The fifth engagement with Merold Westphal's Whose Community? Which Interpretation? Philosophical Hermeneutics for the Church comes from Christina Smerick (see part 1, part 2, part 3, & part 4). Christina Smerick is the Shapiro Chair of Jewish-Christian Studies and Asst. Professor of Philosophy at Greenville College in Greenville, IL. She received her PhD in Philosophy from DePaul University in 2003. Her dissertation focused on the early writings of Walter Benjamin; her recent publications have focused upon Sartrean ethics; and the intersection between philosophy and religion in the Continental tradition (but not in the same article).
Chapter 9: Performance, Application, Conversation
Thus far, we’ve seen Merold Westphal provide a brief, cogent account of the history of hermeneutics, as well as a primer in the objectivist hermeneutics that served as a precursor to Gadamer, Ricoeur, etc. In Chapter 9, he completes the project of elucidating a robust account of Gadamerian hermeneutics by picking up where he left off—truth claims. Westphal argues (and I’m quite sympathetic to this argument, having made it myself in various courses) that even those wonderful ‘hard’ sciences that claim to discover truth are nevertheless participating in their own traditions and have their own limitations. Furthermore, the kind of truth that ‘hard’ science provides is not necessarily the most ‘meaningful’ kind of truth available to us—while I am fascinated by knowing the make-up of a particular molecule, this information does not shape my moral or spiritual life all that much. Thus, the truth that the ‘human sciences’ seek and engage in may be more along the lines of the kind of truth believers seek when they approach the Bible—a truth that increases self-understanding rather than one that simply advances one’s technological expertise. His analysis here seems to gel nicely with Heidegger’s little ditty on calculative v. meditative thinking, which we find in the “Memorial Address”: in Heidegger’s example, calculative thinking may advance us in technology, but meditative thinking is the sort of thinking that is both a) truly human, and b) no longer practiced. Perhaps Gadamer/Westphal are warning us of the same possible crisis—which would be why Westphal repeats his accusation that theologians who forget that Scripture helps us better understand ourselves are turning the Holy Writ into a ‘cadaver’.
The basic argument in Chapter 9 consists of a sort of conflation between interpretation and performance: Gadamer states that “All performance is interpretation and all interpretation is performance,” thus suggesting that reading a text has something intrinsically in common with performing a musical work, for example. All pieces of music are ‘interpreted’ when they are performed—no two conductors will interpret a piece in the same way, which guarantees that there will be a plurality of interpretations, which Westphal cautions us not to fear. Likewise, all such interpretations are ‘originals’ in their own right—they do not simply copy the original, but bring it to new life. Finally, some interpretations are indeed better than others—and here is where language gets tricky on us. One is inclined to say that better interpretations are more ‘loyal’ or (Westphal’s word) ‘faithful’ to the work itself, which begs the question as to what sort of primary access we have to the original work such that we can make this claim. While certainly (as Westphal argues), there are many correct interpretations, and many incorrect ones (Jesus does not command us to punch others in the face; “Mary Had a Little Lamb” does not have intervals of a 3rd in the first 2 bars), exactly how we judge an interpretation to be on the side of the ‘good’ is a complex and legitimate problem. Some questions that arise for me include: who is this ‘we’ who judge? By what standard—and how is this standard both agreed upon and provisional, that is, non-objective and non-absolute? As Westphal goes on to explain how translation, too, is interpretation, the problem gets moved around but not resolved. Let me just say that, as one who works mostly in continental philosophy, I do not think this places us back in the category of ‘relativism’; rather, I think it demonstrates just how tempting ‘objectivist’ or ‘absolutist’ language can be.
Westphal ends Chapter 9 by raising precisely this question of ‘faithfulness’ to the original text. While we of course bring our own pre-judices to the text in our interpretation of it, our interpretation must be “faithful to both the past and the present if it is to bring meaning from the latter to the former.” Again, I tend to ask how we have access to this past, except through the very text that we cannot grasp ‘in itself’. However, his larger point is that interpretation without application is dead (a Book of James argument if I’ve ever heard one). When one interprets a text, one applies it in real life, in one’s community, in concrete ways. One’s engagement with a text is not as with an object, but as if with a person—a conversation arises between the text in its place and time and the reader in her place and time. Thus (and again there are shades of Heideggerian language present here) one is put into question by the text, one is opened and vulnerable—that is, if one is interpreting ‘correctly’.
Chapter 10: Conversation and the Liberal-Communitarian Divide
Chapter 10 threw me for a loop. I was happily tripping along, in my element, thinking about interpretation, when suddenly I was brought up short by Rawls and McIntyre and liberalism and communitarianism. Thankfully, I have just completed teaching a Political Thought course, but my first response to this chapter was, “one of these things is not like the other.” Here, Westphal looks to two models of community in order to see what they have to say to the Church and ecclesiology. Essentially, he concludes that liberalism offers us a model that enables us to ‘get over’ our sometimes competing worldviews by focusing upon where they overlap (this is illustrated by a very helpful Venn diagram). While you and I may disagree radically about alcohol, infant baptism, communion, etc., etc., we (hopefully) agree about the Apostle’s Creed. And so does that other group of Christians over there. Thus we can focus upon what unites, rather than divides, us, recognizing that multiple Christian worldviews can exist, but don’t need to be the focus of our work together. Liberalism assumes that the person ‘exists’ prior to any formation by society or group, and therefore there is some flexibility built in by which we can negotiate our differences (and this is all borrowed from John Rawls).
The Communitarian model argues that we have shared traditions that form us into the persons liberalism assumes we already are. Whereas liberalism assumes a free person without a theory of the good or a worked-out set of virtues, communitarianism argues that one cannot have a “coherent moral life” without such things, and therefore one’s ‘personhood’ is determined or shaped by these traditions and theories. Thus, Communitarianism provides us the model of a ‘comprehensive integrity’ of the many traditions of the Church, such that Christianity may be kept from “being reduced to its least common denominator,” which one assumes is a danger posed by the liberal model. In other words, Communitarianism insists upon a robust set of traditions, but recognizes them as traditions, not as absolute conditions for humanity.
Keeping in mind the overall structure of the book, and that Chapter 9 concluded by noting that we cannot remain in theory but must apply what we learn, if I squint just right, I can see how this chapter functions as a bridge between the hermeneutic ‘theories’ presented in most of the book, and the concluding chapters to follow. However, I have to say that I found the transition a bit jarring, and I think I would have liked a bridge to this bridge.
Overall, however, I am thrilled that Westphal had agreed to contribute to the series; I found this to be the most straightforwardly philosophical of the texts that have come out of this series thus far, which scratched my high-fallutin’, theoretical itch. I don’t think it’s entirely accessible to laypeople, however, as there is still a lot of lingo to learn (apologies for the consonance) in order to follow his analysis of hermeneutics comfortably. I’m always on the lookout for a simple text that can introduce my students to the ideas found in Continental philosophies of religion, and sections of this text may well make the cut. Westphal successfully puts the relativism baby to bed, and for that I am truly thankful. Finally, I think that the final chapters make sense out of Chapter 10 in a way that I cannot do here without stealing someone else’s thunder. Westphal’s concluding lines capture the adventure of the church well enough for me.
The basic argument in Chapter 9 consists of a sort of conflation between interpretation and performance: Gadamer states that “All performance is interpretation and all interpretation is performance,” thus suggesting that reading a text has something intrinsically in common with performing a musical work, for example. All pieces of music are ‘interpreted’ when they are performed—no two conductors will interpret a piece in the same way, which guarantees that there will be a plurality of interpretations, which Westphal cautions us not to fear. Likewise, all such interpretations are ‘originals’ in their own right—they do not simply copy the original, but bring it to new life. Finally, some interpretations are indeed better than others—and here is where language gets tricky on us. One is inclined to say that better interpretations are more ‘loyal’ or (Westphal’s word) ‘faithful’ to the work itself, which begs the question as to what sort of primary access we have to the original work such that we can make this claim. While certainly (as Westphal argues), there are many correct interpretations, and many incorrect ones (Jesus does not command us to punch others in the face; “Mary Had a Little Lamb” does not have intervals of a 3rd in the first 2 bars), exactly how we judge an interpretation to be on the side of the ‘good’ is a complex and legitimate problem. Some questions that arise for me include: who is this ‘we’ who judge? By what standard—and how is this standard both agreed upon and provisional, that is, non-objective and non-absolute? As Westphal goes on to explain how translation, too, is interpretation, the problem gets moved around but not resolved. Let me just say that, as one who works mostly in continental philosophy, I do not think this places us back in the category of ‘relativism’; rather, I think it demonstrates just how tempting ‘objectivist’ or ‘absolutist’ language can be.
Westphal ends Chapter 9 by raising precisely this question of ‘faithfulness’ to the original text. While we of course bring our own pre-judices to the text in our interpretation of it, our interpretation must be “faithful to both the past and the present if it is to bring meaning from the latter to the former.” Again, I tend to ask how we have access to this past, except through the very text that we cannot grasp ‘in itself’. However, his larger point is that interpretation without application is dead (a Book of James argument if I’ve ever heard one). When one interprets a text, one applies it in real life, in one’s community, in concrete ways. One’s engagement with a text is not as with an object, but as if with a person—a conversation arises between the text in its place and time and the reader in her place and time. Thus (and again there are shades of Heideggerian language present here) one is put into question by the text, one is opened and vulnerable—that is, if one is interpreting ‘correctly’.
Chapter 10: Conversation and the Liberal-Communitarian Divide
Chapter 10 threw me for a loop. I was happily tripping along, in my element, thinking about interpretation, when suddenly I was brought up short by Rawls and McIntyre and liberalism and communitarianism. Thankfully, I have just completed teaching a Political Thought course, but my first response to this chapter was, “one of these things is not like the other.” Here, Westphal looks to two models of community in order to see what they have to say to the Church and ecclesiology. Essentially, he concludes that liberalism offers us a model that enables us to ‘get over’ our sometimes competing worldviews by focusing upon where they overlap (this is illustrated by a very helpful Venn diagram). While you and I may disagree radically about alcohol, infant baptism, communion, etc., etc., we (hopefully) agree about the Apostle’s Creed. And so does that other group of Christians over there. Thus we can focus upon what unites, rather than divides, us, recognizing that multiple Christian worldviews can exist, but don’t need to be the focus of our work together. Liberalism assumes that the person ‘exists’ prior to any formation by society or group, and therefore there is some flexibility built in by which we can negotiate our differences (and this is all borrowed from John Rawls).
The Communitarian model argues that we have shared traditions that form us into the persons liberalism assumes we already are. Whereas liberalism assumes a free person without a theory of the good or a worked-out set of virtues, communitarianism argues that one cannot have a “coherent moral life” without such things, and therefore one’s ‘personhood’ is determined or shaped by these traditions and theories. Thus, Communitarianism provides us the model of a ‘comprehensive integrity’ of the many traditions of the Church, such that Christianity may be kept from “being reduced to its least common denominator,” which one assumes is a danger posed by the liberal model. In other words, Communitarianism insists upon a robust set of traditions, but recognizes them as traditions, not as absolute conditions for humanity.
Keeping in mind the overall structure of the book, and that Chapter 9 concluded by noting that we cannot remain in theory but must apply what we learn, if I squint just right, I can see how this chapter functions as a bridge between the hermeneutic ‘theories’ presented in most of the book, and the concluding chapters to follow. However, I have to say that I found the transition a bit jarring, and I think I would have liked a bridge to this bridge.
Overall, however, I am thrilled that Westphal had agreed to contribute to the series; I found this to be the most straightforwardly philosophical of the texts that have come out of this series thus far, which scratched my high-fallutin’, theoretical itch. I don’t think it’s entirely accessible to laypeople, however, as there is still a lot of lingo to learn (apologies for the consonance) in order to follow his analysis of hermeneutics comfortably. I’m always on the lookout for a simple text that can introduce my students to the ideas found in Continental philosophies of religion, and sections of this text may well make the cut. Westphal successfully puts the relativism baby to bed, and for that I am truly thankful. Finally, I think that the final chapters make sense out of Chapter 10 in a way that I cannot do here without stealing someone else’s thunder. Westphal’s concluding lines capture the adventure of the church well enough for me.
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