Hermeneutic understanding and meaning in religious language: an elucidation with reference to Adi Samkara, Wittgenstein and Derrida

Abstract

The key problematic that constitutes the fulcrum of my philosophical exploration is the multifaceted question of hermeneutic understanding and meaning in religious language with reference to °di OEaÚkara, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Jacques Derrida. I begin my inquiry by taking a close look at the problematic of religious language and the matrix of inter-related problems that emanates from it. Religious language means the religious use of natural, ordinary language and the inquiry into its meaning and significance is connected with the philosophy of language and hermeneutics . This has to be seen in the backdrop of understanding the human person as homo loquens as well as homo religiosus. Here one confronts the metaphysical, the epistemological and the semantic issues involved in interpreting religious language. One has to note that the theoretical discourse regarding the constitution, dissemination and practice of meaning has become largely inter-disciplinary as well as trans-disciplinary in nature. In this context I discuss the problematic of conceiving religion as an anthropological, philosophical and cultural category. Particularly I focus on the debate between Clifford Geertz and Talal Asad in comprehending religion. As a possible solution, I argue for a polythetic description of religion instead of a monothetic definition. In polythetic description, the emphasis is on the semantic ambiguity, fluidity and indeterminacy of the religion-making characteristics. Further, I attempt to show the hermeneutic character of understanding and meaning in religious language by discussing the major conceptual issues in hermeneutics. After tracing the trajectories of the origin and development of hermeneutics, I focus on the conception of hermeneutics as an analytic and mediating practice in which the emphasis is on clarifying conceptual issues regarding interpretation by establishing logical connections between meaning, truth and validity in the various uses of language.