TY - JOUR AU - Πυροβολάκης, Ευτύχης PY - 2016/05/04 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Approaches to the Hermeneutics of Literature: Gadamer and Ricoeur JF - Ariadne JA - Ariadne VL - 0 IS - 20-21 SE - Articles DO - 10.26248/ariadne.v0i20-21.220 UR - https://ejournals.lib.uoc.gr/Ariadne/article/view/220 SP - 189-210 AB - <p>IN THIS ESSAY, I distinguish between three levels of reading Gadamer’s&nbsp;and Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of literature. First, terms such as&nbsp;‘dialogue’, ‘tradition’ and ‘mimesis’ occupy a prominent position in the&nbsp;relevant texts of the two philosophers. As a result, hermeneutics is often&nbsp;presented as a reactionary theory that endorses a simplifying construal&nbsp;of the above concepts. Certain critics reject Gadamer’s and Ricoeur’s&nbsp;writings a little hastily, arguing, for instance, that Gadamer regards the&nbsp;tradition as some ineluctable authority.<br>Second, I emphasize the radical elements of Gadamer’s and Ricoeur’s&nbsp;hermeneutics. A cautious study could show that Gadamer, by extricating&nbsp;poetry from the hegemony of a stable exterior point of reference,&nbsp;defends the idea of poetic self-referentiality and semantic indeterminability,&nbsp;hence his interest in Celan’s hermetic lyrics. Similarly, a serious interpretation of Ricoeur could conclude that his concepts of ‘world’ and&nbsp;‘reference’ do not coincide with the author’s socio-psycho-biography or&nbsp;any state of affairs pre-existing the literary text. Hermeneutics is a multi-faceted and complex approach that recognizes a series of elements of&nbsp;alterity inherent in the process of writing and reading literature.<br>Finally, a specific objection to the otherwise intricate and innovative&nbsp;hermeneutics of Gadamer and Ricoeur is that all the instances of&nbsp;non-presence the two philosophers admit to are interpreted as <em>negative</em>&nbsp;elements that could be sublated during the later phase of reading. Such&nbsp;negativity entails that the salience of those elements is underplayed, and<br>the radical singularity and autonomy of the text is not taken very seriously.&nbsp;One can claim that those allegedly negative elements are not&nbsp;merely negative but constitute, rather, the positive conditions of possibility&nbsp;which alone can give rise to an authentic work of literature and to&nbsp;a responsible act of reading worthy of its name.</p> ER -