Lexington Books Interreligious Hermeneutics and the Pursuit of Truth

Philosophical hermeneutics provides a model of interreligious dialogue that acknowledges the interpretive variability of truth claims while maintaining their relation to a preinterpretive reality. The dialectic and tensive structure of philosophical hermeneutics directly parallels the tension between the diversity of belief and the ultimacy of the sacred. By placing philosophers like Gadamer, Ricoeur, Peirce, and Whitehead in conversation, J. R. Hustwit describes religious truth claims as coconstituted by the planes of linguistic convention and uninterpreted otherness. Only when we recognize that religious claims emerge from a dalliance back and forth across the limits of the understanding can we appreciate the engagement between religions. In terms of dialogue, this approach treats religious truth claims as tentative hypotheses, but hypotheses that are frequently commensurable and rationally contestable. Interreligious dialogue goes beyond facilitating bonhomie or negotiating tolerance; dialogue can and should be a disciplined space for rationally adjudicating claims about what lies beyond the limits of human understanding. Review Hustwit takes us through a history of hermeneutic philosophy that is truly a tour de force. Impeccable and insightful discussions of [philosophers] . . . are just a few of the choicest highlights. . . .The book is as refreshing as it is rewarding. . . .for those who want not merely to rehash what others have already had to say about the relationship between hermeneutics and philosophy, but for those who actually want to do some thinking of their own by putting those results to work. . . .Hustwit gets us thinking, and that, especially in a context as sometimes fraught with posturing and hand-waving as this, is no small thing.--Review of Metaphysics J. R. Hustwit offers a perfectly pitched articulation and defense of a "reticent" realistic hermeneutical method that facilitates interreligious dialogue. Beyond seeking to understand commonalities and differences, he urges interfaith dialogue to engage truth questions. His review of European hermeneutics from Kant to the present is detailed and profound without being tortured. This is the best presentation of the Claremont Process School of hermeneutics to date, bringing its promotion of "constructive" (as opposed to "deconstructive") postmodernism into clear conversation with the larger hermeneutical discussion. What a delight it is to find philosophical hermeneutics from the hands of someone who actually knows a lot about many religions!--Robert Cummings Neville, professor of Philosophy, Religion, and Theology, Boston University and author of Realism in Religion and Religion in Late Modern In Interreligious Hermeneutics and the Pursuit of Truth, J. R. Hustwit proves to be a trustworthy guide to the tangled landscape of religious pluralism with its hermeneutical dead ends and epistemological bogs. His well-argued endorsement of a faillibilist hermeneutics in conjunction with a commonsense understanding of truth is sorely needed by interpreters of apparent conflict among religious beliefs. Hustwit leaves us not with a solution to the problem of religious pluralism, but with a meaningful, constructive, critical way forward.--Wesley J. Wildman, Boston University Surely, when we believe something, we believe it to be true, yet the truth claims of religion are in crisis today. In Interreligious Hermeneutics and the Pursuit of Truth, Jeremy Hustwit deftly charts a path between those who wish to dispense with truth altogether and those who are all too sure that they alone possess the final truth. Neither too skeptical nor too restrictive, Hustwitt offers a powerful platform for the new multi-faith dialogue. After all, how can the religions engage one another if they cannot even acknowledge where their beliefs differ?--Philip Clayton, Ingraham Professor of Theology, Claremont School of Theology, Author of In Quest of Freedom: The Eme