A. T. Nuyen’s research while affiliated with The University of Queensland and other places

It seems that Derrida objects to Gadamer's hermeneutics on the grounds that it is, as Gadamer puts it, "a discipline that guarantees truth," taking it as something that partakes in the "metaphysics of presence." However, this criticism is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of hermeneutic truth. It would be on target if hermeneutic truth were some kind of universal condition of correspondence. Gadamer has tried to correct this conception of hermeneutic truth in his various attempts at opening a dialogue with deconstructionism. In this article, the author argues that in a possible debate between hermeneutics and deconstructionism, there are good reasons to judge in favor of the former.

Seeing himself as a defender of reason, and wishing to complete the project of Enlightenment, Jiirgen Habermas has mounted an attack on those who, in his view, wish to circumscribe the force of reason, notably Adorno and Gadamer in Germany and the French post-structuralists ("from Bataille via Foucault to Derrida"). 1 Recently, the debate has involved Richard Rorty. In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 2 Rorty argues for a modified version of Gadamer's hermeneutics. Rorty believes that the post-structuralist position on reason, particularly that of Jean-Francois Lyotard's, is too radical (i.e., too nihilistic) while Habermas's position is too "Platonistic" (i.e., too rationalistic). With a Gadamerean hermeneutics, Rorty believes that he can "split the difference between Lyotard and Habermas...'3 The aim of this paper is to locate Rorty in the group under attack by Habermas, and then to focus on the Habermas-Rorty debate. Specifically, I wish to argue that (1) Rorty's position is much closer to post-structuralism than he thinks; (2) consequently, it is (a) not as close to Gadamer's hermeneutics as he thinks and (b) more susceptible than the latter to the charge of relativism; (3) Rorty's response to the charge of relativism leaves his position vulnerable, ironically, to the charge of conservatism; and (4) if Rorty wants to steer a safe path between "the Scylla of Platonism and the Charybdis of vulgar relativism ''4 then it will be hermeneutics, the position he wants to stay close to but does not, that will help him do so. Toward the end of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Rorty suggests that his pragmatism is a kind of hermeneutics, or rather that Gadamer is saying much the same thing as he is. He takes hermeneutics to be against epistemology, or "an expression of the hope that the cultural space left by the demise of epistemology will not be filled" (p. 315). Indeed, he believes that hermeneutics is the only alternative once we have abandoned the epistemological project, "what we get when we are no longer epistemological" (p. 325). For Rorty, this conclusion follows once we abandon the idea of truth as correspondence to "real" nature reflected in the mirror of the

I wish to show in this paper that the debate in postmodern theology is an extension of the debate in postmodern philosophy, i.e., postmodern theology has to be understood within the larger context of postmodem philosophy. David Ray Griffin has characterized the debate as one between, on the one hand, deconstructive or eliminative postmodern theology and, on the other, constructive or revisionary postmodern theology. 1 Griffin's objection to the former turns out to be the same as that which is commonly leveled at deconstructive or post-structuralist philosophy, i.e., it is the claim that the deconstructive position destroys any basis upon which one may reflect on meaning and truth, on how we should live our lives, and on what we take to be holy - that is, the basis of knowledge, of ethics and of theology. However, I shall argue that the deconstructive position is not as negative as all that. In particular, I wish to argue that the objections to Mark C. Taylor's theology (he calls it "a/theology") 2 are based on a misunderstanding of its underlying poststructuralist philosophy. The mistake lies in the commonly held beliefs that "deconstructive" is opposed to "constructive," and that the deconstructive position leads to relativism and skepticism.