The Hermeneutics of Experience - Part One
Whatever one's philosophical position, there is, generally speaking, acceptance of the reality of one's own individual experience. Even if the contents of one's experience were assumed to be totally illusory, there still exists, nonetheless, the undeniable presence of experience qua experience.
A question which seems to continually bubble to the surface in relation to such experience is the following: How is experience possible at all? This question not only acknowledges the reality of experience, it also seeks to explore what the source and nature of that reality is.
In other words, the question points in the direction of fundamental principles or themes which, if discoverable, could give insight into the very ground of experience itself and how experience of such structural character is possible. The reality and character of such principles are the subject of what might be referred to as 'absolute metaphysics'.
Objectivity, Significance and Hermeneutics
In his book, Hermeneutics, Richard Palmer asserts:
"Dialogue, not dissection, opens up the world of a literary work. Disinterested objectivity is not appropriate to the understanding of a literary work."1
Palmer's primary interest in his book is to develop a suitable framework for understanding literature. Nonetheless, the discussion throughout his book indicates, quite clearly, that the problems of interpretation surrounding literature are, by and large, the same sort of problems encountered by anyone who seeks to interpret written or cultural works in general.
In any event, there seems to be an assumption implicit in the foregoing quote. The assumption is this: in order for analysis to be objective, it must be disinterested and removed' from the object being analyzed.
Furthermore, the quote indicates that what is required in literary analysis is not disinterested objectivity but something else. This 'something' else must provide one with a means of entering into an intimate dialogue with the work to be examined or explored. This perspective raises several issues.
First of all, there is the issue that attempts to deal with what a work (literary or otherwise) means in and of itself. What is the significance or purpose of such a work? Why does it exist?
In addition, there is the issue of evaluation concerning a given work. One would like to know the extent, if any, to which a given work either accurately describes some aspect of reality/experience or provides some degree of insight into such an aspect.
However, no matter how deeply into dialogue one ventures with a given work and no matter how subjectively involved one becomes with that work, one has difficulty in understanding how one can avoid the issue of objectivity. Even with respect to the problem of a work's meaning within its own frame of reference, one runs into the issue of objectivity, in one way or another.
After all, before one can be said to understand a work (and aside from the issue of whether or not one agrees with the work's perspective), one must go through a methodological process of some sort which is designed to help one eliminate false conceptions and inappropriate ideas concerning the work's meaning, purpose, significance, and so on. This process of elimination is an expression of objectivity at work.
For example, one of the terms used by Palmer is the idea of surrender. This is part of the conceptual equipment Palmer feels is necessary in order for an individual to be able to come to understand a literary work as that work originally was intended to be understood by the author of the text.
However, the would-be interpreter of a given work needs to guard against surrendering to a mistaken conception of the work being examined. Indeed, there is often a tendency for an individual to surrender to his or her own ideas about a work's meaning rather than surrender to the actual meaning of the work as conceived by its author. Consequently, considered in terms of the idea of surrender, objectivity would be a matter of distinguishing between: (a) what truly is a reflection of the intended meaning of a work; (b) what does not belong to such an intended meaning and is, instead, imposed from outside (i.e., from the would-be interpreter).
A short while after the previous quote, Palmer, in an attempt to add further distance between hermeneutics and natural science, says:
"Hermeneutics is the study of understanding, especially the task of understanding texts. Natural science has methods of understanding objects; 'works' require a hermeneutic, a 'science' of understanding appropriate to works as works."2
While one can sympathize with the idea that not necessarily everything needs to be investigated in the same way natural science advocates, and while one might agree that inquiry must display a flexibility which is sensitive to the idiosyncrasies of whatever is being studied, one may not be warranted in separating human works such as literature from the natural sciences, - reserving hermeneutical considerations only for the former. The natural sciences also constitute works or creations of human beings involving the text of human experience, and in this respect these sciences share a common set of themes with their literary counterparts.
Furthermore, the issue of understanding human works, such as literature, cannot be limited to discovering the meaning of a work merely in terms of itself. Eventually, one must ask: what does that work tell me, if anything, about the nature of reality or the place of human beings in such reality? Or, what insights does a given work provide one with respect to what makes experience, of the sort to which the work makes identifying reference, possible?
Without this added dimension of questioning the value of a work - of trying to place a work in the context of experience in general - the process of establishing the meaning of a work largely becomes little more than a pointless puzzle. Indeed, one might seriously question why one should be bothered attempting to solve such a puzzle at all. Is it merely an amusing way to pass time, or is there some point to it which leads beyond the work?
Presumably, there is a point to a literary creation which transcends that work qua work. Moreover, presumably this point coincides with that of doing natural science. In other words, one seeks to better understand the nature of different facets of experience, as well as to better understand that which makes experience of such structural character possible.
Interpretation and Language
According to Palmer:
"One of the essential elements for an adequate hermeneutical theory, and by extension an adequate theory of literary interpretation, is a sufficiently broad conception of interpretation itself.... Interpretation is ... perhaps the most basic act of human thinking; indeed, existing itself may itself be said to be a constant process of interpretation.
Interpretation is more encompassing than the linguistic world in which man lives, for even animals exist by interpreting.... Yet human existence as we know it does in fact always involve language, and thus any theory of human interpreting must deal with the phenomenon of language.... Language shapes man's seeing and his thought- both his conception of himself and his world.... His very vision of reality is shaped by language.... If the matter is considered deeply it becomes apparent that language is the 'medium' in which we live, and move, and have our being."3
Without wishing to deny or down play the tremendous effect which language can have on one's conceptions of, and interactions with, reality, the "medium in which we live, move and have our being" appears to be the phenomenology of experience and not language. Language represents but one manifestation and expression (although, granted, an important one) of the phenomenology of experience.
Even though Palmer starts off, in the foregoing quote, by saying: "interpretation is more encompassing than the linguistic world in which man lives", Palmer seems to shift emphasis somewhat toward the latter part of that quote. In effect, he appears to claim that language is the chief architect underlying the drawing of interpretive blueprints. This perspective is problematic, however, since the process of seeking an understanding extends far beyond the horizons of language.
Psychologists have been putting forth evidence for many years now which strongly indicate that pre-linguistic children exhibit a wide variety of intellectual activities and capacities. What is more important, even the learning of the semantics of a language presupposes intellectual processes that do not appear to be primarily linguistic. In other words, in order for the individual to be able to grasp the connection between a word (or its usage) and the complexities of the structural character of those aspects of experience to which the word makes identifying reference, an insight or realization must occur which is itself not necessarily a function of language. That is, language, in and of itself, may not be able to give the required understanding - even though language may help draw the individual's attention to certain aspects of the phenomenology of the experiential field and even though language may serve as a catalyst for helping to speed up the rate at which an understanding is achieved.
This process of hermeneutical insight or realization is the phenomenological ground in which the semantics of any language is rooted. Thus, in this sense, one of the basic reasons semantics is possible is because there is an ocean of experience and understanding, past and present, in which language is immersed.
This experience and understanding are coloured by, among other things, sensory, emotional, motivational approach/avoidance themes, likes/dislikes and so on - all of which are non-linguistic in character. In addition, the inferential links that run, like currents, through such experiences establish networks which are capable of shaping, and being shaped by, language but which are not necessarily reducible to language. They are, in a sense, prerequisites to the possibility of linguistic experience.
In short, both the learning and usage of a language is directed, shaped, organized, coloured and oriented by aspects of the phenomenology of the experiential field which stand outside of language and which predate the appearance of language. Syntax and semantics emerge in the context of these capabilities.
Even if one wishes to adopt a Chomskian-like position in which the principles of 'universal grammar' are considered to be innate, in some manner, within human beings, there must be capabilities that are able to identify the aspects of that universal grammar which reflect the syntax of local language usage. Such matching capabilities cannot be considered to be linguistic in character without risking making anything and everything a function of language, and, thereby, lose any sense of what language is and is not.
The aforementioned recognition and matching processes are an expression of a more general set of capabilities through which a wide variety of congruencies and similarities are established. In fact, through these processes, congruencies are generated that link language usage together with the structural character of various aspects of the phenomenology of the experiential field.
The foregoing comments suggest there is no need to suppose that the processes of understanding and interpretation are linear, exclusive functions of language. In fact, something quite the opposite may be the case.
Thus, instead of reducing understanding to being a function of language (although this is the case sometimes), understanding also can be seen as a manifestation of an internal dialectic into which one enters. This internal dialectic has a variety of modes of expression such as: reflexive awareness, identifying reference, characterization, the interrogative imperative, inferential mapping operations and congruence functions.
These modes of expression permit the individual to explore, test, analyze, probe, criticize, evaluate, link, match, question, and locate various aspects of the phenomenology of the experiential field, together with the ontology that makes a phenomenology of such structural character possible. Through the aforementioned internal dialectic, themes, values, principles, rules, concepts, and ideas, are generated as well as abandoned. Through this dialectic, word usage is altered, modified, and infused with new significance.
The understandings to which the words of a language attempt to give reference do not wait for a new word or usage to be invented before they come into existence. New words are invented, old words are invested with new meanings, and alternate usages are developed. This is all done according to the manner in which the structural character of underlying frameworks of understanding change their shapes as a function of processes that identify, reflect upon, characterize, question, inferentially map, and establish congruence relationships among a variety of different aspects of the phenomenology of the experiential field.
When language is considered to be the fundamental architect of understanding, rather than merely the construction company employed to translate the architectural blueprints into concrete structures, problems tend to emerge on a variety of fronts. As a result, language is seen as an end instead of a means. That is, language is considered to be the official, authoritative master of understanding, instead of just one of the doorways through which understanding can be expanded.
Proclamation need not preclude information
As an example of the sort of problem being alluded to in the foregoing, consider the following quote from Palmer's book. In this quote Palmer is discussing the problems associated with delivering an oral rendition of some given written work. Palmer intends to use this discussion to begin his examination of the three main themes he believes are inherent in the Greek verb hermeneuein (to interpret) and the Greek noun hermeneia (interpretation) from which the term hermeneutics is derived.
"Oral interpretation is not a passive response to the signs on the paper like a phonograph playing a record; it is a creative matter, a performance, like that of a pianist interpreting a piece of music .... the reproducer must grasp the meaning of the words in order to express even one sentence. How does this mysterious grasping of meaning take place? The process is a puzzling paradox: in order to read, it is necessary to understand in advance what will be said, and yet this understanding must come from the reading."4
Palmer seems to be confusing two different levels of understanding in his alleged paradox. On the one hand, one can read a sentence because one knows the general meanings of the individual words of that sentence (assuming, of course, one encounters no words with which one is unacquainted in, at least, a rough fashion). In other words, one has a general knowledge of the way in which the semantic and syntactic features of a language operate. However, on the other hand, coming to understand the intended meanings of the author of a sentence, involves much more than a general knowledge of how the semantic and syntactic features of a language work.
In trying to grasp the meaning of a sentence in the sense in which the author intended it to be understood, one must decide whether the meaning of the sentence can be limited to the general meanings usually associated with the words that make up the sentence in question. Quite frequently, the intended meaning underlying a sentence attempts to expand upon, modify, develop, or limit the generally accepted meaning of various words.
In other words, the underlying intended meaning attempts to provide words with more precise boundaries and structural properties in order to remove some of the looseness and ambiguity which surrounds normal word usage. Consequently, the would-be interpreter of a sentence must study that sentence for clues which suggest possibilities of tone, slant, emphasis, orientation, attitude, direction, mood and so on that add nuances, structural complexities and resolution to the general or usual semantic meanings associated with the words being used in a given sentence.
FOOTNOTES
1.) Palmer, Richard E. Hermeneutics (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969), p. 7. Return to Essay
2.) Ibid., p. 8. Return to Essay
3.) Ibid., pp. 8 - 9. Return to Essay
4.) Ibid., p. 16. Return to Essay
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