Didn't realize you were a fan, Marty.

Sure. One Direction. It's all about Dasein, right? Being-towards-death?

No.

Come on, Paul. Look at their song titles. "Forever Young"? That's totally an ironic protestation of Dasein.

Think you're reading your own fore-structures of thought into the thing-itself there, dude.

Pish-posh.

My, how the mighty have fallen.

Deny all you want, Paul.

Maybe you're right. Checked them out on Spotify. Five seconds of "Gotta Be You," and I was longing for death.

I logged on to Facebook for this?

Coming down with a bug?

My way of life, Broski.

No, I'm just feeling more mediated than normal.

There's your problem. You expect a normal.

You gotta get the method right, man. When's the last time you read my two volumes of awesomeness, Logical Investigations?

I've read better.

No one asked you, Gadamer.

You mean you've written better. Oh, snap!

Guys, please. Paul seems a little blue.

No, I'm okay. I know I talk about how self-understanding needs a hermeneutic detour through relations with others (their discourses, lives, etc.), but sometimes I just wish for immediacy and transparency.

You could give up hermeneutics and return to phenomenology.

You could go the distance to deconstruction!

Critical theory. Cough, cough.

Besides annoying?

Yeah.

You can see how their understanding of just about everything is bound up with the tradition of enslavement.

I'm glad you said "tradition." You can see how traditions tend to oppress.

Perhaps, somewhere along the line, this became true. Clearly, the elves are prejudiced into thinking of themselves as beings deserving slavery and severe punishment. Perhaps, though, this history developed from a misunderstanding?

A misunderstanding? I doubt that. The house elves were trained to believe slavery was in their interest because it served the interests of the dominating powers: the wizards.

I don't want to defend ill treatment of house elves (I'm a muggle member of SPEW), but let's pause here and recognize that we don't know the history here. You're making assumptions about motivations. Not all wizards are death eaters.

You don't have to be a death eater to be an oppressive wizard. You just need to ignore the critique of ideology. Simply being uncritical of your tradition is sufficient to ensure oppression.

I'm not uncritical of tradition.

Please. You give it authority.

I should have figured house elves would get you two going.

Now you're going to try to synthesize our views, right?

Well, you know I'm all for critical hermeneutics, but you're coming from two different places, so a full synthesis won't be happening.

Good.

Can we talk about the hermeneutics of the Hogwarts houses now?