-hermeneutics

-self in conversation with itself; articulation

-articulating the experience…requires interpretation (i.e. not obvious)

-thinking as conversation with the self; expressed in opinion–the it-apears-to-me

-one never sees the thinking only the expression; the thinking, the silent        conversation is what is pointed to in saying but never said (cf. Zeus called           and not called by name)

-words & inner sililoquy as phantasia

-opinion and the as-it-appears as phantasia

-the universal as what is really one among the objects; as more than mere flatus vocis; we see a house before we see the house; the house as the idea, the look

-the example as phantasia; phantasia as possible object that does not depend           upon experience… but is only met with in experience… no thinking without phantasia

-traditional pedagogy as transmitting knowledge already acquired through medium of teacher

-progressive pedagogy as allowing individual experience

-not simply a matter of abandoning the traditional… and what is maintained?

-not focusing on only the present and future but also making the past            relevant to the present (cf: N. the uses and abuses of history)

-the modern attack on experience through (sophistical) historicism

-the experience is not an illusion

 

 

hermeneutic listening is, simply put, attending to the experience of another. At the inception of Western theoretical writing, Heraclitus says the oracle neither reveals nor conceals, rather, it points. Thus, when the oracle pronounced that a great army will fall in the battle of X, the great general X was wrong to not have considered this could mean his enemy’s army would perish or his own. Divine wisdom in the Greek world always descended with the caveat that it may be misunderstood. Hermes himself is a messenger from the gods and also a trickster. Socrates, more prudently than the his martial counterpart, interprets the oracle’s claim that he is wisest among the Greeks. Socrates’ hermeneutical action is to question the meaning of the pronouncement; he asks what it might mean since he believes himself to be ignorant, that is not wise at all: this awareness of his ignorance, he decides, is what separates him out from the others. The difference between Socrates and the General is that one assumes while the other questions. The most famous orcular maxim, know thyself, is never resolved for Socrates, whose response to it is the sempiternal human pursuit of knowledge. It recalls the Heraclitus fragment “I went in search of myself”. In one sense our self is the only thing that is transparent to ourselves, in a sense not only do we know ourselves, but all we know is ourselves since we cannot see, in this respect, outside of our experience. On the other hand, our self interpretation seeks perpetual articulation and clearly changes over time. Thus, the process of interpretation must continually reccur as we seek to understand our experience