Aesthetic Revelation: Reading Ancient and Medieval Texts after Hans Urs von Balthasar

4. Retreading von Balthasar’s Path

101 ChAPter 4 Retreading von Balthasar’s Path in the previous chapters, von Balthasar’s project of interpreting ancient and medieval texts in terms of aesthetics was shown in general to be hermeneutically valid. it was also shown that his exegesis of ancient and medieval texts could be improved upon. The re-examination of von Balthasar’s extensive project by fine-tuning his hermeneutic approach, which is undertaken in Part two of this study, is well justified. von Balthasar’s construction of theological aesthetics includes an attempt to show, through a careful interpretation of traditional texts, how an earlier tradition can be seen as a precursor to contemporary ideas. in his own readings of ancient and medieval texts he finds the roots, or the historical extension, of the idea of beauty as revelation. The importance of this insight to contemporary philosophical and theological thought warrants another look at some of these texts. The reaffirmation of the possibility of retrieving from the ancient and medieval tradition the idea that aesthetic experience is somehow revealing would be an important contribution to Western intellectual history. in order to re-evaluate both the successes and weak points of von Balthasar’s titanic project, the present study will assume a hermeneutic approach in the tradition of h.-g. gadamer. At the same time, it will attempt to utilize all positive developments of the historico-critical method, without the accompanying limiting and restrictive mentality uncovered by the contemporary hermeneutic theory. At the present time, exclusive types of discourse based on convention are practiced in academia in application to the study of ancient and medieval philosophical and theological texts. such habitual academic discourse clearly limits the horizon of discussion. For example, the rationalistic (analytic, neoscholastic) type of academic discourse necessarily limits the study 102 -The contemporary horizon to closed “systems” of thought with truth-dominated discourse and often excludes references to mystical and aesthetic experience that are left “outside” the system. The idea of a “correct method” of extracting information from traditional texts—the heritage of the nineteenth-century historical school—often goes hand in hand with such rationalistic approaches . The limitations of the “historicist” approach, sufficiently discussed above, include the assumptions that, on the one hand, one can arrive at the true interpretation of traditional texts, but that, on the other hand, such texts can be viewed only from the perspective of their own time, which makes them appear rather irrelevant. Another popular trend, the “postmodern” approach (the “new medievalism ,” for example), rightly criticizes the above-mentioned rationalistic approaches to texts by uncovering the fact that they themselves operate from within closed systems of discourse while laying claim to the universal validity of their “correct” interpretations. The postmodern approach does admit the historicity of traditional texts, whose “true” meaning remains forever hidden from us because our position in history is far removed from these texts. however, for this reason it relegates them to particular “closed” types of discourse whose “true meaning” as such cannot be discussed. Postmodern scholars concentrate on the few phenomena that, according to them, can still be studied by contemporary scholarship: methods of writing, types of discourse, systematizing and transmitting knowledge, ideologies, et cetera. What is studied is the system of medieval “episteme” rather than ideas that have any contemporary relevance.1 in the end such analyses sound curious but “empty ,” devoid of any persuasiveness or sense of significance.2 Against this background, the hermeneutic approach can effectively restore the possibility of a constructive dialogue with the ancient and medieval intellectual tradition. on the one hand, the incomprehensibility of the historical past must be admitted. on the other hand, a possibility of engaging this past must be affirmed. There is some common ground of understanding (as the mode of being of the Dasein) that can be brought to light. The historicity of the phenomena (texts, ideas) is 1. cf. P. W. Rosemann, Understanding Scholastic Thought with Foucault (new york: st. Martin ’s Press, 1999), especially his chapter on Aquinas. 2. cf. tracy’s criticism of reductionism in contemporary art criticism (Analogical Imagination , 109), which could well be applied to the postmodern reductionist treatment of the tradition , according to which everything is reduced to some sort of power play, ideology, or type of discourse. Retreading von Balthasar’s Path - 103 just one aspect of their Dasein that does not preclude us from engaging it. so one of the advantages of the hermeneutic...