Hermeneutics is a particular approach to the study of
texts. Advocates of this approach claim that such texts, and the people who produce them, cannot be studied using the same
methods as the
natural sciences. Moreover, they claim that such texts are conventionalized expressions of the experience of the author; thus, the
interpretation[?] of such texts will reveal something about the
social[?] context in which they were formed, but, more significantly, provide the reader with a means to share the experiences of the author. Among the key advocates of this approach are
Wilhelm Dilthey[?], a
historian and
philosopher; the
sociologist Max Weber; the philosopher
Martin Heidegger; and the philosopher
Hans-Georg Gadamer. Although
Jurgen Habermas attacked the principles of hermeneutics and advocated
critical theory as an alternative,
Paul Ricoeur[?] has attempted to reconcile and
synthesize[?] these two opposing
traditions.
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