Hermeneutics and education: understanding, control, and agency

Educational Theory

Volumn 48, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 241-266

  Kerdeman, Deborah ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0040159322     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.1998.00241.x     Document Type: Article

References (30)

1. Hans-Georg Gadamer, "Interview: The 1920s, 1930s, and the Present: National Socialism, German History, and German Culture, " in On Education, Poetry, and History: Applied Hermeneutics, ed. Dieter Misgeld and Graeme Nicholson, trans. Lawrence Schmidt and Monica Reuss (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 152.
2. The PHILOSED computer discussion group was created by Thomas F. Green of Syracuse University and is now maintained by David Blacker of Illinois State University.
3. Gerald L. Bruns, Hermeneutics Ancient end Modern (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 1.
4. David R. Hiley, James F. Bohman, and Richard Shusterman, eds., The Interpretive Turn: Philosophy, Science, Culture (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), 1.
5. Misgeld and Nicholson, On Education, Poetry, and History. This book will be cited as EPH in the text for all subsequent references.
6. William F. Pinar and William M. Reynolds, eds., Understanding Curriculum as Phenomenological and Deconstructed Text (New York: Teachers College Press, 1992). The book will be cited as UC in the text for all subsequent references.
7. The two authors in Understanding Curriculum who explicitly reference Gadamer are David Jardine and jan jagodzinski.
8. Shaun Gallagher, Hermeneutics and Education (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992). This book will be cited as HE in the text for all subsequent references.
9. Gallagher is quoting Heidegger in The Basic Problems of Phenomenology.
10. As we will see, Gadamer also diverges significantly from-Heidegger's position, a fact which I contend Gallagher misses.
11. Gallagher is quoting Gadamer in The Hermeneutics of Suspicion. This statement captures why the work of Gadamer and Heidegger sometimes is called, "philosophical anthropology."
12. I would add that the dichotomy also fails to do justice to the nuanced complexity of human life portrayed by many epistemologists. But that is the subject of another essay.
13. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2d. rev. ed., trans, Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1993), 295. This book will be cited as TM in the text for all subsequent references. See also Gadamer, "On The Circle of Understanding, " in Hermeneutics Versus Science? Three German Views, ed. John M. Connolly and Thomas Keutner (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 75-76.
14. Gallagher is referring to section 80:D-E of the Meno.
15. In fact, Gallagher contradicts himself on this point. See, for example, pp. 169 and 205.
16. In Gallagher's words, "The is constrains the ought, even if we think it ought not to" (p. 57).
17. Richard J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 141. See also Georgia Warnke, Gadamer: Hermeneutics, Tradition, and Reason (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987).
18. Bruns, Hermeneutics Ancient and Modern, 3.
19. Brice R. Wachterhauser, "History and Language in Understanding, " in Hermeneutics and Modern Philosophy, cd. Brice Wachterhauser (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), 22.
20. Bruns, Hermeneutics Ancient and Modern, 3.
21. Gadamer, "On The Circle of Understanding, " 76.
22. Bruns, Hermeneutics Ancient and Modern, 11. See also Charles Taylor, "Interpretation and the Sciences of Man, " Review of Metaphysics 25, no. 1 (1971): 47.
23. The dualism of hermeneutic exegesis reflects and indeed is rooted in the subject-object dualism of epistemology. That is, the goal of exegetical hermeneutics is to gain and produce knowledge systematically about the meaning of texts. Gadamer's existential hermeneutics, by contrast, is not a form of duaHstic epistemology. For Gadamer, understanding is ordinary practical experience in and of the world in which self-understanding is both shaped and implicated.
24. Charles Taylor, "Introduction, " in Charles Taylor, Human Agency and Language: Philosophical Papers I (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 5.
25. William J. Bennett, "What Works in Education? The Scientific Approach, " Education 108 (1987).
26. Michael Ermarth, "The Transformation of Hermeneutics: Nineteenth Century Ancients and Twentieth Century Moderns, " Monist 64, no. 2 (1981): 188.
27. Gadamer writes beautifully about that which lies beyond the capacity of humans to change. See the last paragraph on p. 180 of On Education, Poetry, and History.
28. Gadarner's term is "self-mastery."
29. In making this claim, I am following those such as Jean Grondin who attend to the significant ways Gadamer diverges from Heidegger. Grondin succinctly captures the difference between the two thinkers: "To put the thesis bluntly, Gadamer is a humanist and Heidegger is not." See Jean Grondin, Sources of Hcnnencutics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 112. For additional essays on the differences between Heidegger and Gadamer, see Brice Wachterhauser, ed. Hermereutics find Truth (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1994).
30. See Jacques Derrida, Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter, ed. Diane P. Michelfelder and Richard E. Palmer (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989).