Abstract:
This thesis has as its presupposition the understanding that the present time named
the contemporary displays a paradoxical character, which is justified through the
simultaneity of illuminist and post-modern worldviews. Such paradoxical character demands
a paradoxical hermeneutics that may become the foundation to the construction of a
hermeneutics of care, with a special focus on pastoral care. The work starts by noting certain
confusion in the notions of modernity and post-modernity, in order to present the concept of
the contemporary. The contemporary collapses the illuminist and the post-modern worldviews
and creates the possibility to investigate three relationships in contemporary hermeneutics:
the first one is the relationship between closed-disclosed under the sign of re-velation. This
concept of revelation stands in contrast to the illuminist one identical to the Hegelian
Offenbarung. Karl Barth and Heidegger open the way at this juncture. The second relationship
investigates the possibilities of a hermeneutics built on the dialectic between tradition and
emergence, memory and the forgotten. The third relationship has its focus on a hermeneutics
under the dialectic between action and affection. It will show the dangers of an epistemology
solely based on action prone to a strong metaphysical thought and the need of an
epistemology also based on being affected. In this way it will accomplish the task of
launching the foundations for a new contemporary hermeneutics. The second part of the thesis
starts from this contemporary hermeneutics that sees all reality, texts and people, as the object
of interpretation. Therefore, it tries to understand the nuances that define the texts in motion
(people), in order to propose a hermeneutics of pastoral care. Its starting point is the
Heideggerian concept of care as a mode of being human. The second step is a discussion of,
based on 2 Corinthians 3:1-3, the hermeneutics of the living letters, metaphor that is taken as
a hermeneutical model. The metaphor of the living letters emphasizes the being-ness of human beings and settles the basis for such a hermeneutics. The notions of world, other and
Other as constitutive of human being also serve as a foundation to the being-ness of the
pastoral care. Finally, the thesis proposes three hermeneutical dimensions of pastoral care,
built on the paradoxical relationships displayed by the dialectics between action-affection;
tradition-emergence; closed-disclosed.
