In this thesis I characterize, through an analysis of some of the key themes and central insights of both Charles Sanders Peirce’s pragmatism and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, what Bernstein (2011) has called a “sea change” in contemporary philosophy. I illustrate how their main insights are profoundly educational and how they offer us an effective means of reconceptualising what education means within the context of our world today. I will particularly stress two important elements of this ‘sea change’ that figure prominently in both Peirce and Gadamer’s work. First, the central importance of situated agency, and second, the affirmation of a relational process ontology. When taken together, these insights entail a conception of education that radically affirms the transformative potential of human agency based on the fecundity of educational experience. This ‘sea change’ will be presented in juxtaposition to the problematic modern/Cartesian framework that is current in educational thought today.

This essay is about Skelleftea church town which is named Bonnstan and refers to the city for farmers. Originally, its mission was to function as temporary residence for long distance travelers of the villages, during weekends intended for religious gatherings. Bonnstan have furthermore periodically and in lesser extent been used as permanently abode for domestic workers. Nowadays the area consists of 114 cottages with nearly 400 chambers. The earliest known documentation of Skelleftea church town's existence is from the 17th century even though it may have its origin from the Middle Ages. These early church cottages burnt down in 1835 and were restored two years after the accident. Bonnstan from 19th century has been well preserved ever since. My analysis is about how Bonnstan has served as a meeting place for the city's inhabitants, from the 17th century until today. I also aim to find parallels between these buildings aesthetics and its target audience, together with use. This essay follows a chronological disposition in which social and cultural contexts are examined with the method hermeneutics. Its aesthetics is characterized by simplicity and has fulfilled many important purposes in social and cultural context through time. I aim to declare my opinion on why this is an important monument with complex meanings.

The desire and need for historical representation in postmodernism are coupled with the self-reflexive acknowledgement of our inability to faithfully represent the past. This dissertation examines the ways in which certain historical events are represented in postmodern fiction. More specifically, it introduces the term ‘distortion’ to designate various ways that postmodern authors have attempted to convey traumatic and violent histories through intentional permutations of historical facts. In this study, I analyse six texts, representative works that present the multi-faceted nature of what I call ‘distorted’ historical fiction. Each text is devoted to one of three historical events: the Holocaust in Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow and Art Spiegelman’s Maus; the Chilean dictatorship in Diamela Eltit’s Lumpérica and Isabel Allende’s La Casa de los espíritus; and finally, the Algerian War of Independence in Kateb Yacine’s Nedjma and Mohammed Dib’s Qui se souvient de la mer. The analyses of each text are guided by three main questions: How is the depicted history distorted in the narrative? Why is the historical reality distorted? And lastly, what are the hermeneutical effects for the reader of engaging with the distorted historical text? I contend that these historical fictions apply various modes of distortion to create a specific and often peculiar effect on the reader. These include distortions of narrative form and voice, as well as distortions of temporality and space. I argue that the reader’s encounter with distorted historical fiction creates a peculiar hermeneutical effect of ‘defamiliarisation,’ which has affinities with Viktor Shklovsky’s use of the term and Bertolt Brecht’s ‘V-effekt.’ The sense of defamiliarisation creates a conflict in readers, in which their foreknowledge of a past event clashes with the event's distorted depiction. This conflict demands that the reader be responsible, implying that the reader should not be ‘swept away’ by the distorted narrative. Instead the responsible reader is encouraged to interact with the text, apply previous historical knowledge to correct said distortions, and through this interaction gain a greater intimacy with the past.

The purpose of this study is to examine philosophical hermeneutics as a referent for student understanding of Nature-of-Science (NOS) concepts. Rather than focus on a prescriptive set of canons used in addressing NOS pedagogy in K-12 schools, this study seeks to explicate a descriptive set of principles based on Hans Georg-Gadamer’s theory of interpretation that has the potential for developing dispositions necessary for understanding. Central among these are the concepts of fore-structure, prejudice, temporal distance, and history of effect, all of which constitute part of the whole of the hermeneutic circle as envisaged by Gadamer. As such, Gadamer’s hermeneutics is contrasted with Cartesian epistemology and its primacy of method, the Enlightenment’s prejudice against prejudice, the modernist/progressive tendency to consider all situations as problems to be solved by relegating all forms of knowledge to techné, and the subjective nature of interpretation inherent in a hermeneutics of suspicion. The implication of such a conceptual analysis for NOS pedagogy is that student understanding is considered not so much as a cognitive outcome dependent on a series of mental functions but rather as an ontological characteristic of Dasein (being-human) that situates learning in the interchange between interpreter and text. In addition, the philosophical foundations implicit in addressing student understanding of NOS found in many curricular reform efforts and pedagogical practices in science education are questioned. Gadamer’s hermeneutics affords science education a viable philosophical framework within which to consider student understanding of the development of scientific knowledge and the scientific enterprise.

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This study deals with the concept of ’integration’. Starting from the concept of reality as socially and linguistically constructed, it is an attempt to see how lingual constructions and perceptions affect the official structures of society and vice versa. The main purpose is to compare the different meanings integration has in a sociological context and in a political one. Further, the purpose is to see how the relationship between the sociological and political concepts affects the integrational work in the Swedish County Administrative Boards, and which consequences these effects might have. The study is carried out with ethnographic methods, i.e. participant observation and textual analysis, in a specific County Administrative Board, focusing mainly on its policy and strategy for integrational work. The results are that the main differences between the sociological and political definitions of integration lie in their extent of meanings. The sociological definitions contain many different meanings which sometimes contradict each other. The political ones however are more fixed and limited in their scope. The goal of the integrational politics is not always clear and this affects the practical work. Other problems are that the political as well as practical integrational definitions are limited to certain groups during certain conditions. The consequences of these problems can be that certain groups are left out of the integrational process, that some of the factors of integration are neglected and that immigrants, being the designated group in need of integration, are stigmatized.

The thesis mainly discusses the hermeneutic system on Du Fu¡¦s poetics, which was established after close analysis of Du Fu¡¦s poetry by a literary critic Chin Sheng-Tang (the end of the Ming and beginning of the Qing dynasties).Among all Tang poets Chin Sheng-Tang admired Du Fu the most for his poetics of seven line stanzas, which was viewed by Chin Sheng-Tang as an epitome of high aesthetical value and poetical canon. The critic proposed a method of decompositional analysis for studying Du Fu¡¦s poetry: he saw the interconnection between the title of the poem and it¡¦s content, and then decomposed the poem into small pieces, conducting close reading, so that the poem was seen as having three level structure from bigger to smaller ¡¥the level of passages, sentences and characters¡¦. First, we start with looking at ¡¥other interpretation¡¦ from the describing trend of hermeneutics on Du Fu¡¦s poetics prevailing during that period of time, pointing out what was the main opinion of the literary critics, and comparing it with the one of Chin Sheng-Tang¡¦s, and looking at his status among the circles of literary critics. Then we discuss the Chin Sheng-Tang ¡¥s ¡¥self interpretation¡¦ , explaining what kind of reader and critic he was. After that we provide the review of poetry reading methods and horizon in literary criticism, explaining how to use the method in literary analysis. After Chin Sheng-Tang¡¦s method of literary criticism becomes clear to us, we look how his caesura method is used to analyze structure of Du Fu¡¦s poetry. Through the caesura analysis we use reader¡¦s, author¡¦s and literary works point of view to find out whether this method is appropriate and whether it can reveal the spirit of that age or is it simply an over-reading. In the end we provide the conclusion about the effectiveness of the hermeneutic system, proposed by Chin Sheng-Tang.

Presented as the author's Thesis--Umeå University, Sweden. / Includes bibliographical references ((p. 203-213)).

The topic of eschatology is generally confined to the field of theology. However, the subject has influenced many other fields, such as politics and history. This dissertation examines the question why eschatology remained a topic of discussion within twentieth century philosophy. Concepts associated with eschatology, such as the end of time and the hope of a utopian age to come, remained largely background assumptions among intellectuals in the modern age. Martin Heidegger, Nicolai Berdyaev, and Hans Blumenberg, however, explicitly addressed the subject in their philosophies. The impetus of this study is Heidegger's statement, "Being itself is inherently eschatological," which indicates the centrality of the subject in his understanding of Being. This statement led to the question whether eschatology played a larger role in Western thought. It also raised the question concerning the relationship between eschatology and other philosophical subjects such as teleology. Because of the multitude of assumptions concerning the meaning of eschatology, Chapter One provides essential working definitions. In order to obtain a sufficient understanding of the topic and address the use of the term among the three philosophers, it was necessary to see how eschatology was understood and acted upon in Western thought. Chapter Two addresses the history of eschatology in the West and concludes that there are two general streams of eschatological thought that explains why it continued to remain a subject for contemporary philosophers. Chapters Three through Five address how eschatology was used by Heidegger, Berdyaev, and Blumenberg respectively. Each utilized the subject in different ways: for Heidegger eschatology constitutes Dasein's existence. Futurity ("forward-directedness") is a condition Dasein as a totality. Dasein is "being-toward-the-end" or "toward-death." Berdyaev combines the eschatological tradition with philosophical achievements and offers an "eschatological metaphysics." He distinguishes eschatology from teleology arguing against teleology, noting that only a "personalist" eschatology can solve the problems of dualism and objectification. Blumenberg differs from Heidegger and Berdyaev by offering a negative evaluation of eschatological belief in the West contending that the modern secular age is the result of a failed eschatology. The conclusion of this work follows Charles Taylor's contention in A Secular Age that "our sense of where we are is crucially defined in part by a story of how we got there." The conclusion is that eschatology, throughout most of Western thought, functioned largely as a background assumption for understanding time and history. The transition from the linear concept of time to a cyclical concept defines in part the modern secular age. The notion of future time is an important and often neglected dimension of hermeneutic understanding. The continued influence of eschatological thought in Western history explains why the philosophers under consideration in this work address eschatology and signals that its influence upon philosophical thought is not likely to diminish in the future.

Within the genre of young adult literature, a growing trend is the use of epistolary messages through electronic methods between characters. These messages are set apart from the formal text of the narrative of the novel creating a break in the text features and layout of the page. Epistolary texts require a more sophisticated reading method and level of interpretation because the epistolary style blends multiple voices and points of view into the plot, creating complicated narration. The reader must navigate the narrator’s path in order to extract meaning from the text. In this hermeneutic study, I examined the text structures of three young adult novels that contained epistolary excerpts. I used ethnographic content analysis (Altheide 1987) to isolate, analyze, and then contextualize the different epistolary moments within the narrative of the novel. The study was guided by two research questions: 1. What types of text structures and features did authors of selected young adult literature with epistolary interruptions published since 2008 use across the body of the published work? 2. How did the authors of selected young adult literature situate the different text structures of interruption into the flow of the narrative? What happened after the interruption? I used a coding system that I developed from a case study of the novel Falling for Hamlet by Michelle Ray (2011). Through my analysis I found that the authors used specific verbs to announce an interruption. The interruptions, though few in number, require readers to consider context of the message for event, setting, speaker, purpose and tone as it relates within the message itself and the arc of the plot. In addition, following the interruptions, the reader must decide how to incorporate the epistolary interruption into the narrative as adding to the conflict, adding detail, ending a scene, or simply returning to the narrative. . Therefore, the interruptions in epistolary young adult novels incorporated the text or literacy practices of young adults. Such incorporation reflects the changes in literacy practices in the early 21st century that may render novels of this style a challenge to readers in creating meaning. The study further incorporates Bakhtin’s theory of heteroglossia (1980) that a novel does not contain a single language but a plurality of languages within a single langue and Dresang’s Theory of Radical Change (1999) of connectivity, interactivity, and access. Texts of this nature offer teachers of reading opportunities to guide students through text features to synthesize information in fiction and non-fiction texts.