Abstract

This dissertation deals with the role of non-technical and technical prejudice in hermeneutical experiences. The problem addressed derives from an ambiguity remaining in Hans-Georg Gadamer's treatment of "positive prejudice" in his work on hermeneutics called Truth and Method. ;Gadamer failed to make clear what he wished to include or exclude from his notion of positive prejudice. This failure on Gadamer's part results from his use of the method of eidetic description for understanding hermeneutical experiences. ;In seeking to remedy this situation I provide expositions and analyses of actual hermeneutical examples: Soren Kierkegaard's interpretation of the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham in Fear and Trembling, the Supreme Court decision in the Dred Scott vs. John F. A. Sanford case of 1857, and Karl Marx's interpretation of the Paris Commune experience in The Civil War in France. These three examples from biblical, legal, and historical hermeneutics act as a grounding for a phenomenological description of hermeneutical prejudice. ;The description of prejudice makes it possible to distinguish two types of prejudice, namely, non-technical and technical. Non-technical prejudice is shown to be characterized as a bias arising out of tradition and accepted without question as an everyday way of understanding the world. On the other hand, technical prejudice is revealed to be characterized as a commitment to a belief implied by a question, a hypothesis, or projection, that either opens up or closes off the possibilities of the investigation. That is, while technical prejudice, like the non-technical, may be derived from one's tradition or everyday manner of existence, it is derived as a questioning of that tradition or way of being and brings about an opening up of new possibilities of understanding.