The six bibliographical websites are arranged in an order that corresponds to what we may consider a progressive degree of closeness to our sensitivity. It is a question of hermeneutics since it relates to the diverse ways in which we may be able to relate to the evidence we have from the remote past of ancient Mesopotamia.
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Archaeology qua stratigraphic analysis (as discussed in the Critique), is the most distant: the emplacement of things in the ground does not have any immediate resonance for us, it does not, in and of itself, evoke meaning.
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The domain of politics presents us with patterns of social behavior that are understandable, but with which we do not properly identify.
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Literature requires some training if it is to be appreciated in its full force, especially if one thinks of poetry and the expressive canons that give it shape.
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Items of art and architecture are more immediately accessible to our perception, since their physical embodiment is the same that was perceived by the ancients; they evoke an immediate response, even though the reception of meaning as perceived by the ancients requires considerable hermeneutic grounding.
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The linguistic domain requires the most exacting interpretive effort, a proper “decipherment,” but once this obtains then we gain access to the deeper expressive level of the ancients’ spirit.
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I place religion and spirituality at the top because the issues involved are universals that are deeply felt at all times by all humans.
We may render with a schematic gradient this progressively greater closeness to our ability for internalizing the corresponding deeper values. In the chart, the left axis represents a rough quantitative rendering of the degree of closeness:
Back to top: The hermeneutic gradient