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The paper discusses different approaches to reading the works of Eric Voegelin. Voegelin’s writings all deal in one way or another with questions of interpretation, and thus readers are challenged to orient their own hermeneutical strategies toward the philosophical issues of interpretation inherent in Voegelin’s work. The approach favored in my paper is a non-dogmatic reading of Voegelin, one that bears similarities to literary criticism, without, however, discounting Voegelin’s claim to rigorous scholarship in the social sciences and history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-cultural discourse is necessary if the next step in the articulation and extension of the human rights ideal is to be taken. Confronted with the need for a theory of cross-cultural discourse, contemporary thinkers must consider a variety of methodologies and processes. This paper draws on the work of several theorists to propose that a shift in our conception of human rights, to one that uses a more hermeneutical paradigm, is most useful at the current moment. But a hermeneutical approach to human rights discourse must have some sort of normative grounding; there must be an ontological framework which brings some moral significance to the process of cognitive and linguistic construction and investigation. The second half of this paper takes this criticism to heart, and considers what implications it has for the worldview which a properly conceived comparative political philosophy seems to mandate. My response is to consider in some depth one possible model of religious hermeneutics which situates the cognitive and linguistic work of discourse within just such an ontological framework: Johann Gottfried Herder’s philosophy of language as a communal, revelatory field. The potential moral achievement of engaging with one another in that field Herder called "Humanität," and in the conclusion of my paper, its relationship to human rights doctrine, and methodological contributions to it, are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses three issues troubling predominant models of paradigmatic policy change and proposes an alternative perspective on the subject. The first issue pertains to the conflation of very specific, but difficult to operationalize, types of policy change in Peter Hall's standard three-order typology for understanding policy development. The second has to do with the view that exogenous phenomena, namely shifts in the locus of decision-making authority, are necessary for 'paradigmatic' change to occur. The third issue stems from Hall's strict adaptation of Thomas Kuhn's ideas concerning the (in)commensurability of succeeding paradigms. All three problems are shown to be derivative of the fact that policy change is more complex than often assumed in existing paradigmatic models. Instead of conceiving of policy change in definite or 'ordered' terms, it is argued that analytical focus should be directed toward the hermeneutic contest that unfolds as agents patch together ideas in the attempt to identify and explain the sources of policy problems. This largely discursive conflict takes place as agents vie to influence the authoritative definitions of problem-solutions in a process of 'policy bricolage'. The paper advances a revised and more actor-centered formula for understanding types of paradigmatic and intra-paradigmatic policy change by developing a more precise understanding of different types or 'orders' of policy anomalies and the role anomaly definition plays in the construction of new paradigms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Islamists believe that their political ideology and activism are Islamic. Islamic politics carries the sense that there is an Islamic way of going about applying Islam to political affairs, and that this way is morally and politically superior to other forms of rule because it is a divinely inspired system. This paper questions the claimed authenticity and absence of ambiguity in such claims. It argues that there is more to the term ‘Islamic’ than those properties claimed by the proponents of this idea. It probes certain hermeneutic and religio-historical assumptions in the Islamic tradition, following two different and (roughly) independent aspects: the first questions conventional assumptions about Scripture and the assumed links between Scripture, authority and Islamic authenticity. The second accepts conventional beliefs and shows that even from this angle, there does not exist a consensus or a uniform position on how to go about Islamic political rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The content of actor beliefs and the way in which they form these beliefs play a central role in intentionalist accounts of political behavior, perhaps most explicitly in a widely applied class of game theoretic models. Presenting a signaling game of ethnic mobilization, this paper challenges the claim that such models constitute a rational choice version of interpretive social science and sketches a hermeneutic perspective on strategic action that suggests the importance of mental models in belief formation. History creates emotionally charged mental models that generate biased beliefs about the choice context and the costs associated with different strategies, leading to different choices of actions by agents with different mental models. In order to provide a rational interpretation of significant political events, it is necessary to specify the causal mechanisms linking history and emotion to the beliefs that drive rational choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a well-known passage in the Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein writes: "A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in language and language seemed to repeat it inexorably." The thesis of this paper is that for most of the past century views about the nature of the scientific enterprise, the relationship between the social and natural sciences, and the nature, configuration and aims of social scientific inquiry have similarly been held captive by series of pictures. The most recent picture, I will maintain, is not quite the Wittgensteinian picture of knowledge generally but rather a more specific picture of natural scientific inquiry. Along Wittgensteinian lines, however, I contend that this misleading picture frames our understandings of science in ways that foreclose consideration of a number of promising options for rethinking the nature of social and political inquiry. Indeed, so powerful is this image that many of those who strive to resist the impulse to pattern political inquiry on one or another model of natural scientific inquiry remain in the grip of it. If one attends, for example, to some of the recent analyses of political inquiry advanced by supporters of the Perestroika movement, it is evident that aspects of this picture continue to shape and color their arguments. Consequently, even when these writers aim to vindicate what are in my view generally laudable ideals of theoretical and methodological pluralism, they do so in ways that threaten to perpetuate a variety of distortions and oppositions and to blunt the critical force and effectiveness of their own arguments. In what follows I shall therefore maintain that if the recent issues raised by the Perestroika controversy are to succeed in prompting a discussion about the nature and aims of political inquiry that yields something more than yet another dreary reenactment of the methodenstreit, it may be important to make this picture explicit and to show how it misleadingly figures both our view of natural science and our understanding of the enterprise of political inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the idea of power as emancipation in the late Foucault. Relying on some writings that date back to the final moments of his life and work, I will try and develop the concept of power-emancipation, arguing that the latter allows one to understand the positive and productive meanings which have always been associated to Foucault's ideas on power, and most importantly allows one to properly grasp the relation that takes place between power and liberty. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about the phenomenologies or hermeneutics of the event in the works of thinkers Martin Heidegger, Eric Voegelin, Alain Badiou and Jean-Luc Marion is presented. It investigates how the phenomenologies open up new ways of thinking about human rights. It discusses the implications of the thoughts of Badiou and Marion for rights theories. It analyzes the response of Voegelin, Badiou, and Marion to the challenge presented by Heidegger's essay "The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking."

In this essay, I argue that if we read Leviathan according to the prescriptions and instructions for reading that Hobbes recommends for reading in general, we find that the text no longer supports sovereignty but actually subverts sovereignty in the guise of supporting it. I argue that throughout Leviathan, the notion of reading becomes Hobbes’ operating model for politics itself. As such, the question of interpretation and the authority of text (and nation) are evoked as challenges to a passive style of interpretation wherein the people simply "read" what the sovereign tells them to. From the beginning of Leviathan, Hobbes juxtaposes private readings of citizens against the sovereign’s "right to read" for "Man-kind." Although in the text he insists that the sovereign’s reading should be preferred, when we pay attention to the ways that Hobbes discusses and employs the metaphor and practice of reading we can see that private readings are not necessarily to be subsumed to public readings but instead can serve as an alternative notion of authority (one suggested by Hobbes’ notion that in the people are actually the "authors" of the sovereign’s power). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the role of carnal hermeneutics on political theory in the U.S. Personages of carnal hermeneutics; Views of moral philosopher Emmanuel Levinas on ethics; Principium of carnal hermeneutics.

Proposes the use of the hermeneutics of the combined elements of classical and phenomenological strategies in objectively understanding foreign texts on philosophical and political theory. Contributions of Friedrich Schleiermacher's and Wilhelm Dilthey's works to classical hermeneutics; Phenomenological hermeneutics of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer; Connection between texts and lives in the experiential immersion hermeneutics; Implications of experiential immersion for a dialogical model of interpretation.

Leo Strauss presents at least two distinct accounts of the idea that the authors in the political-philosophical canon have often masked their true teachings. A weaker, conditional account of esotericism dependent on the contingent fact of persecution is attributed to the moderns, while a stronger, unconditional account dependent on a necessary conflict between philosophy and society is attributed to the ancients. Although most interpreters agree that Strauss here sides with the ancients, this view fails to consider the possibility that Strauss’s writings on esotericism may themselves be composed esoterically. A reevaluation of Straussian hermeneutics in light of this possibility suggests that the inegalitarianism and secrecy often associated with ‘Straussianism’ may stem, not from Strauss’s true account of esotericism, but instead from an exoteric doctrine designed to seduce students into a life of philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The human encounter with the Divine Reality is often with a personal God. Using Eric Voegelin's hermeneutic, the symbol "Person" is rich in implications, some of which are evident in religious texts, some of which is explicated by John Macmurray and Emmanuel Mournier. These implications include involvement with other persons, caring about them and responding to them, and developing in relationship with them. If so, God does have a history, the meaning of which is found, as it is for human persons, in the divine-human encounter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hermeneutic circle provides a straight forward answer to the question when to stop researching, and, as a corollary, when to stop interviewing. The premise for accepting this answer lies in recognizing that any scientific research must start with theory, as only a theoretical framework allows for the separation of realms for systematic inquiry. First, we have to define what we are interested in, then our theory will tell us what variables we have to look for and how we suppose they relate to the phenomenon in question. In other words, the hypotheses we formulate allow us to determine what is relevant to our inquiry. Once we have separated a realm for our inquiry, we can start the process of gathering data, where speech acts are considered part of the data to be collected. In addition to collection speech acts, we must contextualize this data with other information relevant to the speaker(s) so that we can reach an understanding of her lifeworld and situate her speech. This is achieved by going for and back between the specific and the general, the concrete speech act and the political, historical, psychological, and in general institutional context in which the speaker and the speech is embedded. This conceptions leads us to gather empirical data up to the point when each single new information "makes sense," i.e. it complements the logical structure of the lifeworld we are exploring. Each new interview must relate to and ultimately confirm what we already have found out, in a positive of negative way, and little by little we construct a contextualized understanding of the single speech act in question, which allows us to interpret each new piece information and locate it within the horizon of meanings that constitute the context or lifeworld of the speech and the speaker and the realm we have separated for our inquiry. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analytic Narratives wed traditional game theoretic modeling to hermeneutic social science methods. I argue that reliance on these traditional modeling techniques undermines this hermeneutic approach and, further, that insights on social cognition, reward, emotion, beliefs, altruistic behavior, trust, and others generated by neuroscience can improve analytic narrative modeling and sustain its hermeneutic program. I illustrate these claims in a neuroscientifically informed, behavioral analytic narrative of ethnic mobilization by ethnic Serbs in Croatia. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Narratives do not impart sovereign truths. Rather, they solicit the (re)discovery of meaning. Narratives do so by depicting spectacular events unfolding in time and space. Such spectacles stand ripe for hermeneutic engagement. They solicit the exercise of interpretive skills to discern their themes, lessons, and moral bearings. Authorial intent takes a back seat here. The author is not sovereign. Political action, according to Arendt, exhibits the same dynamics and characteristics. In her eyes, political action, above all, constitutes a spectacle. The deed arises in its greatness as the beginning of a story in search of its bard. The freedom it manifests is chiefly expressed in the co-development of an ever-unfolding, and unpredictable plot. Arendt argued for the demise of the sovereign actor in order to redeem action, celebrate freedom, and reinvigorate the history of political life. Sources ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses findings of a study which examined the influence of the democratic-peace thesis on politics. It suggested the representation of theory as a hermeneutical mechanism of attaching meaning to political concepts. The hermeneutical mechanism is represented as a three-stage metatheoretical model in which theoretical constructions transform into social conventions. It will later change to political convictions.

The article explores some principles of Voegelinian hermeneutics, particularly, the philosophical art of understanding in Eric Voegelin's reading of French jurist Jean Bodin. It suggests the question of how the political philosopher read texts and what constitutes its peculiarity. The article concludes that Voegelin's way of reading texts appear to emphasize the importance of the hermeneutical traits within his philosophical questioning and his conception of political science in general.

The article deals with the explanatory power of concepts and the relationship between concepts and practices, meaning and action. Concepts are actually vague because of the variable ways that people construe meanings. For the political scientist, this means consideration of hermeneutical meanings, which refer to the definition of the concept as conceived by the actor. Hermeneutical meanings should guide the interpretation of actions.