The Hermeneutical Argument

What justification does Habermas offer for his critique of Gadamer's hermeneutical approach to society and social science? Is Habermas's approach more justified than Gadamer's or other approaches (for example, neo-positivism, conventionalism, or postmodernism) you have seen in the course? In formulating your answer, it may be preview the Week Six readings, which details the theoretical underpinnings of Habermas's critical method.

The justification that Habermas offers for his critique of Gadamer's hermeneutical approach to society and social science is that Habermas argues that there is a political naïveté' of Gadamer's hermeneutics. According to Ramberg and Gjesdal (2005),

          In Habermas's view, Gadamer places too much emphasis on the authority of tradition, leaving no room for critical judgment and reflection. Reason is denied the power of a critical, distanced judgment. What is needed is therefore not just an analysis of the way in which we de facto are conditioned by history but a set of quasi-transcendental principles of validity in terms of which the claims of the tradition may be subjected to evaluation. Hermeneutics, Habermas argues, must be completed by a critical theory of society (para. 48).

As opposed to Betti (1955) and Hirsch (1967), Habermas does not claim that Gadamer's approach to hermeneutics is completely mistaken. He argued, rather, that Gadamer ascribes to hermeneutics an illegitimate kind of universality. Hence, the fundamental problem with Gadamer's hermeneutics would not be solved by calling for a hermeneutic method. Furthermore, Gadamer criticizes the use of a formal method, rather he ascribes to a certain standard of validity what Habermas says is, "quasi-transcendental principles of communicative reason" (para. 49).

Gadamer argued that it was never his intention to do away with validity, objectivity, and method in understanding rather he sought to, "investigate the conditions of possibility for understanding as such (Ramberg & Gjesdal, 2009). I agree with Gadamer's position that, "it is not the case that our situatedness within history is a limiting condition only: rather, as the space of human experience and reason, it opens up the world to us in the first place"(para. 51) and as such I feel Gadamer's approach is more justified.

It is worthwhile to note that Paul Ricoeur was a philosopher who proposed a new way (a third wave) of hermeneutics. His was seen as an alternative to an epistemic orientation to hermeneutics and to Gadamer's ontological distinction between validity and the factualness of interpretation.

Although the differences between the two are authentic, Ricoeur proposes an alternative that aims at combining convincing arguments of the two. Ricoeur agrees with Habermas that the hermeneutic approach goes hand in hand with critical reflection although he does think this requires nixing the field of tradition and historical texts. According to Ramberg and Gjesdal (2009), "...Ricoeur argues how the text itself may open up a space of existential and political possibilities. This dynamic, productive power of the text undermines the idea of reality as a fixed, unyielding network of authoritative patterns of interpretations" (para.

Finally, Ramberg and Gjesdal (2009) eloquently argued, "Appreciating hermeneutics as a living tradition is not, in the end, a matter of identifying a theory or a family of theories. It is fundamentally a matter of perceiving a moving horizon, engaging a strand of dialogue that is an on-going re-articulation of the dynamically historical nature of all human thought" (para. 69).

Good stuff.

References

Betti, E. (1955). Teoria generale della interpretazione. Milan: Giuffrè.

Habermas, J. (1965). Knowledge and human interests. In Delanty, G &

          Strydom, P. (Ed.), Philosophies of social science: The classic and

          contemporary readings. (pp. 234-245). Philadelphia, PA:

           McGraw-Hill.

Habermas, J. (1973). The hermeneutic claim to universality. In Delanty, G &

          Strydom, P. (Ed.), Philosophies of social science: The classic and

          contemporary readings. (pp. 164-171). Philadelphia, PA:

           McGraw-Hill.

Hirsch, E. D. (1967). Validity in interpretation. New Haven, CT: Yale

          University Press.

Ramberg, Bjørn and Gjesdal, Kristin, (Summer, 2009). Hermeneutics. The

          Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from

          <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2009/entries/hermeneutics/>.

Ricoeur, P. (1973). Towards a critical hermeneutic: Hermeneutics and the

          critique . In Delanty, G & Strydom, P. (Ed.), Philosophies of social

          science: The classic and contemporary readings. (pp. 172-181).

          Philadelphia, PA: McGraw-Hill.