In warning his readers against bowing to idols in his Exhortation to Martyrdom ( Origen: An Exhortation to Martyrdom, Prayer, and Selected Works , p. 75 ), Origen finds that he has to address an issue in the philosophy of language. If “names are merely conventional and have no relations to the things for which the names stand,” then a Christian might be tempted to say “I worship Dios/Zeus,” thinking that they haven’t actually abandoned Christ. Such people have to... Read more
In his Exhortation to Martyrdom ( Origen: An Exhortation to Martyrdom, Prayer, and Selected Works , p. 61 ), Origen ponders why Jesus would have resisted martyrdom by asking His Father to remove the cup from him. Origen quotes from the synoptics, each of which quotes Jesus praying for the removal of ” this cup,” as opposed to another. From this, he draws the surprising conclusion: “Consider carefully whether it is not possible that the Savior saw, so to speak,... Read more
Gadamer takes play and games as the starting point of his discussion of the ontology of art, and then asks what happens when we introduce an audience and make the game repeatable, when play becomes a play that can be played-for over and over again. Joel Weinsheimer ( Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method , pp. 108-9) offers this helpful explanation of Gadamer’s intentions: “A play is not there – it does not exist, is not fully itself-... Read more
Critiquing Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics, Gadamer ( Truth and Method (Continuum Impacts) , pp. 166-7) says that his effort to reconstruct the setting of the original work in order to divine the creative act of the creator is impossible: “We may ask whether what we obtain [from reconstructing the conditions of a work] is the meaning of the work of art that we are looking for, and whether it is corect to see understanding as a second creation, the reproduction of the... Read more
In his Between Earth and Heaven: Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, and the Meaning of Christian Tragedy , Roger Cox analyzes the Aristotelian theory of tragedy and finds it, shall we say, wanting: “The Aristotelian doctrine of hamartia is completely misleading.” Cox doesn’t think it fits many Greek plays, if any, and certainly doesn’t fit the tragedies written by Christians. It comes not from observation of the plays, but from Aristotle’s moralism: “Aristotle seems to take it for granted that in the real... Read more
Gadamer: “Nothing is so strange, and at the same time so demanding, as the written word. Not even meeting speakers of a foreign language can be compared with this strangeness, since the language of gesture and of sound is always in part immediately intelligible. The written word and what partakes of it – literature – is the intelligibility of mind transferred to the most alien medium. Nothing is so purely the trace of the mind as writing, but nothing is... Read more
Gadamer writes, “a picture is situated halfway between a sign and a symbol. Its representing is neither a pure pointing-to-something [sign] nor a pure taking-the-place-of-something [symbol]. It is this intermediate position that raises it to a unique ontological status. Artificial signs and symbols alike do not – like the picture – acquire their signifying function from their own content, but must be taken as signs or symbols. We call the origin of their signifying function their ‘institution.’” What might these... Read more
Gadamer consistently speaks of works of art as “events of being.” Is this anything more than Heideggerian mumbo-jumbo? I think so. Gadamer appears to mean at least two things. First, with regard to the art work itself: The art work brings something into existence that wasn’t there before. The landscape that Constable painted was there before Constable himself and before Constable painted it. But the particular presentation and representation of the landscape did not exist before; the painting aims to... Read more
Gadamer says in his discussion of the ontology of art in Truth and Method (Continuum Impacts) , “It is quite in order that the opposition between profane and sacred proves to be only relative. We need only recall the meaning and history of the word ‘profane’: the ‘profane’ is the place in front of the sanctuary. The concept of the profane and its cognate, profanation, always presuppose the sacred. Actually, the difference between profane and sacred could only be relative... Read more
Every god claims in some fashion to be Alpha and Omega, the source of everything and the end toward which everything is moving, the deep past and the deep future. Only the Triune God can actually be Alpha and Omega. A monadic God can perhaps be Alpha (though I’m doubtful), the source. But he cannot also be Omega unless Omega is just another way of saying Alpha. A monadic god can do nothing better than return to the beginning. Because... Read more
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