Gadamer (1979:258) describes the interaction between text and interpreter as a fusion of traditions or ‘historical horizons’. The text is not simply an expression of a past reality for Gadamer but has its own meaning and is immersed in a tradition of its own (Gadamer 1979:262). This tradition goes beyond the confines of the text’s historical composition and includes subsequent accretions of meaning acquired in a ‘constant process of education’ (Gadamer 1979:261). Gadamer (1979:264) argues that the temporal distance between the composition of a text and its interpretation is not a gulf that needs to be bridged for valid interpretation to occur. This span of time does not separate the interpreter from the text but is rather the ‘supportive ground of process in which the present is rooted’ (Gadamer 1979:264). It is not a ‘yawning abyss’ but is ‘filled with the continuity of custom and tradition’ through which all that is handed down through history is made present to the interpreter (Gadamer 1979:264-265).
The interpreter is not in Gadamer’s opinion a detached observer seeking to uncover meaning within the texts. The interpreter brings to the process of interpretation their own tradition or historical consciousness (Gadamer 1979:261). It is the engagement of the tradition of the text with the tradition of the interpreter that generates understanding (Gadamer 1979:258). Such understanding, according
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to Gadamer, is not an action of subjectivity but rather ‘the entering into an event of transmission in which past and present are constantly mediated’ (Gadamer 1979:258). For Gadamer, understanding is not reconstruction but mediation (Linge 1976:xvi). It is not an accidental or subjective event but an ontological process (Linge 1976:xiv).
Gadamer (1979:261) recognises that prejudices or pre-judgements are inherent within historical consciousness. They are present within the tradition of the text and the tradition of the interpreter. These prejudices should be recognised, argues Gadamer, not because they are obstacles to understanding but because they are constituents of the traditions within the hermeneutical situation (Linge 1976:xvii). It is in a conversation between text and interpreter that the prejudgements of the traditions of both parties are disclosed and understanding, through a fusion of these traditions, elicited (Gadamer 1979:258). The conversational process of questions and answers opens possibilities of understanding for both the text and the interpreter. Furthermore, the process has the capacity to further change the historical consciousness or tradition of the text and the interpreter. Gadamer (1979:262) remarks that tradition is not simply a precondition inherited by text and interpreter but is something which the components of the hermeneutical situation produce. They participate in its evolution and determine its future (Gadamer 1979:261).
Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics acknowledges the ‘ontological direction of understanding’ (Gadamer 1979:264). The search for the true meaning of a text is never finished (Gadamer 1979:265). Fresh sources of error continue to be discovered and rejected while new sources of understanding are encountered that reveal unsuspected elements of meaning (Gadamer 1979:265-266).
5.3 ‘Claims of attention’ of Cassian’s texts
To apply Gadamer’s conversational hermeneutical model to Cassian’s texts it is necessary to identify the ‘claims of attention’ of these documents (Tracy 1984:170). These elements of attraction inevitably affect how we perceive and approach the documents. They exist because of the status of Cassian’s texts as ‘classic’ works of literature. The Institutes, the Conferences and, to a lesser extent, On the Incarnation are classic texts because they continue to attract readers long after they were written (Kermode 1975:44). They possess ‘intrinsic qualities that endure’ but also have an ‘openness to accommodation’ that keeps them alive (Kermode 1975:44). The perception that Cassian’s writings, particularly his monastic texts, contain information about spirituality of the past that is of value, or at least worth discovering, in a contemporary context inevitably affects how we engage with the documents. The beliefs, values and attitudes expressed in Cassian’s documents are foreign to us but not so alien that they cannot be retrieved in some form.
The claims of attention of Cassian’s texts are also shaped by the historical tradition of which they are a part. Cassian’s writings, and the teaching about spirituality they convey, greatly influenced subsequent writers and their spirituality. The Institutes and the Conferences, in particular, exerted
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great influence on prominent Christian writers such as Benedict, Aquinas (Ramsey 1997:7) and Merton (1990:283). Such is the extent of their influence on Benedict, and the subsequent impact of the Rule of Benedict on the development of Western monasticism, that the Institutes and the Conferences have assumed the status of classic monastic texts. Cassian’s writings are part of a ‘living tradition’ that spans more than one and a half millennia. It is a tradition that has its roots in the premodern world of Late Antiquity but also stretches through the European eras of the Medieval period, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. It continues to be present in the global age of the twenty-first century that is marked by a mix of premodern, modern and postmodern religious and secular perspectives (Wilber 2006:1).144 The living tradition that embodies Cassian’s texts is inevitably shaped by changing developments within Western, as well as Eastern, monasticism and also external perceptions of such developments. The increase in religious pluralism in most societies during the past century, and the prominence of Hindu and Buddhist monastic practices, has also affected this tradition. Contemporary readers of Cassian’s texts will inevitably be influenced by these developments and perceptions that emerged long after the original composition of the documents. Their understanding of what it means to be a monk, a Christian even a human person is likely to be very different from the views of Cassian. It is at the juncture where the tradition of Cassian’s texts encounters the tradition of the contemporary reader that Gadamer’s ‘fusion of horizons’ occurs and new meanings are generated and discovered.
5.4 Identification of pre-understandings in Cassian’s texts and in the tradition of the reader