This paper argues that Gadamer's hermeneutics offers a methodological perspective for social and political theory that overcomes the impasse created by the dichotomy between the positivist and humanist approaches to social action. Both the positivists’attempt to replace the actors’subjective concepts with the objective concepts of the social scientist and the humanists’attempt to describe meaningful action strictly in the social actors’terms have been called into question in contemporary discussions. Gadamer's approach, which is based on the hermeneutical method of textual interpretation, offers (...) an alternative to both the positivist and humanist perspectives. Gadamer argues that understanding a text involves the fusing of the conceptual schemes of author and interpreter. Relying on Ricoeur's analysis of the parallels between actions and texts, it is argued that this understanding of the process of textual interpretation can be profitably applied to the analysis of social action. This application, furthermore, provides a means of analyzing social action that transcends the dichotomy between the positivist and humanist approaches. Gadamer's approach legitimizes the imposition of the observer's conceptual scheme without denying the constitutive role of the social actors’concepts. (shrink)

Written in the 1960s, TRUTH AND METHOD is Gadamer's magnum opus. Looking behind the self-consciousness of science, he discusses the tense relationship between truth and methodology. In examining the different experiences of truth, he aims to "present the hermeneutic phenomenon in its fullest extent.

This work is both an introduction to, and a reader in, contemporary hermeneutics. Included are papers by Betti, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Apel and Habermas.

"A fascinating and timely treatment of the objectivism versus relativism debates occurring in philosophy of science, literary theory, the social sciences, ...

This classic, first published in 1969, introduces to English-speaking readers a field which is of increasing importance in contemporary philosophy and theology--hermeneutics, the theory of understanding, or interpretation. Richard E. Palmer, utilizing largely untranslated sources, treats principally of the conception of hermeneutics enunciated by Heidegger and developed into a "philosophical hermeneutics" by Hans-Georg Gadamer. He provides a brief overview of the field by surveying some half-dozen alternate definitions of the term and by examining in detail the contributions of Friedrich Schleiermacher (...) and Wilhelm Dilthey. In the Manifesto which concludes the book, Palmer suggests the potential significance of hermeneutics for literary interpretation. (shrink)