Abstract

Process hermeneutics attempts to solve the philosophical problem of the destructive effect of relativism in order to establish a common ground on which our metaphysical and ethical dialogue can be possible. In the postmodern context, we confront a very different hermeneutic task from that of modern hermeneutics. As Jean-François Lyotard characterizes postmodernity as “a war on totality,” postmodern hermeneutics criticizes the modern triumphalist rationality that claims such absolutisms as scientific objectivism, epistemological foundationalism, and moral universalism. Process hermeneutics welcomes this postmodern iconoclastic urge against modern absolutism. However, it suspects the postmodern transition from meta-narrative to local-narrative that causes a difficulty for apossible common scholarship. In the postmodern relativization, an astute thinker asks whose interpretation, whose authority, whose criteria counts, and why. This paper proposes that process hermeneutics offer an alternative understanding to our postmodern studies and dialogues.