The Conscience of Narrative: Toward a Hermeneutics of Transcendence

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N THIS PAPER I wish to consider an aspect of literary narrative, specifically autobiographical narrative involving the subject as first-person narrator, which I take to be of central importance for hermeneutics. By hermeneutics I mean not only a general theory of interpretation but also those verbal procedures within the narrative itself whereby a reflective or cognitive awareness is conveyed to the reader of how such interpretation should proceed. Hermeneutical consciousness in narrative is essentially self-reflective. What interests me in this regard concerning first-person autobiographical narrative are strategies of discourse which establish a basis for understanding beyond the limits of subjective experience and which claim a general, universal, or even transcendent validity. The question to ask is how such narrative can convey to its reader a perspective or point of view which is not limited to the first-person narrator as subject or to the reader as the recipient of what is narrated, but which they come to share together in common. The basis of understanding conveyed by the text must be acknowledged by the reader as validfor him in a reciprocal relation to the subject whose life history is represented in the narrative. In the highest instances of such narrative (provided, for instance, by biblical texts such as the Books of Moses with their claim to theological truth or the Law and by Platonic dialogue, as in the Republic, which is narrated by Socrates, with a corresponding claim to