Hermeneutics: A Philosophy of Understanding

You prob­a­bly don’t know much about the con­cept of hermeneu­tics, I sup­pose. But then why should you? It isn’t some­thing that you could use every­day, or could you? Most­ly hermeneu­tics was de­vel­oped to un­der­stand what ob­scure bible vers­es meant but it can be ap­plied to al­most any­thing that re­quires un­der­stand­ing. Es­sential­ly, hermeneu­tics re­quires that one look at the part in or­der to un­der­stand the whole and to look at the whole to un­der­stand the part. Prob­a­bly the best illustration of hermeneu­tics is in how we learn lan­guages. It’s nec­es­sary to learn lan­guage one word at a time but it’s also nec­es­sary to learn lan­guage as a whole in or­der to un­der­stand what is be­ing com­mu­ni­cat­ed. We would learn a noun so we could iden­ti­fy a thing. But at the same time we might have to learn if that noun were mascu­line or fem­i­nine. Then we’d have to learn vow­els so we could com­mu­ni­cate about ac­tions, but we’d have to learn how to say that vow­el in past, present and future tense so we would know when that ac­tion took place. We would, there­fore, look at the part, (the noun or the verb) in or­der to un­der­stand the whole, (the language). But we’d also have to un­der­stand the lan­guage to un­der­stand how the word fit in the lan­guage. To achieve all of that look­ing and un­der­stand­ing we’d be ap­ply­ing hermeneu­tics even if we didn’t un­der­stand that we were. So we could say that in a way hermeneu­tics is sim­ply the “phi­los­o­phy of un­der­stand­ing”.

Any­one who ob­served Ted Cruz ques­tioning the new Supreme Court nom­i­nee could have eas­i­ly ap­plied hermeneu­tics. We all could clear­ly see that Ted was reach­ing a long way to even ask those ab­surd ques­tions. But the com­mu­ni­ca­tion of him check­ing out his Twit­ter ac­count to see how many men­tions he gar­nered with those stu­pid ques­tions is where we’d re­al­ly ap­ply hermeneu­tics. When Ted­dy checked on Twit­ter we could see and un­der­stand the whole and there­fore see and un­der­stand the parts which had been the stu­pid ques­tions.

Folks like Ted­dy al­ways for­get that what you do speaks loud­er than what you say. Re­mem­ber Ted­dy’s big ad­ven­ture to Can­cun? There was noth­ing he could say that would ex­plain that trip. The ac­tion it­self was all the ex­pla­na­tion need­ed. The same thing is true about Ted­dy look­ing up his men­tions on Twit­ter. It’s the ac­tion which is the com­mu­ni­ca­tion. I have to won­der if the likes of Ted­dy and Joshi and Marge and Matt are un­der­stand­ing what their ac­tions are ac­tu­al­ly say­ing to the con­stituen­cy.

I just can not ac­cept that the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple are buy­ing into the com­e­dy skits which are be­ing pro­duced on the floor of the sen­ate and con­gress. I get that the XLV was a cu­rios­i­ty and thumb­ing his nose at the law and the pro­to­col and the pomp and cir­cum­stance re­quired on the world stage seemed dar­ing and even sexy. But I think that the vast ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple un­der­stood that the XLV did not rep­re­sent the whole of the Amer­i­can peo­ple.

I re­cent­ly saw a re­port that un­em­ploy­ment is the low­est it’s been since 1969. That’s true even with 4,000,000 peo­ple say­ing, “I quit,” and over 1,000,000 deaths from Covid. The pan­dem­ic has changed how we think about things. Sad­ly, I suspect that we are not through with Covid still. I can only imag­ine how much more things will change as we ad­just to more death in our lives. I think that Ukraine is underscoring the se­ri­ous­ness of what ac­tu­al free­dom is. And it is not about vac­cines or masks. The mere fact that folks can bitch about hav­ing to get vac­ci­nat­ed or wear a mask is what free­dom is all about. In the ear­ly days of the pan­dem­ic in Chi­na peo­ple were forcibly re­moved from their home and put in quar­an­tine. Whole neigh­bor­hoods were sealed off and peo­ple were not al­lowed to en­ter or leave those ar­eas. With­in the last month whole cities have been locked down with no one al­lowed in or out.

But in the US we en­joy ac­tu­al free­dom. Where else in the world would truck­ers be al­lowed to con­voy around a na­tion­al cap­i­tal for a month and then com­plain that the may­or of the city should be ar­rest­ed be­cause the truck­ers were pee­ing in their pants — reg­u­lar­ly. Peo­ple in Mos­cow are be­ing ar­rest­ed for car­ry­ing a blank sign. Yet Loren is sug­gest­ing that the US should be more like Vlad´s idea of home. Truck­er is be­ing fea­tured on Russ­ian TV. Do you ac­tu­al­ly think Truck­er would be al­lowed to exist if he spoke out so ve­he­ment­ly against his gov­ern­ment if he were a Russ­ian television per­son­al­i­ty? Do you think that Marge would still be won­der­ing the halls of con­gress if she were a high gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial in Tur­key or Sau­di Ara­bia, or even Ger­many? Of course you know that such sil­ly be­hav­ior would not be tol­er­at­ed in vir­tu­al­ly any oth­er coun­try in the world. The rea­son is that in the US we have and en­joy ac­tu­al free­dom.

Hermeneu­tics gives us a method to un­der­stand com­mu­ni­ca­tion. We can look at the part to un­der­stand the whole and look at the whole to un­der­stand the part.

I see this week that Mo Brooks is ac­tu­al­ly say­ing that the XLV want­ed him to rescind the elec­tion of 2020. Mo said he was a lawyer and knows that the con­sti­tu­tion does not al­low such shenani­gans, no mat­ter what Mrs. Thomas had to say on the is­sue. That part of Mo Brooks say­ing that XLV lost the elec­tion is a part of a whole of folks who are not so bright check­ing their Twit­ter feeds for men­tions of their names when they do dumb and stu­pid things. We all see what they are com­mu­ni­cat­ing. It’s no­table that Mr. Brooks is run­ning for Sen­ate in Al­aba­ma. He knows that he doesn’t have a snow­ball’s chance in hell to win a sen­ate seat in Al­aba­ma by telling a pack of lies. The folks of Al­aba­ma have a good deal of good ol’ fash­ioned horse sense.

It just may be that Mo Brooks is pay­ing attention to the twit­ter­verse pret­ty carefully. I wouldn’t be at all sur­prised that a few more folks who check their feeds to see if they get men­tions might come to re­al­ize that not all men­tions are good mentions. The twit­ter­verse can be a pret­ty treach­er­ous place. Peo­ple pay at­ten­tion to what the en­ter­tain­ers in Wash­ing­ton do and what they say. They no­tice that unemployment is down and gas prices are up. But they also no­tice that some of the entertainment folks are back­ing the wrong horse in Ukraine. They no­tice that old Sleepy Joe is pulling the world to­geth­er to de­feat Vlad­dy with­out start­ing WWI­II. And we hope that he can con­tin­ue with his suc­cess. I think that the se­cret to Sleepy Joe’s suc­cess is that he al­ways looks for an Agree­ment to solve a prob­lem. The other guy al­ways looks for a fight to solve a prob­lem. That guy has to have some­one to blame for his woes. Sleepy Joe doesn’t deal in blame. Old Joe prefers to fix the prob­lem, not the blame. Damn, if that ain’t a prac­ti­cal way of ad­dress­ing this troubling world we live in.