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Beijing Normal UniversityFoundations of Educational Research:

Methodology, Epistemology and Ontology

Topic 3Methodological & Epistemological Foundations of

Historical-Hermeneutic Studies

A. The essentials of the methodology of qualitative research:1. Willhelm Dilthey’s conception of the human sciences:

a. “We owe to Dilthey …that the natural sciences and the human sciences are characterized by two scientificity, two methodologies, two epistemologies.” (Ricoeur, 1991/1973, p. 275)

b. Dilthey in his classical work Introduction to the Human Sciences (1991/1883) underlines that “The sum of intellectual facts which fall under the notion of science is usually divided into two groups, one marked by the name ‘natural science’; for the other, oddly enough, there is no generally accepted designation. I subscribe to the thinkers who call this other half of the intellectual world the ‘human sciences’ (Geisteswissenschaften or translated as ‘the sciences of the mind’)” (Dilthey, 1991, p. 78)

c. “The motivation behind the habit of seeing these sciences as a unity in contrast with those of nature derives from the depth and fullness of human self-consciousness. … (A) man finds in this self-consciousness a sovereignty of will, a responsibility for actions, a capacity for subordinating everything to thought and for resisting any foreign element in the citadel of freedom in his person: by these things he distinguishes himself from all of nature. He finds himself with respect to nature an imperium in imperio.” (Dilthey, 1991, p.79)

2. Clifford Geertz's conception of culture and its interpretationa. Geertz in his classical work The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays

(1973) underlines that “The concept of culture I espouse … is essentially a semiotic one. Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun. I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretative one in research of meaning.” (Geertz, 1994/1973, P. 214)

b. “Culture is most effectively treated …purely as a symbolic system …by isolating its elements, specifying the internal relationship among those elements, and then characterizing the whole system in some general way according to the core symbols around which it is organized, the underlying structures of which it is a surface expression, or the ideological principles upon which it is based.” (Geertz, 1994/1973, p. 222)

3. Max Weber’s conception of sociology and social researcha. Max Weber’s oft-quoted definition of the subject matter of sociology and that

of social sciences in general stipulates that "Sociology is a science concerning itself with interpretive understanding of social action in order thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and consequence. We shall speak of 'action' insofar as the acting individual attaches a subjective meaning to his behavior. …Action is 'social' insofar as its subjective meaning takes account of

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Tsang & YeFoundations of Ed Research

the behavior of others and is thereby oriented in its course." (Weber, 1978, p. 4) This definition has generated three methodological aproia for students of sociology and social sciences to tackle with for generations to come.

b. First, it has stipulated that in studying human actions the major concerns is to provide “interpretive understanding” of the “subjective meanings” underlying each and every “actions”. This has constituted the basic research question for qualitative research in social sciences.

c. Second, the definition has also stipulate another aporia to students in social sciences. That is, given human actions are endowed with subjective meanings, how can two actions be oriented into a mutually acceptable social action? Furthermore, one can continue to ask how society and culture be possible in maintaining these varieties of social actions in stable and continuous manner through time and across considerable spatial distance.

d. Third, the definition has also generated yet another aporia by stipulating the the social researchers should also render “causal explanation” for the “course” and “consequence” of the human action under study. This seems to be a statement of a typical research question for quantitative researchers. In other words, Weber seems to expect his followers to bridge the gap between quantitative and qualitative approaches to social research.

e. In fact, both Alfred Schutz (1967) and Jurgen Habermas (1988/1967) specifically began their books with the same quotation of Weber’s definition of sociology and try to resolve the aporia set forth in it.

B. Jurgen Habermas in his book On the Logics of Social Sciences (1988/1967) has suggested there are generally three approaches to the studies of the subjective meanings of human and social actions. They are a. The social phenomenological approachb. The linguistic approachc. The hermeneutic approach

C. The Conception of Meanings in Social Phenomenological Perspective1. Phenomenology as a school of thought in modern philosophy was established at

the beginning of the twentieth century mainly under the leadership and efforts of Edmund Husserl, a German philosopher. However, it was Alfred Schutz’s work (1967/1932) and the work of two of his students, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1966), which have brought the phenomenological conceptions of meaning to the studies of social action and social world.

2. In his now-classic work, The Phenomenology of Social World, Schutz begins his inquiry with a critique on Weber’s conception of subjective meanings in human actions. He stipulates that by applying the concepts forged by phenomenologists in philosophy can help to resolve these vagueness in understanding the subjective meanings in human actions. And he has then constructed the framework social-meaning formation with the following constituent concepts of social phenomenology

3. Formation of individual subjective meanings: Weber’s aporia No. 1To account for the formation of subjective meanings of individuals, Schutz introduces the following concepts of phenomenological philosophy to social sciences.

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a Stream of consciousness: According to phenomenologists, most notably Hernri Bergson, human beings are not only living within the world of discrete and concrete space and time, but also in the stream of consciousness. It is within this stream of consciousness that a man would grant his attention and intention to an object in reality (or ‘the world’) and elevate some of them to become a “phenomenon” within one’s subjectivity. And Husserl has labelled this fundamental inter-connection between consciousness and objects in reality the ‘intentioanlity’.

b. The concept of intentionality: “The term ‘intentionality’ is taken from the Latin intendere, which translates as ‘to stretch forth’.” It indicates the process of how the mind “stretching forth” into the world and “grasping” and “translating” an object into a phenomenon. (Spinelli, 2005, p.15)The process of intentionality has been differentiated by Husserl into two components, namely noema and noesis.i. The concept of noema (intentional-object) indicates the objects being

intended to, conscious of and grasped, i.e. the what;ii. The concept of noesis (intentional-Act) refers to the act of intending,

stretching forth and bringing to consciousness, i.e. the how.c. Concepts of perception, retention and reproduction:

i. Perception: It refers to the “now-apprehension” granted to an experience by human minds during the immediate encounter.

ii. Retention: It refers to the “primary remembrance” or “primary impression” of an experience formed within the “after-consciousness” of the encounter.

iii. Reproduction: It refers to the “secondary remembrance or recollection” that emerges after primary remembrance is past. “We accomplish it either by simply laying hold of what is recollected … or we accomplish it in a real, re-productive, recapitulative memory in which the temporal object is again completely built up in a continuum of presentifications, so that we seem to perceive it again, but only seemingly, as-if.” (Husserl, 1964, quoted in Schutz, 1967, p. 48)

d. The concept of behavior: Meaning-endowing experiences: Husserl makes a distinction between two types of experiences “Experience of the first type are merely ‘undergone’ or ‘suffer’.’ They are characterized by a basic passivity. Experiences of the second type consist of attitudes taken toward experiences of the first type.” Husserl characterized those experiences endowed with ‘attitude-taking Act’ as ‘behavior’. Accordingly, “Behavior is a meaning-endowing experience of consciousness.” (Schutz, 1967, p. 56)

e. The concept of Action and Project: According to Schutz and Husserl, we can further distinguish behavior from action. The former are experiences endowed with attitudes, while the latter are experiences oriented towards the future. Most specifically, actions are experiences endowed with anticipation, which Husserl has characterized as “the meaning of what will be perceived.” (Husserl, 1931, quoted in Schutz, 1967, p. 58) Furthermore, apart from anticipation of the future, actions are also experiences endowed with another form of intentionality, namely intention of fulfillment. More specifically, actions are not only made up of anticipated goals or “empty protention” to the future. They also consist of the parts of intentions to attaining those goals in the future.

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In conclusion, according to Schutz formulation, an action is experiences endowed with meanings in the form of “a project”, which consists of anticipated goals and intentions and efforts to fulfill them.

In summary, by applying these concepts to Weber’s stipulation of understanding of subjective meanings in human actions, Schutz asserts confidently that “Now we are in a position to state that what distinguishes action from behavior is that action is the execution of a projected act. And we can immediately proceed to our next step: the meaning of any action is its corresponding projected act. In saying this we are giving clarity to Max Weber’s vague concept of the “orientation of the action.” An action, we submit, is oriented toward its corresponding projected act.” (Schutz, 1967, p. 61) That is resolution to Weber’s aporia No. 1.

4. Configuration of meaning-context of individuals: Schutz’s theory building about subjective meanings of individuals does not stop here. He further put forth two concepts.a The concept of Durée: Henri Bergson has coined the concept ‘durée’ to specify

the inner stream of duration constituted within human consciousness. It refers to, as Husserl characterized, the types of experiences, that human minds would “transverse” (translate or transform) into “intentional unities”, within which “immanent time is constituted,…an authentic time in which there is duration, and alteration of that which endures.” (Husserl, 1964; quoted in Schutz, 1967, p. 46)

a. The concept of meaning-context: By meaning-context, Schutz characterized it as follows“Let us define meaning-context formally: We say that our lived experience E1, E2, …, En, stand in a meaning-context if and only if, once they have been lived through in separate steps, they are then constituted into a synthesis of a high order, becoming thereby unified objects of monothetic attention.” (Schutz, 1967, p.75) Schutz indicates that meaning-context derived within one’s inner time consciousness bears numbers of structural features. (Schutz, 1967, p. 74-78)i. Unity: Though intentional acts and/or fulfillment-act various meaning-

endowing experiences are unified and integrated into coherent whole within the Ego. Hence, meaning-context generated from meaning-endowing experiences also bears the internal structure of unity and coherence.

ii Continuity: As lived experiences are set within the stream of consciousness of duration (i.e. Durée), therefore, the meaning-context thereby derived is internally structured into a continuity of temporal ordering.

iii. Hierarchy: Through her lived experiences in different spheres of the life-world, individual will congifurated various meaning-contexts for lived experiences in various spheres of life. And these complex meaning-contexts are structured in hierarchical order according to their degree of meaningfulness and significance.

5. Formation of social meanings: Weber’s aporia No. 2a. As a practicing sociologist, Alfred Schutz’s major contribution to

phenomenological studies is to extend the study of human consciousness and experiences from individual level to social level. Built on phenomenological investigations of meaning-configurations and meaning-contexts of individuals, Schutz poses the following series of questions: How meaning-configurations

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among individuals are possible? More specifically, how meanings among different inner consciousness of durations are able to be corresponded, shared or even come to consensus? And how individual thinking and acting beings come to act harmoniously, concertedly and cooperatively into a social entity?

b. Schutz’s concepts of meaning-context of the social worldi. Schutz suggests that constructions of social meanings within a human

aggregate are possible simply because members of a “society” share common “lived” experiences generated from common temporal and spatial situations.

ii. These common lived experiences have then been accumulated geographically, historically, verbally and textually into a “totality” of meaning-configuration and meaning-contexts, which we now called the culture or what Berger and Luckmann called symbolic universe.

iii. Based on commonly-share culture, Schutz has differentiated the process of meaning-construction into three types

c. Social meaning construction in face-to-face relationshipi. The primary base of mutual understanding between two humans in face-to-

face situation is that there are two inner consciousnesses of durations who share similar if not the same temporal-spatial flows, that is, each is conscious of the other’s presence. In short, each takes the other as intentional-object (noema) of her intentional-Act (noesis) and vice versa.

ii. Expressive movement and expressive act: They refer to non-verbal gestures (body movements) which indicate the “attitudinal-Act” of an individual implicates to an subjective experience which she undergoes. Schutz has further differentiates them into - Expressive movement: It refers to gestures which bears no

communicative intention from the part of the initiator. As Schutz states “expressive movements … have meaning only for the observer, not for the person observed.” (Schutz, 1967, p. 117)

- Expressive act: It refers to body movements “in which the actor seeks to project outward the content of his consciousness, whether to retain the latter for his own use later on (as in the case of an entry in a dairy) or to communicate them to others.” (Schutz, 1967, p. 116)

iii. Sign and sign system:- “Signs are artifacts or act-objects which are interpreted not according to

those interpretive schemes which are adequate to them as objects of the external world but according to schemes not adequate to them and belong rather to other object.” (Schutz, 1967, p. 120) In constructing a sign, the actor undertakes the act of signification, that is, to assign a sign to an object in the external world. As on the part of the reader of the sign, she has to undertake an act of interpretation, which has been defined as the core activities that qualitative researchers have to undertake. Spoken and written signs in a language are the exemplary representations of sign used by human kind.

- Accordingly, sign system refers to well established, widely used, and universally interpreted signs disseminating and communicating among members of a defined human aggregate; for instance, language

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systems of Chinese, English, etc.iv. Concept of externalization and objectification:

- The concept of externalization of subjectivity: It is within a sign system, i.e. a culture and/or a cultural system, that subjective experiences and consciousnesses of individuals can be externalized and communicate to other members of the corresponding language and/or cultural system.

- The concept of objectification of subjectivity: By externalizing one’s subjectivity onto concrete artifacts, subjectivity of mortal individual has then obtained endeavoring existence of its own, which may out-live the originating person.

d. Social-meaning construction with the contemporariesi. As individuals move farther and farther apart, such as residents in a

metropolitan such as Hong Kong, fellow citizens of a nation such as PRC, members of a “nation” such as the Chinese, dwellers of the same continent such as the Asians, fellow residents of the global village, how can they come to shared meanings?

ii. Concepts of ideal type and typification:- As contemporaries, who are located in physically long distance which

does not enable them to have face-to-face confirmation of their meanings to their counterparts, they have to then presume and rely on the ideal-typical interpretive schema generated and established in so-called “institutional contexts”.

- For examples, the ideal-typical role-performances prescribed to teachers and students in modern educational institutions; ideal-typical role-performances presumed by both the husband and the wife in the marriage institution; or sellers and buyers in international trade or cyber-transactions.

- The act of prescribing ideal-typical roles and their corresponding role-performances to partners in interaction has been characterized by Schutz and his followers as “typification”.

iii. Accordingly, the concepts of institution and institutionalization have been reformulated and used by followers of Alfred Schuts, such as Berger and Luckmann, and advocates of New-institutionalism in qualitative researches in social sciences in recent decades.

e. Social-meaning construction with the predecessorsi. To come to agreement with the deaths: When the meaning configurations

are constructed in remotely temporal distance and the text and relics, it poses insurmountable difficulties to researchers who are supposed to retrieve the “authentic” meanings because the interpretive findings can no longer be confirmed with their “authors”. The situation has been characterized by Ricoeur (1984) as the most acute example of Kant’s demarcation between noumenon and phenomenon, that historians can never the past in itself from the historical texts and relics.

ii. Schutz suggests that historians, who are to “reconstruct” the meaning configurations of the deaths, have to presume the notion of the stream of history in parallel to the streams of consciousness, social institutions and cultural system and to strive to constitute the “fusion of horizons” across times. Most specifically, as Paul Ricoeur underlines, historians are

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expected to be able to muster kinds of “sympathetic efforts” and “temporal imagination”, that is, to project “not merely an imaginative projection into another present but a real projection into another human life.” (Ricoeur, 1984, p. 28)

Taking together all the concepts relating to the formation of social meanings in face-to-face situations, with contemporaries across space, and predecessors across times, we may conclude that Schutz with his students Berger and Luckmann have rendered a resolution to Weber’s aporia No. 2.

D. The Conception of Meaning in Linguistic Approach1. Language as expressive system of meanings:

a. As Schutz has indicated, one of the tools that humans have invented and used to express their consciousness and subjective meanings is language. Hence, language can be taken as one of the major system invented and institutionalized by humans to externalize, objectivate and communicate their subjective meanings.

b. Lingustics as discipline studying languages can therefore be conceived as one of approaches to acquire interpretive understanding of subjective meanings endowed in social action.

2. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s linguistic pluralism:a. Ludwig Wittgenstein has been chosen by Habermas as the primary reference

in the linguistic approach in helping him to construct his logic of the social sciences.

b. Habermas has specifically made a connection between phenomenological and linguistic approaches in interpreting social meanings in the following manner. "The problem of language has taken the place of the traditional problem of consciousness: the transcendental critique of language takes the place of that of consciousness. Wittgenstein's life forms, which correspond to Husserl's lifeworld, now follow not the rules of synthesis of a consciousness as such but rather the rules of the grammar of language games." (Habermas, 1988, p. 117) More specifically, the connection and comparison between the two approaches can be summarized as i. Consciousness——Languageii. Rules and structures of consciousness ——Rules of grammar of a

languageiii. Lifeworld ——Life forms

c. The two approaches in fact can further be compared in their developmental stages:

Developmental stages of Wittgenstein's linguistic approach

Developmental stages of social phenomenological perspectives

The linguistic transcendentalism in Tractatus Logico-philosophicus (1922)

Husserl's transcendental phenomenology

The linguistic pluralism in Philosophical Investigations (1953)

Schutz's phenomenology of the social worlds

d. Language games in linguistic pluralism: According to the perspective of linguistic pluralism, each linguistic communities with their own grammatical

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rules and life forms will construct their meanings and lifeworld accordingly. As a result, each will constitute its own “language game”.

e. The subsequent development of the linguistic approach in qualitative research in social sciences, which has been characterized as the “linguistic turn in social research” has triggered diverse perspectives and approaches on “post-modern fashion, which will not to be explored in this course.

E. The Conception of Meaning in Hermeneutic Tradition:1. The meanings of hermeneutics:

a. The origin of the hermeneutic tradition, as Martin Jay has specified, is “originally a Greek term, it referred to the god Hermes. The sayer or announcer of divine messages ― often, to be sure in oracular and ambiguous form. Hermeneutics retained its early emphasis on saying as it accumulated other meanings, such as interpreting, translating, and explaining.” (Jay, 1982, P. 90)

b. Paul Ricoeur’s provides a working definition of hermeneutics as follow:“Hermeneutics is the theory of the operations of understanding in the relation to the interpretation of texts.” (Ricoeur, 1981a, p.43)

c. "What is hermeneutics? Any meaningful expression—be it an utterance, verbal or nonverbal, or an artifact of any kind, such as tool, an institution, or a written document—can be identified from a double perspective, both as an observable event and as an understandable objectification of meaning. We can describe, explain, or predict a noise equivalent to the sounds of a spoken sentence without having the slight idea what this utterance means. To grasp (and state) its meaning, one has to participate in some (actual or imagined) communicative action in the course of which the sentence in question is used in such a way that it is intelligible to speakers, hearers, and bystanders belonging to the same speech community." (Habermas, 1996, p. 23-24)

2. Levels of hermeneutic inquiries: With reference to the meanings retrieved from the “texts”, hermeneutic studies can be classified into different levels: a. Hermeneutics at literal level: Decoding the authentic meanings embedded in

literal texts or in utterances in dialoguesb. Hermeneutics at ontological level:

i. Encoding and decoding meanings from the ontological condition of the author

ii. Encoding and decoding meanings from the ontological condition of the world referred in the text

c. Hermeneutics at historical and cultural level: Encoding and decoding meanings from the historical and cultural context within which the text was produced

d. Hermeneutics at the existential level: i. Hermeneutic experience as “the corrective by means of which thinking

reason escapes the prison of language” ." (Gadamer, 1975, Quoted in Habermas, 1988, p. 144)

ii. Hermeneutics as the “fusion of horizons” of that of the author and reader.e. Hermeneutics at critical level:

i. Encoding and decoding “meanings” from the perspective of human interests

ii. Encoding and decoding “meanings” from the perspective of systemic distortions of institutional context

iii. Encoding and decoding “meanings” from the perspective of ideology of

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given cultural hegemony3. Paul Ricoeur’s literal hermeneutics as bridging of the distanciations in the text

a. Paul Ricoeur, French Philosopher, defines that “A text is any discourse (speech act) fixed in writing.” (Ricoeur, 1981a, p.145) As fixations of speech acts text enables the speech to be conserved, i.e. durability of text.

b. Hermeneutics is therefore needed as a means to bridge the distance created by the text between the two sides of the speech accts, namely writing and readings. This bridging efforts has been called distanciation functions of hermeneutics by Ricoeur. Ricoeur has differentiated distanciation functions into five levels

c. Distanciation as bridging efforts between two separate language events (i.e. discourse), namely writings and readings. It is the most elementary of distanciation and “the core of the whole hermeneutic problem.” (Ricoeur, 1981a, p. 134)

d. Taken text as work, in which the author has specific intent to make the effort to put down his meanings into text or even “work”. Accordingly “hermeneutics remains the art of discerning the discourse in the work; but this discourse is only given in and through the structures of the work. Thus interpretation is the reply to the fundamental distanciation constituted by the objectification of man in work of discourse, an objectification comparable to that expressed in the products of his labour and his art.” (Ricoeur, 1981a, P. 138)

e. Taken the contexts of the text production and interpretation into consideration, i. both the acts of production and interpretation of the text are performed in

specific contexts; ii. as a result, “the text must be able to…’decontextualise’ itself in such a way

that it can be ‘recontextualise’ in a new situation ― as accomplished …by the act of reading.” (Ricoeur, 1981a, p. 139)

f. Text as fixation of discourse, can and should be understood in terms of the referent and reality which it intends to designate or even signify. Ricoeur has characterized it as “the world of thee text”. Accorrdingly, the effort of distanciation can be construed at the level of bridging two “worlds of the text” designated by the authors and readers. Ricoeur has underlined that “the most fundamental hermeneutical problem … is to explicate the type of being-in-the world (life-world) unfolded in front of the text.” (Ricoeur, 1981a, p.141)

g. Finally, the effort of distanciation-bridging can also be taken as “self-understanding in front of the work”. In the process of reading, the readers can and in act are applyig ‘the world of the work’ to the present situation of the reader. In Ricoeur’s own words, i. "To understand is to understand oneself in front of the text. It is not a

question of imposing upon the text our finite capacity of understanding, but of exposing ourselves to the text and receiving from it an enlarge self." (Ricoeur, 1981a, p. 143)

ii. “As a reader, I find myself only by losing myself. Reading introduces me into the imaginative variations of the ego. The metamorphosis of the world in play is also the playful metamorphosis of the ego." (Ricoeur, 1981a, p.144)

4. Hans-Georg Gadamer’s existential hermeneutics as fusion of horizonsa. Existential understanding of language:

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i. Following the teaching of his teacher Heidegger, Gadamer sees that “all human reality is determined by its linguisticality. …Because human beings are thrown into a world already linguistically permeated, they do not invent language as a tool for their own purposes. It is not a technological instrument of manipulation. Rather, language is prior to humanity and speaks through it. Our infinite as human beings is encompassed by infinity of language.” (Jay, 1982, P. 94)

ii. Accordingly, human existence is a linguistically encoded existence, which is made up of all the preconceptions or what Gadamer called “prejudices” accumulated and sustained in a particular cultural-linguistic “tradition. Hence, as human agents speak and act, they are speaking and acting within a prison house of language.

b. Gadamer’s conception of hermeneutic experience: In order to liberate oneself from such a prison, Gadamer suggests that human agents have to undertake the hermeneutic experience. "Hermeneutic experience is the corrective by means of which thinking reason escapes the prison of language, and it is itself constituted linguistically …. Certainly the variety of languages presents us with a problem. But this problem is simply how every language, despite its difference form other languages, is able to say everything it wants. …We then ask how, amid the variety of these forms of utterance, there is still the same unity of thought and speech, so that everything that has been transmitted in writing can be understood." (Gadamer, 1975, Quoted in Habermas, 1988, p. 144)

c. Gadamer’s redefinition of hermeneutic inquiry: i. Within Gadamer’s framework of existential linguistics, hermeneutics is no

longer simply an act of empathetic bridging other distanciations within the text, particularly historical text, revealing what actually happened in the past, as Ranke advocated; but to “fuse” the horizons of the reader and the author. This is what Gadamer calls “fusion of horizons”.

ii. By horizon, Gadamer defines it as “the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point.” (Gadamer, 1975, Quoted in Jay, P. 95) However, Individual horizons are partial and incomplete. Furthermore, they “are open, and shift; we wander into them and they in turn move with us.” (Habermas, 1988, P. 147)

d. Varieties of hermeneutic experiences and inquiries: Accordingly, such a fusion of horizons may take varieties of formsi. Hermeneutic experiences of the translator striving to bridge two languagesii. Hermeneutic experience of the historian attempting to bridge two epochs iii. Hermeneutic experience of the anthropologist trying to bridge two culturesiv. Hermeneutic experience of the sociologist trying to bridge two classes,

status groups and political partiesv. Hermeneutic experience of the comparative-historical researcher striving

of bridge big structures, large process and great communities across times and spaces

e. Gadamer’s concepts of authority and tradition: i. The notion of “legitimate prejudice”: According to Gadamer, human agents

could only approach the world with preconceptions or “prejudices” of accumulated and sustained in a particular cultural-linguistic community.

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However, in hermeneutic experiences and inquiries, the fusion of horizons may not be smooth and armonious but in contradictions or even conflicts. As a result, prejudices and their constituent horizons must be justified in situations where encounters and fusions of horizons take place. That brings about Gadamer’s the concept of authority and the issue of “legitimate prejudice”.

ii. Gadamer contends that the legitimacy of individual horizons and its prejudices are gained in daily-life practices of speech acts, discourse and understanding within a prevailing cultural-linguistic community. While the legitimate “prejudices” at social level can also establish their authority in dialogues, social interactions and institutional practices. Therefore, Gadamer contends that “authority, properly understood, has nothing to do with blind obedience to a command. Indeed, authority has nothing to do with obedience, it rests on recognition.” (Gadamer, 1975, Quoted in Ricoeur, 1991, P. 279) By recognition, Gadamer refers to “that the other is superior to oneself in judgment and insight and that for this reason his judgment takes precedence, i.e. it has priority over one’s own.” (Gadamer, 1975, Quoted in Ricoeur P. 278) “This is the essence of the authority, claimed by the teachers, the superior, the expert.” (Gadamer, 1975, Quoted in Ricoeur 991, P. 279)

iii. As these “legitimate prejudices” sustained and spread their authority within a linguistic community, they establish what Gadamer calls their “effective-historical” status and become the “tradition”. “This is precisely what we call tradition: the ground of their validity…. tradition has a justification that is outside the arguments of reason and in large measure determines our attitudes and behavior.” (Gadamer, 1975, Quoted in Ricoeur, 1991, P. 279)

5. Jurgen Habermas’ Critical Hermeneuticsa. The Gadamer-Habermas debate: The focus of contention between on

Gadamer and Habermas is exactly on the difference in the authority of prejudice and conception of tradition. Habermas disagrees to Gadamer’s treatment of the tradition and its authority of prejudices in a given cultural-linguistic community as normative imperatives derived out of practical speech acts, discourses and fusions of horizons. Instead Habermas underlines the power and domination that are at work in all human relationships including linguistic communications. In Habermas own words, “This metainstitution of language as tradition is evidently dependent in turn on social processes that are not in normative relationship. Language is also medium of domination and social power.” (Habermas, 1977, Quoted in Jay, 1982, P. 99)

b. From the stance of the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School as well as of Marxism, Habermas criticizes Gadamer of neglecting the frozen ideology, hypostatized power, and systemic distortion that may have been prevailed in cultural-linguistic traditions as well as in its supporting institutions.

c. Critical hermeneutics and critique of ideology: According to Habermas’ critique on Gadamer’s existential hermeneutics, Habermas has elevates hermeneutic inquiry yet to another level, namely critical hermeneutics. i. First of all, Habermas criticizes Gadamers’ conception of authorities of

“prejudices” and tradition of neglecting the notion of power that is supposed to be at work behind all these authority. This brings out one of

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the basic concept in the Critical Theory, i.e. the hypostatized power, which is at work in all human relationships and discourses.

ii. Accordingly, this hypostatized will impose systemic distortions to human relationships and discourses.

iii. One of these systemic distortions, which manifests in individual horizon, fusion of horizons, prejudices, and tradition, is the ideological elements frozen in these cultural-linguistic representations.

F. Explaining Social Actions: Weber’s Aporia No. 31. Under the domination of methodological monism of the analytical-empiricism and

the deductive-nomological explanation, historical-hermeneutic approach has been criticized as unable to render any valid explanations for human actions. It was Georg H. von Wright, an Oxford Professor of Philosophy, who led the counter-attack for the historical-hermeneutic approach by putting forth the distinction between causal and teleological explanations. He stated in his book Explanation and Understanding (1971) that “It is…misleading to say that understanding versus explanation marks the difference between two types of scientific intelligibility. But one could say that the intentional or non-intentional character of their objects marks the difference between two types of understanding and of explanation.” (von Wright, 1971, p.135) a. Causal explanation: It refers to the mode of explanation, which attempt to seek

the sufficient and/or necessary conditions (i.e. explanans) which antecede the phenomenon to be explained (i.e. explanandum). Causal explanations normally point to the past. ‘This happened, because that had occued’ is the typical form in language.” (von Wright, 1971, p. 83) It seeks to verify the antecedental conditions for an observed natural phenomenon.

b. Teleological explanation: It refers to the mode of explanation, which attempt to reveal the goals and/or intentions, which generate or motivate the explanadum (usually an action to be explained) to take place. “Teleological explanations point to the future. ‘This happened in order that that should occur.’” (von Wright, 1971, p. 83)

2. Intentional explanation: This type of explanation is the typical mode of explanation employed by social scientists. In fact, as Jon Elster underlines, its feature "distinguishes the social sciences from the natural sciences." (Elster, 1983, p. 69) It focuses on revealing the intentions, motivations, meanings, desires, and believes working behind human actions both at individual and social levels. Accordingly, as Alfred Schutz suggested, human actions should be allocated within its “corresponding projected act” to seek for explanation.

3. Rational-choice explanation: To avoid the diversity in human intentions and idiosyncrasy of subjective meaning, rational-choice theorists have made the working assumption that all men are rational. a. By rational choice, it refers to the belief that men will conduct their actions

consistently with the best evidence available. (Elster, 2009). Accoordingly Elster decomposes rational-choice action into “a triadic relation between action (A), desire (D) and belief (B)”. (Elster, 1983, 90) More recently, Elster specifies that “A successful intentional explanation establishes the behavior as

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action and the performer as an agent. An explanation of this form amounts to demonstrating three place relation between the behavior (B), a set of cognitions (C) entertained by the individual and a set of desire (D) that can also be impute to him. (Eslter, 1994, P. 311)

b. Apart from the triadic relation between action, desire and belief, Elster further asserts that the triadic schema must also be consistent both internally and externally. On the one hand, both the desire and the action must be internally consistent, on the other hand, the belief or cognition must be externally consistent with the evidences available.

c. Economic-man model: Rational-choice explanation can further be elaborated into the economic-man model by assume that the rational choice made by humans are in much more aggressive terms that they will conduct their actions with the objective that maximized returns will be guaranteed in their means-ends or even cost-benefit calculations.

4. Quasi-teleological explanation (functional explanation): a. It is the type of teleological explanation most commonly used in biology. It

"takes the form of indicating one or more functions (or even dysfunctions) that a unit performs in maintaining or realizing certain traits of the system to which the unit belongs." (Nagel, 1979, p. 23) For example, in explaining why human being has lung, the typical explanation in biology is that lung performs the function of breathing, i.e. provide oxygen to the of the proper maintenance of the system of a human body. Accordingly functional explanation consist of the followingsi. X perform the function of Y to the system of Zii. Y therefore explains the existence of X or Z's possession of Y.

b. However, there is a basic logical setback in this functional-explanatory structure. That is, since X performs Y, therefore X must be an antecedent of Y. However in the cause-effect explanatory structure, the existence of an effect (Y) could not have anteceded that of its cause (X). Therefore, Y could not have been the cause of X.

c. Nevertheless, in biology this setback can be compensated by the mechanism of natural selection in the theory of evolution. That is the seemingly temporal ordering mismatch between X and Y can be explained away within the much longer timeline in the evolutionary process of species. G.A. Cohen has called this requirement in functional explanation "consequence law" (Cohen, 1978, p.250)

d. Debate on functional explanation in social sciences i. The focal point of the debate is that there is no commonly accepted

"consequence law" available for the functional explanation of the origin and existence of social phenomena, such as education, available in social sciences. Unless we accept the thesis of social Darwinism that there is natural selection principle at work in social world, otherwise we may have to accept Jon Ester suggestion that functional explanation is not applicable in social science.

ii. One resolution or qualification offered by Philip Pettit (2002) and Harold Kincaid (2007) is that instead to use functional explanation and trace to origins of species as biologists do, social scientists could restrain themselves to explain the origins of social institutions and instead simply

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applying functional explanation to account for the resilient patterns or persistent regularities in social world. Such a qualification or reservation can release social scientists of the burden of proof of tracing the history of actual selection and evolution of the resilience of a social institution. Instead social scientists can simply base on a "virtual selection" assumption and focus on the accounting for the persistence of a given phenomenon.

e. Accordingly, functional explanation can be employed to account for the existence, especially its resilience, continuity, and regularity, of social institutions, such as institutions of education and family in human societies.

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G. Weber’s solution to his own aporia: Weber’s explanatory modelWithin the debate between quantitative and qualitative, one of the impasses is between explanation and understanding. It is argued that quantitative research can render explanation while qualitative research can only provide empathetic understanding. Accordingly, it is impossible to provide both explanation and understanding at the same time. Yet Weber demand students of sociology and researcher in social sciences in general to render interpretive understanding to subjective meanings in social action and to provide causal explanation of its consequences and effect simultaneously. In fact, Weber is not assigning his fellow sociologist an unsurmountable task, he has demonstrate how to accomplish the job himself.1. Conception of “explanatory understanding”: In fact, Weber himself has make any

explicit distinction between two types of understandinga. Direct observational understanding: It refers to “direct rational understanding

of action”, (Weber, 1978, P. 8) that is by locating the action and its subjective meaning with its “corresponding project” as Schtz has suggested. It also refers to “direct observational understanding of irrational emotional reactions”, (Weber, 1978, P. 8) that is by locating it with the situation which arouse such an emotional outburst.

b. Explanatory understanding: Weber then emphasizes that we should go one stage further by “placing the act in an intelligible and more inclusive context of meaning” (Weber, 1978, P. 8) and to provide causal explanation how the respective contexts (historical, socio-cultural, and/or geo-political) “cause” the formulation of the rational project and the undertaking of the corresponding action.

2. In fact Dirk Käsler, a German sociologist, suggests that “we can distinguish three variations on the interpretation of the concept of meaning in Weber’s work, all of which can be grasped by the method of Verstehen: a. Meaning as cultural significance, i.e. as ‘objectified’ meaning in a ‘world of

meanings’. b. Meaning as subjective intended meaning which is intersubjectively

comprehensible and communicable.c. Meaning as functional meaning which is influenced by objective contexts, is

intersubjectively mediated and is functional significance for social processes of change.” (Käsler, 1988, 178)

3. Accordingly, Weber points the way for resolving the illusive aporia by stating that “Thus for a science which is concerned with the subjective meaning of action, explanation requires a grasp of the complex of meanings in which an actual course of understandable action thus interpreted belong.” (Weber, 1978, P. 9)

4. In fact, another prominent American sociologist, Randell Collins (1980) has point out the misreading of Weber’s work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904) as providing a full account for the rise of capitalism. Collins points out that to comprehend Weber full account for the rise of capitalism, we must also reading his work General Economic History (1927). Collins argues that Weber does not only accounting for the rise of capitalism with an idealist approach of attributing the rational and enterprising actions of the capitalists in Europe in the 18th century to the religious belief of the Calvinism, a sect with the Protestantism. He has in fact placing these enterprising acts against the historical, socio-

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economic contexts of the 18th-century Western Europe to render an “explanatory understanding” of “complex meanings”. Collins has summarized the Weber’s contextual framework as follows

G. Representations: The Fields of Historical-Hermeneutic StudiesTaking together the precedent discussions on the methodology of the historical-hermeneutic approach, meanings of human and social actions may appears in a varieties of forms, which can be characterized as “representations. They includes1. Texts: It refers to literal representations, in which meanings expressed in speech

acts (discourse) are fixed in written forms.2. Narratives: It represents the efforts of individuals or human aggregates to arrange

their experiences in meaningful (consistent, coherent, and continuous) manners.3. Relics and historical documents: It refers to the representations meanings form

the past.4. Ethnographic sites: It refers to forms of representations which reveal the meanings

embedded in human activities and routines, such as rituals and organizations.5. Institutions: It refers to the “rules of the games” (North, 1990), which represents

the meanings typified and legitimized in sets of rules governing particular kind of human activities, such as exchange (i.e. market), resolutions of conflicts (i.e. the state), and reproduction (i.e. family and education)

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6. Discourse (in Foucaultian sense): It refers to the “totalities” of “technologies of power”, which subjugate human bodies and minds within human societies.

H. The Epistemological Foundation of Historical-Hermeneutic studies1. The assumptions of the object of inquiry: Contrary to analytical-empirical science,

historical-hermeneutic studies assume that the social world to bear numbers of features which are quite opposite to those in analytical-empirical science.a. Meaning-laden and value-laden: It is assumed that social phenomena are

loaded with meanings and values. In fact, it is exactly the features of meaning-laden and value-laden that lend a social activity and social institution its regularity, resilience and consistency. And this is exactly the task of social researchers to reveal the meanings and values at work underlying each and every social phenomenon.

b. Meaning coherence and meaningful whole: Apart from the feature of meaning-laden, historical-hermeneutic studies also assumes the meanings and values at work in social phenomena and institutions are configured in coherent and integral forms. At individual levels, these meaning integrals usually appear in narrative identities; at societal level, they are constituted in different forms of integrative and enduring institutions; at cultural level, these meaningful wholes take the forms of effective practices of cultural tradition and heritages; and at historical level, the meaning configurations usually passed on in the forms of historical narratives of nations or civilizations.

c. Persistent but transformable in structure: In historical-hermeneutic studies, though the meaning laden social phenomena are subjective and/or intersubjective in nature, yet they are not so idiosyncratic and ephemeral in appearance that they make them unobservable, non-recordable and non-researchable. It is assumed that most of the meaning configurations are regular and persistent in forms, but of course they are not universal, permanent and nomological in form as the natural phenomena. Therefore, they are presumed to be contextualized with particular historical and societal aggregates and to be subject to vary and change with times, spaces and human efforts.

2. The assumption of the knowledge constituted: The knowledge to be constituted and accepted in historical-hermeneutic studies has been characterized as descriptions. They can be discerned in the following elements:a. The deep and thick descriptions: They refer to the descriptive “field notes”

recording the meanings endowed into the social practices by their indigenous participants, mostly the respondents in the studies. They may take on varieties of formats and representations, such as text, historical documentations and relics, narrative story-line, ethnographic situations, and “discourse” (in Foucaultian sense).

b. The interpretation: It refers to the meanings attributed by participants and then by the researchers to the “data”. These interpretations of course cannot be “verified or falsified” empirically and analytically as those in analytical-empirical sciences, yet they can still be “confirmed” in terms of their “effective practices” in the correspondent “Lifeworld” from which the data were initially retrieved. Furthermore, the “validity” of the interpretations, especially those imputed by the researchers can also be cross examined by other researchers in the field in the form of hermeneutic criticism or historical criticism.

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c. Intentional and institutional-functional explanations: Given the descriptions and interpretations obtained, historical-hermeneutic researchers may render explanations for human actions, interactions, and institutional regularities in intentional and/or institutional-functional explanatory modes.

3. The practical truth and the discursive conception of truth: One of the primary differences between analytical-empirical sciences and historical-hermeneutic studies is their conception about the idea of truth. In natural sciences, the truth in scientific knowledge must be tested externally against the facts found in the natural and material world, i.e. compliance with the “correspondence principle”. On the other hand, in historical-hermeneutic studies, truth must be sought after the very practices embedded in the historical-hermeneutic field and/or embodied among participants within socio-cultural situations. Hence, it can be termed as the “practical truth”. By practical truth, it refers to the fact that the validity ground of this type of truth is not to be contrast against the external world but to be sought after within the social world. More specifically, it is the practices of reaching understanding, forging agreement, and bridging consensus within a given “lifeworld” that the validity ground of practical truth is founded. (Habermas, 1984) More recently, Habermas in his book Truth and Justification (2003) makes a specific distinction between two conceptions of trutha. The discursive concept of truth: First of all, Habermas reminds us that the

justification of truth is a linguistically and communicatively embedded process. By locating the issue of “truth and justification” within his previous work on The Theory of Communicative Action, he retrospectively recalls his arguments that “I…determine the meaning of truth procedurally, that is, as confirmation under normatively rigorous conditions of practice of argumentation. This practice is based on the idealizing presuppositions (a) of public debate and complete inclusion of all those affected; (b) of equal distribution of right to communicate; (c) of a nonviolent context in which only the unforced force of the better argument holds sway; and (d) of the sincerity of how all those affected express themselves. The discursive conception was on the one hand supposed to take account of the fact that a statement’s truth─absent the possibility of direct access to uninterpreted truth conditions ─cannot be assessed in term of ‘decisive evidence”, but only in terms of justificatory, albeit never definitely ‘compelling,’ reasons. One the other hand, the idealization of certain features of the form and process of the practice of argumentation was to characterize a procedure that would do justice to the context-transcendence of the truth claim raised by a speaker in a statement by rationally taking into account all relevant voice, topics, and contribution.”(Habermas, 2003, P. 36-37)

b. The realist concept of truth: However, the discursive concept of truth alone, as Habermas admits, cannot substantiate the validity claim of truth. What is needed to accompany “discursive conceptions of truth” is the “realist intuitions” i.e. “the concept of propositional truth”. (Habermas, 2003, P. 8) More specifically, Habermas suggestsWhat we want to express with true sentences is that a certain state of affairs ‘obtains’ is ‘given’. And these facts in turn refer to ‘the world’as the totality of things about which we may state facts. The ontological way of speaking establishes a connection between truth and reference, that is, between the

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truth of statements and the ‘objectivity’ of that about which something is stated. The concept of the ‘objective world’ encompasses everything that subjective of their interventions and inventions.” (Habermas, 2003, P. 254)

Taken together, what Habermas suggests is that we need both concepts of truth and justification to ‘true knowledge’.

4. The implied knowledge-constitutive human interest: Given the nature and features of the historical-hermeneutic knowledge, the knowledge-constitutive human interest to be served, according to Habermas’ formulation, is “practical cognitive interest” effectively embedded in human communications, interactions and more generally communal practices. (Habermas, 1971, P. 196) It is therefore implied that with the well-grounded historical-hermeneutic knowledge, or what Habermas termed “practical effective knowledge” (Habermas, 1971, P. 191) humans are able to understand, to communicate, to bridge distances across historical and socio-cultural communities (or in Gadamer’s terms “fusion of horizons), and finally arrive at consensus. In Habermas conception, it means to achieve “communicative rationality” and “communicative action”.

Additional References

Habermas, Jurgen (1984) The Theory of Communication Action, vol. one. Boston: Beacon Press.

Collins, Randall. (1981) "Weber's Last Theory of Capitalism: Systematization." American Sociological Review 45(6): 925-942.

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