An interpreting animal: hermeneutics and politics in the human sciences.

Abstract

Beginning with a historical study of the human sciences' position between the natural sciences and the humanities, this dissertation examines the consequences of the fixation on questions of method that has characterized this positioning. Drawing on the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, I illustrate how it is that methodological concerns can serve to obscure other, more fundamental concerns. Gadamer uses Aristotle's ethics to make this point about method, and I take the further step of bringing this intersection of Aristotelian ethics and Gadamerian hermeneutics to bear productively on the human sciences. The result of this work is an approach to the human sciences characterized less by attention to methods and more by appreciation of ends. I argue that in the development of what I call "political teleology" the human sciences exploit their particular strengths, and find their political import.