Christopher-Marcus Gibson

In this paper I defend Gadamer’s claim that the scope of hermeneutical reflection is universal. I consider Habermas’s critique of Gadamer – in particular, his objection that language and tradition are ideological. I argue that Gadamer’s elaboration of the historical ground of hermeneutic experience supports the key implication of his understanding of the relationship between thinking and being, which is that the conditions for reflection upon our preconceptions of meaning are themselves mediated through language as effective history. In response to Habermas’s criticisms, hermeneutical reflection is therefore able to emancipate the interpreter from ideological forms of consciousness by understanding them as effective history.

I raise a difficulty for Thomas’s views on the passions I call the instrumentalizing problem: Can well-ordered passions contribute to good human activity beyond merely expressing or rendering more effective the independent work of intellect and will? If not, does that not raise the risk that we are merely handicapped angels? I develop a response by examining Thomas’s discussion of the filiae luxuriae, intellectual and volitional flaws arising from lust. I draw on Thomas’s understanding of one filia, blindness of mind, to help sketch an account of the good habits it opposes: the acquired virtue I term attentiveness and the corresponding Spiritual gift of understanding. These good habits, I argue, render their bearers responsive to natural and supernatural reasons that guide them in the conduct of life. By partly constituting these habits, well-ordered passion makes an indispensable contribution to human activity at its best.