北京师范大学
教育研究方法讲座系列
Lecture 8
Approach to Comparative-Historical Method (5):
Critical Hermeneutic Perspective
Hermeneutics
as Comparative-Historical Method
1. The meanings of hermeneutics:
a. Marin Jay points out that hermeneutics “originally a
Greek term, it referred to the god Hermes. The sayer or
announcer of divine messages ― often, to be sure in
oracular and ambiguous form. Hermeneutics retained its
early emphasis on saying as it accumulated other
meanings, such as interpreting, translating, and
explaining.” (Jay, 1982, P. 90)
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Hermeneutics
as Comparative-Historical Method
1. The meanings of hermeneutics:
b. Paul Ricoeur’s provides a working definition of
hermeneutics as follow:
“Hermeneutics is the theory of the operations of
understanding in the relation to the interpretation of
texts.” (Ricoeur, 1981a, p.43)
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Hermeneutics
as Comparative-Historical Method
1. The meanings of hermeneutics:
b. "What is hermeneutics? Any meaningful expression—be it an
utterance, verbal or nonverbal, or an artifact of any kind, such
as tool, an institution, or a written document—can be identified
from a double perspective, both as an observable event and as
an understandable objectification of meaning. We can
describe, explain, or predict a noise equivalent to the sounds of
a spoken sentence without having the slight idea what this
utterance means. To grasp (and state) its meaning, one has to
participate in some (actual or imagined) communicative action
in the course of which the sentence in question is used in such
a way that it is intelligible to speakers, hearers, and bystanders
belonging to the same speech community." (Habermas, 1996,
4
p. 23-24)
Hermeneutics
as Comparative-Historical Method
2. Levels of hermeneutic inquiries
a. Hermeneutics at literal level: Decoding the authentic
meanings embedded in literal texts or in utterances in
dialogues
b. Hermeneutics at ontological level:
 Encoding and decoding meanings from the ontological condition of
the author
 Encoding and decoding meanings from the ontological condition of
the world referred in the text
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Hermeneutics
as Comparative-Historical Method
2. Levels of hermeneutic inquiries
c. Hermeneutics at historical and cultural level: Encoding and
decoding meanings from the historical and cultural context
within which the text was produced
d. Hermeneutics at the ontological/existential level:
 Hermeneutic experience as “the corrective by means of which
thinking reason escapes the prison of language." (Gadamer,
1975, Quoted in Habermas, 1988, p. 144)
 Hermeneutics as the “fusion of horizons” of that of the
author and reader
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Paul Ricoeur’s Literal Hermeneutics as
Bridging of the Distanciations in the text
(See Explications in Lecture 7)
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Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Existential
Hermeneutics as Fusion of Horizons
1. Existential understanding of language:
a. Following the teaching of his teacher Heidegger, Gadamer
see that “all human reality is determined by its
linguisticality. …Because human beings are thrown into a
world already linguistically permeated, they do not invent
language as a tool for their own purposes. It is not a
technological instrument of manipulation. Rather, language
is prior to humanity and speaks through it. Our infinite as
human beings is encompassed by infinity of language.”
(Jay, 1982, P. 94)
8
1900-2002
Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Existential
Hermeneutics as Fusion of Horizons
1. Existential understanding of language:
b. Accordingly, human existence is a linguistically encoded
existence, which is made up of all the preconceptions or
what Gadamer called “prejudices” accumulated and
sustained in a particular cultural-linguistic “tradition”.
Hence, as human agents speak and act, they are speaking
and acting within a prison house of language.
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Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Existential
Hermeneutics as Fusion of Horizons
2. The conception of hermeneutic experience: In order
to liberate oneself from such a prison of language,
Gadamer suggests that human agents have to
undertake the hermeneutic experience.
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Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Existential
Hermeneutics as Fusion of Horizons
"Hermeneutic experience is the corrective by means of
which thinking reason escapes the prison of language,
and it is itself constituted linguistically …. Certainly the
variety of languages presents us with a problem. But this
problem is simply how every language, despite its
difference form other languages, is able to say everything
it wants. …We then ask how, amid the variety of forms
of utterance, there is still the same unity of thought and
speech, so that everything that has been transmitted in
writing can be understood." (Gadamer, 1975, Quoted in
Habermas, 1988, p. 144)
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Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Existential
Hermeneutics as Fusion of Horizons
3. Gadamer’s redefinition of hermeneutic inquiry:
a. Within Gadamer’s framework of existential linguistics,
hermeneutics is no longer simply an act of empathetic
bridging other distanciations within the text, particularly
historical text, revealing what actually happened in the past,
as Ranke advocated; but to “fuse” the horizons of the reader
and the author. This is what Gadamer calls “fusion of
horizons”.
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Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Existential
Hermeneutics as Fusion of Horizons
3. Gadamer’s redefinition of hermeneutic inquiry:
b. By horizon, Gadamer defines it as “the range of vision that
includes everything that can be seen from a particular
vantage point.” (Gadamer, 1975, Quoted in Jay, P. 95)
However, individual horizons are partial and incomplete.
Furthermore, they “are open, and shift; we wander into
them and they in turn move with us.” (Habermas, 1988, P.
147)
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Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Existential
Hermeneutics as Fusion of Horizons
4. Varieties of hermeneutic experiences and inquiries:
Accordingly, such a fusion of horizons may take
varieties of forms
a. Hermeneutic experiences of the translator striving to bridge
two languages
b. Hermeneutic experience of the historian attempting to
bridge two epochs
c. Hermeneutic experience of the anthropologist trying to
bridge two cultures
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Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Existential
Hermeneutics as Fusion of Horizons
4. Varieties of hermeneutic experiences and inquiries: …
d. Hermeneutic experience of the sociologist trying to bridge
two classes, status groups and political parties
e. Hermeneutic experience of the comparative-historical
researcher striving of bridge big structures, large process
and great communities across times and spaces
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Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Existential
Hermeneutics as Fusion of Horizons
5. Gadamer’s concepts of authority and tradition:
a. The notion of “legitimate prejudice”: According to
Gadamer, human agents could only approach the world
with preconceptions or “prejudices” of accumulated and
sustained in a particular cultural-linguistic community.
However, in hermeneutic experiences and inquiries, the
fusion of horizons may not be smooth and harmonious but
in contradictions or even conflicts. As a result, prejudices
and their constituent horizons must be justified in situations
where encounters and fusions of horizons take place. That
brings about Gadamer’s the concept of authority and the
issue of “legitimate prejudice”.
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Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Existential
Hermeneutics as Fusion of Horizons
5. Gadamer’s concepts of authority and tradition:…
b. Gadamer contends that the legitimacy of individual horizons
and its prejudices are gained in daily-life practices of speech
acts, discourse and understanding within a prevailing
cultural-linguistic community. While the legitimate
“prejudices” at social level can also establish their authority
in dialogues, social interactions and institutional practices.
Therefore, Gadamer contends that “authority, properly
understood, has nothing to do with blind obedience to a
command. Indeed, authority has nothing to do with
obedience, it rests on recognition.” (Gadamer, 1975, Quoted
in Ricoeur, 1991, P. 279) …
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Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Existential
Hermeneutics as Fusion of Horizons
5. Gadamer’s concepts of authority and tradition:…
b. … By recognition, Gadamer refers to “that the other is
superior to oneself in judgment and insight and that for this
reason his judgment takes precedence, i.e. it has priority
over one’s own.” (Gadamer, 1975, Quoted in Ricoeur P.
278) “This is the essence of the authority, claimed by the
teachers, the superior, the expert.” (Gadamer, 1975, Quoted
in Ricoeur 991, P. 279)
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Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Existential
Hermeneutics as Fusion of Horizons
5. Gadamer’s concepts of authority and tradition:…
c. As these “legitimate prejudices” sustained and spread their
authority within a linguistic community, they establish what
Gadamer calls their “effective-historical” status and become
the “tradition”. “This is precisely what we call tradition: the
ground of their validity…. tradition has a justification that
is outside the arguments of reason and in large measure
determines our attitudes and behavior.” (Gadamer, 1975,
Quoted in Ricoeur, 1991, P. 279)
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Jurgen Habermas’
Critical Hermeneutics
1. The focus of contention between on Gadamer and
Habermas is exactly on the difference in the authority
of prejudice and conception of tradition. Habermas
disagrees to Gadamer’s treatment of the tradition and
its authority of prejudices in a given cultural-linguistic
community as normative imperatives derived out of
practical speech acts, discourses and fusions of
horizons. Instead Habermas underlines the power and
domination that are at work in all human
relationships including linguistic communications. …
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Jurgen Habermas’
Critical Hermeneutics
1. …In Habermas own words, “This metainstitution of
language as tradition is evidently dependent in turn
on social processes that are not in normative
relationship. Language is also medium of domination
and social power.” (Habermas, 1977, Quoted in Jay,
1982, P. 99)
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Jurgen Habermas’
Critical Hermeneutics
2. From the stance of the Critical Theory of the
Frankfurt School as well as of Marxism, Habermas
criticizes Gadamer of neglecting the frozen ideology,
hypostatized power, and systemic distortion that may
have been prevailed in cultural-linguistic traditions as
well as in its supporting institutions.
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Jurgen Habermas’
Critical Hermeneutics
3. Critical hermeneutics: According to Habermas’
critique on Gadamer’s existential hermeneutics,
Habermas has elevates hermeneutic inquiry yet to
another level, namely critical hermeneutics.
a. First of all, Habermas criticizes Gadamers’ conception of
authorities of “prejudices” and tradition of neglecting the
notion of power that is supposed to be at work behind all
these authority. This brings out one of the basic concept in
the Critical Theory, i.e. the hypostatized power, which is at
work in all human relationships and discourses.
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Jurgen Habermas’
Critical Hermeneutics
3. Critical hermeneutics: …
b. Accordingly, this hypostatized will impose systemic
distortions to human relationships and discourses.
c. One of these systemic distortions, which manifests in
individual horizon, fusion of horizons, prejudices, and
tradition, is the ideological elements frozen in these
cultural-linguistic representations.
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Critical Hermeneutic Analysis: An Illustration
Michel Foucault’s Discourse, Genealogy and Power
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Michel Foucault’s
Conceptions of Discourse
1. From text and narrative to discourse: Three
constituents of the linguistic turn
a. The task of literal hermeneutics is to ‘describes the
phenomenon from the inside’ (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982,
p.79), that is, to retrieves the meanings embedded in the text,
and to bridge the distanciation between the ‘being-in- theworld’ of the author and reader
27
Michel Foucault’s
Conceptions of Discourse
1. From text and narrative to discourse: Three
constituents of the linguistic turn
b. The task of narrative study is to reveal 'forms', 'plots',
'meanings', and narratives that historians have imposed upon
historical data in their writings historical storylines. That is
to reveal 'the content of the form' of historians'
representations.
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Michel Foucault’s
Conceptions of Discourse
1. From text and narrative to discourse: Three
constituents of the linguistic turn
c. Archaeology in Foucaultian sense look into how discourses
are formed in the history of ideas and/or truth. Foucault
contends that in studying the successions of schools of
thought in the history of ideas, one should look beyond the
internal meanings of the school of thought under study but
analyze the discursive rules in operations in a given historical
and socio-cultural contexts. Furthermore, Foucault’s
discourse analysis reveals the underlying “technology of
power” at work in the process of discourse formation….
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Michel Foucault’s
Conceptions of Discourse
1. From text and narrative to discourse: Three
constituents of the linguistic turn
c. … “Foucault, the archaeologist looks from outside, reject the
appeal to meaning. He contends that viewed with external
neutrality, the discursive practices themselves provide a
meaningless space of rule-governed transformations in which
statements, subjects, objects, concepts and so forth are taken
by those involved to be meaningful.” (Dreyfus & Rabinow,
1982, p. 79)
30
Michel Foucault’s
Conceptions of Discourse
1. From text and narrative to discourse: Three
constituents of the linguistic turn
c. … “Foucault, the archaeologist looks from outside, reject the
appeal to meaning. He contends that viewed with external
neutrality, the discursive practices themselves provide a
meaningless space of rule-governed transformations in which
statements, subjects, objects, concepts and so forth are taken
by those involved to be meaningful.” (Dreyfus & Rabinow,
1982, p. 79)
31
Michel Foucault’s
Conceptions of Discourse
2. Statements and Discourse
a. Statement “The statement is not the same kind of unit as the
sentence, the proposition, or the speech act…The statements
is not …a structure (i.e. a group of relations between variable
elements...).; it is a function of existence that properly belong
to signs and on the basis of which one may then decide,
through analysis or intuition, whether or not they ‘make
sense’, according to what rule they follow one another or are
juxtaposed, of what they are the sign, and what sort of act is
carried out by their formulation (oral or written).”
(Foucault, 1972, p. 86-87)
32
You are insane
You are sick
You are condemned
You are sexually,
inappropriate
& immoral
Michel Foucault’s
Conceptions of Discourse
2. Statements and Discourse
b. A discourse “is the totality of all effectiveness statements
(whether spoken or written). ... Description of discourse is in
opposition to the history of thought. There…a system of
thought can be reconstituted only on the basis of a definite
discursive totality. …The analysis of thought is always
allegorical in relation to the discourse that it employs. Its
question is unfailingly: what is being said in what was said?
…what is this specific existence that emerges from what is
said and nowhere else?” (Foucault, 1972, p. 27-28)
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Michel Foucault’s
Conceptions of Discourse
3) The Formation of Object
a. Mapping the surface of the emergence of the object
b. Describing the authorities of delimitation
c. Analyzing the grids of specification
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Michel Foucault’s
Conceptions of Discourse
4. The Formation of Enunciative Modality
a. Identifying who is speaking, who is accorded the right to use
this sort of language, who is qualified to do so.
b. Describing the institutional sites from which the discourse is
made and form which the discourse derives its legitimate
source and point of application
c. Analyzing the position of the subject, in which s/he occupies
in relation to the various domains and groups of objects
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Michel Foucault’s
Conceptions of Discourse
5. The Formation of Concepts: the formation of the
organization of the field of statements where they
appeared and circulated
a. Identifying the forms of succession, e.g.
Orderings of enunicative series
Types of dependence of the statement
Rhetorical schemata according to which groups of statements may be
combined
b. Identifying the forms of coexistence
Field of presence
Field of concomitance
Field of memory
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Michel Foucault’s
Conceptions of Discourse
5. The Formation of Concepts: …
c. Identifying the procedures of intervention that may be
legitimately applied to statements, e.g. technique of rewriting
, method of transcribing, mode of translating, means of
transferring, method of systematizing
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Michel Foucault’s
Conceptions of Discourse
6. The Formation of Strategies or theoretical and
thematic choice
a. Determining the points of diffraction of discourse
 Point of incompatibility
 Point of equivalence
 Point of systematization
b. Analyzing the economy of the discursive constellation
c. Analyzing the other authority, e.g. functional to fields of nondiscursive practice, observing the rules and processes of
appropriation of discourse
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Michel Foucault’s
Conception of Power
1. Power as subjection and subjugation
a. “I would like to say, first of all, what has been the goal of my
work during the last twenty years. It has not been to analyze
the phenomena of power, nor to elaborate the foundations of
such an analysis. My objective, instead, has been to create a
history of the different mode by which, in our culture, human
beings are made subjects... Thus it is not power, but the
subject, which is the general them of my research.” (1982,
208-209)
40
Michel Foucault’s
Conception of Power
1. Power as subjection and subjugation
b. Power as objectification of subjection: The technology of
power
 Objectification in transformation of human beings into subjects of
human sciences, e.g. philology, linguistics, biology, economics, …
 Objectification in turning identified human beings into subjects of
“dividing practices”, e.g. the insane, the sick, the convicted, the
uneducated, …
 Objectification in turning human themselves into subjects…..
41
Michel Foucault’s
Conception of Power
1. Power as subjection and subjugation
b. Typology of power: Emerged from Foucault’s studies of
power, there are at least four conceptions of power
 Disciplinary power
 Biopower
 Pastoral power
 Sovereign power
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Discourse, Genealogy and Power
1. From Discourse to genealogy: The methodological link
a. Archaeology and genealogy as different levels interpretation:
 Archaeological level of interpretation: “Whether we are analyzing
propositions physics or phrenology, we substitute for their internal
intelligibility a different intelligibility, namely their place within the
discursive formation. This is the task of archaeology …Archaeology
is always a technique that can free us from a residual belief in our
direct access to objects; in each case the ‘tyranny of the referent’ has
to be overcome.” (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982, p. 117)
 Genealogical level of interpretation: "When we add genealogy,
however, a third level of intelligibility and differentiation is
introduced. After archaeology does its job, the genealogist can ask
about the historical and political roles that these science play.”
(Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982, p. 117, my italic)
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Discourse, Genealogy and Power
1. From Discourse to genealogy: The methodological link
b. Genealogy as study of Episteme and Entstehung:
 Episteme as descents of discourses
 Entstehung
• ‘Entstehung designates emergence, the moment of arising.”
(Foucault, 1984, p.83)
• Emergence is always produced through a particular stage of forces.
The analysis of the Entstehung must delineate this interaction, the
struggle these forces wage against each other or against adverse
circumstances, and the attempt to avoid degeneration and regain
strength by dividing these forces against themselves.” (p.83-84)
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Discourse, Genealogy and Power
2. The Concept of Power/Knowledge:
a. ‘It is in discourse that power and knowledge are joined
together’ (Foucault, 1978, p. 100) and therefore "discourse is
both instrument and effect of power." (1978, p. 101),
Accordingly it is through discourse that constitutes what
Foucault conceptualized the power/knowledge.
45
Discourse, Genealogy and Power
2. The Concept of Power/Knowledge:
b. ‘We should admit … that power and knowledge directly imply
one another; that there is no power relation without the
correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any
knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the
same time power relations. These power/knowledge relations
are to be analyzed, therefore, not on the basis of a subject of
knowledge who is or is not free in relation to the power
system, but, on the contrary, the subject who knows, the
objects to be known and the modalities of knowledge must be
regarded as so many effects of these fundamental
implications of power/knowledge and their historical
transformations. …
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Discourse, Genealogy and Power
2. The Concept of Power/Knowledge:
b. … In short, it is not the activities of the subject of knowledge
that produces a corpus of knowledge, useful or resistant to
power, but power/knowledge, the processes and struggles that
traverse it and of which it is made up, that determines the
forms and possible domains of knowledge.’ (Foucault, 1977,
p. 28)
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Theory
Evidence
Comparative Studies
of Multiple Cases
Historical Studies
of Particular Case
Functional
Equivalence
Structural
Configuration
Lecture 8
Approach to Comparative-Historical Method (5):
Critical Hermeneutic Perspective
END