What English Readers Need to Know about Mistakes in Gadamer’s Truth and Method
H.-G. Gadamer’s Truth and Method is a key text on hermeneutical theory. The newest English edition is a wonderful resource, but it’s not without problems.
Truth-and-Method
An introduction to Gadamer
St. Johns Nottingham has a helpful introduction to the life and philosophy of H.-G. Gadamer.
Aubrey on theological lexica
Mike Aubrey has provided an excerpt from an essay of his in Linguistics & Biblical Exegesis (Lexham, 2016). The excerpt strives carefully to work out a middle ground that is neither wholly on the side of theological lexica nor on that of James Barr’s critique of them.
Instead, Mike suggests,
If the failure of theological dictionaries was the assumption that words and concepts are identical, then the failure of the structuralist semantics that dominated the field when James Barr wrote his critique was the assumption that words and concepts are dramatically different. If words mean anything at all, then there must be a substantive relationship between them and the concepts (both associative and denotative) they evoke mentally.
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In the (e)mail: Rodríguez and Thiessen, “The So-called Jew”
In addition to Boccaccini and
Segovia’s Paul the Jew, inbox recently saw the arrival
from Fortress Press of a
review copy of Rafael Rodríguez and Matthew Thiessen’s edited volume The So-Called Jew in Paul’s Letter to
the Romans(2016). According to the book’s blurb:
Decades ago, Werner G. Kümmel described the historical problem of Romans as its “double character”: concerned with issues of Torah and the destiny of Israel, the letter is explicitly addressed not to Jews but to Gentiles. At stake in the numerous answers given to that question is nothing less than the purpose of Paul’s most important letter. In The So-Called Jew in Paul’s Letter to the Romans, nine Pauline scholars focus their attention on the rhetoric of diatribe and characterization in the opening chapters of the letter, asking what Paul means by the “so-called Jew” in Romans 2 and where else in the letter’s argumentation that figure appears or is implied. Each component of Paul’s argument is closely examined with particular attention to the theological problems that arise in each.
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Gadamer on the Führerprinzip
The notorious statement, “The party (or the Leader) is always right” is not wrong because it claims that a certain leadership is superior, but because it serves to shield the leadership, by a dictatorial decree, from any criticism that might be true. ( 389n22)
That is, at least from Gadamer’s viewpoint, the slogan he quotes is not so much a statement of fact, but a statement of what must necessarily be articulated as a statement of fact, despite any possible indications to the contrary.
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