Hermeneutics, Self-Knowledge and Self-Interpretation

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the ways in which hermeneutics might contribute to understanding third-person self-interpretation. This chapter proceeds as follows: First, we show that the “persons” form of analysis is used differently in linguistic, literary, and philosophical contexts. Second, we make the whole structure more complex by recognizing that there are different applications we can have for this “persons” form, and in particular, the goal of providing reliable epistemology for self-construction is different from providing self-understanding, in the hermeneutic sense. Third, we look at the Truman Show Delusion, which is a case in which there seems to be a systematically mistaken third-person self-understanding. We argue here that the Golds are looking to provide an actual mechanism to account for this form of delusion, instead of just a symptomology as has been done in the past. Fourth, we argue that the real issue is navigating between regimes of knowledge, and that we require forensics to accomplish this. The result of these steps is to maintain that incommensurabilities in the regimes of knowledge, for instance between first-person and third-person accounts (or between multiple third-person accounts) might be ways of checking the reliability of a narrative, but they might also end up being part of the construction of the self. Holding accounts at different regimes of knowledge is not necessarily the sign of a deficiency in one’s epistemology, or even the sign of a delusion. We might simply be highlighting the inadequacy of a forensics between two forms of reason, and that could be a creative moment for the self, rather than a dissolution of the self. Finally, we introduce the idea that the second-person can be an element of the forensics of self, in particular the openness to the voice of the other, which makes the third-person self-understanding possible.

Thanks to Dr. Lisa Roney for comments on this chapter