based on a particular interpretive framework inherited from tradition and
verified by personal experience.
We should think of the liberal arts as the hermeneutic heart of the university
and thus of our society. The humanities’hermeneutical task consists in
guarding the best of human insights and expressions concerning our human-
ity, in training scholars and students so that they can indwell these resources,
and in applying creatively these insights to the problems of our time. Perhaps
the best analogy to the cultural work of the humanities is the work of
translation. The humanities are the central educational hub for translating
past cultural achievements into the present. Think of all the elements involved
in translation: knowledge of one’s own language and tradition, acquaintance
with the other, alien language, and the expectation of a common rational
ground that makes the fusion of linguistic and cultural horizons possible.
The work of Paul Ricoeur is exemplary of the interpretive activity that
defines the humanities. Building on the insights of Heidegger and Gadamer,
Ricoeur shows, for example, understanding even our most intimate, personal
experiences of evil depends on the religious symbols. Religion is an intrinsic
element of the world in which we participate as humans belonging to a certain
historical-intellectual tradition.^89 Another important but often forgotten
thinker, John Macmurray, has also convincingly argued that our perception
of reality is always already an interpretive act that draws together sense
impressions and ideas by means of an integrating‘unity pattern’. He names
three such interpretive frameworks and their attendant means of expressions:
the‘mechanical-mathematical’pattern of the sciences,^90 which corresponds to
our perception of the world in terms of objects; the‘organic-biological one’,^91
which comprises our understanding of reality in terms of growth, the unifying
of different functions into a harmonious organism; and,finally, the‘psycho-
logical, personal’unity pattern, which is able to account for the complex
relational and social nature of human knowledge.^92
According to Macmurray, objective human knowledge in its fullest form
occurs in personal relations, which call upon all the capacities of our con-
sciousness at once:‘it is only the objectivity of our conscious relation to other
persons which can express our rationality fully and so reveal its essential
character’.^93 Thus human knowledge can only be exhibited at its fullest,
most complex, and most objective in personalist categories. The objective
understanding of myself and my world depends on my relation with others.
For Macmurray, the best description of this community of conscious beings is
(^89) See Paul Ricoeur,The Symbolism of Evil(New York: Harper & Row, 1967).
(^90) John Macmurray,Interpreting the Universe(Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press,
1996), 48.
(^91) Macmurray,Interpreting the Universe, 68.
(^92) Macmurray,Interpreting the Universe, 80.
(^93) Macmurray,Interpreting the Universe, 76.
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