Action as a text: Gadamer's hermeneutics and the social scientific analysis of action

Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 14 (3):333–354 (1984)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This paper argues that Gadamer's hermeneutics offers a methodological perspective for social and political theory that overcomes the impasse created by the dichotomy between the positivist and humanist approaches to social action. Both the positivists’attempt to replace the actors’subjective concepts with the objective concepts of the social scientist and the humanists’attempt to describe meaningful action strictly in the social actors’terms have been called into question in contemporary discussions. Gadamer's approach, which is based on the hermeneutical method of textual interpretation, offers an alternative to both the positivist and humanist perspectives. Gadamer argues that understanding a text involves the fusing of the conceptual schemes of author and interpreter. Relying on Ricoeur's analysis of the parallels between actions and texts, it is argued that this understanding of the process of textual interpretation can be profitably applied to the analysis of social action. This application, furthermore, provides a means of analyzing social action that transcends the dichotomy between the positivist and humanist approaches. Gadamer's approach legitimizes the imposition of the observer's conceptual scheme without denying the constitutive role of the social actors’concepts

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-01-28

Downloads
55 (#259,775)

6 months
2 (#668,348)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

References found in this work

Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.Richard Rorty - 1979 - Princeton University Press.
Truth and method.Hans-Georg Gadamer - 1975 - New York: Continuum. Edited by Joel Weinsheimer & Donald G. Marshall.
Collected papers.Alfred Schutz - 1962 - Boston: Distributor for the U.S. and Canada Kluwer Boston. Edited by Maurice Alexander Natanson.
Collected papers.Alfred Schutz - 1962 - The Hague,: M. Nijhoff. Edited by H. L. van Breda, Maurice Natanson, Arvid Brodersen, Ilse Schütz, Aron Gurwitsch, Helmut R. Wagner, George Psathas, Lester Embree, Michael D. Barber & Alfred Schutz.

View all 17 references / Add more references