Unit 1

Introduction: Foundation of Research

1. Epistemological consideration: Interpretivism
Epistemology is the philosophical field revolving around (the study of) knowledge and how to
reach it. Epistemology is the study of knowledge and the research is search of knowledge or
solution through scientific investigation. Epistemology in research is concern with the degree of
acceptable knowledge in discipline. The epistemological consideration focus on knowledge of
Concepts, acts, entities and system used in research. It gives emphasis on the kind of knowledge
that is valid in research using at least acceptable source of evidence and acceptable end result of
knowledge. It focus on the whether the research use same principle or methods followed by
natural science. In this concern the epistemology may follow positivism or Interpretivism for
gaining knowledge.
Epistemology in general is the assumptions we make about the kind or the nature of knowledge
or how it is possible to find out about the world. Epistemology is a way of looking at the world
and making sense of it. It involves knowledge and, necessarily, it embodies a certain
understanding of what that knowledge entails. He further explains that epistemology deals with
the ‘nature’ of knowledge, its possibility (what knowledge is possible and can be attempted and
what is not), its scope and legitimacy. Similarly, but with a particular reference to the contrasting
views about how natural and social worlds should be studied, Bryman (2008) defines
epistemology as “an issue concerns the question of what is (or should be) regarded as acceptable
knowledge in a discipline”. Epistemology is about the assumptions which one makes about “the
very bases of knowledge – its nature and form, how it can be acquired and how communicated to
other human beings”. Furthermore, the authors stress how the kind of epistemological
assumptions which we make or hold about knowledge profoundly affect how we go about
uncovering knowledge of social behavior. Here they refer to the decisions which the researcher
will need to make about the kind of method(s) he or she will be using in their research as per
their epistemological assumptions. That is, if knowledge, on one hand, is viewed as hard,
objective and tangible, this demands of the researcher an observer role together with an
allegiance to the methods of natural science such as testing, measuring, etc. If knowledge, on the
other hand, is viewed as personal, subjective and unique, then this imposes on the researcher a
rejection of the methods used by natural science and a greater involvement with their subjects.
Interpretivism
Interpretivism, also known as interpretivist involves researchers to interpret elements of the
study, thus Interpretivism integrates human interest into a study. Accordingly, “interpretive
researchers assume that access to reality (given or socially constructed) is only through social
constructions such as language, consciousness, shared meanings, and instruments”. Development
of interpretivist philosophy is based on the critique of positivism in social sciences. Accordingly,
this philosophy emphasizes qualitative analysis over quantitative analysis. Interpretivism is
“associated with the philosophical position of idealism, and is used to group together diverse
approaches, including social constructivism, phenomenology and hermeneutics; approaches that
reject the objectivist view that meaning resides within the world independently of
consciousness”. According to interpretivist approach, it is important for the researcher as a social
actor to appreciate differences between people. Moreover, Interpretivism studies usually focus
on meaning and may employ multiple methods in order to reflect different aspects of the issue.
Interpretivism focus on the interpretation of elements of the study which integrate the human
interest into a subject matter under study. Interpretive view believed that access to reality can
only be reach only through social constructions, examines the reality from the jointly constructed
understanding on the basis of share assumption such as consciousness, shared meanings, culture,
etc. Interpretivism is “associated with the philosophical position of idealism, and is used to group
together diverse approaches, including social constructivism, phenomenology and hermeneutics;
approaches that reject the objectivist view that meaning resides within the world independently
of consciousness”. According to interpretivist approach, it is important for the researcher as a
social actor to appreciate differences between people. Moreover, Interpretivism studies usually
focus on meaning and may employ multiple methods in order to reflect different aspects of the
issue.
Interactionist approaches assumed that human behavior is meaningful and directed towards the
achievement of a purpose and the social behavior may view from various way. interpretivists
approach argue that human actions cannot be understood in the same way as natural phenomena
and that consequently the methods of the natural sciences are inappropriate to the study of social
life due to the fact that the social life are complex in nature and cannot be study separately due to
interconnection of different aspect of society. Social behavior of the person and society cannot
explain by partial analysis of the subject. Humans have a consciousness and actively experience
and interpret the world and behave according to this interpretation. Social reality is seen as a
subjective construction based on interpretation and interaction; all human actions have meaning
and cannot be understood separately from this meaning. Positivist prefer scientific quantitative
methods, while Interpretivists prefer humanistic qualitative methods. Interpretivists want to
uncover the meanings held by individuals and social groups because they believe that each
individual/group defines 'reality' differently. To understand these different definitions,
interpretivist research therefore involves going to the groups and allowing them to act or speak
openly.
An Interpretivist approach to social research would be much more qualitative, using methods
such as unstructured interviews or participant observation for the data collection and later it is
interpreted. It argue that individuals are not just puppets who react to external social forces as
Positivists believe. According to Interpretivists individuals are intricate and complex and
different people experience and understand the same ‘objective reality’ in very different ways
and have their own, often very different, reasons for acting in the world, thus scientific methods
are not appropriate. Interpretivist research methods derive from social action theory (People’s
behavior and life-chances are not determined by their social background. Instead, social action
theorists emphasizes the role of the active individual and interactions between people in shaping
personal identity and in turn the wider society). Interpretivists actually criticize ‘scientific
sociology’ (Positivism) because many of the statistics it relies on are themselves socially
constructed. Interpretivists argue that in order to understand human action we need to achieve
‘Verstehen‘, or empathetic understanding – we need to see the world through the eyes of the
actors doing the acting. An interpretivist would argue that researchers need to understand what
people mean by depression, how they come to categorize certain actions as ‘depression’ and then
investigate who comes to be seen as criminal in a particular society.
Important Aspects of Interpretivism
Interpretivist approach is based on naturalistic approach of data collection such
as interviews and observations. Secondary data research is also popular with Interpretivism
philosophy. In this type of studies, meanings emerge usually towards the end of the research
process.
The most noteworthy variations of Interpretivism include the following:
 Hermeneutics refers to the philosophy of interpretation and understanding. Hermeneutics
mainly focuses on biblical texts and wisdom literature and as such, has a little relevance to
business studies.
 Phenomenology is “the philosophical tradition that seeks to understand the world through
directly experiencing the phenomena”.
Symbolic interactionism accepts symbols as culturally derived social objects having shared
meanings. According to symbolic interactionism symbols provide the means by which reality is
constructed.
In general interpretivist approach is based on the following beliefs:
 Relativist ontology.  This approach perceives reality as intersubjective that is based on
meanings and understandings on social and experiential levels.
 Transactional or subjectivist epistemology. According to this approach, people cannot be
separated from their knowledge; therefore there is a clear link between the researcher and
research subject.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Interpretivism
Main disadvantages associated with Interpretivism relate to subjective nature of this approach
and great room for bias on behalf of researcher. Primary data generated in interpretivist studies
cannot be generalized since data is heavily impacted by personal viewpoint and values.
Therefore, reliability and representativeness of data is undermined to a certain extent as well.
On the positive side, thanks to adoption of Interpretivism, qualitative research areas such as
cross-cultural differences in organizations, issues of ethics, leadership and analysis of factors
impacting leadership etc. can be studied in a great level of depth. Primary data generated via
Interpretivism studies might be associated with a high level of validity because data in such
studies tends to be trustworthy and honest.
2. Ontological consideration: Constructionism
Ontology is the philosophical field revolving around (the study of) the nature of reality (all that
is or exists), and the different entities and categories within reality. Ontology is the study of
‘being’ and is concerned with ‘what is’, i.e., the nature of existence and structure of reality as
such (Crotty, 1998) or what it is possible to know about the world. The SAGE Online Dictionary
of Social Research Methods (2006) defines ontology as “a concept concerned with the existence
of, and relationship between, different aspects of society such as social actors, cultural norms and
social structures… Ontological issues are concerned with questions pertaining to the kinds of
things that exist within society”. For Richards, (2003), ontology is the assumptions we make
about the kind and nature of reality and what exists. Snape and Spencer (2003) also define
ontology as the nature of the world and what we can know about it. Furthermore, Bryman (2008)
introduces the concept of ‘social ontology’ which he defines as a philosophical consideration in
research which concerns the nature of social entities, i.e., whether these social entities are or can
be objective entities which exist independently from social actors or rather they are social
constructions in themselves built up from the perceptions, actions and interpretations of the
individuals in society. Similarly, Ormston et al (2014) assert that ontology concerns the question
“whether or not there is a social reality that exists independently from human conceptions and
interpretations and, closely related to this, whether there is a shared social reality or only
multiple, context-specific ones”. In short, ontology concerns our beliefs about the kind and
nature of reality and the social world (what exists).
The word ontology is composed by the Greek word ‘onto’ which means being and ‘logia’ that is
logical discourse. So, Ontology is the study of being. At its simplest it is the study of existence.
Ontology can be defined as the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of existence and
reality. In other words, it is the nature of being or the kinds of things that have existence. How
we determine things if they exist or not as well as the classification of existence is also included
in ontology. Ontology can be said to be a part of metaphysics which is a branch of philosophy
that looks at the very nature of things, their being, cause or identity.
Metaphysics has many definitions but it means something like “the study of the fundamental
nature of reality.” Ontology is generally considered to be a sub-field of metaphysics. How
metaphysics is defined here is closely related to ontological questions. In this sense, there is an
overlap between ontology and metaphysics. It covers questions like “what is existence?” or” how
do things exist?” However, we should know that ontology asks what questions, while
metaphysics asks how questions.
History and Importance
Metaphysics can be traced way back to the rime of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, who
lived from 384 to 322 B.C.E. Although some historians say philosophers before Socrates to
name a few the Parmenides and Heraclitus as well as Aristotle’s teacher Plato, who lived from
427 to 347 B.C.E. also studied metaphysical and ontological ideas. When we talk about the
history of ontology, it is one of the oldest forms of philosophy. The Greek philosophers were
somewhat obsessive otologist and in their desire for complete knowledge of the world, they
tended to categorize things and argue about what the categories should be and what should
belong to them. For example, Aristotle made a highly influential argument about the “Ladder of
Nature,” which placed non-living beings at the bottom such as the rocks and clouds, then moved
up to plants, then animals, and finally human beings. This is an ontological theory of the natural
world, and it had a huge impact on medieval philosophy and far-reaching implications for
Aristotle’s moral theory. This sort of ontology wasn’t practiced only in the West but also in
Arab, Indian, and Chinese philosophers studied the world around them, deduced general “rules”
of existence, and tried to categorize things. Through the global trade networks of the ancient and
medieval worlds, these philosophers all influenced one another; Arabs argued about Aristotle,
Romans argued about the Indian Vedic traditions, and so on. These traditions of ontology were
never entirely separate from each other. The scientific revolution brought about a deep change in
ontology. Many of the early scientists realized that the only way to be certain that they were
discovering truths about nature was to forget about anything (at least while doing science) that
couldn’t be tested and proven, which seems to include supernatural beings, divine forces, and
souls. Only physical laws, matter and energy seem to be measurable and obey reliable laws.
Many of them also had religious beliefs, and some of them even carried out experiments
concerning the supernatural, but for the most part, they found that it was necessary to assume
that only the material world exists in order to carry out sensible experiments and derive laws of
nature from them. Ontology is also highly relevant to religions and spirituality. No matter what
your beliefs about spirituality, they have an ontological dimension. All of the following are
ontological statements:
 Everything is made of atoms and energy
 Everything is made of consciousness
 You have a soul
 You have a mind
Constructionism
Constructionism (subjectivism/Interpretivism) remarks that social phenomena is created from
perceptions and consequent actions of those social actors concerned with their existence. It can
be defined as “ontological position which asserts that social phenomena and their meanings are
continually being accomplished by social actors. This position challenges the suggestion that
categories such as culture are pre-given and therefore confront social actors as external realities
that they have no role in fashioning.
Culture term: Instead of seeing culture as an external reality that acts on and compels people, it
can be taken to be an emergent reality in a continuous state of construction and reconstruction.
Becker (1982: 521), for example, has suggested that ‘people create culture continuously.’ It
implies that social phenomena and categories such as culture are not only produced through
social interaction but that they are in a constant state of revision.
Organization Term: Instead of taking the view that order in organizations is a pre-existing
characteristic, it can be argued that the social order of an organization is an outcome of agreed-
upon patterns of action that were themselves the products of negotiations between the different
parties involved. In recent years, the term has also come to include the notion that researchers’
own accounts of the social world are constructions. In other words, the researcher always
presents a specific version of social reality, rather than one that can be regarded as definitive.
Constructionism (also known as subjectivism) is an ontological position asserting that social
phenomenon and their meaning are continually being accomplished by social actors, and that
they are in constant construction and revision. Constructivism, claims that reality is constructed
by the knower based upon mental activity. Humans are perceivers and interpreters who construct
their own reality through engaging in those mental activities...thinking is grounded in perception
of physical and social experiences, which can only be comprehended by the mind. What the
mind produces are mental models that explain to the knower what he or she has perceived.... We
all conceive of the external reality somewhat differently, based on our unique set of experiences
with the world and our beliefs about them.
Advantages of Constructionism
 Facilitates understanding of how and why
 Enables the researcher to be alive to changes which occur
 Good at understanding social processes
 Allows for complexity and contextual factors
Disadvantages of Constructionism
 Data collection can be time consuming
 Data analysis is challenging and can be complex
 Researcher has to live with the uncertainty that clear patterns may not emerge
 Generally perceived as less credible by ‘non researchers’
Types of ontology and epistemology
There are quite a range of epistemological and ontological positions, i.e., views of the world and
knowledge.
Positivism and objectivism
Positivism, which is an epistemological position, focuses on the importance of objectivity and
evidence in searching for truth and the world is unaffected by the researcher. Also, in positivism,
facts and values are very distinct, thus making it possible to conduct objective and value-free
inquiry. What this means is that the researcher should distance him or herself from any impact on
their research findings. In addition, positivism epistemology holds the position that meaning and
meaningful realities already reside in objects awaiting discovery and they exist apart from any
kind of people’s consciousness. Therefore, according to this view, when we recognize objects
around us, we simply discover meanings which have been lying in them all along. Furthermore,
according to the positivism/objectivism paradigm, truth is static and is always objective. This
truth is ‘objectified’ in the people being studied and this objective truth can be ‘discovered’ if we
go about it in the right way. These ‘right’ ways of discovering knowledge about the world
include, as proposed by positivist writers such as Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon, methods such
as ‘careful direct observation’ and not deduction from abstract proposition. In other words, the
essence of objectivism derives from the acceptance of natural science as a paradigm to study
human knowledge and, necessarily, employs means and methods for data collections and data
interpretations similar to those used in natural science including hypothesis testing, causal
explanations and modelling. Finally, in this tradition, all knowledge about the world originates in
our experiences and is derived through our senses and, as such, only phenomena (and hence
knowledge) which can be confirmed by the senses can genuinely be regarded as knowledge.
Positivist knowledge, according to Wellington (2000) deemed to be objective, value-free,
generalizable and replicable. This is why positivism is often being perceived as a synonymous of
‘scientific method’.
Critiques to positivist thinking
Nevertheless, the positivist and objectivist traditions and thinking have been subject to criticism
since the early twentieth century. The rejection of the positivist thinking and tradition was based
on the ground that if rules and laws are only derived from observation, then it is also quite
possible that a future observation proves an exception to a current rule or law. This view then
gave rise to a second version of positivism known as post-positivism. The proponents of this
view argue that knowledge of the world is produced through testing propositions rather than
based on careful observation and hypotheses are to be derived first from theories and then tested
empirically against observations (deductive reasoning). Finally, while positivism advocates that
reality can be known accurately, the post-positivist approach maintains that reality can be known
approximately.
Interpretivism and constructionism
In a total rejection to the positivist and objectivist traditions, opposing views of the world and
knowledge then appeared known as Interpretivism and constructionism. According to these
views, there are ways of knowing about the world other than direct observation; namely, our
perceptions and interpretations of the world around us. People use their perceptions to interpret
what their senses tell them. As such, knowledge of the world is based on our ‘understanding’
which arises from our reflection on events rather than only on lived experiences. In a clear
opposition to the positivist and objectivist tradition, Interpretivism and constructionism
approaches argue that knowledge is produced by exploring and understanding (not discovering)
the social world of the people being studied, focusing on their meaning and interpretations, i.e.,
meanings are social constructed by the social actors in a particular context. In the previous
traditions we have seen that reality is unaffected by the reach process and that the researcher has
to distance him or herself from the findings. In this opposing tradition, however, researchers also
construct meanings and interpretations based on those of their participants. In addition, the
research process is considered to be largely ‘inductive’ in the sense that the aim is to generate a
theory from the data collected rather than use the data to test an already existing theory. Another
important distinction between the former and latter approaches is that facts and values in
Interpretivism and constructionism approaches are not distinct and totally objective and value-
free research is impossible. In other words, the researcher cannot detach him or herself from the
research; they inevitably become personally engaged in the research and, as such, findings are
influenced by their perspectives and values. Finally, in interpretivist and constructivist traditions,
the methods used in studying the natural sciences are not suitable for the study of the social
world and that social reality cannot be captured or portrayed accurately because there are
different perceptions and understandings of reality.
Interpretivism
 The researcher and the social world impact on each other
 Facts and values are not distinct
 Objective and value-free inquiry is not possible since findings are inevitably influenced by
the researchers’ perspectives and values
 Methods of natural science are not appropriate for the study of social phenomena for the
social world is not governed by law-like regularities but mediated through meaning and
human agency
 Knowledge is produced by exploring and understanding the social world of the people being
studied
 Knowledge is seen as personal, subjective and unique
 The researcher understands the social world using both his/her as well as the participants’
understanding
 Social world is approached through the understanding of human behavior
Constructionism
 External reality exists but is only known through human mind and socially constructed
meanings.
 There is no shared social reality, only a series of different individual constructions of it.
 Reality is subjective
 There exist only estimate or approximate observations or views of reality
 Social phenomena and their meanings are continually being accomplished by social actors
 Social phenomena and their meanings are produced through social interaction and are in a
constant state of revision
 Life is defined in ‘estimate’ terms based on inner experiences of humans where choice,
freedom and individual responsibility are appreciated
3. Hermeneutics: Objectives hermeneutics, the hermeneutics circle, Autonomization
Hermeneutics
Hermeneutics is the art of interpretation and thus fundamental to much if not all qualitative research.
Originally, with Friedrich Schleiermacher, hermeneutics was developed as a methodology for
interpreting texts, notably biblical texts. There was at the time a pressing need to find a way to
understand the scriptures correctly. With Wilhelm Dilthey in the late nineteenth century,
hermeneutics was extended to human life itself, conceived as an ongoing process of
interpretation. Dilthey developed a descriptive psychology, an approach to understanding human
life that was fundamentally different from how the natural sciences work. We explain nature
through scientific activity, Dilthey said, but we have to understand human cultural and historical
life. A life, as the hermeneutic philosopher Paul Ricoeur said a century after Dilthey, “is no more
than a biological phenomenon as long as it has not been interpreted.”. And qualitative
researchers are (or should be, according to the hermeneutic approach to human science) in the
business of understanding the interpretations that already operate in people’s lives, individually
and collectively, which is in effect to interpret a range of interpretations (as we touch upon
below, sociologist Anthony Giddens once referred to this as one aspect of a “double
hermeneutics”; 1976). The dichotomization of Erklären and Verstehen has been very influential
in separating quantitative from qualitative research, with the implication that explanation is about
bringing individual observations under a general law (this is known as the covering law model of
scientific work; see Hempel, 1942), while understanding is something more particularistic that
rests on the specific qualitative features of the situation in which someone acts. There is a
difference, for example, between explaining the movements of objects in space by invoking laws
of nature as articulated in physics and understanding why someone decided to do something at a
particular moment in that person’s life. In the latter case, Dilthey would say, we need to
understand the particularities of that person’s life, and putative universal laws of human behavior
are of little use. The situations and episodes studied by qualitative researchers are, like historical
events, most often unique in the sense that they only happen once. For that reason, it is not
possible to bring them under universal laws. Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time from the early
twentieth century is often cited as the work that inaugurated a shift from Dilthey’s life
hermeneutics to what Heidegger would call “ontological hermeneutics”. The question of
Schleiermacher’s methodological hermeneutics had been, “How can we correctly understand the
meaning of texts?” The epistemologically oriented hermeneutics from Dilthey had asked, “How
can we understand our lives and other people?” But ontological hermeneutics—or “fundamental
ontology” as Heidegger also called it —prioritizes the question:  “What is the mode of being of
the entity who understands. Being and Time aims to answer this question and can thus be said to
be an interpretation of interpreting, or a philosophical anthropology, which has been formative in
relation to much qualitative research in the hermeneutic tradition. Heidegger’s name for the
entity that understands is Dasein, and the being of Dasein is unlike the being of other entities in
the universe. Physical entities such as molecules, tables, and chairs are things that have
categorical ontological characteristics, whereas human beings, or Dasein, are histories or events
and have what Heidegger called existentials as their ontological characteristics. These are
affectedness (Befindlichkeit) (we always find ourselves “thrown” into situations where things
already matter and affect us), understanding (Verstehen) (we can use the things and episodes we
encounter in understanding the world), and articulation or telling (Rede) (we can to some extent
articulate the meanings things have). In short, humans are creatures that are affected by what
happens, can understand their worlds, and communicate with others, and together, these features
can be said to comprise an interpretative qualitative stance in human and social science research.
For Heidegger and later hermeneuticists such as Hans-Georg Gadamer and the contemporary
philosopher Charles Taylor, understanding is not something we occasionally do—for example,
by following certain procedures or rules. Rather, understanding is, from the hermeneutic
perspective, the very condition of being human. We always see things as something, human
behavior as meaningful acts, letters in a book as conveying some meaningful narrative. In a
sense, this is something we do, and hermeneutic writers argue that all such understanding is to be
thought of as interpretation, and it is exactly this process that interpretative social science aims to
engage in. To study culture is, in Clifford Geertz’ words, to study “a system of inherited
conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and
develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life”. When seeking to understand the
cultural symbolic system, the qualitative researcher should engage in “thick description,” Geertz
said, that captures the contextual features that render any individual action or event meaningful.
The researcher interprets members of a culture, who already operate with more or less implicit
self-interpretations of their own actions. This, however, should not be understood as implying
that people normally make some sort of mental act in interpreting the world. “Interpretation”
here is not like the mental act of interpreting a poem, for example. It is not usually an explicit,
reflective process, but rather, in the Heideggerian tradition, seen as something based on skilled,
everyday modes of comportment. This also means that many hermeneutic qualitative researchers
have been skeptic about “method” as the way to understanding other people (which is one goal
of qualitative inquiry). Instead, they argue, we understand others by spending time with them and
talking to them, and this cannot be put into strict methodological formulas. The idea of
reflexivity, which is central to much qualitative research, has also been articulated within
hermeneutic philosophy. Interpretation depends on certain pre-judices, as Gadamer famously
argued, without which no understanding would be possible. Knowledge of what others are doing
and of what our own activities mean “always depend upon some background or context of other
meanings, beliefs, values, practices, and so forth.”. There are no fundamental “givens,” for all
understanding depends on a larger horizon of non-thematized meanings. This horizon is what
gives meaning to everyday life activities, and it is what we must engage with as we do qualitative
inquiry—both as something that can break down and necessitate a process of inquiry, and as
something that we can reflexively try to make explicit in an attempt to attain a level of
objectivity (in the sense of objectivity about subjectivity). The latter is often referred to by
qualitative methodologists as making one’s pre-understandings or pre-judices explicit.
Gadamer said: In fact history does not belong to us; we belong to it. Long before we understand
ourselves through the process of self-examination, we understand ourselves in a self-evident way
in the family, society, and state in which we live. The focus of subjectivity is a distorting mirror.
The self-awareness of the individual life is only a flickering in the closed circuits of historical
life. That is why the prejudices of the individual, far more than his judgments, constitute the
historical reality of his being. Gadamer argues that this makes the condition of human and social
science quite different from the one we find in the natural sciences “where research penetrates
more and more deeply into nature”. In the human and social sciences, there can be no “object in
itself” to be known, for interpretation is an ongoing and open-ended process that continuously
reconstitutes its object. The interpretations of social life offered by researchers in the human and
social sciences are an important addition to the repertoire of human self-interpretation, and
influential fields of description offered by human science, such as psychoanalysis, can even
affect the way whole cultures interpret themselves. This means that “social theories do not
simply mirror a reality independent of them; they define and form that reality and therefore can
transform it by leading agents to articulate their practices in different ways”. Like the pragmatists
would say (see the section “North American Traditions” later in this chapter), social theories are
tools that may affect and transform those agents and practices that are theorized. Thus, Giddens,
has used the term “double hermeneutics” to describe the idea that social science implies
researchers interpreting the knowledge (or interpretations) of research participants and that the
findings of social scientists (i.e., concepts and theories) continuously re-enter and reshape the
social worlds that they describe. Others, such as Kenneth Gergen have conceptualized this as
“generative theory,” thus connecting hermeneutic ideas with contemporary forms of social
constructionism within qualitative inquiry. In short, hermeneutics is one of the most important
philosophical traditions to have informed qualitative inquiry. Denzin and Lincoln simply refer to
the many qualitative paradigms, ranging from constructivism and feminism to cultural studies
and queer theory, as interpretative paradigms, thus stressing this legacy from hermeneutics.

Objectives hermeneutics
Basics
The methodology of Objective Hermeneutics was developed by Oevermann in the context of
studies on socializing interaction. This approach tries to overcome the shortcomings of one-
sidedly psychologically oriented research into socialization. Hence, a genuine sociological
analysis has to consider social factors not only as contingent parameters of socialization, but
generally has to search for the sources stimulating development beyond the individual. This
places the reconstruction of objective latent structures of meaning in the foreground, as a
fundamental thesis on socialization states: the structure of actual socializing interaction is
constituted relatively independent of the motives, dispositions and interactions of the
participating persons, as an objective structure of social differentiation as well as an objective
structure of latent coherence of meaning. Thus, the constitution of objective latent structures of
meaning is supported by rules structured by interaction, for example, syntactical or pragmatical
rules, sequential rules of interaction, or rules of distributing speech contributions.
It is obvious that in objective hermeneutics, the term "structure" goes beyond the static definition
of a limited quantity of elements in specific relation to each other and leads to a dynamic view:
structure is equal to the process of being structured unfolding itself generatively. Therefore it is
not constitutive achievements of acting subjects that support structures but rules structured by
interaction. Consequently, one can only talk about structure if one knows the process of its
reproduction and the laws of its transformation. Such rules can only be reconstructed from the
social succession represented in the text, the sequentially of which is controlled by two
parameters: first, the quantity of all rules determining the presence of any connecting point for an
expression; second, the determinants of a decision about selection representing the particular of
the case structure. This reveals the necessity for each hermeneutic construction of structure to be
built up by means of analyzing sequences. A case structure is not considered completely
reconstructed before at least one complete phase of its reproduction has been successfully
reproduced by means of sequential analysis.
Objective hermeneutics is based on methodical realism, defining reality as everything
demonstrable regardless whether perceivable or not. This is the sense in which the concept of
"objective latent structure of meaning" has to be understood, which refers to structure within the
meaning of social action. These structures of meaning are included in the expressional shape of a
text irrespective of intentional realization or sensory perception. They can be reconstructed
because they &e created by rules and flow as mutually related actions into an objective structure
of meaning. In identifying these rules by returning to the explication of potentials of meaning
contained in the text, Objective Hermeneutics refers to the activity of cognition of everyday
action. Interpretation operates with three different forms of knowledge in order to decode the
manner of reading potentially hidden in a text: First, everyday knowledge of the normality of
action in an interactive community, which is, at the same time, essential for interpretation.
Second, knowledge of the internal context of a case is gained by means of sequential
interpretation. Third, knowledge of the external context. Which can, as knowledge of others, lead
to subsumption, has different significance in Oevermann's variants of interpretation.
Procedures
In spite of the far-reaching consequences of interpretation, Objective Hermeneutics can suffice
with small pieces of text as far as the reproduction of structure can be demonstrated. It is not the
quality of data which is important, but the "conclusive reconstruction and explication of the
coherence of a state of being structured, which can only be assessed in the sequential succession
of reproduction". Although any kind of text can be analyzed in principle, Objective
Hermeneutics prefers material which is not produced for the purpose of being analyzed, but
appears in the context of everyday experience (interaction records, etc.). In contrast to practical
everyday action, which is subjected to economizing factors, interpretations are supposed to avoid
this tendency by the extensive interpretation of meaning, by relieving the pressure of action and
by not being subject to time constraint. In the following sections, two main procedures of
Objective Hermeneutics are presented.
Rules of Interpretation: Fine Analysis
Fine analysis is an elaborated standard for the diachronic interpretation of units of interaction,
which are examined embedded in a sequential succession. Several steps have to be observed in
the course of analysis. First, the selection of a quotation in the text: introductory situations are
preferred because they are connected with the continuation of the formally opened conversation
and establish the frame for the analysis. Second, the sections of the text are-broken down into the
smallest units possible that still retain their significance and are subjected to extensive
interpretation. The basic principle of any interpretation is that any individual endowed with the
full capacity to interpret would be capable of such an interpretation. The relevant rules for the
practical interpretation of such an extensive interpretation of meaning are described by
Oevermann et al. (1979) in terms of eight levels:
Level 0: "Explication of the context directly preceding an interaction ..., from the point of view
of that person who, in fact, interacts next". Ideally the options of all participants should be listed.
Level 1: "Paraphrase of the importance/meaning of an 'interact' with respect to the accompanying
wording verbalization". Here the comprehension of an auditor with everyday competence is
decisive.
Level 2: "Explication of intention of the interacting subject". The meanings and functions of the
'interact' of which the speaker is possibly aware should be listed extensively.
Level 3: "Explication of the objective motives of the 'interact' and its objective consequences; in
contrast to the explication of the speaker's intention, here the focus is placed on the explication of
changes in the state of the system affected objectively - which means only partly in agreement
with the intention of the speaker - by his interaction". Contextual knowledge has to be included
here. Verbalizations are viewed as carrying potential structures of meaning constituting reality,
independent of the subject.
Level 4: "Explication of the function of an 'interact' with respect to the distribution of interaction
roles". What kind of restrictions on the participant's opportunities to interact result from the
'interact'?
Level 5: "Description of the linguistic characteristics of an 'interact"'. Linguistic peculiarities and
unusual linguistic structures have to be recorded.
Level 6: "Extrapolation of the interpretation of the 'interact' to general figures of
communication ... and summary assessment of the interpretations that, in the light of the
evidence of the interpreted 'interact', have been consistent with the material so far; reconstruction
of the scene's objective latent structure of meaning". With this step, the reproduction mechanisms
of the system as well as false approaches of interpretation are supposed to be developed and
filtered from the preceding analysis.
Level 7: "Explication of general connections”. For this purpose, the coherence emerging from
the analysis of the case has to be examined with respect to possibly transferring the results to a
generalized consideration of the topic.
Sequential Analysis as an Art of Interpretation
Although the objective is the same as that of fine analysis, sequential analysis rejects the
complete regulation of interpretation, but instead includes hypothetical contexts. One important
principle of sequential analysis is: "The definition of what is viewed as an individual case has to
precede each interpretation by means of analyzing sequences as does the decision about the
interactional context of a text chosen for interpretation". Cases are historically-developed social
entities on different levels (families, institutions, etc.), the structure of which realizes itself in the
actions of actual subjects. The referential structure of actions is always bound, however, in a
variety of ways; thus, it is necessary in each case of analysis to define the interpretive
perspective: i.e., whether the expression is to be interpreted as an expression of personality, of a
role, or in general, as a human expression. Oevermann summarizes the three main steps of
interpretation for reconstructing the objective structure of meaning as follows: "In Objective
Hermeneutics, we begin the reconstruction of the objective structure of meaning of a specific
expression by - first - telling stories about as many contrasting situations as possible where one
expression can be used consistently, pragmatically fitting their prevailing conditions. In the next
step these stories, exhibiting implicit intellectual constructions, are explicitly generalized into the
common structural characteristics being expressed in them, and in the third step these general
structural characteristics are compared to the actual contextual conditions under which the
analyzed expression had originally been stated". Oevermann demands radical involvement with
the object, which can only be achieved by explication, not by subsumption under theoretical
terms and concepts. He views theoretical knowledge as an abbreviating function in the
explication process. There is no general final criterion research practice; however, the analysis is
suspended if it ceases to supply information about the structure of the case.
The Hermeneutics circle
The hermeneutic circle describes the process of understanding a text hermeneutically. It refers to
the idea that one's understanding of the text as a whole is established by reference to the
individual parts and one's understanding of each individual part by reference to the whole.
Neither the whole text nor any individual part can be understood without reference to one
another, and hence, it is a circle. However, this circular character of interpretation does not make
it impossible to interpret a text; rather, it stresses that the meaning of a text must be found within
its cultural, historical, and literary context.
The hermeneutical circle refers to the process of encountering a text, trying to understand it
better (and this will take different textures depending on various understandings of the circle),
and returning to it more fully attuned to its nuances. In some versions of the circle, the
intermediate ‘out-going’ step involves reading more carefully the constituent parts of the text; in
thse versions, the ‘return’ takes up again the whole of the text in question. (And one then returns
to the parts with a renewed understanding of the whole, which enhances one’s appreciation of the
parts; and then returns one to the whole, and so on.). One can also envision the circle as the
continuous out-going to attention to a more-or-less foreign text, which understanding changes
oneself, which then affects one’s reading of the text (now differently foreign), which in turn
changes the reader again, and so on. Or one can envision the circle as a way the reader
encounters a foreign text and then seeks explication beyond the text (in a historical background,
or the dynamics of class consciousness, or the self-realisation of Spirit as Spirit, or the liberation
of consciousness from enslavement to prejudice, or what you will), then returns to the text, then
on encountering a new perplexity again seeks beyond, and then returns. Or in the most
commonly circulated version, the hermeneutical circle refers to a conversational process (not
necessarily between people; this approach can imagine a give-and-take between the reader and a
painting, or a scene, or an exquisite dram of whisky, I suppose) wherein attempts to understand
encounter obstacles, puzzles, intricacies, and so return to generating a sense of the greater whole
of which the puzzle is a part. Some scholars posit a hermeneutical spiral, that draws ever closer
to correct understanding of its object; or a hermeneutical helix, that doesn’t necessarily get closer
to the object but always advances in some other way (along a different axis). All of these models
themselves generate problems. There are problems associated with the spatial metaphor for
understanding; if there’s a circle of out-going and return, what is it that goes out and returns?
(‘Attention’? “Understanding’?) How different is a hermeneutical circle from simple changes of
the focus of attention? How secure is the self that investigates and returns — or are we always
investigating in one way or another? But the hermeneutical circle provides a way that many have
found satisfactory for the experience of having been changed by a text, and looking back at it and
then seeing further new aspects of it.
The hermeneutic circle can be explained in two ways: a procedural-ironic way, and a technical
way. The technical one understand the hermeneutic circle as the underlying process of
interpretation; the procedural-ironic way understands it as a logical process, thoroughly
embedded in the nature of understanding.
I. The hermeneutic circle a process of interpretation:
Nothing is illogical, but something is illogical, everything is illogical. So it is very difficult to
understand meaning. But people have claimed that they know something; but the “hermeneutic
circle”, which is a philosophical word, really, is supposedly the opposite of that notion: we do
not know nothing, we know something, and we are interpreting the world based on what we
‘think’ to know. So it is related to another question: What is knowledge?
II. The hermeneutic circle as a logical process:
Something is nothing; nothing is nothing in particular; nothing in particular could be anything;
anything is something; something is nothing; etc.
The hermeneutical circle is one of the most fundamental and contentious doctrines of
hermeneutical theory. In its most basic form in contemporary hermeneutics, it is the idea that we
always understand or interpret out of some presuppositions. In a slightly different reading, which
goes back to ancient rhetoric and hermeneutics, the circle is that of the whole and its parts: we
can only understand the parts of a text, or any body of meaning, out of a general idea of its
whole, yet we can only gain this understanding of the whole by understanding its parts. In both
versions, the basic idea is the same, namely that there is no such thing as an understanding
without presuppositions. Heidegger would speak here of the essential “anticipatory structure”
(Vorstruktur) of understanding, Gadamer of “prejudices”, which could be productive or
misleading, an ideology critique of some ideology or knowledge-guiding interests, while others
would speak of the hermeneutical background or framework of understanding, which would be
determined by culture, history, language and education. How one deals with these
presuppositions is a matter of dispute. A traditional, more methodically inclined hermeneutics
would view them with suspicion and strive to eliminate them in the name of objectivity. The
point of classical, methodical hermeneutics was indeed to avoid the hermeneutical circle of an
interpretation that would be tainted by its presuppositions, premises or erroneous assumptions
about the whole or the intent of a work. Hermeneutical thinkers like Heidegger, Bultmann,
Ricœur and Gadamer view the hermeneutical circle more favorably since it constitutes for them
an inescapable and positive element of understanding: as finite and historical beings, we
understand because we are guided by anticipations, expectations and questions. For them, the
key is not to escape the hermeneutical circle, but, following Heidegger’s famous phrase, to enter
into it in the right way. For Heidegger, this signifies, first, that we have to acknowledge that
there are indeed anticipations in every understanding; second, that we can sort them out through
the self-understanding of understanding he calls Auslegung (interpretation, elucidation), and,
third, that we should dismiss through “destruction” false anticipations which are imposed upon
the things themselves in order to replace them by more authentic ones which would be assured
by the things themselves. Some of our anticipations, we can surmise from this, are blindly taken
over, say, from an unquestioned tradition or the prevailing chatter (Gerede), and impede an
understanding of the things themselves. It is incumbent upon us to develop more “authentic”,
hence more accurate projects of understanding. Heidegger’s life-long destruction of the history
of Western thought in the hope of unfolding a more original understanding of Being can indeed
be seen as his way of entering into the hermeneutical circle of the understanding of Being.
Gadamer takes up Heidegger’s suggestion that the important thing is to get into the circle in the
right way, but for him this mainly means that the “prejudiced” nature of our understanding
should be recognized as that which makes understanding possible in the first place. This is what
he calls the “ontological” and positive aspect of the hermeneutical circle. He emphasizes the
ontological nature of the circle to fight against the false ideal of a presuppositionless type of
knowledge which would have been imposed upon the humanities by the objectivity requirement
of exact science. His aim in highlighting the hermeneutical circle is to liberate the humanities
from this alienating model. But does this mean that all presuppositions, prejudices, and
anticipations are valid? Obviously not, since this would call into question the very idea of truth,
which a book entitled “Truth and Method” surely wants to defend. Gadamer does maintain the
distinction between adequate and inadequate anticipations. According to his best account of this
key critical difference, it is through temporal distance and the work of history that we are able to
make this distinction. However, it is never clear-cut since every understanding of this distinction
is itself subject to the hermeneutical circle, that is, dependent on anticipations rooted in time and
history. Ultimately, there is an “effective history” or what Gadamer calls Wirkungsgeschichte at
work behind every effort at understanding, an influence of which, as finite beings, we are never
totally aware (the hermeneutical circle thus becomes a variant of the classic idea that we are the
sons and daughters of our time). Where Heidegger stressed the possibility of an elucidation of
understanding through interpretation (Auslegung), Gadamer points to the limits of such self-
understanding and elucidation in light of the overriding influence of history.
Historical roots
This notion of the hermeneutical circle is recent, but its roots go back to antiquity and ancient
rhetoric. This is especially true of the “circle” or interplay of the whole and its parts, which was
at first a requirement for the composition and writing of texts and later became one for
understanding them properly. Plato already states in his Phaedrus (264 c) that every speech is
constituted like a living being, with a head, feet, a center and members woven together so that
they form an organic unity, an idea that Aristotle would take up in his Poetics (23, 1459 a 20).
Plato expresses here a requirement that was to become an important component of ancient
rhetoric: the parts of a text or speech must be conceived with a view to its whole that has to form
an organic body (compare, e. g., Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory, 7.10). It naturally became a
hermeneutic requirement for the understanding of these texts: the parts of a text should be
understood out of the whole (which can be the entirety of a text, its purpose, scopus, or the
intention, intentio, of the author). Hermeneutic theory and issues were often discussed within the
realm of rhetorics. In his very influential rhetorical treatises, Melanchton (1497–1560) stressed,
for instance, that “since inexperienced readers cannot understand detailed and complicated
treatises if they only have superficial knowledge of a text, it is necessary to show them the whole
(universum) of a text and its parts (regions) so that they become able to consider these elements
and determine to what extent there is an agreement”. 1 The idea of a “circle” does not appear
here per se, but it is viewed as a matter of course that the parts of a text must agree with the
whole. In the eigtheenth century, the influential historian J. M. Chladenius would stress the
importance of the perspective of the author in interpretation, which he called his “Sehe-Punct”
(point of view), a notion which stands in the continuity of what ancient rhetorics called the
scopus (intent) of a work: to understand a work and its parts it is necessary to take into account
the point of view of the author which makes him present his ideas in such and such a way. In all
these instances, it is worth noting that the “circle” of the parts and the whole is viewed as a basic
requirement of coherence. The interplay of the whole and the parts is not really a “circle”, but a
description of the necessary unity of purpose of any written text and thus its understanding. It is
essentially descriptive and would only and increasingly become a “problem” in the nineteenth
century. The first author to speak explicitly of a “hermeneutic circle” was in all likelihood the
German classical philologist A. Boeckh (1785–1867): alluding in his lectures of 1809 to the
different types of interpretation (Auslegungsarten), for instance the grammatical and the
historical, he says that the “hermeneutische Cirkel” between them cannot be entirely avoided. He
obviously means by this that both types of interpretation condition one another. He influenced
the protestant theologian Schleiermacher (1768–1834), who spoke extensively of the “circle” of
the whole and the parts in understanding (without however using the expression “hermeneutical
circle”). Like many hermeneuts before him, he understands the hermeneutical task of
understanding as inversing the rhetorical process: “The act of understanding is nothing but the
inversion (Umkehrung) of an act of speech in which one becomes conscious of the thought that
lay at the root of speech”. Just as a text was written with a view to its whole, its parts should be
understood out of this whole. But in what does this “whole” ultimately consist? On the subjective
side, he argues, a work can be seen as part of the production of its author, out of which it should
be understood, but, on the objective side, this work is also a part of a literary genre, out of which
it can also be explained. Schleiermacher seems to still harbor a descriptive understanding of this
circularity, viewing in it more as a description of the task of understanding than a problem, but
he is aware that this circle can be “potentiated”, that is, that one can also interpret the work of an
author or a genre out of an even larger context, like that of history as a whole. He claims that any
solution of this issue has to remain an unending task.
The circle for Dilthey and the challenge of the objectivity of the humanities
In this descriptive understanding of the circle, as a requirement of coherence, the emphasis lies
on the relation of the whole and the parts as we encounter them in the object of understanding, in
the interpretandum. Increasingly, however, in the course of the nineteenth century, the idea that
the interpreter might be at the root of an erroneous understanding of the whole, and thus its parts,
will gain currency and usher in a new understanding of the hermeneutical circle which views it
less as a description and a requirement of coherence than as an epistemological problem or
aporianhermeneutics has to overcome. While often still formulated in the vocabulary of the
whole and its parts, the circle will become the circle of one’s own subjective presuppositions,
which would impede an objective understanding of a work, and the interpretation of the parts one
is unfolding. In this context, the ideal would appear to be an understanding of a work that is
independent of one’s own personal prejudices and the circle this would imply. The circle that is
intended here is the logical circle that amounts to a petitio principii: if the interpretation only
serves to defend the preestablished point of view of the interpreter, it becomes a circular and
futile enterprise. This thus forms a bad or vicious circle (circulus vitiosus). The awareness of this
circularity, which one finds in the work of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) who sees in the
hermeneutical circle of the whole and its part a fundamental “aporia” of hermeneutics, 5 owes a
lot to the epistemological idea of objectivity which has assured the success of the exact sciences:
they produce methodically reliable results that can be verified because they are not dependent on
the point of view of the scientist. Is such objectivity attainable in the humanities? It can only be
reached, it seems, if one strives to escape one’s own presuppositions and produce knowledge and
results that are independent of the interpreter. As Dilthey would put it, the task of hermeneutics
is to provide universally valid knowledge that would enable the humanities to escape the
suspicion of subjectivism that is responsible for the skepticism one often entertains regarding
their cognitive value. A methodological hermeneutics, that is, one that proposes rules to counter
this danger of subjectivism entailed by the hermeneutical circle, appears essential if one wishes
to salvage the scientific credibility of the humanities. In this, the hermeneutical circle (of the
whole and the parts or of the interpretans and interpretandum) has ceased to be a description of
the interpretative process to become a vicious circle that has to be fought or contained.
Heidegger’s critical appropriation and transformation of the circle of understanding
It is in this context that Heidegger (1889–1976) introduces his famous discussion of the circle at
the end of § 32 of Being and Time (1927). He only indirectly alludes to the humanities and their
epistemological predicament, yet his ideas have an immediate impact on them. Heidegger’s
focus is on the notion of understanding as a distinctive feature of our finite existence (Dasein).
To understand means to know one’s way around (sich auf etwas verstehen) and this would
always happen in the light of some anticipations (Vorstruktur): in every understanding, he
argues, there is a pre-given background (Vorhabe), an intent or fore-sight (Vorsicht) and a fore-
grasp (Vorgriff). Heidegger thus formulates the basic insight of the hermeneutical circle
(without, it should be noted, mentioning the circle of the whole and the parts): one always
understands out of some anticipations. One can however understand this understanding, i.e.,
make it explicit. This self-understanding of understanding he calls Auslegung, interpretation
(presented as a clearing up of understanding). In a provocative sentence, especially in German,
he states that every interpretation must have already understood what it seeks to interpret. When
one reads his text carefully, the root of the circle lies precisely here: that in every interpretation,
which is to yield understanding, what is to be interpreted must already have been understood.
This has often been noted, Heidegger observes in a kind of aside, be it only in the derivative
forms of understanding and interpretation to be found in philological interpretation. He does not
specify who has noted this, but it is with obvious irony that he references this view he wishes to
counter. According to this idea of understanding, he goes on, philological interpretation belongs
to the realm of scientific knowledge, which requires a stringent foundation. It goes without
saying that a scientific proof can never presuppose what it is its task to demonstrate. Yet, if
interpretation is already nourished by what it aims to understand, how can it provide results
without moving within a “circle”? According to the basic rules of logic this would amount to a
circulus vitiosus. This is how Heidegger introduces his idea of a circle of interpretation. Three
points must be highlighted here (because they are often overlooked):
 The idea that there is a circle in understanding is introduced as the epistemological
perspective on understanding that is that of Heidegger’s adversaries, not necessarily his own
(Heidegger will however turn the tables on them when he will give the circle a positive
twist);
 This circle is not the descriptive circle of classical hermeneutics, say, the circle of the whole
and its parts (and their necessary coherence), but the logical and vicious circle which seems
to imply a petitio principii if what is to be understood through interpretation has already
been understood beforehand;
 The terms of Heidegger’s circle are clearly those of understanding and Auslegung (or
interpretation), again not the whole and its parts. It is a vicious circle if one grasps these
notions, understanding and interpretation, in their usual sense (this is the point, the valid
point, one might add, of the epistemological perspective Heidegger is summarizing in his
own words).
But it is not if one understands them in the sense of Heidegger, i.e., if understanding means one’s
basic orientation in light of anticipations and interpretation (Auslegung) signifies the clarifying
elucidation of these anticipations. In this, understanding and interpretation refer constitutively to
one another. It is thus no surprise then when Heidegger goes on to say that the decisive thing is
not to get out of this circle (which is impossible since Auselgung is nothing for him but the
sorting out of our anticipations), but to enter into it in the right way. This circle, he states, is not a
circle into which a specific type of understanding that of the humanities, takes place; it is “the
expression of the anticipatory structure (Vor-struktur) of our existence”. It is not a vicious circle
since it points to the “positive possibility of a more original type of understanding”, which is
only seized, “if interpretation-Auselgung has understood that its first, constant and last task, is
not to let the Vorhabe, Vorsicht and Vorgriff be pre-given by some vague intuitions and popular
concepts, but to sort them out in order to secure the scientific theme out of the things
themselves”. To get into the hermeneutical circle (which is not called such) is to elucidate the
anticipations of understanding to make sure that they are assured by the things themselves.
The seldom seen irony in this is that by saying that the right anticipations must be confirmed by
the things themselves, Heidegger, without acknowledging it, continues to subscribe to the
episemological and logical understanding of the circle that tends to see the circle of
understanding as vicious. If one has to be wary of the ascendancy of anticipations that have been
provided by vague intuitions and commonly assumed notions, it is obviously because such a
preunderstanding would “vitiate” understanding and interpretation. In other words, an
interpretation that would take up its Vorhabe, Vorsicht and Vorgriff from commonly assumed
notions (Volksbegriffe) would not secure its scientific theme out of the things themselves and
would thus be suspect. The supreme irony here is that this shows that Heidegger also wishes to
get out of the (‘bad’) hermeneutical circle. He wishes to neutralize the objection of the
hermeneutical circle that his adversaries could level against his doctrine, when he claims that the
important thing is not to get out of the circle, but to “enter” into it in the right way. Yet he
continues to presuppose this logical and epistemological understanding of the ‘bad’ circle when
he warns against interpretations that would be governed by anticipations unassured by the things
themselves. Thus, Heidegger does not rid himself of the logical and vicious circle, but
presupposes it still.
How this sorting out (Ausarbeitung) or “destruction” (the term is not used here but would be
appropriate) takes place, Heidegger does not specify in this context, but, as we indicated, his
whole philosophical enterprise can be seen as this entering into the circle of our understanding of
Being in order to point out its inadequacies and suggest a more original understanding. In this,
Heidegger leaves behind the issues of “philological interpretation” which he used, as a negative
foil, to present his own original views of understanding and interpretation. Yet all his heirs in the
hermeneutical tradition, Bultmann, Gadamer and Ricœur, will discuss them anew and draw
philological conclusions out of Heidegger’s positive understanding of the circle, which will
increasingly be called the “hermeneutical circle”. This is the case of the theologian Rudolf
Bultmann (1884–1976), who was an interpreter of the New Testament and a friend of
Heidegger’s. He applied Heidegger’s insight to the interpretation of scripture, for instance in his
famous study of 1950 on “The Problem of Hermeneutics”. 9His “re-philologisation” of the circle
was tacitly taken up by Gadamer and Ricœur. Bultmann was probably the first to speak of the
“Vorverständnis” or pre-understanding of the interpreter when reading a text. This
preunderstanding is rooted in the “living relation” (Lebensverhältnis) of the interpreter to the
thing (Sache) or issue that is expressed, directly or indirectly, in a text and which guides
understanding. Interpretation is not for him the transposition of the individuality of the
interpreter into that of the author; it takes on the form of a communication about the Sache
between the text and interpreter. The preunderstanding of the interpreter must not be eliminated,
but brought to consciousness in order to be put to the test and be called into question by the text.
Paul Ricœur followed Bultmann when he spoke in 1960, at the end of Finitude et culpabilité, of
the hermeneutical circle of faith and understanding, which he expressed in the following way:
“one must understand to believe, but one must believe to understand”. For him, as was the case
for Bultmann, this circle is not vicious, nor fatal, but lively and stimulating. One must believe in
order to understand because an interpreter cannot understand what the text is saying unless she is
living in the aura of its meaning, to which the interpreter has a vital relation. On the other hand,
one must understand in order to believe because it is only through interpretation that we can
believe nowadays in religious symbols. The hermeneutical circle thus makes it possible to renew
the Sacred and to experience it through interpretation. In this way, hermeneutics becomes, in his
famous words, a means by which modernity can overcome its forgetfulness of the Sacred and its
loss of man as essentially belonging to the Sacred. In later discussions of the hermeneutical
circle, for instance in “The Conflict of Interpretations”, Ricœur will focus much less on the issue
of the Sacred and engage critically with Heidegger’s analysis. He will fault it for being too
ontological and jettisoning the methodological issue of the validity of interpretation which gave
rise to the problem of the hermeneutical circle in the first place.
Gadamer’s application and new interpretation of the hermeneutic circle
Gadamer’s Truth and Method (TM) published in 1960 bases its theory of the hermeneutical
experience on Heidegger’s notion of the hermeneutical circle, in which Gadamer heralds first
and foremost the discovery that the circle has a positive and ontological significance, but which
Gadamer will also reinterpret in the process. The circle is viewed as positive because it is not a
vicious circle which should be avoided, and as ontological since it is rooted in our existence as
beings of questions and expectations who cannot but understand out of some anticipations,
bequeathed to us by history and tradition. Heidegger and Gadamer agree on this. But whereas
Heidegger insists on the anticipatory structure of understanding in order to challenge the
prevailing pre-understanding of Being and existence, thus paving the way for a more authentic
one, Gadamer views in this anticipatory structure a recognition that “prejudices” are always at
work in understanding (the decisive chapter on this topic in TM is entitled “The Hermeneutical
Circle and the Problem of Prejudices”). Heidegger, of course, did not speak of prejudices in this
context. Gadamer does because his aim is different from his mentor: his issue is with the idea
that prejudices are detrimental to understanding and should be eliminated at all cost, an idea he
traces back to the Enlightenment and its own “prejudice” against prejudices. The hermeneutical
circle thus means for Gadamer that there is no understanding without prejudices. This insight can
enable us, he argues, to do justice to the type of understanding and interpretation practiced in the
humanities. According to his leading thesis, the quest for an understanding without prejudices
would impose a foreign, indeed alienating form of knowledge on the humanities. He wishes to
free them from this inadequate model and hammer home the point that the hermeneutical circle
is the condition of their very being: the humanities are modes of understanding rooted in history
and language and would not make sense without them. Gadamer’s intent, a justification of the
mode of knowledge of the humanities, which stands in the continuity of the older idea of
hermeneutics, is different from Heidegger’s. But so is, to a surprisingly large extent, his account
of the elements of the circle itself.
For Heidegger, the terms between which the circle takes place were those of understanding
(Verstehen) and its elucidation in the critical process of interpretation Auslegung. For Gadamer,
the circle chiefly obtains between the interpretation of a text and the pre-understanding of the
interpreter, but he spontaneously describes this in terms of the circle of the whole and its parts,
rejoining the older, rhetorically rooted version of the circle. The process of understanding, he
argues, is a constant back and forth between the whole and the parts: one’s interpretation of the
parts of a text cannot but be guided by a (pre)understanding of the whole in which they stand, yet
this understanding of the whole is constantly revised the more one advances in the understanding
of the parts, which are then understood in light of a more accurate idea of the whole. The
hermeneutical circle, he contends, describes this constant and ongoing process of trial and error,
where one always strives to develop the right anticipations which have to be “borne out by the
things themselves”. For this, the only requirement is an openness to the opinion of the text and
its alterity. But how can one remain open if one is always prejudiced, as Gadamer repeatedly
claims? It is not sure Gadamer provides an entirely satisfying solution to this difficulty (which is
often raised against him), but his analysis does offer a few hints.
 Understanding, he stresses, is aimed at the Sache, the issue discussed in the text (and not the
mind of the author), which provides in itself a sort of “criterion” (Maßstab) 16 in that not
every interpretation can be sustained on the sheer basis of the things themselves. The
criterion Gadamer is hinting at is the twofold one of correspondence and coherence: on the
whole, an indefensible interpretation will be refuted by what the text has to say and it has to
be consistent.
 This cogency requirement is furthermore guided by what Gadamer calls the “anticipation of
perfection (or completeness)” according to which the text one is interpreting is assumed to
form a perfect unity of meaning. It is a presupposition we always make, Gadamer contends,
when we interpret a text. Interpretations or anticipations that fail to render this completeness
will fall by the wayside and be replaced by more adequate ones.
 In this, one is aided by temporal distance and effective history (Wirkungsgeschichte), which
serves to distinguish, in the long run, the prejudices of understanding that are true because
they make understanding possible from the false ones that lead to misunderstanding. 18
Gadamer shows here a considerable faith, if not optimism in the course of history, which is
reminiscent of Hegel.
 On a more reflective level, Gadamer argues that a hermeneutical consciousness which is so
keenly aware of the hermeneutical circle and the role of effective history in our
interpretations will also more easily become conscious of its own prejudices and be ready to
let them be challenged by the texts it is studying.
The task for Gadamer is not to escape the realm of prejudices, which is deemed impossible and
pointless, but to develop the right ones, that is, those that enable us to hear what the other has to
say. In this, it is obvious that Gadamer retains Heidegger’s notion that bad preconceptions can
harm preunderstanding, which had always been the basic contention of the hermeneutical circle.
If both Heidegger and Gadamer claim they only want to “enter” in the circle in the proper way,
their doctrine and practice of interpretation confirms that they also want to get out of it.
Autonomization