Richard J. Severson

In the Middle Ages, the Catholic church endorsed four different methods for interpreting the Bible (literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical).  Hermeneutics is the fancy term for this very ancient art pertaining to the interpretation of significant texts. 

What began as an artform for the interpretation of written texts alone has become, in our time, an independent branch of philosophical inquiry.  Understanding texts—the goal of hermeneutics—is identical to understanding anything at all; that’s the elusive insight that modern hermeneutical theorists finally grasped.  Texts represent worlds that we are capable of understanding, just as everyday life represents a kind of being in the world that we must interpret properly in order to understand.  To abuse a famous Shakespeare line, all the world is but a written text. 

Being in some sort of world, imaginary or otherwise, is an operational necessity of the mind.  In order to cook a meal, for example, I rely upon an entire matrix of previous cooking experiences (the various kitchen appliances that I have used, the foods that I have purchased, the recipes that have become second nature to me, and so forth) that merge into a familiar world from within which I understand how to cook. 

It is a truism of philosophical hermeneutics that we become what our worlds enable us to become.  Every creature remakes its surroundings into a milieu, or habitat, that suits its own purposes and needs.  To a wolf, for example, the crevice on the hillside represents a potential den, and the elk grazing in the meadow a potential food source.  That is the meaning of the world as the wolf perceives it.  Confine it to a small cage, and the wolf no longer exists as the creature that it was.  It is the world that gives us the possibilities for our existence; the world is the text or script that we live by. 

Shakespeare again: I enter the make-believe world of Macbeth when the curtain has risen in the theater, and the actors begin their recitation.  Could I live without ever having seen this Shakespearean play?  Of course.  Could I live without the ability to inhabit make-believe worlds that instill meaning in my life?  Not as a human being.  The creation of meaning (understanding) is a direct consequence of our being in some sort of world. 

If the operational principle of the mind is to generate and inhabit worlds, what happens when different minds meet?  This has been a question of great interest to modern hermeneutical theorists.  According to Hans-Georg Gadamer, a meeting of the minds entails a fusion of horizons.  Isn’t that precisely why we read books—to expand our horizons, and thereby increase our understanding of the world(s) around us?  Every text represents another world that the reader can inhabit.  Each of us lives in a Big World that is filled with alternative worlds that we acquire through reading and other experiences capable of eliciting a fusion of horizons. 

In America, the Constitution is our most sacred text, and Supreme Court judges are its most authoritative interpreters.  It would be unfair to expect judges—practical (juridical) decision-makers—to engage in debates about philosophical hermeneutics.  Yet, in the methods of Constitutional interpretation that are frequently mentioned in the press—textualism, originalism, judicial precedent, pragmatism, moral reasoning, constructionism, and so forth—there is ample evidence of conflicting worldviews at play.  Take the interpretive strategy known as originalism, for instance.  Judges who adhere to this perspective tend to believe that the Constitution has an objective meaning that is an artifact of the times in which it was written; therefore, they attempt to reconstruct what the Constitution meant to people living in the late 18^th century.  This sort of historical interpretation requires a fair amount of imagination as the judges set aside their own worldview in order to immerse themselves into the world of the first Americans. 

But can judges really set aside their own worldview when they enter another world from the past?  That’s not how interpretation works according to hermeneutical philosophers.  We can’t discard our own worldview because it automatically comes with a set of preconceptions about reality that infiltrate every nook and cranny of our minds, including how we understand the law.  How can we crawl out of our own skins?  What we do, instead, is build a bridge between our own world and the world we are trying to understand; that’s what a “fusion of horizons” entails.       

To interpret the Constitution without reading their own biases into it is the goal of every Supreme Court judge.  It is a worthy aspiration.  But it is an impossible task; the fingerprints of their own worldviews are everywhere in their readings.  The telltale signs are both subtle and pervasive.  Why, for instance, do originalist interpreters have a tacit preference for the past over the future?  They look back to the world of the framers as if it were a shining light on a hill capable of addressing the problems of any era.  They instinctively rebuff those who speak of a Living Constitution that evolves and perfects itself as it moves forward in time.  This subtle binary preference for either the past or the future is a precondition of every worldview, as are many other presuppositions that shape the sense of reality that is part and parcel of what it means to be in the world. 

The world represents the nature—the textuality—of each person’s existence.  It is the framework for our interactions with the natural world, and with each other.  Cultures emerge as groups of people form a shared world.  Societies entail the civil—and not so civil—interactions of multiple cultures.  When one culture rejects the reality of another culture, we call that a culture war (or, cancel culture).  Culture wars are often the result of deliberate subversive behaviors, but not always.  As we are learning through difficult societal experiences, it takes a great deal of time and effort to eradicate implicit racism and other habits of the mind that are intrinsic to our being in the world.

The surest sign that Supreme Court judges cannot step outside their own worlds when they interpret the Constitution is the presence amongst them of the same insidious tribalism—or, hermeneutics of rejection—that has infiltrated our entire nation. 

A final thought:  The 500-year culture war instigated by the Protestant Reformation had almost everything to do with how we interpret the Bible.  How we interpret the crucial texts that define our world is tantamount to how we get along with others.  Even common sense and the reality of “facts” are up for grabs in the mutually exclusive worldviews that accompany the hermeneutics of rejection.