Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences

Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences
Author: Paul Ricoeur
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2016-08-26
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1107144973

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

Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences

Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences
Author: Paul Ricoeur
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 1981-08-31
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780521280020

A collection in translation of essays by Paul Ricoeur.

Introduction to the Human Sciences

Introduction to the Human Sciences
Author: Wilhelm Dilthey
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Total Pages: 392
Release: 1988
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780814318980

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.

Hermeneutics and Social Science (Routledge Revivals)

Hermeneutics and Social Science (Routledge Revivals)
Author: Zygmunt Bauman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 440
Release: 2010-03-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1136955534

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.

Romanticism, Hermeneutics and the Crisis of the Human Sciences

Romanticism, Hermeneutics and the Crisis of the Human Sciences
Author: Scott Masson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2016-03-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317242572

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.

Interpretation and Social Knowledge

Interpretation and Social Knowledge
Author: Isaac Ariail Reed
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2011-08-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0226706729

For the past fifty years anxiety over naturalism has driven debates in social theory. One side sees social science as another kind of natural science, while the other rejects the possibility of objective and explanatory knowledge. Interpretation and Social Knowledge suggests a different route, offering a way forward for an antinaturalist sociology that overcomes the opposition between interpretation and explanation and uses theory to build concrete, historically specific causal explanations of social phenomena.

Hermeneutic Philosophies of Social Science

Hermeneutic Philosophies of Social Science
Author: Babette Babich
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 638
Release: 2017-10-23
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3110551578

Hermeneutic philosophies of social science offer an approach to the philosophy of social science foregrounding the human subject and including attention to history as well as a methodological reflection on the notion of reflection, including the intrusions of distortions and prejudice. Hermeneutic philosophies of social science offer an explicit orientation to and concern with the subject of the human and social sciences. Hermeneutic philosophies of the social science represented in the present collection of essays draw inspiration from Gadamer’s work as well as from Paul Ricoeur in addition to Michel de Certeau and Michel Foucault among others. Special attention is given to Wilhelm Dilthey in addition to the broader phenomenological traditions of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger as well as the history of philosophy in Plato and Descartes. The volume is indispensible reading for students and scholars interested in epistemology, philosophy of science, social social studies of knowledge as well as social studies of technology.

Wilhelm Dilthey: Selected Works, Volume III

Wilhelm Dilthey: Selected Works, Volume III
Author: Wilhelm Dilthey
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 415
Release: 2010-10-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 069114933X

This volume provides Dilthey's most mature and best formulation of his Critique of Historical Reason. It begins with three "Studies Toward the Foundation of the Human Sciences," in which Dilthey refashions Husserlian concepts to describe the basic structures of consciousness relevant to historical understanding. The volume next presents the major 1910 work The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences. Here Dilthey considers the degree to which carriers of history--individuals, cultures, institutions, and communities--can be articulated as productive systems capable of generating value and meaning and of realizing purposes. Hegel's idea of objective spirit is reconceived in a more empirical form to designate the medium of commonality in which historical beings are immersed. Any universal claims about history need to be framed within the specific productive systems analyzed by the various human sciences. Dilthey's drafts for the Continuation of the Formation contain extensive discussions of the categories most important for our knowledge of historical life: meaning, value, purpose, time, and development. He also examines the contributions of autobiography to historical understanding and of biography to scientific history. The finest summary of Dilthey's views on hermeneutics can be found in "The Understanding of Other Persons and Their Manifestations of Life." Here, Dilthey differentiates understanding relative to three kinds of manifestations of life. After giving his analysis of elementary understanding, he examines the role of induction in higher understanding and interpretation, and the relevance of transposition and re-experiencing for grasping individuality.

Hermeneutics and Phenomenology in Paul Ricoeur

Hermeneutics and Phenomenology in Paul Ricoeur
Author: Scott Davidson
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2016-07-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3319334263

Hermeneutics and Phenomenology in Paul Ricoeur: Between Text and Phenomenon calls attention to the dynamic interaction that takes place between hermeneutics and phenomenology in Ricoeur’s thought. It could be said that Ricoeur’s thought is placed under a twofold demand: between the rigor of the text and the requirements of the phenomenon. The rigor of the text calls for fidelity to what the text actually says, while the requirement of the phenomenon is established by the Husserlian call to return “to the things themselves.” These two demands are interwoven insofar as there is a hermeneutic component of the phenomenological attempt to go beyond the surface of things to their deeper meaning, just as there is a phenomenological component of the hermeneutic attempt to establish a critical distance toward the world to which we belong. For this reason, Ricoeur’s thought involves a back and forth movement between the text and the phenomenon. Although this double movement was a theme of many of Ricoeur’s essays in the middle of his career, the essays in this book suggest that hermeneutic phenomenology remains implicit throughout his work. The chapters aim to highlight, in much greater detail, how this back and forth movement between phenomenology and hermeneutics takes place with respect to many important philosophical themes, including the experience of the body, history, language, memory, personal identity, and intersubjectivity.