CRT4225

Hermeneutics

Walter Veit

12 points -2 hours per week -Second semester Clayton

Objectives Students successfully completing this subject should be familiar with principles text of the theory of understanding in the European cognitive tradition within the humanities, the history of hermeneutics, and its position in and impact on modern critical theory. They should have learnt to use hermeneutics in the assessment of other cognitive theories.

Synopsis The subject studies the main events in the development of hermeneutics from a theory and practice of textual interpretation during the Enlightenment and the nineteenth century to a modern theory of understanding and knowledge in the work of Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jürgen Habermas, as well as its application in the study of literature and history in the work of E D Hirsch, Emilio Betti, Paul Ricoeur and Hans Robert Jauss. It addresses problems such as the conflict between subjectivity and objectivity, the dialectics of the foreign and the familiar, the recognition of the new, the role of language and the function of tradition in understanding, the universality of hermeneutics as a theory of cognition and its impact on the social sciences.

Assessment Two seminar papers (1000-1500 words each): 20% each -Research essay (6000 words): 60%

Prescribed texts

Mueller-Vollmer K (ed.) The hermeneutics reader Blackwell, 1985

Recommended texts

Baynes K and others After philosophy, end or transformation? MIT Press, 1987
Bleicher J Contemporary hermeneutics: Hermeneutics as philosophy, method and critique Routledge, 1980
Dallmayr W and McCarthy T (eds) Understanding and social inquiry Notre Dame U P, 1977
Howard R Three faces of hermeneutics U California P, 1983
Natoli J (ed.) Tracing literary theory Illinois U P, 1987
Palmer R E Hermeneutics Northwestern U P, 1969
Radnitzky G Contemporary schools of metascience Akademiforlaget, 1973
Stamiris Y Main currents in twentieth century literary criticism: A critical study Whitson, 1986
Wachterhauser B R (ed.) Hermeneutics and modern philosophy SUNY Press, 1986

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