The hermeneutic claim for universality revisited

• Grant number: 18/02913-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: June 07, 2018
• End date: December 06, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Ricardo Ribeiro Terra
• Grantee: Rafael Barros de Oliveira
• Supervisor: Christian Berner
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense (Paris 10), France
• Associated to the scholarship: 16/25103-5 - The hermeneutic claim for universality revisited, BP.MS

Abstract

The status of interpretation within philosophy was object of many formulations, criticism, and intense debate. During the 1970s, the universality of the act of interpretation was at stake. Taking as a starting point Jürgen Habermas' text The hermeneutic claim to universality, on the philoso-phy of Hans-Georg Gadamer, I suggest a reconstruction of the debate between these two au-thors, along two fundamental bibliographic paths: on the one hand, Gadamer's and Habermas' texts against each other; on the other hand, the role of other authors in the quarrel between philo-sophical hermeneutics and the critique of ideology - specially Paul RicSur. The first question to be handled in this research is whether Habermas's critique is pointed at the hermeneutic claim to totality, rather than its claim to universality. The second, whether Gadamer's hermeneutic neces-sarily raises such claim, not being able to get rid of it, and thus falling prey to Habermas' critique. The third and final question to be reckoned with is whether such a claim - either to universality or to totality - is inherent to other possible conceptions of philosophical hermeneutics. In other words, whether it is possible to conceive hermeneutics without falling to Habermas' objections. About this last point, the hypothesis in test is whether RicSur's conception of hermeneutics would be a satisfying alternative to deal with the difficulties arisen in the Gadamer-Habermas debate. The three questions express different dimensions of a broader one, that is: what is left of philosophical hermeneutics after the clash with the critique of ideology?