The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy_ I Link Therefore I Am - Luke Cuddy [55]
Enter Hermeneutics: Parts and Wholes
The branch of philosophy that deals with interpreting texts or systems of meaning is called “hermeneutics.” Books, paintings, plays, music, and videogames are all obvious candidates for interpretation, but philosophers like Martin Heidegger and his student Hans-Georg Gadamer went further and claimed that all of life consisted of the same sort of hermeneutic process that is engaged in when interpreting a text. Finding “the meaning of life” is a similar process to finding the meaning of a work of art. Interpretation is an activity that we are constantly engaged in, if only subconsciously.
Every waking moment, we take in what we see in the world around us and draw conclusions that allow us to act purposively. The goal of philosophers of hermeneutics is to describe how we actually interpret the world everyday in order to describe how interpretation ought to be done in difficult cases.
The central insight of the philosophy of hermeneutics is that interpretation is a circular process by which our understanding of the part informs our interpretation of the whole, and our understanding of the whole informs our interpretation of the part. Our knowledge that Ganon recurs as an enemy throughout many games in the series allows us to make sense of the references to previous attacks by him that are included in The Wind Waker. Our knowledge of the whole helps us interpret the part. On the other hand, some fans have speculated about a connection between the owl Kaepora Gaebora in Ocarina of Time and other owls in the Zelda series based on particular bits of text from that game, like a gossip stone calling him a reincarnated sage. In this case, their understanding of a part helps them form an interpretation of the whole. Without an understanding of the whole, we can’t figure out where to put specific parts, but without an understanding of specific parts, we cannot grasp the outline of the series as a whole. The insight of hermeneutics is that we must iteratively refine our interpretation by incrementally improving our understanding of the whole from the parts and the parts from the whole.
One of the long standing debates in philosophy has been between the “empiricists” who claim we can learn about the world best by studying our experiences and the “rationalists” who claim we can learn about the world best by using our reason. Experiences without theories are blind, because we need theories to help us shape our experiences into a coherent whole, but theories without an empirical basis are empty, since we need experience to give credence to our theories. To give either exclusive emphasis is useless. Hermeneutic interpretation is a process that must draw on both.
So, we need to use a hermeneutical method to interpret the Zelda universe. But, if the hermeneutic process is circular, our problem isn’t just with Zelda. We need to explain how anyone ever interprets anything if we need theories for our facts and facts for our theories. The process may continue to refine itself circularly once it has begun, but we need an initial basis from which to start the whole thing or else we may be draw into a vicious regress.
The initial set of facts from which to draw when creating an interpretation of the Zelda universe will be the experiences that emerge while playing the games. However, without an initial framework of interpretive theories in place, we will still be unable to refine our interpretation of Zelda over time. We will be stuck with facts without theories. Thus, the first task in our interpretive process must be to vet principles that can guide the selection of theories and facts, and select those principles that best advance the achievement of our aims. Since our aim is the creation of an interpretation of the Zelda timeline that will be accepted by the majority of the fan community on the basis of its support from evidence in and around the games,