Making mathematics inclusive: interpreting the meaning of classroom activity.

The article discusses the view of the author on using hermeneutics. According to the author, hermeneutics is the theory of interpretation which is categorized in forms including conservative hermeneutics, moderate hermeneutics, and radical hermeneutics. The author also mentions that teachers must be provided with support and training that will enable them to make judgments

Faithful Hermeneutics

This article was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Law Schools on January 9, 2009 as part of a panel on Scriptural and Constitutional Hermeneutics. The panel was co-sponsored by the Law and Religion Section, Section on Jewish Law, and Section on Islamic Law, and the papers will be published by the Michigan State Law Review. My article compares legal and religious hermeneutics by exploring the dual nature of what I term faithful hermeneutics. The ambiguity evoked by this phrase is intentional. On one hand, it suggests an investigation of the relationship between legal and religious interpretation by comparing hermeneutical activities undertaken by faithful adherents to these two different textual traditions. In this first sense, it is to compare how these practices are the hermeneutics of the faithful. On the other hand, the phrase suggests an analysis of how interpreters in these two traditions remain faithful to the nature of their practice. In this second sense, it is to compare how hermeneutics can be faithfully accomplished. My thesis is that these two senses of faithful hermeneutics are connected. The fact that it is faithful adherents who engage in the interpretive practice in large part defines how they can, and should, remain faithful to the interpretive enterprise. I anchor my argument in Hans-Georg Gadamer\u27s critique of historicism, in which he references the practices of legal and religious hermeneutics. Gadamer\u27s philosophical hermeneutics explains how faith is a prerequisite of understanding, even as understanding revitalizes and reshapes the faith one brings to a textual tradition. I then unfold the critical dimensions of faithful hermeneutics by comparing the work of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) and Gianni Vattimo on the Catholic tradition. I argue that these two thinkers display both the broad range and the non-methodological character of the critical insights of faithful hermeneutics. I conclude by suggesting that the parallels between religious and legal hermeneutics are instructive, but that we remember that it would be a mistake to conflate these two instances of faithful hermeneutics in our secular age

After Hermeneutics?

Recently Alain Badiou and Quentin Meillassoux have attacked the core of the phenomenological hermeneutic tradition: its commitment to the finitude of human understanding. If accurate, this critique threatens to render the whole tradition a topic of merely historical interest. Given the depth of the criticism, this essay aims to establish a provisional defense of hermeneutics. After briefly reviewing each critique, it is argued that Badiou and Meillassoux themselves face rather intractable difficulties. These difficulties, then, open the space for a hermeneutic response, which is accomplished largely by drawing on the work of Paul Ricoeur. We close with a suggested program for hermeneutic thought

Hermeneutics and Economics

If hermeneutics has obtained remarkable results in the field of arts, philosophy, literature and every other field that operates with symbols, why not bring it in the field of economics as well? Economic hermeneutics starts, first, from the premise of the economic knowledge relativity. Secondly, a correct interpretation requires appropriate techniques for researching causal relations. Thirdly, explanation and prediction give the consistency of interpretation, because the explanation is the one to make a phenomenon easy to understand by revealing the causes of its rise, and the prediction anticipates the result, starting from the original phenomena, the ones that are expected to happen, and the laws governing them. Fourthly, the argumentation is meant to persuade others, in a rational way, that the interpretation is correct. This paper presents a synthesis of the systematic character of the economic hermeneutics. The arguments favoring economic hermeneutics are not intended to suggest that we pursue the completion of the construction of hermeneutics. We are aware of the limitations of the approach. But we would take pleasure in raising future debates and pursue new ideas concerning the present analysis, at least awaking the interest of others expecting this way new developments on the analyzed issue.Economic phenomenon, Reasoning, Argumentation, Interpretation, Economic hermeneutics

Hermeneutics and Nature

This paper contributes to the on-going research into the ways in which the humanities transformed the natural sciences in the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries. By investigating the relationship between hermeneutics -- as developed by Herder -- and natural history, it shows how the methods used for the study of literary and artistic works played a crucial role in the emergence of key natural-scientific fields, including geography and ecology

Transcendental Pragmatics and Hermeneutics

Abstract: In which sense could transcendental pragmatics combined with a hermeneutical approach provide the social sciences with a critical oriented approach? This essay aims at giving an answer to that question by elaborating the critical intent of Apel"s approach to transcendental pragmatics and hermeneutics. Hermeneutics itself is considered to have critical potentials by its explicit focus upon the normative presuppositions of the social sciences. Hermeneutics does not, however, provide the sciences with any clear-cut criterions of critique. Nor does hermeneutics escape from a certain relativistic strain, due to the contextual, i.e.; socio-historically relative basis of the normative presuppositions of any hermeneutic approach. The meta-normative conditions of transcendental pragmatics are counterpoising the relativism as well as lack of normative criterions inherent in hermeneutical thinking. The meta-normative conditions of symmetry and reciprocity are meant to be a meta-normative standard for critique as well as functioning as conditions of a valid consensus within a community of scientists. Thereby, Apel is giving a solution to the validation-problem, as well as a compensation for the lack of criterions of criticism within hermeneutics. I will divide the essay into three main topics, and i) start with explicating the transcendental-pragmatic approach of Apel, ii) continue by dealing with his criticism of as well as positive appropriation of hermeneutical thinking, and iii) work out examples of a critical-hermeneutical approach in the last parts of the essay. The main example used will be from contemporary Norwegian sociology, dealing with the possibility of a unitary critical approach. The closing part (iv) will have clarifying purposes

Mao Chen. Between tradition and change : the hermeneutics of May Fourth literature

This article reviews the book Between Tradition and Change: The Hermeneutics of May Fourth Literature , written by Mao Chen

Five loaves and two fishes : an empirical study in psychological type and biblical hermeneutics among Anglican preachers

The sensing, intuition, feeling and thinking (SIFT) method of biblical hermeneutics and liturgical preaching has its roots in three fields: a theology of individual differences situated within the doctrine of creation, an application of Jungian psychological-type theory and empirical observation. The present study tested the empirical foundations for this method by examining the psychological-type profile of two groups of Anglican preachers (24 licensed readers in England and 22 licensed clergy in Northern Ireland) and by examining the content of their preaching according to their dominant psychological-type preferences. These data provided further support for the psychological principles underpinning the SIFT method of biblical hermeneutics and liturgical preaching