Interreligious Hermeneutics and the Pursuit of Truth

J. R. Hustwit

Philosophical hermeneutics provides a model of interreligious dialogue that acknowledges the interpretive variability of truth claims while maintaining their relation to a preinterpretive reality. The dialectic and tensive structure of philosophical hermeneutics directly parallels the tension between the diversity of belief and the ultimacy of the sacred. By placing philosophers like Gadamer, Ricoeur, Peirce, and Whitehead in conversation, J. R. Hustwit describes religious truth claims as coconstituted by the planes of linguistic convention and uninterpreted otherness. Only when we recognize that religious claims emerge from a dalliance back and forth across the limits of the understanding can we appreciate the engagement between religions. In terms of dialogue, this approach treats religious truth claims as tentative hypotheses, but hypotheses that are frequently commensurable and rationally contestable. Interreligious dialogue goes beyond facilitating bonhomie or negotiating tolerance; dialogue can and should be a disciplined space for rationally adjudicating claims about what lies beyond the limits of human understanding.
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Lexington Books

Pages: 162 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-0-7391-8738-8 • Hardback • April 2014 • $92.00 • (£65.00)

978-0-7391-8739-5 • eBook • April 2014 • $87.00 • (£60.00)

Subjects: Philosophy / Religious, Philosophy / Methodology, Philosophy / Hermeneutics

Interreligious Hermeneutics and the Pursuit of Truth

Hardback

eBook

Summary

Philosophical hermeneutics provides a model of interreligious dialogue that acknowledges the interpretive variability of truth claims while maintaining their relation to a preinterpretive reality. The dialectic and tensive structure of philosophical hermeneutics directly parallels the tension between the diversity of belief and the ultimacy of the sacred. By placing philosophers like Gadamer, Ricoeur, Peirce, and Whitehead in conversation, J. R. Hustwit describes religious truth claims as coconstituted by the planes of linguistic convention and uninterpreted otherness. Only when we recognize that religious claims emerge from a dalliance back and forth across the limits of the understanding can we appreciate the engagement between religions. In terms of dialogue, this approach treats religious truth claims as tentative hypotheses, but hypotheses that are frequently commensurable and rationally contestable. Interreligious dialogue goes beyond facilitating bonhomie or negotiating tolerance; dialogue can and should be a disciplined space for rationally adjudicating claims about what lies beyond the limits of human understanding.

Book Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 162 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-0-7391-8738-8 • Hardback • April 2014 • $92.00 • (£65.00)

978-0-7391-8739-5 • eBook • April 2014 • $87.00 • (£60.00)

Subjects: Philosophy / Religious, Philosophy / Methodology, Philosophy / Hermeneutics

Author

J. R. Hustwit is assistant professor and chair of the Religion and Philosophy Department at Methodist University.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Reclaiming the Religions
A Plea for Content
A Plea for Contention
The Hermeneutical Straddle
Chapter 2: Mixed Transmission: Three Core Insights of Hermeneutics
Hybrid Experience
Communal Stability
Epistemic Alienation
Chapter 3: Agents of Comprehension
What is Dialogue?
What is Understanding?
Agency and critical Reason
Chapter 4: The Worry of Incommensurability
The Gammar of a Life
Three Orders of Difference
Phronēsis: A Solution Based in Contingency
From Genuine Commensuration to Genuine Controversy
Chapter 5: Truth Beyond the Pale
Mysteriosophy
Internalism
Critical Realism
Reticent Realism
Fear of Ontological Commitment
Chapter 6: Reconstructing Plurality
Hermeneutics as Meta-narrative
The Disruption of Différance
The Logical Status of Fallibilist Hermeneutics
A Way Forward: Constructive Postmodernism
Dialogue and Homogeneity
The Hermeneutic Response to Deconstruction
Conclusion: Reality, Religions, and Discursive Justice

Reviews

Hustwit takes us through a history of hermeneutic philosophy that is truly a tour de force. Impeccable and insightful discussions of [philosophers] . . . are just a few of the choicest highlights. . . .The book is as refreshing as it is rewarding. . . .for those who want not merely to rehash what others have already had to say about the relationship between hermeneutics and philosophy, but for those who actually want to do some thinking of their own by putting those results to work. . . .Hustwit gets us thinking, and that, especially in a context as sometimes fraught with posturing and hand-waving as this, is no small thing.
— Review of Metaphysics

Surely, when we believe something, we believe it to be true, yet the truth claims of religion are in crisis today. In Interreligious Hermeneutics and the Pursuit of Truth, Jeremy Hustwit deftly charts a path between those who wish to dispense with truth altogether and those who are all too sure that they alone possess the final truth. Neither too skeptical nor too restrictive, Hustwitt offers a powerful platform for the new multi-faith dialogue. After all, how can the religions engage one another if they cannot even acknowledge where their beliefs differ?

— Philip Clayton, Ingraham Professor of Theology, Claremont School of Theology, Author of In Quest of Freedom: The Emergence of Spirit in the Natural World

Interreligious Hermeneutics and the Pursuit of Truth

J. R. Hustwit

Interreligious Hermeneutics and the Pursuit of Truth

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