Revitalisasi Humanisme dan Kritik Gadamer atas Metodologi

Setelah memperkaya pengetahuan di bidang filologi, Gadamer pada akhirnya mengembangkan kajian hermeneutika yang berujung pada terbitnya buku Truth and Method. Ketika itu gagasan positivisme dan perkembangan ilmu baru, yaitu sosiologi, perlahan-lahan mendominasi khazanah ilmu-ilmu humaniora. Dominasi itu akhirnya direspons dan dilawan oleh sejumlah filsuf yang menganggap bahwa positivisme mengabaikan dimensi manusia yang begitu kompleks dan berbeda sama sekali dengan obyek penelitian ilmu-ilmu alam. Gadamer mengkritik keyakinan bahwa hanya melalui metodologi ilmu-ilmu alam, manusia dapat mencapai kebenaran. Gadamer menawarkan diskursus humanisme di tengah kepungan dominasi metodologi untuk mengembangkan humaniora. Gadamer mengangkat empat konsep penting dari tradisi humanisme, yaitu Bildung, sensus communis, pertimbangan, dan selera.

Gadamerian and Chinese Philosophical Reflections on the Developments of Chung-ying Cheng’s Post-Dialogue Onto-hermeneutic Philosophy

In light of developments in Chung-ying Cheng’s (1935-) onto-hermeneutic philosophy during the years after his dialogue with Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002) took place in Heidelberg in May 2000, I explore several new issues related to Cheng’s understanding of Gadamer’s hermeneutic philosophy. First of all, I argue that Cheng has not addressed the vital concept of the “inner word” in Gadamer’s Truth and Method, and point toward some of its fecund hermeneutic significance, especially with regard to its characterization of Sprache/Language and its dynamics within human understanding. Secondly, I underscore the fact that Cheng (and the majority of other contemporary Chinese philosophers) have not understood the profound impact of Christian philosophical writings in Gadamer’s work, particularly in his claim that Christian ontology offers an alternative to ancient Greek ontologies that are “categorically significant.” Finally, I describe and analyze the development of a new theistic understanding of reality within Cheng’s post-dialogue publications, suggesting ways of critically advancing his claims in the light of Gadamer’s account of the “inner word” and the Christian ontological claims grounded in the logos-theology as presented in the prologue to the Gospel of John.

Machiavelli and the Play-Element in Political Life

This essay interprets Machiavelli’s famous letter to Francesco Vettori in terms of a play-element that runs across his works. The letter to Vettori is a masterpiece of epistolary form, but beyond its most memorable passage, where Machiavelli recounts his evening in study, it has not received much scholarly attention. Reading the letter in its entirety is to discover Machiavelli’s account of an eclectic political education and the pleasures of playing with others. Machiavelli’s letter speaks to a basic ludicity in his political thinking, in which play is not opposed to the serious, and diverse play forms can be thought together. Hans-George Gadamer’s Truth and Method, Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens, and Roger Caillois’s Man, Play, and Games provide resources for reconstructing this play-element in Machiavelli’s thought.

Truth and Method in Southern Criminology

What does it mean to “do” southern criminology? What does this entail and what demands should it place on us as criminologists ethically and methodologically? This article addresses such questions through a form dialogue between the Global North and the Global South. At the center of this dialogue is a set of questions about ethical conduct in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding in human relations. These develop into a conversation that engages South Asian scholars working at the forefront of critical social science, history and theory with a foundational text of European hermeneuticist theory and practice, Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Truth and Method, published in 1960. Out of this exercise in communication across culture, histories and knowledge practices emerges a new kind of dialogue and a new way of thinking about ethical practice in criminology. To give such abstractions a concrete reference point, the article illustrates their possibilities and tensions through a case study of penal reform and the question of whether so-called “failed” Northern penal methods—like the prison—should be exported to the Global South. The article thus works dialogically back and forth through these scholars’ accounts of ethical conduct, research practice, the weight of history, and the work of theory with a very concrete and common criminological context in sight. The result is what might be understood as a norm of ethical engagement and an epistemology of dialogue.

Vida y filosofía. Aprendiendo la humildad hermenéutica

En el 51 aniversario de la publicación de Verdad y método (1960) de Hans-Georg Gadamer, este ensayo abordará la articulación entre el proyecto hermenéutico ―inicialmente formulado como una investigación que tiene como objetivo repensar el fenómeno de la com-prensión en la medida en que se refiere a toda nuestra experiencia vital― y su caracterización como filosofía práctica en las categorías de la pluralidad, el diálogo y la responsabilidad. En otras palabras, vamos a mostrar cómo Gada-mer, en el contexto de nuestros tiempos tecnológicos y bajo una influencia fenomenológica, define la hermenéutica como la “praxis” de la comprensión del otro. Este “praxis” debe ser concebida a la vez como un “aprendizaje de humildad”, capaz de ayudarnos a construir “un mundo razonablemente ordenado y comprensible, donde estamos obligados a vivir”. Para ello nos concentraremos en la rehabilitación de Gadamer de algunos temas de la filosofía griega que le permiten formular su concepto de “praxis” en oposición a su significado moderno, así como a la cultura de expertos de la sociedad contemporánea.At the 51st anniversary of the publication of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Truth and method (1960), this paper will approach the articulating thread between the hermeneutical project—initially formulated as an investigation that aims to rethink the phenomenon of understanding in as much as it concerns to all our vital experience—and its characterization as practical philosophy under the categories of plurality, dialogue and responsibility. In other words, we will show how Gadamer, in the context of ours technological times and under a phenomenological influence, defines hermeneutics as the “praxis” of understanding the other. This “praxis” must be conceived at the same time as a “learning of humility”, capable of helping us to construct “a reasonably ordered and comprehensible world where we are bound to live”. To this extend we will concentrate ourselves in Gadamer’s rehabilitation of some topics of Greek philosophy, that will allow him formulate his concept of “praxis” in opposition to its modern meaning as well as to the expert culture of contemporary society.

Ordinary Transubstantiations: Gadamer’s Notion of ‘Speculative’ and Material Logic of Hermeneutic Experience

According to Gadamer, the main distinguishing feature of hermeneutic experience is its ontological dimension epitomized by complex and multilayered transformative processes expressed in such formulae as ‘increasing in being’, ‘transformation into the true’ or ‘total mediation’. This notion of ontological experience as a transformative event allows two readings. The weak reading of Gadamer’s hermeneutic ontology (favoured by Gadamer himself as well as by all his interpreters and critics), laying the stress on interpreter’s self-consciousness, contents itself with just ‘subjective’ side of transformative effects of hermeneutic experience. The strong treatment of transformative potential of hermeneutic experience, which corresponds better to the universality claim of philosophical hermeneutics, presupposes equally strong transformation affecting not only interpreter’s self-consciousness but also her body as well as material environments of interpretive experience. We find the elements of such a ‘strong’ treatment of the transformative (i.e. ontological) potential of understanding in Gadamer’s conception of the speculative, adumbrated in the concluding sections of his ‘Truth and Method’. Drawing on this conception, the paper proposes the notion of transubstantiation as a model for describing the bodily-material dimension of transformative processes making up the core element of hermeneutic ontology.

Gadamer ve Hirsch'ün Yorumbilim Felsefesindeki Anakronizmin “Kral Oedipus” ve “Hamlet”e Atfen Yapısökümcü Bir Karşılaştırması

Edebiyat eleştirisi, bir edebi metinde yazarın kurguladığı anlamı ve niyeti metnin kaleme alındığı ve yorumlandığı tarihsel dönemi de göz önünde bulundurup sorgulayarak uzun bir yolculuk yapmıştır. Hans-Georg Gadamer ve Eric Donald Hirsch Jr., tarihsellik sorunu ve anakronizm üzerine yoğun tartışmalara öncülük eden ve Yorumbilim'e, (hermeneutics) birbirlerine zıt biçimlerde katkıda bulunan iki geleneksel isim olarak öne çıkmaktadır. Bu karşılaştırmalı çalışma, Hirsch'ün Yorumda Geçerlilik (Validity in Interpretation) ve Gadamer'ın Hakikat ve Yöntem (Truth and Method) adlı başyapıtlarına dayanmaktadır. Bu çalışma aynı zamanda Yapısökümcü eleştirinin merceğinden bakarak, Yorumbilim'i edebi eserlere uygulamayı hedeflemektedir. Bu analiz, Gadamer ve Hirsch'ün birincil eserleriyle sınırlıdır çünkü edebiyattaki iki şahesere—Sofokles'in oyunu Kral Oedipus ve William Shakespeare'in oyunu Hamlet'e kısa atıflarda bulunarak, Gadamer ve Hirsch'ün konumlarını sadece tarihsellik kavramı temelinde karşılaştırmayı amaçlamaktadır. Çalışmanın bir başka amacı da Yapısökümcü eleştirinin, özellikle de Barthes ve Derrida'nın fikirlerinin, genel olarak edebiyat tartışması yürütmek ve edebi metinlerde anakronik okuma yapmak için nasıl bir teorik ve felsefi zemin yarattığını göstermektir.