The Power of Dialogue
Subtitle: Critical Hermeneutics after Gadamer and Foucault (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)
Publisher: The MIT Press
Published: October 15, 1996
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 334
ISBN-13: 9780262112161
Subjects: Epistemology, theory of knowledge; Western philosophy, from c 1900 -; Speculative Philosophy; Philosophy; Epistemology; History & Surveys - Modern; Contributions in hermeneutics; Foucault, Michel; Gadamer, Hans Georg; Philosophy / General; General; 1900-2002; 1926-1984; 20th century; Foucault, Michel,; Gadamer, Hans Georg,; Hermeneutics; History
First sentence: Understanding is not possible without preunderstanding: this thesis does not concern merely the methodological objectivism of those human sciences that take themselves to be capable of assuring without prejudice the objective significance of their object domains.
Description: Exemplifying a fruitful fusion of French and German approaches to social theory, The Power of Dialogue transforms Jurgen Habermas's version of critical theory into a new "critical hermeneutics" that builds on both Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics and Michel Foucault's studies of power and discourse.

At the book's core is the question of how social power shapes and influences meaning and how the process of interpretation, while implicated in social forms of power, can nevertheless achieve reflective distance and a critique of power. It offers an original perspective on such issues as the impact of prejudice and cultural background on scientific interpretation, the need to understand others without assimilating their otherness, and the "truth" of interpretation.