Monday, November 21, 2011

Preferential Politics

[The true ‘enemy’ of the thesis is seen to be in the synthesis because it includes the thesis and ends the latter’s reason for being. (Intimate Enemy)
http://www.sciy.org/2010/01/24/ashis-nandy-on-sri-aurobindo-an-examination-by-r-carlson/ ]

[The hermeneutic circle describes how we interpret a text through the circular feedback of parts and wholes. We start with the first word (a part) and a sense of what this text we are about to read is about (and so the whole of the text), and then we interpret each succeeding part using our conception of the whole. In turn we alter our understanding of the whole by the understanding we make of each new part.
So this is a continual, circular process by which interpretation occurs. At the end of the text our conception of the whole, the meaning of the text, has changed, and it has changed through the reading of the parts which got their interpretation through the then current understanding of the whole, which they, the parts, in turn, continually altered as we read.
Hermeneutic and Preferential Circles - philosophy autobiography by Jeff Meyerhoff on Nov 20, 2011 10:57 PM]

Between Katju and Hazare, we encounter a huge intellectual chasm comparable to Ravi Verma's opulence vs. Husain's minimalist representation of goddesses. Imagination or interpretation, though preferential and constrained by individual's horizon, can generate unpredictable response in the receiver that verges upon co-creation. The fleeting footwork of a dancer can be a life long cherished memory as much as a line of a poem one can't forget even after trying. While the abstraction involved is voluntary bypassing the rough edges is not always rational.

This disjoint torpedoes the truth-clams and even philosophy falls prey to rhetoric. The snares of hermeneutics, therefore, are too difficult to cut through. Most will agree that politics is bad, but that should not prompt us to hate Politics (with capital p). [TNM55]

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