The Intentionality and Textuality of Listening: The Phenomenological Basis of Hermeneutical Theology

ABSTRACT

The article argues that theological hermeneutics by its own standards requires a theological understanding of the act of human listening. Based upon a phenomenological approach to this act, and drawing especially on Husserl and Ihde, an analysis of auditory intentionality is carried out. The categories of voice and auditory horizon are then applied to the field of theology. Using further insights by Ricoeur, Barth and Kierkegaard, it is argued that the auditory dimension in theology can be reconstructed as the experience both of listening to Scripture as well as listening with Scripture.

KEYWORDS:

• Listening
• hermeneutics
• theology
• phenomenology
• scripture

Notes

1 Acts 8, 30 (New International Version).

2 Cf. Dalferth, Radikale Theologie.

3 Bultmann, Neues Testament und Mythologie.

4 Stuhlmacher, Verstehen, 220.

5 Weder, Hermeneutik.

6 Luz, Theologische Hermeneutik, 163 ff., 412 ff.

7 Barth, Church Dogmatics, §19,2.

8 Cf. Lincoln, Theologie und Hören, 163–80.

9 Dalferth, Radikale Theologie, 219–34.

10 Dalferth, Wirkendes Wort, 110–16.

11 Ibid., 149.

12 Ibid., 150.

13 Gen 3, 8 (New International Version).

14 Cf. Kierkegaard, Concept of Anxiety, Chapter 1.

15 For the fundamental role of textual distanciation for hermeneutics cf. Ricoeur, Distanciation.

16 Weder, Hermeneutik, 151.

17 Cf. Husserl, Analysen.

18 Ihde, Listening and Voice, 59. As Ihde has shown, Western philosophy pretended for a long time to exist in a world of mute objects leading to a visiualistic metaphysics.

19 Ibid., 149.

20 Cf. Schulze, Raumkörperklang.

21 Cf. Waldenfels, Vielstimmigkeit, 40–53. The opposite view is held by Dalferth who constructs the difference between literacy and orality as basis for the catergorical difference between textual communication and a communication which requires the co-presence of the agents. The Gospel’s self-communication which is distinguished from its communication via the Biblical texts, takes place on that level of orally determined communication, cf. Wirkendes Wort, 65–75, 110–12.

22 Ricoeur, Stimme und Schrift, 98 (my translation).

23 Dalferth, Wirkendes Wort, 73: “Zur Schrift wird die Bibel nur, wenn man sie nicht nur liest, sondern im Licht des Credo auf das Evangelium hin liest, also so, wie sie im Gottesdienst zu Gehör gebracht wird.”

24 Ihde, Listening and Voice, 56–71.

25 Derrida, Die Stimme und das Phänomen.

26 Ricoeur, Philosophical Hermeneutics, 94. It should be mentioned that Ricoeur deals with the phenomena of voice and listening mainly from a semantic standpoint.

27 This can be seen in the research on victims of genocide, cf. Laub, Zeugnis ablegen.

28 Cf. Lincoln, Theologie und Hören, 152–63.

29 Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 103. The original “Don Giovanni” was titled “Don Juan” in Denmark.

30 Dalferth, Radikale Theologie, 211–17.

31 Ihde, Listening and Voice, 104–13.

32 Ibid., 112.

33 Ibid., 113.

34 Krämer, Medium, 34–36. Krämer exemplifies this structure of mediality at the model of the messenger (“Botenmodell”) and the angel.

35 Barth, Church Dogmatics I/2, 248 (my italics); the orginal German is clearer than the translation: “weil es uns eben nichts anderes als eben das Wort zu Gehör bringt.”

36 Zahavi, Husserls Phänomenologie, 101–31.

37 “Sie behandelt das eidetische Problem einer möglichen Welt überhaupt als Welt ‘reiner Erfahrung’, als wie sie aller Wissenschaft im ‘höheren’ Sinne vorangeht, also die eidetische Deskription des universalen Apriori”(Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik, 256; my translation); see also Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen, 173, and the editor’s preface to Analysen zur passiven Synthesis.

38 Dalferth, Wirksames Wort.

39 Ricoeur, Philosophical Hermeneutics, 92.

40 Dalferth, Radikale Theologie, 279–80.

41 Ihde, Listening and Voice, 109–10.

42 Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 384–85.

43 Ibid., 384.