INTRODUCTION Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 PART II Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 PART III Page 1 Page 2 PART IV Page 1 Page 2 APPENDIX A APPENDIX B NOTES Notes 1-15 Notes 16-35 Notes 36-44 Notes 45-56

Part IV. THE NATURE OF HERMENEUTICS: One "I" Understands Another "I" Only Via a "We" (page 1)

Overview

     In human beings, the notion of expanding a "we" or a circle of togetherness is the basis of various forms of hermeneutics and collaborative inquiry.⁴⁵ That is, two subjects come together and, in addition to any harmonic empathy (and other forms of prior intersubjectivity and/or tele-prehension), they attempt to exchange tokens of their interiors in order to more adequately understand each other. (These tokens are not merely or even especially linguistic, and certainly not at pre- and trans-linguistic waves.)⁴⁶ This is an attempt to understand an other from within, not merely without (even though the attempt is often mediated via exterior objects, signifiers, or communicative tokens), and therefore this type of communication attempts to move from exteriors to some sort of interiors. It is, in many ways, an exchange of third-person " its" (outside-exteriors) in order to help convert a first-person singular " I" (inside-interior) and a second-person singular " you" (outside-interior) into a first-person plural " we" (shared-inside-interiors).⁴⁷ I share part of my inside-interior and you share part of your inside-interior; those exchanges are internal to the we: we have shared-inside-interiors.

     The point is that with most forms of authentic hermeneutics, I attempt to know and understand the interiors of another holon, another sentient being. I come to understand "you" as an "I," not an "it." This, for example, is the essence of Martin Buber's I/thou relationship, where I treat you as a thou: a unique and valuable individual in a dialogue grounded in shared horizons--as opposed to an I-it relationship, where I treat you as a utilitarian object or "it," like a pile of garbage. (As is well known, human barbarity is always preceded by convincing oneself that the Other is an "it," not a "thou," and hence can indeed be treated exactly like garbage, which one might dispose of by using, say, a gas incinerator.)

     The transcendental growth of "we's" (to ever-wider circles) is the history of an unfoldment of "it" to "you" to "thou" to "we"--where I first meet a strange, alien, or foreign holon (human or nonhuman) only in its outside-exterior dimensions (UR) and thus treat it like an "it" or instrumental object; but then advance to the understanding that this holon (all the way up, all the way down) is a sentient being which therefore possess a real interior, an "I" or proto-"I" (UL), and thus this "alien" holon, or this holon merely in its otherness, is starting to be perceived not just in its third-person dimensions of being-in-the-world but also in its second-person dimensions (not merely as an "it" but a "you"). That "you" therefore begins to exist in, or disclose itself as, an "other" or "outside" not merely in my exterior spaces, but an "other" or "outside" in my interior spaces, an "other" that can be approached as a potential partner in mutual resonance, felt meaning, communication, or intersubjective exchange of one sort or another.

     If that resonance succeeds at any level, then this foreign "you" (or outside-interior) has become a "thou" which is part of the newly-disclosed "we" (or shared-inside-interiors; first-person plural [LL]). It is not that I and this other holon have been put together and forcefully glued into some sort of relationship, but that we have mutually enacted and brought forth this particular ripple in the ocean of our own intersubjectivity: our intersections are dimensions of each other in the moment of the I-thou touch. We are not a single super-I (or an imperium super-agency that controls everything you and I do), but an extraordinary, amazing, mysterious "we," where two souls intersect and find in that intersection, not a single dominant I, but deeper aspects of their own I's, found not above and beyond, but within and together.

     That is the purpose of all authentic hermeneutics.

Solidarity

     Each of those steps--"it" to "you" to "thou/we"--is in many important ways a developmental unfoldment that depends on the capacity for increasing depth in the subject (or "I") attempting the understanding. But that brings us directly to our next, and in some ways most important, topic. We will start the discussion with humans, but quickly move to holons in general.

     The assumption behind most forms of hermeneutics, collaborative inquiry, and participatory interpretation is that two (or more) subjects can in fact reach some sort of mutual understanding. The assumption that both subjects make in communicative exchange is that they can indeed share, to some degree (and in an accurate-enough fashion), the feelings and prehensions and viewpoints of the other subject. That is, they necessarily assume that the Kosmos contains a space called first-person plural (or "shared-inside-interiors").

     (As Habermas and others have explained, this assumption--called similar signification--is necessarily behind communicative action, or else the subjects would not engage it in the first place. If you know that there is no way to even vaguely understand an other, you won't even try, will you? The fact that you try therefore means that in some fashion you assume the possibility of similar signification. Similar signification does in fact exist because of various inter-holonic and trans-holonic realities.⁴⁸ As even Derrida acknowledged, transcendental signifiers do exist, or else, as he said, we would not be able to translate various languages. I will simply take it as the case that many people are already communicating with each other, asserting that they understand each other well enough, and hence we need to find a place in the Kosmos for what is already happening in any event. When a postmodernist like Lyotard denies the existence of mutual understanding, he assumes that we know what he means by that, yah?)

     What is less often appreciated is that there are at least two important forms of similar signification. That is, there are two important aspects of mutual understanding, which we will call horizontal and vertical.

     Horizontal signification is commonly known as solidarity, which is perhaps the central notion in hermeneutic validity claims. Solidarity can be traced to theorists such as Heidegger but finds perhaps its most complete statement in Hans-Georg Gadamer. Solidarity is designed to answer the question, If I am interpreting a text and attempting to understand what it means, how do I know if I am right or wrong?

     The dilemma of interpretation is this: I am faced with a text that I need to interpret, but there are no empirical guidelines. Take the play, A Streetcar Named Desire. What is the meaning of that text? Science cannot help me here, because Blanche Dubois (who has always depended on the kindness of strangers) is not a real person but a symbolic or imaginary person, and thus nothing I can do in the laboratory will help me out.

     I must interpret the meaning of A Streetcar Named Desire, but--and this is where it gets tricky--not every interpretation of A Streetcar Named Desire is correct. That drama is definitely NOT about a family picnic in Hawaii. That is, even an imaginary play has a certain type of validity claim (because all holons are situated in at least four quadrants). So what is Streetcar about, and how do I know if I am generally right or generally wrong in my interpretation? Although there is no one correct interpretation of Streetcar, there are plenty of wrong ones--and how do I know which is which?

     In hermeneutics, the "text" (such as Streetcar) can actually mean anything that must be interpreted; that is, it is symbolic in some sense--it is a series of signs that stand for, represent, express, or enact certain realities, and I need to interpret (or decode) those symbols in order to understand the realities they indicate. "The text" might be an actual book (e.g., Anna Karenina), or it might be last night's dream, or it might be your interiors as I attempt to understand you, or it could be my dog's interiors as I attempt to understand him. Indeed, most of the important things in life are texts, not facts, and thus they demand interpretation, not proof.

     The early hermeneuticists, such as Dilthey, maintained that you and I can reach some sort of understanding if we share various types of life experiences. For example, if I say, "Yesterday my dentist performed a root canal, and the pain felt like it was going right through the top of my head," you will probably be able to understand what I mean if you, too, have had a root canal. Because we share that particular life experience, we can reach a mutual understanding by using abstract signs to refer to those common experiences. Abstract signs and symbols work just fine, or fine enough, if you and I have had similar experiences; but if you have not had a root canal, it will be much harder to explain what I mean, and my abstract signs won't carry much meaning.

     Although that is true enough as far as it goes, the early hermeneuticists were still caught in a type of modernist prejudice, namely, that symbols are essentially representational--that is, they represent various types of experiences, and thus empirical experiences can anchor interpretations. But the postmodern turn brought a further complication: many symbols do not represent a pregiven reality but in fact create realities, enact worlds, bring forth experiences. Signs don't just represent realities, they enact realities; and I must be able to interpret signs in order to understand the realities they enact. There is no single pregiven world, such that a shared experience of aspects of that world could anchor our interpretations. Rather, there are different worlds enacted via different cognitive and cultural backgrounds, and the only way to anchor interpretations is therefore some sort of shared subjectivity (or intersubjectivity), and NOT merely some sort of shared objectivity (or interobjectivity). And with that insight, modernism gave way to postmodernism: all holons have a Lower-Left quadrant.

     Gadamer gave voice to this intersubjective reality with his notion of solidarity. To say that interpretations are not grounded in shared experiences of an objective reality is not to say that they are not grounded at all. There are still various sorts of good and bad interpretations ( Hamlet is not a play about the Philippines), but these interpretations, to paraphrase Gadamer, are grounded in shared intersubjective traditions of cultural solidarity. "Tradition," in this sense, does not mean some sort of rigid, archaic, stultifying conventions, but rather the rich ground of mutual prehensions and shared horizons that allow any sort of communication and interior-to-interior intimacy to occur at all. Solidarity is the luxurious texture of a history of "we's" that have reached some sort of mutual understanding.

     When my interpretations resonate authentically with this solidarity, then I have some way to ground my interpretations (i.e., my hermeneutic validity claims can be redeemed in the circle of intersubjective solidarity). Like truth (UR), truthfulness (UL), and functional fit (LR), cultural meaning (LL) has cash value that can be exchanged in the real Kosmos, simply because all holons have at least four dimensions of being-in-the-world.

     Of course, to say that hermeneutic or interpretive truths are grounded in cultural solidarity or tradition is not to say that new (and "nontraditional") interpretive truths can't emerge. Each moment or actual occasion is include-and-transcend, or old and new, or prehension plus novelty, or karma plus creativity. Every moment of existence surprises the Kosmos with a bit of novelty that has no grounding in any tradition whatsoever. It is simply that even those moments of novelty have to arise and tetra-mesh with existing realities or be erased altogether; and thus each novel addition must mesh to some degree with existing intersubjective meanings or else it would have no significance (and no signified) at all. (I can jump out of my skin, but only a little bit at a time....)

     Thus, a specific path or tradition, worn into the AQAL lattice in its intersubjective dimensions, is necessary for communication of any form to be communicated at all: hence, solidarity. This is as true for a pack as wolves as for a religious tradition, as true for an ant colony as for a scientific discipline, as true for reproductive chemical networks as for philosophical schools of thought.

     In short, intersubjective solidarity refers to various forms of Kosmic habits in the Lower-Left quadrant, the cultural backgrounds--the waves of "we's"--that are the necessary media of all communicative exchange. It is solidarity that allows me to be "in the interpretive groove." As noted, the validity claim here is not one of objective truth, subjective truthfulness, or functional fit, but intersubjective justness or appropriateness--and that is established via the Kosmic habits of the cultural background or cultural-nexus memory, whose exterior correlates include various types of collective morphic fields, ecosystems, and social systems, but whose interiors include various types of intersubjective feelings, meanings, cultural backgrounds, habitus, and prehensive solidarities that alone can anchor symbolic meaning (and therefore communicative exchange). Solidarity is the interior feel of morphogenetic fields collectively plowed in a particular circle of togetherness.

     Thus, if you want to know some of the many meanings of A Streetcar Named Desire, it will do no good to use empirical science and look around in the sensorimotor world. There is no Blanche Dubois out there (nor meaning, value, care, etc.). Blanche Dubois exists in intersubjective spaces of interpretive meaning. To have access to those phenomenological spaces, you need (among other things) to learn a language and immerse yourself to some degree in the cultural traditions that brought forth those meanings. You must have access to some of the solidarities that anchor the symbolic meanings in that text, and then you must enter or be "inside" the hermeneutic circle of the text itself (such that your intersections with the text are internal to its possible worlds of meaning). Otherwise, as we say, "It's all Greek to me"--all symbols without any meaning.

     "It's all Greek to me"--that is the key to solidarity and hermeneutic validity. Unless you stand in some sort of solidarity with the person who is speaking to you, you will never understand a word said. Take language itself. If you are inside or within the horizons of the Greek language, you can see some of the worlds enacted by that linguistic intersubjectivity (i.e., the shared linguistic signifiers will have some sort of shared signifieds: the syntax will have a semantic [see Excerpt E, subheading "Integral Semiotics"]). Otherwise, all you can see is the syntax (or exterior signs), not the semantic (or interior meanings), and thus those enacted worlds, which cannot be seen empirically, will not be seen interpretively, either. I will not be able to see Blanche Dubois in the sensorimotor world, but I won't be able to see or understand her in my interior world, either. It's all Greek to me.

     We have seen that to be inside a particular hermeneutic circle means that each member's inter-subjective occasions are internal to the nexus-agency of the circle, which simply means that the internality of the circle is the solidarity itself--that is what it means to be "within" a cultural horizon. The solidarity I feel with you is a shared intersubjectivity, a shared inside-interior, a first-person plural "we."⁴⁹ This solidarity is the heart of a we-culture--the communal or relational culture--and that culture begins leaving traces of its own existence deposited as Kosmic habit--it leaves an interwoven karmic nexus (carried in, but not as, the prehensions of its members)--and thus it begins to form a cultural tradition that acts as the grounding of authentic communication within that culture.

     Solidarity is the interior culture of an exterior system or social holon. A married couple begins forming its own culture with its own solidarity; a group of friends begins forming its own culture with its own solidarity; a pack of wolves begins forming its own culture with its own solidarity; an ecosystem begins forming its own culture with its own solidarity; a philosophical movement begins forming its own culture with its own solidarity; a tribe begins forming its own culture with its own solidarity; a coral reef begins..., a flock of geese begins..., a nation begins....

     Of course, solidarity, as it is commonly used, refers to the cultural traditions of humans. But perhaps we can see that solidarity in its most general sense simply means the inter-interior or intersubjective dimensions of the Kosmic habits laid down by any group of holons acting as a group.⁵⁰ Cultural solidarity is the Kosmic karma deposited in the Lower-Left quadrant of the dynamically unfolding AQAL matrix, traces of the many ways we touch as we move through our own togetherness.

     When it comes to a holon's capacity to exist, or to reproduce itself through time--in short, when it comes to Kosmic karma in all four quadrants--we find, in the Upper-Right quadrant, genetic inheritance, DNA replication, formative causation, individual autopoietic regimes, morphic resonance, gross/subtle/causal mass-energies, and so on; in the Lower-Right quadrant, we find systems memory, sustaining ecosystems, replicating social systems and institutions, dissipative structures, social autopoiesis, reproducing chemical networks, chaos and complexity dynamics, modes of techno-economic production, among others; in the Upper-Left quadrant we find prehension, prehensive unification, personal identity and memory, ongoing felt-awareness, etc.; and in the Lower-Left quadrant, we find cultural solidarity, habitus, path traditions, intersubjective memory, mutual prehensions of "thou/we," and the collective interiors (or shared inside-interiors) of mutual grooves in the AQAL matrix laid down by any two or more holons existing within overlapping horizons.

     In short, cultural solidarity is how all sentient beings touch each other from within; it is the felt interior of all exterior systems; it is the heart of why we are in this together, endlessly; it is the face of God when he can no longer stand being alone; it is the exuberance of the Goddess when she dances naked for all to see--the mystery where two souls touch each other and know that they have done so, which points unmistakably to the secret meaning of any "we": the Spirit that hides itself in the heart of each I, begins to find itself by finding other I's.