INSTINCTS INTO SACRED COWS - ARE HERMENEUTICAL UNIVERSALS REDUCIBLE TO AGREEMENT - REPLY

Jeffrey Friedman's claim that arbitrariness is the inevitable result o f the rejection of objectivist notions of truth misses its mark becaus e it is based on a sense of ''agreement'' that is radically at odds wi th the concept of agreement at work in hermeneutical practice. The rat ionalist notion of truth Friedman upholds cannot escape the need for a greement any more than the hermeneutical notion; the central distincti on between the two senses of ''agreement'' is the distinction between coercion and consent. Hermeneutical practice integrally links the rati onal procedure and universalizing consent, which together constitute a rigorous existential standard that challenges any rationalist discipl ine.