Hermeneutical Strategies Research Articles

En conversación con las arquitectas: la entrevista como herramienta de investigación feminista en estudios de postgrado

This paper addresses an experience that integrates research and teaching with a gender-based perspective in the qualifying Master of Architecture at the University of Alicante. This experience interweaves heuristic and hermeneutic strategies with the purpose of providing students with methodologies and tools for analysis that encourage a critical approach to the built environment. The study of collective housing complexes created by women architects in Spain is the catalyst for a biographical inquiry and personal encounters with their works and with the residents, in which the interview becomes an instrument to overcome the condition of architecture as an object and explore its epistemic and political fecundity.

Coopetition in development: A Chinese hermeneutics

This paper adopts Ming and Shi (“名”与“实”, or naming/saying vs gaining/doing) as critical Chinese hermeneutics to understand stakeholder coopetition in destination development. Through an ethnographic case study in an ancient town in China, three internal coopetitions are identified: Ming overriding Shi (以名乱实), Shi overriding Ming (以实乱名), and one Ming overriding another Ming (以名乱名). Three external coopetitions are also discussed: legitimating Ming with external Shi (以实正名), enhancing Ming in compliance with external Shi (名副其实), and replacing old Ming with new Ming (以新名替旧名). These Chinese hermeneutic strategies are contrasted with Western interpretations to shed light on intercultural understandings of destination stakeholder coopetitions.

Doing Justice to Poetry: Gadamer and Derrida on Reading Paul Celan

A large part of what scholars do in the humanities is reading and interpreting texts, and they must do so in a just and righteous manner. But what does that mean, doing justice to a text? To a philosophical text, but also to a literary or a poetic text? This is the question at stake in the ‘Gadamer-Derrida encounter,’ which remains relevant for our daily interpretative endeavors. Rather than adding another commentary to the already extensive literature on this debate, this paper offers a comparative analysis of two closely related essays in which Gadamer and Derrida read the work of the German poet Paul Celan with a keen eye for differences, as well as similarities, between the hermeneutical strategies of both philosophers. These two essays lead me to specify the guiding question of this paper: what does it mean to do justice to a poetic text, that is, to poetry? To answer this question, the paper discusses several issues, starting with Gadamer’s and Derrida’s shared rejection of the intentions of the poet as the decisive factor in interpreting poetry. This is followed by a discussion of Gadamer’s hermeneutical approach, as exemplified by his interpretation of Celan, and Derrida’s main objections to this approach. Having subsequently discussed the way in which Derrida demarcates his own hermeneutics from that of Gadamer, the paper first concludes that Gadamer’s and Derrida’s positions are sufficiently refined to be considered as complementary rather than mutually exclusive. Second, this paper argues that doing justice to a philosophical, literary or poetic text means seeking to decipher its meaning, as Gadamer argues, whilst accepting that no articulated meaning can ever be final, certain or exhaustive, as Derrida emphasizes.

Legacy of I. Kant and H. Arendt: Comprehension of World in Hermeneutical Perspective

H. Arendt developed largely her hermeneutical interpretation of understanding in line with the rethinking of I. Kant’s philosophical heritage. Although she was able to offer a rather original interpretation of the theoretical views of the great German philosopher, her hermeneutic strategy was also influenced by the approaches to their understanding that were proposed by her teachers M. Heidegger and K. Jaspers. Arendt’s hermeneutical teaching proceeds from the need to realize the close unity of practical action and spiritual activity of the human subject - Vita Activa and Vita Contemplativa. Accepting the initial position of Heidegger’s metaphysics of finiteness about the “abandonment” of man in the flow of time, Arendt simultaneously follows Jaspers’ call for the need for an existential-hermeneutic interpretation of practical action and the abilities of the spirit by their understanding on the basis of Kant’s legacy. Singling out thinking, will and judgement among the main vectors of self-realization of the spirit, she demonstrates their close relationship with the main types of practical human activity - work, work and action. Analyzing the abilities of the spirit, Arendt emphasizes the major role of thinking, which brings together the processes of knowledge acquisition and meaning creation. It highlights the primacy of the meaning-producing function of the reason in relation to the ability of the intellect to generate true knowledge on the basis of generalization of the data of contemplation. Describing thinking after Kant as a “thing in itself”, Arendt speaks of its involvement in eternity and time in the moment of the present, the ability to generalize the past and design the future. Thinking forms the core of practical reason, which Kant identified with the will, and opens a new horizon of meaning generation in its aspiration to the future. The ability to judge also turns out to be a product of thinking, referring to the past while relying on common sense and imagination. Arendt rightly argues that the “paralysis” of the faculty of judgement, indicating the significance of Kant’s categorical imperative, threatens not only to produce a distorted vision of history, but also the triumph of the “banality of evil” in the sphere of politics.

The Origin of Humanity and Evolution: Science and Scripture in Conversation

The Origin of Humanity and Evolution: Science and Scripture in Conversation

Forgetting the Cosmological Origins of Metaphysical Warfare in Rev. 12:7-12: A Dialogue with Cato Gulaker and Peter Leithart


 
 
 This article offers an analytical review of two approaches to the interpretation of the metaphysical background of the conflict in Rev. 12:7–12. It presents the distinctive features of each of them and the hermeneutic strategy of their authors. It has been observed that theologians have neglected the unity and inspiration of Scripture, and as a result, their conclusions about the subject matter of the study contradict the theological meanings of the history of man’s redemption. The main purpose of this article is not only to point out the complex of problems associated with the rejection of the authenticity of the metaphysical confrontation in these texts. But also for the first time in a theological discussion of this kind, to demonstrate the negative consequences, both for Christian ideology and for humanity as a whole, of rejecting the cosmological cause of the metaphysical war between God and Satan, which took place before the creation of the earth.
 
 

Niger Delta Subaltern Agency and Resistance in Obari Gomba’s The Ascent Stone and Stephen Kekeghe’s Rumbling Sky

This article applies the theoretical positions of some scholars from the Subaltern Studies Collective to the reading of poetry by Niger Delta writers. I argue that the Niger Delta people are subaltern in the Nigerian national space due to their disadvantaged sociopolitical position as well as the resource conflict that has left the region at the mercy of the state and its agents. With insights from the writings of Ranajit Guha, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Gyan Prakash, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Partha Chatterjee, I read the subaltern themes of agency and resistance in Obari Gomba’s The Ascent Stone and Stephen Kekeghe’s Rumbling Sky. In adopting this framework, I draw from Guha’s original theorisation of peasant insurgency and the structure of power as well as later theorisations of relational power discourse and subaltern agency. My close reading of selected poems reveals the figure of the Niger Delta subaltern as the architect of their own destiny and whose resistance haunts the dominant discourse of the nation. The notions of insurgency, the nation and its fragments, failed revolutions, and relational power discourse are deployed as hermeneutical strategies. My adoption of this theoretical approach recovers its insights for the reading of literary works by writers from minority groups.

Heidegger’s Question of Being: the Unity of Topos and Logos

In this article, I elucidate the significance of Heidegger’s ‘question of being’ from a topological point of view by explaining the relationship between his thought of place and language. After exploring various hermeneutic strategies of reading Heidegger’s oeuvre, I turn to Richard Capobianco’s interpretation of Heidegger and critically engage with his idea of the experience of being itself as the ‘luminous self-showing of logos’. In doing so, I explain the later turn from ‘truth’ to ‘place’ and articulate why logos needs to be conceived as the gathering site of the presencing of being. In arguing against the primacy of passive receptivity and active projection, I put forward the primacy of language as the topos and logos of being. In returning to the Capobianco-Sheehan debate, I conclude by explaining why Heidegger’s place-related notions cannot be thought metaphorically.

Your Body is not your own: A Political Theological Engagement with Gretha Wiid’s Patriarchal Interpretation of Ephesians 5:22-23

Why does Gretha Wiid call upon her predominately white Afrikaner female followers to submit themselves unquestioningly to the sexual will and social authority of their husbands? Why would some of these women willingly give over their bodies and their agency to be considered “Worthy Women of God”? This paper engages the founder of the “Worthy Women of God” movement, Gretha Wiid’s, interpretation of Ephesians 5:22–23. It aims to explicate the political theology that underpins and informs Wiid’s patriarchal hermeneutics by placing it within the cultural, political, racial, and gendered context of a changing South Africa. In order to do so we shall consider the ways in which Wiid has interpreted Ephesians 5:22–23 in her publications, public addresses, and DVD / Video materials. By understanding her tacit political convictions, one can gain a clearer understanding of her hermeneutic strategy, and the reception of her patriarchal theology among her predominantly white, middle class, Afrikaner, women followers. It will be argued that her political strategy is diametrically opposed to the ethical intent contained in Ephesians 5:21–33. Keywords: Feminism, Gender, Sexuality, Patriarchy, Oppression, South Africa, Political Theology, Ephesians, Apartheid, Whiteness, Worthy Women of God

Virtual Laboratories and Posthuman Learning

The increasing use of virtual laboratories in education raises new philosophical—and perhaps especially phenomenological—questions related to how this type of technological mediation affects the user’s sense of situated embodied being: sensory perception. The empirical basis of this phenomenological inquiry is a case study conducted in a Danish school setting. This allows us to compare analog laboratory work with virtual. Inspired by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, we describe how pupils’ bodily and multisensory interactions with laboratory tools differ across physical and virtual settings. Virtual laboratories are complex, sociotechnical, often opaque practices that affect the pupils’ sense of embodiment, thus prompting the need for in situ development of hermeneutical strategies for bridging the gap between the simulated laboratory and the physical world. In the final section, we discuss how these strategies can be considered posthuman learning processes.

Predictors and outcomes in primary depression care (POKAL) – a research training group develops an innovative approach to collaborative care

BackgroundThe interdisciplinary research training group (POKAL) aims to improve care for patients with depression and multimorbidity in primary care.POKAL includes nine projects within the framework of the Chronic Care Model (CCM). In addition, POKAL will train young (mental) health professionals in research competences within primary care settings. POKAL will address specific challenges in diagnosis (reliability of diagnosis, ignoring suicidal risks), in treatment (insufficient patient involvement, highly fragmented care and inappropriate long-time anti-depressive medication) and in implementation of innovations (insufficient guideline adherence, use of irrelevant patient outcomes, ignoring relevant context factors) in primary depression care.MethodsIn 2021 POKAL started with a first group of 16 trainees in general practice (GPs), pharmacy, psychology, public health, informatics, etc. The program is scheduled for at least 6 years, so a second group of trainees starting in 2024 will also have three years of research-time. Experienced principal investigators (PIs) supervise all trainees in their specific projects. All projects refer to the CCM and focus on the diagnostic, therapeutic, and implementation challenges.ResultsThe first cohort of the POKAL research training group will develop and test new depression-specific diagnostics (hermeneutical strategies, predicting models, screening for suicidal ideation), treatment (primary-care based psycho-education, modulating factors in depression monitoring, strategies of de-prescribing) and implementation in primary care (guideline implementation, use of patient-assessed data, identification of relevant context factors). Based on those results the second cohort of trainees and their PIs will run two major trials to proof innovations in primary care-based a) diagnostics and b) treatment for depression.ConclusionThe research and training programme POKAL aims to provide appropriate approaches for depression diagnosis and treatment in primary care.

Divine Darkness and Legal Darkness: Apophasis, Cataphasis and the Making of Legal Cultures of the First Millennium

The article explores the long lost synthesis between apophatic and cataphatic theological strategies and early legal systematizations which shaped the Christian, Jewish and Islamic legal collections in the twelfth century. It argues that the theological possibilities to achieve Divine knowledge have reached out to all normative forms of human existence including law. It focuses specifically on a Christian context where imagining the law involves complex scales of cataphasis and apophasis and parallels other normative forms such as ritual and ascetic practices. The text only hints that parallel trends appear via very different routes but in a very similar ways in the Jewish and the Islamic legal projects and proposes that a comparative interreligious study of the twelfth century legal collections and their hermeneutic strategies is long overdue and critically important.

El desafío de la tesis de la autonomía: examinando la tesis de la exclusividad en el razonamiento judicial y el precedente

This article reflects on one of the challenges Gerald Postema’s account of the autonomy thesis poses to Raz’s pre-emption thesis in judicial practice and precedent. Certain flaws in the pre-emption thesis, as applied to courts, come to light upon analyzing the autonomy challenge, whereas some aspects of the former are better understood from the perspective of the latter. This work shows that, although these two theses seem to clash, the autonomy challenge leads instead to an alternative approach to the pre-emption thesis that allows exploring some disregarded relationships between judicial practical reasoning and precedent. Drawing from this Raz-Postema debate, I argue for an alternative reading of the autonomy challenge by introducing the hermeneutic strategy of courts (HeSCo) as a tool to analyze the role of officials as addressees of exclusionary legal directives and its explanatory force. The HeSCo ultimately unravels the paradox by holding the pre-emption thesis as central to the proper understanding of judicial practice and precedent.

Excavating Exodus: Biblical Typology and Racial Solidarity in African American Literature by J. Laurence Cohen

Reviewed by: Excavating Exodus: Biblical Typology and Racial Solidarity in African American Literature by J. Laurence Cohen Brian Britt J. Laurence Cohen, Excavating Exodus: Biblical Typology and Racial Solidarity in African American Literature (Clemson, SC: Clemson University Press, 2021) Excavating Exodus presents close readings of African American primary sources, including pamphlets, poetry, and fiction, as expressions of distinct positions on racial identity. With a focus on uses of Exodus and the Moses story from the nineteenth century to the present, Excavating Exodus represents a major contribution to scholarship on African American reception of the Bible. The study moves from a discussion of Mosaic subjectivity in David Walker's pamphlet, Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (1829), Martin R. Delaney's Blake: or; The Huts of America (1859–1862), and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's writings to the twentieth-century works of Alain Locke and Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952), and William Melvin Kelly's A Different Drummer (1962). Contemporary readings of Exodus include works by Beyoncé and Eve Ewing's poetic rendering of Exodus in terms of Chicago politics, featuring Mayor Richard J. Daley as Pharaoh (158–161). Cohen's study articulates a set of arguments about what these sources say and how they use Exodus and Moses to say it. In dialogue with Albert Raboteau, Eddie Glaude, Rhondda Robinson Thomas, Tommie Shelby, Sharon A. Stanley, and others, Cohen advocates a view of African American solidarity that is more pragmatic than essentialist, yet "affective and political" at the same time (25). In [End Page 103] building this account, Cohen displays an impressive range of engagements with the Exodus story, across many genres and perspectives, with particular emphasis on historical and political context. One of the most valuable contributions of Cohen's study is his use of "signifying" as a mode of intertextual engagement. Like biblical reception in general, signifying applies to a wide range of interpretive practices. For instance, Cohen argues that Martin R. Delany's Blake not only represents its main character as a Moses figure, but also signifies Harriet Beecher Stowe's Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856) (56). Cohen similarly suggests that Frances Harper responded to David Walker's 1829 use of Moses in her 1859 essay, "Our Greatest Want." This "unmotivated signification," a concept borrowed from Henry Louis Gates's The Signifying Monkey, produces intertextual dialogue and development across the authors and texts. Yet it is not always clear how to distinguish an author's act of signification from Cohen's comparison, such as when he suggests that the character Tom Anderson in Iola Leroy (1892) signifies Stowe and Frederick Douglass alike (75–77). Cohen's sources engage multiple forms of biblical reception, ranging from direct citation of Moses and Exodus to generally Mosaic figures who bear only distant allusions and echoes of the Bible. Cohen skillfully surveys these diverse interpretive approaches, suggesting the categories of "typological rigidity" and "typological plasticity" to account for different interpretive approaches to Exodus (48). Unlike the moralistic rigidity that simply contrasted good Mosaic abolitionists against evil Pharaonic slaveholders, Cohen finds more flexible interpretive possibilities within the abolitionism of Martin R. Delaney and others who imagine a new kind of religious reality beyond slavery (60–62). But the real story of Excavating Exodus is not the how but the what of biblical exegesis. Insofar as Cohen frames Exodus interpretations "as a microcosm of the debates at the heart of the Civil Rights movement," his study contributes more to civil rights history than biblical reception history, leading to this four-part classification: "pro-Exodus desegregationism (King), anti-Exodus democratic pluralism (Ellison), pro-Exodus racial separatism (Malcolm X), and anti-Exodus radical individualism (Kelley)" (149, 153). Excavating Exodus culminates in this useful taxonomy, and it would be interesting to see even more about how these political categories relate to the rhetorical and hermeneutical strategies that produced them. Excavating Exodus bears the traces of the doctoral dissertation from which it draws, but the book's clarity and originality make an important contribution to scholarship on African American racial identity and biblical reception. For the study of American religion more generally, the book is a reminder...

The Theme of “Self-recognition” in Philosophy of Vladimir Bibikhin

The article is dedicated to the theoretical reconstruction of the hermeneutics of “self” in the philosophy of Vladimir Bibikhin, considering the role that the practice of “self-recognition” plays in the interpretation of the history of philosophy and the possibilities of reading it. The author refers to the materials of Bibikhin's lecture courses (Recognize Yourself, Property, History of Modern Philosophy, etc.) and suggests comprehending the strategies of Bibikhin's thoughts and reasoning through a particular hermeneutic setting that requires self-recognition in the narrative, in a historical event, in the text and thoughts of another. At the same time, the author offers to view this hermeneutic strategy polemically by comparing it with the Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalytic strategy of interpretation. It is proposed to decipher the so-called Bibikhin “formulas” of “self-recognition” by referring to three situations: dreams, childhood and doppelgangers' experiences. These situations have a deep existential dimension but can also be considered in the context of how Bibikhin exposes historical-philosophical material, since this very motive of philosophizing as “recognizing one's own” is rooted for Bibikhin in the practice of philosophical conversation, reading and writing. Interpretation of dreams, children's babbling speech and play, as well as reflection in the “living mirror”, are those given situations that open the possibility for a person to comprehend one's position and find the integrity of one's existence in the world. The risk of the strategy proposed by Bibikhin is that such hermeneutics, or the practice of “recognizing oneself”, is predominantly negative. Moreover, despite the desire to avoid possible dogmatism, unscrupulousness, skepticism, “grabbing the world”, or an invasive approach to the truth, this or that interpretation of “self”, “our” or “us” may still have been a biased decision.

Translation hermeneutics of the 1933/1953, 1983 and 2020 Afrikaans Bibles

The official Afrikaans Bible translations, published in 1933/1953, 1983 and 2020, influenced Reformed theology, sociopolitical perceptions and the role of the church in society. These issues bled through in the translations via the hermeneutical scope of the different eras. This study focuses on the influence of the hermeneutic foundations of the translators on the content, style and linguistic choices in these translations. The differences between the translations are quite obvious to the reader and a reflection of the fact that different translation strategies were followed. There were vastly different sociopolitical and religious contexts prevailing during the different translation projects. Not only did the sociohistorical setting in South Africa undergo dramatic changes, but internationally there were historic events, such as the two World Wars, the rise and fall of communism, globalisation and the rapid development of technology and the Internet. No official hermeneutic strategies were documented or self-reflectively employed by the translators of the Afrikaans Bibles and therefore this study will approach the hermeneutics of the translations from a descriptive point of view. Sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts together with developments in theological reflection will provide the background for understanding the prevailing hermeneutics of the translations.Contribution: A new Afrikaans Bible was released in 2020, and a need arose to put the Afrikaans translations in applicable hermeneutical contexts. This discussion provides insights into the hermeneutical backgrounds of the three official Afrikaans translations. This contributes to the knowledge base of Afrikaans Bible translations and provides new insights into the hermeneutics of these translations.

ʿbd and šmr in Genesis 2:15 as the Ecological Mandate: An African Theanthropocosmic Perspective

This paper contributes to the ongoing conversation on ecology by contributing an African perspective derived from the theanthropocosmic perspective. African indigenous knowledge and practices have been successfully passed on from one generation to the next without documentation. This is because of the inherent nature of responsibility within the African worldview where God, mankind, and nature exist in a (un)conscious community. The homogenous environmental ethic created within the African context provides scope for rereading the ecological mandate of Genesis 2:15 perhaps as a hermeneutical strategy toward responsibility for the physical environment.

Postphenomenological variation of instrumental realism on the "problem of representation"

In the present paper, I take findings from the postphenomenological variation of instrumental realism to develop an ‘environmental framework’ to provide a philosophical answer to the ‘problem of representation.’ The framework focuses on three elements of the representational environment, image-making technology, image as a representational device, and scientific hermeneutic strategies occurring within the image interpretation process in the laboratory set-up. The central idea in this regard is that scientific images do not produce meanings without their instrumental environment or that an image becomes representational through the interplay between three framework elements. In the second part of the paper, I apply the framework to contemporary debates on fMRI imaging. I show that fMRI images receive meaning not in isolation but within a complex instrumental environment.

A Revelation of Weakness: Julian of Norwich, John Caputo, and the Event of Hospitality

ABSTRACT This study is foremost a close reading of chapter 22 of revelation nine from Julian of Norwich’s (c. 1343–1416) Revelations of Divine Love. I reflect on the implications of a section from the chapter’s introduction in which Christ asks Julian if she were satisfied (‘payde’) for the suffering he underwent for her. Upon hearing her affirmative response Christ tells her that ‘If thou art payde, I am payde.’. In my analysis, I turn to the interpretive strategies offered by the philosopher and theologian, John Caputo (b. 1940), to reflect on the theological images being presented in this chapter. Specifically, I consider the subordinate depiction of Christ in relation to Julian that this section suggests. To do this, I draw on Caputo’s notion of ‘weak theology’ combined with his idea of ‘the event’ and his ethics of ‘hospitality’ as fruitful hermeneutical strategies for thinking through the Christological implications of this chapter.

Rewilding life together: Bonhoeffer, spirituality, and interspecies community

AbstractIn a time of grave ecological danger, compounding injustices, and resource stresses threatening entire human and ecosystemic populations, we need new forms of life together, an intentional interspecies weirding of inherited religious visions of community. The recent turn toward place‐based thinking orients our gaze back to the actual places we live, learning again to see, love, and sustain relationships with their creatures and elements. This article stands within that larger development of place‐based hermeneutics: engaging Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together toward an interspecies broadening of what Christian community means. Such life together takes distinctive shape in each particular place: here, the fire‐charred chaparral and car‐centered built world of southern California, haunted by European settlers’ annihilation of the local indigenous humans, grizzlies, and groundwater, ground zero now for climate‐, pandemic‐, extinction‐, and immigrationjustice challenges. The article's process generates new insights in the study of Bonhoeffer's legacy and hermeneutical strategies useful for other projects in place‐based (re‐) readings of classic texts in Christian spirituality.