University of Denver Digital Commons @ DU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate Studies 6-1-2010 Reading and Responsibility: The Grammar of the Inexpressible and the Poiesis of Religious Belief Philip G. Banning University of Denver Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd Part of the Philosophy Commons, and the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Banning, Philip G., "Reading and Responsibility: The Grammar of the Inexpressible and the Poiesis of Religious Belief" (2010). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 53. https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/53 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Studies at Digital Commons @ DU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ DU. For more information, please contact [email protected],[email protected]. READING AND RESPONSIBILITY: THE GRAMMAR OF THE INEXPRESSIBLE AND THE POIESIS OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the University of Denver and the Iliff School of Theology Joint Ph.D. Program In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy by Philip G. Banning June 2010 Advisor: Dr. Francis Seeburger Author: Philip G. Banning Title: READING AND RESPONSIBILITY: THE GRAMMAR OF THE INEXPRESSIBLE AND THE POIESIS OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF Advisor: Dr. Francis Seeburger Degree Date: June 2010 ABSTRACT Reading religious literature is generally considered to be either an “outsider’s” practice useful for the determination of a culture’s or individual reader’s beliefs, whether of the past or present, or an “insider’s” practice necessary for guidance in morality and “right” action. Both of these practices mean the text is construed as the motivation or cause of other beliefs and actions, and that the purpose or value of such texts is nothing more than identifying and promulgating certain beliefs. Understanding texts and reading in this way does not allow us to conceive of the text as a work of art and perceive the reader’s own self-structuring through engaging this art. An alternative notion of reading can help us to conceive of the self as a work of art whose growth depends on encountering and engaging another’s artistry, in this case, the religious text. Through the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger, and to a lesser degree that of Jean- Paul Sartre, this dissertation proposes reading itself to be an imaginative process that illuminates the self and its relationship with others. As part of that imaginative activity, the concepts of truth and the self are also re-thought and dislocated from the subject- object framework which dominates much of contemporary thinking. The practice of reading is therefore best seen not as a search for truths or beliefs “embedded” in the text, but a communication with others that proves the self to be in a constant state of becoming, an artistic process most human in its resistance to perfectability. ii Acknowledgments I would like to gratefully acknowledge my advisor, Frank Seeburger, for his excellent advice, professionalism, and mentoring during every stage of writing this dissertation. His book, The Stream of Thought, helped spur and hone many of the ideas expressed here. I would also like to thank the other members of my committee, Naomi Reshotko and Edward Antonio, for their inspirational teaching as well as their helpful comments that helped strengthen this dissertation. Dr. Reshotko deserves a special note of gratitude for mentoring my introduction into the study of philosophy. Her scholarship coupled with her willingness to engage her students’ questions brought the richness of Plato’s and Aristotle’s thought to life for me. Finally, I would like to express, albeit only inadequately, my love and gratitude to my wife Kalisha for all her support during my years of graduate study. iii Table of Contents Chapter One: Introduction...................................................................................................1 Thesis and Scope......................................................................................................1 Context and Comparison with Similar Concepts of Reading..................................3 Who Is the Reader of the Sacred Text?...................................................................8 Background and Terms Used.................................................................................15 Methodology..........................................................................................................30 Rationale and Significance.....................................................................................35 Chapter Outline......................................................................................................45 Chapter Two: The Grammar of the Inexpressible and the Indeterminacy of Meaning......50 Reading, Language Games, and Meaning..............................................................54 Reading and the Poiesis of Belief..........................................................................88 Reading and Believing.........................................................................................113 Chapter Three: Poiesis: The Imaginative Production of Worlds and Hermeneutical Responsibility......................................................................................................120 Introduction: An Overview of Heidegger’s Concepts of Truth and Language....120 Truth and Self According to Heidegger...................................................126 Heidegger and the Truth of Language..................................................................141 The Literary Work of Art and the Making of the Reader....................................153 The Literary Work of Art and (Re)Inventing the Self..........................................162 Sartre, the Text, and the Other.............................................................................175 Sartre and the Imagination...................................................................................184 Ignorance, Knowledge, and the Inexpressible.....................................................190 Chapter 4: The Interpretative Crisis and Belief: The Being of Reading..........................202 Reading and the Dismantling of Values..............................................................205 Imagination, Text, and the Poiesis of the Self.....................................................221 Reading and the “House of Being”......................................................................244 Reading and Poiesis.................................................................................251 Sacred Texts and Reflective Reading..................................................................259 Chapter 5: Conclusion: The Everyday Mystical..............................................................268 The Hermeneutics of Reading..............................................................................268 Reading and Ethics..............................................................................................275 Reading, Self, and Beliefs....................................................................................279 Sacred Texts and the Hermeneutics of Reading..................................................282 Works Cited.....................................................................................................................291 iv Introduction One reads in order to ask questions. Franz Kafka I. Thesis and Scope Prior to encountering a text, a reader already has an understanding of what it is to read, one which contains an implicit philosophy of language. Readers often simply take reading as primarily, if not entirely, a matter of “information” processing, then assume that a text, insofar as they consider whatever information it contains to be “factual” or “accurate,” determines in a causative manner their beliefs and the actions subsequently informed by those beliefs. Much of twentieth-century philosophy, however, rejects and critiques the propositional theory of language that supports such a model of reading. The following dissertation will use this critique to advance a different understanding of reading, one whereby we realize reading offers us the possibility to forge a different self. Through such activity, reading shows itself to be a dialogic, creative process originating in the linguistic imagination and involving both author and reader, a process resulting in the beliefs the reader forms to relieve the critical need to interpret the text, to address the question of who the reader is in the world the text reveals. Developing this thesis further, I can claim that reading as such a creative process is an engagement with another human being (or beings) through that person’s (or persons’) own imaginative construction of what it means to exist, that is, her 1 interpretation of being. In general, this construction takes the form of spoken discourse, but for purposes of my thesis, I focus on that imaginative structure known as text (see below for further clarifications of “text” and “discourse”). Reading can then be considered the interpretation of interpretation, that is, the reader’s activity of building or creating (poiesis: a making, a forming) a meaning from the author’s1 own created edifice of meaning that is the text. So conceived, reading can no longer be simply understood as an interaction with an artifact (printed