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three remarks on interpretation

Gianni Vattimo: [O]ne cannot talk with impunity of interpretation; interpretation is like a virus or even a pharmakon that affects everything it comes into contact with. On the one hand, it reduces all reality to message -- erasing the distinction between Natur and Geisteswissenschaften, since even the so-called "hard" sciences verify and falsify their statements only within paradigms or pre-understandings. If "facts" thus appear to be nothing but interpretations, interpretation, on the other hand, presents itself as (the) fact: hermeneutics is not a philosophy but the enunciation of historical existence itself in the age of the end of metaphysics[.]

Martin Heidegger: Hermeneutically -- that is to say, with respect to bringing tidings, with respect to preserving a message... it is on purpose that the first page of Being and Time speaks of "Raising again" a question. What is meant is not the monotonous trotting out something that is alwasy the same: but to fetch, to gather in, to bring together what is concealed within the old.

Santiago Zabala: If this is true, then the pharmakon of Being must be interpretation itself, because it is not only what allows Being to come through (the remedy) but also what rejects it (the poison). Interpreting is the only act, practice, or way capable of reaching the Being of beings and allowing the Being of beings to reach us.

All found in: Zabala, Santiago (2007). "Pharmakons of Onto-Theology". In Zabala, Santiago. Weakening Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Gianni Vattimo. McGill-Queen's University Press. p. 231 and p. 241


And a bonus remark from me, which is that interpreting in a semiotic sense (e.g. Kockleman) has been part of the discussion here for a while.

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