4. THE GADAMERIAN APPROACH TO THE RELATION BETWEEN EXPERIENCE AND LANGUAGE

Narrativism as a theory of historical depiction intuitively opens the question: what is left of reality when it is poured through the filter of language structures? And, extended a little bit further, questions arise: What is responsible for the final shape of a historical depiction? Is it experience or language? What is affecting what? Narrativism typically accuses language units of transforming experience in a specific way. However, even in asking these questions, the problem of the separation of experience from language and language from experience remains. In this article, I address this issue using Gadamer's hermeneutical frame. Wherever philosophical tradition insists on the separation of certain positions, Gadamer tries to show their ontological connections. For Gadamer, understanding is a basic ontological structure, within which both sides of a dialogue affect and constitute each other. In Gadamerian hermeneutical ontology, there is no “starting point” or first responsible position. In the understanding, dialogue has the permanently moving character of a play, where separate positions are erased. This Gadamerian view can also be applied to the question of language and experience and their mutual connection in depicting any experience via language. In Gadamer's example of the work of art, the original subject matter (Urbild) is articulated through its depiction. The subject matter dictates possible ways of depicting, which in turn dictate the final shape of depiction. In this article, I discuss Gadamer's term “articulation of the world,” by which he means a function of language. Articulation is simply a transformation of shapeless matter into a shape, and in our case it is a transformation of an experience into a language depiction. I show that the Gadamerian approach to language and experience can offer an interesting perspective on the issues discussed in reaction to narrativist philosophy of history.     

President Obama,the Bible,and Political Rhetoric

Abstract

How has President Obama made use of the Bible in his political rhetoric, especially as it relates to public policy debates? This article addresses Obama's religious origins, his work as a community organizer in Chicago, his coming to Christian faith under the leadership of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and the development of his understanding regarding the relationship between faith and politics. In particular President Obama has emphasized the notion that we are all our brothers' and sisters' keepers. He also stresses the present generation of black Americans as "the Joshua Generation." The article considers President Obama's hermeneutics, as well as the important context of the black church for his own use of Scripture. The lenses of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Reinhold Niebuhr are also addressed as they relate to Obama's use of Scripture in political rhetoric.     

Hermeneutics without Historicism: Heidegger,MacIntyre, and the Function of the University

Martin Heidegger and Alasdair MacIntyre both claim that universities perform important philosophical functions. This essay reconstructs Heidegger’s and MacIntyre’s views of the university and argues that they have a common source, which I call hermeneutics without historicism. Heidegger and MacIntyre are hermeneutical philosophers: philosophers who are sensitive to the ways in which thought is mediated by interpretation and conditioned by history and culture. But both of them reject the relativistic historicism sometimes associated with a hermeneutical approach to philosophy. This desire to have it both ways leads Heidegger and MacIntyre to attach tremendous importance to activities that take place in universities but nowhere else. The essay also asks whether MacIntyre’s defenders should be troubled by the similarities between his account of the function of the university and Heidegger’s. I argue that they should not, because, while Heidegger’s account of the university has obvious moral and political failings, these failings result not from non-historicist hermeneutics as such, but from specific features of Heidegger’s version of it.     

Egypt,Islamists, and the Internet: The Case of the Muslim Brotherhood and Its Rhetoric of Dialectics in Ikhwanweb

This essay offers an ideological analysis of the rhetoric of the Islamist Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in its official English‐language Web site, Ikhwanweb, between 2005 and 2010 — years preceding the Egyptian uprising of January 2011. The purpose was to examine the ideology manifest in the rhetoric and uncover the instrumental function the rhetoric served. Analysis brought forth a post‐Islamist ideology manifest through a rhetoric of dialectics. The instrumental function of the Egyptian MB's rhetoric in Ikhwanweb was to alter Western societies' monolithic understanding of Islamism — radical, undemocratic, inflexible. The cyber‐rhetoric was also used as a means to disapprove certain Western agents' support for authoritarian regimes. During Mubarak's rule, Ikhwanweb was used as a communicative medium to demonstrate to the West the Egyptian MB's need to be valued — respected regardless of ideological differences, understood rather than essentialized, stereotyped, and prejudged, and supported as a pragmatic, political entity within Egypt.     

CAN THERE BE A BOURDIEUSIAN THEORY OF CRISIS? ON HISTORICAL CHANGE AND SOCIAL THEORY

Philip Gorski's edited book engages the question of how Bourdieu's concepts can aid historical analysis, and in particular, account for change as well as reproduction. From a fascinating set of papers, this review essay takes special notice of two that theorize crisis. One, by Ivan Ermakoff, engages the question of whether disruption creates the opportunity for more conscious calculation on the part of actors; a second, by Gisele Sapiro, considers how a crisis reverberates through a specific field. This leads to further reflection on Bourdieu's work on power and the state, as well as a call for crisis hermeneutics in social theory.     

Visual Persuasion in George W. Bush's Presidency: Cowboy Imagery in Public Discourse

Discussion of George W. Bush's rhetoric typically focuses on his spoken address, yet his use of cowboy visuals also qualifies as public communication. By visually identifying himself as a cowboy Bush associated his presidency with the story of the mythic cowboy, a powerful concept in American culture. While visual images are typically not considered a substantive and rational form of political communication, Bush's cowboy persona, emphasized visually, prompted widespread debate about his leadership style and approach to national problems, particularly terrorism. While many did not agree with his policies, the simplicity of the visual message and the foundational nature of the cowboy story provided a narrative that prompted a national debate on substantive issues of the day. Language is still considered the critical element of political debate, but as Bush's experience demonstrates, rhetoric includes visual communication as well.     

Management and Community: Some Problems with New Labour

Abstract

This essay examines some tendencies in New Labour's political rhetoric, in particular its reduction of what counts as political and what counts as community. What will be argued is firstly, that the quest for managerial efficiency has functioned to reshape political discourse. This has come about primarily through the attempted removal of political control from economic and public life through the rhetoric of audit and the proliferation of executive agencies and other quangos. Secondly, I will also claim that the language of something called ‘the value of community’, despite being the primary moral principle underpinning the whole New Labour agenda, is politically virtually redundant, principally because its sphere has been reduced to the ‘voluntary’ sector. This redrawing of the boundaries of politics does not augur well for the long-term survival of the British political system: serious questions about the role of the state and the future of democracy emerge from the policies of the past five years and will be discussed briefly in the final section.     

Europe’s Right Step in the Wrong Direction

Abstract

This brief essay attempts to show, through ?i?ek’s interpretation of Hei-degger, how the European Union has also taken (as the German master in the thirties), the “right step in the wrong direction” and how it can change its political error. Following ?i?ek’s view of communism as an opportunity of emancipation for Heidegger, hermeneutics philosophy is presented as the change of direction for the Union, change that will only take place if metaphysics is overcome in the appropriate manner.     

Said,Auerbach, and the Return to Philological Hermeneutics

ABSTRACT

This essay explores the relationship between Edward Said’s well-known contrapuntal reading of history and Erich Auerbach’s Ansatzpunkt, or point of departure, as a means of entering a given hermeneutic circle. Although Auerbach occupied an increasingly prominent place in Said’s critical thought, his engagement with the work of the German philologist has been largely ignored or downplayed. In this essay I take the figure of exile, which is so central to Said’s scholarship and which he explicitly links with the intellectual mission of critique, as a point of departure for a deepened exploration of Said’s critical method—a method developed in critical dialogue with Auerbach’s work. Building on the existing literature, I argue that Auerbach offers more than simply a way for Said to problematize identity politics and to challenge the dogmatism of received notions of home and political belonging. More than this, I argue that the German philologist provides Said with a way to reconfigure the dialectic between history and literature; to develop his contrapuntal approach to reading history; and to rethink the parameters of a historicist humanism that, in turn, enables him to reactivate the critical potential of philological hermeneutics.     

Japan's global environmentalism: rhetoric and reality

The 1992 Earth Summit marked the emergence of a new type of global environmentalism in which nation states increasingly sought to represent themselves as key environmental actors. Since the early 1990s, Japan has attempted to position itself rhetorically as a global environmental leader. This rhetoric must be compared to Japan's international environmental impacts, which are considerable, especially in East and Southeast Asia. Japan's domestic environmental situation is evaluated, and five key areas of international environmental impacts are discussed: official development assistance, foreign direct investment, deforestation, overfishing, and the promotion of high technology. Motivations for Japan's use of global environmentalist rhetoric including its domestic political environment, geopolitical goals, geoeconomic motivations, and the increasing globalization of the Japanese economy are analyzed. The spread of the Japanese model of development is linked to Asia's continuing environmental crises.     

’Refined,highfalutin’ principles’: The northern public,the constitution,and slavery, 1861–62

Early in the Civil War an anticonstitutional rhetoric arose on the Northern home front in response to military delays and defeats as well as congressional debates over the constitutionality of punitive actions against rebel citizens. This critique was based in part on the Constitution's protections of rebel citizens’ rights, especially their disputed right to hold human property. Impatient Northerners also perceived the political compromises with slavery throughout the sectional conflict as based on constitutional principles. As a result, some Northerners began to equate the Constitution with slavery, and began to demand that the document be revised or even rewritten. This essay argues, however, that in spite of their critique of the Constitution's perceived protections of slavery, war‐minded Northern citizens did not advocate immediate or widespread emancipation.     

Radical Political Theology

Abstract

This essay investigates the claim, advanced by a number of contributors to Theology and the Political, that the potential for political transformation requires an analogical ontology. I argue that this is not the case, and that an ontology of immanence, as found primarily in the work of Gilles Deleuze, provides an alternative and superior paradigm for political transformation. This argument is advanced by examining the manner in which immanence enables a novel approach to creation. Such immanent creation is distinct in that it departs from analogy's dependence on the transcendent as well as from capitalism's dependence on communication.     

Michael Oakeshott and Hans-Georg Gadamer on Practices,Social Science,and Modernity

This article compares Michael Oakeshott and Hans-Georg Gadamer, in particular examining the different ways they conceptualise human practices and the relationship between theory and practice. First, I highlight where the two agree. Both are sceptical of causal explanations of human behaviour, and instead advocate understanding human conduct intersubjectively, using Aristotle's concept of ‘practical wisdom’. Second, however, I also highlight important areas of disagreement. Oakeshott maintains that non-philosophical but non-practical theoretical disciplines are possible; by contrast, Gadamer stresses the intrinsically practical nature of all understanding. More practically, they also differ over how useful Aristotelian insights are politically. Gadamer claims (like Aristotle) that we can seek an objective common good; Oakeshott rejects this, due to his commitment to pluralism. Finally, I suggest that these divergences are due to different conceptualisations of ‘experience’ and the Western tradition. First, Oakeshott and Gadamer differ over how authentically we can know human experience, and therefore over how important the right discipline for investigation is. Second, they differ over the degree to which we can interrogate the Western tradition. For Oakeshott, we must accept its pluralist inheritance; for Gadamer a healthy dialogue with it is essential—only thus can we unearth the (Aristotelian) insights vital for us to live well.     

Inspecting the pious body: Christological morphology and the ritual-crucifixion allegation

The first ritual-murder accusations appeared at a time in which a theology that was increasingly invested in Christ's human body was articulated. Forms of mimetic devotion emerged across Latin Christendom, but were considered highly controversial. The Life and Miracles of St William of Norwich, this essay argues, is an attempt to think about some of the problems that arise from this theology. By interpreting Jewish actions, both real and alleged, the author, Thomas of Monmouth, deployed a Christian bodily logic in order to make a claim about William's sanctity based on his physical ‘likeness’ to Christ in suffering. While in the end this rhetorical and theological scheme was not widely accepted by the author's contemporaries, the Christological grammar of bodily hermeneutics that the Vita articulates resonated in the language of subsequent allegations.     

Keystone of the patriarchal family? Indissoluble marriage,masculinity and divorce in Liberal Italy

While divorce laws were introduced in most of western Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century, the majority of Italian statesmen exhibited strong reluctance to take such a measure on the occasions it was proposed by a number of progressive parliamentarians between unification and 1920. This essay examines the debates over whether or not to introduce a divorce law during Italy's Liberal period, arguing that many Italians saw indissoluble marriage as a way of protecting the ‘natural’ gender order against the corruptive tendencies of modernity seen elsewhere, particularly in France. Much rhetoric was expended on the notion that marriage protected Italian women in particular, but a divorce law would also have righted the radical asymmetries of power that lay at the heart of the Italian marriage contract. These were asymmetries that gave the husband distinct privileges and helped to construct masculine identity. For that reason, the maintenance of marriage as a contract only dissoluble by death can be read as a determination to protect traditional notions of masculinity.     

Orthodox violence: “Critique of Violence” and Walter Benjamin's Jewish political theology

This paper deals with the role of Judaism in Walter Benjamin's famous 1921 essay on violence and law, Zur Kritik der Gewalt. Despite the intense attention devoted to this essay, the role of Jewish myth in it has not yet been thoroughly explained. This study contends that the association between what Benjamin termed revolutionary violence and the Jewish messianic tradition, which plays a central role in the evaluation of Benjamin's text, is far more problematic than has hitherto been assumed, and poses a serious challenge, which has not been fully examined in its historical context. Second, this essay claims that the subversive elements that many have supposedly found in Benjamin's text and the attempts to link these elements to messianic traditions are also unconvincing. Third, the paper contextualizes Benjamin's thought within the framework of the Jewish political–theological debate of the period. It contends that Benjamin's theory of law and justice should be understood not as a revolutionary, anti-republican text, as has been generally accepted, but as a secularized conservative orthodox one. In doing so, it seeks to shed light not only on Benjamin's early thinking and its influences, but also on the neglected element of Jewish orthodoxy within the broader topic of political theology.     

Yoram Hazony and Leo Strauss on the Relation between Philosophy and Revelation

This essay challenges Yoram Hazony's ostensible correction of Leo Strauss's account of the tension between philosophy and revelation in Hazony's book The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture. While Hazony persuasively demonstrates the value of the Hebrew Bible, notably the half that he calls the “History of Israel,” as a work of rational political theory, emphasizing the difference in function between the Torah and the Christian “New Testament” (which serves chiefly to “bear witness” to particular events, rather than account for the permanent character of human and political life), he wrongly accuses Strauss of sharing the position of the radically antiphilosophic Christian theologian Tertullian that the Bible and classical philosophy are “absolutely oppos[ed],” even though Strauss, unlike Tertullian, takes the side of philosophy rather than the Bible in this conflict. Contrary to the impression Hazony conveys, Strauss readily acknowledged that the believer, no less than the philosopher, is obliged to make use of reason in his quest for truth and noted the critical areas of agreement between the Torah and classical philosophy. He simply emphasized the conflict between philosophy's reliance on reason as the ultimate guide to truth and the dependence of the Bible on belief in divine revelation, a dependence that Hazony implausibly seems to deny. And Hazony's challenge to the very distinction between reason and revelation threatens to weaken our appreciation of both sides of this tension, which Strauss identified as the source of the West's “vitality.”     

The role of Finland in the Swedish national and war economies during Sweden's period as a great power

The primary goal of this article is to present anti-Semitism as the underlying reason for the rejection of Israel-Jakob Schur's PhD dissertation at the University of Helsinki and at Åbo Akademi University in the late 1930s. The article analyzes the different stages of the processes and the ideological background and motives underpinning the rejections. Schur's antagonists were right-wing professors, some of whom sympathized with National Socialism and/or maintained contacts with eminent German anti-Semitic ideologues. The article analyzes the rhetoric of the written statements, which contain ideas of Christian anti-Semitism as well as other anti-Jewish stances. Moreover, the article demonstrates that Schur was regarded as an alien element in the Finnish academe, and the topic of his research – circumcision – was considered non-national from the perspective of Finnish science.