Qu’est-ce qu’une « herméneutique critique » ?

Abstract

Against « philosophical » hermeneutics, which asserts the constraint of the structure of « prejudice », « critical » hermeneutics aims at rehabilitating the function of judgement and claims its legitimacy as a method. This correction follows a double statement : particular hermeneutics, preferring the adhesion to the object, engaged in different kinds of positivism in which the question of meaning was taken away at the benefit of « objective » historical fields of knowledge; philosophical hermeneutics, as a general theory of understanding, turned aside from the question of interpretation and its validity at the benefit of a quest on the ontological conditions of any understanding. From Peter Szondi’s proposition to oppose « material hermeneutics » (§1) to « philosophical hermeneutics » and Jean Bollack’s effort to rehabilitate the hermeneutical questioning in philology and the other way round (§2), we will question the possibility of building some critical hermeneutics (§3) in which interpretation is achieved in the exercise of a judgement.

Keywords

• critical theory
• critique
• hermeneutics
• judgement
• material hermeneutics
• meaning