Thesis (M.Sc. (Hons.))-University of Western Sydney, 2007. / A thesis submitted to the University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, School of Education, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science (Honours). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, 2002. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 221-230).

Although presenting the concept of love in a form not accepted by societal conventions does indeed estrange the conception of love in Nabakov's Lolita, it does nothing to explain how readers accept Humbert's passion, without immediately and consistently disregarding it as lewd and inappropriate. I will argue that Nabakov estranges the romantic conceptions not by defamiliarizing the occasion of love (i.e. by making the romance a manifestation of pedophilia), but rather by defamiliarizing and complicating the acts of both reading and interpreting. First, I will make associations between the Romantics and Nabokov, regarding their shared desire to renew the habitual acts of both perceiving and interpreting human life, which they accomplish through methods of isolating the emotions effected by acts--not the acts themselves. After which, I will examine the theories of phenomenology and externalist philosophy to cement the concepts of anticipation and hermeneutics, starting in general and then narrowing to the act of reading. In following, I will demonstrate how Nabokov agitates this anticipation for readers, making the very act of reading Lolita a new experience, in which Romantic themes do not appear cliché and outdated. On the whole, I will maintain that it is this disruption in interpretation that absolves Humbert's ills, allowing Lolita to maintain its status as one of the greatest love stories of the twentieth century.

This dissertation addresses the question of marginalization in cross-cultural communication from the perspectives of hermeneutic philosophy and postcolonial theory. Specifically, it focuses on European colonialism‘s effect on language and communicative practices in Latin America. I argue colonialism creates a deeply sedimented but unacknowledged background of inherited cultural prejudices against which social and political problems of oppression, violence and marginalization, especially towards women, emerge—but whose roots in colonial and imperial frameworks have lost transparency. This makes it especially difficult for postcolonial subjects to meaningfully express their own experiences of psychic dislocation and fragmentation because the discursive background used to communicate these experiences is made up of multiple, sometimes conflicting traditions. To address this problem, I turn to a strategic use of Nietzsche‘s conceptions of subjectivity and language as metaphor to engage the unique difficulties that arise in giving voice to the subaltern experience. Thus, I argue that while colonialism introduces an added layer of complexity to philosophical discussions of language, the concrete particularities and political emergencies of Latin American history necessitate an account of language that can speak to these concrete particularities. To this end, I develop a conception of, what I call, ―hydric life,‖ a postcolonial feminist hermeneutics that better accommodates these cultural specificities.

This article sets out to explore the hermeneutical problems in the narrative therapeutic theory of Michael White by investigating his understanding of "story" within its interpretative context. In both White's interpretative approach and his “story" are inconsistencies rooted in a meta-theoretical tension based on his account of the autonomy of a person. This tension lies between the postulation of contingency and the pressure of stability. This is shown by testing the sustainability of White's therapeutic approach against the logical consistency of the underlying theoretical and philosophical foundation. The fundamental meta-theoretical tensions are brought to the fore by means of these contradictions. / Thesis (M.A. (Philosophy))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2005.

This thesis examines the Castilian work of Fray Luis de Leon from the perspective of phenomenological hermeneutics as a literary approach. I discuss the lack of serious studies on 16th Century Spanish poetic theory, and propose that Fray Luis de Leon’s work offers a model of literary theory and creation that can be considered a philosophical poetics, in contrast to the rhetorical approach of Renaissance humanistic poetics. I examine the formation of Fray Luis de Leon’s literary work as a process that follows four stages of both hermeneutic understanding and literary creation. I examine the first stage in his translations of Horace and Virgil, his rendering of Tuscan lyric love poetry, and his interpretation of the Psalms. In the literary structuring of his work, I identify images and poetic devices he later expands into all his work. Simultaneously, I suggest that throughout his work, Fray Luis understood the role of language in its literary function as a way to describe reality. In stage two, I analyze Fray Luis de Leon’s biblical expositions, confirming the first stage findings. Fray Luis develops the meaning of poetic configuration, relating it to the literary function of Scripture. The interplay between the biblical text and his reflection on his own reality, forms a sub-text representing a true literary theory. First he attempts a practical literary work in La perfecta casada, a biblical commentary with clear literary pretensions. I extensively analyze Fray Luis de Leon’s main prose work, De los nombres de Cristo as a literary structure resulting from his reflection on literature’s role in understanding reality. Therefore, I approach this important work as literature, not simply as a philosophical treatise or as piece of superb writing. I use Aristotle’s categories, interpreted by Northrop Frye and Paul Ricoeur. Following Frye, literature is a symbolic, verbal structure with different levels of meaning; a structure which in the process of its configuration, gives understanding to the poet and reveals reality. Ricoeur suggests, following Augustine and Aristotle, that the configurating process attempts to redescribe reality to understand it. De los nombres thus expresses the poet’s understanding and insight into the configurative process of the Scriptures, offering it as a way to produce in the reader a poetic experience that is the true experience of reality’s structure. Fray Luis organizes the verbal structures of his work, the “nombres” (names), so the characters of his dialogue, as they discuss the meaning of the names, themselves go through different stages of understanding while literally moving through a physical setting configured by language symbolic of mythical ascent and descent. a practical literary work in La perfecta casada, a biblical commentary with clear literary pretensions. I extensively analyze Fray Luis de Leon’s main prose work, De los nombres de Cristo as a literary structure resulting from his reflection on literature’s role in understanding reality. Therefore, I approach this important work as literature, not simply as a philosophical treatise or as piece of superb writing. I use Aristotle’s categories, interpreted by Northrop Frye and Paul Ricoeur. Following Frye, literature is a symbolic, verbal structure with different levels of meaning; a structure which in the process of its configuration, gives understanding to the poet and reveals reality. Ricoeur suggests, following Augustine and Aristotle, that the configurating process attempts to redescribe reality to understand it. De los nombres thus expresses the poet’s understanding and insight into the configurative process of the Scriptures, offering it as a way to produce in the reader a poetic experience that is the true experience of reality’s structure. Fray Luis organizes the verbal structures of his work, the “nombres” (names), so the characters of his dialogue, as they discuss the meaning of the names, themselves go through different stages of understanding while literally moving through a physical setting configured by language symbolic of mythical ascent and descent.

This chapter contains a survey of historiographioal theory from the time of the Greeks up to the work of Sorokin and Mandelbaum. It is descriptive rather than critical. [...]

Taking as its central motif Hans-Georg Gadamer’s claim that “the true locus of hermeneutics is [the] in-between,” this thesis defends Gadamer’s concept of the fusion of horizons as radically interstitial against recent allegations that link his project to Romantic interpretive commensurability. Distancing Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics from both the Romantic hermeneutical approach and the incommensurabilist alternative proposed by John D. Caputo, this study reassesses Gadamer’s contributions toward understanding the other in a manner that avoids both imperious reductions and hyperbolic valorizations of the other’s alterity. Extending this discussion to cross-cultural interpretation, this thesis concludes by arguing for the fusion of horizons as a model for conceiving a new postcolonial space, irreducible to the commensurabilism of colonialism and the incommensurabilism of nativism. To this end, Gadamer is brought into discussion with Homi K. Bhabha, whose work on cultural hybridity offers a striking parallel with Gadamer’s fusion of horizons.

This thesis explores the question of what it means to be a critical being, and how we can cultivate and enact a critical orientation through the ancient Aristotelian notion of phronesis. I begin by defending the claim that the familiar traditions and methods of rhetoric and hermeneutics have their practical, experiential and critical origins in a fundamental and constitutive human desire to express and understand ourselves and others through the most primary of human capabilities: listening, speaking, interpreting and understanding. This way of describing hermeneutics and rhetoric gives us a sense of their origins in lived experience. It also reminds us that rhetorical expression and hermeneutic understanding are not to be thought of as merely ‘systematized disciplines’, ‘instruments’ or ‘methods’ that we can be indifferent to, but part of our participatory linguistic experience. I argue that once the interpenetrating relation of rhetorical expression and hermeneutic understanding is made apparent, an implicit critical-thinking dimension in experience also becomes visible. This ‘critical dimension’ is not discovered in static theory, procedure or method, but, rather, something that is enacted over time with and among others. It is Aristotle’s concept of phronesis, and his understanding of insight and practical reasoning that best captures the emergence and enactment of critical thinking-being. Phronesis is a mode of practical reasoning that is always in motion, always challenging and interrogating the relation between the particular circumstances we find ourselves in, and the historical traditions, general rules, laws or procedures that form our normative background. I allow this argument for a critical hermeneutics through phronesis to be challenged by Jürgen Habermas’s critical sociological approach. I conclude, firstly, that Habermas’s critical theory relies for its critical thrust on a hermeneutical reflective tradition of immanent critique and insights about communication that can be grasped through phronetic reasoning, tradition and concrete embodied linguistic practices. Secondly, I argue that critical hermeneutics enacted through practical reasoning and phronesis describes a way of thinking-acting-desiring being that is more congruent with our actual experience, and therefore capable of meeting the personal, occupational, moral and political exigencies of a complex and diverse contemporary world.

The title of this thesis is: Connection: A Hermeneutical Inquiry of an Autobiographical Text. It is based on the following thesis question: What is the significance of connecting with another in teaching? The following quote set the stage for the writing: "All places have names and stories, and wisdom sits in (those) places" (Chambers, 2003,p.233). Hermeneutics -- the art of interpretation -- is used to inform an autobiographical fragment. This autobiographical fragment is a fictional rendering of two days of teaching told in a narrative format. the thesis is designed around Gadamer's text Truth and Method. Gadamer's work is supplemented with the work of Martin Heidegger, F.D.E. Schleiermacher, Georg Hegel, as well as modern curriculum scholars such as Cynthia Chambers, David Smith, David Jardine and Max Van Manen. The writing begins with a methodology which grounds the writing, and then is developed through three voices in the form of a literature review, a narrative fragment, and text interpretation. The literature review is guided by questions such as Why use autobiographical narrative? What is the site of the inquiry? and Is narrative still relevant in a postmodern world? Time is also spent on the questions: Who were the great hermeneutical thinkers? and Who speaks for hermeneutics now? After the literature review, a narrative fragment is given. In the last third of the thesis, the narrative is deconstructed using Truth and Method and curriculum scholarship articles to structure the reflections. The "voice" shifts between the three sections. In the first third of the thesis the voice is intended to be academic. The voice in the narrative is personal. The third voice is interpretive and plays back and forth between academic reference and personal reflection. The major themes evolved as the writing progressed. The theme of authoritarianism as antithetical to connection was explored. Alienation acted as a foil to connection. There is an analysis of connection in the context of proper conversation, which includes guidelines for mutual respect and codes of moral conduct. The thesis provides a commentary on the power of hermeneutics to inform the teaching process. It then concludes with a series of questions pertaining to the significance of hermeneutical exploration in teacher preparation and classroom teaching. / viii, 127 leaves ; 29 cm.