Philosophy and the Arts: Lecture 25:

1. Philosophy and the Arts:Lecture 25: Hermeneutics??

2. The paper you are to have read today is “A Portrait of Interpretation,” by Ruth Lorand. Prof. Lorand teaches at the U. of Haifa, in Israel, and is the author of many books and papers in aesthetics. And she is now a member of the Board of Trustees of the ASA!! READ THIS PAPER!!

3. Of course, the real authority on “Hermeneutics” was Gadamer, but much of what he wrote was tough stuff. At one point, he defines ‘hermeneutics,’ “It denotes the basic being-in-motion of There-being which constitutes its finiteness and historicity, and hence includes the whole of its experience of the world.” There you are. It’s so good to have these things cleared up!! Hans-Georg Gadamer(1900-2002)

4. Well, it could be, and Prof. Lorand notes that hermeneutics began with the attempt to find hidden messages in the Bible….coded messages and the like. But interpretation is not a matter of decoding messages. Is this Van Gogh’s Bible??

5. Remember this picture?

6. Try a cleaned-up version!

7. Dan Brown claims, among other things, that the person to Jesus’ right was not John, the beloved disciple, but Mary Magdalene- who was Jesus’ wife!! And surely, we haveall read this book.

8. Other Interpretations-I like Caravaggio

9. Pardon an aside…

10. The book ends, as the movie did, too, at Rosslyn Chapel. This pillar is just one of its many mysteries, ranging from a great number of Masonic symbols to the secret of the Holy Grail !! Lots to decode here!

11. Here’s another to “interpret.” The chapel was “finished” in 1456—but this looks like Indian corn??? And how about the knights on the lower level—well, Scott cannot lie, can he?? Maize??

12. O'er Roslin all that dreary nightA wondrous blaze was seen to gleam;'Twas broader than the watch-fire's light,And redder than the bright moonbeam. It glar'd on Roslin's castled rock,It ruddied all the copse wood glen; 'Twas seen from Dryden's groves of oak And seen from cavern'd Hawthorn-den. Seem'd all on fire that chapel proud,Where Roslin's chiefs uncoffin'd lie, Each Baron, for a sable shroud,Sheath'd in his iron panoply. Seem'd all on fire within, around,Deep sacristy and altar s pale; Shone every plllar foliage bound, And glimmer'd all the dead men's mail. Blaz'd battlement and pinnet high,Blaz'd every rose-carved buttress fairSo still they blaze when fate is nighThe lordly line of high St. Clair. There are twenty of Roslin's barons boldLie buried within that proud chapelle; Each one the holy vault doth holdBut the sea holds lovely Rosabelle! And Scott said inThe Lay of the Last Minstral • Must be true…

13. Must music be decoded?? • Clearly, a musical score or the text of a great novel (or the Bible) does not need to be decoded. Note also that decodings are correct or incorrect, maybe even true or false. We call for an interpretation, Lorand says, when something seems incomplete, or disturbing….why, in the Genesis account, did God say…”that it was good,” every day except the second?? There are different interpretations, some interesting, and perhaps helpful.

14. But Renoir did a bunch of these, and I love them all. Maybe it’s just a guy thing. Note the pose…almost the same. Whoops! I’ve used that one..

15. Lorand makes the unusual point that sometimes interpretations are made on false information. She says the Latin Vulgate, which Michelangelo used, confused the Hebrew, ‘Keren’ (horned), for ‘Karan’ (irradiating). Moses with horns??

16. Yes, there’s more… • This is a profound paper, written by a brilliant author; I cannot say enough about it here. Suffice it to say that Prof. Lorand is not saying that this is an area in which “anything goes.” Permit a quote as a conclusion: • “I would say that the very interpretative questions limit the answers - the factors which determine the questions determine the scope and value of the answers. In order to accept an interpretation as a satisfactory solution one has to recognize the initiating problem and accept it as a significant problem of the object.”