This two volume work is a comprehensive reader in modern philosophical and theological hermeneutics. David E. Klemm has selected essays representing acknowledged classics in hermeneutics and the best modern hermeneutical thinkers. Volume One collects essays on the hermeneutics of texts. Volume Two collects works on the hermeneutics of existence. Each essay is preceded by an informative contextualizing introduction. Included in Volume One are works by: F.D.E. Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Dilthey, Rudolf Bultmann, Martin Heidegger, Paul Tillich, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Gerhard Ebeling, Paul Ricoeur, (...) Norman Perrin, and Robert P. Scharlemann. (shrink)

This two-volume work is a comprehensive reader in modern philosophical and theological hermeneutics. David E. Klemm has selected essays representing acknowledged classics in hermeneutics and the best modern hermeneutical thinkers. Volume One collects essays on the hermeneutics of texts. Volume Two collects works on the hermeneutics of existence. Each essay is preceded by an informative contextualizing introduction. Volume Two includes essays by: F. Schleiermacher, W. Dilthey, E. Husserl, M. Heidegger, R. Bultmann, P. Tillich, P. Ricoeur, J. Habermas, H-G. Gadamer, and (...) R. Scharlemann. (shrink)

We are frequently confronted with moral situations that are unsettling, confusing, disorienting. We try to come to grips with them. When we do so, we engage in a distinctive type of moral inquiry: hermeneutical inquiry. Its aim is to make sense of our situation. What is it to make sense of one's situation? Hermeneutical inquiry is part of our everyday moral experience. Understanding its nature and its place in moral epistemology is important. Yet, I argue, that existing (...) accounts of moral inquiry do not give us the resources to do so. This paper develops a positive account of hermeneutical inquiry. I argue that when we engage in hermeneutical inquiry, we search for an apt perspective on our situation. (shrink)

This book takes the novel approach of framing Political Obligation as a situation rather than a problem. By doing so, Political Obligation is not considered as an issue to be solved, but a central condition of existence to be investigated and understood. The book launches a hermeneutic inquiry into how this relationship of obligation is constructed through encounters in which the citizen comes face-to-face with the existential manifestations of the State. The book first discusses the dominant approaches to (...) Political Obligation to elucidate the benefits of an existential hermeneutical approach. The notion of encounter is then developed into a hermeneutic approach capable of uncovering and interpreting the arguments, ideas, and narratives of obligation as are communicated in political communities. Finally, the limitations of this approach are considered in reference to the concerns of the Post-truth era. (shrink)

Understanding between care providers and patients with stroke and aphasia: a phenomenological hermeneutic inquiry The present study illuminates the understanding in communication between formal care providers and patients with stroke and aphasia. Five care providers and three such patients participated in the study. Video recordings were made during conversations about pictures (n = 15), and the care providers were also interviewed (n = 15) after the video‐recorded conversations. A phenomenological hermeneutic method of interpretation of the interview text (...) was used. The findings showed that a range of conditions for ‘understanding and being understood’ in the communication on the part of the care providers exists. These different conditions are: lacking both knowledge and understanding; having knowledge but not necessarily accompanied by understanding; and being in understanding. Within the condition ‘being in understanding’, the care providers create a feeling of at‐homeness in a relaxed atmosphere and thus have the opportunity to be in ‘understanding and being understood’ together with the patient. The condition ‘being in understanding’ appears in connection with the care providers’ creating of a ‘calm liturgy of caring’ by mediating humility and calm vitality affects to the patients, and further, when needed, being present on the level of mystery, i.e. caring communion. (shrink)

Drawing on the work of Georg Misch, this work seeks to give back to the Word its original fullness of meaning. The question of life leads the inquiries undertaken in this study via Misch s anthropological conception on to the phenomenological ontology of Martin Heidegger and Josef Koenig s investigation of Being and Thought. ".

My main interest here is to look at pain as a sign of the body that something is wrong. I will argue that there is a meaning of pain before and after an illness is diagnosed. An illness contains its own semantic paradigm, but the pain before the diagnosis affects the pace of life, not only by limiting our interactions, but also as a struggle with its meaning and a reminder of mortality.My main approach is what I call bio-hermeneutics, an (...) extension of medical hermeneutics branching out from the Continental hermeneutical tradition. As such, I will explore the connection between pain and language, temporality, dialectics, and ontology. Given the centrality of language in constructing the meaning of pain, my analysis is informed by the semantics (looking at pain metaphors), syntax (pain as incoherence), and pragmatics (pain as companion) of expressing pain.The last section explores the meaning of pain in connection with death, as memento mori. Revisiting an old definition of philosophy asmelete thanatou, or ‘rehearsal of death’, I will reflect on the difficulty of finding meaning not only for pain, but also for death as cessation of all existential possibilities. (shrink)

This study recapitulates basic developments in the tradition of hermeneutic and phenomenological studies of science. It focuses on the ways in which scientific research is committed to the universe of interpretative phenomena. It treats scientific research by addressing its characteristic hermeneutic situations, and uses the following basic argument in this treatment: By demonstrating that science's epistemological identity is not to be spelled out in terms of objectivism, mathematical essentialism, representationalism, and foundationalism, one undermines scientism without succumbing scientific research (...) to "procedures of normative-democratic control" that threaten science's cognitive autonomy. The study shows that in contrast to social constructivism, hermeneutic phenomenology of scientific research makes the case that overcoming scientism does not imply restrictive policies regarding the constitution of scientific objects. (shrink)

This paper aims to examine and evaluate Habermas’ thoughts on hermeneutical reßection as a methodology of social science based on his work titled Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften (On The Logic of The Social Sciences). By starting from a theory of action approach focusing on the process of inquiring and understanding intentional action, Haber-mas developed a hermeneutical reßection approach emphasizing the importance of communicative experience between the researcher and the subject examined. This approach has emancipatory power because it encourages researchers to (...) thoroughly identify the ideological elements of social reality researched. Apart from all the advantages of Habermas’ methodological thought, his thinking should be evaluated critically because there are problematic aspects when viewed through the lens of ontology, methodology/method, and axiology. (shrink)

What are the implications for theory and research in psychology of a hermeneutic perspective that takes practices as its starting point notion? The author addresses this wide-ranging issue by considering a number of specific questions in turn, including, among others, whether the hermeneutic perspective leads to rejecting systematic, quantitative research methods; whether it leads to the conclusion that efforts at theory and research provide us with an understanding of human behavior that is arbitrary; and whether a practices-based perspective (...) points to a way of pursuing inquiry in psychology that is better than proceeding along the lines of mainstream psychology. The answers to these questions include a number of surprises, especially regarding how the hermeneutic perspective contrasts with mainstream psychology and how it differs from social constructionism. The author also identifies challenging issues for adherents of the hermeneutic perspective, including, in particular, issues concerning the limits of what we can know about psychological phenomena. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

In addition to opening a fertile field for inquiry in analytical social epistemology, Miranda Fricker’s work has provided powerful conceptual tools that merge descriptive capacity and political potency. For this reason, over the last fifteen years, the conceptual repertoire introduced by the author has been well received in both academic and political arenas. At times, the concepts of both testimonial and hermeneutical injustice acquire excessive dimensions in the literature, and this undermines, on the one hand, their analytical precision and, (...) on the other, their usefulness. In this paper I argue against Fricker’s structural parallelism thesis and defend an independent treatment of each of these concepts. On this basis, to counteract the hyperinflation of the concept of hermeneutic injustice, I proceed with an exercise of conceptual precision. To this end, I identify the conditions that make hermeneutic injustice both unjust and hermeneutic. Finally, I present theoretical and practical reasons to encourage the rigorous use of these concepts. (shrink)

Legal Hermeneutics The question of how best to determine the meaning of a given text has always been the chief concern of the general field of inquiry known as hermeneutics. Legal hermeneutics is rooted in philosophical hermeneutics and takes as its subject matter the nature of legal meaning. Legal hermeneutics asks the … Continue reading Hermeneutics, Legal →.

This volume introduces the methodological value of hermeneutic dialogue in the field of theoretical and philosophical psychology. It reflects on the works of Frank Richardson, who has made, and continues to make, seminal contributions to the field, as well as having influenced the work of many of the practitioners engaged in this field today. Each chapter explores a major topic of hermeneutic dialogue and is authored by a scholar whose work has been directly impacted by Richardson's life and (...) research. The chapters illuminate a variety of issues in psychology, such as instrumentalism, individualism, relationality, social ontology, the wisdom of limits, neoliberalism, and the idea that theory is a form of praxis. All contributions in this volume illustrate aspects of theory as practice coming to expression in reflection on theoretical and philosophical psychology and trace some of the implications for psychology, political philosophy, social justice, community, human dignity, and transcendence. This book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of theoretical and philosophical psychology, philosophy of the mind, and personality theories. (shrink)

This volume is devoted to studying the emergence and flourishing of new humanistically informed developments in philosophical hermeneutics within contemporary Chinese philosophy. By means of some articles published previously in the Journal of Chinese Philosophy in the 1970s and 1980s, questions about the nature of philosophical understanding and the diversity of hermeneutic options in Chinese indigenous teachings – including Ruist (“Confucian”), Daoist, and Chinese Buddhist realms of exploration – are reintroduced. Following these seminal essays, a number of new pieces (...) written by philosophers and sinologists active in evaluating basic orientations toward philosophical understanding in China are presented. Some offer new insights into the confluence of Gadamerian and Ruist approaches to philosophy, while others employ more critical methods to indicate why serious hermeneutic inquiries into these indigenous traditions and their most representative texts reveal significant challenges for the informed reader. The focus of this volume centers on issues arising in early Ruist and Daoist texts – the Analects and the Zhuangzi – and then moves to examine hermeneutic claims asserted in the synthetic philosophical efforts of Zhu Xi (1130-1200). A sequel dealing with modern and contemporary themes in Chinese hermeneutics will appear in the March 2007 issue of the Journal of Chinese Philosophy. (shrink)

The pattern of universality and redemption capsizes in the realm of politics. This chapter discusses the relationship of hermeneutics and politics in light of several moments in Western culture and philosophy. It bases this inquiry on Hans‐Georg Gadamer's ideas of hermeneutics, and begins with a discussion of his ontological commitments in order to assess their bearing on the question of politics. Gadamer sees agreement as the ontological outcome of conversations because it is antecedent to the conversation as well as (...) its only goal. Tradition is the source of questions, the tribunal that stipulates the criteria that will validate claims. If we accept that power and the concepts it uses possess both the weight of a dominant reasoning and its criteria to validate claims, then the characterization of politics carries with it the question of tradition and all its potentialities and concomitant problems. (shrink)

Hermeneutic research in nursing: developing a Gadamerian‐based research method This paper takes the stance that although there are many different approaches to phenomenological and hermeneutic research, some of these have become blurred due to multiple interpretations of translated materials. Working from original texts by the German philosophers, this paper reconsiders the relevance of phenomenology and hermeneutics to nursing research. We trace the development of Gadamer's philosophy in order to propose a research method based in this tradition. Five steps (...) have been identified as a guide for nurse researchers. These are deciding upon a question, identification of preunderstandings, gaining understanding through dialogue with participants, gaining understanding through dialogue with text and establishing trustworthiness. (shrink)

Hermeneutics, also referred to as interpretive phenomenology, has led to important contributions to nursing research. The philosophy of Charles Taylor has been a major source in the development of contemporary hermeneutics, through his ontological and epistemological articulations of the human sciences. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that Taylor's ideas can further enrich hermeneutic inquiry in nursing research, particularly for investigations of ethical concerns. The paper begins with an outline of Taylor's hermeneutical framework, followed by a (...) review of his key ideas relevant for ethics research. The paper ends with a discussion of my empirical research with critically ill children in Canada and France in relation to Taylor's ideas, chiefly Social Imaginaries. I argue that Taylor's hermeneutics provides a substantive moral framework as well as a methodology for examining ethical concerns. (shrink)

Hermeneutics and narration: a way to deal with qualitative data This article focuses a hermeneutic approach on the interpretation of narratives. It is based on the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur's theory of interpretation but modified and used within a caring science paradigm. The article begins with a presentation of the theoretical underpinnings of hermeneutic philosophy and narration, as well as Ricoeur's theory of interpretation, before going on to describe the interpretation process as modified by the authors. The interpretation (...) process, which consists of several stages, is exemplified and discussed using a single case from a larger study on suffering. The results of that study indicate that the struggle of suffering is perceived as a struggle formed between shame and dignity, and that nurses must engage in the process of preserving and restoring the dignity of their suffering patients. The authors suggest that Ricoeur's theory of interpretation is useful when trying to understand narrative data if the researcher realises that the process of distanciation, although central in Ricoeur's thinking, is not the goal of the process but rather a means to deal with the researcher's pre‐understandings. According to Ricoeur, distanciation is accomplished by putting the context aside and dealing with the text ‘as text’ and thereby explaining its meaning. Explanation thus becomes the dialectic counterpart to understanding in the interpretation process. The researchers further argue that distanciation must be followed by reflection, where the interpretations are linked back to the empirical context. (shrink)

Taken in general terms, “hermeneutics” refers to the study of understanding and interpretation, and, traditionally, this study focuses on considerations of the art, method, and foundations of research in the arts and humanities. The study of hermeneutics has been developed and applied in a number of areas of scholarly inquiry, such as biblical exegesis, literary studies, legal studies, and the medical humanities. In the context of post-war Continental European thought, however, hermeneutics is brought into a novel philosophical context and, (...) with this, comes to designate a philosophical movement – or, at least, a number of related philosophers and themes – concerned with the scope and limits of phenomenology, the character of human existence, the relation of the natural sciences and humanities, as well as a range of interrelated matters in the philosophy of history, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of art and aesthetics, practical philosophy, as well as in epistemology and the theory of meaning. (shrink)

This work presents an engaging interdisciplinary study of the nature and scope of interpretation, one of the most important areas of inquiry in today's ...

Part I. Hermeneutical theory and human experience. Interpretation and experience -- Interpretation and life connection -- Phenomenology and hermeneutics -- Understanding and linguistic existence -- Part II. Intercivilizational encounters : interpretation and ethical subject. Mediation : the hermeneutical self and moral self -- Interpretation and ethics of virtue : Aristotle revisited -- Intercivilizational encounters : the mean in Confucian ethics -- Thomas Aquinas : theological virtue ethics and analogy -- A comparative religious study of Aquinas and Mengzi -- Part III. (...) Aftermath of modernity : discourse reason and ethics of the other. Interpretation in long route and social location -- Discourse ethics and communicative rationality -- Neo-Aristotelian ethics and neo-Kantian framework -- Aesthetics of existence and ethics of alterity -- Part IV. Intercivilizational reconstruction in the aftermath of colonialism. Intercivilizational reconstruction and global-critical inquiry -- Engaging the Cave and the Butterfly : dialectics of Enlightenment and neo-Confucian self -- Interpretations as conflict and creativity : retrieval of Wang Yangming -- Concluding reflection : the hermeneutical self and an ethical difference -- Epilogue: Interpretive reason and postcolonial irregularity. (shrink)

This is a study in the philosophy of social science. It takes the form of a comparative critique of three contemporary approaches: ordinary language philosophy, hermeneutics and critical theory, represented here respectively by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Paul Ricoeur and Jürgen Habermas. Part I is devoted to an exposition of these authors' views and of the traditions to which they belong. Its unifying thread is their common concern with language, a concern which nonetheless reveals important differences of approach. For whereas ordinary language (...) philosophers tend to treat linguistic activity as the ultimate object of inquiry, both Ricoeur and Habermas regard it as a medium which betrays more fundamental dimensions of human experience and the social world. Part II complements the exposition with a critical analysis of its central themes: the conceptualisation of action, the methodology of interpretation, and the theory of reference and truth. The author defends many aspects of the work of Ricoeur and Habermas, such as the emphasis on power and ideology, the strategy of depth interpretation, and the link between consensus and truth; but he argues that there are serious deficiencies and obscurities in their work. He proposes solutions to these difficulties and concludes with a sketch of a critical and rationally justified theory for the interpretation of action - a critical hermeneutics. (shrink)

Of Aristotle’s core terms, potency (dunamis) and actuality (energeia) are among the most important. But when we attempt to understand what they mean, we face the following problem: their primary meaning is movement, as a source (dunamis) or as movement itself (energeia). We therefore have to understand movement in order to understand them. But the structure of movement is itself articulated using these terms: it is the activity of a potential being, as potent. This paper examines this hermeneutic circle, (...) and works out a strategy for reading Aristotle based on his conception of our epistemological predicament. This hermeneutic approach helps us gain access to the phenomena of movement and its sources (potency, and energeia). The paper closes with a review of the conceptual resources we deploy to think about movement: homogeneity, space and time, impulse, relativity, the blend of sameness and difference, and being and non-being. Showing that Aristotle uses none of these clears the landscape for a fresh inquiry into his account of movement. (shrink)

The paper begins with an overview of the historical roots of philosophical hermeneutics grounded in the work of Husserl and Heidegger. It goes on to explore the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans Georg Gadamer as a philosophy useful to nursing research. The four concepts of prejudice, the fusion of horizons, the hermeneutic circle and play are discussed, as are the implications these concepts have for nursing research. These concepts have been utilized in the author's own research and examples from this (...) research are given to illuminate how these concepts can be shaped to the purposes of nursing research. While the concepts discussed stem from the work of Gadamer, the ways they have been utilized by the author do not represent a Gadamerian method. Gadamer's project is purely philosophical. (shrink)

This article examines genealogical investigations in an attempt to explain what they are, how they work, and what purpose they serve. It is a critique of Robert Brandom’s view of genealogists as naïve semanticists who believe that normative thinking, as it relates to all forms of epistemic inquiry and language use, is reducible to naturalistic causes. This reduction, Brandom claims, is hopelessly misguided and semantically incoherent since genealogies are not epistemically neutral in that “they count no more and no (...) less,” as Habermas put it, than the traditional accounts of moral phenomena that they seek to replace. Nietzsche’s “story” of the origin of guilt in On the Genealogy of Morals is thus not even a useful fiction but merely meaningless. My analysis shows that Brandom’s understanding of genealogy is rather simplistic. While genealogists are naturalists insofar as they attempt to discover the specific historical causes that gave rise to current normative practices, they are neither reductive empiricists nor first-stage semanticists, as Brandom calls them, but multidimensional power-pragmatists. (shrink)

Increasingly, nurses use the philosophy of hermeneutics, especially Heideggerian and Gadamerian hermeneutics, to inform interpretive research. However, application of the work of these philosophers to interpretive nursing research has proved problematic as it fails to recognise, or act upon, obligations inherent in their work. Through a review of hermeneutically informed nursing research, methodological implications regarding the use of hermeneutic philosophy are examined in relation to: (i) the need to address forestructures and pre-understandings; (ii) checking interpretations with research participants; (iii) (...) seeking objectivity, consensus and accuracy in textual interpretation; (iv) evaluating interpretations; and (v) gaining entry into the hermeneutic circle. This review suggests that despite obligations inherent in Heideggerian and Gadamerian hermeneutic philosophy, nurses fail to actualise these obligations in their research. In following Heidegger, nurses need to make the scientific theme secure by working out their forestructures in terms of the phenomenon under investigation. Those following Gadamer need to accept that interpretation seeks to manifest textual meanings rather than individual ones. And, whether following Heidegger or Gadamer, the way to make manifest textual meanings is to engage with the text within the hermeneutic circle by continuing to address forestructures and pre-understandings and by considering their influences upon the research. (shrink)

Hermeneutic philosophy. Part II: a nursing research example of the hermeneutic imperative to address forestructures/pre‐understandingsHermeneutic research requires that pre‐understandings are brought to consciousness in order to provide the phenomenon under investigation with the greatest opportunity to reveal itself. This hermeneutic imperative is dealt with in the present study. My research involved explicating the practice knowledge of nursing on residential adolescent mental health units, and as I had worked on such units I held pre‐understandings that would influence the (...) research. I addressed pre‐understandings in three ways: (i) by developing understandings of practice knowledge through a hermeneutic conceptualisation of it; (ii) by working out forestructures of the phenomenon under investigation. Using Heidegger’s writing on forestructures, 20 statements were generated, interpreted and reconceptualised as my forestructures of residential adolescent mental health nursing. I used this work to review participant interviews in an effort to prevent myself from only finding what I already assumed I would find in relation to practice knowledge; and (iii) by formulating pre‐understandings of the phenomenon of interest. Using Gadamer’s writing on reflection, seven stories were written and interpreted as my pre‐understandings of adolescent mental health nursing practice. I used this work to consider the presence of pre‐understandings during textual interpretation in an attempt to prevent premature interpretive closure. In these ways, I brought my forestructures/pre‐understandings to consciousness, reflected on them, questioned their origins, adequacy and legitimacy and thereby took account of their influence on myself and the research. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the relevance of the view of cognitive existentialism to a multi-gendered picture of science education. I am opposing both the search for a particular feminist standpoint epistemology and the reduction of philosophy of science to cultural studies of scientific practices as championed by supporters of postmodern political feminism. In drawing on the theory of gender plurality and the conception of dynamic objectivity, the paper suggests a way of treating the nexus between the construction of gender (...) within the interrelatedness of scientific practices and the constitution of particular objects of inquiry. At stake is the notion of characteristic hermeneutic situation which proves to be helpful in designing a multi-gendered pedagogy as well. (shrink)

A phenomenological hermeneutic study of the lifeworld of critical care nursing was undertaken, from which emerged the concept of ‘focusing’. Focusing is defined as empathizing concern for the critically ill person and his/her family amid the high technology of the intensive care unit. When nurses focus on the patient and the patient's family they are able to empathize with die personal dimensions of caring. The study used a phenomenological hermeneutic approach to describe die nature of the lived experience (...) of clinical nursing practice in a high technology environment. (shrink)

This book applies philosophical hermeneutics to biblical studies. Whereas traditional studies of the Bible limit their analysis to the exploration of the texts' original historical sense, this book discusses how to move beyond these issues to a consideration of biblical texts' existential significance for the present. In response to the rejection of biblical significance in the late nineteenth century and the accompanying crisis of nihilism, B. H. McLean argues that the philosophical thought of Heidegger, Bultmann, Gadamer, Habermas, Ricoeur, Levinas, Deleuze (...) and Guattari provides an alternative to historically oriented approaches to biblical interpretation. He uses basic principles drawn from these philosophers' writings to create a framework for a new 'post-historical' mode of hermeneutic inquiry that transcends the subject-based epistemological structure of historical positivism. (shrink)

Summary According to the contemporary hermeneutical school the distinguishing feature of the humanities is the capability of the inquirer to communicate with the object of his inquiry. This idea underlies K.-O. Apel's model for the humanities adopted from psycho-analytical therapy. It is argued (1) that there is no sense in which the object of the historical inquiry can be regarded as aKommunikationspartner of the historian; and (2) that when the traditionalVerstehen doctrine is re-interpreted counterfactually (e.g., If I were (...) Caesar, then ... substantiates my explanations of Caesar's actions), then the doctrine has an acceptable application to history and the charge of psychologism is removed. (shrink)

Hermeneutics is widely celebrated as a call for “conversation”—that is, a manner of inquiry characterized by humility and openness to the other that eschews the pretenses of calculative rationality and resists all finality of conclusions. In this, conversation takes shape in efforts to understand and interpret that always unfold in the transmission of meaning historically in language. Yet, the celebration of hermeneutics for humility and openness appears, at least, to risk embarrassment in light of claims found in Heidegger and (...) Gadamer that conversation is always contingent on “prior accord.” Critics of hermeneutics have, for some decades, interpreted this claim of prior accord to refer to a common tradition, so that the understanding achieved in conversation is restricted to those who belong to the same heritage. In this essay, the author argues that although Heidegger and Gadamer often suggest this prior accord is a matter of common tradition, crucial threads of Gadamer’s thought, in particular, recommend a different view. Gadamer, in these threads, offers that “prior accord” concerns not a common tradition, but, on the contrary, the call to participate in hermeneutic transmission as such, even—and no doubt especially—when those in conversation are not familiar with the tradition or language of the other. With this, we are called to converse not first by _what_ the other says, but by the fact _that_ we do not yet understand, that we have already misunderstood, and that we perhaps cannot understand. (shrink)

Hans‐Georg Gadamer has been criticized by a wide range of feminist scholars who argue that his work neglects feminine aspects of understanding, many of which are essential to sound theorizing about educational contexts. In this essay, Linda O’Neill employs Virginia Woolf’s classic gender analysis both as a foil for Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics and as an exemplar of feminist reasoning. Through her striking descriptions of embodied tradition, language, and transcendence, Woolf challenges and enriches Gadamer’s work. Bringing Gadamer into conversation with Woolf (...) offers expanded horizons for philosophers of education who choose to ground their studies of teachers and learners in a feminist epistemology resonant with the rich ambiguity of educational experience. This comparison, O’Neill concludes, suggests that the pluralistic reasoning of feminist inquiry offers engendered, embodied insights absent from Gadamer’s hermeneutics and crucial to what Patti Lather calls “fieldwork in philosophy,” an investigative alternative capable of informing sustainable educational policy, practice, and reform. (shrink)

Nursing and nurses rely upon qualitative research to understand the intricacies of the human condition. Acknowledging the subjective nature of reality and commonly founded in a constructivist epistemology, qualitative approaches offer opportunities for uncovering insights from the perspective of the individual participants, the insider's view, and the construction of representations that maintain an intimacy with the subject's realities. Debate continues, however, about what is needed for a qualitative construction to be considered an authentic understanding of a subject's realities. Authenticity in (...) the context of qualitative research has been described as entailing consideration of a number of well‐trodden dimensions: fairness, ontological, educative, catalytic and tactical. Taking these dimensional requirements as key, this paper argues that authenticity may not always be as well‐developed through some of the standard practices in qualitative research as perhaps expected. In particular, qualitative understandings of authenticity stress that participants should not be merely reported on but instead should be dynamically involved in and changed by the constructions and interpretations of data developed throughout the research process. As this paper illustrates, such engagements appear problematic for qualitative research approaches that are beholden to designative commitments in the context of language and meaning‐making and which tend to prioritise commonality and generality at the expense of individual authenticity. An alternative qualitative approach, Hermeneutic Constructivism, is proposed as better able to achieve the requirements of the dimensions of authenticity. As outlined, this approach is well‐placed to present an understanding of human experience through a genuinely expressivist approach and transcends the stress upon the common or the general that can be pervasive and problematic. (shrink)

Much of the interest of critical realists in the hermeneutic character of social inquiry has been shaped by debates with critics. Critical realists insist that the meaningful character of societies does not exclude the possibility of treating them as objects that have causal powers and that these objects are more than the sum-total of their meanings. In what follows, I want to go beyond this debate. Working within critical realist ontology, the question I want to ask is what (...) kind of hermeneutics is required for the study of the causal powers of meaningful objects. If hypotheses about the causal powers of such objects can be confirmed only in dialogues, then what kind of dialogues and with whom are necessary for the understanding of causal powers? The question of the interpretation of causal objects is not merely a methodological one. Social structures are ontologically different from natural ones, and the nature of our understanding of meaningful objects is in part dependent on the way we come to apprehend them in thought. I argue that the approach to the understanding of the causal power of meaningful objects that has emerged in the debate between critical realists and their critics tends to view the study of causal powers as a dialogue between experts in the service of a more democratic society. Against this view, I suggest an understanding of the study of causal powers as a dialogue between critical social science and the public, a dialogue that takes place in the public sphere. (shrink)

It has frequently been argued that there must be a necessary and important difference between the methods of the natural and social sciences, or that an empirical method in social science must be supplemented by or is inferior to an interpretative method. Often these claims have been supported by arguments using premises derived from the early Heidegger or the late Wittgenstein. These arguments, in turn, tend either to be transcendental in form or to follow a hermeneutic argument strategy. This (...) paper argues that neither of these types of argument, based on Heideggerian or Wittgensteinian premises, can be used successfully to show an important or essential difference between natural and social science. It does this by examining arguments proposed by Peter Winch and Hubert Dreyfus, showing how they are fallacious and misconstrue the import of the premises upon which they are based, and generalizing these objections to the transcendental and hermeneutic styles of argument in this field as such. The paper concludes with a consideration of Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, which reaches conclusions in this area which are similar to those of this paper but which, it is argued, misconstrues the character of its own argument. (shrink)

This paper discusses a version of the hermeneutic philosophy of science. Special focus is placed on the ways of reading theoretical objects in scientific inquiry. In implementing readable technologies, this reading succeeds in contextually visualizing the theoretical objects by means of various sorts of signs. A configuration of readable technology accomplishes a further step. The configuration textualizes the contextually produced signs. Textualizing the reading of theoretical objects interlaces the meaningful articulation and objectification of scientific domains. The horizon of (...) possibilities for textualizing is constantly shifting in the process of normal-scientific inquiry, and the shifting horizon plays the role of a hermeneutic fore-structuring of the outcomes of textualizing. The paper explores the importance of “material hermeneutics” for the contextual reading of theoretical objects. The conclusion is drawn that the hermeneutic study of the entanglement of technological artifacts with the outcomes from reading-as-textualizing requires the introduction of ontic-ontological difference. (shrink)

Heidegger calls his early philosophy a “science of being.” Being and Time combines phenomenological, ontological, hermeneutical, and existential themes in a way that is not obviously coherent. Commentators have worried in particular that Heidegger’s hermeneutical transformation of phenomenology is incompatible with his “scientific” aspirations. I outline three interpretations on which Heidegger cannot adopt Husserl’s “scientific” conception of phenomenology as eidetic, intuitive, propositionally articulated, and non‐relativistic due to his hermeneutical commitments. I argue that each of these readings rests on a misinterpretation (...) of one or more of three hermeneutical concepts that are central to Heidegger’s early thought: the understanding of being, the hermeneutical situation, and phenomenological destruction. By giving fresh analyses of these concepts, I show that Heidegger retains the scientific conception while refining it to avoid distortions that are introduced when inquiry is “infiltrated with traditional theories and opinions about being.” I also respond to the charge that Being and Time is a “disguised theology.”. (shrink)