Applied turn of philosophical hermeneutics

Abstract

The article presents a critical analysis of the methodological consequences of phenomenological and philosophical hermeneutics. The article examines the possibility of a generalized perspective on qualitative research with emphasis on flexibility of research techniques and procedures that can be used in a variety of conceptual approaches. As well as focus on sequence and coherence of the methodological approach when the methodical procedures are coherent to philosophical grounds of the approach is analyzed. The author describes phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches' philosophical grounds used as a qualitative research strategy and shows how particular philosophical world view take shape in the data analysis procedures and in research quality assessment principles.

The purpose of the paper is to outline the key strategies for applying the methodology of philosophical hermeneutics in social sciences: to determine theoretical conditions for the turn of philosophical hermeneutics towards applied social research; to identify key concepts and techniques of philosophical hermeneutics, relevant to exploring actual social phenomena;  to outline the logic of application of the elements of philosophical hermeneutics within social science. Scientific outcome of the paper is expressed in the following statements:  the theoretical conditions for the applied turn of philosophical hermeneutics include the pragmatic critique of ontologization of the hermeneutic circle, that is, the reinterpretation of philosophical hermeneutics contrary to the key guidelines of its founders (M. Heidegger, H.-G. Gadamer); key concepts and techniques of philosophical hermeneutics, relevant to the research of actual social phenomena, consist in the hermeneutic circle and self-understanding, hermeneutical reduction and destruction; the logic of the applied use of the elements of philosophical hermeneutics in the context of social science involves correlation of the structure of the research with the hermeneutic structure of self-understanding, inherent in the subject under consideration.

In the framework of this study, a historical-philosophical excursion to the evolution of the “hermeneutic turn” of philosophizing was compared with analytics of the possibility of instrumentalizing the elements of philosophical hermeneutics by the qualitative methodology of modern social sciences.