If we accept the implications of this – that interpretation of the past is not an attempt to transcend tradition, but rather an engagement with tradition; that the one who seeks to understand the past cannot himself step outside his own situation but is seeking an understanding of the past in the present, a present which bears upon him in ways of which he cannot be objectively aware; that this engagement with the past is not simply a process whereby we understand the past, but equally a process of self-discovery which can never be complete – if we accept the implications of this, we can begin to see what is involved in any process of understanding within the humanities. It is a process of revising our preconceptions, not seeking to escape from them. It is a growing into what we learn from tradition. The movement in the process is a movement of undeception: as a result of experience and growing understanding we see that we have been deceived and so are freed from deception. It is thus a growth in truth and a growth in openness towards new experiences.
Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery. An Essay on the Nature of Theology, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983) 36-37.
Central to the development of the scientific method was the ideal of reaching objective truth independently of the one who knows this truth. Thus the aim of experimentation – which needed to be open to repetition – was to elide the subjectivity of the researcher. This is however much more problematical when applied to the humanities in which humanity itself is the object of study and in which there is a “connaturality that exists between the author and his interpreter.” (30) By seeking the reconstruction of the original historical context, the original intention of the author and a meaning that exists independently of any interpretation, the historical-critical method forgets that both the original author and the interpreter belong to history and that both are more than simply isolated individuals.
Louth highlights both Gadamer’s critique of the Enlightenment’s illusory ideal of presuppositionless understanding, which only serves to disconnect us from history and to see us as isolated individuals, and his rehabilitation of the notion of prejudice which is necessary for any genuine understanding. In contrast, Louth, following Gadamer, argues that “a truer theory of interpretation, which does not seek to elide the historical reality of the one seeking understanding, sets the interpreter himself within tradition. … Understanding is an engagement with tradition, not an attempt to escape from it.” (33)
By engaging tradition we are confronted with the mystery of human freedom. This is a mystery in which we participate, unlike our confrontation of the mystery of natural laws. Tradition, for Gadamer, is the context in which we can be free. We do not need to try and forget our preconceptions and prejudices, but we do need to be open to having them challenged. Louth comments:
… we find in the process of seeking to understand that it is not simply a matter of our putting questions to the tradition, but of our being subject to questioning by that tradition itself. As we ‘make the text speak’, we hear what it has to say, and what we have to say, as we hear it, addresses us and calls us into question. If we are not open to that, we are not open to understanding. (39)
***
The importance of Gadamer for Louth’s specifically theological argument is further developed in later chapters. For now I should note that my own response to Gadamer seems to have shifted somewhat from when I read him (or works on him) twelve to fifteen years ago. Then I was concerned with his arguments in rehabilitating tradition and of tradition’s ability to be self-critical in a rather abstract way. Now his work strikes me as having a rather ascetical tone to it, it enables an encounter with the tradition as that which seeks to purify us, a purification that works at a number of levels, including the intellectual. I suppose that this was there all along and I was just blind to it, or at least orientated to other things. But it is perhaps partly also due to Louth’s reading of him which highlights the transformative potential of his work and which will, in later chapters, situate it within the context of our call to holiness.
In a following post I will discuss tradition’s role in formation for Gadamer.
A vow of conversation 
April 26, 2008 at 7:10 am
“Now his work strikes me as having a rather ascetical tone to it, it enables an encounter with the tradition as that which seeks to purify us, a purification that works at a number of levels, including the intellectual.”
That is remarkable insight! I’ll have to ponder that one for a while … If tradition indeed purifies than it is easier to make sense of the much repeated statement that “tradition is the Life of the Spirit in the Church” because tradition would be closely connected to the Holy Spirit’s activity.
Food for thought … I’ll just ponder before I say anything silly.
Dn. Gregory
April 27, 2008 at 3:54 pm
From what I remember of my first fairly cursory reading of this book, it is precisely this idea, of tradition as the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church, that Louth develops in his reading of Saint Basil’s On the Holy Spirit. Hopefully I’ll get to it sometime.
There is a lot that I also need to ponder, and give time to sink in and do its work!
August 4, 2010 at 4:55 am
I’m fascinated with what you’ve doing in this blog – describing so honestly how hard it is to simply read with discipline through a single book – when you have a mind that fires on many cylinders simultaneously! Somehow you’re also circling “time” and “limitations” in a person’s life and the difficulty of imposing discipline on one’s development, which is an organic process, which takes on a life of its own, which flows from within. At least that’s what I’m observing here – and trust me, I’m in the same boat!
But that was not really what I set out to say here. For I too was struck by that comment about the ascetical, the purification. But actually I was also thinking of the scientific method – and that may surprise you. And I think it all depends on the “mentality” of the seeker.
While I am in complete agreement that the social “sciences” are not really Science, nevertheless before one does any type of experimental research (which I had to “undergo” as part of my training), one studies the “scientific method.” And when I did so, and that was after I had already immersed myself in spirituality at some depth for a few years, I came to the realization that the scientific method – IF one pursued it in the frame of mind which the method truly calls for – was an ascetic discipline. For it requires that someone posit a theory and test it rigorously, while also ready at any moment to abandon or adjust the theory, according to the evidence emerging. So a type of submission to a method and to whatever might develop as one tried to prove the opposite of one’s theory (for that is what one does… to try and find “proof” that one’s theory is wrong). I once pondered this very deeply, interested, in the effect (upon the “researcher”) of pursuing such a method with utter selflessness. And in that sense it seemed to me a type of spiritual process – if one truly put the method into practice.
Doing therapy is like that too. It’s a very selfless activity. I wonder if this is the key for why some people achieve “enlightment” as bakers or gardeners in certain traditions. Maybe because any method, any activity, that one does in a selfless, single-minded way, allows for a type of ascetic discipline to occur.
And without realizing it, I’m back to my first paragraph. And I now realize, maybe, that even if you’re finding it hard to keep to reading one book or author in a disciplined way, perhaps you are engaged on a relentless task (I suspect you must be) occurring within you, which almost requires that you allow what appears to be an undisciplined sort of reading, weaving your threads together or submitting yourself to this weaving – as it emerges.
Blessings upon you!
August 4, 2010 at 12:16 pm
TheraP, Thank you. This blog is something of an attempt to impose a little discipline on some of my reading. As you’ve noticed, that doesn’t always work! Or, if it does it’s in a longer term way…