The Indeterminable Hermeneutics of Irreducible Ambiguity episode artwork

EPISODE · Dec 17, 2025 · 33 MIN

The Indeterminable Hermeneutics of Irreducible Ambiguity

from Failure Is Freedom · host https://www.martinessig.com

Jean-Luc Marion's "Saturated Phenomenon" produce "indeterminable hermeneutics." Indeterminable hermeneutics can either be a blessing or a curse because they are counter to our intention. What we cannot intend is what Marion called the "non-object," which is the "object" of all saturated phenomena. Soren Kierkegaard was perhaps the first to articulate the anxiety produced by the non-object of the void. Sigmund Freud defined fear as having an object and anxiety as without one. Jacques Lacan then positivized this negativity with his formulation that "anxiety is not without an object." Because the hermeneutics of the non-object can't be determined, no one interpretation can become totalizing. The gift of the negativity of non-closure is that interpretations can be put in relation with each other without one becoming dominant. The "clash" of interpretations, as Paul Ricoeur might have put it, produce "semantic innovations" in the irresolution of their relations. But how does one avoid the "lazy relativism" of intellectual tolerance that David Tracy warned about. In the patronizing acceptance of all interpretations, including indefensible ones, one loses sight of the truth. If the public relating of interpretations are to make a community of interpreters, then they must offer public reasons for these interpretations?The disjunction between the intention and the intuition in Saturated Phenomena are not so much a disjunction as a relation, in particular, the relation that Lacan outlined as that between the Symbolic and the Real. Every attempt at an interpretation is an attempt to symbolize the Real, but the Real's resistance to symbolization is absolute. But the gift of the Real is the constant renewal of the interpretive intention. Paul Ricoeur thought of this relation as that of the dialectic between language's universality and the particularity of difference that allowed for  imaginal creativity. Much like the Lacanian Imaginary, Ricoeur's imaginal creativity makes whole, but by bringing difference into relation without the resolution of completion, which is the non-completion of the Lacanian "Non-Relation." For both thinkers this wholeness can be the relation between wholeness and its failure, which might be thought of as wholeness without completion or intention without oneness, which would be the necessary ground of the multiplicity of a possible hermeneutic community.https://www.martinessig.com I mix the mixtapes that I post here but...,Baddass vibes mixed by James Reeves of Midnight Radio: jamesreeves.co for the intro and outro music of most episodes.

Jean-Luc Marion's "Saturated Phenomenon" produce "indeterminable hermeneutics." Indeterminable hermeneutics can either be a blessing or a curse because they are counter to our intention. What we cannot intend is what Marion called the "non-object," which is the "object" of all saturated phenomena. Soren Kierkegaard was perhaps the first to articulate the anxiety produced by the non-object of the void. Sigmund Freud defined fear as having an object and anxiety as without one. Jacques Lacan the...

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The Indeterminable Hermeneutics of Irreducible Ambiguity

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Jean-Luc Marion's "Saturated Phenomenon" produce "indeterminable hermeneutics." Indeterminable hermeneutics can either be a blessing or a curse because they are counter to our intention. What we cannot intend is what Marion called the "non-object,"...

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