What Are Your Expectations in Doing Comparative Interpretation?

Abstract

This essay is an extended invitation to reflect on what you expect comparative interpretation to accomplish.1 Its purpose is to challenge your understanding and practice in comparing different viewpoints on some common issue. Do you think your development in understanding and practice can accelerate indefinitely? Do you, instead, expect it to level off, even come to a halt, because you have concluded that competing interpretations often reflect fundamental, irreconcilable differences between schools of thought or between different moral-religious traditions?

Part I describes some expectations about comparative interpretation and asks you to make them explicit “objects” of your attention. Part II offers some guidance in identifying your own expectations. It also tackles the difficult question of the criterion: What is the basis for the judgments and decisions that produce developmental rankings of interpretations? Part III asks where you stand in relation to eight expectations about basic issues in comparative interpretation. The invitation to formulate your stances is an invitation to work out your own expectations about expectations, your own viewpoint on viewpoints.