Without collapsing critical thinking into relativism, hermeneutics recognizes the historicity of human understanding. Ideas are nested in historical, linguistic, and cultural horizons of meaning. A philosophical, theological, or literary problem can only be genuinely understood through a grasp of its origin. Hermeneutics is in part the practice of historical retrieval, the re-construction of the historical context of scientific and literary works. Hermeneutics does not re-construct the past for its own sake; it always seeks to understand the particular way a problem engages the present. A philosophical impulse motivates hermeneutic re-construction, a desire to engage a historically transmitted question as a genuine question, worthy of consideration in its own right. By addressing questions within ever-new horizons, hermeneutic understanding strives to break through the limitations of a particular world-view to the matter that calls to thinking.
Hermeneutics opposes the radical relativist notion that meaning cannot be trans-lingual. As the speculative grammarians of the Middle Ages recognized, all languages are rooted in a depth grammar of human meaning. This ontological grammar is not a meta-language in which everything can be said. Rather, it is the single horizon of human understanding, which makes speakers of various languages members of a human community. On the other hand, hermeneutics opposes the rationalist tendency to downplay the uniqueness of languages. Hermeneutics is not satisfied with translating the language of the other; it wants to speak with the other in the language of the other.
Hermeneutics cannot happen without a level of inter-disciplinary collaboration that does not yet exist on university campuses. The theologian needs the philosopher as much as the philosopher needs the theologian; both need the literary critic. Hermeneutics is a resolute break with the specialization that has isolated academic disciplines, an effort to redress fragmentation without infringing upon any science's unique area of inquiry.
The Need for Inter-National Collaboration
The world of business knows that the economy is global; the world of academia has been slower to recognize the global unification of research through communication technology. A university can no longer remain content within its national boundaries; it must become a center for inter-national collaboration. We only understand the other by entering their horizon. We only enter the horizon of the other by acknowledging its otherness. We must meet. We must interpret. The contemporary university must become a center for inter-cultural and intra-cultural dialogue if it is to remain relevant in the twenty first century.
The Need for Inter-Religious Collaboration
Hermeneutics has had immense impulses from theology through the work of Roman Catholic theologians Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Bernard Lonergan, Protestant theologians Friedrich Schleiermacher and Karl Barth, and Jewish theologians Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas. The philosophical and literary traditions of the world are intimately bound up with the practice of human religion. Understanding traditional texts is not possible without a religious context. This understanding can be independent of an individual religious commitment. Hermeneutics acknowledges that the meaning of a religious text is uniquely disclosed within the horizon of a particular faith; however, hermeneutics is equally interested in reading religious texts within the horizon of un-belief. In the hermeneutic universe, no voice is excluded from the conversation because of a faith commitment or a lack thereof. According to Hans-Georg Gadamer, our pre-judgments do not impede understanding; on the contrary, they make it possible.
29 Sep 2023
Scholars of second languages interested in the psychology of language learning and teaching have recently used specific cutting-edge methods to investigate various psychological elements of second language acquisition and education. This strategy can offer deeper insights into the underlying causes of creating these psychological characteristics, although the application of the methodology is still in its infancy. Top academic universities and online platforms like the LiveXP use new second-language teaching approaches. New methods are used both in language training for business and private lessons.