Just a quick response to Guillermo, who mentioned Husserl and Heidegger.
In an attempt to overcome the divide between God’s truth vs hocus pocus
(or foundationalism/relativism, or whatever name you want to give these
concepts), Heidegger’s notion of pre-understanding may be useful.
In opposition to foundationalists, H. argued that meaning does not derive
from axioms, but from pre-understanding, from which emerges each
individual’s perspective on reality. In opposition to relativists, who
argue that pre-understanding blocks our access to reality, H. argued that
pre-understanding is the condition of possibility of each individual’s
access to reality.
My understanding of H. is limited, so I’ll quote Brice Wachterhauser, who
put it better than I can:
“The fact that any perspective has limitations does not imply that our
perspectives cut us off from reality. Just because we always understand
reality from some perspective does *not* imply that what we understand is,
really, our own perspective and not reality. On the contrary, we
understand *from* a perspective but *what* we understand is still reality.
(Introduction to Hermeneutics and Modern Philosophy (1986, p. 26))
This takes us a few steps closer to breaking the opposition between God’s
truth and hocus pocus, but there’s still a question about the status of
‘pre-understanding’. It seems to be (to paraphrase H) a primordial ‘there’
before anyone has observed or ascertained it.
Warren
Just published:
Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema
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