Hermeneutic Philosophies of Social Science

✍ Scribed by Babette Babich (editor)

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2017
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 446
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Hermeneutic philosophies of social science offer an approach to the philosophy of social science foregrounding the human subject and including attention to history as well as a methodological reflection on the notion of reflection, including the intrusions of distortions and prejudice. Hermeneutic philosophies of social science offer an explicit orientation to and concern with the subject of the human and social sciences.

Hermeneutic philosophies of the social science represented in the present collection of essays draw inspiration from Gadamer’s work as well as from Paul Ricoeur in addition to Michel de Certeau and Michel Foucault among others. Special attention is given to Wilhelm Dilthey in addition to the broader phenomenological traditions of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger as well as the history of philosophy in Plato and Descartes.

The volume is indispensible reading for students and scholars interested in epistemology, philosophy of science, social social studies of knowledge as well as social studies of technology.

✦ Table of Contents

Table of Contents
List of Abbreviations
Hermeneutic Philosophies of Social Science: Introduction
I. Science and Method: Towards Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Social Science
Toward an Interpretative or Hermeneutic Social Science
Quantum Mechanics and the Social Sciences
A Critical Hermeneutics of Agency: Cultural Studies as Critical Social Theory
Overcoming Naturalism from Within: Dilthey, Nature, and the Human Sciences
Hermeneutics from the Inside-Out and the Outside-In—And How Postmodernism Blew It All Wide Open
II. Reflexive and Relational Hermeneutics
The Sciences of Subjectivity
Studies of Empirical Ontology and Ontological Difference
Hermeneutics and Its Discontents in Philosophy of Science: On Bruno Latour, the “Science Wars”, Mockery, and Immortal Models
On the Importance of Getting Things Straight
Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Concept of the Horizon and Its Ethico-Political Critique
III. Practice and Application: Hermeneutics, Social Theory
Gadamer’s Hermeneutics as Practical Philosophy
The ‘New’ Sociology of Knowledge
Taking Plurality Seriously with Michel De Certeau: From History to ‘Reception Sociolinguistics’
Pragmatism and Hermeneutics
Make It Scientific: Theories of Education from Dewey to Gadamer
IV. Truth and Life: Life-Philosophy and History, Psychology and Theology
The Hermeneutical Human and Social Sciences
Life, Metaphysics, History: Reflections on the Contemporary Relevance of Dilthey’s Philosophy of Life
Four Fundamental Aspects of the Reversal of Platonism
Heidegger: Hermeneutics as “Preparation” for Thinking
Hermeneutic Reflections on Descartes’ Introduction to His Meditations on First Philosophy
List of Contributors
Index