23 June 2009

Originalism vs. the Living Constitution debate... (a case study for CR?)

(Follow the link above for a story on constitutional interpretation)

I haven't developed these thoughts to any extent- but there is an interesting parallel between debates surrounding the interpretation of the U.S. constitution and those surrounding the issues of interpreting any text generally (including Scripture).

The view of originalism is that the constitution should be interpreted according to what it meant to the founders and is the typical conservative view of interpretation.

The "living constituion" view is less well defined and seems to want to account for the need for the constitution to have relevance in different historical/cultural realities than those in which it was written. There is a spectrum of course, but this view tends to be the progressive approach to the constitution.

It seems that Critical Realism (as I understand it following Lonergan, Meyer, Wright etc.) has something to offer in such a debate. Neither can the text's meaning within it's original horizon be neglected, nor can the fact that historical and social realitites are constantly in flux be disregarded in interpretation. If interpretation is truly a fusion of horizons (in Lonergan's understanding, not Gadamer's) then both the original meaning of the text and the needs of present historical reality need to be respected in the interpretive event.


04 June 2009

A Brief Note: Philosophical Horizons and Late Western Interpreters

This is a brief note- reflection on some of what I've drawn from Lonergan/Meyer (see previous posts) on making explicit philosophical horizons, which are implicitly passed on through interpretive practices and by the language used in interpretive contexts.

Philosophical categories often structure interpretation under the table- so to speak, without the awareness of interpreters/readers.  These categories are embedded in the very language used in order to make clear or elucidate meaning.

Making philosophical horizons explicit will often show the true root of disagreement between groups that come to a debate with implicit assumptions that are incompatible.  Dialectic, for Lonergan, is the process of laying bare those assumptions.

As a late-modern (or late western- i.e. neither modern nor post-modern) interpreter I've inherited certain categories that structure interpretation:

1. The individual as the primary category of human existence.
2.  Newtonian causality (one object bumps another setting off a chain of events) - even though no longer dominant in physics, the underlying notion is tacitly held by many of us in our approach to everyday events of causality, including textual ones.
3.  Spirit/body dualism (this is a classic Platonic distinction which held sway in various ways and times throughout interpretive history) 
4.   A parallel theological/material distinction which leaves things like economics and social reality out of interpretation in theological texts.

All of these things I would call tendencies- categorizations that I have inherited but which I can subvert as long as I make them explicit.   It is not that all of these categorizations are wrong, bad or untrue- though at times I feel that they can be misleading (especially when interpreting biblical texts).  The point is that if I am not at least aware of these tendencies in interpreting I will be far more likely to allow these assumptions to dominate.

Critical realism is about a posture of humility towards the world and an honest assessment of one's capability to know along with  a commitment to the drive to knowledge.   

More to come.

01 June 2009

Critical Realism... coming back soon

Hello to all the scattered critical realists of the earth:

  I am hoping to resurrect this blog, which really served in the past as a way of working through the issues that CR (in the stream following Lonergan) raised for my own approach to the New Testament.  I am a PhD student at the London School of Theology (though living in Minneapolis, MN, USA) working in Mark's gospel with speech act theory in a CR framework.

  My PhD thesis is entitled "Liberating Ecclesiology in Mark's Gospel" and will focus on Mark 11:1-13:2 and draws alot from the work of John R. Searle and Quentin Skinner and their work in speech act theory and adaptation of it for doing interpretation across historically distant contexts.  

  I plan on beginning to reflect on the issues related to CR that I come upon in my studies on this blog.  In the meantime, there are several posts (a couple years old admittedly) that describe my own understanding on Critical Realism in the Lonergan, Meyer, Wright line of thought and its relation to biblical studies.   You may or may not find them interesting (and even convincing?).... I'll leave that judgment up to you.

  Peace. 
Tom A.




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