Rationality, Impossibility, and Analogy: Gadamer's Hermeneutics and the "Theological" Turn in French Phenomenology
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In contemporary, French phenomenology, a debate has arisen concerning whether phenomenology can allow for a certain kind of “theological” consideration. In particular, Jean-Luc Marion argues that the potential of the reduction has not been fully explored and that a full reduction to pure givenness in fact allows one to give an account of the paradoxical experience of the impossible beyond experience, which is described as a phenomenon of revelation and may include a Revelation of God. Marion’s claims have been considered contentious. As I interpret it, the debate plays out between 1) those who also admit that phenomenology can occasion a form of “theological” consideration, but maintain, unlike Marion, that it remains a more existential affirmation of the impossible beyond experience, represented by Jacques Derrida and John Caputo, and 2) those who refuse any role for this impossible beyond experience within phenomenology (and perhaps more generally), and insist that phenomenology be preserved as an essentialist science of the appearances, represented by Dominique Janicaud. I take the positions of Derrida and Caputo, on the one hand, and Janicaud, on the other, to each entail extreme consequences that ought to be avoided—the former resulting in a form of irrationalism and the latter converting phenomenology into a form of pragmatism. Furthermore, I find Marion’s basic claim, that the impossible beyond experience ought to have a role in shaping finite experience, to be worth investigating further. However, Marion concedes too much to the deconstructive position of Derrida and Caputo at the outset, and so I find that the philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer provides an opportunity to correct some of the deficiencies in Marion’s position, but also argue to a similar end as he does. I find that Gadamer’s position incorporates an implicit analogical structure between rational experience and the impossible, thereby permitting one to maintain the impossible as impossible, but also affirm a certain possibility for understanding it.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.076 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.012 | 0.010 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".