10.13125/CH/3144
application/pdf
2533-1825
3144
1
en
urn:nbn:it:unica-22221
Vinicio Busacchi
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Critical Hermeneutics
Hermeneutics ‘Reloaded’: From Science/Philosophy Dichotomy to Critical Hermeneutics
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch
1
Articles
2017-12-28
2017-12-28
2017-12-28
2017-12-28
41-65
1
Vinicio Busacchi
2017/12/28
10.13125/CH/3144
41
Department of Pedagogy, Psychology, and Philosophy
UNIVERSITY OF CAGLIARI
2533-1825
1
65
urn:nbn:it:unica-22221
Hermeneutics ‘Reloaded’: From Science/Philosophy Dichotomy to Critical Hermeneutics
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/article/download/3144/pdf
1
Critical Hermeneutics, 1 (2017)                               Articolo presentato il 20/12/2017
Biannual International Journal of Philosophy                  Articolo accettato il 20/12/2017
http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/index                      Articolo pubblicato il 22/12/2017
ISSN 2533-1825 (on line); DOI 10.13125/CH/3144




 Hermeneutics ‘Reloaded’: From Science/Philosophy
                Dichotomy to Critical Hermeneutics


                                   Vinicio Busacchi




Abstract
Currently, hermeneutics is no longer a koinè, yet it pervades the field
of human knowledge on different and diverse levels. With the decline
of philosophical hermeneutics, the inheritance of a rich tradition of
thought, there remains some very important problematic and
speculative       cornerstones         and       a   poorly    ordered        horizon        of
hermeneutical practices and procedures, more or less technical
and/or speculative. From this composite picture the (negative)
possibility of truths without method and methods without truth or
validity emerges; and therefore, again, emerge the problems of
consistency, rigour and philosophical legitimacy, and the risk of non-
rational seductions and/or ideological distortions. From another point
of view, philosophy and reflection within hermeneutical traditions
have elaborated sufficient critical content and devices for the
definition of an organised, rigorous and controlled model of a
comprehensive procedure. From this perspective, Paul Ricoeur’s
philosophical work seems emblematic. From his philosophy it is
possible to extract a general model of a non-philosophically-engaged
hermeneutical method, which is valuable for the human and social
sciences as well as a useful procedure for interdisciplinary work. This
is critical hermeneutics: a specific form of speculative and theoretical
hermeneutics whose methodological and epistemological foundation
Vinicio Busacchi, Hermeneutics ‘Reloaded’




mirrors the new form of the contemporary hermeneutic-scientific
koinè.
Keywords: critical hermeneutics, ontology,                      epistemology, fact,
value, ideology




1. Introduction: Hermeneutics’ Persistent Legitimacy and Its
Paradoxes
I am in full agreement with what David Pellauer says at the start of
his 2014 paper, ‘Work to Be Done’, dedicated to hermeneutics and its
current task. Indeed, even more, the hypothetical and circumstantial
position according to which we can overlook the distinction between
philosophical       hermeneutics            and    hermeneutic       philosophy   is
generalised on the basis of the assumption that: ‘hermeneutic
philosophy is philosophy that takes seriously the question of
interpretation in relation to understanding, where understanding is
both the result of interpretation and, quite paradoxically, also what
motivates interpretation in the first place’ (Pellauer, 2014: 1). The
only distinction that is necessary, and to which we will return later, is
between      hermeneutics         as    a     technique   and     hermeneutics    as
philosophy. It is a distinction that has aspects of overlap and
interrelation to the extent that, on the one hand, the technique is
nourished by and involved in theoretical and methodological research,
and on the other, philosophy is also exercised on a theoretical-
methodological level. In fact, it is around the relationship between
interpretation and comprehension that the legitimacy and speculative
value of hermeneutics is at stake. This relationship defines the terrain
of its problematicness and opens up the space to a series of quasi-
paradoxical, if not fully paradoxical, aspects.
      With     Pellauer,     I   say:       ‘(…)   we   exist   as   understanding,
understanding ourselves, others, our world, things in that world, our



42
                                                    Critical Hermeneutics, 1 (2017)




possibilities in that world’ (3). Actually, Schleiermacher already
explained that hermeneutics’ role or end is not interpretation, but
understanding: Verstehen als die Aufgabe der Hermeneutik (Die
Aphorismen, 1805). This is the source of the epistemic, cognitive and
speculative     strength     of   hermeneutics,     because          it     enables
hermeneutics to move beyond the one-dimensionality of analytical-
descriptive and scientific-explanatory knowledge, and to synthesise
knowledge data, values, creation of meaning and inspiration in a
unified theoretical practical synthesis, closer to both the human being
and life-world reality than emerges by calculation and measurement
only. However, this is also the source of the epistemic, cognitive and
speculative weakness of hermeneutics, constantly driven to be
articulate between truth and evaluation, knowledge and interest,
reality and ideology. A discipline capable of actively supporting and
nurturing both nihilistic and relativistic conceptions as well as positive
and    affirmative   conceptions    reveals   all    about     its        flexibility,
ambivalence and ambiguity. On the other hand, however, some
degree of mixtures of the same kind does not lack even the so-called
‘analytic’ and scientific knowledge, as above all, today, that much
analytic thought advances a purely ideological pretence of purity and
perfection, and much scientific knowledge conceals an idolatry of
human intelligence, manipulability of nature and the possibilities of
technology.
      The problem is deep, and it is deeper than the problem of
knowledge. In some way, hermeneutics establishes and maintains as
radical   and    perpetual    the   problematicness       of    truth,        value,
goodness/rightness and legitimacy with regards to knowing, acting,
doing and even existing. And everything is knotted on the point of
(evident) precedence and the greater degree of completeness and
significance of understanding on knowing.




                                                                                   43
Vinicio Busacchi, Hermeneutics ‘Reloaded’




       Through this, I am not supporting the reasoning behind the
ontological or ontological existential anchorage of understanding to
the Being as intended by Heidegger and Gadamer, I am just
suggesting that hermeneutical understanding is the form of human
existence as human existence that is, in his/her relations with
himself/herself,        with   his/her       Erlebnisse,        with     others    and     the
environmental context, with values and the world and even with
abstract and transcendent ideas. (In fact, knowing is inevitably
anchored to some guiding interest, and there is no need to bother the
young Habermas to grasp this point). Even without embracing the
ontological-existential idea of the grounding of understanding within
the Being, one can grasp the truth, validity and scope of what
Schleirmacher already pointed out: namely that only by means of
hermeneutics does the child arrive at the meaning of words (Jedes
Kind     kommt      nur    durch     Hermeneutik           zur     Wortbedeutung;          Die
Aphorismen, 1805). Conversely, without contravening this thesis,
science is today able to identify with precision and in a structured
formula the concatenation of neurobiological, cognitive and functional
processes that make a child’s interaction with the mother and the
world        possible   and    therefore         leading   to      his/her      mental     and
experiential evolution.
       Thus, point of strength of hermeneutics is also its point of
weakness, and this is not the only paradoxical element that
characterises it:
       (I)    Philosophically,     we       no    longer    live    in    the     season    of
hermeneutics, but that of analytic philosophy (of mind and of
language). Today is the season of rooting (and radicalisation) on the
naturalistic pragmatist paradigm. Hermeneutics no longer has the
pervasiveness of a koinè (see Vattimo, 1987), except within a certain
circle of followers and believers. Yet philosophical hermeneutics
remains and continues to affect many disciplines and scientific



44
                                                    Critical Hermeneutics, 1 (2017)




research:    from    dynamic        and       relational      psychology        to
neurophenomenology,         from   social    psychology       to    critical   and
qualitative-interpretative sociology, from theory of law to literature,
and from history to political theory, etc. Today, hermeneutics is no
longer koinè, and yet it persists in pervading the field of human
knowledge.
    (II) With the decline of philosophical hermeneutics, the teachings
of an important tradition of thought remain, as well as it remains a
series of speculative residuals, fertile problematic issues, and a not
well-ordered horizon of hermeneutical practices and procedures.
    From this variegated picture the (negative) possibility of truths
without method and methods without truth or validity emerges; and
therefore, again, there emerges the problem of consistency, rigour
philosophical legitimacy, as well as the risk of non-rational and
ideological seductions and distortions. However, from a different point
of view, philosophy (in general) and hermeneutics (more specifically)
have elaborated sufficient critical content and devices for the
definition of an organised, rigorous and controlled model of a
comprehensive procedure. The case of Paul Ricoeur’s philosophical
work seems emblematic from this point of view. A general and
generalisable model of hermeneutical procedure can be extracted
from his philosophy that does not implicate an ideological or a value-
speculative personal engagement.
    (III) The hermeneutical solution generates the problem, and the
nature of the problem determines only one type of possible solution:
that of a huge philosophical downsizing, in favour of a more
meaningful    theoretical     practical     generalisation.        To   renounce
speculative dogmatism or school adherence is not the same as
renouncing the truth; and renouncing hermeneutical radicalisation
does not mean renouncing rigour, abandoning the primacy of
philosophy, or suffering cultural diminution. Rather, more than ever



                                                                                45
Vinicio Busacchi, Hermeneutics ‘Reloaded’




today, it is necessary to start from the datum that all forms of
philosophical knowledge and philosophical practice not equipped with
self-reflection      and     self-criticism     disposals    are    already     oriented
towards radicalisation and dogmatisation. The solution is to keep and
practice problematically. The solution is to seek aporia and conflictual
difficulty, that is, to exercise philosophy as a perpetual cognitive-
procedural tension and as a tensional mediation between paradigms
and knowledge. This is not the expression of restlessness of thought
or mind: it is philosophical research in scientific form. Critical
hermeneutics in all disciplinary domains can be a critical procedure of
philosophy exercised around truth, value and meaning.


2. Hermeneutics Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
In contrast with the idea of hermeneutics as a new koinè of
contemporary philosophy, today, the field of hermeneutics is more
fragmented than ever. However, it is not fragmented by the effect of
an    analogous          sectorial     hyperspecialism      at     work   in    analytic
philosophy; it is fragmented because it is an ‘exploded’ field.
Hermeneutics is currently practised in the most varied, as productive
as vague and weak, ways, and in such strict modalities as in
uncontrolled        multidisciplinary         melting     pots.    The    problem     is
exacerbated         by    the   fact    that    the     contemporary      philosophical
panorama forms a fragmentary multiverse.
      Wide diffusion of analytic philosophy in different theoretical-
speculative and practical fields and territories does not represent the
alternative answer, but rather is causally implicated in the problem.
In one way or another all analytic philosophies are focused on
fragments      of    fragments.        This    new    characterisation     of   current
philosophy has an uneasy framing in the history of thought and
speculative traditions. Here too, the theoretical ground assumes an
orderly arrangement according to the cultural perspective ‘from



46
                                               Critical Hermeneutics, 1 (2017)




which’ or ‘for which’ it is observed. This is immediately seen trying to
determine a reasoned collocation of critical hermeneutics in relation
to traditional philosophical hermeneutics. It can not be done by
demonstration, by trial or by argumentation; it can only be done by
argumented statement.
    To classify Anglo-Saxon philosophy as ‘analytic’ in contrast to the
European philosophy understood as ‘Hermeneutical’ still has certain
diffusion. In his 1987 article, Gianni Vattimo noted since the 1980s in
the U.S.A., hermeneutics has been used to qualify more or less all
contemporary European-continental philosophy without distinctions
between phenomenology, existentialism and hermeneutics. Thus, it
has been considering Gadamer, Ricoeur, Derrida, Foucault, Apel and
Habermas as members of the same hermeneutical family (see
Vattimo, 1987: 4). In Europe, this is a still surprising simplification,
even more surprising considering the growing number of areas and
places   in   which   analytic   philosophy,    not      hermeneutic       or
phenomenology, is embraced and practised. There is no doubt:
analytic philosophy is the new koinè.
    Beyond this discourse, the framing of critical hermeneutics
requires a specific determination about philosophical hermeneutics
within the history of hermeneutics. The historical approach has been
largely relevant, in this: in identifying in Schleirmacher’s work the
first starting point of hermeneutics      as philosophy,       and of a
philosophical hermeneutics anchored to an exegetical tradition. In
this sense, the work performed by Schleiermacher is significant and
particular. His speculative developments on hermeneutical issues are
closely intertwined with procedural and theoretical problems of
hermeneutics as a technique. From here it has been possible to
retrospectively   anchor   the   whole   philological,    rhetorical     and
speculative tradition of Alexandrine hermeneutics to the advent of
Judeo-Christian and patristic hermeneutics; from medieval exegesis



                                                                           47
Vinicio Busacchi, Hermeneutics ‘Reloaded’




(Scoto Eriugena et alii) to Renaissance philology (Valla, Ficino, Luther
et alii; according to Whilelm Dilthey, scientific hermeneutics started
with Protestantism; see. Dilthey, 1966: 597); from the seventeenth
to eighteenth century biblical hermeneutics (Dannhauer, Ernesti, Vico
et alii) to historical and (proper) philosophical hermeneutics (Vico,
Herder).
      Reflecting on critical hermeneutics in reference to contemporary
philosophical hermeneutics, the first dilemma concerns the possibility
of a specific intra-disciplinary framework or whether it refers not only
to the historical diatribe between Gadamer, Bubner, Habermas, Apel,
etc. but also to the models conceived for human and social sciences.
      According to Javier Recas Bayón, the ‘critical’ adjective became
paradigmatic and generalisable starting with Gadamer’s Truth and
Method (see Bayón, 2006: 22). According to him, despite being a
broad and ambiguous concept, critical hermeneutics represents better
than any other concept the perspectives of those who propose and
require a critical extension of the hermeneutics of ontological
affiliation.   Human        understanding         is      critical,   and   this   critical
understanding is ontologically rooted. Critical hermeneutics is a
demystifying hermeneutics of the sense, and Ricoeur’s idea of a
hermeneutics of suspicion opposes the traditional idea of ontological
hermeneutics as appropriation of meaning (see Ib.: 23).
      This is the philosophical framework of critical hermeneutics
according to Bayón. It is a wide frame, certainly interesting, but not
without     difficulties;    above      all,    general       historical    philosophical
difficulties due to a juxtaposition under the brand of ‘critical
hermeneutics’ of philosophies as different as those of Gadamer and
Habermas, Rorty and Derrida, Heidegger and Ricoeur.
      According      to     Bayón,    the      critical    element     constitutes     the
cornerstone of a contemporary hermeneutic alternative with respect
to the tradition of philosophical hermeneutics. Starting from Maurizio



48
                                                                Critical Hermeneutics, 1 (2017)




Ferraris’ articulation of contemporary hermeneutical philosophy in the
three     main        areas    of   ontological,        methodological          and   critical
orientation, Bayón tries to reorganise, in an original way the
speculative work of Gadamer, Habermas, Rorty, Derrida, Heidegger
and Ricoeur, overcoming Ferraris’ grid. He replaces these figures on
the     basis    of     the    pre-eminence        of     the      critical    paradigm        in
contemporary philosophy. And within the framework of this enlarged
conception of critical hermeneutics, Apel and Habermas are placed on
the foundationalist front, while Ricoeur and others stay on the anti-
foundationalist front.
      This redetermination of contemporary philosophical hermeneutics
certainly gives strength and significance to the critical line of
hermeneutics.           However,      it    places      criticism      along      a   mainly
philosophical          line.   This    is    a    speculative          perspective         that
underestimates the specific potential of critical hermeneutics as a
theoretical practical procedure. In addition, by extracting critical
hermeneutics from Ricoeur’s philosophy, the perspective appears
different both speculatively and methodologically. It is true that
Ricoeur’s       work     explicitly   mentions          critical    hermeneutics          as   a
philosophy. In fact, the notion of ‘critical hermeneutics’ is used by
him to define the field of his philosophical exercise of tensional
mediation       between        Gadamer’s         hermeneutics          of     tradition    and
Habermas’ critique of ideology. However, I am referring to the
indirect qualification of Ricoeur’s critical hermeneutics by considering
his philosophical work as a whole and (then) by extracting from it his
general procedural approach (see Ricoeur 1973; see Busacchi, 2013:
81–127; see Busacchi 2015).
      Where      all     philosophical      hermeneutics           seems      outdated,        or
reduced and transfigured into some deconstructive, nihilistic or post-
speculative formulation, the path of critical hermeneutics seems to
remain open and extremely fertile even for philosophical research.



                                                                                               49
Vinicio Busacchi, Hermeneutics ‘Reloaded’




And this requires reconsidering the entire theoretical-speculative and
practical field of philosophical hermeneutics, keeping the aim of
reconsideration from the procedural point of view. The challenge of a
rigorous interpretation, of an interpretation as a scientific process, is
the same as that posed by Emilio Betti in his Teoria generale
dell’interpretazione in 1955. However Betti’s enterprise is in some
way    philosophically       bound      to   and   limited   by   Heidegger   and
Gadamer’s ontological perspective to which it is opposed. Where the
latter understand hermeneutics in the circular movement between the
Being-there (or presence; Dasein) and the Being (Sein), and
therefore hermeneutics as expression and production of the Being.
Betti persists in considering hermeneutics philosophically, embracing
the relationship between the subject and the world and indirectly
between the subject and the Being. To him, hermeneutics is the
clarification or, rather, the recognition of the Being and the world;
and, therefore, hermeneutics is conceived as a clarification or, better,
recognition of the Being through the world (see Ferraris, 1998: 96–
97). The problem is that this alternative generates a partial rigidity
(for objectification and historicisation) on an ontological conception
that requires redefinition. It is not only ontology that can be defined
in alternative ways, without an exclusive focus on the Being or the
world, but the problem of rigour in interpretation is one among many
other problems concerning critical hermeneutics validity. Moreover,
validity and rigour are not the only decisive components for
determining and recognising the significance and productivity of the
critical and scientific applications of hermeneutics.


3. Hermeneutics and Ontology
With critical hermeneutics, I do not intend to take the path of a
methodology. This, in fact, would be a withdrawal on the technical
matrix of hermeneutics and even an abandonment of critical



50
                                                 Critical Hermeneutics, 1 (2017)




hermeneutics work as a philosophical commitment. The challenge
consists in rigorously articulating a hermeneutic theory as a theory
and as a speculative procedure. Ricoeur’s philosophy shows the
concrete possibility of this dual path: on the one hand, a tensional
exercise of mediation between Gadamer’s hermeneutics of tradition
and Habermas’ critique of ideology is an example of speculative use
(and interpretation) of critical hermeneutics; on the other hand, his
use of and approach to philosophy follows a non-speculative
procedural model.
    There is first an obstacle to be clarified that concerns the
connection of this critical hermeneutics with the ontological problem.
Obviously, because of its dual nature, critical hermeneutics can have
a free hand in terms of philosophical use (ontology included). Where
used philosophically, critical hermeneutics can only introduce and
implement elements of mediation and argumentative rigour, but
within a philosophical space that remains freely passable (even from
neo-Heideggerians,    neo-Derridians,   etc.).    More     interesting      is,
however, the extra-speculative application of hermeneutics as a
critical procedure, particularly in its coordinated functioning with
science. In no way does this constitute a negation of the relation
between hermeneutics and ontology, nor is it a matter of redefining
the nature of this relationship; rather it (re)establishes what ontology
is. The ancient claim of a certain philosophical hermeneutics to
establish itself as ontology is part of a determined history. Not all
hermeneutics said, says and can say with Nietzsche: ‘facts do not
exist, only interpretations’; nor is all hermeneutics interested in the
experience of the Being in a Transcendent or Pantheistic sense (as
Heidegger and others did). Neither more nor less than scientific work,
hermeneutics remains close to the ontological discourse insofar as it
deals with facts and with the interpretation of facts. In this context,
the downsizing of what is the content of ontology parallels critical



                                                                             51
Vinicio Busacchi, Hermeneutics ‘Reloaded’




hermeneutics with scientific discourse, revealing at the same time its
specificity.
      Critical hermeneutics does not have an idea of the primacy of
interpretation because it is an exercise that (as we will see it) is
articulated between description, explanation and comprehension,
under a properly interpretive linking functioning. Here is the
operation      of    critical   hermeneutics:     to   describe,     to    know,    to
understand and to evaluate how a state of things is or must be, by
considering as ‘a state of things’ the following cases: natural objects,
social elements, cultural products, psychic (or internal) states,
dispositions,       actions     and   values.   Here     a   functioning    at   both
theoretical and practical level is involved. In addition, there is a
meta-theoretical plan for the application of critical hermeneutics; and
it is here that a first specificity aspect emerges. To the extent that
knowing, understanding and evaluating things and states of things
involves language, conceptual networks and a (pre-)theoretical
framework, critical hermeneutics can work flexibly to adapt its
procedures and functioning to the form and logic of a given
descriptive construction, of a given legitimative system, etc. This is
not a relativistic or debole approach in a philosophical sense. It is a
principle of rigour in relation to a due referential paradigm or a
transcendental ideal, as well as a further possibility of support for
scientific     and     non-scientific       knowledge.       The   possibility     and
effectiveness of a truth as truth remains: there is, in fact, a state and
reality of the world beyond the historical-cultural framework of our
way of living and knowing, as well as there is a true state of the past,
about how things have happened, that is independent from means
and the cognitive, reconstructive, interpretative and representative
resources we have today. Certainly, there are those who believe that
we are nothing more than ‘brains in a bath’, but where not
understood in the original sense of a mental experiment (Putnam)



52
                                                          Critical Hermeneutics, 1 (2017)




this discourse is just valid as a mythology, as a thesis without
consistency and is useful for nihilistic believers only.
       Critical exercise of hermeneutics also concerns science at a more
philosophical level, insofar as the latter is becoming increasingly
involved with metaphysics. I say more: that today science is
tightening more dangerously with a certain radicalised ontology,
contributing to the strengthening of a metaphysic credo around only
biological and natural data. To illustrate this point, it is opportune to
set the problem in the Husserlian formulation (as Husserl’s Krisis
suggests),     to    which   critical    hermeneutics        offers    elements       of
correlation         and   alternative.           ‘Correlation’,       because       the
phenomenological point of view introduces the discourse on the life-
world, which is an application field for both eidetic-descriptive and
hermeneutic philosophy; ‘alternative’, because the phenomenological
approach remains trapped in a philosophical a priori, where critical
hermeneutics can operate without or, rather, can take into account,
an a priori in a non-exclusive way. The pre-eminence (or even
radicalised antecedency) of             a subject’s point of view               is this
philosophical a priori of phenomenology. On the one hand, we have
the paradigmatic model of science process as organised according to
a categorial logic (in a more or less sophisticated Aristotelian sense),
that is a categorism with a substantialist tendency. And here lies the
root of the Parmenidism which, according to Enrico Nicoletti, forms
metaphysics, and also science (see Nicoletti, 1989). In his re-reading
of Husserl’s Krisis, he points out how the German philosopher
considered the correlation of philosophy and science within European
or Western crisis of reason. Furthermore, he recalls that this crisis
does     not   concern    science       as   a    methodologically       constructed
knowledge, but science as a global interpretation of life and reality
(see Id.: 246). ‘Science faces a crisis (...) when it elevates its own
objectiveness to the authentic representation of the world and of life.



                                                                                      53
Vinicio Busacchi, Hermeneutics ‘Reloaded’




It is a dilation of the sense of science in which the true face of reality
and life, from which science itself springs, remains concealed. In this
context, science acquires a universal and necessary value: that is to
say, it becomes philosophical. This is the fall of science into
objectivism; it is becoming philosophy’ (Ib.).
      On the other hand, we have phenomenology, whose alternative
system is expressive of a metaphysics of subjectivity, where the
substantiality of the Cogito is opposed to the categorial substantiality:
the subject is substance, therefore the life-world itself is transformed
into a new metaphysical filed. Phenomenology aims to play the role of
liberator of science from its objectivism and representationism, which
is a sick reflection of the crisis of modern rationality. At the same
time, it aims to safeguard the methodology of science-technique; but
it contrasts science’s radicalisation with a new metaphysics of the
subjective or a conscientialist metaphysics. It is certainly still
significant that the phenomenological aim is exemplified by the
eidetic motto zurück zu den Sachen selbst! The ‘returning to the
things themselves’ is, in fact, a sign of the return to the world, which
establishes and recognises the pre-eminent value of the world with
respect to an objectivising and radicalised science. In Husserl’s
perspective, the fundamental operation that phenomenology must
perform with respect to science is to define a foundation of a rigorous
science of the life-world from which sciences are born, and with
respect to which sciences owe relate in order to not lose the sense
and limitation of their work. Therefore, the principle of scientific
objectivity becomes relative to the transcendental foundation of the
life-world, which is the only possible foundation, according to Husserl
(see Id.: 245).
      Critical   hermeneutics,         insofar   as   it   is   also   exercised    in
problematic      reference      to    its   phenomenological      anchorage,       can
remedy this risk of ‘re-sacralisation’ and metaphysical relapse



54
                                                             Critical Hermeneutics, 1 (2017)




precisely by exploiting the critical-reflexive function. In this way, it
does not float on the surface of questions and problems, nor does it
keep implicit or hidden any uncomfortable and ‘powerful’ truth. It
simply    operates     under      a     domain          of   prevailing       contingent
commitment, and it can suspend its argumentative-demonstrative
commitment concerning last things, which can be so much as not a
motive of philosophical interest. To do and not be engaged on it does
not imply an emptying of philosophical work value and meaning.
Critical hermeneutics can support it as it can also evade it. And a
similar argument is valid with respect to the (Husserlian) objective
concerning the phenomenological reflective clarification lacking in
science that is the sense of its own procedure. Here, hermeneutics
can give a productive critical contribution without self-interpreting in
the role of a re-foundational discipline and without entering into the
field of ultimate implications. To give an example, the cosisation or
dehumanisation determined by a radical scientist approach in the
field of human relationships can be the subject of an effective
criticism of the distortion of public communication or of psychological
impoverishment or social alienation without ‘inconveniencing’ the
ontological-existential   discourse          of    an    authentic      or    inauthentic
existence as explained in Heidegger’s early work, Being and Time
(1927).


4. Hermeneutics and Epistemology
The renewed interest of the last 40 years of epistemological research
for   interpretation   and     the     use    of    hermeneutical            models    and
procedures in science is due, in particular, to the crisis of the neo-
empiristic   conception      of       scientific        theories    (Kuhn,       Hanson,
Feyerabend et alii; see Parrini 1998). The current scenario still
remains fragmented and magmatic, with certain strongly polarised
proposals (new scientism or new Parmenidism vs. relativism). It is



                                                                                         55
Vinicio Busacchi, Hermeneutics ‘Reloaded’




interesting to note how in all cases the problematic node remains the
determination of what is objectivity and what are the possibilities and
forms of valid knowledge.
      And it is interesting to note how the distance between the
alleged    rigourism       of    natural       science’s   methodologies      and    the
‘problematically rigorous’ character of the social and historical-
hermeneutical sciences has now been reduced. There is an explicit
hermeneutical problematisation (on truth, evaluation, procedure and
interpretation) that is internal to the natural sciences’ different
methodologies         (hypothetical-deductive,             inductive,    falsificationist
methodology, etc.). And much methodological research in the social,
historical and psychological fields aims at the application of non-
hermeneutical models and therefore has an approach to the problem
of interpretation under determined procedural or epistemic aspects.
Paolo     Parrini     remarks           the     methodological     parallelism      that
characterises the interpretative sciences and the natural sciences
(Parrini, 1998: 15), by thematising the detailed comparison between
the empirical process and the hermeneutical procedure that Adolf
Grünbaum         developed         by     studying      Habermas        and   Ricoeur’s
interpretation        of        psychoanalysis          (Grünbaum        1984).     The
methodological link is intertwined and strengthened through a
redefinition of objectivity according to the critical-analytical analysis
developed      by    Mary       Hesse         (Hesse,   1980),   namely:      (1)   non-
separability of data from theory; (2) theories not as hypothetical-
deductive schemes but as a perceptive-cognitive classification of the
facts themselves; (3) logical-theoretical synthesis in constituting facts
and logical-causal correlations between facts; (4) metaphorical
dimension of all the scientific language and of the representative
constructions through which science interprets nature; and (5)
terminological value given by the reference to the theory and not to
the reality of the facts (170, 172–173; see Parrini, 1998: 15). Parrini



56
                                                     Critical Hermeneutics, 1 (2017)




is able to strongly highlight the parallelism recalling (according to
Gadamer) the two general and characteristic traits of the hermeneutic
work: (1) the role attributed to the prejudices as conditions for
understanding;     and    (2)   the    hermeneutic     circle,    that    is   the
dependence of the whole comprehension from the single components
(of a text) and vice versa the understanding of the single components
starting from the whole. As Parrini explains, ‘there is therefore a
substantial similarity between the empirical and the hermeneutical
method. Science also has to do with an equipped nature of
conceptual assumptions and uses these same assumptions and
experience data to develop hypotheses on specific issues’ (17).
Undoubtedly,     this    recognition   is   not   limited    to   the    interest
represented by the parallel in itself, but it implies the implementation
of a certain degree of epistemic relativism, both in the (prevalently)
interpretative sciences and in the (prevalently) descriptive-explicative
sciences. It is in this way that the problem arises of the compatibility
of relativism with the possibility of objectivity and truth as the
fundamental objective of scientific and hermeneutical practices (see
Id.: 18). For Parrini, the alternatively viable ways are as follows: (1)
the abandonment of the epistemological project for the hermeneutical
one (that is the way exemplified by Richard Rorty’s conversational
position; see Id.: 20–22); (2) the awareness of subjective points of
reference   and intrasystemic value          of objectivity (that is,          the
recognition of partial autonomy of cognitive experience with respect
to epistemic conditioning: this is the way indicated by Hans
Reichenbach and considered by Gadamer; see Id.: 23–24); (3)
objectivity and truth as trans-regulatively transcendental ideals (see
Id., 25–26). The latter, which is Parrini’s privileged position, can be
understood as a criterion applicable to the ambit of both the
descriptive-explanatory and hermeneutical disciplines. At the same
time, it is an ideal theoretical-philosophical position, since the



                                                                                 57
Vinicio Busacchi, Hermeneutics ‘Reloaded’




relativistic oscillation is not reducible to a threshold of neutrality. In
other words, it is a referential transcendentalism, a transcendental
ideal.    Here     is   the     transversality   of   hermeneutics   and   the
indispensable hermeneutic-epistemological connection. Today, even
for the empirical sciences has become impossible to formulate
historical and purely formal criteria of scientificity. However, it is
possible to compare theories with respect to the canons or values
(Kuhn) that shape the scientific process according to its own
progressive historical-knowing refinement (see Parrini, 2002: 156).
Certainly, this can also take the path of a strong relativism, so that
‘truth’ and ‘objectivity’ are strongly conceived as inevitably connected
and dependent on cultural adhesion and intersubjective participation,
as it is at work within the procedural context of accreditation-
recognition from a community of scientists.
      Parrini does not have this in mind. He rather conceives the
historical-cultural progress of methodological and epistemological
knowledge as transcendent from a due historical-cultural context to
the extent that it is progressive. This transcendentalist path aims to
limit the relativistic drift and can be interestingly correlated with the
analysis that Luigi Perissinotto proposes regarding the Donald
Davidson vs. Michael Dummett diatribe on the objectivity of knowing
or understanding. Dummett (Dummett, 1986: 464; see Perissinotto,
2002: 93–117) goes back to Ludwig Wittgenstein to refute Davidson’s
thesis that every understanding is inevitably interpretation. Dummett
points out, as a Wittgenstein’s central observation (around how to
follow a rule), that ‘there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an
interpretation’ (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, section
201); and, analogously, ‘there is a way of understanding a sentence
or an utterance that does not consist in putting an interpretation on
it’. There is no absolute freedom or a completely decontextualised or
ahistorical operating: to know and to follow the rules are intertwined



58
                                                  Critical Hermeneutics, 1 (2017)




with the specific reality of a form of life. As Perissinotto remarks, if
Platonism reifies and mythises the rules, who maintains the idea that
between the rule and its particular applications there is always an
interpretation he/she is denying and dissolving them. And with
respect to these two outcomes, Wittgenstein’s move consists in
emphasising that it is in its use that a rule is a rule (see Id.: 114) As
stated in section 202 of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations,
‘obeying a rule is a practice’. The linguistic game is not a system of
propositions to the foundation of which there would be certain
propositions    that   are   true   in   an   evident,    immediate         and
incontrovertible way. A foundation of the linguistic game is neither
seeing nor knowledge but our acting. And this acting is not a blind
acting that awaits a justification, nor an uncertain acting until the
alternative basis for exclusion is found; nor is it an acting that can be
chosen or abandoned in radical and absolute freewill (see Id.: 116–
117). It is not the claim of eternity and absoluteness of the rules of
scientific play that allows the rigour and certainty of advancement in
knowledge; but rather the stability, consistency and continuity in life
experience and within a due historical-cultural context of the rules
given in a scientific game that determine its degree of truth,
legitimacy and value. Change is possible but rules are not arbitrary.
They are the result of the sedimentation of knowledge and know-how
from generation to generation. They have become that canon or
transcendental ideal on which we build a scale of certainty of
knowledge and a scale of greater or lesser relativity, correctness,
validity, credibility of a certain interpretation and knowledge.


5. Critical Hermeneutics
Certainly, the critical determination of hermeneutics was a passage of
secondary      importance    in   Ricoeur’s   philosophical-hermeneutical
evolution. He progressed from the paradigm of interpretation of



                                                                              59
Vinicio Busacchi, Hermeneutics ‘Reloaded’




symbols and myths to the interpretation of symbols within psychic
inner life, from the interpretation of metaphor and the text to
narrative hermeneutics, from a description-interpretation of action
and Self to the philosophy of translation and hermeneutics of
recognition. However, within Ricoeur’s work there are intrinsic
possibilities to extract and develop a procedural methodology that are
able to work both in/for a theoretical field and in/for a speculative
field.
      Today’s specialisation and articulation of knowledge concerning
the human being has determined a paradoxical situation: on the one
hand, there is an increase in complexness and deepening of the
universe of discourses referred to the human being, and these
discourses are fragmented, not-harmonised and in different case are
even contradictory; on the other hand, thanks to the human
advancement in science, philosophy, culture and art, ‘perhaps for the
first time’, it is concretely possible ‘to encompass in a single question
the problem of the unification of human discourse’ (Ricoeur, 1970:
3).
      In his 1965 essay on Freud and Philosophy, Ricoeur expressed
an ambivalent position towards such a problem: on the one hand, he
expresses the clear position of a perspective of resolution of it via a
(non-exactly determined) philosophy of language; on the other hand
he expresses the effective possibility to apply and experience such an
interdisciplinary-comprehensive-universalised knowledge or such a
‘comprehensive philosophy of language’ (4). He writes, in fact: ‘I
doubt (…) that such a philosophy could be elaborated by any one
man. A modern Leibniz with the ambition and capacity to achieve it
would have to be an accomplished mathematician, a universal
exegete, a critic versed in several of the arts, and a good
psychoanalyst’ (Ib.).




60
                                                     Critical Hermeneutics, 1 (2017)




     Through his work, Ricoeur has explored and put in connection
many different fields of scientific and non-scientific knowledge. His
vast work, which is defined as fragmented, but somehow unified or
continuous, touches and        traverses hermeneutics, epistemology,
religion, myth, rhetoric, linguistics, literature, history, political theory,
psychology, psychopathology, neurobiology, law, anthropology, social
science and more. He even puts in connection and intertwines
different traditions and approaches: phenomenology, philosophical
hermeneutics, reflective philosophy, psychoanalysis, structuralism,
philosophy of language, philosophy of action, and more. Ricoeur’s
work offers in itself an example of how philosophy can play the
mediatory role of an interdisciplinary analysis, theoretical synthesis
and theoretical-practical correlation. Philosophy has a vast tradition
or series of traditions. It has a vast, rich and varied conceptual and
theoretical patrimony. It has a flexibility for theoretical-practical uses
and applications that other disciplines do not / can not have.
     In addition, Ricoeur’s work, which is not a type of comprehensive
philosophy    of   language    but   an   interdisciplinary      hermeneutical
research based on description, interpretation and critical reflection,
offers the concrete example of the potential of critical hermeneutics
as   a   methodology    and    epistemology    for     culture    and     science
(especially for human and social sciences).
     In the important introductory essay entitled From Text to Action
(1986), Ricoeur summarises the methodological set of reflective
philosophy, phenomenology and hermeneutics that he followed in his
research.    Without     any    doubt,    Ricoeur       has      followed      this
methodological perspective, but other aspects of his research and
particularly his epistemological-procedural model called ‘hermeneutic
arc’, has played an additional, important role. This model or theory
suggests more than a reflective-based interpretative description, it
suggests the idea of a hermeneutic-based philosophy exercised as a



                                                                                 61
Vinicio Busacchi, Hermeneutics ‘Reloaded’




theoretical and critical practice. Many explanatory and anchoring
points are already present in Ricoeur’s 1970 paper, ‘Qu’est-ce qu’un
texte?     Expliquer      et   comprendre’          (Ricoeur,   1970b).      First,   he
encourages the connection between critical hermeneutics to the
epistemology of the hermeneutic arc. Among Italian scholarly experts
on philosophical hermeneutics, Franco Bianco was the one to have
grasped the epistemological centrality of the hermeneutic arc theory,
especially in reference to the broader contemporary debate around
the philosophical discourse and its uses among the natural and the
human-social sciences (see Bianco, 2002).
      Secondly, there is an already indirect-but-established connection
of critical hermeneutics to Freud’s psychoanalysis. Because both the
epistemological and methodological constitution of Ricoeur’s theory of
the hermeneutic arc is realised thematising the theories of text,
action and history, but even by considering Freud’s psychoanalysis
problematic case as a productive example of a multi-epistemic and
multi-methodological discipline; and thus, as a paradigmatic example
of an explanatory and interpretative discipline and procedure.
      Critical hermeneutics is an interdisciplinary engaged philosophy,
exercised in theoretical-practical fields and as practical theory (see
Busacchi, 2015). It is a methodological model that is descriptive as
well as explanatory, interpretative as well as reflective and analytical
as well as comprehensive. This is not a mixture of confusing free-
functions but an articulated series of disposals coordinated with a
certain degree of rigour and argumentative logic under the work of
critical hermeneutics.
      To conclude, by considering the more general and typical uses,
factors    and     characteristics          of   Ricoeur’s   applications,    we      can
summarises its main functions as follows: (1) the dialectical and
dialogical approach as an ideal of theoretical and interdisciplinary
research, as able to put different theories and disciplines in



62
                                                        Critical Hermeneutics, 1 (2017)




productive connections; (2) the interdisciplinary approach as a
method (which is mirrored in critical hermeneutics’ open and
transversal methodology and epistemology); (3) the mediatory
function of an explicative-comprehensive argumentative approach on
a     theoretical   and    practical    level;   (4)      the    articulation     and
differentiation of the philosophical procedure by analytic-reflective
degrees, theoretical and practical levels, thematic and disciplinary
domains, and methodological registers; (5) the neutral-value use(s)
of critical hermeneutics as an interdisciplinary approach; (5bis) the
possibility to an evaluative use of critical hermeneutics as an applied,
interpretative-argumentative philosophy of tension and mediation;
(6)     the   reflective-hermeneutic        work       from      non-philosophical
dimensions to philosophical dimension and vice versa; (7) the
prevalence in considering and using philosophy as a theoretical
practice; and (8) the philosophical engagement within the real life, at
a(n) cultural, ethical, civic, social and political level.




References
AA.VV. (2003). Ermeneutica. Milano: RaffaelloCortina.
Bianco, F. (2002). Introduzione all’ermeneutica, Roma-Bari: Laterza.
Busacchi, V. (2013). Pour une herméneutique critique. Etudes autour
de Paul Ricoeur, Paris: Harmattan.
Busacchi, V. (2015). The Ricoeurian Way: Towards a Critical
Hermeneutics        for   the   Human    and     Social    Sciences.      American
International Journal of Social Science (AIJSS), 4(6), 82–88.
Dilthey,      W.     (1966).     Preisschrift      über         die   Hermeneutik
Schleiermachers. Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 1893; in
Gesammelte Schriften, 14(2), Göttingen.




                                                                                    63
Vinicio Busacchi, Hermeneutics ‘Reloaded’




Dummett, M. (1986). A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs: Some
Comments on Davidson and Hacking. In E. Lepore, ed. (1986), Truth
and    Interpretation:       Perspectives   on   the   Philosophy   of   Donald
Davidson. Oxford: Blackwell.
Ferraris, M. (1998). L’ermeneutica. Roma-Bari: Laterza.
Grünbaum, A. (1984). Philosophical Foundations of Psychoanalysis: A
Philosophical Critique. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California
Press.
Hesse, M. (1980). Revolutions and Reconstructions in the Philosophy
of Science. Brighton: Harvester Press.
Marconi, D. (2007). Per la verità. Relativismo e filosofia. Torino:
Einaudi.
Nicoletti, E. (1989). Fenomenologia e interpretazione. Pref. by Paul
Ricoeur. Milano: FrancoAngeli.
Parrini, P. (1998). Ermeneutica ed epistemologia. Paradigmi. Rivista
di critica filosofica, 16(46), 7–31.
Parrini, P. (2002). La psicoanalisi nella filosofia della scienza. In, Id.,
Sapere e interpretare. Per una filosofia e un’oggettività senza
fondamenti. Milano: Guerini e Associati, 141–158.
Pellauer, D. (2014). Work to Be Done. Philosophy Today, 58(1), 1–8.
Perissinotto, L. (2002). Le vie dell’interpretazione nella filosofia
contemporanea. Roma-Bari: Laterza.
Recas Bayón, J. (2006). Hacia una hermenéutica crítica. Gadamer,
Habermas, Apel, Vattimo, Rorty, Derrida y Ricoeur, Madrid: Editorial
Biblioteca Nueva.
Ricoeur, P. (1970). Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation.
Trans. by D. Savage. New Haven & London: Yale University Press.
Ricoeur, P. (1970b). Qu’est-ce qu’un texte? Expliquer et comprendre.
In AA. VV., Hermeneutik und Dialektik. Aufsätze II. Sprache und
Logik. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr.




64
                                              Critical Hermeneutics, 1 (2017)




Ricoeur, P. (1973). Herméneutique et critique des idéologies. Archivio
di Filosofia, 43(2-4), 25–61.
Schleiermacher, F. D. E. (1977). The Aphorisms on Hermeneutics
from 1805 and 1809-10. Trans. by R. Hass and J. Wojcik. Cultural
Hermeneutics, 4(4), 367–390.
Vattimo, G. (1987). Ermeneutica come koinè. aut aut, 217-218, 3–
11.




                                                                          65
