Fort Valley State University--Department of Languages
ENGLISH 4153: Critical Theory  3 Hours

Hermeneutics

(from Hermes): deals with that which is involved in the act of interpretation.

Enunciation is an interpretation of reality - Every time we speak we interpret the world.  Language contains an inner duality in that it has both covert and overt meaning.

Hermeneutics of Faith

Hermeneutics of Suspicion (Nietzsche & Freud)

• Covert language hides the world
• Language is political

Hermeneutic Circle

• Model of understanding Assumptions:
  • 1. No presuppositionless knowledge
  • 2. Persons are temporally and historically situated.
  • 3. Understanding is a dialectic process.
• Truth is intersubjective validation.

Intertextuality

Phenomenology

Phenomenology-the attempt to study the structures of consciousness.

• Natural attitude
• Reflective attitude (the beginning of research)awareness of how we perceive

Edmund Husserl asks: "why must we presume objectivity?"

Husserl argues that the sciences presuppose the fact that the scientist can be more objective than the objects that are under study. He argues that phenomena is only available through experience. The sciences miss the phenomena they claim to study because they miss the experience of experience.

But, if our experiences are an experience of language or filtered by language, how can we actually experience? Through Epoche.

Epoche (bracketing)

For Husserl, Epoche is the assumption of "natural attitude."

• 1. Things are objects
• 2. We are subjects
• 3. We must seek the relationship between the two

Significance/Experience/Meaning changes yet the object is unchanged. Science misses that which constitutes our awareness of things. The formation of perspective = non-natural meaning

The structure of awareness (the constant x) is not the same as reality it is the de-correlate of the formation of perspectives

Epoche avoids the metaphysical question What is reality? Rather it calls the awareness of reality "Asignification."

Therefore, awareness is an awareness of something and it must be related to something else... Intentionality- holds that every experience is correlated to something

• Phenomenology should show levels and correlations between awareness and the object of awareness
• Therefore Correlate X = Identity (the permanent awareness of something that allows us to see the other things changing around us)

Logical levels of Phenomenology

• 1. Access
• 2. Transcendental Subjectivity

Levels of Objectivity

Components of Awareness

Correlation between permanence and change

4 laws of that correlation:

• 1. Some changes are for the maintenance of permanence
• 2. Some changes are for the disrupting of permanence
• 3. Some permanence disallows change
• 4. Some permanence embraces change

  Transcendental Subjectivity is always intersubjectivity. It asks "how do I know the other?"

  Language is one transmission of the triolouge (dialogue allows us to borrow experience through language).

  Application

  • 1. Understand the self in correlation to the world at various levels
  • 2. Discover factors maintained as permanent
  • 3. Search for meaning

  Questions? Email me at Sophist@Bigfoot.Com  or Return to ENG 4153 Syllabus.