Tom Walker wrote: >I second the endorsement for Ricoeur but wouldn't disdain Gadamer. In general, my point was that both of them were not perfect either.One does not need to be *empricist* to criticize hermeneutics.Empricism alone does not guarentee radical science, as such it is an *ideology* as a method. It is non-marxist in its methodological orientation. The whole empirical tradition in social sciences people like Parsons, Dahl (bingo American pluralism!), Verba (bingo civic culture!), Deutsch, Huntington or positivist (fascist) socio-biologists like Wilson, Dawkins, Pearson belong to are famous in their bombastic claims to neutrality--studying the reality as it is without any reference to value judgements or political preferences. They claim so called objectivity when they link rape to human genetic structure or study brain size differences and eugenics to make claims about the racial inferiority of blacks, hispanics etc. There is INDEED politics that shapes their arguments. Ideological preferences, maintanence of a power structure within empricism ensures the continuity of mainstream practices. People who bullshit about sociology saying that it has no theoretical validity can not see that postivist/social science distinction so much celebrated by empricists to impose their own intellectual hegemony does indeed promote a distorted wiew of reality, IDEOLOGY. On the other hand, hermeneutical method of sciences, which is an interpretative understanding of a phenomenon through a textual reading (btw still the text has a *coherent* meaning for them, which is not the case for deconstructionist postmodernists) runs the risk of being too text centric, like those post modernists who they claim to be critical. Since they focus heavily on understanding and interpretation they can not see that our understandings can be distorted or ideology distorts reality in our understandings of the social world. They assume that the reader can freely interpret the text, thus they are as ideologs as empricists. Hermeneutical method can be radicalized only if one is self-concious of the *ideological orientation* of the text she is reading. One needs a critical distance between the text and the self. In my view, Gadamer fails this test at this moment; he idealizes the author and makes any critical reflection impossible. That being said, he treats the text conservatively and uncritically ( I am not big a fun of Habermas, but his critique of Gademer as well as postmodernists deserve some legitimate credit here). >Marx's critique of The German Ideology. Lukacs addressed the issue as >"false consciousness" in _History and Class Consciousness_. That's where >this critical theory "lit crit sh*t" comes from. Literary critique does not *necessarily* have to be *shit*. That was the point I was resisting. Such a way of brushing literary critique carries an empricist bias. There are many Marxist literary critics out there who are not a shit, evidently. >understanding to others. One of the problems that Freud addressed in >Moses >and Monotheism was Moses' inarticulateness, an inarticulateness that >might >even be attributed to his understanding. Freud would have less distorted reality if he had not assumed that WAR originated from our *inner agressive drives* or women had a penis envy.... he was so much into Hobbes' sexism and phsycological individualism.. >Gramsci called for pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will. I >guess I can lay claim at least to the first part of that formula. Correct! Grasmci advocates a politically articulated historical materialism, which is why I love him... he is a very dynamic thinker.. >Tom Walker Mine Doyran SUNY/Albany
