Habituation and Hermeneutics: Toward a Thomistic Account of Pre‐Understanding

Abstract

AbstractHuman existence entails that our encounter with the world is mediated by the context, historicity, and concrete particularities of that existence. Consequently, this situatedness, which contributes to our pre‐understanding, makes us more or less capable of “seeing” the truth of the world we encounter. The hermeneutical principle of pre‐understanding is sometimes presupposed to be ambivalent toward, if not in opposition to, traditional metaphysics. The present essay shows how traditional metaphysics, specifically of a Thomistic sort, need not be pitted against hermeneutics, but rather, offers the ground for understanding the way in which pre‐understanding, as our habituation into and connaturality with truth, and ultimately, God, is that means by which right interpretation is made possible.