Transcript Lecture Note 3: Historical

北京师范大学研究生课程
教育研究的基础：方法论、知识论及本体论
Topic 3
Methodological & Epistemological Foundations of
Historical-Hermeneutic Studies
The Essentials of the Methodology of
Qualitative Research
Willhelm Dilthey’s conception of the human
sciences:
“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)
Wilhelm Dilthey’s Introduction to the Human
Sciences (1923)
(1833-1911)
3
The Essentials of the Methodology of
Qualitative Research
Willhelm Dilthey’s conception of the human
sciences: …
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)
The Essentials of the Methodology of
Qualitative Research
Willhelm Dilthey’s conception of the human
sciences: …
“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 selfconsciousness. … A man finds in this selfconsciousness 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)
The Essentials of the Methodology of
Qualitative Research
Clifford Geertz's conception of culture and its
interpretation
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)
Clifford Geertz's conception of culture and
its interpretation (1973)
(1926-2006)
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The Essentials of the Methodology of
Qualitative Research
Clifford Geertz's conception of culture and its
interpretation
“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)
The Essentials of the Methodology of
Qualitative Research
Max Weber’s conception of sociology and
social research
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 the behavior of others and is
thereby oriented in its course." (Weber, 1978, p. 4)
(1864-1920)
The Essentials of the Methodology of
Qualitative Research
Max Weber’s conception of sociology and
social research
…. 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.
The Essentials of the Methodology of
Qualitative Research
Max Weber’s conception of …
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?
The Essentials of the Methodology of
Qualitative Research
Max Weber’s conception of …
Third, the definition has also generated yet another
aporia by stipulating 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.
The Essentials of the Methodology of
Qualitative Research
Max Weber’s conception of …
In fact, both Alfred Schutz (1967/1932) 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.
The Essentials of the Methodology of
Qualitative Research
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
The social phenomenological approach
The linguistic approach
The hermeneutic approach
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
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.
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
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 socialmeaning formation with the following
constituent concepts of social phenomenology.
(1899-1959)
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The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
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.
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
Formation of individual subjective meanings: …
Stream of consciousness: According to
phenomenologists, most notably Hernri 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 interconnection between consciousness and objects in
reality the ‘intentioanlity’.
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
Formation of individual subjective meanings: …
 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 Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
Formation of individual subjective meanings: …
 The concept of intentionality: …
The process of intentionality has been differentiated by
Husserl into two components, namely noema and
noesis.
The concept of noema (intentional-object) indicates the
objects being intended to, conscious of and grasped, i.e. the
what;
The concept of noesis (intentional-Act) refers to the act of
intending, stretching forth and bringing to consciousness,
i.e. the how.
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
Formation of individual subjective meanings: …
 Concepts of perception, retention and reproduction:
 Perception: It refers to the “now-apprehension” granted to an
experience by human minds during the immediate encounter.
 Retention: It refers to the “primary remembrance” or “primary
impression” of an experience formed within the “afterconsciousness” of the encounter.
 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 Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
Formation of individual subjective meanings: …
 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 meaningendowing experience of consciousness.” (Schutz,
1967, p. 56)
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
Formation of individual subjective meanings: …
 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)
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
Formation of individual subjective meanings: …
 The concept of Action and Project: …
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 goals and
intentions and efforts to fulfill them.
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
Formation of individual subjective meanings: …
In summary, by applying these concepts to Weber’s
stipulation of understanding of subjective
meanings in human actions, Schutz asserts
confidently that ….
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
Formation of individual subjective meanings: …
“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.
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
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.
The concept of Durée: …
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
Configuration of meaning-context …
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)
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
Configuration of meaning-context …
 The concept of meaning-context: By meaningcontext, 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)
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
Configuration of meaning-context …
The concept of meaning-context: …. bears numbers
of structural features.
 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.
 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.
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
Configuration of meaning-context …
The concept of meaning-context: …. bears numbers
of structural features. …
 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.
Internal time consciousness
Durée
Action
Anticipation & fulfillment
Behavior
Attitude-taking Act
Meaning-context #n
of unity and continuity
Subjective Meanings
Reproduction, Retention, Perception
Hierarchy
Meaning-context #1
of unity and continuity
Stream of consciousness
(Intentionality)
The
subject
Intentional-Act
Intentional
object
35
Phenomenological conceptual framework of meaning
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
Formation of social meanings: Weber’s aporia
No. 2
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? ……
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
Formation of social meanings: Weber’s aporia
No. 2
…..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 come
to act harmoniously, concertedly and cooperatively
into a social entity?
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
Formation of social meanings….
Schutz’s concepts of meaning-context of the social
world
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.
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.
Based on commonly-share culture, Schutz has
differentiated the process of meaning-construction into
three types
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
Formation of social meanings….
Social meaning construction in face-to-face
relationship
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.
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
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
Formation of social meanings….
Social meaning construction in face-to-face
relationship ….
Expressive movement and expressive act: …. 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)
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
Formation of social meanings….
Social meaning construction in face-to-face
relationship ….
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.
• ….
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
Formation of social meanings….
Social meaning construction in face-to-face
relationship ….
Sign and sign system:
• ….
• 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.
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
Formation of social meanings….
Social meaning construction in face-to-face
relationship ….
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 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.
Cultural system
Durée
Durée
Sign systems
Signs
Objectifications
Externalizations
Express
Acts
Intentionality
Express
Movements
Intentionality
44
Phenomenological conceptual framework of social meaning
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
Formation of social meanings….
Social-meaning construction with the
contemporaries
 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?
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
Formation of social meanings….
Social-meaning …contemporaries…
 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 socalled “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 roleperformances to partners in interaction has been characterized by
Schutz and his followers as “typification”.
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
Formation of social meanings….
Social-meaning …contemporaries…
 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. (To be
explicated on Topic 5 &6)
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
Formation of social meanings….
 Social-meaning construction with the predecessors
 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 bridge the past in
itself from the historical texts and relics.
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
Formation of social meanings….
 Social-meaning construction with the predecessors
 ….
 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)
The Conception of Meanings in Social
Phenomenological Perspective
Formation of social meanings….
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.
Institutional context
of the predecessors
Fusion of
horizons
Typiifcation
Institutionalization
Typiifcation
Institutionalization
Institutional context of the contemporaries
Phenomenological conceptual framework of social-meaning
construction with contemporaries and predecessors
51
The Conception of Meaning in
Linguistic Approach
Language as expressive system of meanings:
 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.
 Lingustics as discipline studying languages can
therefore be conceived as one of approaches to
acquire interpretive understanding of subjective
meanings endowed in social action.
The Conception of Meaning in
Linguistic Approach
Ludwig Wittgenstein’s linguistic pluralism:
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.
Habermas has specifically made a connection
between phenomenological and linguistic
approaches in interpreting social meanings in the
following manner. …
The Conception of Meaning in
Linguistic Approach
Ludwig Wittgenstein’s linguistic pluralism:
…connection between phenomenological and
linguistic approaches …
"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
The Conception of Meaning in
Linguistic Approach
Ludwig Wittgenstein’s linguistic pluralism:
…connection between phenomenological and
linguistic approaches …
…More specifically, the connection and comparison
between the two approaches can be summarized as
 Consciousness——Language
 Rules and structures of consciousness ——Rules of
grammar of a language
 Lifeworld ——Life forms
The Conception of Meaning in
Linguistic Approach
Ludwig Wittgenstein’s linguistic pluralism:
 The two approaches in fact can further be compared
in their developmental stages:
Developmental stages of
Wittgenstein's linguistic
approach
The linguistic
transcendentalism in Tractatus
Logico-philosophicus (1922)
The linguistic pluralism in
Philosophical Investigations
(1953)
Developmental stages of
social phenomenological
perspectives
Husserl's transcendental
phenomenology
Schutz's phenomenology
of the social worlds
The Conception of Meaning in
Linguistic Approach
Ludwig Wittgenstein’s linguistic pluralism:
 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”.
 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.
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
The meanings of hermeneutics:
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)
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
The meanings of hermeneutics:
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)
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
The meanings of hermeneutics:
"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. ….
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
The meanings of hermeneutics:
“….. 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)
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
Levels of hermeneutic inquiries: With reference
to the meanings retrieved from the “texts”,
hermeneutic studies can be classified into
different levels:
Hermeneutics at literal level: Decoding the authentic
meanings embedded in literal texts or in utterances
in dialogues
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
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
Levels of hermeneutic inquiries: ….
 Hermeneutics at historical and cultural level:
Encoding and decoding meanings from the historical
and cultural context within which the text was
produced
 Hermeneutics at the 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.
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
Levels of hermeneutic inquiries: ….
Hermeneutics at critical level:
 Encoding and decoding “meanings” from the perspective of
human interests
 Encoding and decoding “meanings” from the perspective of
systemic distortions of institutional context
 Encoding and decoding “meanings” from the perspective of
ideology of given cultural hegemony
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
Paul Ricoeur’s literal hermeneutics as bridging
of the distanciations in the text
 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.
Paul Ricoeur’s literal hermeneutics
1913-2005
66
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
Paul Ricoeur’s bridging of the distanciations….
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
readings. This bridging efforts has been called
distanciation functions of hermeneutics by Ricoeur.
Ricoeur has differentiated distanciation functions
into five levels
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
Paul Ricoeur’s bridging of the distanciations….
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)
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
Paul Ricoeur’s bridging of the distanciations….
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)
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
Paul Ricoeur’s bridging of the distanciations….
Taken the contexts of the text production and
interpretation into consideration,
both the acts of production and interpretation of the text are
performed in specific contexts;
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)
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
Paul Ricoeur’s bridging of the distanciations….
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)
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
Paul Ricoeur’s bridging of the distanciations….
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. ….
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
Paul Ricoeur’s bridging of the distanciations….
. ….In Ricoeur’s own words,
"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)
“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)
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
Hans-Georg Gadamer’s existential
hermeneutics (philosophical hermeneutics) as
fusion of horizons
Existential understanding of language:
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)
1900-2002
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
Hans-Georg Gadamer’s existential
hermeneutics as fusion of horizons
Existential understanding of language:
…
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.
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
Gadamer’s existential hermeneutics …
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. …
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
Gadamer’s existential hermeneutics …
Gadamer’s conception of hermeneutic experience:
“. …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)
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
Gadamer’s existential hermeneutics …
Gadamer’s redefinition of hermeneutic inquiry:
Within Gadamer’s framework of existential linguistics,
hermeneutics is no longer simply an act of empathetic
bridging of 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”.
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)
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
Gadamer’s existential hermeneutics …
Varieties of hermeneutic experiences and inquiries:
Accordingly, such a fusion of horizons may take
varieties of forms
Hermeneutic experiences of the translator striving to bridge
two languages
Hermeneutic experience of the historian attempting to
bridge two epochs
Hermeneutic experience of the anthropologist trying to
bridge two cultures
Hermeneutic experience of the sociologist trying to bridge
two classes, status groups and political parties
Hermeneutic experience of the comparative-historical
researcher striving of bridge big structures, large process
and great communities across times and spaces
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
Gadamer’s existential hermeneutics …
Gadamer’s concepts of authority and tradition:
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 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”.
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
Gadamer’s existential hermeneutics …
Gadamer’s concepts of authority and tradition: …
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) ……
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
Gadamer’s existential hermeneutics …
Gadamer’s concepts of authority and tradition: …
…….. 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)
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
Gadamer’s existential hermeneutics …
Gadamer’s concepts of authority and tradition: …
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)
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
Jurgen Habermas’ Critical Hermeneutics
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.
….
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
Jurgen Habermas’ Critical Hermeneutics
The Gadamer-Habermas debate:
….. 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)
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
Jurgen Habermas’ Critical Hermeneutics
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.
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
Jurgen Habermas’ Critical Hermeneutics
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.
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.
Accordingly, this hypostatized power will impose systemic
distortions to human relationships and discourses.
The Conception of Meaning in
Hermeneutic Tradition
Jurgen Habermas’ Critical Hermeneutics
Critical hermeneutics and critique of ideology:
….
One of these systemic distortions, which manifests in
individual horizon, fusion of horizons, prejudices, and
tradition, is the ideological elements frozen in these culturallinguistic representations.
Explaining Social Actions:
Weber’s Aporia No. 3
Under the domination of methodological
monism of the analytical-empiricism and the
deductive-nomological explanation, historicalhermeneutic 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.
Explaining Social Actions:
Weber’s Aporia No. 3
(1916-2003)
Explaining Social Actions:
Weber’s Aporia No. 3
 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 nonintentional character of their objects marks the
difference between two types of understanding
and of explanation.” (von Wright, 1971, p.135)
Explaining Social Actions:
Weber’s Aporia No. 3
Georg H. von Wright…distinction…
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.
Explaining Social Actions:
Weber’s Aporia No. 3
Georg H. von Wright…distinction…
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)
Explaining Social Actions:
Weber’s Aporia No. 3
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.
Explaining Social Actions:
Weber’s Aporia No. 3
Intentional explanation: ….
Intentional explanation in social phenomenological
perspective: As Schutz suggested, human actions
should be allocated within with its “corresponding
projected act” to seek for explanation. While social
actions can also be explained with reference to the
rational-choice theory.
Explaining Social Actions:
Weber’s Aporia No. 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.
Explaining Social Actions:
Weber’s Aporia No. 3
Rational-choice explanation:……
 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)
Elster’s Rational-Choice Explanatory Model (1993)
Evidence
Cognition
Action
Desire
Explaining Social Actions:
Weber’s Aporia No. 3
Rational-choice explanation:……
 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.
Elster’s Rational-Choice Explanatory Model (2009)
Information
Cognition
because-of explanation
Action
in-order-to explanation
Desire
Explaining Social Actions:
Weber’s Aporia No. 3
Rational-choice explanation:……
 Economic-man model: Rational-choice explanation
can further be elaborated into the economic-man
model by assume that the rational choice made by
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.
Explaining Social Actions:
Weber’s Aporia No. 3
Quasi-teleological explanation (functional
explanation):
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.
….
Explaining Social Actions:
Weber’s Aporia No. 3
Quasi-teleological explanation (functional
explanation):
Accordingly functional explanation consist of the
followings
 X perform the function of Y to the system of Z
 Y therefore explains the existence of X or Z's
possession of X.
Explaining Social Actions:
Weber’s Aporia No. 3
Quasi-teleological explanation (functional
explanation):
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.
Explaining Social Actions:
Weber’s Aporia No. 3
Quasi-teleological explanation (functional
explanation):
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)
Explaining Social Actions:
Weber’s Aporia No. 3
Quasi-teleological explanation (functional
explanation):
Debate on functional explanation in social sciences
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.
…
Explaining Social Actions:
Weber’s Aporia No. 3
Quasi-teleological explanation…
Debate on functional explanation in social sciences….
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.
Explaining Social Actions:
Weber’s Aporia No. 3
Quasi-teleological explanation…
Debate on functional explanation in social sciences
....
 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.
Functional Explanation of
the Persistence of Institutions
Other Factors
Social Function at T0
.
.
.
Social Function at Tn
Social Actions
Institution
Contexts
Persistence
Summary of models of
teleological explanation
Cognition
because-of explanation
In-order-to explanation
Social Actions
Desire
Other
Factors
Teleological Explanation
Quasi-teleological Explanation
Persistence
Social Function at T0
.
.
Social Function at Tn
Institution
Contexts
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.
Weber’s Solution to his own Aporia:
Weber’s Explanatory Model
Conception of “explanatory understanding”: In
fact, Weber himself has make any explicit
distinction between two types of understanding
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.
Weber’s Solution to his own Aporia:
Weber’s Explanatory Model
Conception of “explanatory understanding”:
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.
Weber’s Solution to his own Aporia:
Weber’s Explanatory Model
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:
Meaning as cultural significance, i.e. as ‘objectified’
meaning in a ‘world of meanings’.
Meaning as subjective intended meaning which is
intersubjectively comprehensible and
communicable.
Weber’s Solution to his own Aporia:
Weber’s Explanatory Model
…
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)
Weber’s Solution to his own Aporia:
Weber’s Explanatory Model
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)
Weber’s Solution to his own Aporia:
Weber’s Explanatory Model
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.
Weber’s Solution to his own Aporia:
Weber’s Explanatory Model
 ….. Collins points out that to comprehend Weber
full account for the rise of capitalism, we must also
reading his work General Economic History (127).
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 18thcentury Western Europe to render an “explanatory
understanding” of “complex meanings”.
Weber’s Solution to his own Aporia:
Weber’s Explanatory Model
Collins has summarized the Weber’s contextual
framework as follows
Components of
rationalized
capitalism
Intermediate
conditions
Background
conditions
Ultimate
conditions
Literate
administrators
Entrepreneurial
organization of
capital
Bureaucratic
state
Favorable
Transportation &
communication
Writing & recordkeeping
Coinage
Rationalized
technology
Centrally supplied
weapons
Calculable
law
Citizenship
Self-supplied,
disciplined army
Free labor
Greek civic cults
Unrestricted
market
Methodical Nondualistic
economic ethic
Judaic
prophecy
Christian
proselytization
Reformation sects
Weber’s Causal Chain of the Rise of Capitalism
Church law &
bureaucracy
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
Texts: It refers to literal representations, in which
meanings expressed in speech acts (discourse) are
fixed in written forms.
Narratives: It represents the efforts of individuals or
human aggregates to arrange their experiences in
meaningful (consistent, coherent, and continuous)
manners.
Representations: The Fields of
Historical-Hermeneutic Studies
…..“representations…include
Relics and historical documents: It refers to the
representations meanings form the past.
Ethnographic sites: It refers to forms of
representations which reveal the meanings embedded
in human activities and routines, such as rituals and
organizations.
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)
Representations: The Fields of
Historical-Hermeneutic Studies
…..“representations…include
Discourse (in Foucaultian sense): It refers to the
“totalities” of “technologies of power”, which
subjugate human bodies and minds within human
societies.
The Epistemological Foundation of
Historical-Hermeneutic studies
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 analyticalempirical science.
The Epistemological Foundation of
Historical-Hermeneutic studies
The assumptions of the object of inquiry: …
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 meaningladen 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.
The Epistemological Foundation of
Historical-Hermeneutic studies
The assumptions of the object of inquiry: …
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.
The Epistemological Foundation of
Historical-Hermeneutic studies
The assumptions of the object of inquiry: …
Persistent but transformable in structure: In historicalhermeneutic 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, nonrecordable 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.
The Epistemological Foundation of
Historical-Hermeneutic studies
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:
The Epistemological Foundation of
Historical-Hermeneutic studies
The assumption of the knowledge constituted:
…
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).
The Epistemological Foundation of
Historical-Hermeneutic studies
The assumption of the knowledge constituted: ...
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.
The Epistemological Foundation of
Historical-Hermeneutic studies
The assumption of the knowledge constituted:
…
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 intentional and/or
institutional-functional explanatory modes.
The Epistemological Foundation of
Historical-Hermeneutic studies
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”. …
The Epistemological Foundation of
Historical-Hermeneutic studies
The practical truth and the discursive
conception of truth:
…. On the other hand, in historical-hermeneutic
studies, truth must be sought after the very
practices embedded in the historicalhermeneutic 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 practical social world.
The Epistemological Foundation of
Historical-Hermeneutic studies
The practical truth and the discursive
conception of truth:
…. 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
The Epistemological Foundation of
Historical-Hermeneutic studies
The practical truth and the discursive
conception of truth:
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
The Epistemological Foundation of
Historical-Hermeneutic studies
The practical truth ….:
….
“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 Epistemological Foundation of
Historical-Hermeneutic studies
The practical truth ….:
“….. 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)
The Epistemological Foundation of
Historical-Hermeneutic studies
The practical truth ….:
The realist concept of truth: However, the discursive
concept of truth alone, as Habermas admits, cannot
‘decisively’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 ….
The Epistemological Foundation of
Historical-Hermeneutic studies
The practical truth ….:
The realist concept of truth: ….
“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)
The Epistemological Foundation of
Historical-Hermeneutic studies
Taken together, what Habermas suggests is that
we need both concepts of truth to ‘justify true
sentence as knowledge’.
The Epistemological Foundation of
Historical-Hermeneutic studies
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) …
The Epistemological Foundation of
Historical-Hermeneutic studies
The knowledge-constitutive human interest:
….It is therefore implied that with the wellgrounded 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 sociocultural 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”.
Topic 3
Methodological & Epistemological Foundations of
Historical-Hermeneutic Studies
End
149