The Hermeneutics of Experience - Part Two
Palmer elaborates on the idea of hermeneuein, in its sense of asserting or proclaiming or saying out loud, by providing an illustration from theology. At one point, Palmer remarks:
"Christian theology must remember that a 'theology of the Word' is not a theology of the written word but of the spoken Word, the Word that confronts one in the 'language event' of spoken words.... Certainly the task of theology is to explain the Word in the language and context of each age, but it also must ex-press and proclaim the Word in the vocabulary of the age.... The Bible's language operates in a totally different medium from a direction manual for building something or an information sheet. 'Information' is a significant word; it points to a use of language different from that found in the Bible. It appeals to the rational faculty and not the whole personality; we do not have to call upon our personal to risk ourselves in order to understand information.... But the Bible is not information; it is a message, a 'proclamation', and it is meant to be read aloud, and meant to be heard. It is not a set of scientific principles; it is a reality of a different order from that of scientific truth. It is a reality which is to be understood as an historical story.... The interpretational processes appropriate to historical happenings, or to the happenings theology or literature tries to understand."5
Even if one were to accept Palmer's claim that the Bible "is a message, a proclamation" and not information, nevertheless, one still might ask what the nature of the proclamation or message is which is being given in the Bible. In other words, if the reply were to come (as Palmer might maintain, given the foregoing quote) that the message or proclamation of the Bible is an historical happening which appeals to the whole personality, one still could proceed to inquire about the nature of that appeal, how it takes place and what is its significance.
From the perspective of one who believes in God, the Torah, the Gospels, the Psalms, the Qur'an, or any proclamation which is considered to be revealed Truth, these ‘proclamations’ give expression to a dimension of Grace. This Grace is believed to be bestowed on a reciter of, or one who listens to, the sacred text, providing the activity is undertaken with the proper attitude of sincerity and humility.
Nevertheless, part of the dimension of Grace being conveyed resides in the character of the Truth, both literal as well as symbolic, which is being communicated through the text. Consequently, one who believes may very well maintain that a legitimate book of revelation can be engaged on many levels, one of which entails accurate information.
One should make a distinction, however, between peripheral and essential information. For example, in terms of a religious believers perspective, the fact that the Los Angeles Dodgers won the 1988 World Series may be a piece of accurate information. On the other hand, such a piece of information is clearly peripheral (even if the believer were assumed to be a Dodger fan) when compared to the sort of essential information which is believed to be transmitted through a true revelation.
The essential information of revelation is capable of inspiring and uplifting an individual's spiritual condition in a variety of ways. One of these ways is to confront and challenge the individual with respect to the sorts of weaknesses and moral blindness to which most of us are far too vulnerable.
Confrontation by this kind of information can be very hard and bitter to take since if accepted, it tends to destroy so many illusions which one has about oneself. Thinking one is generous, caring, modest, open and loving, one may see his/her true condition of selfishness, pride, arrogance, and hostility reflected in the parables, descriptions and historical incidents which are related in the sacred text.
When such essential information is seriously taken to heart, one needs to risk oneself. Or, more precisely, one needs to risk losing the ego to which one is attached. In order to be able to accomplish this, one must examine and re-evaluate the meaning and significance of all past and present experience against the standard of revealed truth which is being communicated through the essential information of a sacred text.
Apparently, in his eagerness to get away from what he perceives as the foreboding and distorting shadow which the scientific model of investigation has cast over literary and religious studies (e.g., by denying that one of the levels of a proclamation concerns information) , Palmer has introduced what, in many cases, may be an unnecessary set of divisions between, on the one hand, the aim and intent of science (which, ultimately, is to uncover the truth), and, on the other hand, the aim and intent of other kinds of interpretational processes such as history, theology and literature (which also, ultimately, is to uncover the truth).
As a result, one ends up with a disjointed sense or understanding of the world or reality. Such disjointed understanding often tends to create more problems than it resolves.
Among other things, one's experience becomes compartmentalized into separate boxes of science, history, literature, theology and so on. Consequently, one has little sense of how, or if, one compartment is related to other compartments. Yet, all of these boxes are challenged by a common problem: namely, the mystery of experience. Moreover, all of these boxes employ various kinds of methodologies which attempt to determine the extent to which the contents of the boxes are reflective of, or provide insights into, the nature of the reality which makes experience of such structural character possible.
Preunderstanding In the context of the hermeneutical problem
In developing the second dimension of hermeneuein, which Palmer considers to be 'explanation' (the first dimension being the aspect of proclamation discussed above), Palmer says the following:
"... meaning is a matter of context; the explanatory procedure provides the arena for understanding. Only within a specific context is an event meaningful.... Significance is a relationship to the listener's own projects and intentions; it is not something possessed by Jesus in himself outside of history and outside of a relationship to his hearers. We may say that an object does not have a significance outside of a relationship to someone, and that the relationship determines the significance. To speak of an object apart from a perceiving subject is a conceptual error caused by an inadequate realistic conception of perception and the world.
... explanatory interpretation makes us aware that explanation is contextual, is 'horizonal'. It must be made within a horizon of already granted meanings and intentions. In hermeneutics, this area of assumed understanding is called pre-understanding.... It might be asked what horizon of interpretation a great literary text inhabits, and then how the horizon of an individual's own world of intentions, hopes and preinterpretations is related to it. This merging of two horizons must be considered a basic element in all explanatory interpretation. 6
Having said the foregoing, Palmer goes on to describe what he terms the "hermeneutical problem". The hermeneutical problem is actually a variation on the paradox previously considered in the discussion of oral interpretation.
In the earlier paradox, Palmer puzzled over how to come to grips with the fact that: (a) understanding a text seemed to be a prerequisite for reading a text, but (b) understanding was what the text was supposed to supply. Consequently, how could one possibly have the necessary understanding required to read a text when, supposedly, only a reading of the text could provide such an understanding? Understanding seems to presuppose itself in the reading of a text.
The hermeneutical problem, which is similar to the foregoing puzzle, manifests itself through the notion of preunderstanding. This is the "horizon of already granted meanings and intentions" with which a given work is approached and which makes such an approach possible. Thus, presunderstanding appears to shape and define the process of inquiry.
According to Palmer, this means that the object of study becomes a function of the mode of inquiry. Consequently, on this view, one really cannot separate the object of study from the method used to study the object.
However, if the foregoing perspective is correct, then how, Palmer wonders, can the individual discover a means of permitting the horizons surrounding his or her inquiry to merge with the actual meaning and intentions that are given expression through the work being studied? In other words, how is one to arrive at a proper explanation of a given text since, according to Palmer, methodology is rooted in preunderstanding, and such preunderstanding may appreciably alter or distort the structural character of what one is attempting to explain?
Part of Palmer's so-called hermeneutical problem may be due more to an unnecessary restriction on the idea of 'horizon' than it is due to any philosophical crisis or paradox inherent in the process of hermeneutics. Palmer has construed horizon in terms of a set of parameters of meaning and intention that accompany, guide and shape a person's exploration of some text or work. Without denying that this kind of preunderstanding does exist, one need not suppose that the capacity of a horizon to guide and shape understanding must automatically mean such a capacity is inherently antagonistic to the individual's working toward a merging of horizons with the structural character of the text being engaged.
Part of what is entailed by the process of merging horizons with a given text is an altering of one's own horizons, or preunderstanding, as a result of the dialectic which takes place between the horizons of a text and the horizons of the individual engaging that text. This dialectic is given expression through the way the individual explores, probes, questions, reflects on, analyzes, experiments with, and is challenged by, a given text. Through such a process, one has an opportunity to change the shape and content of one's preunderstanding in a way that would be congruent with, or reflect, or merge horizons with, the structural character of the text.
In the previous quote, Palmer claims that "significance is a relationship to the listener's own projects and intentions". Furthermore, he maintains that objects do not have significance outside of such a relationship. More specifically, Palmer's position (which seems to have a sort of Berkelian-like overtone to it) is predicated on the assumption that significance, if not reality, is something which only can be conferred by virtue of the perceiving relationship through which something is invested with significance by the individual.
The very idea of a hermeneutical problem in which one seeks to find a way of merging horizons with another point of view suggests Palmer believes, at least tacitly, that there really does exist significance, of sorts, quite apart from the projects, intentions and meanings of an individual's personal horizons. If this were not the case, then, the hermeneutical problem would be a purely illusory one in which there is no point to bringing about a merging of horizons between individual and text since all significance would be purely a function of the individual's understanding.
In any event, there seems to be at least two senses of significance. One sense gives expression to what a given individual means or intends by that which the individual thinks, says and does. The other sense of significance is deeper and more encompassing than the first sense.
In effect, the second sense raises questions about the significance of an individual's conception of significance as measured against the reality of that which makes experience - through which the individual's ideas about significance arise - possible at all. Just as one can ask about the extent to which one's current perspective encompasses the meaning and intent of a given text (i.e., to what extent do horizons, so too, one can ask about the extent to which one's conception of the significance of some aspect of experience coincides with the actual significance of that aspect of experience.
Irrespective of whether one believes reality is, ultimately, rooted in a Divine Being, or one believes the physical universe is all that exists (or some other alternative), one cannot escape being confronted by the 'fact' there is some standard(s) of absolute metaphysics against which all individual conceptions of significance are to be measured. Yet, in effect, Palmer implies that the latter sense of significance is not possible since it is not a function of the meanings and intentions of individuals which, according to Palmer, are the sole sources of significance.
Translation: the heart of hermeneutics
The third dimension inherent in the meaning of hermeneutics (proclamation being the first dimension and explanation the second) concerns the idea of translation. Palmer believes:
"The phenomenon of translation is the very heart of hermeneutics: in it one confronts the basic hermeneutical situation of having to piece together the meaning of the text, working with grammatical, historical and other tools to decipher an ancient text. Yet, there are always two worlds, the world of the text and that of the reader, and consequently there is the need for Hermes to 'translate' from one to the other."7
However, Palmer goes on to point out that when one attempts to translate, for instance, the Bible, one is confronted with a variety of problems. Most noticeable among these problems are the differences in language, times and culture which exist between the 'modern' era and the days in which the Bible was originally recorded.
After all, how does one compare the problems associated with the modern capacity for annihilation through biological, chemical and nuclear accidents/warfare with the problems of Biblical days? Or, how does one compare the problems generated by the increasing scarcity of basic resources (including food and water) in modern times with the difficulties encountered by Biblical peoples?
Do not Biblical days, Palmer asks, constitute a "radically different context" from those of the modern era? How can people of today hope to merge horizons with the people of Biblical times?
Palmer contends that the task of translation:
"... is to bring what is strange, unfamiliar, and obscure in its meaning into something meaningful that speaks our language". 8
To accomplish such a task, Palmer maintains one must show the original significance of the given work. If one is successful in accomplishing this, then the individual of modern times may come to appreciate the significance of the work in question for him or her.
Moreover, in order for the individual to be able to show (i.e., translate) the significance of the original work, the individual must uncover the "metaphysics" and 'ontology" of the work being engaged. For Palmer, "metaphysics" involves determining the "definition of reality", whereas "ontology" gives expression to the "character of being-in-the-world".
Not surprisingly, Palmer points out there is a sharp divergence of opinion in scholastic circles concerning the character of the process of 'uncovering' which is to take place through translation. For example, at one point, Palmer informs us that:
"There is the tradition of Schleiermacher and Dilthey, whose adherents look to hermeneutics as a general body of methodological principles which underlie interpretation. And there are the followers of Heidegger, who see hermeneutics as a philosophical exploration of the character and requisite conditions for all understanding." 9
Palmer proceeds to say that, in his opinion, the two leading advocates of these competing views in the present era are Emilio Betti and Hans-Georg Gadamer. "Betti, in the tradition of Dilthey, aims at providing a general theory of how 'objectivations' of human experience can be interpreted, and Betti argues strongly for the autonomy of the object of interpretation and the possibility of historical 'objectivity' in making valid interpretations. Gadamer, following Heidegger, orients his thinking to the more philosophical question of what understanding itself is, and, in doing so, he argues, with equal conviction, that understanding is an historical act and, as such, it always is connected to the present. To speak of 'objectively valid interpretations' is naive, according to Gadamer, since to do so assumes that it is possible to understand from some standpoint outside of history." 10
In an attempt to help place Gadamer's side of the controversy in proper perspective, Palmer undertakes a discussion of Rudolf Bultmann. Although Palmer acknowledges that Bultmann's work has its own peculiar flavor and emphasis which distinguishes it from the work of both Heidegger and Gadamer, nonetheless, Palmer places Bultmann on the Gadamer/Heidegger side of the fence in relation to the academic schism concerning the nature of hermeneutics.
FOOTNOTES
5.) Ibid., p. 19. [Return to Essay]
6.) Ibid., pp. 24 - 25. [Return to Essay]
7.) Ibid., p. 31. [Return to Essay]
8.) Ibid., p. 29. [Return to Essay]
9.) Ibid., p. 46. [Return to Essay]
10.) Ibid. [Return to Essay]
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