GallagherThinkers

Critical hermeneutics is a deployment of hermeneutics as a means of penetrating false consciousness, discovering the ideological nature of belief systems, promoting distortion-free communication, as well as accomplishing a liberating consensus.

Critical hermeneutics is guided by the four main principles aiming to delegitimize traditional power structures: reproduction and hegemony (which must be avoided) and reflection and application (which are principles of possibility).

An Interpretation is never simply a repetition or a copy or reproduction or restoration of the interpreted in its originality. Interpretation produces something new. This original insight gives meaning and understanding to the interpreter.

Interpretation is original insight gives meaning and understanding to the interpreter.

Reflection (thought) is, in critical hermeneutics, seen as a method to neutralize the biases of tradition, and therefore interpretation can be freed from distortion.

Reproduction is, for critical hermeneutics, largely an unconscious, unreflective diffusion of the authority and power structures of tradition.