Philosophical Hermeneutics as Inclusive Democratic Discourse: Local Hermeneutics, Socrates, and the Just Community of Learners

• In Event: 14.045 - Roundtable Session 3
  In Roundtable Session: 14.045-13 - Communities, "Outsiders," and Education: Migrants, Refugees, and Language Minorities

Abstract

I open the potential for Gadamer’s “moderate hermeneutics” to be re-considered as a potential democratic discourse concerned with social justice. I offer a reading of the Socratic practice of dialectic as a form of critical and constructive democratic dialogue. Reading Socrates through the lens of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, a form of interpretive discourse emerges that demonstrates the concern for social justice. Social justice begins as possibility within “local” discourse attuned to language and tradition as “factical” conditions for authentic human transcendence and transformation. Local manifestations of interpretive activity serve to ground the “normative” and “ethical” dimension of philosophical hermeneutics as a form of social justice in praxis.

Author

• James M. Magrini, College of Dupage