Generous Hermeneutics: Hans Thomas Hakl and Eranos

Inspired by Paul Ricoeur’s seminal discussions in De l’interprétation (1965), this article argues that the academic study of Eranos has suffered from a binary logic which falsely assumes that scholars must choose between either a hermeneutics of faith or a hermeneutics of suspicion. Hans Thomas Hakl’s Eranos exemplifies a neglected intermediary approach that may be referred to as the hermeneutics of generosity. Hakl’s insistence on the maxim audiatur et altera pars allowed him to transcend narrow ideological positions and apply the principle of charity to thinkers across the political spectrum from left to right. Furthermore, instead of approaching scholars such as Jung, Eliade, Corbin, or Scholem as unique and isolated figures, he contextualized them historically as parts of a scholarly tradition that had been neglected by the academy. Although his true agenda was to discuss Eranos in terms of an alternative Geistesgeschichte with special attention to its “esoteric” dimension, the sheer pressure of the dominant discourse may have actually caused him to overemphasize political issues. Updated future studies of Eranos should be able to follow in Hakl’s footsteps while expanding the scope of inquiry to dimensions that still remain neglected, including that of Eranos as a characteristic manifestation of high modernity. It is suggested here that the famous “spirit of Eranos” reflects a refusal of the linguistic turn in twentieth-century thought and an insistence that meaning comes to the self rather than from it. Its characteristic hope of being ergriffen or interpellé by “the impossible” is best understood in terms of the dark existentialist mood among intellectuals during the period dominated by two world wars.