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Part Three
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FROM HERMENEUTICS TO PRAXIS THE term "hermeneutics,// with its ancient lineage, has only recently begun to enter the working vocabulary of Anglo-American thinkers. Its novelty is indicated in a passage cited earlier from Thomas Kuhn's The Essential Tension (1977) in which he confesses that "the term 'hermeneutic' ... was no part of my vocabulary as recently as five years ago. Increasingly, I suspect that anyone who believes that history may have deep philosophical import will have to learn to bridge the longstanding divide between the Continental and English-language philosophical traditions.//l We can trace the paths by which interest in hermeneutics has spread and deepened among Anglo-American thinkers. One of the primary traditions that feeds into contemporary hermeneutics has been that of biblical hermeneutics. The meaning and scope of hermeneutics was significantly extended in the nineteenth century by such German thinkers as Schleiermacher and Dilthey, who in turn influenced Heidegger and Bultmann. Some of the earliest discussions of hermeneutics in an Anglo-American context were by biblical scholars , theologians, and students of the history of religions who were 110 Beyond Obiectivism and Relativism influenced by or reacting against the claims of Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Bultmann. But the problems of the interpretation of sacred texts, as Frank Kermode has most recently argued, have analogues with the problems of the interpretation of literary texts.2 It is not surprising in an age when the question of interpretation has become so fundamental for literary history and literary criticism that interest in hermeneutics should become so prominent.3 A significant event focusing attention on hermeneutics in the United States in recent times occurred at a symposium held in 1970 in which Charles Taylor, Paul Ricoeur, and Hans-Georg Gadamer participated. Taylor, although he was trained at Oxford at a time when the work of Wittgenstein and J. 1. Austin were the dominant influences, has always had a long-standing interest in bridging "the divide between Continental and English-language philosophical traditions." He began his paper with the question, Is there a sense in which interpretation is essential to explanation in the sciences of man? The view that it is, that there is an unavoidably "hermeneutical " component in the sciences of man, goes back to Dilthey. But recently the question has come again to the fore, for instance, in the work of Gadamer, in Ricoeur's interpretation of Freud, and in the writings of Habermas.4 Taylor's question and the positive answer that he develops in his paper have had extensive resonances because they appeared at a time when important developments were taking place within the sciences of man and the social sciences. This was a period when there were increasing doubts about the methodological self-understanding of the social disciplines that had been shaped by logical positivism and empiricism. Three factors contributed to the uneasiness about the nature of the social disciplines and to the receptivity to hermeneutics . There was a growing awareness that themes in analytic philosophy , and especially insights of the later Wittgenstein and the theory of speech acts developed by Austin, were relevant to a critical understanding of social life. This was complemented by the realization that the tradition of interpretive sociology was neither dead nor passe, and more generally that hermeneutics could be used to criticize positivist strains in the social disciplines and open the way to a more penetrating understanding of them. Anglo-American thinkers became more receptive to the type of hermeneutical critiques developed by Ricoeur, Gadamer, and Habermas. Finally, many practitioners of the social disciplines themselves began to question the adequacy of the notion of social science as a fledging natural science. [35.175.236.44] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 22:53 GMT) III From Hermeneutics to Praxis Because hermeneutics, as it was shaped in the nineteenth century, was intimately related to the study of history and the nature of historical knowledge, it is only natural that discussions of hermeneutics began to appear among historians who were reflecting on the status of their discipline. In this respect the work of Hayden White and Quentin Skinner should be mentioned.5 Although both have been sharply critical of some of the claims made by hermeneutics, nevertheless both have entered into serious dialogue with this tradition . A key influence on Skinner has been Collingwood. One can . only speculate about the hearing that hermeneutics might have received from Anglo-American philosophers if the work of Collingwood had had the influence it so eminently deserves.6...