Chapter 2: Understanding Culture and History Flashcards
What is hermeneutics
The theory and methodology of interpretation (it has to do with how one understands anything and everything in life and is applicable to life itself)
What is the philosophy of being, existing, experience and interpretation
> ontology - is the philosophy of being
> existentialism - is the philosophy of existence
> phenomenology - is the philosophy of experience
> hermanutics - is the philosophy of interpretation
Why is hermeneutics important
- it describes how we make sense of the world around us
- it helps us to understand how things influence and change our perspectives
- it helps us to be critical of our own understanding
- hermeneutics is essentially about solving problems
We interpret the world through layers of ___
Interpretation. Signs and symbols are one of those layers of interpretation
What is the dual role of hermeneutics
- Text - how to interpret its meaning
- Context - application/practice
What is the argument of the philosopher Friederich Schleiermacher
He argues that the author produced the text from a specific time, language and culture and that the reader (from his own time, language and culture) needs to reconstruct the world of the author to understand the text.
Focuses on the cultural and historical world of the author and ultimately on the intentions of the author
What is the argument of the philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey
He argues that we have to relive the authors experiences to understand the text properly he describes this method as ‘empathetic understanding’. So what he adds to Schleiermacher is an emphasis on the reliving the emotions of the author.
What is the argument of the philosopher Martin Heideggar
He argues that we are first existing beings (ontological) and then we try to make sense, understand or know the world (epistemology). It is therefore important to be aware of your own prejudice and position.
This means that understanding is not just one of our human characteristics, but it is fundamentally who we are, it is our being. We are constantly understanding. It is no longer about the intentions and emotions of the author but about the whole being of the reader
What is the argument of the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer
Understanding belongs to the being of that which is being understood. He describes understanding as an event, not so much something we as humans do but rather something that happens to us.
Gadamer talks about effective historical consciousness, our prejudice (tradition ,culture, experience) with which we enter the hermeneutic circle. It is our ‘horizon’ from where we try to understand new events or texts, we cannot start from nowhere. So therefore our horizons fuse with the text’s or event’s horizon also known as the fusion of horizons
What is the argument of the philosopher Jurgen Habermas
Habermas suggests that we should be much more critical towards the whole notion of tradition. He argues that tradition problematizes hermeneutics’ quest for truth or at least the most truthful or correct interpretation.
He argues that tradition is part of language itself and that we cannot proceed with interpretation without language. Tradition enables us to make initial interpretations - it is our entry point of initial limited insight/horizon.
And so he explores the end goal of communication as consensus - mutual understanding, which could be obtained through communicative reason or communicative rationality. He relies on the theory of communication and the possibility of transparent universal consensus
What is the argument of the philosopher Jacques Derrida
Derrida emphasizes the complexity of language. Derrida’s work led to the theory of deconstruction, deconstruction is a critique of the relationship between a text and meaning.
What is the argument of the philosopher Paul Ricoeur
Ricoeur agrees with Gadamer’s notion of effective historical consciousness, but he differs from Gadamer in that he emphasizes the need to be more critical of our own tradition (prejudice) or self-understanding. Ricoeur argues for distanciation (a critical distance to or critique of) regarding one’s tradition.
He argues that we may have a false self-interpretation, a false ‘effective historical consciousness’ and therefore it needs to be scrutinized through a process of ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’. This means that we should be suspicious about the way we interpret ourselves, because there are unconscious and unforeseen influences that shape our self-interpretation.
What are the three masters of suspicion according to Paul Ricoeur
- our natural ‘will to power’ plays a constant role in the way we understand ourselves and the way we act
- our underlying economic drive (our economic class interest)
- the role our sexual desires play in our unconsciousness
all of these, often unconscious influences, play a huge role and how we interpret things
What is the argument of the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Merleau-Ponty emphasizes that our interpretations are always connected to our bodies, its desires, its needs, its unconscious drives and its position in the world, the body is an expression of speech.
It is through our bodies that we first perceive and experience the world, and it is on this embodied experience that we form an interpretation of the world. (we are not only a cognitive subject, but we also perceive through seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling and feelings)
What is the argument of the philosopher Tsenay Serequeberhan
He emphasized the importance of one’s lived experience in postcolonial African liberation. He critiques Eurocentrism (the belief or idea that European existence is qualitatively superior to other forms of human life).
