Abstract
The field of social and psychological theory is marked by an astounding degree of fragmentation and confusion. This situation derives in large part from a failure to resolve thorny questions about the entanglement of knowledge claims with historical contexts, cultural influences, and moral values. The philosopher Richard Bernstein argues that these difficulties reflect a struggle to find a way beyond the opposition and unresolved tension between broad philosophical outlooks of “objectivism” and “relativism,” a struggle taking place in many cultural and intellectual arenas, including the philosophy of natural science, philosophy proper, literary theory, and elsewhere. We note that hermeneutic philosophy represents a compelling attempt to chart such a path. We then outline the perspective of the British philosopher and theologian Colin Gunton who presents a powerful and unique analysis of modern dilemmas and longstanding difficulties in reconciling the “one” and the “many” in Western thought. Gunton’s ideas are highly congruent with hermeneutics and both reinforce and enrich its ontology of the human life-world and human agency. We suggest several specific ways in which Gunton’s view and hermeneutic thought cross-fertilize one another, extending their ability to speak to current cultural and spiritual dilemmas.
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Notes
- 1.
Gunton looks with favor on Plato’s seeking to formulate an affirmative “engaged” philosophical outlook and encourages us to do the same today. But he points out there is no doubt that Plato “chose…unity rather than plurality. At times like his and ours, of real or threatened social disintegration, there is always a temptation to seek unity and stability above all, and that is one reason why totalitarianism is a constant threat in modern times” (1993, 21).
- 2.
This paradox is illustrated by a remarkable commercial for Dr. Pepper, where virtually every person ends up wearing a Dr. Pepper T-shirt, walking in the same direction and drinking the same soft drink while “I gotta be me” is playing as the background music. The particularity of being ‘me’ is completely lost in the overwhelming conformity to sameness.
- 3.
The struggle of the one vs. the many continues in contemporary Christianity. For example, consider the emphasis on individual righteousness and freedom of many conservative evangelicals that leads them to march in lock step with the most conservative strands of the Republican Party and ostracize those Christians who do not follow suit. On the other side, many liberal Christians, out of a concern to avoid such dogmatism at all costs, limit their ethical outlook to fighting discrimination and domination and endorsing conventional (liberal) notions of “social justice” and criticizing those who do not “go thou, and do likewise.”
- 4.
There is a deep sense in which the liberationist aspirations of the Enlightenment are paternalistic in denying the particularity of individuals for the greater good of the very freedom of those individuals from oppression and false beliefs. Similar forms of hidden paternalism show up in contemporary Western consumerism and mercantilism. For example, Evgeny Morozov (2012) has analyzed how personal liberation lies at the heart of Apple’s values for the design and marketing of their products, while it paternalistically ignores the particularity of customers funneling them into the use of identical technology and features.
- 5.
Looked at this way, current polarized debates in the U.S. about big versus small government represent an argument between a more or less oppressive false universal and a rebellion of the many against the one that denies the need for some focus of unity in the affairs of a nation.
- 6.
According to Taylor, an action “is dialogical…when it is effected by an integrated, non-individual agent. This means that for those involved in it, its identity as this kind of action essentially depends on the agency being shared” (1991, 311).
- 7.
Richardson and Fowers argue that many kinds of postmodern and social constructionist theory, as well, partake of this form of disengagement and inscribe a distanced, somewhat manipulative stance toward the world and others (1998). For this reason, Selznick (1992) refers to this kind of postmodernism as the “wayward child of modernism.”
- 8.
There is a close parallel between this conception of hermeneutic dialogue and Bakhtin’s (1981) idea of continual tension in communication between “centripetal” forces pushing toward unity and agreement and “centrifugal” forces seeking multiplicity and disagreement.
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Richardson, F.C., Bishop, R.C. (2015). Philosophical Hermeneutics and the One and the Many. In: Pedersen, H., Altman, M. (eds) Horizons of Authenticity in Phenomenology, Existentialism, and Moral Psychology. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 74. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9442-8_10
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