Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.6, 2019

The Third Turn of Western Hermeneutics—From Habermas to Ricoeur

(Abstract)

He Weiping

Paul Ricoeur likened the two turns in Western hermeneutics—from partial to general hermeneutics, and from methodological to ontological hermeneutics—to a second Copernican revolution. We believe that hermeneutics is undergoing a third turn, i.e. the combination of hermeneutics with epistemology and methodology, represented by Habermas and Ricoeur. Habermas pioneered this turn, which has been developed further by Ricoeur. One could say that this is a return to Dilthey at a higher level, in a development that has a broad and profound meaning today.