Situational hermeneutics: improvisation as a method of historical and philosophical investigation. On the example of Rāmānuja’s “Nityagrantham”

Abstract

This article is devoted to explaining one of the “techniques” of R.V. Pskhu’s method of situational hermeneutics in a historical-philoso-phical context. Situational hermeneutics has developed from the study of specific linguistic realities to an exploration of the role of not only language but also culture as a whole in constructing the basic matrices of a given tradition. The use of situational hermeneutics is an attempt to introduce philosophical/socio-cultural anthropology/ “ethnography” into science: finally, a method should appear in the arsenal of philosophical methods that takes into account the mental diversity of people conditioned by culture, a method that takes into consideration the diversity of types of rationality and, in general, the spiritual “habitus” of a person. Based on the material of one of the Sanskrit texts of the late Middle Ages, a fragment of which is presented for the first time in the Russian-language scientific literature, the author demonstrates improvisation as one of the techniques of this method, which allows the researcher to quickly navigate when identifying unexpected circumstances related to the subject of research. The chosen source is Rāmānuja’s “Nityagrantham”, it fully demonstrates the fact that a full-fledged study of Viśiṣṭādvaita philosophy requires non-philo-sophical realities, in this case Vaiṣṇava liturgics. The reader is offered the second part of the Russian translation of “Nityagrantham”, translated from Sanskrit for the first time in Russian Indology.