Was kann und soll Rationale Rekonstruktion hermeneutischer Interpretationsansätze (nicht) leisten?
Authors: Groeben Norbert , Pahlke A. Florian 
Published: April 2016

In the field of empirical analytic sciences, the approach of ›Rational Reconstruction‹ offers a way to use older theories that are fruitful in the Humanities even today, rather than merely explicate their historical value. It denotes a procedure that attempts to adapt a historically earlier theoretical approach, in its precision and consistency, to current meta-theoretical standards, yet without altering the underlying concept of this approach in the process. According to this conception, the goal is to represent what it is that a theory could accomplish were it expanded and supplemented by new levels of knowledge. In contrast to classical hermeneutics, Rational Reconstruction is thus geared toward an approach that is not purely descriptive but also prescriptive, insofar as the criteria of precision and logical consistency are combined with the criterion of similarity (resemblance to the starting theory). In addition to a historical, diachronic consideration of theories, Rational Reconstruction displays its particular appeal in precisely the possibility of also explicating theoretical approaches in a systematic, synchronic manner, that is, in compliance with current standards of the theory of science as well as the content of theoretical findings. In addition to providing information about a historical theory, the result of such a reconstruction is in particular the elaboration of historical theories in regard to their content and (methodological) structure through a contemporary updating.

To this end, we have to maintain a balance between a descriptive and a prescriptive method: The Rational Reconstruction must neither overrun the descriptive function, by attempting to justify any given theoretical approach, nor shall its prescriptive function lead through the backdoor, as it were, to the stipulation of new theoretical approaches. Nevertheless, there remains a wide range of possibilities within which Rational Reconstruction can become a fruitful procedure. Precisely because it is not only concerned with showing what a theory wished to state at the time of its formation, there arises both the extreme that theories cannot be rationally reconstructed and the extreme that in the end the scientific criteria have to be expanded in order to do justice to an existing theoretical approach.

Seeking to elaborate this scope of Rational Reconstruction with reference to hermeneutic interpretive approaches, this essay differentiates and discusses by way of example four paradigmatic cases, namely:

1. Rational Reconstruction as a means to – further – explicate existing theories (

2. Rational Reconstruction applied to theories which by all means lay the same claim to rationality yet, due to earlier states of knowledge, cannot as optimally implement them as is possible with the content and meta-theoretical knowledge of today. Here, Rational Reconstruction can help to expand and clarify (even more) such theoretical approaches (

3. Rational Reconstruction as evidence of the non-rational: It holds for some theories that structurally they do not fulfill basic meta-theoretical requirements, and not in the least because they themselves programmatically reject these requirements. Rational Reconstruction here serves as a means for exemplifying this refusal (

4. Rational Reconstruction as a touchstone for scientific criteria: In the case of a theory containing variations of precision and consistency, which in this form have previously not been contained in the meta-theoretical canon of scientific criteria, the procedure of Rational Reconstruction can contribute to the expansion or adaptation of these criteria. We would like to show that there are areas in which, for good reasons, previous models of rationality should be expanded and supplemented (

The examples used in this essay provide a look at the possible application of Rational Reconstruction. The essay thereby shows how an utterly heterogeneous set of theoretical approaches can be constructively and fruitfully elaborated in an improved (more precise) variant and hence, if need be, revived. Likewise, it can be shown that the procedure of Rational Reconstruction is able to demonstrate the limits of rationality of certain theories and, as a result, to obtain the added value of rational precision and constructiveness for the entire discipline.