A Critique of methodologism from the perspective of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics

جستارهایی در فلسفه و کلام

Article 2, Volume 48, Issue 1 - Serial Number 96, August 2016, Pages 9-30   

Document Type: Original Article

DOI: 10.22067/philosophy.v48i1.34493

Authors

Alireza Azad^{* 1}; Ahmed Vaezi²; Hassan Naghizadeh¹

¹Ferdowsi University of Mashhad

²Baqir al-Olum University

Abstract

Gadamer’s critique of methodologism is one of the fundamental teachings of his philosophical hermeneutics. Gadamer sees truth much beyond the ability of method to grasp it completely. He criticizes the exclusive restriction of truth in methodical processes but does not reject the need for methodical work.The present article explores the origins of methodologism in ancient Greece and modern times, and studies Gadamer’s review on the extra-methodical thoughts of Greek philosophers. Then, the following issues are articulated: Gadamer’s phenomenological critique on Cartesian subjectivism, and Kantian epistemology, and the methodologism of classical hermeneutics including the separation of subject and object and the failure of methodologism in
accomplishing academic goals and the inability to get to the whole truth and its inner contradictions. Gadamer finds a wrong understanding of logic and a lack of knowledge about its limitations and the boundaries of its capabilities as one of the causes for misconceptions about method and inappropriate expectations from methodologism, including the attainment of truth. And in its critique he reaches back to the Greek roots of methodologism and distinguishes between scientific logic and philosophical logic in the dichotomy of Apollonian and Dionysian ideas among Stoic philosophers and the followers of the Old Academy. Gadamer seeks to prove that the expectation to reach truth by resorting to methodologism is naive and suffers from fundamental errors and problems. He introduces extra-methodical thought and hermeneutical rationality as an alternative to methodologism and methodic rationality and defines an attention to dialectic, practical wisdom, eloquence, and the fusion of horizons as the strategy to achieve those parts of truth that lies beyond methodologism.

Keywords

Critique of methodologism; critique of logic; truth; philosophical hermeneutics; Gadamer

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