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Comfort with Ambiguity (Kinsella 2006)

04/11/2011 By Kelly Cooper

"Hermeneutics embraces ambiguity. According to GADAMER (1992) hermeneutics 'is entrusted with all that is unfamiliar and strikes us as significant' (p.70). Indeed, JARDINE (1992) states that it is the task of hermeneutics to restore life to its original difficulty. A hermeneutic view resists the idea that there can be one single authoritative reading of a text and recognizes the complexity of the interpretive endeavor. For instance, GADAMER (1996) explains that in textual analysis, from a hermeneutic perspective, the meaning of a text is not to be compared with an immovably and obstinately fixed point of view (p.388). Rather 'to understand a text always means to apply it to ourselves and to know that, even if it must always be understood in different ways, it is still the same text presenting itself to us in these different ways' (p.398). There cannot be any single interpretation that is correct in itself, as the historical life of tradition depends on being constantly assimilated and interpreted. In other words, GADAMER believes an interpretation has to adapt to the hermeneutical situation in which it belongs. [32]

WEINSHEIMER (1985) notes that, in keeping with the spirit of hermeneutics, GADAMER's work itself is not open to reductive analysis. Rather, his hermeneutic rigor resists neat antithesis and neat reconciliations and precludes pat formulations. He points out that GADAMER does not think in assertions, statements, and propositions that aim at unequivocal meanings in logical sequence. Rather, he thinks in questions. Even his answers open onto an unsaid, unasserted aura of meaning that can not be pinned down in univocal statements. [33]

Thus, a hermeneutic approach is open to the ambiguous nature of textual analysis, and resists the urge to offer authoritative readings and neat reconciliations. Rather, it recognizes the uniquely situated nature, historically and linguistically influenced, and the ambiguous nature of interpretation, and offers such for readers to engage with, or not, as they wish. [34]" (p.2.5).

Kinsella, Elizabeth Anne (2006). Hermeneutics and Critical Hermeneutics: Exploring Possibilities within the Art of Interpretation [47 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 7(3), Art. 19, http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0603190.

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Political Culture and Multiplicity of Subcultures

23/06/2011 By Kelly Cooper

"Originally, the suggestive unity of a more or less homogenous nation could ensure the cultural embedding of a legally defined citizenship status. In this context, democratic citizenship could form the focal point of social ties of mutual responsibility. But today we live in pluralistic societies that are moving further and further away from the model of a nation-state based on a culturally homogeneous population. The diversity of cultural forms of life, ethnic groups, religions, and worldviews is constantly growing. There is no alternative to this development,except at the normatively intolerable cost of ethnic cleansing. Hence republicanism must learn to stand on its own feet. The central idea of republicanism is that the democratic process can serve at the same time as a guarantor for the social integration of an increasingly differentiated society. In a society characterized by cultural and religious pluralism, this task cannot be displaced from the level of political will-formation and public communication onto the seemingly natural substrate of a supposedly homogeneous nation. The latter would merely serve as a facade for a hegemonic majority culture. For historical reasons, in many countries the majority culture is fused with the general political culture which claims to be recognized by all citizens regardless of their cultural background. This fusion must be dissolved if it is to be possible for different cultural, ethnic, and religious forms of life to coexist and interact on equal terms within the same political community. The level of the shared political culture must be uncoupled from the level of subcultures and their prepolitical identities. Of course, the claim to coexist with equal rights is subject to the proviso that the protected faiths and practices must not contradict the reigning constitutional principles (as they are interpreted by the political culture).

The political culture of a country crystallizes around its constitution. Each national culture develops a distinctive interpretation of those constitutional principles that are equally embodied in other republican constitutions—such as popular sovereignty and human rights#8212;in light of its own national history. A 'constitutional patriotism' based on these interpretations can take the place originally occupied by nationalism. This notion of constitutional patriotism appears to many observers to represent too weak a bond to hold together complex societies. The question then becomes even more urgent: under what conditions can a liberal political culture provide a sufficient cushion to prevent a nation of citizens, which can no longer rely on ethnic associations, from dissolving into fragments?" (Habermas 1998:117-118).

Habermas, Jürgen
1998 The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory. Ciaran Cronin and Pablo De Greiff, eds. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press

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Text and the Reader

11/06/2011 By Kelly Cooper

"His [Ricoeur's] second claim, also supported in his book on metaphor, is that literary works bring our experience to language. Thus, those who by methodological decision want to refer to a 'referential illusion' have not thereby abolished the problem of the relationship between literature and the world of the reader. Using Gadamer's expression, Ricoeur says that 'reading poses anew the problem of the fusion of two horizons, that of the text and that of the reader, and hence the intersection of the world of the text and the world of the reader.'. In the case of metaphor, the literal nonsense of the sentence which appears meaningless, and therefore incapable of referring to anything, is overcome by the new, metaphoric meaning which brings with it a new reference. Poetic texts as well as descriptive texts have the power to redescribe the world. What the interpretation of a text gives us is a possible world in which we could live. If we include narrative reference under the general heading of poetic reference, then a third problem arises. Narrative reference is at once similar and more complex than poetic reference. It is simpler because in narrative the world is seen through the lens of human action. According to mimesis2, narratives configure a world of action. And, a preunderstanding of action is presupposed. So, if in a broad sense narratives refer to the world of 'praxis' or human action, then the referential relationship is easier to understand. On the other hand, the referential relationship between text and the world is complicated by the truth-claims of some kinds of narrative— especially historical narratives— which are lacking in poetic works. Put simply, the referential modes of history and function are quite asymmetric" (Reagan 1995:333-334).

Reagan, Charles E.
1995 Words and Deeds: The Semantics of Action. In The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur. Lewis Edwin Hahn, ed. Pp. 332-345. Chicago, IL: Open Court.

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Ricoeur on Interpretation

25/05/2011 By Kelly Cooper

"To speak of interpretation in terms of an operation is to treat it as a complex of language acts—of utterances—incorporated in the objectifying statements of historical discourse. In this complex several components can be discerned: first, the concern with clarifying, specifying, unfolding a set of reputedly obscure significations in view of a better understanding on the part of the interlocutor; next, the recognition of the fact that it is always possible to interpret the same complex in another way, and hence the admission of an inevitable degree of controversy, of conflict between rival interpretations; then, the claim to endow the interpretation assumed with plausible, possibly even probable, arguments offered to the adverse side; finally, the admission that behind the interpretation there always remains an impenetrable, opaque, inexhaustible ground of personal and cultural motivations, which the subject never finishes taking into account. In this complex of components, reflection progresses from utterance as an act of language to the utterer as the who of the acts of interpretation. It is this operating complex that can constitute the subjective side correlative to the objective side of historical knowledge" (Ricoeur 2006:337).

Ricoeur, Paul
2006[2004] Memory, History, Forgetting. Kathleen Blamey & David Pellauer, trans. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

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Memory, History, Forgetting on Amazon.com

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The Philosophical Teaching of Law

07/05/2011 By Kelly Cooper

"If you were to imagine a pedagogy for the philosophical teaching of law, how would you conceive it?

I think one would have to proceed by concentric circles. I would show that the first encounter that we have with the law, as citizens, the first circle if you like is penal law. For justice encounters its contrary first in the thirst for vengeance, which is a powerful passion: justice consists in not seeking vengeance. Between the crime and the punishment, to return to well-known categories, lies justice and, consequently, the introduction of a third party. In the first instance, this is the state, obviously, since there is no law if there is no state, but it also implies the existence of a corpus of written laws; then an institution like the courts made up, in its turn, of those who are recruited for their competence and reputation for independence—the judges. State, written laws, courts, judges: this is what constitutes the exteriority of the first circle of the juridical. In addition, between the crime and the punishment, the operation of justice interposes a just distance by means of deliberation; it is in the trial that the distancing between the aggressor and the victim takes place, victim and aggressor who are not defined juridically until they stand as opposing sides in the same trial. They then become the plaintiff and the defendant; this change of status results from the very fact of the mediation by the juridical authority.

Philosophically, it is very interesting to see that the form of discourse employed in this area is argumentation. I have recently become interested in the relation between argumentation and interpretation….

The designation of the infraction, in juridical matters, involves an enormous work of interpretation. What is one to call this offense? Homicide by negligence? Involuntary homicide? One has to find the legal pigeonhole that corresponds to the list of features defining the offense; and often one has to invent the rule under which the case is to be placed.

On close examination, we see that there are, in fact, three interpretive moments. In the first place, what we call a case is, in reality, the interpretation of a story: someone tells what happened. And we know that there are always several ways to recount the same things. Secondly, in order to know what law to place the case, we must see in the panoply of laws the one that possesses a sort of presumed affinity with the case; consequently, there is a work of interpretation of the law as a function of the case; but also a work of presentation of the case as a function of its suitability to the law. Thirdly, the adjustment of one to the other—the mutual adjustment of the process of interpretation of the law and the process if interpretation of the fact—in short, the matching of these two interpretations with one another.

The case of the trivial is equally interesting philosophically from another point of view, because it allows us to address the current Habermasian problem of 'open discussion': how closely does the juridical approximate the model of open discussion, without limits or obstacles? We see right away that there is an unbridgeable distance between this model and the reality of the trial. For in a court no one is ever in a situation of infinite and open discussion. I see at least three constraints: first, the fact that the defendant is not present of his or her own free will; next, the fact that the parties do not speak whenever they feel like it, but each speaks in turn; finally, the fact that the decision takes place in a limited time and that the judges have an obligation to conclude the proceedings.

We are dealing with a very specific operation of rationality, which is, in a word, that of rhetoric. Provided, however, that the word 'rhetoric' is taken in its strong sense, as that which is most clearly distinguished from sophistry, and as involving the use of probably reasonings concerning matters of controversy. This is the stuff of a trial, with the assault of words and the competition of arguments. In a scale model, marked off by the rules of procedure, we have here a paradigmatic example of categories discussed in philosophy: deliberation and decision. It is truly astonishing that we fail to draw upon this resource in the teaching of philosophy.

Between moral rationality and the rationality of the state, so bound up with violence, this first juridical circle constitutes a region of intermediary rationality, in which the presupposition is precisely the break between discourse and violence to recall Eric Weil's famous opposition at the beginning of Logique de la philosophie; the trial is, in this regard, the privileged place for an ordered and ritualized discussion.

The second circle of the juridical is much wider. The trial—and in particular, the criminal trial—constitutes in reality only a segment of the law; it could be called the judiciary aspect of law. But the juridical is much broader; too often, because of excessive dramatization, it is as though everything hinged on imposing the sentence. But civil law is already in itself irreducible to criminal law; the obligation to repair damages is not equivalent to the obligation to submit to a punishment; from criminal to civil, there is already a significant broadening.

The notion of 'damage' should be placed within this second circle, which is that of contracts. For life in society is not based only on its conflicts but also on the giving of our word, on exchanges of words. And conflicts arise precisely when someone’s word is broken, when one party believes that the other has not kept the commitment made. Here we find ourselves in the vast domain of the mutual obligations which bind us to one another" (Ricoeur 1998:117-119).

Ricoeur, Paul
1998[1995] Critique & Conviction. Kathleen Blamey, trans. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Critique and Conviction at Amazon.com

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