Hermeneutics And The Human Sciences

John B. Thompson's collection of translated essays forms an illuminating introduction to Paul Ricoeur's prolific contributions to sociological theory.

A collection in translation of essays by Paul Ricoeur.

For some two centuries, scholars have wrestled with questions regarding the nature and logic of history as a discipline and, more broadly, with the entire complex of the "human sciences, " with include theology, philosophy, history, literature, the fine arts, and languages. The fundamental issue is whether the human sciences are a special class of studies with a specifically distinct object and method or whether they must be subsumed under the natural sciences. German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey dedicated the bulk of his long career to there and related questions. His Introduction to the Human Sciences is a pioneering effort to elaborate a general theory of the human sciences, especially history, and to distinguish these sciences radically from the field of natural sciences. Though the Introduction was never completed, it remains one of the major statements of the topic. Together with other works by Dilthey, it has had a substantial influence on the recognition and human sciences as a fundamental division of human knowledge and on their separation from the natural sciences in origin, nature, and method. As a contribution to the issue of the methodologies of the humanities and social sciences, the Introduction rightly claims a place. This is the first time the entire work is available in English. In his introductory essay, translator Ramon J. Betanzos surveys Dilthey's life and thought and hails his efforts to create a foundational science for the particular human sciences, and at the same time, takes serious issue with Dilthey's historical/critical evaluation of metaphysics.

First published in 2004. This study begins by surveying the field of modern hermeneutics. Noting its repeated crisis of self-legitimisation, it traces these to circular beliefs bequeathed by Romanticism that human nature is self-begetting, and can thus be known intimately and autonomously. After providing a historical overview of how human nature had been understood, the focus shifts to the attack in Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria on Wordsworth’s 1802 Preface to Lyrical Ballads, and to a reading of some key Romantic texts. It reads Coleridge’s famous definition of the imagination as an attack on Romantic hermeneuticsm, roots in the traditional view that man has been created in Imago Dei. This title will be of interest to students of literature.

Originally published in 1978, this important work, by one of the leading European social theorists, is arguably the best introduction to the hermeneutic tradition as a whole. It is designed to help students of sociology and philosophy place the problems of "understanding social science" in their historical and philosophical context. It does so by presenting the major current in sociological thought as responses to the challenge of hermeneutics. The idea that true knowledge of social life can be attained only if human conduct is seen as meaningful action whose meaning is accordingly grasped has been presented as a discovery of recent sociology. In fact its history is long and its connections plentiful, reaching beyond the boundaries of sociology itself. Yet it is in sociology that the hermeneutic tradition has attracted most interest but most misinterpretation. The debate is in full swing and there is no attempt to offer "correct" solutions - the emphasis instead is upon revealing the strengths and weaknesses of each of the main approaches. However it is Bauman's view that the theory of understanding may achieve valid results only if it treats the problem of understanding as an aspect of the ongoing process of social life.

Published in 1997, this volume is written from a hermenutico-phenomenological point of view. The essays cover a spectrum of relevant issues: the essential interpretation of science; the possibility of a "strong hermeneutics of science" that takes into consideration science's cognitive structure; the implications of existential-ontological interpretations of science for the post-metaphysical dialogue between hermeneutics and epistomology; the place of rhetorical tools in the human sciences; and the strategies of overcoming the legitimation crisis of the human sciences. Because of its commitment to the radical universalization of the hermeneutic problem, the strong programme of hermeneutics of science, suggested in this book, avoids both objectivism and relativism. In this regard, the essays must be read in relation to the search for a middle way between defending epistemic rationality as a basis for futher development of the "project of modernity" and the postmodern deconstruction of all cognitive identities of modernity.

The most convenient and accessible guide to Gadamer currently available.