Fourfold Sense Research Articles

Literature unbound: William Desmond's metaxu and the opening of literary hermeneutics

In a 2017 article, Suzanne Choo suggests that the literature classroom should eschew insular aesthetic concerns in favour of a cosmopolitan ethical approach. In response to Choo, Liam Gearon believes that a prescribed and predetermined hermeneutic undermines the freedom of the pedagogue and the pupils. In this paper, I side with Gearon against moving the literature classroom solely towards ethical ends. Using William Desmond's idea of the fourfold sense of being as an analogy for the process of reading and experiencing texts, I suggest that complications arise from establishing a univocal, or determinate, end to literary hermeneutics. I will further explore the indeterminacies extant in the reading process. While these indeterminacies do not preclude communicability, they make impossible a singular, codified purpose to literary studies or interpretive frameworks. I use Plato's Timaeus and Critias as a model for the metaxological and, finally, offer ways to open up a metaxological hermeneutic in the classroom.

Towards an expansive object and a restrictive experience in Everyday Aesthetics: A Chestertonian metaxological approach

This article proposes to resolve an internal ambiguity in the subdiscipline called Everyday Aesthetics (EA), systematized by the researcher Horacio Pérez-Henao, according to whom the extension of aesthetics to the everyday has been done, on the one hand, by means of a consideration of an expansive object and subject according to aesthesis itself, as mainly proposed by Katya Mandoki, and, on the other hand, by means of a restrictive object and subject according to the parameters of an authentic aesthetic experience, a theory headed by John Dewey. Methodology: To resolve this tension, a hermeneutic methodology known as the fourfold sense of being, related to Hegelian dialectic, albeit with important modifications supplied by William Desmond was used. This methodology allows a suitable way to explore and discuss different approaches in everyday aesthetics epitomized by Mandoki and Dewey, and makes possible the proposal of a third way, epitomized by G. K. Chesterton. Results: Bearing in mind the original intention of EA—according to which the everyday must be revitalized from an aesthetic perspective, as explained by Joseph Kupfer, it is argued that the two alternate positions of Mandoki and Dewey are unsatisfactory; an attempt is therefore made to respond to this through the analysis of the aesthetic approach of G. K. Chesterton. From his aesthetic reflections, it can be ascertained that to revitalize daily life, the object must be expansive and the subject, restrictive, from a certain méthodos and according to patterns that qualify an everyday aesthetic experience. All of this seeks to pave the way for subsequent investigations of EA being both expansive and restrictive. Finally, it is argued that this Chestertonian EA converges with and extends the aesthetics of design of Jane Forsey, and thus shows that design itself can be revitalized in keeping with a restrictiveexpansive approach to everyday aesthetics. Conclusion: aesthetics should be expansive every day, in that it should concern itself with any aspect of daily life, and restrictive, in that it should set certain limits on the self and its intentions with regard to the possibilities of aesthetic experience.

The Voyage of Human Reason in and beyond Kant's The Critique of Pure Reason

The Copernican Revolution had meant for modern Europe surer navigation, bolder voyages and wilder discoveries. With the declaration of independence of America in 1781 and the publication of The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant in the same year, the age of Enlightenment defined itself as an age of coming of age and of daring to know. This essay tries to draw out the peculiar enlightenment ethos of a youth against youth through Kant’s depiction of the voyage of human reason in the First Critique. It will do so by examining the four-fold sense of objects, the island of truth surrounded by illusion, amphibolic insularity, the mirror of schema and the “No Further!” of the Pillars of Hercules. Interrogating the dual sense of “limit” as both infinitizing, transgressively de-territorializing and yet at the same time self-delimiting, self-critiquingly re-territorializing, this essay argues for a hermeneutic vantage point to comprehend Kant as the unwilling mariner who by way of the transcendental as-if attempted to gain a certain spectatorship, a particular possibility of seeing - at a shore already and increasingly lost to the European and global humanity of centuries to come.

The Integrative Role of Sacrifice in the Theology of Henri de Lubac

AbstractAt key junctures in his theologies of spiritual exegesis, the Eucharist and the church, Henri de Lubac appeals to the notion of Christ's sacrifice as providing the pivotal content for the topic at hand. Despite this, de Lubac scholarship has devoted scant attention to the role of sacrifice in his thought. Using the fourfold sense of Scripture and the scholastic categories of res and sacramentum to establish a formal structure for de Lubac's thought, I demonstrate that sacrifice provides an integrative motif for these disparate areas of de Lubac's thought, better accounting for the ‘organic unity’ of his theology.

On the Fourfold Sense of Scripture in Jesus of Nazareth, Volume 1

On the Fourfold Sense of Scripture in Jesus of Nazareth, Volume 1

The Theological Presuppositions of Ancient Christian Exegesis: G. K. Beale and Henri de Lubac in Conversation

ABSTRACT The appropriation of the theological presuppositions of ancient Christian exegesis is a matter of debate in the discipline of theological interpretation. In recent years, G. K. Beale has become a leading expert in the NT use of the OT, having conducted extensive research on the NT authors' exegetical methods and addressing the question of the theological presuppositions underlying these methods. Beale proposes that modern Christian readers of the Bible ought to pattern their exegesis after that of the apostles. I wish to bring Beale into conversation with the Catholic, ressourcement theologian, Henri de Lubac, who has had a significant influence on the contemporary retrieval of spiritual exegesis and has provided profound insight into the reading strategies of patristic and medieval exegesis. I hope to demonstrate that de Lubac's exposition of the fourfold sense of Scripture finds certain profound resonances with Beale's understanding of the NT writers' presuppositions. Furthermore, de Lubac's theological categories, the Fact of Christ and the mystery of Christ, and his understanding of tropology, offer two points of constructive insight for proponents of Beale's project, while Beale's emphasis on the hermeneutical continuity between the Testaments offers an important corrective for proponents of spiritual exegesis. In bringing these two different scholars into conversation, I hope to clear a pathway for an "ecumenical hermeneutic" that addresses certain concerns of both Protestants and Catholics. I also suggest several ways both scholars' projects can work together to address constructively the question which presuppositions modern Christians should appropriate in a theological interpretation of Scripture.

The Theological Presuppositions of Ancient Christian Exegesis: G. K. Beale and Henri de Lubac in Conversation

ABSTRACT The appropriation of the theological presuppositions of ancient Christian exegesis is a matter of debate in the discipline of theological interpretation. In recent years, G. K. Beale has become a leading expert in the NT use of the OT, having conducted extensive research on the NT authors' exegetical methods and addressing the question of the theological presuppositions underlying these methods. Beale proposes that modern Christian readers of the Bible ought to pattern their exegesis after that of the apostles. I wish to bring Beale into conversation with the Catholic, ressourcement theologian, Henri de Lubac, who has had a significant influence on the contemporary retrieval of spiritual exegesis and has provided profound insight into the reading strategies of patristic and medieval exegesis. I hope to demonstrate that de Lubac's exposition of the fourfold sense of Scripture finds certain profound resonances with Beale's understanding of the NT writers' presuppositions. Furthermore, de Lubac's theological categories, the Fact of Christ and the mystery of Christ, and his understanding of tropology, offer two points of constructive insight for proponents of Beale's project, while Beale's emphasis on the hermeneutical continuity between the Testaments offers an important corrective for proponents of spiritual exegesis. In bringing these two different scholars into conversation, I hope to clear a pathway for an "ecumenical hermeneutic" that addresses certain concerns of both Protestants and Catholics. I also suggest several ways both scholars' projects can work together to address constructively the question which presuppositions modern Christians should appropriate in a theological interpretation of Scripture.

Patristic Exegetical Theory and Practice in De Lubac and Congar

AbstractThis article examines the retrieval of patristic exegesis in two major figure in Catholic Ressourcement theology: Henri de Lubac and Yves Congar. Henri de Lubac's driving concern in his biblical writings is not so much to chronicle the history of interpretation as it is to explicate the great theological synthesis, which underlies the doctrine of the fourfold sense of Scripture. For de Lubac, this synthesis, wherein the totality of Christian doctrine and practice is centered in Christ and grounded in the reading of Scripture, is an essential component of Christianity. De Lubac encourages the integration of this theological vision with modern biblical studies, but he does not offer much as to what such an integration might look like in practice. Congar, building upon de Lubac's work, goes beyond de Lubac in making concrete efforts to integrate some of the theory and practice of patristic interpretation with modern exegesis. Important here is Congar's notion of “typological tradition” whereby the divine mystery concealed and revealed in the realities presented by the biblical text, unfold in the tradition, doctrine, and practice of the Church.

“Gehyre se ðe Wille”: The Old English Exodus and the Reader as Exegete

This article examines two important but understudied passages in the Old English Exodus, the poem's concluding scene and its opening verse paragraph, in order to show that the text holds its reader partially responsible for producing the poem's allegorical meaning. The opening and closing lines place the reader in the position of interpreter, requiring him or her to read for the manifold senses of the text rather than relying passively on the poem to supply the allegorical meaning of the narrative. In doing so, these lines foreground the importance and value of allegoria as a practice of reading, one that relies upon the fourfold sense, rather than of “allegory” as a method of composition. By concluding with an exultant portrayal of “gold out of Egypt”, the poem invokes Augustine's teaching on the propriety of putting secular learning to Christian uses; in this way, the conclusion broadens the domain of allegoria to encompass the reading of a range of genres and languages. The introduction anticipates this move by framing Moyses domas, “Moses' decrees” (l. 2), in terms of the fourfold sense, inviting its audience to read each moment in the poem with an eye to fourfold meaning.

Single-shot magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging with partial parallel imaging.

A magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging (MRSI) pulse sequence based on proton-echo-planar-spectroscopic-imaging (PEPSI) is introduced that measures two-dimensional metabolite maps in a single excitation. Echo-planar spatial-spectral encoding was combined with interleaved phase encoding and parallel imaging using SENSE to reconstruct absorption mode spectra. The symmetrical k-space trajectory compensates phase errors due to convolution of spatial and spectral encoding. Single-shot MRSI at short TE was evaluated in phantoms and in vivo on a 3-T whole-body scanner equipped with a 12-channel array coil. Four-step interleaved phase encoding and fourfold SENSE acceleration were used to encode a 16 x 16 spatial matrix with a 390-Hz spectral width. Comparison with conventional PEPSI and PEPSI with fourfold SENSE acceleration demonstrated comparable sensitivity per unit time when taking into account g-factor-related noise increases and differences in sampling efficiency. LCModel fitting enabled quantification of inositol, choline, creatine, and N-acetyl-aspartate (NAA) in vivo with concentration values in the ranges measured with conventional PEPSI and SENSE-accelerated PEPSI. Cramer-Rao lower bounds were comparable to those obtained with conventional SENSE-accelerated PEPSI at the same voxel size and measurement time. This single-shot MRSI method is therefore suitable for applications that require high temporal resolution to monitor temporal dynamics or to reduce sensitivity to tissue movement.

Are Bolzano’s Substances Simple?

This article analyzes one aspect of Bolzano's metaphysics. It discusses the question of whether, according to Bolzano, substances are simple or not. In the opinion of some commentators, he accepts composed substances, that is, substances having substances as proper parts. However, it is easily possible to misinterpret his position. This paper first tries to reconstruct Bolzano's definitions of the concept of substance and suggests that he should be able to agree with the following final definition: x is a substance if and only ifx is real and not a property. After this, it is shown that, according to Bolzano, every substance is simple in a fourfold sense: No substance has (1) adherences as parts, (2) substances as proper parts, (3) spatially extended parts, and (4) temporal parts.

The ‘Fourfold Sense’: De Lubac, Blondel and Contemporary Theology

Henri de Lubac's contribution to Catholic theology is well‐known. But the work of the latter part of his career on medieval exegesis has received less scholarly acclaim. Historians of exegesis find it apologetic and too theological, and thus unhelpful in their field, while most theologians, with a few exceptions, have seemed to find it too historical for their work. This article argues that de Lubac's Medieval Exegesis is an exercise in theology, but specifically a tradition‐oriented historical theology. Drawing upon Maurice Blondel's philosophical definition of tradition, de Lubac aims to describe the ‘fourfold sense’ as a tradition, a theological mentalité, often implicit, that suffuses ancient and medieval Christian theology. It is the author' hope that the recognition of the proper genre and aim of de Lubac's magnum opus et arduum is the catalyst for further, properly theological, reflection upon its claims about scripture and tradition.

The Reformation and Bible Criticism

MODERN Bible criticism is commonly regarded as having its origin in the Reformation period. It was then after the long medieval period of scholastic exegesis with its emphasis on the four-fold sense of Scripture, that the importance of penetrating to the literal meaning was realized anew. The principle was not original with the reformers, having served as the basis of interpretation among the exegetes of the school of Antioch in the fifth century. But the revival of literal interpretation by the reformers marks the beginning of the modern critical approach to the study of the Bible.