Dear Professor Kearney,
[...] I completely understand how bodily hermeneutics can be temporally primary and prethematic. But it seems that the body can be just are erroneous as any cognitive hermeneutic. For example, one may be positively disposed towards a charming rapist or be repulsed by an angel. If I understand you correctly that the body may provide reliable discernments at times when cognitive hermeneutics cannot, I don't see how these moments of bodily discernments can themselves be discerned, given the body's ability to deceive (e.g. as charmed by a demon). [...]
Prof. Kearney's response:
A really interesting question. It is precisely because of the fallible/tentative/tacit/inchoate nature of our carnal discernments/readings (that is why I called it a hermeneutic 'flair' rather than 'judgment' ) that the primary hermeneutic of embodied imagination and sensation needs to be supplemented by a critical hermeneutics of reasonable discernment (Kant's aesthetic reflective judgment) and practical wisdom (Aristotle's phronesis). My point is that a primary leap of emotion, faith or flair is not 'blind' but already interpretative...In other words, hermeneutics goes all the way down...
hope that helps a little? We must come back to this in class as several other students asked me similar questions after seminar was over....
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ReplyDeleteHello, Richard -- I find myself in the midst of your blog/seminar, not quite sure of my bearings. I just reread Heidegger's Dialogue with a Japanese (in reality Prof. Tezuka, Germanist of Tokyo University). I think it would be interesting to analyze it in terms of your reflections on hospitality.
ReplyDeleteJoe O'Leary