Concluding chapter
"texts", relevant contexts, and textualizing
pp. 253-269
in: , Hermeneutic realism, Berlin, Springer, 2016Abstract
Although a "text" could primarily be recognized as a complex body of knowledge, given that it is isolated from the process of textualizing, the concept of "text" is not a kind of pre-epistemological concept. In hermeneutic realism, "text" is an ontological concept characterizing scientific inquiry"s facticity. (A discussion of the preliminary concept shows that the "minimalist texts" are recognizable even within the strategies of epistemological justification. But this recognition can only be attained by assuming that interpretive fore-structuring is an intratheoretical relation between theoretical terms and theory-laden data.) The hermeneutic realist specifies—with respect to the concept under discussion—the ontic-ontological difference as a difference between semantic and hermeneutic meaning of the "texts". The former presupposes knowledge, structured in models, about objectified factuality. Furthermore, this knowledge is enclosed within a framework of objectification. The hermeneutic meaning—as engendered by the interpretive fore-structuring—refers to the "text"s" way of being in facticity of scientific inquiry and the domain"s meaningful articulation. While the preliminary concept of "text" draws on an approach seeking to find a balance between hermeneutics and epistemology/semantics, the full-fledged concept requires enriching the hermeneutics of textualizing with deconstructionist motifs.