LACAN AND MEANING
SEXUATION, DISCOURSE THEORY, AND TOPOLOGY IN THE AGE OF HERMENEUTICS
CHAPTER 1
PETITIONS TO MEANING
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Scripture. With the later development of historical understanding by the Romantics, theological scholars could begin to draw links between textual matters of Scripture and causal forces of past religious events. But these scholars were only shown to be fully entwined with these matters and forces when Heidegger further articulated the meaningful dimension of Dasein. What Bultmann’s work highlights is how this dimension is not just oriented to the past. Yes, when interpreters approach texts alive with questions, these are, in a way, always already understood. But there is an additional temporal component to consider. For such questioning also presupposes a dimension of Dasein that is future-oriented. Here is an anticipatory gesture for meaningful answers, but one which does not rule out the fact that some questions seem to go unanswered. Such is the case with Scripture. Many questions posed to it will only ever meet with those open-ended questions already embedded in the texts themselves. Certainly questions concerning the meaning of the historical life and death of Jesus Christ would fit this bill, as they directly map onto those eschatological questions surrounding parousia – the Second Coming.
This absence of a readymade response ultimately compels the interpreter to answer his own questions from the array of meaningful possibilities disclosed by his actual life-context. Thus, consistent with its Protestant origins, the hermeneutical phenomenological approach does not yield to authoritative readings of the particular claims of Scripture. Rather, in light of these claims, it confronts its practitioner with having to take responsibility for the past as his past and for the future as his future. Bultmann likens the approach to Kant’s categorical imperative which similarly expresses the need to take responsibility for oneself. Yet his suggestion that the Kantian law of practical reason is but the Idealist version of an original Christian ethicality is telling. It reveals how the pure freedom to self-determine only ever services the meaningful claims of Scripture (even if this results in a confession of unfaith). In other words, since autonomy is not deemed a simple attribute of the will but rather a Divine Gift, the meaningfulness of Scripture will always permeate its presuppositionless reading. Nevertheless, Bultmann contends that this approach is an autonomous textual strategy, a belief shared by his student Ebeling.
But there is an important difference between Bultmann and Ebeling. While the former instantiates an approach to Scripture as per Being and Time, Ebeling’s own effort derives from Heidegger’s later turn toward language and dialogue. The result is his so-called New Hermeneutic, a project held as the proper heir to the Reformation. For Ebeling feels that the once promising principles of perspicuity and self-sufficiency gave way to a disastrous orthodoxy which identifies the Scriptural text and the word of God without distinction. What was thereby lost is the original Protestant insight into how Scripture possesses claritas, its own illuminating power. In order to let it shine once again, the interpreter must refrain from reading Scripture in isolation as if it were silent. Rather, it must be heard as if spoken aloud, much like what occurs during a
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