Friday, April 27, 2007

Taxonomy of different species of hermeneutics

On Different Species of Hermeneutics ~ by larvalsubjects on April 26, 2007
Reading Dennett has led me to think that it would be both interesting and useful to produce a sort of taxonomy of different species of hermeneutics. Here’s a start. Perhaps readers can suggest better names and other editions to such a list.
Zoohermeneutics: Intepretation that traces all practices and social formations back to biological and evolutionary principles. Exemplars of this would be Dennett, Dawkins, and roughly anything from evolutionary psychology and sociology.
Theohermeneutics: This is a wide ranging field that requires further subdivisions. One variety interprets historical and political events in terms of Biblical prophecy. Pat Robertson would be an example of this. Other approaches interpret texts in terms of their religious symbolism. Paul Ricoeur would be a good example of this. Clearly Ricoeur and Robertson are doing entirely different things.
Econohermeneutics: This would be a form of interpretation that explains cultural phenomena in terms of economic conditions. Marx would, of course, fall here. As would Friedman.
Ontohermeneutics: The most famous proponent of this heremeneutics would be Heidegger who reads all of Western history in terms of different sendings of being.
Pathohermeneutics: This hermeneutics traces texts back to the lived body. Merleau-Ponty and Lakoff come to mind here.
Aestheticohermeneutics: This form of hermeneutics traces texts back to distributions of sensation. Logical positivism falls here as does Hume and other empiricists. Under one reading, Deleuze would fall under this as well, though in a very different way than logical positivism.
Historicohermeneutics: This interpretative approach traces texts back to their historical conditions of production.
Dunamohermeneutics(?): This would be that hermeneutics that traces texts back to distributions of power. Spinoza, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Deleuze and Guattari might be placed here.
Semiohermeneutics: This hermeneutics would look at texts as networks of relations among other texts. Certain aspects of Derrida and Butler fall here. Gadamer would fall here. Basically any intertextual approach would fall in this category.
Sociohermeneutics: Interpretative approaches that explain texts sociologically, e.g., Luhmann, perhaps Latour.
Biohermeneutics: Interpretative approaches that explain phenomena vitalistically, e.g., Deleuze, Bergson.
Any other suggestions? One Response to “On Different Species of Hermeneutics”
Harmohermeneutics: Derives from the attempt of Sri Aurobindo to harmonize disparate points of view on the anvil of the ageless Vedic vision. Tusar N. Mohapatra said this on April 27th, 2007 at 3:52 am (edit)

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