Orientation and Judgment in Hermeneutics

Book excerpt: In this book renowned Dilthey scholar Rudi Makkreel offers not simply a new theory of interpretation, but rather a hermeneutics of orientation in the global world of the twenty first century. His starting point is the fact that the differences of national, ethnic, or religious perspectives that make up today s world cannot be reconciled through a benign conception of a fusion of horizons, which ultimately is restricted to the Western tradition. Confronted with the failure of dialogue and dialectic in the face of the conflict between the multiple traditions and the different heritages of today s complex world, Makkreel develops a concept of interpretive insight that aims not only at convergence, but that also acknowledges divergence. He argues that where dialogue fails, reflective judgment becomes necessary, and he presents an impressive rehabilitation of judgment in hermeneutics. In order to tease out the manifold implications of reflective judgment for an orientational hermeneutics, he has recourse to Kant s Third Critique, and especially to Kant s elaborations on reflection and judgment in his various lectures on Logic, which in itself is no small contribution to Kant scholarship. Although technical, and subtle in nature, Makkreel s penetrating conceptual analyses are eminently clear. This book is not only a systematic work, it is also a historical work in that the new conception of hermeneutics is put in a tight and critical dialogue with the post-Enlightenment representatives of hermeneutics, in particular, Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Habermas. In the concluding chapter on contemporary art Makkreel considers concrete examples and applications of orientational hermeneutics."