10.13125/CH/3141
The twentieth century was deeply influenced by theoretical-practical and reflective developments in philosophical hermeneutics. It introduced a large range of problems, content and perspectives, on a vast referential and implicational (inter-)disciplinary scale, to enter into the real orbit of a philosophical koinè, not for a decennary or few decennaries (Vattimo), but for a century and more. It expressed the productivity, significance and heuristic strength of research and thought that hit different scientific domains, particularly (but not exclusively) the human and social sciences: from psychology to sociology, from psychoanalysis to literature, from semiotic to biblical exegesis, from anthropology to linguistics, from rhetoric to narratology, from history to law and from political theory to religion.
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2533-1825
3141
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Vinicio Busacchi
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Critical Hermeneutics
Editor's Introduction
Text.Serial.Journal
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Articles
2017-12-28
2017-12-28
2017-12-28
2017-12-28
I-IV
1
Vinicio Busacchi
2017/12/28
10.13125/CH/3141
I
Università degli studi di Cagliari
2533-1825
1
IV
urn:nbn:it:unica-22228
Editor's Introduction
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/article/download/3141/pdf
1
Critical Hermeneutics, 1 (2017)
Biannual International Journal of Philosophy
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ISSN 2533-1825 (on line); DOI 10.13125/CH/3141




                            Editor’s Introduction




The twentieth century was deeply influenced by theoretical-practical
and    reflective      developments         in    philosophical   hermeneutics.      It
introduced a large range of problems, content and perspectives, on a
vast referential and implicational (inter-)disciplinary scale, to enter
into the real orbit of a philosophical koinè, not for a decennary or few
decennaries (Vattimo), but for a century and more. It expressed the
productivity, significance and heuristic strength of research and
thought that hit different scientific domains, particularly (but not
exclusively) the human and social sciences: from psychology to
sociology, from psychoanalysis to literature, from semiotic to biblical
exegesis,      from     anthropology         to    linguistics,   from   rhetoric    to
narratology, from history to law and from political theory to religion.
      This is an itinerary as vast and fecund as non-linear and
problematic and even conflictual.
      For a long time, hermeneutics has been recognised as a technical
and philosophical discipline of reference in the interpretation of signs,
symbols and propositional content; in biblical exegesis and in the
interpretation of texts in general; in research and in reflection around
methodological and epistemological aspects of science; in the study
of    phenomenological           and     ontological     nature    related   to     the
phenomenon of understanding and to the content of knowledge and
in the critical approach to ideological construction and so on.
      Contemporary          philosophical         hermeneutics     has   significantly
contributed to determining a truthfully complex modality to approach
the knowledge of reality, of human beings and of cultural products
Editor’s Introduction




and values. From this comes the necessity for a redefinition of
discursive levels and registers, for a statutory re-qualification, for
refining procedures, methods and interpretative possibilities. In
addition, there is a widespread practical ethical tension, both in
reference to methodology and to content as well as in the form of a
dialectical-dialogue and problematising and conflictual tension. This is
philosophical hermeneutics as mediation-normalisation, alternative-
alteration and as a discipline of conciliating synthesis and a practical-
theoretical critique.
      In an opened-up range of investigation and research, this issue
of Critical Hermeneutics thematises the question of the relationship
between       understanding        and   interpretation   within   the   thematic
perspective of philosophical hermeneutics of yesterday, today and
tomorrow. The question of whether interpretation and explanation
could open productive dynamics and practices of knowledge and
understanding within different or potentially connected knowledge,
cultures and ideas, remains unanswered.


      Papers from the following authors are included in this issue:
Silvana Borutti, Vereno Brugiatelli, Vinicio Busacchi, Marco Casucci,
Beatriz Contreras Tasso, Pier Luigi Lecis, Giuseppe Martini, Gaspare
Mura and Luís António Umbelino.
      In her epistemological paper, ‘An Epistemological Look at
Comparison’, Borutti develops an analysis around a specific type of
comparison, which is differential and contrastive. Wittgenstein’s
approach, that comparing is not simply seeing but rather ‘seeing as’,
constitutes the main reference here. Starting from this point, a
problematisation is articulated that on the one hand focuses a
somehow formalising criteriology of comparison and on the other
hand     parallels      Peirce’s   approach   on   hypothetical    and    indirect

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                                                       Critical Hermeneutics, 1 (2017)




inference. Brugiatelli’s paper, ‘Ontological or Nominal Hermeneutics?
The Problem of the Relationship between Hermeneutics and Being in
Gadamer, Rorty, Vattimo and Ricoeur’, proposes an interesting
parallel among some key figures in contemporary philosophical
hermeneutics     about    the    ontological-anthropological          relationship
between language and Being. To this, Brugiatelli connects an itinerary
internal to Ricoeur’s hermeneutical thought, oriented to determine
both its specific ontological basis and its particular explanation
concerning language possibility to express the extralinguistic. In
‘Hermeneutics Reloaded: From Science/Philosophy Dichotomy to
Critical Hermeneutics’, Busacchi proposes a general reconsideration of
the nature and function(s) of today and tomorrow philosophical
hermeneutics, both under a technical-procedural and speculative
plane, and introduces a specific idea of ‘critical hermeneutics’. In
‘Between Explanation and Understanding: On Ricoeur’s Hermeneutics
of   the   Parallel   Discourse’,    Casucci       thematises     the       classical,
methodological and epistemological problems implicated in correlating
explicative and comprehensive procedures. He realises it, trying to
redefine Ricoeur’s dialectical-discoursive perspective in terms of
‘parallel discourse’, as formulated from Furia Valori around Heidegger
and Gadamer. In Contreras Tasso’s paper, ‘Original Affirmation, Self-
Appropriation    and     Attestation:      Three     Main     Concepts        for     a
Hermeneutics     of    Reception    in     Paul    Ricoeur’    with     a    notable
phenomenological sensitivity she explores the connection of Ricoeur’s
philosophy of the capable human being with three key-terms of
reflective thought (that are disposed between the anthropological and
ontological   dimensions):      original    affirmation,      appropriation         and
attestation. Lecis and Busacchi, in their theoretical approach text,
‘Imagination controlled: Representation and Factuality in Historical
Knowledge’, thematise the question of the relationship between

                                                                                     III
Editor’s Introduction




imagination and representation in historical knowledge. A perspective
emerges that underlines the irreducible connection of hermeneutical
and non-hermeneutical contents in historical and historiographical
research, particularly by putting ‘under tension’ the theme of reality
of the past with the functioning of memory and the question of the
rigour of the procedure of knowing with the subjective dimension of
testimony.       Martini’s   contribution,   ‘Hermeneutical   Perspective   in
Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis: An Overall View and Its Development
Lines’, is a work of psychiatric and psychoanalytic theory of a
philosophical-hermeneutic nature focused on the relation between the
representational and the unrepresentational. Martini’s assumption is
that ‘as psychiatry and psychoanalysis tend to reduce psychic
suffering, they always relate to understanding and the search of
meaning’. Mura proposes with acuteness and erudition, in his article
‘Hermeneutics in Late Antiquity: Theological Perspectives’, a general
historical-speculative reconsideration of the relationship between
theological reflection and philosophical hermeneutics. Beginning from
Heidegger, Gadamer and Ricoeur’s suggestions referring to the
narrow connection of hermeneutics and theology, Mura examines
some boundary-themes, as the pre-understanding, the relationship
between revelation and interpretation, etc. Finally, Umbelino, in ‘On
Paul Ricoeur’s Unwritten Project of an Ontology of Place’, develops an
interesting proposal of a Ricoeurian ‘ontology of place’ considered in
the same sense and value of Ricoeur’s ontology of historicity defined
in Memory, History, Forgetting (2000).




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