Realism and hermeneutics

pp. 61-76

in: William Outhwaite, New philosophies of social science, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1987

Abstract

This chapter and Chapter 5 are intended to form a unit, since the relations between hermeneutics and critical theory are extremely close, though also very complex. First, it is worth noting that it was Jürgen Habermas's development of critical theory which introduced the term "hermeneutics' into the social scientific culture of the English-speaking world. One of Habermas's central preoccupations has always been the issue of "methodological dualism" in the social sciences and the fact that they are "pervaded by the opposition between different approaches and aims."¹ And, given his intellectual background, it was only natural that he should discuss these issues in relation to the German hermeneutic tradition and its most prominent contemporary representative, Hans-Georg Gadamer. Though Habermas's massive synthesis has a number of other intellectual sources, most notably of course the earlier generation of critical theorists, it is not impossible to see it as one variant among others of "critical hermeneutics".²