Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, September 27, 2022
Speaker: Leonor Gómez Cabranes
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The Relational Ontology Research (ROR) group organised a study seminar with Leonor Gómez Cabranes on the possibility of conducting a dialogue between theology, philosophy, and sociology in the light of ROR’s programmatic manifesto.
The relational paradigm is a conceptual framework capable of promoting a dialogue between disciplines that can illuminate reality better than other paradigms. From an epistemological point of view, however, it is important to note that all sciences must be realistically aware that their investigation of reality is never complete, but limited. That is why it is necessary to admit references to a ‘beyond’, that is, to a dimension that refers beyond their own boundaries. Within relational epistemology there is what can be called an ‘epistemic relativity’, which in turn constitutes one of the pillars of critical realism. The latter is the epistemological approach in which the relational paradigm is framed. It claims to reconcile ontological realism, epistemic relativity and critical relationality within itself.
In short: there is a truth to be found ‘out there’ (ontological realism) and, although our search highlights our fallibility (epistemic relativity), it is possible to discuss it rationally. The above principles dismantle both the epistemic fallacy (the world is reduced to our knowledge) and the ontic fallacy (the world determines our knowledge).
The work of Leonor Gòmez Cabranes is in the making. For the moment, it is centered on two authors, Scannone and Beuchot, expressions of a critical epistemology both realist and relational. Their contributions can therefore shed some light on how to establish and conduct a dialogue between theology, philosophy and sociology.
As emerged from the seminar, both propose analogy as the key to transdisciplinary dialogue between theology, philosophy and the human and social sciences. Analogy has always been regarded as the way to reconcile the paradox of the one and the many. It contributes to the dialogue between sciences – especially the humanities – because it places contributions in unity of order, without subordination of one science to the other, always remaining open to the irreducible eminence and exteriority of the human as well as to any contextualised historical and cultural novelty. Where the analogy is considered not only with respect to transcendence, in its vertical dimension, but also in its horizontal dimension, that is, in the otherness of other peoples and cultures, its impetus towards cultural otherness becomes evident.
Scannone, in particular, goes so far as to speak of ‘trans-interdisciplinarity’ and proposes the method of anadialectics. In such a proposal, the dialectic of the Hegelian approach meets the dynamism of analogy, the latter making an opening in the rigid meshes of the former and taking it beyond the Hegelian closure. For Beuchot, analogy has its own dialectic, which does not culminate in a new synthesis but remains open to a dialogue or interrelation between opposites. For interdisciplinary dialogue, he proposes an analogical-iconic hermeneutic. In this way, Beuchot intends to avoid the extremes of univocalism or the imposition of self-referential knowledge on others, as well as equivocalism or the mere juxtaposition of specialised knowledge. Through such a proposal, a dia-philosophy could be prepared, i.e. a method able to coordinate knowledge in a reflexive dialogue. Starting from these interesting perspectives, the research of Leonor Gómez Cabranes.
