thought. Each agent can recognize his own point of view only by virtue of recognizing the points of view of other agents, and this kind of recognition can arise when “an intention is common to subjects facing each other from opposed points of view” (111). The structure of recognition that emerges is, of course, quite complex and full of self-reflexive moments, but what emerges is Geist, spirit, the “I that is a We and the We that is an I,” which is not itself an entity having a point of view but a structure of self-conscious, mutually recognizing beings. Thus, at the basis of Hegel’s philosophy is a hermeneutical theory of how agents address and understand each other—that is, how they interpret each other’s acts, intentions, and expressions. Redding puts this interpretation to work in a short account of the progression of the Phenomenology, which he takes to be an account of the way in which the European community has historically failed to realize the kind of institutional and social structures of mutual recognition that would create the “conditions adequate for rational and free intentionality” (141) until modern times. The end of the Phenomenology—“absolute knowing”—is thus not the achieving of a “body of complete or final knowledge” but of the “(tragic) insight that particular and determinate bodies of knowledge are always conditioned and so perspectival” and thus calling for hermeneutical activities of interpretation (140).To make good on his account of the central status of “recognition” (and therefore of “hermeneutics”) to Hegel’s enterprise, Redding gives a short but quite insightful sketch of how Hegel’s notorious Science of Logic might be understood as a formalization of the logic of such recognitive practice, an account of how it is that agents can adopt these complex patterns of recognizing their own points of view as being recognized by others. Hegel’s Logic depends on the rejection of there being any “immediate” truths that can serve as absolute starting points or premises and from which we can then derive “mediated” true conclusions. There are no such “truths” outside of the circle of thought; this is, Redding argues, “characteristic of that ‘hermeneutic circle’ within [End Page 328] which, according to Heidegger and Gadamer, thought always moves,” namely, “a structure of reciprocal recognition... [as... (shrink)

In the past, biblical scholarship has neglected the hermeneutical contribution that an imaginal engagement with the text may make. The author’s aim in this article was to develop theological imagination as a hermeneutical device. This was done by briefly considering the concurrence in the hermeneutic contributions of three interpreters of biblical texts, with specific regard to their understanding of biblical imagination. These were Walter Brueggemann, Paul Ricoeur and Ignatius of Loyola. Their hermeneutical contributions concur in their understanding of a biblically (...) informed imagination, and it is specifically this aspect of the concurrence of their thought that was explored. An illustration from Proverbs 14:27, which draws on the metaphor and biblical motif of the fountain or source of life, was put forward to demonstrate how the concurrence in the contributions of these biblical interpreters may influence an imaginal engagement with the text.Keywords: Old Testament; Proverbs; Hermeneutics; The fear of the Lord/Yahweh; Walter Brueggemann; Paul Ricoeur; Ignatius of Loyola; Imaginal engagement. (shrink)

Against the background of an academic development starting in literary studies, also involving ‘encounters’ with hermeneutics, this article argues that the contemporary cross-discipline of Discourse Studies, and hence Critical Discourse Studies, have gone beyond the impressionistic or erudite ‘interpretation’ of texts, as traditionally practiced in hermeneutics. It is summarized how psychology today accounts for many of the properties of the semantic and pragmatic comprehension of situated text and talk, for instance in terms of mental models. It thus makes (...) explicit processes that are only vaguely characterized in terms of the metaphors of the interpretative ‘Arc’ as presented by Ricoeur. Yet we have only begun to make explicit the complex processes of discourse comprehension, especially also how structures of discourse are related to broader social, political, historical or cultural macro-contexts. Sophisticated discourse interpretations, also in hermeneutics, may thus provide insights that may be used in future developments of more explicit theories of discourse understanding. (shrink)

The metaphor of host and guest has value for exploring the practice and role identity of nurses on inpatient mental health units. Two complementary texts, one from the ancient Zen record of Lin‐chi, and the other from the contemporary hermeneutic philosopher Richard Kearney, are used to elaborate meanings of host and guest that can be applied to the situation of mental health nurses. In a doctoral study with a hermeneutic design, I addressed the topic of nurse–patient relationship using an (...) interpretive framework that included sources from Buddhist thought. The positions of host and guest emerged from interviews with nurses as one interpretive theme to open up new understanding of the topic. The two texts, originally distant in era and culture, both employ the host and guest metaphor. They are applied to extracts from interviews to open up discussions of hierarchy, status, patients' perspectives, otherness and resistances as features of nurses' complex experience. These provide insights into understanding practice and suggest implications for how institutional environments shape practice. An intercultural reading of texts can provide a source of new understanding of nurse–patient relationships. (shrink)

Despite the importance of linguistic disclosure for philosophical hermeneutics there has been a conspicuous lack of attention to the question of how linguistic disclosure actually works. I examine the mechanics of disclosure by drawing on Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics as well as Ricoeur’s concept of translation and his theory of metaphor. My claim is that the background horizon of the unsaid that differs between languages enables each to disclose different things. This situation underscores the importance of engaging in (...) East-West comparative philosophy, of philosophizing across what Ricoeur calls the radical “fold” (pli) in what can be thought and experienced. (shrink)

Postphenomenology is not a critique of phenomenology, but a practical interpretive epistemology where technological artifacts and practices are studied. These new researchers can be called ‘R&D postphenomenologists’. Over the past 25 years, the expanding hermeneutics of postphenomenology has been undertaken by classical phenomenologists, cultural anthropologists, media/communications writers and performance artists. But these face Scharff’s challenge of ‘insufficient critical consideration’ and an entire world of artifice experienced through embodied mobile devices. In response there is a ‘weaving metaphor’ and performance (...) art with the intentional use of artifice/illusion to allow for multistability and ‘implicit idealism’ in a complex and unpredictable sensory world of ontological experiments and case studies. Allowing for multistable interpretations, variational theory, and the study of illusions, technoscience researchers and users of emerging technologies can develop heuristics for interpreting the world through devices, if programmers of these technologies make the hermeneutics accessible and visually interpretable. Both groups must expand the purview of the ‘readable technologies’ of Patrick Heelan, allowing for an expanding material hermeneutics of postphenomenology that is poised to become a praxis of perception for users of ubiquitous digital technologies and devices. (shrink)

Abstract. Don Browning's career involved a deep exploration into the frequently hidden philosophical assumptions buried in various forms of psychotherapeutic healing. These healing methodologies were based on metaphors and metaphysical assumptions about both the meaning of human fulfillment and the ultimate context of our lives. All too easily, psychological theories put forward philosophical anthropologies while claiming to be operating within a modest, empirical approach. Browning does not fault or criticize these psychotherapeutic enterprises for making such claims because he thinks these (...) claims are implicit in all discussions of psychological health. But he does fault these methodologies for not being more forthcoming about their shift from a narrow empirical investigation to a broad-ranging philosophical and even quasireligious orientation. Browning can be described as a “horizon analyst” who constantly pulled back the curtains and helped us see the deeper symbols, images, and metaphysical assumptions behind our psychological investigations. (shrink)

It is acknowledged that the study of metaphor is a key inflection in Ricœur’s heremeneutics. It is perhaps less well known that this study is concomittant with one of parables, which represents an equally noteworthy inflection in Ricœur’s contribution to Biblical hermeneutics. Some, however, use this concommitance to argue that the transfer of some theological presuppositions (as to the nature of language and the Truth) is facilitated by this and then do not hesitate to claim that the pages (...) devoted to tha analogia entis , in The Rule of Metaphor , are proof of the presence of dubious theological interests in the development of his theory of metaphor. To counter this devastating critique, this article draws from some analyses by Umberto Eco, which imply that the relation between analogia entis and metaphor are not epistemologically scandalous as well as Alain, who sketched out an interpretation of parables which is very close to Ricœur’s. (shrink)

Kravchenko suggests replacing Turing’s suggestion for explaining cognizers’ cognitive capacity through autonomous robotic modelling by ‘autopoiesis’, Maturana’s extremely vague metaphor for the relations and interactions among organisms, environments, and various subordinate and superordinate systems therein. I suggest that this would be an exercise in hermeneutics rather than causal explanation.

This book uses the phenomenological interpretive approach of Paul Ricoeur to shed new light on New Testament eschatological expectation. Peter C. de Vries argues for a metaphorical reading of the apocalyptic discourse of Mark 13, based upon neither the author’s intention nor the reader’s reception but latent meaning present in the text itself.

ABSTRACTTo assess the strength of Lloyd's conception of analogy, in particular, his innovative conceptual apparatus ‘the multidimensionality of reality’ and ‘the semantic stretch’, I propose the notion of hermeneutic mechanism as a rival tool of investigation. Hermeneutic mechanism manifests in the interaction of negative and positive hermeneutic forces, the dynamic interdependence between ideal universality and contextualized individuality, and the organism-like ‘hermeneutic circle’. I argue that hermeneutic mechanism not only offers a meta-methodological perspective for appreciating Lloyd's methodological development of analogy for (...) cross-cultural studies, but also incorporates both Lloyd's quest for diversity and his critique of logical dichotomy, and moreover overcomes the explicatory flaw in his ‘multidimensionality of reality’ and colour metaphor. (shrink)

With the advent of the digital age and new mediums of communication, it is becoming increasingly important for those interested in the interpretation of religious text to look beyond traditional ideas of text and textuality to find the sacred in unlikely places. Paul Ricoeur’s phenomenological reorientation of classical hermeneutics from romanticized notions of authorial intent and psychological divinations to a serious engagement with the “science of the text” is a hermeneutical tool that opens up an important dialogue between the (...) interpreter, the world of the text, and the contemporary world in front of the text. This article examines three significant insights that Paul Ricoeur contributes to our expanding understanding of text. First under scrutiny will be Ricoeur’s de-regionalization of classic hermeneutics culminating in his understanding of Dasein (Being) as “being-in-the-world,” allowing mean-ing to transcend the physical boundaries of the text. Next, Ricoeur’s three-fold under-standing of traditionality/Traditions/tradition as the “chain of interpretations” through which religious language transcends the tem-poral boundary of historicity will be explored. The final section will focus on Ricoeur’s understanding of the productive imagination and metaphoric truth as the under-appreciated yet key insight around which Ricoeur’s philosophical investigation into the metaphoric transfer from text to life revolves. (shrink)

My main interest here is to look at pain as a sign of the body that something is wrong. I will argue that there is a meaning of pain before and after an illness is diagnosed. An illness contains its own semantic paradigm, but the pain before the diagnosis affects the pace of life, not only by limiting our interactions, but also as a struggle with its meaning and a reminder of mortality.My main approach is what I call bio-hermeneutics, (...) an extension of medical hermeneutics branching out from the Continental hermeneutical tradition. As such, I will explore the connection between pain and language, temporality, dialectics, and ontology. Given the centrality of language in constructing the meaning of pain, my analysis is informed by the semantics (looking at pain metaphors), syntax (pain as incoherence), and pragmatics (pain as companion) of expressing pain.The last section explores the meaning of pain in connection with death, as memento mori. Revisiting an old definition of philosophy asmelete thanatou, or ‘rehearsal of death’, I will reflect on the difficulty of finding meaning not only for pain, but also for death as cessation of all existential possibilities. (shrink)

The review essay critically evaluates, synoptically presents, and admiringly celebrates Chung-ying Cheng latest work, The Primary Way: Philosophy of Yijing. It sees the book’s publication as an emblem of an intellectual jubilee – a half-centenary of scholarly lucubration and achievement in Chinese and comparative philosophy by Cheng, who was trained at Harvard in American pragmatism and analytic philosophy. The essay reveals why Cheng returns to the Yijing time and again. The principal reason is that this ancient classic, to his way (...) of thinking, offers us “the primary Way,” the anchoring normative criteria, perspectives, and values in a nutshell, whereby reality may be deciphered, discerned, and distinguished. To put it in metaphoric terms, the Yijing is the fount of Chinese philosophy. Whether interpreting Chinese thoughts in general or reading the Yijing in particular, Cheng brings western theoretical perspectives to bear on the understanding of the Chinese texts, which are, in and of themselves, replete with deep philosophical meanings. Cheng appropriates the Yijing for his own primary end, which is to disclose, via his onto-hermeneutic reading, a living, transformative ethico-moral philosophy that is onto-cosmologically alive and onto-generatively fecund: the primary Way. In doing so, he not only offers us innovative scholarship on the ancient classic but also opens up a theoretical and methodological frontier, an onto-hermeneutic one, where Chinese thought and philosophy may be explored anew. (shrink)

Aristotle’s distinction between phronesis (practical wisdom) and episteme (theory) has been centrally influential in the development of hermeneutics. Heidegger, initiating hermeneutic phenomenology, foregrounded practical understanding as foundational (or ‘ready-to-hand’): scientific theory was but secondary (‘presented-at-hand’). Gadamer subsequently emphasised understanding as primarily practical, as an applicative achievement, within broad assumptions, ‘horizons of understanding’, a metaphor signalling explicitly/implicitly represented surroundings. How should Aristotle’s idea of practical wisdom in human affairs articulated in phenomenology’s hermeneutic thought - principally Gadamer’s scholarship - inform (...) researcher analyses? Here an account of hermeneutic philosophy, with its core conceptual formations, is presented as concerning situated understanding in practice, phronesis. Multiple instances of this behavioural research focus from psychology’s Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis then receive reflection. Interviewing proceeds from ‘horizons of expectation’ (Jauss 1982). Themes are viewed as 'horizons of understanding’ (Gadamer 1975), interviewees’ perspectives on practices. A researcher may engage in resolving ‘indeterminacy’ (Iser 1978). Participants’ reflectively recounted meaning-making phronesis practices can be structured in their analyses by locating their a priori, universally discernible aspects. Thus phronesis is constituted by generic, care (Heidegger’s Sorge) embodying activity, ‘emplaced’ or understood from tacit representational affective ‘horizons of understanding’: participant bodies can become denoted ‘equipment’ (Heidegger’s Zeug). Keywords: caring, hermeneutic phronesis, interpretative horizons of understanding, phenomenology. (shrink)

Unparalled in its poetry, richness, and religious and historical significance, the Hebrew Bible has been the site and center of countless commentaries, perhaps none as unique as Thinking Biblically. This remarkable collaboration sets the words of a distinguished biblical scholar, André LaCocque, and those of a leading philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, in dialogue around six crucial passages from the Old Testament: the story of Adam and Eve; the commandment "thou shalt not kill"; the valley of dry bones passage from Ezekiel; Psalm (...) 22; the Song of Songs; and the naming of God in Exodus 3:14. Commenting on these texts, LaCocque and Ricoeur provide a wealth of new insights into the meaning of the different genres of the Old Testament as these made their way into and were transformed by the New Testament. LaCocque's commentaries employ a historical-critical method that takes into account archaeological, philological, and historical research. LaCocque includes in his essays historical information about the dynamic tradition of reading scripture, opening his exegesis to developments and enrichments subsequent to the production of the original literary text. Ricoeur also takes into account the relation between the texts and the historical communities that read and interpreted them, but he broadens his scope to include philosophical speculation. His commentaries highlight the metaphorical structure of the passages and how they have served as catalysts for philosophical thinking from the Greeks to the modern age. This extraordinary literary and historical venture reads the Bible through two different but complementary lenses, revealing the familiar texts as vibrant, philosophically consequential, and unceasingly absorbing. (shrink)

Unparalled in its poetry, richness, and religious and historical significance, the Hebrew Bible has been the site and center of countless commentaries, perhaps none as unique as Thinking Biblically. This remarkable collaboration sets the words of a distinguished biblical scholar, André LaCocque, and those of a leading philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, in dialogue around six crucial passages from the Old Testament: the story of Adam and Eve; the commandment "thou shalt not kill"; the valley of dry bones passage from Ezekiel; Psalm (...) 22; the Song of Songs; and the naming of God in Exodus 3:14. Commenting on these texts, LaCocque and Ricoeur provide a wealth of new insights into the meaning of the different genres of the Old Testament as these made their way into and were transformed by the New Testament. LaCocque's commentaries employ a historical-critical method that takes into account archaeological, philological, and historical research. LaCocque includes in his essays historical information about the dynamic tradition of reading scripture, opening his exegesis to developments and enrichments subsequent to the production of the original literary text. Ricoeur also takes into account the relation between the texts and the historical communities that read and interpreted them, but he broadens his scope to include philosophical speculation. His commentaries highlight the metaphorical structure of the passages and how they have served as catalysts for philosophical thinking from the Greeks to the modern age. This extraordinary literary and historical venture reads the Bible through two different but complementary lenses, revealing the familiar texts as vibrant, philosophically consequential, and unceasingly absorbing. (shrink)

The theme of reading and relation to the textual production is persistent in works of the Danissh philosopher and theologian of the 19th century Soren Kierkegaard. This, in turn, is closely related to his project of existential communication. One of the decisive qualifications of the project is distance, or distancing between the self and the other. The distance makes it possible for self to reflect upon his/her own existence. Kierkegaard develops this theme in his conception of existential maeutics as opposed (...) to the Socratic one that presupposes closing the gap between interlocutors. Important role in the process of distanciation is played by the text, as well as by specific reading practices, and Kierkegaard metaphorically speaks of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ modes of reading. The ‘bad’ one means loosing oneself in the text, while the ‘good’ one – retaining some level of integrity of the reader. The distanciation is a theme also in reflections of French phenomenologist Paul Ricoeur, but if for him the distance is a difference within the field of language itself (as text versus discourse), then Kierkegaard takes into account mainly extratextual (ethical, religious and other) aspects, and difference is between text and reader. The present paper gives examples of ‘good’ reading practices employed by Kierkegaard in his Journals and Papers. (shrink)

The favourable reception of the analytic philosophy of language plays a central role in the composition of Ricœur’s literary hermeneutics. Following a brief description of the historical and methodological context of this reception, we show how Ricœur intends to link up phenomenology and analytic philosophy of language. Then we examine the role allocated to the analytic philosophy of language in establishing the idea of metaphor as a “more fundamental mode of reference” in The Rule of Metaphor . (...) But once again Ricœur situates this semantic interpretation of metaphor within the context of an ontology. The result is methodological difficulties that mark the limits of Ricœur’s reception of the analytic philosophy of language. Keywords: Semantics, Metaphor, Ontology, Structuralism, Poetics. Résumé La réception de la philosophie analytique du langage joue un rôle central dans la constitution de l’herméneutique littéraire de Ricœur. Après avoir tracé le cadre historique et systématique dans lequel s’inscrit cette réception, on montre comment Ricœur se propose d’articuler phénoménologie et philosophie analytique du langage. On étudie ensuite le rôle assigné à la philosophie analytique du langage pour la mise en place de la conception de la métaphore comme “mode plus fondamental de la référence” dans La métaphore vive . Mais Ricœur situe encore une fois cette interprétation sémantique de la métaphore dans un cadre ontologique. Il en résulte des difficultés systématiques qui marquent les limites de la réception de la philosophie analytique du langage par Ricœur. Mots-clés: Sémantique, Métaphore, Ontologie, Structuralisme, Poétique. (shrink)

A thorough examination of John Wesley’s writings will show that he was not a biblical literalist or infallibilist, despite his own occasional suggestions to the contrary. His most important principles for interpreting the Bible were: We should take its words literally only if doing so is not absurd, in which case we should “look for a looser meaning;” and “No Scripture can mean that God is not love, or that his mercy is not over all his works.” Eleven instances of (...) his not taking biblical texts literally are examined. His real view was something like this: Biblical language is infallibly and literally true if and only if it does not contradict more basic scriptures and is not absurd, that is, not construed literally when metaphorical, or not misleadingly metaphorical, or not oversimplified or exaggerated, or not culture bound, or not contrary to reason and experience, or not ethically unconscionable and unloving. (shrink)

But is not the word "metaphor" itself a metaphor, the metaphor of a displacement and therefore of a transfer in a kind of space? What is at stake is precisely the necessity of these spatial metaphors about metaphor included in our talk about "figures" of speech. . . . But in order to understand correctly the work of resemblance in metaphor and to introduce the pictorial or ironic moment at the right place, it is necessary (...) briefly to recall the mutation undergone by the theory of metaphor at the level of semantics by contrast with the tradition of classical rhetoric. In this tradition, metaphor was correctly described in terms of deviance, but this deviance was mistakenly ascribed to denomination only. Instead of giving a thing its usual common name, one designates it by means of a borrowed name, a "foreign" name in Aristotle's terminology. The rationale of this transfer of name was understood as the objective similarity between the things themselves or the subjective similarity between the attitudes linked to the grasping of these things. As concerns the goal of this transfer, it was supposed either to fill up a lexical lacuna, and therefore to serve the principle of economy which rules the endeavor of giving appropriate names to new things, new ideas, or new experiences, or to decorate discourse, and therefore to serve the main purpose of rhetorical discourse, which is to persuade and to please. Paul Ricoeur is professor of philosophy at the Université de Paris and John Nuveen Professor at the University of Chicago. He is editor of Revue de métaphysique et de morale and the author of many influential works on phenomenology, hermeneutics, and the philosophy of language. His most recent work to appear in English is The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language. He has also contributed "Narrative Time" to Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

This paper takes Plato's metaphor of poetic transmission as magnetic charge in the Ion as a central trope for thinking through the various relationships between philosophy and literature; between poetry, interpretation, and truth; and between erotic affects and the material, corporeal, queer dimensions of reception. The affective dimensions of the Platonic text in the Ion, Republic, Symposium, and Phaedrus are examined at length, and the explicit accounts of ascent to philosophical truth are shown to be complicated by the persistence (...) of tropes of corporeal and affective downgoing, with particular attention afforded to the figures of Eros, Hermes, and shame. The paper argues for an unbroken connection between these scenes of classical philosophy and the emergence of homosexuality in relation to the study of the classics in Victorian England. (shrink)

Birds, beasts, and creeping things swarm throughout the Bible's pages. Despite their prevalence, most biblical scholars have viewed them merely as metaphors, passive objects, or background embellishment to the human experience. This collection seeks to move beyond this traditional view of biblical animals by engaging the growing interdisciplinary field of animal studies. Contributors Peter Joshua Atkins, Jared Beverly, William P. Brown, Margaret Cohen, Jacob R. Evers, Michael J. Gilmour, William "Chip" Gruen, Dong Hyeon Jeong, Brian Fiu Kolia, Anne Létourneau, Robert (...) R. MacKay, Suzanna R. Millar, Timothy J. Sandoval, Robert Paul Seesengood, Ken Stone, Brian James Tipton, Arthur W. Walker-Jones, and Jaime L. Waters showcase the breadth and depth of inquiry that animal studies can foster in biblical studies as well as what animal studies can gain from a more rigorous engagement with biblical texts. Together the essays offer an animal hermeneutic that supports the flourishing of all creatures. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the metaphor of existence as a way of philosophical talking about life. Metaphorology was introduced by Hans Blumenberg (1920–1996), one of the most important and innovative thinkers of the 20th century. The works of Blumenberg fall generally within the category of the hermeneutics of metaphor. It is, for him, the question of substituting the study of the more hidden work of metaphors, symbols, and myths for the traditional history of concepts and doctrines. One (...) can say there are two inextricable elements of Blumenberg’s thought: (1) a theory of nonceptuality as essential to philosophizing and (2) an exploration of culture understood as humanity’s unceasing attempts to relieve itself of the weight of the absolutism of reality. Metaphors play an important role in the philosophical language: they are not impediments to clear thinking and clear expression, but rather they are images, iconic constants used by philosophers. Metaphors are able to grasp the reality better than philosophical concepts. According to Blumenberg, metaphors are a kind of reality models, the work of human imagination. One of such models is the metaphor of seafaring/shipwreck and the present article focuses on multiple actualisations of the metaphor in Blumenberg’s philosophy. (shrink)

Sarah A. Mattice develops a comparative intervention in contemporary metaphilosophy. Drawing on resources from hermeneutics, cognitive linguistics, aesthetics, and Chinese philosophy, she explores how philosophical language is deeply intertwined with the definition and practice of the discipline.

Many philosophers have refused to recognize Chinese traditions as genuinely philosophical. The conceptual foundations of these exclusionary efforts appear in Aristotle’s dividing philosophy from rhetoric, then associating philosophy with truth, and rhetoric with metaphor. The Chinese have frequently been defined as metaphorical thinkers, in contrast with the logical, scientific, or literal pursuits of Occidental traditions. Because metaphor is classed with rhetoric, and Chinese was associated with metaphor, critics had a way to say that the Chinese weren’t participating (...) in philia-sophia as rational inquiry into truth. I draw on two strands of 20th century philosophy to move us beyond this exclusionary framing: conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) and Gadamerian hermeneutics. Together these point to a conception of truth that welcomes Chinese traditions and suggests a fusion of horizons that introduces new metaphors for thinking about the role of philosophy. We can see philosophy as a subdiscipline of the more capacious and equally honorable discipline of hao-xue (好學), love of learning. This points us towards a new way forward for global philosophy—away from the thorny issues of access to sophia and towards a conception of hao-xue as the highest of human aims. We can shift the burden of membership qualifications and ask, does the west have hao-xue? As we’ll see, the west, particularly through the influence of Socrates, does have hao-xue, and we can rejoice that philosophy is welcomed into the big tent and can find its rightful place as a subdiscipline of the hallowed human endeavor to love learning. (shrink)

The concepts of metaphor and symbol within the context of hermeneutics are indebted to Hans‐Georg Gadamer and, especially, Paul Ricoeur. Both of these thinkers depart from the accepted, or “scientific”, definition of symbol, and both see a fundamental difference between symbols and metaphors: a symbol is not simply a metaphor in miniature, nor is a metaphor simply a symbol writ large; symbols are not primarily linguistic, whereas metaphors are fundamentally so. Ricoeur identifies three “primary” symbols as (...) being particularly important: the stain (or defilement), sin, and guilt. But these symbols also have “existential” meanings, of being impure, of being sinful, of being guilty. The metaphor “brings to language the implicit semantics of the symbol”: the metaphorical utterance clarifies the assimilation of one thing to another and of us to things that the symbol confuses. (shrink)

This article presents the conceptual groundwork for a “poetics of the self” by theorizing how and why a creative praxis rooted in Ricoeur’s philosophy of the will and hermeneutics of the living metaphor contributes to an individual’s on-going development of self-awareness. Its focus is on the affective fragility that manifests in an individual’s intermediary status of polarities – finitude and infinitude, freedom and nature – in conjunction with Ricœur’s tensional status of metaphorical truth. The act of writing poetry, (...) it suggests, can be an aesthetic mediation that develops insight into the primordial discord of the servile will. (shrink)