The Practices of Interpretation
Interpretation - A Critical Primer - Nathan Eric Dickman
Nathan Eric Dickman [+ ]
University of the Ozarks
Nathan Eric Dickman (PhD, The University of Iowa) is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of the Ozarks. He researches in hermeneutic phenomenology, philosophy of language, and comparative questions in philosophies of religions, with particular concerns about global social justice issues in ethics and religions. He has taught a breadth of courses, from Critical Thinking to Zen, and Existentialism to Greek & Arabic philosophy. His book titled "Using Questions to Think" (Bloomsbury, 2021) examines the roles questions play in critical thinking and reasoning, his book titled "Philosophical Hermeneutics and the Priority of Questions in Religions" (Bloomsbury, 2022) examines the roles questions play in religious discourse, and his book titled "Interpretation: A Critical Primer" (Equinox, 2023) examines the role of questions in the interpretation of texts.
Description
Chapter Five, The Practices of Interpretation, examines the social aspects and institutional elements of interpretation. How do communities of readers establish and change canons of acceptability for some interpretations and not others? How do different interpretive communities incorporate critical perspectives such as Critical Race Theory, Crip Theory, Feminist Criticism, and more? We will detail the three fundamental steps of the hermeneutic arc: from initial guess, to critical explanation, to a culminating comprehension. The process and dynamism of interpretation involves all of these but grasping this involves distinguishing interpretation from explanation and clarifying existential appropriation and application.