In this paper I argue for the relevance of the philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer for contemporary feminist scholarship on epistemic injustice and oppression. Specifically, I set out to argue for the Gadamerian notion of hermeneutical openness as an important hermeneutic virtue, and a potential remedy for existing epistemic injustices. In doing so I follow feminist philosophers such as Linda Martín Alcoff and Georgia Warnke that have adopted the insights of Gadamer for the purpose of social and feminist philosophy. (...) Further, this paper is positioned in relation to a recent book chapter by Cynthia Nielsen and David Utsler in which they argue for the complementarity, and intersecting themes and concerns of Gadamer's hermeneutics and Miranda Fricker's work on epistemic injustice. However, Nielsen and Utsler solely focus on Fricker's conception of epistemic injustice and the two forms of epistemic injustice, testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice, that she identifies. In this paper I expand their analysis by considering other forms of epistemic injustice such as wilful hermeneutical ignorance and contributory injustice. Thus, this paper contributes to the budding literature on the relevance of Gadamer's work for the debates pertaining to epistemic injustice and oppression by expanding such analysis to other forms of epistemic injustice, and by further arguing for the strength of Gadamer's work in terms of offering relevant insights for the reduction and remedy of existing epistemic injustices. (shrink)

In this article I will reflect on interreligious dialogue and the tensive relation between openness and identity from a theological perspective. First, I consider the so‐called theology of religions and the threefold soteriological typology of exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism. Second, I address one of the main criticisms of this approach, namely that the soteriological approach amounts to a perversion of the virtue of openness. This critique is articulated especially within particularism, a model which sets out to move beyond (...) the soteriological fixation of the classical theology of religions. Because this relatively new model has not yet been analyzed systematically in the relevant literature, I will analyze some of its main tenets. I focus especially on the way this model sets out to alter the terms of the discussion on the dialogical tension between openness and commitment by claiming that hermeneutical openness should precede soteriological appreciation. Third, I turn to comparative theology as a fertile expression of particularism. Comparative theology presents itself as a genuinely adequate way to understand and appreciate the otherness of the religious other without losing sight of one's own identity. Moreover, comparative theology gives a new twist to the discussion on the dialogical tension between openness and commitment. Whereas the classical theology of religions seems to be actuated by the conviction that it is both possible and necessary to come to a final and definite soteriological appreciation of the religions, comparative theology sees interreligious encounter first and foremost as an ongoing conversational process, which can yield preliminary results only. It is my contention that this marks the nature of real and authentic dialogue. (shrink)

This book delves into Carl Schmitt's early legal works and explores their hermeneutic nature. Drawing on the insights of the giants of existential hermeneutics, such as Heidegger and Gadamer, we illuminate the essence of hermeneutic thought - the existential openness inherent in us as human beings, and then examine its implications for Carl Schmitt's early legal thought. The journey that this text embarks on reveals that the openness inherent in human beings inevitably extends to the legal phenomenon. This (...) realisation exposes two potential pitfalls or flawed appropriations within juridico-hermeneutical activity. First, there's the scientism that restricts law strictly to positive legislation, depriving it of its broader scope. Second, there's what might be called legal romanticism, in which the interpreter, on the basis of whim and subjectivity, dictates what the law means. The book delves into Schmitt's early works, highlighting his awareness of these extremes and the ways in which he addresses them. (shrink)

This article deploys Whitehead's systematic metaphysics as the basis for a philosophical hermeneutics. Whiteheadian hermeneutics are then compare and contrasted with Schleiermacher's own hermeneutics.

O cuidado espiritual é considerado um aspecto intrínseco às boas práticas de cuidados paliativos. Contudo, este é um desafio a profissionais de saúde. Há carência de propostas cientificamente embasadas e não religiosas para identificar e atender as necessidades existenciais/espirituais de pacientes e familiares. Este artigo tem como objetivo apresentar uma ferramenta de cuidado espiritual denominada Modelo Diamante ou _Ars Moriendi_, desenvolvida por um pesquisador holandês que a concebeu a partir de elementos extraídos de sua pesquisa empírica. O modelo é teoricamente (...) baseado em estruturas antropológicas não morais e não religiosas e está aberto a pessoas de uma variedade de origens culturais e religiosas. Tanto capelães quanto equipes multidisciplinares podem usar essa ferramenta hermenêutica. Ela ajuda a melhor compreender e atender as necessidades espirituais de pacientes e familiares nas dimensões que envolvem autonomia, sofrimento, relacionamentos, questões pendentes e esperança. A apresentação do Modelo Diamante ao público brasileiro também é um convite para testá-lo e avaliá-lo em estudos futuros que investiguem a espiritualidade em cuidados paliativos no Brasil. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers—analytic as well as continental—tend to feel uneasy about Ernst Tugendhat, who, though he positions himself in the analytic field, poses questions in the Heideggerian style. Tugendhat was one of Martin Heidegger's last pupils and his least obedient, pursuing a new and controversial critical technique. Tugendhat took Heidegger's destruction of Being as presence and developed it in analytic philosophy, more specifically in semantics. Only formal semantics, according to Tugendhat, could answer the questions left open by Heidegger. Yet in doing (...) this, Tugendhat discovered the latent "hermeneutic nature of analytic philosophy"—its post-metaphysical dimension—in which "there are no facts, but only true propositions." What Tugendhat seeks to answer is this: What is the meaning of thought following the linguistic turn? Because of the rift between analytic and continental philosophers, very few studies have been written on Tugendhat, and he has been omitted altogether from several histories of philosophy. Now that these two schools have begun to reconcile, Tugendhat has become an example of a philosopher who, in the words of Richard Rorty, "built bridges between continents and between centuries." Tugendhat is known more for his philosophical turn than for his phenomenological studies or for his position within analytic philosophy, and this creates some confusion regarding his philosophical propensities. Is Tugendhat analytic or continental? Is he a follower of Wittgenstein or Heidegger? Does he belong in the culture of analysis or in that of tradition? Santiago Zabala presents Tugendhat as an example of merged horizons, promoting a philosophical historiography that is concerned more with dialogue and less with classification. In doing so, he places us squarely within a dialogic culture of the future and proves that any such labels impoverish philosophical research. (shrink)

In this article I suggest that in arguing that God has only present knowledge, falling short of the classical understanding of divine forekowledge, openview theologians imply a paradigmatic change in the hermeneutical principles of theological methodology. This change takes place when they abandon t..

This scholarly and engaging text focuses on John Milton’s poetry and prose as the locus of a hermeneutic model of the interpretation of meaning which is radically different from modern scientific understandings of interpretation as a matter of discovery or the uncovering of knowledge.

The author argues that Günter Figal sheds novel light on language in his recent Objectivity: The Hermeneutical and Philosophy through a debate he appears to stage with the position Jacques Derrida develops in some of his early essays on deconstruction. Figal describes language as a form of showing and emphasizes the openness and flexibility of expression involved in determining significance. Yet, he rejects the idea he finds in Derrida that such flexibility should lead us to wholesale suspicion of (...) the capacity of language to fix significance. Whereas Derrida concludes that all attempts to fix significance through supplementation of our expressions can only end in the need for further supplementation, Figal stresses the dialectical mien of language that allows supplementation to yield genuinely determinate significances. (shrink)

More than fifteen years have now passed since the publication of Dominique Janicaud’s book Phenomenology “Wide Open” —the sequel to his controversial essay published in Phenomenology and the “Theological Turn.”1 There, as is widely known, Janicaud raised the question of whether the phenomenological enterprises of figures such as Emmanuel Levinas, Michel Henry, and Jean-Luc Marion were marked by a “theological turn” and, if so, whether such a turn was phenomenologically warranted. At this point, a voluminous literature over this debate exists, (...) much of it defending the accused against those charges.2 Perhaps as an indirect result of that focus, there has been relatively little discussion of .. (shrink)

A groundbreaking work that uncovers an implicit system of hermeneutics in traditional Chinese thought and aesthetics.

Tim Ingold draws a sharp line between animism and hylomorphism, that is, between his relational ontology and a rival genealogical ontology. He argues that genealogical hylomorphism collapses under a fallacy of circularity, while his relationism does not. Yet Ingold fails to distinguish between vicious or fallacious circles, on the one hand, and virtuous or hermeneutic circles, on the other. I demonstrate that hylomorphism and Ingold’s relational animism are both virtuously circular. Hence, there is no difference between them on this count. (...) A path thus opens for what I call hylomorphic animism. While Ingold’s relational animism leads into obscurity, hylomorphic animism is able to explain the differences in power between material things. (shrink)

The significance of critical phenomenology for psychiatric praxis has yet to be expounded. In this paper, I argue that the adoption of a critical phenomenological stance can remedy localised instances of hermeneutical injustice, which may arise in the encounter between clinicians and patients with psychosis. In this context, what is communicated is often deemed to lack meaning or to be difficult to understand. While a degree of un-shareability is inherent to subjective life, I argue that issues of unintelligibility can (...) be addressed by shifting from individualistic conceptions of understanding to an interactionist view. This takes into account the contextual, historical and relational background within which meaning is co-constituted. I conclude by providing a corrective for hermeneutical injustice, which entails a specific attentiveness towards the person’s subjectivity, a careful sensitivity to contingent meaning-generating structures, and a degree of hermeneutical flexibility as an attitude of openness towards alternative horizons of possibility. (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)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

The (dis)information age represses questioning and distorts what we take to be genuine questioning. Most studies construe questions as “epistemic imperatives,” and critics reject it as exploitative. In its defense, this chapter isolates the significance of indeterminacy in questioning. It develops a hermeneutic of questioning to show its priority in receiving meanings, and exposes that shared questioning makes the questioners too indeterminate to claim one is exploiting the other. It also develops a phenomenology of questioning to identify what it is (...) people share when they share questions and reach an understanding through them. On the acting or noetic side, it is like the dehiscence of our bodies, where its openness consists in its both feeling and being felt. Questioning is dehiscent in that it opens understanding to enfold new meaning. On the content or noematic side, questioning expresses subject matters in the state of indeterminacy, where a topic is suspended in a network of predicative possibilities. Through questioning, we gain empowerment to determine things for ourselves, to take responsibility for our own answers. (shrink)

Digital technologies are frequently considered as lacking material aspects. Today, it is evident that behind digital technologies lies a huge and complex material infrastructure in the form of fiber optic cables, servers, satellites, and screens. Postphenomenology has theorized the relations to material things as embodiment relations. Taking into account that technologies can also have hermeneutic aspects, this theory defines hermeneutic relations as those in which we read the world through technologies. The article opens with a review of some theoretical developments (...) to hermeneutic relations with a special focus on digital technologies. The article suggests that in the digital world, material hermeneutics needs to be updated as it shifts from a scientific to an everyday technological context. Now, technologies not only “give voice” to things, they also produce new meanings to informational structures and direct users to certain meanings. When it comes to digital technologies, especially those involving artificial intelligence (AI), the technology actively mediates the world. In postphenomenological terms, it possesses a technological intentionality. The postphenomenological formula should be updated to reflect this type of technological intentionality, by reversing the arrow of intentionality so that it points to the user, rather than from the user. (shrink)

Today, there is an emerging interest for the potential role of hermeneutics in reflecting on the practices related to digital technologies and their consequences. Nonetheless, such an interest has neither given rise to a unitary approach nor to a shared debate. The primary goal of this paper is to map and synthetize the different existing perspectives to pave the way for an open discussion on the topic. The article is developed in two steps. In the first section, the authors analyze (...) digital hermeneutics “in theory” by confronting and systematizing the existing literature. In particular, they stress three main distinctions among the approaches: between “methodological” and “ontological” digital hermeneutics; between data- and text-oriented digital hermeneutics; and between “quantitative” and “qualitative” credos in digital hermeneutics. In the second section, they consider digital hermeneutics “in action”, by critically analyzing the uses of digital data for studying a classical object such as the political opinion. In the conclusion, we will pave the way to an ontological turn in digital hermeneutics. Most of this article is devoted to the methodological issue of interpreting with digital machines. The main task of an ontological digital hermeneutics would consist instead in wondering if it is legitimate, and eventually to which extent, to speak of digital technologies, or at least of some of them, as interpretational machines. (shrink)

Hermeneutics and Deconstruction provides an assessment of two dominant modes of thinking and writing in continental philosophy today. It addresses central issues in the theory of interpretation and in the strategies of textual reading. Placed in the context of contemporary philosophical practice, this volume raises the question of the “end” of philosophy and offers different ways of understanding how the question of “closure” in philosophy can itself open up a whole range of philosophical activities. Special attention is given to the (...) practice of interpretation in the areas of science, perception, and literature, and to the dimensions of hermeneutic understanding with respect to being, life, and the world. An investigation of how history is interpreted and read as a text provides access to one of the significant differences between hermeneutic understanding and deconstructionist practice. A section is devoted to the controversy concerning the value and the achievement of deconstruction. The writings of Heidegger and Derrida are juxtaposed and examined. And the volume concludes with several indications of new directions in continental philosophy and various versions of what a post-Derridean reading might entail. (shrink)

A review of the achievements of Fr. Busa over the course of his 60 years of work in the area of computational linguistics: internal hypertexts, the systematization of allographs, lemmatization, homographs and typologies; the lexical system; the laws of economy for graphemes, for semantic typology, for heterogeneity among terms, and of the two lexical hemispheres. Finally, the project of disciplined languages is mentioned, a response to the linguistic challenge resulting from informational globalization.

Digital technologies are frequently considered as lacking material aspects. Today, it is evident that behind digital technologies lies a huge and complex material infrastructure in the form of fiber optic cables, servers, satellites, and screens. Postphenomenology has theorized the relations to material things as embodiment relations. Taking into account that technologies can also have hermeneutic aspects, this theory defines hermeneutic relations as those in which we read the world through technologies. The article opens with a review of some theoretical developments (...) to hermeneutic relations with a special focus on digital technologies. The article suggests that in the digital world, material hermeneutics needs to be updated as it shifts from a scientific to an everyday technological context. Now, technologies not only “give voice” to things, they also produce new meanings to informational structures and direct users to certain meanings. When it comes to digital technologies, especially those involving artificial intelligence (AI), the technology actively mediates the world. In postphenomenological terms, it possesses a technological intentionality. The postphenomenological formula should be updated to reflect this type of technological intentionality, by reversing the arrow of intentionality so that it points to the user, rather than from the user. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker's original presentation of Hermeneutical Injustice left open theoretical choice points leading to criticisms and subsequent clarifications with the resulting dialectic appearing largely verbal. The absence of perspicuous exposition of hallmarks of Hermeneutical Injustice might suggest scenarios exhibiting some – but not all – such hallmarks are within its purview when they are not. The lack of clear hallmarks of Hermeneutical Injustice, moreover, obscures both the extent to which Fricker's proposed remedy Hermeneutical Justice – roughly, (...) virtuous communicative practices – adequately addresses the injustice, and the accuracy of criticisms suggesting that Hermeneutical Justice is insufficient to the task. In what follows, after briefly defending necessary and sufficient conditions for what I take to be the best candidate interpretation of Hermeneutical Injustice, I build on recent work on moral responsibility to construct and defend a rigorous explication of Hermeneutical Justice. (shrink)

The paper applies Gadamerian hermeneutics to everyday situations of nonverbal social interaction in the urban space. First, relevant aspects of urban encounters are briefly discussed with philosophical hermeneutics’ relation to nonverbal communication and bodily understanding. Second, hermeneutic understanding is presented as conversation, and the ethical implications of hermeneutics are articulated: as philosophical practice, Gadamerian hermeneutics is about intensifying the voice of the other. There is a demand for mutual openness towards otherness. Connected to this attitude required for hermeneutic encounters (...) are the ideas of a cosmopolitan public sphere and an inclusive hermeneutic community. After attending to these, the value of specifically urban encounters can be articulated. Urban context and built environment can in good circumstances assist in encountering the other hermeneutically. The passing communicative situations can be negotiations of meanings and values, instances of public sphere. The urban mass society with its crowds has potentiality to enact an inclusive hermeneutic community. To conclude, the consequences of our failures to engage hermeneutically with each other are discussed in a plea for hermeneutic openness. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on the notion of clinical medicine as a hermeneutical enterprise and to bridge the gap between the general perspectives of hermeneutics and the particularities of medical practice. The case of a patient with low back pain is analyzed. The discussion centers around the metaphor of the patient as a text and a model of five social discourses about low back pain. The problems addressed are: (1) the nature of a moral experience, (...) (2) the variety of available texts, (3) the difference between the doctor's and patient's narratives, and (4) the patient's and doctor's responsibility regarding the existential, biographical meaning of an illness. Although many problems are left unsolved, it is argued that from a philosophical point of view the notion of medicine as a hermeneutical enterprise opens up the possibility of gaining insight in the foundations of the clinical encounter. (shrink)

This work aims to show, in the first place, that the ratiovitalism of Jose Ortega y Gasset is one of the possible lines of the hermeneutic transformation process of contemporary thinking. Nietzsche’s hermeneutical mark on the development of Ortega’s thinking is clear in some very relevant aspects, such as the importance of the body and the innovative notion of life, both of which are decisive issues to understand sport. Secondly, an attempt is made to tap into the rich reflections (...) of Ortega y Gasset on sport, which have a considerable impact on the entire human life, based on the claim of a notion of living body and of a new notion of life. Sport forms part of a vital horizon that is not reduced by the narrow utilitarian perspective, but which announces the superior form of human existence, opening up to a festival and creative meaning of life. This requires a discipline that is not merely satisfied with correctly complying with some standards, but which encourages indefinite improvement. The attribute of sport is creative vitality, a new way of understanding life. Because, based on this new vital perspective, homo oeconomicus can no longer be used as a model, but rather, the vital phenomenon understood in a sporting manner is festival, joyful, creative, agonal and Olympic, freely vigorous, a meaningful source of energy. Life is, in principle, creation, a creative experiment, as in the Nietzschean conception. (shrink)

The claim that there are significant parallels and connections between hermeneutics and humanism may be plausible from the mere fact that the magnum opus of contemporary hermeneutics, Gadamer's Truth and Method, opens with a chapter on “The significance of the humanist tradition for the human sciences”, which is discussed in this chapter. A brief interpretation of the Gadamer's chapter and its philosophical background will be followed by a short interpretive reconstruction of the origin and history of the concept of humanism (...) and its interconnections with hermeneutics. Possible or plausible consequences of what has been said include the following two theses: hermeneutics is humanism; and the contemporary form of humanism is hermeneutics. From this perspective, hermeneutics may be said to be the heir of the legacy of the humanist tradition and may be entitled to be called its form in the twentieth and twentieth‐first centuries more than any other philosophical stance. (shrink)

To have a theory of religion before studying religion would make the study superfluous unless there is openness for change, openness for new horizons emerging. However, we need to understand that contextual meaningfulness is not the same as relativism. The search for a common framework presupposes the reality of and possibility of the same. Men can determine the rules of a particular language-game; but, they cannot create the laws of logic. So, while hermeneutics must pay attention to both (...) content and context, it must also watch to keep to the principles that are universal and absolute – that are common. (shrink)

Recently Alain Badiou and Quentin Meillassoux have attacked the core of the phenomenological hermeneutic tradition: its commitment to the finitude of human understanding. If accurate, this critique threatens to render the whole tradition a topic of merely historical interest. Given the depth of the criticism, this essay aims to establish a provisional defense of hermeneutics. After briefly reviewing each critique, it is argued that Badiou and Meillassoux themselves face rather intractable difficulties. These difficulties, then, open the space for a hermeneutic (...) response, which is accomplished largely by drawing on the work of Paul Ricoeur. We close with a suggested program for hermeneutic thought. (shrink)

Proceeding from the debate opened by Beck, Giddens and Lash’s Reflexive Modernization, this paper seeks to clear the way for a more consistent and coherent concept of reflexivity in relation to the cultural-symbolic foundations of society. Seeing that Lash in his contribution to the debate inadvertently raises a key problem, i.e., the broad cognitive problem, the paper develops a critique of his hermeneutic culturalism. It focuses on the disparity between the position explicitly put forward in the debate with Beck and (...) Giddens and the cognitive one which more or less implicitly comes into play throughout his relevant essays. The disparity shows up already in his treatment of the problem of mediation, but it comes graphically to a head in his appropriation of Bourdieu. To lend the analysis some profile and depth, the argument is supported by elements of a socio-cognitive theory which has been gaining visibility in both social theory and the philosophy of social science. While the paper is critical of Lash, its overall aim is to strengthen his contribution to the debate. (shrink)

Interpretation and politics merge in one the famous story of Joseph's power of dream interpretation in the Hebrew Bible. Rome's College of Augurs reinforces the entwinement of interpretation, power, religion, and folklore that one can also find in the earlier context of the Delphic Oracle. Augury reminds us that understanding happens in the context of an event, a context that presupposes one is missing something, lacking the necessary vision or foresight, and help is called for. Most of the contemporary scholars (...) who write about philosophical hermeneutics, the tradition which includes Martin Heidegger and Hans‐Georg Gadamer, are allergic to politics in the proletarian sense of that word. Party politics and parliamentarian procedures receive almost no attention in the secondary literature on contemporary hermeneutics. Assertion about the political incompetence of philosophy opens the door to an esoteric tradition in philosophy that includes Plato's “secret doctrine”, and stretches back to Pythagoras and Heraclitus. (shrink)

This collection brings together eighteen of the author's original papers, previously published in a variety of academic journals and edited collections over the last three decades, on the process of interpretation in literature and the visual arts in one comprehensive volume. The volume highlights the centrality of artistic texts to the study of multimodality, organized into six sections each representing a different modality or semiotic system, including literature, television, film, painting, sculpture, and architecture. A new introduction lays the foundation for (...) the theoretically based method of analysis running through each of the chapters, one that emphasizes the interplay of textual details and larger thematic purposes to create an open-ended and continuous approach to the interpretation of artistic texts, otherwise known as the "hermeneutic spiral". Showcasing Michael O'Toole's extensive contributions to the field of multimodality and in his research on interpretation in literature and the visual arts, this book is essential reading for students and scholars in multimodality, visual arts, art history, film studies, and comparative literature. (shrink)

This chapter carries out an analysis of the manner in which dialectics is reappropriated and transformed by Hans‐Georg Gadamer and Theodor W. Adorno. If hermeneutics and critical theory can be seen as legitimate successors of Hegel's dialectical tradition, it is precisely thanks to the efforts of Adorno and Gadamer. Both Adorno's and Gadamer's reappraisals of Hegel's philosophy take the form of a drawing out of Hegelian dialectics what is implicit in its own premises. By examining the intellectual experience that the (...) principle of contradiction expresses, Adorno demonstrates that nonidentity is precisely the driving force behind Hegel's idealistic dialectics. The abandonment of the oppositional‐critical character of dialectics that marks Gadamer's fundamental difference from Adorno's negative dialectics, and makes it necessary for Gadamer to rebrand his method as hermeneutic: no longer critique, but rather understanding and interpretation in the shared and open‐ended dialogical process. (shrink)

There has been a longstanding and acrimonious debate in the human sciences over the role played by classic texts. Advocates of the classic insist its value is timeless and rests on the intrinsic superiority of its cognitive insights and aesthetic virtues. Critics, by contrast, argue that the respect accorded the classic is spurious because it conceals the ideological assumptions, tensions and discontinuities of tradition. This paper seeks a solution through the account of ‘the classical’ brought by Hans-Georg Gadamer in Truth (...) and Method, which acknowledges a text’s ‘eminence’ as well as its ‘historicity’. Following the introduction, the paper divides into four sections. Section one, notes that the hermeneutic account of tradition describes it as being open to challenge rather than closed and unchangeable, and that the classic, as grounded in tradition, will conserve difficulty as readily as comfortable certainty. Section two focuses on the idea that in the classic we find matter ‘properly portrayed’, while section three notes the importance of ‘application’ for an understanding of classic texts. It is noted that both ‘proper portrayal’ and ‘application’ depend on recognising the role of the fusion of historical horizons in generating classic texts. The final section challenges the criticism that the classic is no more than a reflection of the institutional power wielded by the canon, arguing instead that the classic and the canon are different entities, and conflating them in favour of the latter, misleadingly reduces classic-ness to being no more than an effect of canonicity. (shrink)

Computer simulation has become important in ecological modeling, but there have been few assessments on how complex simulation models differ from more traditional analytic models. In Part I of this paper, I review the challenges faced in complex ecological modeling and how models have been used to gain theoretical purchase for understanding natural systems. I compare the use of traditional analytic simulation models and point how that the two methods require different kinds of practical engagement. I examine a case study (...) of three models from the insect resistance literature in transgenic crops to illustrate and explore differences in analytic and computer simulation models. I argue that analyzing simulation models has been often inappropriately managed with expectations derived from handling analytic models. In Part II, I look at simulation as a hermeneutic practice. I argue that simulation models are a practice or techné. I the explore five aspects of philosophical hermeneutics that may be useful in complex ecological simulation: (1) an openness to multiple perspectives allowing multiple levels of scientific pluralism, (2) the hermeneutic circle, a back and forth in active communication among both modelers and ecologists; (3) the recognition of human factors and the nature of human practices as such, including recognizing the role of judgments and choices in the modeling enterprise; (4) the importance of play in modeling; (5) the non-closed nature of hermeneutic engagement, continued dialogue, and recognizing the situatedness, incompleteness, and tentative nature of simulation models. (shrink)

Despite the fact that Chan, especially koan Chan is highly unconventional and perplexing, there are still some principles with which to interpret and appreciate the practice. Each of the five houses or lineages of Chan has its idiosyncratic hermeneutic rules. The Linji House has Linji si liao jian, si bin zhu and si zhao yong among others while the Yunmen House follows Yumen san ju as one of its house rules. Moreover, there is a general inner logic that seems to (...) apply to understanding Chan encounters across lineages. The opportune moment (Chan Ji) of responding swiftly and skillfully and yet always grounding oneself in the openness and flow of the mind highlights the inner logic of the cognition and behavior of Chan Buddhists. This paper attempts to read koans from The Blue Cliff Record in the light of Chan Buddhist hermeneutics. Some aspects and patterns of Chan encounters may appear as rituals that serve either as a provisional means for common people or as an embodiment of enlightened behaviors. Routinized ritualization of Chan life, however, runs counter to the fundamental spirit of freedom and spontaneity of Chan way of life. Much can and needs to be elucidated about the mystified koan Chan experience before we finally resort to the transpersonal experience of noble silence. (shrink)

Abstract:This article applies hermeneutics and conceptual metaphor theory to the cross-cultural encounter with China's philosophical metaphors. Philosophical hermeneutics draws attention to the fore-structures of understanding and the traditional horizons that condition interpretations of the world, and to a notion of truth as transformative experience. Conceptual metaphor theory draws attention to the ubiquity of cognitive metaphors as structures of anticipation and sources of meaning. Together they give us a notion of "fore-metaphors" that both condition and enable our encounters with truth and (...) meaning. Chinese philosophy's deeply embedded metaphors—such as water, family, and harmony—have profound implications. Thinking through the eff ects of our fore-metaphors can help overcome the cultural distance separating Western and Chinese philosophies. A hermeneutic attitude of openness and willingness to allow further truth to reform our fore-having could help us understand Chinese metaphors in a fusion of horizons that alters our way of being in the world. (shrink)

This article addresses the ongoing debate between transcendental pragmatics and philosophical hermeneutics. I argue that Apel's version of linguistic transcendentalism is to be refuted, if one succeeds in demonstrating that the normative conditions of intersubjective validity of the argumentative discourse are `derivable' from the fore-structure of the discursive-practical medium of communication. Loci for specifically hermeneutical investigations of this fore-structure include the proto-normativity of the discursive practices, the effective-historical openness of the medium of communication, and the interplay between argumentative (...) discourse and medium. (shrink)

This paper discusses the contribution of a prolific author and an Egyptian scholar Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd and his hermeneutical approach to the Qur’an. The article argues that Abu Zayd is a Muslim reformer of the twentieth century through his takwil. His hermeneutical concept is questioning the “an-nash ” tradition of the Qur’an and the transformation of Arab culture from oral to text-oriented culture in the earliest history of the Qur’an. He differentiates between tanzil to takwil. This article (...) further argues that Abu Zayd’s hermeneutical concept should be understood from the history of revelation which speaks to a particular community and respond to a particular situation. Thus, the Qur’an itself is a living phenomenon and open for interpretation, rather than a closed corpus. (shrink)

Hunger is both a natural and social phenomenon. On one hand, it is a natural, biological state that affects everyone, everywhere, in every historical time. On the other hand, our perceptions, attitudes, and experiences of hunger are far from uniform. We think about it differently in different contexts and settings depending on its causes and consequences. The same event—the same pangs, emptiness, and lack of energy associated with the desire for food—takes on different meanings depending on who is hungry, when, (...) where, and why. That is to say, it is a matter of interpretation like any other human affair. However, just because it is open to interpretation does not mean that all opinions are equally valid, or that there is nothing objectively true about it. On the contrary, there is a good deal of agreement about what hunger is and where it comes from. Both the biological and socio-economic causes are well-researched, albeit far from settled. Yet, hunger is a surprisingly elastic concept that covers a number of different experiences. Consequently, different practical, moral, and political responses might be appropriate depending on how it’s interpreted. The four main classes of hunger are: involuntary, voluntary, scientific, and political. Each has its particular actors, explanations, and outcomes; each takes place in different social and historical setting; and each has its own solutions beyond simply putting food into empty stomachs. After briefly examining the relevance of hermeneutics for understanding the variety of hungers, this paper will analyze several different forms and changing definitions of it. Although the meaning of hunger may be indeterminate and solutions to it debatable, we can always explain ourselves and understand conflicting interpretations. (shrink)

Understanding how a nurse acts in a particular situation reveals how nurses enact their ethics in day-to-day nursing. Our ethical frameworks assist us when we experience serious ethical dilemmas. Yet how a nurse responds in situations of daily practice is contingent upon all the presenting cues that build the current moment. In this article, we look at how a home care nurse responds to the ethical opening that arises when the nurse enters a person’s home. We discuss how the home (...) presents the nurse with knowledge that informs the provision of ethical nursing care. The analysis is based on findings from an interpretive research study in palliative home care in Canada. Through interpretive analysis of a nursing situation we delineate how the nurse engages with the whole and acts inside the moment. The analysis shows how home care nurses are ethically determined to engage with whatever is going on in a patient’s home. (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)

Drew Leder's Clinical Interpretation: The Hermeneutics of Medicine [1] is an essay which understates its case and thereby opens itself to misinterpretation. This response to Leder argues for a more thorough-going hermeneutic for both medicine and science. At the conceptual as well as the practical level, modern medicine and its scientific foundations are hermeneutic enterprises. The purpose of this essay is to argue that we should not back away from this more radical thesis. Embracing it will result in less alienation (...) of physicians from patients, and of physicians from the tasks of medicine. (shrink)

The underlying premise of this essay is that the essential contribution of the hermeneutic turn in contemporary philosophy is the acknowledgment of a historical criterion of thinking, whereby the philosophical tradition is claimed by the question of its own truth. Philosophy, historically established by founding experience in truth, thus finds itself facing the open experience of truth, i.e. the truth as the coming about of the openness. Philosophical hermeneutics, as differing from hermeneutic philosophy, cannot limit itself solely to interpretative (...) criticism. Rather, it must follow the opening of truth primarily happening in transit from thinking to language. And the moment of this transit is the question of ourselves. (shrink)