Hermeneutic Way Research Articles

In Good Company: Risk, Security and Choice in Young People'S Drug Decisions

This article draws on original empirical research with young people to question the degree to which ‘individualisation of risk’, as developed in the work of Beck and Giddens, adequately explains the risks young people bear and take. It draws on alternative understandings and critiques of ‘risk’ not to refute the notion of the reflexive individual upon which ‘individualisation of risk’ is based but to re-read that reflexivity in a more hermeneutic way. It explores specific risk-laden moments – young people's drug use decisions – in their natural social and cultural context of the friendship group. Studying these decisions in context, it suggests, reveals the meaning of ‘risk’ to be not given, but constructed through group discussion, disagreement and consensus and decisions taken to be rooted in emotional relations of trust, mutual accountability and common security. The article concludes that ‘the individualisation of risk’ fails to take adequate account of the significance of inter-subjectivity in risk-decisions. It argues also that addressing the theoretical overemphasis on the individual bearer of risk requires not only further empirical testing of the theory but appropriate methodological reflection.

The aesthetic experience of nursing

This article highlights the distinction between the 'art of nursing' and 'fine art'. While something in the nature of nursing can be described as 'the art of nursing', it is not to be misunderstood as 'fine art' or craft. Therefore, the term 'aesthetic' in relation to nursing should not be linked to the aesthetic of modern art, but instead to a broader and more general meaning of the word. The paper's main focus is the aesthetic experience, which is treated in a hermeneutic way and elucidated from classical sources and the philosophy of nursing and from Art. The paper argues that the pioneers used the term 'art of nursing' in a metaphorical way to say something more specific on the nature of nursing. The term illustrates the nurse's ability to practise at the highest possible level of excellence.

On strangers: Phantasy, terror and the human imagination

This paper explores the interface between sociology and psychoanalysis using Zygmunt Bauman's notion of the 'stranger' as a conceptual tool to investigate the possibility of developing a sociology of the imagination. The aim of this paper is to explore the way in which we can look at human emotion without resorting to some form of cognitive science model and to understand the way in which we perceive and act in relation to others using some psychoanalytic ideas. In other words, how we can imagine how the imagination works in an interpretive, subjective and hermeneutic way and the specific implication this has for the basic human rights of individuals.

The operationalistic and hermeneutic status of psychoanalysis

Hermeneutic and anti-hermeneutic sides in the debate about psychoanalysis are entangled in an epistemological and methodological antinomy, here exemplified by Grunbaum's and Spence's paradigmatic views. Both contain a partial element of truth, which they assert dialectically one against the other (§§ 1 and 2). This antinomy disappears only by reconciling an operationalist approach with man's ability to suspend the effectiveness of the‘laws’ applied to him (§ 3). The hermeneutic way in which the technical-operational criterion of truth works in psychoanalysis demands that clinical and extra-clinical testing methods work synergically, through a fruitful self-correcting strategy, grounded on the very psychoanalytic object: the unconscious (§ 4).

Apie ilgąjį hermeneutikos kelią

Supratimo teorijos gaivinimas XX a. susijęs su pastangom atskirti dvasios mokslus nuo gamtos mokslų (Gadamer) ir jiems suteikti daugiaprasmę ženklinimo funkciją (Ricoeur). Taip atsiranda simbolio, polisemijos, žaidimo hermeneutinės teorijos, kurių modeliu tampa meno kūrinys. Poezijos kūrinio aiškinimas, apimdamas estetiką ir poetiką, hermeneutiką išplečia ne tik nagrinėjamo objekto (poeziją aiškino ir Dilthey), bet ir turinio atžvilgiu. Remdamasis Gadamerio ir Ricoeuro tekstais, panagrinėsiu šią hermeneutikos slinktį, kurią Ricoeuro žodžiais pavadinau ilguoju hermeneutikos kelių. Drauge bandysiu išryškinti filosofinę poetiką kaip savarankišką discipliną, nors ir susikertančią tiek su hermeneutika, tiek su estetikos teorija.

Beyond Art and Beauty: In Search of the Object of Philosophical Aesthetics

This article deals with the ambigous situation of philosophical aesthetics, which now seems to have lost its proper object. Moreover, Arthur C. Danto has popularized talk of an end of art, in which he ties that end to the end of any aesthetic master narrative. Comparing modern and medieval approaches to art, this paper tries to reformulate the question of philosophical aesthetics, which has to be understood in a hermeneutical way. Taken in a heuristic manner 'art' and 'beauty' remain the principal aesthetic categories able to keep the understanding of what belongs to aesthetics open to different historical approaches.

Educational Ideologies of Polish Teachers

The domain of educational ideology is usually investigated in a hermeneutic way. This article presents results of an empirical approach to the problem. In a pilot study, a comprehensive questionnaire of ideological catchwords was completed by 100 Polish teachers. Principal component analysis of their responses yielded three components interpreted as three educational ideologies: bureaucratic, liberal, and romantic. The pattern appeared quite similar in another sample of Polish teachers, and two ideological components (bureaucratism and liberalism) were found in the responses of 56 German teachers. In four separate studies with 75, 61, 100, and 100 teachers, respectively, some antecedents and consequences of teachers' ideological identifications have been shown. Stored in the professional culture of teachers, educational ideologies are selectively adopted by individuals during their accommodation to the profession. Once adopted, an ideology helps teachers interpret their professional activity and bring it into line with their value orientations and personal problems (study 1 on the social background and early experience of teachers), general attitudes to life (study 2 on gender identity), and personal resources (study 3 on social intelligence). Ideology may also influence a teacher's daily practice and its educational effects (study 4 on teachers' attributions of students' successes and failures). The results attest to the validity of the notion of ideology and its usefulness in educational research.

Organic unity theory: an integrative mind-body theory for psychiatry.

The potential of psychiatry as an integrative science has been impeded by an internal schism that derives from the duality of mental and physical. Organic unity theory is proposed as a conceptual framework that brings together the terms of the mind-body duality in one coherent perspective. Organic unity theory is braided of three strands: identity, which describes the relationship between mentally described events and corresponding physically described events; continuity, which describes the linguistic-conceptual system that contains both mental and physical terms; and dialectic, which describes the relationship between the empirical way of knowing that is associated with the physical domain of the linguistic-conceptual system and the hermeneutic way of knowing that is associated with the mental domain. Each strand represents an integrative formulation that resolves an aspect of mental-physical dualism into an underlying unity. After the theory is presented, its implications for psychiatry are briefly considered.

CONTINGENTIE, CONTEXTUALITEIT EN GODSDIENST BIJ RORTY

Summary Which perspectives does Richard Rorty's pragmatism offer to religion, theology and philosophy of religion? He takes as a starting point the radical contingency of our human existence and knowledge, so that objectivity and transcendence no longer have any sense. Philosophy can only attribute to a new and better vocabulary about existence; therefore metaphysics and theology are no more to be studied. But we can point at some actual metaphysics and theology (e. g. in a hermeneutical way) which prove to be non-objectivistic. Besides that Rorty says that solidarity is indispensable for realizing more justice in our (liberal) society. And all solidarity is contextual, without any theoretical foundation, so it is more a kind of benevolence than a critique of power. Totally distinct from this social duty is the individual development to an interesting life, a self-creation everyone has to accomplish with irony. Now that our culture has been dedivinized, religion is superfluous or just acceptable as an exp...