Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences - Classic Text | Alexandria
Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences (Paul Ricoeur) designates a pivotal investigation into how interpretive methods shape our understanding of human existence and social realities. More than just a guide to interpreting texts, it delves into the very conditions that make interpretation possible, challenging any notion that the human sciences can emulate the objectivity of the natural sciences.
The roots of this inquiry are inextricably tied to the hermeneutic tradition, traceable back to the 19th-century work of figures like Friedrich Schleiermacher and Wilhelm Dilthey, who sought to establish a distinct methodology for understanding human experience. Dilthey, in his unfinished Critique of Historical Reason (c. 1883), wrestled with how to bridge the gap between subjective experience and objective knowledge, an issue Ricoeur grapples with directly. These early attempts to define the human sciences arose during a period of intense debate about the nature of knowledge and the authority of science—debates fueled by the rise of positivism and historical relativism.
Ricoeur's contribution lies in his engagement with structuralism and psychoanalysis, arguing that these "sciences of suspicion" reveal the limitations of surface-level interpretations. He posited that understanding involves navigating a "hermeneutics of suspicion" by critically acknowledging how ideology, power, and unconscious drives shape meaning. This approach leads Ricoeur to focus on the “distanciation” inherent within all forms of communication. How does the meaning intended at the origin of a text or action persist and evolve as it encounters new audiences and contexts? Ricoeur attempts to mediate the seeming opposition between explaining and understanding, drawing on narrative theory to demonstrate how our understanding of self is dynamically constructed through story.
Ultimately, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences presents a vision of interpretation as an ongoing dialogue between the reader or observer and the text or phenomenon being studied. This dialogue is far from neutral, but rather, it necessitates a careful consideration of the historical, social, and psychological factors influencing both the interpreter and the interpreted. By questioning the nature of objectivity in the human sciences and emphasizing the role of interpretation in shaping our understanding of ourselves and the world, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences invites us to ask: can true objectivity ever be achieved, or is human understanding always, fundamentally, an act of interpretation?