Abstract
I’m afraid that my title, ‘Transcendental Hermeneutics’, may impress an English-speaking audience as one of the typical verbal abominations which are supposedly used by teutonic philosophers to intimidate rather than clarify. I will make every effort not to confirm this widespread prejudice. To begin with I should make clear the scope and limits of this paper.
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Notes
Ever since E. Stenius (Wittgenstein’s Tractates, Oxford, 1960, Ch. XI) who compared Wittgenstein and Kant, there has been talk about the ‘transcendental’ element in Wittgenstein. However, it has never been made clear what was meant by this. Though the observation is not new, I don’t think that the following remarks are useless, because they try to explain transcendentality within the framework of Wittgenstein’s own philosophy. For the continuity of this topic in the late Wittgenstein, cf. my article ‘Die Einheit in Wittgensteins Wandlungen’, Philosophische Rundschau 15 (1968) 160-185.
‘Carnap’s Views on Ontology’, in W. V. Quine, Ways of Paradox, New York, 1966.
Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, New York and London, 1969, p. 68.
London 1964, I, 1 and 3, especially p. 29f, 38ff.
Cf. Strawson, ‘On Referring’, Mind 59 (1950) 320-344.
B. Stroud, ‘Transcendental Arguments’, The Journal of Philosophy 65 (1968) 241-256; M. S. Gram, ‘Transcendental Arguments’, Nous 5 (1971) 15-26; J. Hintikka, ‘Transcendental Arguments: Genuine and Spurious’, Nous 6 (1972) 274-281; Gram, ‘Hintikka and Spurous Transcendentalism’, Nous 8 (1974) ‘Categories and Transcendental Arguments’, Man and World 6 (1973), Must Transcendental Arguments be Spurious?, Kant-Studien 65 (1974).
Hintikka, 277f. Cf. also Hintikka, Logic, Language-Games and Information, Kantian Themes in the Philosophy of Logic, Oxford 1973, 114ff. With this demonstration of the self-referentiality of transcendental arguments with regard to what they reveal, it seem to me that the controversy between Körner and Schaper is overcome. (Cf. St. Körner, ‘The Impossibility of Transcendental Deductions’, The Monist 51 (1967) 317-331 and E. Schaper, ‘Arguing Transcendentally’, Kant-Studien 63 (1972) 101-116.) This controversy comes to a halt at the thesis that the necessity and uniqueness of a presupposed system of concepts must be proved from within the latter itself. Stephen Körner wanted to explain the impossibility of transcendental deductions by showing the impossibility of legitimating the validity of a hypothetical cognitive scheme without recourse to other reasons. Despite the subtle opposition by Eva Schaper in her plea for the original Kantian way of thinking I am in sympathy with Körner’s thesis that a deduction senso stricto is impossible. Nevertheless, this controversy does not take into account the inner connection between a system of concepts and the very attempt at legitimation which we have termed’ self-referential’. Given this basis one can indeed make sense of Kant’s transcendental argumentation withdrawing a strong deductive claim. See below.
N. Hinske deals with the history of the concept in Kants Weg in die Transzendental-philosophie, Stuttgart, 1970. Cf. I. Angelelli, ‘On the Origins of Kant’s Transcendental’, Kant-Studien 63 (1972), and also Hinske’s reply in Kant-Studien 64 (1973) 56-62.
§13(A71).
Einleitung zur Transzendentalen Logik II (A 56).
Cf. Th. M. Olshewsky, ‘Deep Structure: Essential, Transcendental or Pragmatic?’, The Monist 57 (1973) 430-442.
In a little known passage Kant himself considered the possibility of a “transcendental grammar, which contains the basis of human language”. An investigation of how the linguistic forms “lie in our intellect” would be a kind of preparation followed by formal logic and then “transcendental philosophy, the theory of general concepts a priori” (Vorlesungen über die Metaphysik, ed. 1821, Repr. Darmstadt 1964, p. 78).
I have dealt with this question in somewhat greater detail in the final section of my essay ‘Zur Struktur des transzendentalen Arguments’, Proceedings IV. Internationaler Kant-Kongress, Kant-Studien, Sonderheft I (1974) 15-27. I make extensive use of this material here. (Addendum: An enlarged English version is about to appear in Review of Metaphysics, March 1975).
It is perhaps of interest that this term was meant to indicate the particular (greek: idion) and should not be misread as ‘ideographic’.
This is the title of an important book by H. Rickert, Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung, Tübingen, 1902, first edition.
It is not surprising that the hermeneuticians have taken special notice of his book The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy, London, 1958. Cf. the critique by A. Maclntyre in Proc. Arist. Soc., Supl. Vol. 41 (1967).
Cf. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, London, 1960, especially his ‘hermeneutic’ turn in Objective Knowledge, London, 1972.
Useful as first information, G. Radnitzky, Contemporary Schools of Metascience II, Gothenburg, 1968.
Cf. the translation of Der Positivismusstreit in der deutschen Soziologie (Adorno, Albert, Dahrendorf, Habermas), London, 1974.
Besides the book by G. H. von Wright already mentioned we should also point out the ambitious project of Stephen Toulmin, Human Understanding, Vol. 1, Princeton, 1972. Here Hegelian influences — via Collingwood — can be detected quite distinctly. They stretch as far as an incorporation of the topos ‘the cunning of reason’ (final chapter).
Cf. the third and fifth essays in my book Dialektik und Wissenschaft, Frankfurt am Main, 1973.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, Tübingen, 1960, Engl. transl. Boston, 1975, Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interest, London, 1972; see also the postscript to the second German edition (Frankfurt am Main, 1973), English version in Philosophy of the Social Sciences 3 (1973); ‘Toward a Theory of Communicative Competence’, in H. P. Dreitzel (ed.), Recent Sociology, No. 2, London, 1970; Karl-Otto Apel, Transformation der Philosophie, Frankfurt am Main, 1973, 2 vols. Cf. also Apel, Analytic Philosophy of Language and the Geisteswissenschaften, Foundations of Language, Suppl. Series, Vol. 4, Dordrecht, 1967, ‘The Apriori of Communication and the Foundations of the Humanities’, Man and World 5 (1973).
We shall simply refer to one recent publication which stands for many: Tendenzen der Wissenschaftstheorie (with contributions by L. Krüger, E. Ströker, G. Radnitzky, H. Pilot), Neue Hefte für Philosophie 6 (1974), Göttingen.
Being and Time, §7.
Ct. Philosophical Investigations, §38, 123.
Philosophische Grammatik, Frankfurt am Main, 1973, §41, p. 84.
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Bubner, R. (1976). Is Transcendental Hermeneutics Possible?. In: Manninen, J., Tuomela, R. (eds) Essays on Explanation and Understanding. Synthese Library, vol 72. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1823-4_3
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