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On Hans-Georg Gadamer's Truth and Method (1960, ch. 4), "Aesthetics and Hermeneutics" (1964), "The Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem" (1966), and "Hermeneutics as Practical Philosophy" (1972).
Hemeneutics is all about interpretation, primarily of texts, but of other things too, and Gadamer thinks that even if we learn all about the history and customs and probable authorial mindset of a text, there's still not a single, correct interpretation. We can't just put aside our prejudices to get to such an objective truth, and in fact without the baggage we bring to a text, we have no purchase from which to begin an interpretation.
Mark, Seth, Wes, and Dylan try to get through all this rich material, discussing science vs. philosophy (again!), modern art, what it is to be practical, and lots more. Read more about the topic and get the texts.
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The Gadamer picture is by Sterling Bartlett.
dmf says
March 2, 2015 at 10:26 amwas interesting times with lots of current echoes; questions of whether or not the study of history/mankind could be scientific, progressive attempts to read the Bible not just poetically but existentially, questions of whether or not philosophy exceeds anthropology/cog-sciences, and folks like Heidegger working against what he saw as the threats of developments like cybernetics.
http://psych.stanford.edu/~michael/papers/Davidson_Derangement.pdf
Cannon Hubka says
March 2, 2015 at 11:02 amWes’ “German in America” comment both blew my mind and caused me the laugh harder than I had in many episodes. It made me think of Adorno and how much I want to hear how Dylan will react to that particular German’s hand-wringing negativity and obscurity. Fantastic episode. You guys are a treasure.
Greg Milner says
March 2, 2015 at 12:07 pmI cannot believe he managed to write 3 books with that word in the title. Didn’t someone once say “When I hear the word hermeneutics, I reach for my gun.”? Well, they should have.
Simon Robinson says
March 2, 2015 at 1:49 pmReally brilliant episode guys. Cheers
dmf says
March 2, 2015 at 6:05 pmgood questions raised as to are we trying to understand the author/painter/etc or the object (book,painting,etc) itself?
reminds me we should get to the “linguistic-turn”, holism, and quietism somewhere down the long and winding road.
http://www.academia.edu/5175079/Derrida_Davidson_and_Differance
John Dodge says
March 3, 2015 at 5:15 amre-reading The Interpretation of Dreams right now. This episode is just what I needed. Thank you!
John Williamson says
March 7, 2015 at 5:29 pmHi guys, and fellow commenters. Great episode, very hermeneutic handling of this hermeneutist! I just wanted to mention, along the lines of the brief discussion about research toward the end of the episode, that hermeneutics is a guiding philosophy of research and practice in some education and nursing faculties (at least at the university I study at). Though both teaching and nursing obviously involve a great deal of technical knowledge, both can become too technical and this can be damaging to the complex human relationships around learning and healing that professionals in these fields engage in with their clients. The idea of practical wisdom and ongoing interpretation can counter this risk. For a better sense of this please check out this lecture transcript from a respected theorist of applied hermeneutics. http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/26
Erik weissengruber says
March 8, 2015 at 8:53 pmA wonderful cast.
Sam Parkes says
March 11, 2015 at 1:51 pmHello, beautiful people! I heard the Ricoeur works named in this episode. Are those available to look up yet? I’m excited. Ricoeur’s work is at the heart of my recently-submitted-but-yet-to-be-defended dissertation in another field. I’m a newbie and may need to be schooled as to when the previews will be posted.
Wayne Schroeder says
March 21, 2015 at 12:33 pmHermeneutics and circles!
Does language really bring a common understanding to the following terms raised by Gadamer?:
meaning/truth,
method/objectivity,
interpretation/interaction,
openness/prejudice,
art/science,
text/context,
thought/image,
art/science,
hermeneutics/prejudice,
historicity (groundedness)/objectivity,
transcendent (symbolic)/objective,
meaning/linguistic,
unknown/known,
animal/human, existential/linguistic,
technology/respect,
statistics/understanding,
alienation/aesthetic awareness?
Is it really language that ties these concepts together, as with Heidegger, the house of understanding? Gadamer has taken Heidegger’s fundamental questioning approach to Being as an approach to truth above the scientific, objective knowing of the Enlightenment, and proceeds to apply it to his concept of hermeneutics, of understanding, of awareness of fore-projection.
Sometimes Gadamer’s efforts to span the object-subject divide based on language as the ground of reality border on the mystical: fore-understanding, historicity as truth, finite/infinite foundation, techne versus praxis. The concept of language alone, even as expansive as Heidegger makes it is not enough to cover all of the categories of reality mentioned above, compared to the Whitehead’s more expansive concept of the Event.
HS says
March 31, 2015 at 4:01 pmFinally got around to listening to this. I think I was saving the episodes on hermeneutics because the topic is like a philosophical equivalent of comfort food. Great job, it was a lot of fun!
You may be fatigued by the social science / humanities perspective, but hermeneutics is in many ways a central part cultural anthropology, especially the interpretive / textual / linguistic turn of sixties and seventies. The German idealist roots are something both have in common and hermeneutics is implicated in anthropological holism, the idea of anthropology as a comparative project, as well as participant observation.
I think I’ve recommended it to you before but the article I found helpful in bridging the gap between textual exegesis and interpretation of non-linguistic cultural phenomenon is Paul Ricoeur’s The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as Text. It can be found online for free.
(p.s. To get back at you philistines for mocking Suprematism: I’m not a native speaker, and I can’t remember who said it, but I don’t think banal is supposed to rhyme with anal…)
grant says
April 3, 2015 at 4:14 pmI think it’s kind of funny (and I mean that… I’m not being sarcastic, it’s literally making me smile) that a show so based around a conversational format didn’t really touch on Gadamer’s idea of the hermeneutic conversation, of dialogue as a figure for understanding.
Or maybe that was already covered in a previous show that I’ve not heard yet.
Anyway, thanks for this – great to see some Gadamer getting out into the world.
Bobby says
July 20, 2015 at 11:35 amHey gang, great episode. Wish I had a transcript (yes, I know, if I become a ‘PEL Citizen I can get one, but I’m always weary of being inundated with email) as I’m working on a Diss with a Gadamer component.
For a laugh, check out this paper. I stumbled onto it before getting to this PEL podcast.
http://www.academia.edu/1499868/Il_n_y_a_pas_de_rapport_sexuel_The_Irresolvability_of_the_Gadamer-Habermas_Debate
Did you know that Gadamer is ‘feminine’ to Habermas’ masculinity? I mean, really! In academia, anything goes. But wouldn’t Gadamer himself have to sanction such a reading? If the interpreter’s hermeneutical horizon is sexual…