Critical Hermeneutics

A comparative critique of ordinary language philosophy, hermeneutics and critical theory.

Providing a comprehensive engagement with the work of Hans-Herbert Kögler, this is the first volume to expand upon and critique his distinctive approach to critical theory: critical hermeneutics. In the current climate of crisis, the relevance and fruitfulness of Kögler's work has never been greater, as he fuses the philosophies of Michel Foucault, Hans Georg Gadamer, and his mentor, Jürgen Habermas, to respond to critical international issues surrounding politics, agency, and society. Working towards a truly non-ethno-centric and global conception of intercultural dialogue, an essential aspect of Kögler's critical hermeneutics is his account of selfhood as reflexive: socially situated, embodied, and linguistically articulated, permeated by power, but yet critical and creative. Leading international scholars, representing a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, build upon Kögler's approach in this volume and explore the methodological, theoretical, and applicative scope of critical hermeneutics beyond the Frankfurt School. In doing so, they address some of the most pressing issues facing global society today, from multilingual education to the urgent need for interreligious and intercultural understanding. Closing with a response from Kögler himself, Hans-Herbert Kögler's Critical Hermeneutics also offers an exclusive account of the philosopher's contemporary re-appraisal of the core tenets of critical hermeneutics.

The Turkish market of Qur’anic translations and studies is exceedingly oversaturated. Critics find some of these lacking in proper hermeneutical judgment, impelling them to reflect on the conditions of judicious Qur’anic exegesis. These reflections have remained relatively unexplored in English academic literature. In Critical Hermeneutics, Çelik explores and compares the hermeneutical philosophies of three Turkish intellectuals, namely Alpyağıl, Cündioğlu, and Öztürk. By exploring their philosophical views on subjectivity and objectivity in the context of interpreting the Qur’an, Çelik draws major implications for reading the Qur’an in new and different ways.

Providing a comprehensive engagement with the work of Hans-Herbert Kögler, this is the first volume to expand upon and critique his distinctive approach to critical theory: critical hermeneutics. In the current climate of crisis, the relevance and fruitfulness of Kögler's work has never been greater, as he fuses the philosophies of Michel Foucault, Hans Georg Gadamer, and his mentor, Jürgen Habermas, to respond to critical international issues surrounding politics, agency, and society. Working towards a truly non-ethno-centric and global conception of intercultural dialogue, an essential aspect of Kögler's critical hermeneutics is his account of selfhood as reflexive: socially situated, embodied, and linguistically articulated, permeated by power, but yet critical and creative. Leading international scholars, representing a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, build upon Kögler's approach in this volume and explore the methodological, theoretical, and applicative scope of critical hermeneutics beyond the Frankfurt School. In doing so, they address some of the most pressing issues facing global society today, from multilingual education to the urgent need for interreligious and intercultural understanding. Closing with a response from Kögler himself, Hans-Herbert Kögler's Critical Hermeneutics also offers an exclusive account of the philosopher's contemporary re-appraisal of the core tenets of critical hermeneutics.

Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur were two of the most important hermeneutical philosophers of the twentieth century. Gadamer single-handedly revived hermeneutics as a philosophical field with his many essays and his masterpiece, Truth and Method. Ricoeur famously mediated the Gadamer-Habermas debate and advanced his own hermeneutical philosophy through a number of books addressing social theory, religion, psychoanalysis and political philosophy. This book brings Gadamer and Ricoeur into a hermeneutical conversation with each other through some of their most important commentators. Twelve leading scholars deliver contemporary assessments of the history and promise of hermeneutical philosophy, providing focused discussion on the work of these two key hermeneutical thinkers. The book shows how the horizons of their thought at once support and question each other and how, in many ways, the work of these two pioneering philosophers defines the issues and agendas for the new century.

Hermeneutics has frequently been dismissed as useful only for literary and textual analysis. Some consider it to be Eurocentric or inherently relativistic and thus unsuited to social critique. Lorenzo C. Simpson offers a persuasive and powerful argument that hermeneutics is a valuable tool not only for critical theory but also for robustly addressing many of the urgent issues of today. Simpson demonstrates that hermeneutics exhibits significant interpretive advantages compared to competing explanatory modalities. While it shares with pragmatism a suspicion of essentialism, an understanding that disagreements are situated, and an insistence on the dialogical nature of understanding, it nevertheless resolutely rejects the relativistic accounts of rationality that are often associated with pragmatism. In the tradition of Gadamer, Simpson firmly establishes hermeneutics as a resource for both philosophy and the social sciences. He shows its utility for unpacking intractable issues in the philosophy of science, multiculturalism, social epistemology, and racial and social justice in the global arena. Simpson addresses fraught questions such as why recent claims that “race” has a biological basis lack grounding, whether female genital excision can be critically addressed without invidious ethnocentrism, and how to lay the foundations for meaningful cross-cultural dialogue and reparative justice. This book reveals how hermeneutics can be a worthy partner with critical theory in achieving emancipatory aims.

The book reconsiders Paul Ricoeur’s speculative research from the perspective of a critical hermeneutics understood as a general methodology which is able to work at an interdisciplinary level. The specialisation of sciences results in a differentiation of knowledge that determines advancement, while also provoking a great increase of complexity and fragmentation. As such, among the human sciences, some problematic disciplines, like psychoanalysis, sociology and history, have not yet found a unified methodological and epistemological structure. This book argues that critical hermeneutics may work as a mediatory inter-discipline in this regard.

Explores the relevance of hermeneutics for modern human sciences, its history and development, and its key philosophical debates.