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Episode 111: Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: How to Interpret

March 2, 2015 by Mark Linsenmayer 20 Comments

http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/partiallyexaminedlife/PEL_ep_111_2-8-15.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:21:29 — 129.6MB)

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.

End song: "The Default Relation," a new song by Mark Lint. Read about it.

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Filed Under: Podcast Episodes Tagged With: Hans-Georg Gadamer, hermeneutics, interpretation, philosophy and art, philosophy and literature, philosophy podcast

Comments

  1. dmf says

    March 2, 2015 at 10:26 am

    was 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

    Reply
  2. Cannon Hubka says

    March 2, 2015 at 11:02 am

    Wes’ “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.

    Reply
  3. Greg Milner says

    March 2, 2015 at 12:07 pm

    I 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.

    Reply
  4. Simon Robinson says

    March 2, 2015 at 1:49 pm

    Really brilliant episode guys. Cheers

    Reply
  5. dmf says

    March 2, 2015 at 6:05 pm

    good 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

    Reply
  6. John Dodge says

    March 3, 2015 at 5:15 am

    re-reading The Interpretation of Dreams right now. This episode is just what I needed. Thank you!

    Reply
  7. John Williamson says

    March 7, 2015 at 5:29 pm

    Hi 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

    Reply
  8. Erik weissengruber says

    March 8, 2015 at 8:53 pm

    A wonderful cast.

    Reply
  9. Sam Parkes says

    March 11, 2015 at 1:51 pm

    Hello, 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.

    Reply
  10. Wayne Schroeder says

    March 21, 2015 at 12:33 pm

    Hermeneutics 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.

    Reply
  11. HS says

    March 31, 2015 at 4:01 pm

    Finally 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…)

    Reply
  12. grant says

    April 3, 2015 at 4:14 pm

    I 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.

    Reply
  13. Bobby says

    July 20, 2015 at 11:35 am

    Hey 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…

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Episode 112: Ricoeur on Interpreting Religion | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    March 16, 2015 at 5:56 am

    […] Last episode taught us about hermeneutics, but how can this best be applied to the text for which hermeneutics was originally developed, i.e. the Bible? For Ricoeur, it’s a two-way street: We need to change our understanding of the text (i.e. read it historically, recognizing for example that it was common to mythologize heroes in texts at the time), but also “put at risk” our own evaluative presuppositions, which under the tutelage of science have blinded us to symbolism and so left us unable to even sensibly ask the question “what is it to be saved?” […]

    Reply
  2. Topic for #113: Jesus’s Parables (Plus a Not School Group on Historical Jesus) | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    March 19, 2015 at 12:10 pm

    […] These stories present a feast for hermeneutics, and this episode would best be listened to after #111 and #112, and our recent episode and bonus discussion on Jaspers would be helpful here too. How can […]

    Reply
  3. Listen to the Gadamer Aftershow | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    March 22, 2015 at 3:21 pm

    […] Aftershow to Ep. 111 on Gadamer was happenin’, sporting not only Stephen West and Seth Paskin, but returning Aftershower […]

    Reply
  4. Topic for #111: Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: How to Interpret | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    April 6, 2015 at 12:33 pm

    […] On Feb. 8, the regular four discussed a spate of works by Hans-Georg Gadamer about hermenutics. Listen to the episode now. […]

    Reply
  5. ‘Identification’ with/in Music | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    July 1, 2015 at 1:31 pm

    […] We seldom simply hear, and I think when we do, we don't have a hook to get a handle on it, a hermeneutic strategy. We don't know whether this is new or old, whether this is original or a hacky imitation, whether […]

    Reply
  6. Topic for #122 and #123: Augustine’s “Confessions” | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    August 5, 2015 at 8:34 pm

    […] stops when it comes to questioning God's existence or goodness, but he pretty much invented hermeneutics for the express purpose of not having to interpret absurd-seeming parts of the Bible literally. […]

    Reply
  7. Topic for #129: Is Religious Faith Rational? | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    December 13, 2015 at 9:46 pm

    […] assumptions (this is the hermeneutic circle, which you can hear us talk about in discussing Gadamer and then in a specifically religious context about Ricoeur). Finally, we need stability in these […]

    Reply

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