DIALECTICS VS HERMENEUTICS: HISTORY AND LITERATURE IN THE ANALYSIS OF THE BIOGRAPHICAL TEXTS

Abstract

The “postmodern situation” demands time to think and people historically in an age, when “objective history” is denied
and rejected. One consequence of this paradox is predominance of hermeneutics in philosophy, literature, linguistics –
science, in general. Everything is opened to interpretation, varieties of historic events interpretations and historical people
are included in the hermeneutical discourse, incorporated with the text problem in relation to genre. In biographies the real
exists (and existed) but our understanding of it is always conditioned by different ways of talking and writing about it. The
problem is that people still need objectivity; in reading “histories” – biographies included – we try to understand what is true,
and what is opinionated, subjectivated and is simply deceit and fraud. Hence the importance of a dialectical method, a
method, which means weighing up contradictory facts or ideas with a view to the resolution of their real or apparent
contradictions, comes.