Se ofrece una interpretación teórico-política de la fusión de horizontes de Gadamer. Se argumenta que el diálogo político, desde un punto de vista hermenéutico, debe entenderse como el proceso de cuestionamiento y disputa de los horizontes de sentido en donde descansan las prácticas sociales. Asimismo, se sostiene que el diálogo instituye una pregunta-escenario-común que abre el horizonte social de sentido hacia la contingencia e incertidumbre, así como que este nunca busca un consenso procedimental o sustancial que subsane los conflictos y (...) concilie las diferentes perspectivas en un punto de vista homogéneo. The article provides a theoretical-political interpretation of Gadamer's fusion of horizons, arguing that, from a hermeneutical point of view, political dialogue should be understood as the process of questioning and challenging the horizons of meaning underlying social practices. Likewise, the article holds that dialogue establishes a common question-scenario that opens up the social horizon of meaning to contingency and uncertainty, and that it never seeks a procedural or substantial consensus that eliminates conflicts and reconciles different perspectives in a homogeneous point of view. Neste artigo, oferece-se uma interpretação teórico-política da fusão de horizontes de Gadamer. Argumenta-se que o diálogo político, sob um ponto de vista hermenêutico, deve ser entendido como o processo de questionamento e disputa dos horizontes de sentido em que descansam as práticas sociais. Além disso, sustentase que o diálogo institui uma pergunta-cenário-comum que abre o horizonte social de sentido à contingência e incerteza, bem como que este nunca procura um consenso procedimental ou substancial que ressarça os conflitos e concilie as diferentes perspectivas num ponto de vista homogêneo. (shrink)

I propose a minimal account of authorship that specifies the fundamental nature of the author-relation and its minimal domain composition in terms of a three-place causal-intentional relation holding between agents and sort-relative works. I contrast my account with the minimal account tacitly held by most authorship theories, which is a two-place relation holding between agents and works simpliciter. I claim that only my view can ground productive and informative principled distincitons between collective production and collective authorship.

This paper reconsiders the possibility of applying the procedure of falsification, which consists in testing a theory by confronting hypotheses derived from the theory with empirical data, in the studies of culture, in particular when evaluating interpretive hypotheses. Falsification, to which, according to Popper and his followers, the natural sciences owe their success, is viewed with strong suspicion when the object of investigation is meanings and values rather than material phenomena. If by interpretation one understands reconstruction of the artefact’s meaning, (...) obvious challenges when falsifying interpretive hypotheses include: the multiplicity, instability and ambiguity (indefiniteness or self-contradictory character) of meanings inherent in artefacts. All of this does not seem to exclude the possibility of identifying as misreadings interpretive hypotheses which clearly contradict relevant (non-contradictory) artefactual evidence. Falsification thus understood seems indispensable in educational contexts. At the same time, it must be admitted that in practice (as contrasted with the logical formula which underlies the procedure) falsification is inconclusive, and the application of the procedure is further complicated when meanings and values are the object of research. This is one of the reasons why falsification in the humanities (as elsewhere) needs to be complemented by other epistemic procedures while the status of literary studies or history of philosophy might best be perceived as partly cognitive (and in so far as the research conducted in these disciplines is empirically testable, also scientific) and partly creative (artistic). (shrink)

What is the value of art? Standard responses draw on the different kinds of value that we tend to ascribe to individual artworks. In that context, none have been more significant than aesthetic value and moral value. To understand what makes an artwork valuable we then need to examine the interaction between these two kinds of value and how this contributes to the artwork's final value. The main aim of this article is to highlight two areas of concern for interaction (...) theories, in order to improve our understanding of the dynamic relations between kinds of value in art. In the first instance, I shall outline the main tenets of the three leading interaction theories. Next, I shall discuss what it might mean to say that an artwork has moral value, in an attempt to establish on what grounds interaction theories base their central claims. Subsequently, I will look at how our conception of art's moral value affects the possibility of a bona fide form of value interaction, or one capable of shaping a work's final value in conjunction with its aesthetic value. Finally, I shall turn to a discussion of the notion of aesthetic value. (shrink)

The concept of empathy in history education involves students in the attempt to think within the context of historical agents’ particular predicaments. Tracing the concept’s philosophical heritage to R. G. Collingwood’s philosophy of history and ‘re-enactment doctrine’, this article argues that our efforts in history classrooms to understand historical agents by their own standards are constrained by a tension that arises out of the need to disconnect ourselves from a present that provides the very means for understanding the past. Though (...) rather than serving to undermine the concept, it is proposed that the moderate hermeneutics of H.-G. Gadamer, through a positive conception of prejudice, tradition and temporal distance, transforms the factors typically seen as inhibitors to empathy’s operation into those that potentially enable it. The article aspires to shed new light on what is at play when history students engage in the intellectually demanding task of empathizing in history. (shrink)

This paper investigates how unsupervised machine learning methods might make hermeneutic interpretive text analysis more objective in the social sciences. Through a close examination of the uses of topic modeling—a popular unsupervised approach in the social sciences—it argues that the primary way in which unsupervised learning supports interpretation is by allowing interpreters to discover unanticipated information in larger and more diverse corpora and by improving the transparency of the interpretive process. This view highlights that unsupervised modeling does not eliminate the (...) researchers’ judgments from the process of producing evidence for social scientific theories. The paper shows this by distinguishing between two prevalent attitudes toward topic modeling, i.e., topic realism and topic instrumentalism. Under neither can modeling provide social scientific evidence without the researchers’ interpretive engagement with the original text materials. Thus the unsupervised text analysis cannot improve the objectivity of interpretation by alleviating the problem of underdetermination in interpretive debate. The paper argues that the sense in which unsupervised methods can improve objectivity is by providing researchers with the resources to justify to others that their interpretations are correct. This kind of objectivity seeks to reduce suspicions in collective debate that interpretations are the products of arbitrary processes influenced by the researchers’ idiosyncratic decisions or starting points. The paper discusses this view in relation to alternative approaches to formalizing interpretation and identifies several limitations on what unsupervised learning can be expected to achieve in terms of supporting interpretive work. (shrink)

Judging Gadamer’s theoretical stance is a complicated matter, and his ontological hermeneutics is usually regarded as a text-centered theory of understanding. Through an analysis of the phenomenological premises from which his theories take off, however, we can clearly see his reader-centric stance. On the basis of this stance some cease to seek for the original intention of the author or the original meaning of the text, which ineluctably leads to the ignorance of an understanding methodology. As far as people’s intentional (...) understanding is concerned, however, the important as well as essential task is still that of striving for a certain kind of understanding that is relatively correct, with universally effective methodology as its necessary prerequisite. What is more, herein lies the significance of the epistemology of hermeneutics. This article aims to re-insert a sense of methodology after hermeneutics went through a period of ontological reflection, and hence clarify that it is of necessity that hermeneutics resumes its text-centric methodological stance. (shrink)

A través de la metodología de una selección de teóricos de la “estética de la recepción”, pretendemos analizar la interrelación entre el “horizonte de expectativas” de Marco Tulio Cicerón, con el de los intelectuales ilustrados Montesquieu y Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos. A partir de ahí, pretendemos rellenar los “vacíos”, o los misunderstandings que la lectura ilustrada hace de la ética política ciceroniana en el término concreto de la “virtud” y la “honestidad”. Así pues, desarrollaremos estos conceptos según toda la cosmovisión (...) ciceroniana en contraste con la ilustrada de Montesquieu y Jovellanos, y resaltaremos, de este modo, aquellos puntos de cambio y aquellos de enraizamiento en el pensamiento del propio Cicerón. En de nitiva, responderemos a la pregunta de hasta qué punto el rhetor romano condicionó la concepción política de la virtud y honestidad tanto en el ilustrado francés como en el español, a la vez que, de qué forma estos autores “modernos” readaptaron y transformaron el pensamiento del “clásico” según sus propios “horizontes de expectativas”. (shrink)

One way to show that text interpretation can be treated as a scientific problem is to show that the standards that are currently used in the natural sciences when dealing with problems not involving meaningful material can also be successfully employed in the case of text interpretation. These standards involve intersubjective intelligibility, testability with the use of evidence, rational argumentation, and making methodological decisions aiming at the attainment of truth, accuracy, simplicity and other epistemic values. In the case of text (...) interpretation—despite the fact that we deal with meaningful material—hypotheses can be formulated, consequences can be drawn by deduction, and these can be tested against empirical data. This claim is substantiated by the provision of an example of a scientific text. (shrink)

Wolves have a special resonance in many human cultures. To appreciate fully the wide variety of views on wolves, we must attend to the scientific, social, and ethical discourses that frame our understanding of wolves themselves, as well as their relationships with people and the natural world. These discourses are a configuration of ideas, language, actions, and institutions that enable or constrain our individual and collective agency with respect to wolves. Scientific discourse is frequently privileged when it comes to wolves, (...) on the assumption that the primary knowledge requirements are matters of ecology, cognitive ethology, and allied disciplines. Social discourse about wolves implicitly challenges this privilege and provides a rich array of social perspectives on human-wolf relations. Ethical discourse has until recently lagged behind the other two. So too, ethicists are increasingly challenging the adequacy of scientific and social discourse. They do so by calling attention to the value-laden character of all discourse, and the unavoidable ethical questions that confront us as we learn to share the landscape with large predators like wolves. (shrink)

Focusing on the production of lists of evaluative criteria has oversimplified our judgments of qualitative research. On the one hand, aspirations for global criteria applicable to “qualitative” or “interpretive” research have glossed over crucial analytic differences among specific types of inquiry. On the other hand, the methodological concern with appropriate ways of acquiring trustworthy data has led to an overly narrow proceduralism. I suggest that rational evaluations of analytic worth require the delineation of species of analytic tasks and the exercise (...) of genre-appropriate judgments, to determine what constitutes explanatory, interpretive, or explicatory adequacy. I focus on the parameters of judgment for interpretations and explications because their analytic differences have not yet been made distinct in qualitative research. (shrink)

In the philosophical debate about literary interpretation, the actual intentionalist claims, and the anti-intentionalist denies, that an acceptable interpretation of fictional literature must be constrained by the author’s intentions. I argue that a close examination of the two most influential recent strands in this debate reveals a surprising convergence. Insofar as both sides (a) focus on literary works as they are, where work identity is determined in part by certain (successfully realized) categorial intentions concerning, e.g., title, genre, and large-scale instances (...) of allusion, allegory, and irony and (b) allow that works can acceptably be interpreted for unintended meanings—since an intentional act can, under a different description, exhibit unintended features—then they turn out to share the same interpretive policy concerning authorial intention. This suggests that philosophers should shift the interpretation debate away from issues of authorial intention and toward issues about the aims of interpretation. (shrink)

Les aspects polémiques et rhétoriques de la réhabilitation des préjugés chez Gadamer font non seulement violence à la pensee de Descartes, mais obscurcissent le sens véritable de la théorie gadamérienne sur ce point. Pour en arriver à une compréhension plus adéquate de la position de Gadamer, il faut rendre explicites différents éléments qui renvoient à des motifs de la Kehre Heideggérienne et mettre Vaccent sur le rôle de principes herméneutiques développés par Gadamer, tels la tradition et le langage. On peut (...) alors arguer que la pomme de discorde entre Descartes et Gadamer ne se trouve pas dans la théorie des préjugés, leur position sur cette question étant plus complementaire qu'opposée, mais dans la théorie de la subjectivité. (shrink)

This paper investigates how Schleiermacher’s universal hermeneutics can be considered as a better alternative to both, German rationalist aesthetics as pioneered by Christian Wolff, and Kant’s transcendental idealism, to the extent of overcoming the problematics of rule-following. A general account of the necessity of a universal hermeneutics and its meaning from historical practices of exegeses is given. This is then followed by the account of rule-following in the tradition of both German rationalist aesthetics and Kant’s transcendental idealism with latter as (...) expounded in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. The investigation is comparative and descriptive. The purpose of this study is to discuss the hermeneutic possibilities in research methodologies for human sciences. (shrink)

Wilhelm Dilthey's late nineteenth-century doctrine of `re-experiencing' the thoughts and feelings of the actors whose lives the social scientist seeks to understand has been criticized by several commentators as entailing a `naïve empathy view of understanding' in which social scientists are said to transport themselves into other cultural contexts in a wholly uncritical, unreflective manner. This article challenges such criticisms by arguing that Dilthey's writings on hermeneutics amount to a highly sophisticated defence of the role of psychological feeling in understanding (...) that should still be of interest to contemporary social theorists. Beginning with a review of the reception of Dilthey's work by Max Weber and the Neo-Kantians, the article goes on to enumerate a number of significant parallels between Dilthey's insights and more recent approaches in social and cultural theory. (shrink)

This article addresses the ongoing debate between transcendental pragmatics and philosophical hermeneutics. I argue that Apel's version of linguistic transcendentalism is to be refuted, if one succeeds in demonstrating that the normative conditions of intersubjective validity of the argumentative discourse are `derivable' from the fore-structure of the discursive-practical medium of communication. Loci for specifically hermeneutical investigations of this fore-structure include the proto-normativity of the discursive practices, the effective-historical openness of the medium of communication, and the interplay between argumentative discourse and (...) medium. (shrink)

A number of recently published studies by reformist-minded Muslim scholars have both questioned the normative nature of and emphasized the need to rethink some of the fundamental assumptions and interpretational models governing traditional Islamic legal theories and ethics. As part of this process they have emphasized the need to develop novel Islamic hermeneutics. One major element in this emergence of novel Islamic hermeneutics is the production of an increased number of what I term ‘gender equality affirmative scholarship on Islam’. What (...) is particularly interesting, if not intriguing, from the perspective of the author of this article is that the scholarship on gender equality affirmative interpretations of Islam is theorized by reformist-minded Muslim male scholars at historically unprecedented levels which is what this study seeks to highlight. This article examines the arguments employed by three prominent contemporary Muslim male reformist scholars, both Shī’ī and Sunnī, in developing gender equality affirmative interpretations of Islam – Nasr Abu Zayd, Mohsen Kadivar, and Khaled Abou El Fadl. The focus on male scholars in this article is intentional and seeks to highlight the most fundamental point and indeed the raison d’être behind it, namely to underscore the historically unprecedented support Muslim male scholars are providing to the development of feminist interpretations of Islam. (shrink)

Several years ago, the poet & critic Joan Houlihan offered a scathing and hilarious indictment of a lot of postmodern poetry for using words in a way that treats them as meaningless (or, perhaps, renders them meaningless). She suggested that word choice in such poems doesn’t really matter, and that the poet could just as well have substituted in other words without any change in meaning or aesthetic qualities. I argue that she’s wrong about this. I offer an account of (...) how interpretation and meaning function in poems that use words in highly non-standard ways. In such poems, there are associations and implicatures that one can reasonably expect a suitably backgrounded reader to grasp, rescuing interpretation from being a purely subjective and arbitrary activity. (shrink)

Given an interpretive ontology of the artwork, exemplified by Danto’s “constitutive interpretation” thesis, the present paper considers a fundamental “obscurity” at the heart of the artistic phenomenon – the ontological confusion between the material and the semantic “body“ of an artwork. For Danto, the material object of an artwork is nothing but the embodiment of an intended meaning, metaphorically expressed by the artist and waiting to be reconstructed by its audience. Therefore, an epistemic concept of truth, understood as interpretive validity, (...) seems to be required for maintaining the identity of the artwork. In this paper, I am trying to show that Danto’s epistemic conditions of interpretive validity are too strong to be maintained in the experience of an artwork. Instead, using the difference between understanding and interpretation, I try to show, following Shusterman and Gadamer, that the experience of the artwork could be democratically reconstructed in the frame of a pluralistic view of the concept of interpretive validity. The necessity of a “hermeneutic” concept of “truth” is thus maintained, given that the artwork and its experience by a concrete public would not be dissociated. (shrink)