Some Priniciples of Phenomenological Hermeneutics (9)

9. Self-understanding is a cultural act, and culture is a personal act. Paul Ricoeur puts it this way:

On the one hand, self-understanding passes through the detour of understanding the cultural signs in which the self documents and forms itself. On the other hand, understanding the text is not an end in itself; it mediates the relation to himself of a subject who, in the short-circuit of immediate reflection, does not find the meaning of his own life. Thus it must be said, with equal force, that reflection is nothing without the mediation of signs and works, and that explanation is nothing if it is not incorporated as an intermediary state in the process of self-understanding. In short, in hermeneutical reflection — or in reflective hermeneutics — the constitution of the self is contemporaneous with the constitution of meaning. [from “What is a Text?”]

On the relation of culture to self Gadamer says,

Long before we understand ourselves through the process of self-examination, we understand ourselves in a self-evident way in the family, society and state in which we Live. The focus of subjectivity is a distorting mirror. The self-awareness of the individual is only a flickering in the closed circuits of historical life. That is why the prejudices of the individual, far more than his judgments, constitute the historical reality of his being. (Copyright 1996 by John Lye)

i walk into town a lot.

 

When i walk into town i see a lot of people and sometimes it feels a bit like i am in a Film Festival movie.

 

Or The Truman Show.

 

That’s what everyone says aye? “I feel like I’m in The Truman Show.”

 

My friend used to say “Sometimes I feel like whoever is running my life has run out of extras.” That was before The Truman Show. I think it was in the days when the alternative stations played guitar music and the commercial stations played electronic music. Not like today.

 

So far i have missed Sigur Ros, The Arctic Monkeys, a good play, Mandalay, and countless other things i don’t know about. Soon i will miss DJ Shadow and the Film Festival. Still, i have my walks into town. Well, when it’s not pissing down with sleet and hail.

 

 

 

i am pretty sure it can’t ‘piss’ down with sleet and hail. The nature of hail and sleet makes it pretty near impossible for it to travel in a piss-like way.