Response to Ken Wilber – A Brief History of Everything – page 87

This term is very meaningful to me. Much of my professional life has been engaged in hermeneutics. I even did my master’s Thesis on the efficacy of performance hermeneutics. Most people familiar with the term associate it with interpretation of the Bible. When scripture is examined it is done through a hermeneutic lens. There is a tendency to read passages in the Bible in the context of the modern vernacular and perspective. You need to understand the writer of the passages and know his/her relationship to the world. What are the belief systems? What was the purpose? Who is the audience? All of these aspects will color the meaning regardless of the divine inspiration or not. Example would be when someone references the sun rising and setting in the sky. That is not the truth but from the knowledge of the writer that’s exactly what happens. If the ‘truth’ were to be uttered forth the reader is not likely to comprehend the words. If the writer says ‘…and the sun appears to rise and set because the spherical earth is spinning on its axis in an easterly direction.’ he has told the truth but the reader thinks he is more than just a bit addled.

Wilber contrasts hermeneutics with the empiric-analytic studies which are more linear and dualistic in nature. He states that when one examines something empirically it is shallow compared with a hermeneutic which goes deeply. I could not agree more because it goes directly to the core. However, Wilber does caution that a hermeneutic must be done well because done poorly it can be devoid of meaning or can even be false. In particular, interpretation is directly tied to context. As an existentialist I believe that all meaning is derived from context. As a teacher, when I used performance hermeneutics I was turning the interpretive lens around and speaking from the vernacular of my students. In other words, the context of their understanding.