The Hermeneutical Self and an Ethical Difference: Intercivilizational Engagement

A study of inter-civilisational hermeneutics drawing on diverse classical and modern sources to construct a new hermeneutical theory for a postcolonial age. In response to the religious and spiritual transition experienced in our modern world, Chung creates a postcolonial framework for inter-religious exchange, focussing on issues of interpretation, moral deliberation and ethical praxis. He investigates the relationship between hermeneutical theory and ethics and produces a new theory for intercivilizational dialogue, studying theological-philosophical theory of interpretation, ethics, the experience of cultural hybridity and inter-civilisational alliance, set within multiple horizons and diverse contexts.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Foreword by John Berthrong Preface Introduction Part I: Hermeneutical Theory and Human Experience 1. Interpretation and Experience 2. Interpretation and Life Connection 3. Phenomenology and Hermeneutics 4. Understanding and Linguistic Existence Part II: Intercivilizational Encounters: Interpretation and Ethical Subject 5. Mediation: The Hermeneutical Self and Moral Self 6. Interpretation and Ethics of Virtue: Aristotle Revisited 7. Intercivilizational Encounters: The Mean in Confucian Ethics 8. Thomas Aquinas: Theological Virtue Ethics and Analogy 9. A Comparative Religious Study of Aquinas and Mengzi Part III: Aftermath of Modernity: Discourse Reason and Ethics of the Other 10. Interpretation in Long Route and Social Location 11. Discourse Ethics and Communicative Rationality 12. Neo-Aristotelian Ethics and Neo-Kantian Framework 13. Aesthetics of Existence and Ethics of Alterity Part IV: Intercivilizational Reconstruction in the Aftermath of Colonialism 14. Intercivilizational Reconstruction and Global-Critical Inquiry 15. Engaging the Cave and the Butterfly: Dialectics of Enlightenment and Neo-Confucian Self 16. Interpretation as Conflict and Creativity: Retrieval of Wang Yangming 17. Concluding Reflection: The Hermeneutical Self and an Ethical Difference Epilogue: Interpretive Reason and Postcolonial Irregularity Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Paul S. Chung is an Associate Professor of Mission and World Christianity at Luther Seminary. His books related to constructive theology and missiological hermeneutic include Martin Luther and Buddhism (2007) and The Cave and The Butterfly.

Review :
Chung's book is an important contribution to interreligious solidarity towards compassionate justice within the context of imperial capitalism creating a dangerous crisis for human life and earth. He creatively awakens the wisdom of Confucianism and Daoism in postcolonial perspective in order to reread history from below, giving the victims of western civilization a voice and designing a new epistemology transcending the dominating reductionist rationalism. This is liberation theology at its best. With breadth of historical comprehension, intercivilizational insight, and synthetic judgment, Paul Chung immerses the reader in his quest to construct a usable hermeneutics for this second 'axial age' (Jaspers). We are challenged to engage in an archeological reframing of the colonial era that leads to the dismantling of the iron cage of capitalism and the privileging of subaltern perspectives toward the emergence of a postcolonial, irregular, life-enhancing ethic. Retrieving the wisdom of Confucian thought from Western stereotypes and drawing upon Western voices from Aristotle to Levinas, Aquinas to Bonhoeffer, Chung casts an imaginative vision of the theological task in our times. Chung is to be applauded for his development of the similarities in the hermeneutical traditions of both and his desire to put them in dialogue. [...] ...there is much to like in Chung's text... [...] ...for those wrestling with the interreligious dialogue between Christianity and Confucianism, it will be a necessary read. This book will appeal to a wide range of scholarly interests and provide food for thought among those interested in hermeneutics, ethics, political theology, liberation theology, and postcolonial critiques of the Western traditions of philosophy and theology.