Explanation and Understanding: Text in Positivism and Critical Hermeneutics

Without any pretense of being exhaustive, one could synthesize the main features of the positivistic tradition as follows: science is the highest form of knowledge; there is one scientific method common to all the sciences; and metaphysical claims are pseudo-scientific. The common denominator of all the different schools within the positivist tradition is the search for an “a priori universal” scientific method as well as the identification of fundamental structures (and the relations among them) applicable to all domains of the natural world including human behavior. Levi-Strauss describes it as the “quest for the invariant, or for the invariant elements among superficial differences” (1978: 8).

Such an approach has been adopted also in the study of language and text. To study language from this perspective, analysts must describe a linguistic system, which consists of structures not content. For structuralism, the crucial point is that the object of analysis is not the corpus of utterances identified as “parole,” but the underlying system (“langue”) – that is, a set of formal elements defined in relation to each other and which can be variously combined to form a sentence (Saussure 1983).

The language-speech (langue-parole) distinction is fundamental in order to give linguistics a homogeneous object that is both a-temporal and composed of “units devoid of proper meaning” (Ricoeur 1981: 153). In this light, language and text become systemic objects that can be investigated scientifically under the assumption that in any state of the system there are no absolute terms but only relations of mutual dependence. In other words, structuralism treats the collection of signs as closed and autonomous system of internal dependencies (Ricoeur 1981: 8).

Two major implications of the positivistic approach are the treatment of the text as a “worldless and authorless object” – that is, to be explained in terms of its internal relations (Ricoeur 1981: 152). Each unit of the text-system is defined only in terms of its difference from all of the others.
Consequently, structural analysis divests the role of the plot in the narrative and subordinates it to the underlying logical structures. Plot is relegated to the surface level of manifestation as opposed to the level of “deep grammar,” that consists of structures and their transformations (Ricoeur 1981: 280).


The duality between explanation and understanding, outlined in Dilthey’s work (1976), constitutes an alternative wherein one term is mutually exclusive to the other: “either you ‘explain’ in the manner of the natural scientist, or you ‘interpret’ in the manner of the historian” (Ricoeur 1981: 150). After Dilthey the decisive step was the questioning of the fundamental postulate that saw the differences between the “hard” sciences and the “human” sciences as an epistemological matter. In other words, the legitimization of the human sciences was dependent on the development of an appropriate methodology of their own. Such presupposition implies that hermeneutics is merely a subsection of the theory of knowledge and that “the debate between explanation and understanding can be contained within the limits of the…methodological dispute” (Ricoeur 1981: 53).

Both Heidegger and Gadamer, the fathers of the critical hermeneutics approach, put into question such an assumption – that is, the presupposition that hermeneutics is construed as epistemology. This movement beyond the epistemological enterprise uncovers the ontological conditions of hermeneutics. Ricoeur defines it as “a movement from regional to general hermeneutics” as well as a “radicalization of hermeneutics” where the question to be asked is “what is the mode of that being who exists only in understanding?” (Ricoeur 1981: 54). From now on, the properly epistemological concerns of hermeneutics – that is, its efforts to achieve scientific status – are subordinated to ontological preoccupation, “whereby understanding ceases to appear as a simple mode of knowing in order to become a way of relating to beings and to being” (Ricoeur 1981:44).

This ontological turn informs the approach to the written text as a fixed discourse. Ricoeur (1981) worked out a systematic theory of interpretation based on a distinctive notion of the text. A text, according to Ricoeur is an instance of written discourse. Thus, it involves four forms of distanciation which differentiate it from the conditions of speech. First, in spoken discourse there is an interplay between the event of saying (the utterance) and the meaning of what is said: it is the meaning which is inscribed in the text. Second, whereas in spoken discourse there is an overlap between the intention of the speaking subject and the meaning of what is said, in the case of written discourse these two dimensions of meaning drift apart: the meaning of the text does not coincide with what the author meant. The written text becomes an independent entity from its author. Third, whereas spoken discourse is addressed to a specific recipient, written discourse is addressed to an unknown audience and potentially to anyone who can read. Fourth, whereas the shared circumstances of the speech situation provide some degree of referential specificity for spoken discourse, in the case of written discourse these circumstances no longer exist. To think of language as a structure or a tool limits the interpreter’s creativity and confines it to a designated set of actions outside its being and apart from its own history.

These various characteristics of the text provide the basis upon which Ricoeur elaborates his theory of interpretation. He argues that the process of interpretation can be facilitated and enriched by the use of explanatory methods of analysis. Since the text is a structured totality of meaning which has been distanced from its conditions of production, it can be analyzed fruitfully and legitimately by means of structuralist methods. But this type of analysis can never be an end in itself. It can only be a step along the path of interpretation – that is, a partial contribution to the broader hermeneutical task of unfolding the “world” of the text and the significance it has for its readers. While Ricoeur’s theory of interpretation is formulated with regard to texts, he argues that it can be extended to non-textual phenomena like action (1981, 1986). Ricoeur’s argument is that action involves the four forms of distanciation characteristic of written discourse; and hence, for the purposes of analysis, action can be treated as a text. One advantage of this approach is that it enables Ricoeur to propose a novel solution to the problem of the relation between explanation and interpretation in the social sciences. Just as interpretation of texts can be facilitated by the structuralist analysis of their contents, so too the understanding of action can be enriched by an explanatory account. Hence explanation and understanding are not necessarily in opposition. Rather, the explanation of action can be treated as an integral part of a process of understanding.