The Thirteenth Hermeneutic: Destruction and the Borrowed Power Algis Mickunas Ohio University
Introduction The phrase "thirteenth hermeneutic" suggests the possibility of twelve other hermeneutical designs that have been and/or are in vogue in scholarly research. I shall not attempt to elucidate them all, since each would require volumes. Yet it is proper to indicate some of the differences among hermeneutical conceptions: 1. The most common understanding is the function of language, known by some figure, such as Hermes, who translates the "elevated" speaking of the higher regions into daily terms. Theological proclamations belong here, but also scientific journalism is part of this hermeneutics; legal codes that are constantly translated into specific applications appear in every courtroom. 2. Methodical hermeneutics, wherein every text must be understood from its own context and the part must be understood through the whole, while the whole must be understood through the parts. This rule is articulated into four different whole–part relationships and can be ordered hierarchically. The first whole, of which the text and parts of the text is a part, is the language in which the text is written (deconstructive hermeneutics belongs here). The second whole, to which the text and parts of the text belong, is the historical context of the text. We have to understand the events to which the text refers, other texts, their terminologies, etc., in the framework of this context. The third whole is the totality of the works written by an author, the oeuvre, in its temporal and historical unfolding. This whole is represented first, by a style, (the specific use of language, characteristic of an individual or a "school" of individuals), and changes in the style in the texts belonging to the same author or school. Fourth, is the whole as the text itself, and the parts are the parts of the text. The first level is called the "grammatical level," the second is the "historical level," the third is the "individual level," and the fourth is called the "generic level." Dilthey called the first two levels, the technical preparation that guides the way to the context of the text. In a way, this includes historical–philological methods. 3. Philosophical hermeneutics whose focus is the way Being is understood indirectly, i.e. the preunderstanding we assume in order to speak of all other things. Thus Western philosophical hermeneutics set up Being whose presence could be accessed from a limit (peras), leading to numerous texts that were framed within this interpretation, e.g. Platonic forms, Aristotelian substances, space and time, not to speak of stability and reiteration. This hermeneutic reached its completion and dissolution—in the West—with Hegel's identification of Being and Nothing (for classicism Nothing was the limit of Being) 4. Apophantic hermeneutics that depends on but is not identical with philosophical hermeneutics. Apophantic reading of the world is framed by a specific selection of grammar and syntax that allow one to formulate everything into essentializing propositions—the specific whatness of all events, leading to definitory answers. The very notion of definition is de–finis—giving finality and hence presuming that the defined can be safely tucked away as known forever: what is human, what is an atom, what is science, what is myth, etc., each
