After a Certain Posture: Dennis Schmidt and the “Ethical Struggle”

Abstract

Hermeneutics has been first and foremost a theory alert to the finitude of all understanding. Guided by such convictions, hermeneutic theory has paid special attention to the conflicts and complexities of the struggle, ultimately – and I believe that this is important in the final analysis – an ethical struggle, to put oneself in words. This struggle to find words goes beyond the strategic problem of merely communicating information. Rather, it is a struggle that finally concerns the relation of language and being, and so this struggle to find oneself in words is among the most profound struggles in which one can engage. In a very real sense, the question of language always inevitably becomes a question of who one is – and is not.1