Beijing Normal University
Foundations of Educational Research:
Methodology, Epistemology and Ontology
Topic 3
Methodological & Epistemological Foundations of
Historical-Hermeneutic Studies
A. The essentials of the methodology of qualitative research:
1. Willhelm Dilthey’s conception of the human sciences:
a. “We owe to Dilthey …that the natural sciences and the human sciences are
characterized by two scientificity, two methodologies, two epistemologies.”
(Ricoeur, 1991/1973, p. 275)
b. Dilthey in his classical work Introduction to the Human Sciences (1991/1883)
underlines that “The sum of intellectual facts which fall under the notion of
science is usually divided into two groups, one marked by the name ‘natural
science’; for the other, oddly enough, there is no generally accepted
designation. I subscribe to the thinkers who call this other half of the intellectual
world the ‘human sciences’ (Geisteswissenschaften or translated as ‘the
sciences of the mind’)” (Dilthey, 1991, p. 78)
c. “The motivation behind the habit of seeing these sciences as a unity in contrast
with those of nature derives from the depth and fullness of human
self-consciousness. … (A) man finds in this self-consciousness a sovereignty
of will, a responsibility for actions, a capacity for subordinating everything to
thought and for resisting any foreign element in the citadel of freedom in his
person: by these things he distinguishes himself from all of nature. He finds
himself with respect to nature an imperium in imperio.” (Dilthey, 1991, p.79)
2. Clifford Geertz's conception of culture and its interpretation
a. Geertz in his classical work The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays
(1973) underlines that “The concept of culture I espouse … is essentially a
semiotic one. Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in
webs of significance he himself has spun. I take culture to be those webs, and
the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law
but an interpretative one in research of meaning.” (Geertz, 1994/1973, P.
214)
b. “Culture is most effectively treated …purely as a symbolic system …by
isolating its elements, specifying the internal relationship among those
elements, and then characterizing the whole system in some general way 
according to the core symbols around which it is organized, the underlying
structures of which it is a surface expression, or the ideological principles upon
which it is based.” (Geertz, 1994/1973, p. 222)
3. Max Weber’s conception of sociology and social research
a. Max Weber’s oft-quoted definition of the subject matter of sociology and that of
social sciences in general stipulates that "Sociology is a science concerning
itself with interpretive understanding of social action in order thereby to arrive
at a causal explanation of its course and consequence. We shall speak of
'action' insofar as the acting individual attaches a subjective meaning to his
behavior. …Action is 'social' insofar as its subjective meaning takes account of
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b.
c.
d.
e.
the behavior of others and is thereby oriented in its course." (Weber, 1978, p. 4)
This definition has generated three methodological aproia for students of
sociology and social sciences to tackle with for generations to come.
First, it has stipulated that in studying human actions the major concerns is to
provide “interpretive understanding” of the “subjective meanings” underlying
each and every “actions”. This has constituted the basic research question for
qualitative research in social sciences.
Second, the definition has also stipulate another aporia to students in social
sciences. That is, given human actions are endowed with subjective meanings,
how can two actions be oriented into a mutually acceptable social action?
Furthermore, one can continue to ask how society and culture be possible in
maintaining these varieties of social actions in stable and continuous manner
through time and across considerable spatial distance.
Third, the definition has also generated yet another aporia by stipulating the
the social researchers should also render “causal explanation” for the “course”
and “consequence” of the human action under study. This seems to be a
statement of a typical research question for quantitative researchers. In other
words, Weber seems to expect his followers to bridge the gap between
quantitative and qualitative approaches to social research.
In fact, both Alfred Schutz (1967) and Jurgen Habermas (1988/1967)
specifically began their books with the same quotation of Weber’s definition of
sociology and try to resolve the aporia set forth in it.
B. Jurgen Habermas in his book On the Logics of Social Sciences (1988/1967) has
suggested there are generally three approaches to the studies of the subjective
meanings of human and social actions. They are
a. The social phenomenological approach
b. The linguistic approach
c. The hermeneutic approach
C. The Conception of Meanings in Social Phenomenological Perspective
1. Phenomenology as a school of thought in modern philosophy was established at
the beginning of the twentieth century mainly under the leadership and efforts of
Edmund Husserl, a German philosopher. However, it was Alfred Schutz’s work
(1967/1932) and the work of two of his students, Peter Berger and Thomas
Luckmann (1966), which have brought the phenomenological conceptions of
meaning to the studies of social action and social world.
2. In his now-classic work, The Phenomenology of Social World, Schutz begins his
inquiry with a critique on Weber’s conception of subjective meanings in human
actions. He stipulates that by applying the concepts forged by phenomenologists in
philosophy can help to resolve these vagueness in understanding the subjective
meanings in human actions. And he has then constructed the framework
social-meaning formation with the following constituent concepts of social
phenomenology
3. Formation of individual subjective meanings: Weber’s aporia No. 1
To account for the formation of subjective meanings of individuals, Schutz
introduces the following concepts of phenomenological philosophy to social
sciences.
a Stream of consciousness: According to phenomenologists, most notably Hernri
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b.
c.
d.
e.
Bergson, human beings are not only living within the world of discrete and
concrete space and time, but also in the stream of consciousness. It is within
this stream of consciousness that a man would grant his attention and intention
to an object in reality (or ‘the world’) and elevate some of them to become a
“phenomenon” within one’s subjectivity. And Husserl has labelled this
fundamental inter-connection between consciousness and objects in reality the
‘intentioanlity’.
The concept of intentionality: “The term ‘intentionality’ is taken from the Latin
intendere, which translates as ‘to stretch forth’.” It indicates the process of how
the mind “stretching forth” into the world and “grasping” and “translating” an
object into a phenomenon. (Spinelli, 2005, p.15)
The process of intentionality has been differentiated by Husserl into two
components, namely noema and noesis.
i. The concept of noema (intentional-object) indicates the objects being
intended to, conscious of and grasped, i.e. the what;
ii. The concept of noesis (intentional-Act) refers to the act of intending,
stretching forth and bringing to consciousness, i.e. the how.
Concepts of perception, retention and reproduction:
i. Perception: It refers to the “now-apprehension” granted to an experience by
human minds during the immediate encounter.
ii. Retention: It refers to the “primary remembrance” or “primary impression” of
an experience formed within the “after-consciousness” of the encounter.
iii. Reproduction: It refers to the “secondary remembrance or recollection” that
emerges after primary remembrance is past. “We accomplish it either by
simply laying hold of what is recollected … or we accomplish it in a real,
re-productive, recapitulative memory in which the temporal object is again
completely built up in a continuum of presentifications, so that we seem to
perceive it again, but only seemingly, as-if.” (Husserl, 1964, quoted in
Schutz, 1967, p. 48)
The concept of behavior: Meaning-endowing experiences:
Husserl makes
a distinction between two types of experiences “Experience of the first type are
merely ‘undergone’ or ‘suffer’.’ They are characterized by a basic passivity.
Experiences of the second type consist of attitudes taken toward experiences
of the first type.” Husserl characterized those experiences endowed with
‘attitude-taking Act’ as ‘behavior’. Accordingly, “Behavior is a
meaning-endowing experience of consciousness.” (Schutz, 1967, p. 56)
The concept of Action and Project: According to Schutz and Husserl, we can
further distinguish behavior from action. The former are experiences endowed
with attitudes, while the latter are experiences oriented towards the future.
Most specifically, actions are experiences endowed with anticipation, which
Husserl has characterized as “the meaning of what will be perceived.” (Husserl,
1931, quoted in Schutz, 1967, p. 58)
Furthermore, apart from anticipation of the future, actions are also experiences
endowed with another form of intentionality, namely intention of fulfillment.
More specifically, actions are not only made up of anticipated goals or “empty
protention” to the future. They also consist of the parts of intentions to attaining
those goals in the future.
In conclusion, according to Schutz formulation, an action is experiences
endowed with meanings in the form of “a project”, which consists of anticipated
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goals and intentions and efforts to fulfill them.
In summary, by applying these concepts to Weber’s stipulation of understanding of
subjective meanings in human actions, Schutz asserts confidently that
“Now we are in a position to state that what distinguishes action from behavior is
that action is the execution of a projected act. And we can immediately proceed to
our next step: the meaning of any action is its corresponding projected act. In
saying this we are giving clarity to Max Weber’s vague concept of the “orientation
of the action.” An action, we submit, is oriented toward its corresponding projected
act.” (Schutz, 1967, p. 61) That is resolution to Weber’s aporia No. 1.
4. Configuration of meaning-context of individuals:
Schutz’s theory building about subjective meanings of individuals does not stop
here. He further put forth two concepts.
a The concept of Durée: Henri Bergson has coined the concept ‘durée’ to specify
the inner stream of duration constituted within human consciousness. It refers
to, as Husserl characterized, the types of experiences, that human minds would
“transverse” (translate or transform) into “intentional unities”, within which
“immanent time is constituted,…an authentic time in which there is duration,
and alteration of that which endures.” (Husserl, 1964; quoted in Schutz, 1967, p.
46)
a. The concept of meaning-context: By meaning-context, Schutz characterized it
as follows
“Let us define meaning-context formally: We say that our lived experience E1,
E2, …, En, stand in a meaning-context if and only if, once they have been lived
through in separate steps, they are then constituted into a synthesis of a high
order, becoming thereby unified objects of monothetic attention.” (Schutz, 1967,
p.75) Schutz indicates that meaning-context derived within one’s inner time
consciousness bears numbers of structural features. (Schutz, 1967, p. 74-78)
i. Unity: Though intentional acts and/or fulfillment-act various
meaning-endowing experiences are unified and integrated into coherent
whole within the Ego. Hence, meaning-context generated from
meaning-endowing experiences also bears the internal structure of unity
and coherence.
ii Continuity: As lived experiences are set within the stream of consciousness
of duration (i.e. Durée), therefore, the meaning-context thereby derived is
internally structured into a continuity of temporal ordering.
iii. Hierarchy: Through her lived experiences in different spheres of the
life-world, individual will congifurated various meaning-contexts for lived
experiences in various spheres of life. And these complex meaning-contexts
are structured in hierarchical order according to their degree of
meaningfulness and significance.
5. Formation of social meanings: Weber’s aporia No. 2
a. As a practicing sociologist, Alfred Schutz’s major contribution to
phenomenological studies is to extend the study of human consciousness and
experiences from individual level to social level. Built on phenomenological
investigations of meaning-configurations and meaning-contexts of individuals,
Schutz poses the following series of questions: How meaning-configurations
among individuals are possible? More specifically, how meanings among
different inner consciousness of durations are able to be corresponded, shared
or even come to consensus? And how individual thinking and acting beings
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come to act harmoniously, concertedly and cooperatively into a social entity?
b. Schutz’s concepts of meaning-context of the social world
i. Schutz suggests that constructions of social meanings within a human
aggregate are possible simply because members of a “society” share
common “lived” experiences generated from common temporal and spatial
situations.
ii. These common lived experiences have then been accumulated
geographically, historically, verbally and textually into a “totality” of
meaning-configuration and meaning-contexts, which we now called the
culture or what Berger and Luckmann called symbolic universe.
iii. Based on commonly-share culture, Schutz has differentiated the process of
meaning-construction into three types
c. Social meaning construction in face-to-face relationship
i. The primary base of mutual understanding between two humans in
face-to-face situation is that there are two inner consciousnesses of
durations who share similar if not the same temporal-spatial flows, that is,
each is conscious of the other’s presence. In short, each takes the other as
intentional-object (noema) of her intentional-Act (noesis) and vice versa.
ii. Expressive movement and expressive act: They refer to non-verbal
gestures (body movements) which indicate the “attitudinal-Act” of an
individual implicates to an subjective experience which she undergoes.
Schutz has further differentiates them into
- Expressive movement: It refers to gestures which bears no
communicative intention from the part of the initiator. As Schutz states
“expressive movements … have meaning only for the observer, not for
the person observed.” (Schutz, 1967, p. 117)
- Expressive act: It refers to body movements “in which the actor seeks to
project outward the content of his consciousness, whether to retain the
latter for his own use later on (as in the case of an entry in a dairy) or to
communicate them to others.” (Schutz, 1967, p. 116)
iii. Sign and sign system:
- “Signs are artifacts or act-objects which are interpreted not according to
those interpretive schemes which are adequate to them as objects of the
external world but according to schemes not adequate to them and
belong rather to other object.” (Schutz, 1967, p. 120)
In constructing a sign, the actor undertakes the act of signification, that is,
to assign a sign to an object in the external world.
As on the part of the reader of the sign, she has to undertake an act of
interpretation, which has been defined as the core activities that
qualitative researchers have to undertake. Spoken and written signs in
a language are the exemplary representations of sign used by human
kind.
- Accordingly, sign system refers to well established, widely used, and
universally interpreted signs disseminating and communicating among
members of a defined human aggregate; for instance, language systems
of Chinese, English, etc.
iv. Concept of externalization and objectification:
- The concept of externalization of subjectivity: It is within a sign system,
i.e. a culture and/or a cultural system, that subjective experiences and
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consciousnesses of individuals can be externalized and communicate to
other members of the corresponding language and/or cultural system.
- The concept of objectification of subjectivity: By externalizing one’s
subjectivity onto concrete artifacts, subjectivity of mortal individual has
then obtained endeavoring existence of its own, which may out-live the
originating person.
d. Social-meaning construction with the contemporaries
i. As individuals move farther and farther apart, such as residents in a
metropolitan such as Hong Kong, fellow citizens of a nation such as PRC,
members of a “nation” such as the Chinese, dwellers of the same continent
such as the Asians, fellow residents of the global village, how can they
come to shared meanings?
ii. Concepts of ideal type and typification:
- As contemporaries, who are located in physically long distance which
does not enable them to have face-to-face confirmation of their
meanings to their counterparts, they have to then presume and rely on
the ideal-typical interpretive schema generated and established in
so-called “institutional contexts”.
- For examples, the ideal-typical role-performances prescribed to teachers
and students in modern educational institutions; ideal-typical
role-performances presumed by both the husband and the wife in the
marriage institution; or sellers and buyers in international trade or
cyber-transactions.
- The act of prescribing ideal-typical roles and their corresponding
role-performances to partners in interaction has been characterized by
Schutz and his followers as “typification”.
iii. Accordingly, the concepts of institution and institutionalization have been
reformulated and used by followers of Alfred Schuts, such as Berger and
Luckmann, and advocates of New-institutionalism in qualitative
researches in social sciences in recent decades.
e. Social-meaning construction with the predecessors
i. To come to agreement with the deaths: When the meaning configurations
are constructed in remotely temporal distance and the text and relics, it
poses insurmountable difficulties to researchers who are supposed to
retrieve the “authentic” meanings because the interpretive findings can no
longer be confirmed with their “authors”. The situation has been
characterized by Ricoeur (1984) as the most acute example of Kant’s
demarcation between noumenon and phenomenon, that historians can
never the past in itself from the historical texts and relics.
ii. Schutz suggests that historians, who are to “reconstruct” the meaning
configurations of the deaths, have to presume the notion of the stream of
history in parallel to the streams of consciousness, social institutions and
cultural system and to strive to constitute the “fusion of horizons” across
times. Most specifically, as Paul Ricoeur underlines, historians are
expected to be able to muster kinds of “sympathetic efforts” and “temporal
imagination”, that is, to project “not merely an imaginative projection into
another present but a real projection into another human life.” (Ricoeur,
1984, p. 28)
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Taking together all the concepts relating to the formation of social meanings in
face-to-face situations, with contemporaries across space, and predecessors
across times, we may conclude that Schutz with his students Berger and
Luckmann have rendered a resolution to Weber’s aporia No. 2.
D. The Conception of Meaning in Linguistic Approach
1. Language as expressive system of meanings:
a. As Schutz has indicated, one of the tools that humans have invented and used
to express their consciousness and subjective meanings is language. Hence,
language can be taken as one of the major system invented and
institutionalized by humans to externalize, objectivate and communicate their
subjective meanings.
b. Lingustics as discipline studying languages can therefore be conceived as one
of approaches to acquire interpretive understanding of subjective meanings
endowed in social action.
2. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s linguistic pluralism:
a. Ludwig Wittgenstein has been chosen by Habermas as the primary reference in
the linguistic approach in helping him to construct his logic of the social
sciences.
b. Habermas has specifically made a connection between phenomenological and
linguistic approaches in interpreting social meanings in the following manner.
"The problem of language has taken the place of the traditional problem of
consciousness: the transcendental critique of language takes the place of that
of consciousness. Wittgenstein's life forms, which correspond to Husserl's
lifeworld, now follow not the rules of synthesis of a consciousness as such but
rather the rules of the grammar of language games." (Habermas, 1988, p. 117)
More specifically, the connection and comparison between the two approaches
can be summarized as
i. Consciousness——Language
ii. Rules and structures of consciousness ——Rules of grammar of a
language
iii. Lifeworld ——Life forms
c. The two approaches in fact can further be compared in their developmental
stages:
Developmental stages of
Developmental stages of social
Wittgenstein's linguistic approach
phenomenological perspectives
The linguistic transcendentalism in
Husserl's transcendental
Tractatus Logico-philosophicus
phenomenology
(1922)
The linguistic pluralism in
Schutz's phenomenology of the
Philosophical Investigations (1953)
social worlds
d. Language games in linguistic pluralism: According to the perspective of
linguistic pluralism, each linguistic communities with their own grammatical
rules and life forms will construct their meanings and lifeworld accordingly. As a
result, each will constitute its own “language game”.
e. The subsequent development of the linguistic approach in qualitative research
in social sciences, which has been characterized as the “linguistic turn in social
research” has triggered diverse perspectives and approaches on “post-modern
fashion, which will not to be explored in this course.
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E. The Conception of Meaning in Hermeneutic Tradition:
1. The meanings of hermeneutics:
a. The origin of the hermeneutic tradition, as Martin Jay has specified, is
“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)
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)
c. "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, p. 23-24)
2. Levels of hermeneutic inquiries: With reference to the meanings retrieved from the
“texts”, hermeneutic studies can be classified into different levels:
a. Hermeneutics at literal level: Decoding the authentic meanings embedded in
literal texts or in utterances in dialogues
b. Hermeneutics at ontological level:
i. Encoding and decoding meanings from the ontological condition of the
author
ii. Encoding and decoding meanings from the ontological condition of the
world referred in the text
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 existential level:
i. Hermeneutic experience as “the corrective by means of which thinking
reason escapes the prison of language” ." (Gadamer, 1975, Quoted in
Habermas, 1988, p. 144)
ii. Hermeneutics as the “fusion of horizons” of that of the author and reader.
e. Hermeneutics at critical level:
i. Encoding and decoding “meanings” from the perspective of human
interests
ii. Encoding and decoding “meanings” from the perspective of systemic
distortions of institutional context
iii. Encoding and decoding “meanings” from the perspective of ideology of
given cultural hegemony
3. Paul Ricoeur’s literal hermeneutics as bridging of the distanciations in the text
a. Paul Ricoeur, French Philosopher, defines that “A text is any discourse (speech
act) fixed in writing.” (Ricoeur, 1981a, p.145) As fixations of speech acts text
enables the speech to be conserved, i.e. durability of text.
b. Hermeneutics is therefore needed as a means to bridge the distance created
by the text between the two sides of the speech accts, namely writing and
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readings. This bridging efforts has been called distanciation functions of
hermeneutics by Ricoeur. Ricoeur has differentiated distanciation functions into
five levels
c. Distanciation as bridging efforts between two separate language events (i.e.
discourse), namely writings and readings. It is the most elementary of
distanciation and “the core of the whole hermeneutic problem.” (Ricoeur, 1981a,
p. 134)
d. Taken text as work, in which the author has specific intent to make the effort to
put down his meanings into text or even “work”. Accordingly “hermeneutics
remains the art of discerning the discourse in the work; but this discourse is
only given in and through the structures of the work. Thus interpretation is the
reply to the fundamental distanciation constituted by the objectification of man
in work of discourse, an objectification comparable to that expressed in the
products of his labour and his art.” (Ricoeur, 1981a, P. 138)
e. Taken the contexts of the text production and interpretation into consideration,
i. both the acts of production and interpretation of the text are performed in
specific contexts;
ii. as a result, “the text must be able to…’decontextualise’ itself in such a way
that it can be ‘recontextualise’ in a new situation ― as accomplished …by
the act of reading.” (Ricoeur, 1981a, p. 139)
f. Text as fixation of discourse, can and should be understood in terms of the
referent and reality which it intends to designate or even signify. Ricoeur has
characterized it as “the world of thee text”. Accorrdingly, the effort of
distanciation can be construed at the level of bridging two “worlds of the text”
designated by the authors and readers. Ricoeur has underlined that “the most
fundamental hermeneutical problem … is to explicate the type of being-in-the
world (life-world) unfolded in front of the text.” (Ricoeur, 1981a, p.141)
g. Finally, the effort of distanciation-bridging can also be taken as
“self-understanding in front of the work”. In the process of reading, the readers
can and in act are applyig ‘the world of the work’ to the present situation of the
reader. In Ricoeur’s own words,
i. "To understand is to understand oneself in front of the text. It is not a
question of imposing upon the text our finite capacity of understanding, but
of exposing ourselves to the text and receiving from it an enlarge self."
(Ricoeur, 1981a, p. 143)
ii. “As a reader, I find myself only by losing myself. Reading introduces me
into the imaginative variations of the ego. The metamorphosis of the world
in play is also the playful metamorphosis of the ego." (Ricoeur, 1981a,
p.144)
4. Hans-Georg Gadamer’s existential hermeneutics as fusion of horizons
a. Existential understanding of language:
i. Following the teaching of his teacher Heidegger, Gadamer sees 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)
ii. Accordingly, human existence is a linguistically encoded existence, which is
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b.
c.
d.
e.
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.
Gadamer’s conception of hermeneutic experience: In order to liberate oneself
from such a prison, Gadamer suggests that human agents have to undertake
the hermeneutic experience.
"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 these
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)
Gadamer’s redefinition of hermeneutic inquiry:
i. 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”.
ii. 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)
Varieties of hermeneutic experiences and inquiries: Accordingly, such a fusion
of horizons may take varieties of forms
i. Hermeneutic experiences of the translator striving to bridge two languages
ii. Hermeneutic experience of the historian attempting to bridge two epochs
iii. Hermeneutic experience of the anthropologist trying to bridge two cultures
iv. Hermeneutic experience of the sociologist trying to bridge two classes,
status groups and political parties
v. Hermeneutic experience of the comparative-historical researcher striving of
bridge big structures, large process and great communities across times
and spaces
Gadamer’s concepts of authority and tradition:
i. 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 armonious 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”.
ii. 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
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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) 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)
iii. 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)
5. Jurgen Habermas’ Critical Hermeneutics
a. The Gadamer-Habermas debate: 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. 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)
b. 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.
c. Critical hermeneutics and critique of ideology: According to Habermas’ critique
on Gadamer’s existential hermeneutics, Habermas has elevates hermeneutic
inquiry yet to another level, namely critical hermeneutics.
i. 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.
ii. Accordingly, this hypostatized will impose systemic distortions to human
relationships and discourses.
iii. 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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F. Explaining Social Actions: Weber’s Aporia No. 3
1. Under the domination of methodological monism of the analytical-empiricism and
the deductive-nomological explanation, historical-hermeneutic approach has been
criticized as unable to render any valid explanations for human actions. It was
Georg H. von Wright, an Oxford Professor of Philosophy, who led the
counter-attack for the historical-hermeneutic approach by putting forth the
distinction between causal and teleological explanations. He stated in his book
Explanation and Understanding (1971) that
“It is…misleading to say that understanding versus explanation marks the
difference between two types of scientific intelligibility. But one could say that the
intentional or non-intentional character of their objects marks the difference
between two types of understanding and of explanation.” (von Wright, 1971, p.135)
a. Causal explanation: It refers to the mode of explanation, which attempt to seek
the sufficient and/or necessary conditions (i.e. explanans) which antecede the
phenomenon to be explained (i.e. explanandum). Causal explanations normally
point to the past. ‘This happened, because that had occued’ is the typical form
in language.” (von Wright, 1971, p. 83) It seeks to verify the antecedental
conditions for an observed natural phenomenon.
b. Teleological explanation: It refers to the mode of explanation, which attempt to
reveal the goals and/or intentions, which generate or motivate the explanadum
(usually an action to be explained) to take place. “Teleological explanations
point to the future. ‘This happened in order that that should occur.’” (von Wright,
1971, p. 83)
2. Intentional explanation: This type of explanation is the typical mode of explanation
employed by social scientists. In fact, as Jon Elster underlines, its feature
"distinguishes the social sciences from the natural sciences." (Elster, 1983, p. 69) It
focuses on revealing the intentions, motivations, meanings, desires, and believes
working behind human actions both at individual and social levels. Accordingly, as
Alfred Schutz suggested, human actions should be allocated within its
“corresponding projected act” to seek for explanation.
3. Rational-choice explanation: To avoid the diversity in human intentions and
idiosyncrasy of subjective meaning, rational-choice theorists have made the
working assumption that all men are rational.
a. By rational choice, it refers to the belief that men will conduct their actions
consistently with the best evidence available. (Elster, 2009). Accoordingly
Elster decomposes rational-choice action into “a triadic relation between action
(A), desire (D) and belief (B)”. (Elster, 1983, 90) More recently, Elster specifies
that “A successful intentional explanation establishes the behavior as action
and the performer as an agent. An explanation of this form amounts to
demonstrating three place relation between the behavior (B), a set of
cognitions (C) entertained by the individual and a set of desire (D) that can also
be impute to him. (Eslter, 1994, P. 311)
b. Apart from the triadic relation between action, desire and belief, Elster further
asserts that the triadic schema must also be consistent both internally and
externally. On the one hand, both the desire and the action must be internally
consistent, on the other hand, the belief or cognition must be externally
consistent with the evidences available.
c. Economic-man model: Rational-choice explanation can further be elaborated
into the economic-man model by assume that the rational choice made by
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humans are in much more aggressive terms that they will conduct their actions
with the objective that maximized returns will be guaranteed in their
means-ends or even cost-benefit calculations.
4. Quasi-teleological explanation (functional explanation):
a. It is the type of teleological explanation most commonly used in biology. It
"takes the form of indicating one or more functions (or even dysfunctions) that a
unit performs in maintaining or realizing certain traits of the system to which the
unit belongs." (Nagel, 1979, p. 23) For example, in explaining why human
being has lung, the typical explanation in biology is that lung performs the
function of breathing, i.e. provide oxygen to the of the proper maintenance of
the system of a human body. Accordingly functional explanation consist of the
followings
i. X perform the function of Y to the system of Z
ii. Y therefore explains the existence of X or Z's possession of Y.
b. However, there is a basic logical setback in this functional-explanatory structure.
That is, since X performs Y, therefore X must be an antecedent of Y. However in
the cause-effect explanatory structure, the existence of an effect (Y) could not
have anteceded that of its cause (X). Therefore, Y could not have been the
cause of X.
c. Nevertheless, in biology this setback can be compensated by the mechanism of
natural selection in the theory of evolution. That is the seemingly temporal
ordering mismatch between X and Y can be explained away within the much
longer timeline in the evolutionary process of species. G.A. Cohen has called
this requirement in functional explanation "consequence law" (Cohen, 1978,
p.250)
d. Debate on functional explanation in social sciences
i. The focal point of the debate is that there is no commonly accepted
"consequence law" available for the functional explanation of the origin and
existence of social phenomena, such as education, available in social
sciences. Unless we accept the thesis of social Darwinism that there is
natural selection principle at work in social world, otherwise we may have to
accept Jon Ester suggestion that functional explanation is not applicable in
social science.
ii. One resolution or qualification offered by Philip Pettit (2002) and Harold
Kincaid (2007) is that instead to use functional explanation and trace to
origins of species as biologists do, social scientists could restrain
themselves to explain the origins of social institutions and instead simply
applying functional explanation to account for the resilient patterns or
persistent regularities in social world. Such a qualification or reservation
can release social scientists of the burden of proof of tracing the history of
actual selection and evolution of the resilience of a social institution.
Instead social scientists can simply base on a "virtual selection" assumption
and focus on the accounting for the persistence of a given phenomenon.
e. Accordingly, functional explanation can be employed to account for the
existence, especially its resilience, continuity, and regularity, of social
institutions, such as institutions of education and family in human societies.
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G. Weber’s solution to his own aporia: Weber’s explanatory model
Within the debate between quantitative and qualitative, one of the impasses is
between explanation and understanding. It is argued that quantitative research can
render explanation while qualitative research can only provide empathetic
understanding. Accordingly, it is impossible to provide both explanation and
understanding at the same time. Yet Weber demand students of sociology and
researcher in social sciences in general to render interpretive understanding to
subjective meanings in social action and to provide causal explanation of its
consequences and effect simultaneously. In fact, Weber is not assigning his fellow
sociologist an unsurmountable task, he has demonstrate how to accomplish the job
himself.
1. Conception of “explanatory understanding”: In fact, Weber himself has make any
explicit distinction between two types of understanding
a. Direct observational understanding: It refers to “direct rational understanding of
action”, (Weber, 1978, P. 8) that is by locating the action and its subjective
meaning with its “corresponding project” as Schtz has suggested. It also refers
to “direct observational understanding of irrational emotional reactions”,
(Weber, 1978, P. 8) that is by locating it with the situation which arouse such an
emotional outburst.
b. Explanatory understanding: Weber then emphasizes that we should go one
stage further by “placing the act in an intelligible and more inclusive context of
meaning” (Weber, 1978, P. 8) and to provide causal explanation how the
respective contexts (historical, socio-cultural, and/or geo-political) “cause” the
formulation of the rational project and the undertaking of the corresponding
action.
2. In fact Dirk Käsler, a German sociologist, suggests that “we can distinguish three
variations on the interpretation of the concept of meaning in Weber’s work, all of
which can be grasped by the method of Verstehen:
a. Meaning as cultural significance, i.e. as ‘objectified’ meaning in a ‘world of
meanings’.
b. Meaning as subjective intended meaning which is intersubjectively
comprehensible and communicable.
c. Meaning as functional meaning which is influenced by objective contexts, is
intersubjectively mediated and is functional significance for social processes of
change.” (Käsler, 1988, 178)
3. Accordingly, Weber points the way for resolving the illusive aporia by stating that
“Thus for a science which is concerned with the subjective meaning of action,
explanation requires a grasp of the complex of meanings in which an actual course
of understandable action thus interpreted belong.” (Weber, 1978, P. 9)
4. In fact, another prominent American sociologist, Randell Collins (1980) has point
out the misreading of Weber’s work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism (1904) as providing a full account for the rise of capitalism. Collins
points out that to comprehend Weber full account for the rise of capitalism, we
must also reading his work General Economic History (1927). Collins argues that
Weber does not only accounting for the rise of capitalism with an idealist approach
of attributing the rational and enterprising actions of the capitalists in Europe in the
18th century to the religious belief of the Calvinism, a sect with the Protestantism.
He has in fact placing these enterprising acts against the historical, socio-economic
contexts of the 18th-century Western Europe to render an “explanatory
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understanding” of “complex meanings”. Collins has summarized the Weber’s
contextual framework as follows
G. Representations: The Fields of Historical-Hermeneutic Studies
Taking together the precedent discussions on the methodology of the
historical-hermeneutic approach, meanings of human and social actions may appears
in a varieties of forms, which can be characterized as “representations. They includes
1. Texts: It refers to literal representations, in which meanings expressed in speech
acts (discourse) are fixed in written forms.
2. Narratives: It represents the efforts of individuals or human aggregates to arrange
their experiences in meaningful (consistent, coherent, and continuous) manners.
3. Relics and historical documents: It refers to the representations meanings form the
past.
4. Ethnographic sites: It refers to forms of representations which reveal the meanings
embedded in human activities and routines, such as rituals and organizations.
5. Institutions: It refers to the “rules of the games” (North, 1990), which represents the
meanings typified and legitimized in sets of rules governing particular kind of
human activities, such as exchange (i.e. market), resolutions of conflicts (i.e. the
state), and reproduction (i.e. family and education)
6. Discourse (in Foucaultian sense): It refers to the “totalities” of “technologies of
power”, which subjugate human bodies and minds within human societies.
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H. The Epistemological Foundation of Historical-Hermeneutic studies
1. The assumptions of the object of inquiry: Contrary to analytical-empirical science,
historical-hermeneutic studies assume that the social world to bear numbers of
features which are quite opposite to those in analytical-empirical science.
a. Meaning-laden and value-laden: It is assumed that social phenomena are
loaded with meanings and values. In fact, it is exactly the features of
meaning-laden and value-laden that lend a social activity and social institution
its regularity, resilience and consistency. And this is exactly the task of social
researchers to reveal the meanings and values at work underlying each and
every social phenomenon.
b. Meaning coherence and meaningful whole: Apart from the feature of
meaning-laden, historical-hermeneutic studies also assumes the meanings
and values at work in social phenomena and institutions are configured in
coherent and integral forms. At individual levels, these meaning integrals
usually appear in narrative identities; at societal level, they are constituted in
different forms of integrative and enduring institutions; at cultural level, these
meaningful wholes take the forms of effective practices of cultural tradition and
heritages; and at historical level, the meaning configurations usually passed on
in the forms of historical narratives of nations or civilizations.
c. Persistent but transformable in structure: In historical-hermeneutic studies,
though the meaning laden social phenomena are subjective and/or
intersubjective in nature, yet they are not so idiosyncratic and ephemeral in
appearance that they make them unobservable, non-recordable and
non-researchable. It is assumed that most of the meaning configurations are
regular and persistent in forms, but of course they are not universal, permanent
and nomological in form as the natural phenomena. Therefore, they are
presumed to be contextualized with particular historical and societal
aggregates and to be subject to vary and change with times, spaces and
human efforts.
2. The assumption of the knowledge constituted: The knowledge to be constituted
and accepted in historical-hermeneutic studies has been characterized as
descriptions. They can be discerned in the following elements:
a. The deep and thick descriptions: They refer to the descriptive “field notes”
recording the meanings endowed into the social practices by their indigenous
participants, mostly the respondents in the studies. They may take on varieties
of formats and representations, such as text, historical documentations and
relics, narrative story-line, ethnographic situations, and “discourse” (in
Foucaultian sense).
b. The interpretation: It refers to the meanings attributed by participants and then
by the researchers to the “data”. These interpretations of course cannot be
“verified or falsified” empirically and analytically as those in analytical-empirical
sciences, yet they can still be “confirmed” in terms of their “effective practices”
in the correspondent “Lifeworld” from which the data were initially retrieved.
Furthermore, the “validity” of the interpretations, especially those imputed by
the researchers can also be cross examined by other researchers in the field in
the form of hermeneutic criticism or historical criticism.
c. Intentional and institutional-functional explanations: Given the descriptions and
interpretations obtained, historical-hermeneutic researchers may render
explanations for human actions, interactions, and institutional regularities in
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intentional and/or institutional-functional explanatory modes.
3. The practical truth and the discursive conception of truth: One of the primary
differences between analytical-empirical sciences and historical-hermeneutic
studies is their conception about the idea of truth. In natural sciences, the truth in
scientific knowledge must be tested externally against the facts found in the natural
and material world, i.e. compliance with the “correspondence principle”. On the
other hand, in historical-hermeneutic studies, truth must be sought after the very
practices embedded in the historical-hermeneutic field and/or embodied among
participants within socio-cultural situations. Hence, it can be termed as the
“practical truth”. By practical truth, it refers to the fact that the validity ground of this
type of truth is not to be contrast against the external world but to be sought after
within the social world. More specifically, it is the practices of reaching
understanding, forging agreement, and bridging consensus within a given
“lifeworld” that the validity ground of practical truth is founded. (Habermas, 1984)
More recently, Habermas in his book Truth and Justification (2003) makes a
specific distinction between two conceptions of truth
a. The discursive concept of truth: First of all, Habermas reminds us that the
justification of truth is a linguistically and communicatively embedded process.
By locating the issue of “truth and justification” within his previous work on The
Theory of Communicative Action, he retrospectively recalls his arguments that
“I…determine the meaning of truth procedurally, that is, as confirmation under
normatively rigorous conditions of practice of argumentation. This practice is
based on the idealizing presuppositions (a) of public debate and complete
inclusion of all those affected; (b) of equal distribution of right to communicate;
(c) of a nonviolent context in which only the unforced force of the better
argument holds sway; and (d) of the sincerity of how all those affected express
themselves. The discursive conception was on the one hand supposed to take
account of the fact that a statement’s truth─absent the possibility of direct
access to uninterpreted truth conditions ─cannot be assessed in term of
‘decisive evidence”, but only in terms of justificatory, albeit never definitely
‘compelling,’ reasons. One the other hand, the idealization of certain features
of the form and process of the practice of argumentation was to characterize a
procedure that would do justice to the context-transcendence of the truth claim
raised by a speaker in a statement by rationally taking into account all relevant
voice, topics, and contribution.”(Habermas, 2003, P. 36-37)
b. The realist concept of truth: However, the discursive concept of truth alone, as
Habermas admits, cannot substantiate the validity claim of truth. What is
needed to accompany “discursive conceptions of truth” is the “realist intuitions”
i.e. “the concept of propositional truth”. (Habermas, 2003, P. 8) More
specifically, Habermas suggests
What we want to express with true sentences is that a certain state of affairs
‘obtains’ is ‘given’. And these facts in turn refer to ‘the world’as the totality of
things about which we may state facts. The ontological way of speaking
establishes a connection between truth and reference, that is, between the
truth of statements and the ‘objectivity’ of that about which something is stated.
The concept of the ‘objective world’ encompasses everything that subjective of
their interventions and inventions.” (Habermas, 2003, P. 254)
Taken together, what Habermas suggests is that we need both concepts of truth
and justification to ‘true knowledge’.
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4. The implied knowledge-constitutive human interest: Given the nature and features
of the historical-hermeneutic knowledge, the knowledge-constitutive human
interest to be served, according to Habermas’ formulation, is “practical cognitive
interest” effectively embedded in human communications, interactions and more
generally communal practices. (Habermas, 1971, P. 196) It is therefore implied that
with the well-grounded historical-hermeneutic knowledge, or what Habermas
termed “practical effective knowledge” (Habermas, 1971, P. 191) humans are able
to understand, to communicate, to bridge distances across historical and
socio-cultural communities (or in Gadamer’s terms “fusion of horizons), and finally
arrive at consensus. In Habermas conception, it means to achieve “communicative
rationality” and “communicative action”.
Additional References
Habermas, Jurgen (1984) The Theory of Communication Action, vol. one. Boston: Beacon
Press.
Collins, Randall. (1981) "Weber's Last Theory of Capitalism: Systematization." American
Sociological Review 45(6): 925-942.
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