Phenomenological Tradition

"Conversation, properly construed, might just restore a public realm where all are welcome and all are listened to and expected to respond."

-David Tracy

• Truth and Method 2nd ed. Sheed and Ward, London 1989 XXVIII
• Moustakas, C. (1994). Phenomenological research methods. Tousand Oaks: Sage.
• http://churchandpomo.typepad.com/conversation/2009/08/gadamer-on-hermeneutical-experience.html
• Tracy, D. (1998). Is There Hope for the Public Realm?, Conversation as, Interpretation. Social Research, 65(3), 597-609.

7 Traditions of Communication

Phenomenology

Intro

"In accordance with phenomenological principles, scientific investigation is valid when the knowledge sought is arrived at through descriptions that make possible an understanding of the meanings and essences of experience . . .The filling in or completion of the nature and meaning of the experience becomes the challenge." (Moustakas, 1994, p. 84/ 90)

http://www.tmz.com/

http://perezhilton.com/

Craig and Muller: Phenomenology

Gadamer

What is Phenomenology?

Under the surface

Experience

“Phenomenological Tradition is the process of knowing through direct experience. It is the way in which humans come to understand the world”

“Phenomenon refers to the appearance of an object, event or condition in one’s perception.”

Experience, cont.

Gadamer and Hermeneutics

- Gadamer believes that this experience is characterized by an alternating cycle of hope and disappointment

- “Inductive experience is fulfilled in the knowledge of the concept—which, in both senses, is the end of experience. Thus, in the teleological view, experience finds its fulfillment in its extinction. The theory of induction implies that confirmation is the primary and most important aspect of experience. The process of experience is essentially an experience of repetition and the identity of experiences” (Gadamer’s Hermeneutics).

- Gadamer highlights disappointments and disconfirmations of experience in order to show how “the negativity of experience has a curiously productive meaning”

- Gadamer highlights the fact that experience and growth from experiences involves constant confrontations with our own assumptions and convictions (so long as we maintain an attitude of openness)

Gadamer believes hermeneutic experience is considered negative.

- By negative he means that our expectations of what something is or means are disappointing or disconfirmed

Hermeneutics

Hermeneutic phenomenology or Hermeneutical Experience is the interpretation of being.

Phenomenological tradition illustrates what is real for the person.

Hermeneutic circle is a constant cycle between experience and meaning

Hope

Meeting New People

- If hope is the beginning expectation then hope is prior to experience and is its condition

- Through our disappointments and struggles to understand the person at hand, new expectations/hopes arise

- Hope then both precedes and follows disappointment and disconfirmation

• When confronted with new information about a person or event or when we see and issue or subject in a different perspectives, we put ourselves at risk
• We start to formulate questions. Questions that form our own negative biases and misguided assumptions
• Putting ourselves at risk, opening an exposure to what it means (ex. Stereotypes)
• Realizing this becomes painful and disappointment but since the hermeneutical experience includes both disappointment and hope; hope is on the horizon

Hans Georg-Gadamer

"Nothing exists except through language." -Gadamer

• Gadamer was born on February 11, 1900 in Marburg, Germany
• His most famous work, Truth and Method, explained his philosophy of hermeneutics. He did not side with modern beliefs that a text should be read using only the readers experience, not did he agree with the German idea that the author's original intent should be sought.
• Gadamer believed in a blend of these.
• Also studied the Greek philosophers to an extent.

Is There Hope for the Public Realm?, Conversation as, Interpretation.

Publicness, cont.

Interpretation as Conversation

Publicness, cont.

"We understand at all insofar as we understand differently."

-Hans Georg Gadamer

• Public discourse is a phenomenon by nature, thus, classics of any culture are as well
• to fully understand the classics, or any argument/conversation, we must meld together author's intent with our own interpretation

• The rhythms of our own native language form how we experience the world in our own preconscious
• These rhythms depend on the generation we are born in & where we grew up--what "grasped" us
• ex. Gilbert Murray (Euripides) & David Grene (Aeschylus), translations

• Hermenutics--conversation does not involve purely autonomous text, nor a purely passive recipient-interpreter
• When we read text, we take in the information, while constantly trying to interpret it by using our own experience
• Our interpretation is different from the author's and even the original audience
• the effect of the piece remains public, not the origin

Interpretation as Conversation

Corrections to the Original Model of Interpretation as Conversation

Two Principles

Correction #2

Correction #1

• "Hermeneutics of Suspicion"--suspect that the problems we face in conversation (culture) are unconscious, systemically functioning illusions
• Need the critical theory--type of argument
• Ideology is not a conscious error
• Examples of unconscious error: sexism, racism, classism, antisemitism--need HoS to critically analyze

• Developed by Paul Ricoeur
• Asserts that Gadamer does not emphasize interruptions in conversation enough
• explanations, theories, and methods in order to develop, challenge, or change one's original understanding--arguments

Publicness as Argument & Conversation

• Gadamer's example of a game: any game with multiple players is hermeneutical (and phenomenological) because you must constantly analyze what the other players are thinking or going to do, based on their communication
• ie. Clue; can we think of any other games that rely on phenomenology?

1. The public realm is made up of both argument and conversation

2. We are all interpreting all the time in the public realm

Correction #3

• Greater insistence on otherness and difference
• Hermeneutics is based on otherness--Gadamer does not speak of it as such
• We have different experiences that we draw upon, each needs to be given equal weight

• Argument is the most obvious form of genuinely public discourse
• Public discourse is any exchange of words; anything that is not private (ie. a diary of Anne Frank)
• When we are brave enough to enter into genuine conversation, we emit and elicit truth as primal hermeneutical understanding--disclosure-transformation