Chapter 1: Reclaiming the Religions
A Plea for Content
A Plea for Contention
The Hermeneutical Straddle
Chapter 2: Mixed Transmission: Three Core Insights of
Hermeneutics
Hybrid Experience
Communal Stability
Epistemic Alienation
Chapter 3: Agents of Comprehension
What is Dialogue?
What is Understanding?
Agency and critical Reason
Chapter 4: The Worry of Incommensurability
The Gammar of a Life
Three Orders of Difference
Phronēsis: A Solution Based in Contingency
From Genuine Commensuration to Genuine Controversy
Chapter 5: Truth Beyond the Pale
Mysteriosophy
Internalism
Critical Realism
Reticent Realism
Fear of Ontological Commitment
Chapter 6: Reconstructing Plurality
Hermeneutics as Meta-narrative
The Disruption of Différance
The Logical Status of Fallibilist Hermeneutics
A Way Forward: Constructive Postmodernism
Dialogue and Homogeneity
The Hermeneutic Response to Deconstruction
Conclusion: Reality, Religions, and Discursive Justice
J. R. Hustwit is assistant professor and chair of the Religion and Philosophy Department at Methodist University.
Surely, when we believe something, we believe it to be true, yet
the truth claims of religion are in crisis today. In Interreligious
Hermeneutics and the Pursuit of Truth, Jeremy Hustwit deftly charts
a path between those who wish to dispense with truth altogether and
those who are all too sure that they alone possess the final truth.
Neither too skeptical nor too restrictive, Hustwitt offers a
powerful platform for the new multi-faith dialogue. After all, how
can the religions engage one another if they cannot even
acknowledge where their beliefs differ?
*Philip Clayton, Ingraham Professor of Theology, Claremont School
of Theology, Author of In Quest of Freedom: The Emergence of Spirit
in the Natural World*
In Interreligious Hermeneutics and the Pursuit of Truth, J. R.
Hustwit proves to be a trustworthy guide to the tangled landscape
of religious pluralism with its hermeneutical dead ends and
epistemological bogs. His well-argued endorsement of a faillibilist
hermeneutics in conjunction with a commonsense understanding of
truth is sorely needed by interpreters of apparent conflict among
religious beliefs. Hustwit leaves us not with a solution to the
problem of religious pluralism, but with a meaningful,
constructive, critical way forward.
*Wesley J. Wildman, Boston University*
Hustwit takes us through a history of hermeneutic philosophy that
is truly a tour de force. Impeccable and insightful discussions of
[philosophers] . . . are just a few of the choicest highlights. . .
.The book is as refreshing as it is rewarding. . . .for those who
want not merely to rehash what others have already had to say about
the relationship between hermeneutics and philosophy, but for those
who actually want to do some thinking of their own by putting those
results to work. . . .Hustwit gets us thinking, and that,
especially in a context as sometimes fraught with posturing and
hand-waving as this, is no small thing.
*Review of Metaphysics*
J. R. Hustwit offers a perfectly pitched articulation and defense
of a “reticent” realistic hermeneutical method that facilitates
interreligious dialogue. Beyond seeking to understand
commonalities and differences, he urges interfaith dialogue to
engage truth questions. His review of European hermeneutics from
Kant to the present is detailed and profound without being
tortured. This is the best presentation of the Claremont Process
School of hermeneutics to date, bringing its promotion of
“constructive” (as opposed to “deconstructive”) postmodernism into
clear conversation with the larger hermeneutical discussion. What a
delight it is to find philosophical hermeneutics from the hands of
someone who actually knows a lot about many religions!
*Robert Cummings Neville, professor of Philosophy, Religion, and
Theology, Boston University and author of Realism in Religion and
Religion in Late Modern*
Ask a Question About this Product More... |