Critical Hermeneutics

Critical Social Theory as Critical Hermeneutics

We can distinguish two phases in the articulation of a critical hermeneutic paradigm. By “paradigm” here, we mean a coherent vision and perspective vis-à-vis the understanding of social agency as well as its symbolic and cultural expressions. Such a perspective emerges first in the debate between philosophical hermeneutics and critical social theory. Jürgen Habermas articulated, initially on the basis of neo-Marxist assumptions, a forceful criticism of Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. Gadamer's lasting achievement was to bring Martin Heidegger's insight on the universal significance of interpretation for human existence to bear on the methodological self-understanding of the human and social sciences. Humans are, in Charles Taylor's words, interpreting animals; human agency is intrinsically defined by linguistic concepts grounded in social and historical practices. Gadamer showed how this entails that all explicit understanding remains bound to an implicit pre-understanding that encompasses all interpretation. Given that pre-understanding makes interpretation possible because it provides a horizon of significance and relevance, the positivist illusion of objective understanding and neutral assessment of meaning must be abandoned. In its place moves the concept of a dialogic encounter of other meaning that [Page 152]is oriented at truthfully explicating the other's beliefs and assumptions while knowing that any such process will entail a fusion of horizons based on the involved background concepts.

Habermas understood the force of these insights but challenged the claim to universality that Gadamer raised on its basis. He rejected conceiving social-scientific understanding solely on the basis of a linguistic dialogue because of the fact that language itself is shaped and determined by social factors. Modern bureaucratic power and capitalistic economy present us with objective shaping forces that a comprehensive (and critical) social science must take into account. Taking such factors into account means methodologically developing theoretical tools that transcend the internal first- and second-person orientation to dialogic meaning and introduce third-person explanatory models. For example, reading a religious text cannot focus solely on its intended meaning regarding the truthfulness of the message concerning God but also must recognize and analyze how this discourse might express and legitimize social power and hierarchy. Habermas set out in a first step to conceive a theory of communicative competence that entails the normative resources to understand critical interpretation, meaning that the orientation to validity is seen as essentially built into language use. Yet he eventually fulfilled the promise of a comprehensive social theory in his opus magnum theory of communicative action where he combined the internal communicative approach to meaning and truth with a functionalist perspective developed in terms of social systems theory. This made it possible to analyze how value orientations might be systematically affected by structural social power relations.

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