Category Archives: Hermeneutics

A vision

Hermeneutics, Holarchy, Philosophy

Having vision is a matter of seeing from a distinctive point of view. What is seen from that perspective is not itself the vision but the result of the vision.

Objectivist thinking misses what is essential to vision and leaps over the perspective directly to the objects of sight. Any vividly imagined aggregate of ideas is “a vision”, whether it is seen coherently or not.

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A vision, being perspectival, is holistic. If, in the course of resolving a problem, you have a vision of its solution, if you are open and alert, you will notice that much more than the object of the vision is affected. With genuine philosophical problems everything is affected simultaneously.

Objectivist thinking misses what is essential to holism and leaps over the quality of wholeness directly to the object-parts that “constitute” a whole. Any aggregate, whether it is seen coherently or not, is called holistic if it satisfies all criteria of “completeness” – that is, no omission is identified. The being of the wholes is reduced to sum of parts.

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Thinking literally: If you stand in place and have someone else shift the furniture around for you have you changed your perspective?

If you change your opinion on this or that isolated fact have you changed your perspective on it?

Existential entities

Hermeneutics, Philosophy, Pragmatism

The existential I – Heidegger’s Dasein – is the cheapest and most exciting philosophical discovery.

The existential You – Buber’s Thou – is more elusive. Catching sight of the concept of the existential You points the way to the development of the intellectual and ethical practice of existing in the I-Thou relationship. The rules in this strata of being are different from those of ordinary objective thought.

Developing the practice of the I-Thou relationship, one necessarily discovers the existential We, the ground of I-Thou. With that discovery one begins to move into the profound and boring world of Pragmatism.

(At this point, I’d call myself a Hermeneutical Pragmatist. When I’m done reading Husserl’s Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology I am looking forward to reading Richard Rorty.)