408 - Hermeneutics and the Sociology of Knowledge

Hermeneutics and the Sociology of Knowledge
By Susan J. Hekman
Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1986. 224 pages. $29.95.

The title of this book suggests that hermeneutics has something to say to the sociology of knowledge. The author, a teacher of political science at the University of Texas at Arlington, promises in the first chapter to show how "anti-foundational thought, and particularly the work of Gadamer, provides an accurate understanding of the task of the social sciences" and can help to redefine "an existing research program in the social sciences, the sociology of knowledge." If this reviewer understands the author's appropriation of Gadamer, this review should strive for some sort of "fusion" between my understanding and hers, a fusion of our respective horizons. The fusion is possible because both our beings are constituted by language and rooted in our specific communities of speech. Granted that these contexts supply distortions and prejudices, they can nonetheless be superseded through conversation mediated by the text in question. I need not be worried too much about Hekman's vocabulary or intentions. Any misinterpretations on my part should' come out in the wash of the give and take of public speech. Such speech is not merely a conversation between author and reviewer but is public.

The author herself takes texts very seriously indeed, and she focuses almost entirely on communication that is serious. Much of her work is devoted to attempts to save Gadamer from misreadings and to point to relevant or neglected virtues in the work of Mannheim. Gadamer has been misread as a historicist and a relativist. Hekman seeks to redress the balance of interpretation by showing that Gadamer follows Heidegger in rooting his ideas in the centrality of language. Language is central and almost (perhaps not quite) "foundational" of human existence, but for Gadamer language is not transcendent (as Heidegger perhaps would

410 - Hermeneutics and the Sociology of Knowledge

have it) because it is rooted in concrete situations, communities, and periods. The effort to spare Gadamer from misreading is made more difficult, the author notes, because of apparent inconsistencies in Gadamer's own texts. Furthermore, Gadamer at times seems to restore reason to a position in which it could correct the distortions of language, a position that comes precariously close to the Enlightenment's trust in reason as a means to knowledge. Hekman is eager to correct any tendencies toward "foundational" thought, especially where that foundation is rationality.

The author's attempt to separate writers on the basis of concepts and orientations (objectivist, positivist, nihilist, foundational, anti-foundational, and the like) is fortunately tempered by her fidelity to the inconsistencies of the texts she has studied. There is a discipline to the study of texts, and she is usually faithful to the terms of the texts themselves. Sometimes, however, she relies on hearsay and personal testimony. Of Foucault's Archeology of Knowledge, she writes "it is widely acknowledged to be his worst book and presents a position that he later repudiates." Like the testimonials and citations on the jacket of her book, these other sources of credit or discredit seem like forms of discourse imported to add credibility to this text.

If the text is paradigmatic for hermeneutics, it is hardly so for the social sciences. Therein lies a problem, one that Hekman appears to side-step. She clearly seeks to find in Gadamer and hermeneutics a "research program," although not a "method," for the social sciences. In so doing, however, Hekman ignores the fact that some sociologists do not find texts paradigmatic or even very useful for the study of social life. Most forms of discourse are not in texts; those that are textual suffer from a variety of constraints whose effects usually are not apparent in the text itself.

Sociologists are not always interested in discourse, and those who are interested do not necessarily find "serious" discourse representative or particularly interesting. To be interesting to many sociologists, Hekman could well have devoted more space to the sociology of language, to discourse analysis, and to ethno-methodological studies of conversation, Even if she had addressed herself to these areas of sociological inquiry, she also would have had to speak to those who reject the notion that conversation is typical of the situations in which most individuals do their talking. (I mention these aspects of sociology particularly, since the reviewer, to be responsible in addressing this or any other text, should be candid about his or her own "horizon.")

It should be added that many sociologists of knowledge are quite aware of the relativity of their viewpoint and of their own rootedness in a concrete or particular social situation. Hekman could have engaged sociologists of knowledge more directly, for instance, if she had taken up the proposal of Friedrichs (in a Sociology of Sociology) for a "reflexive" orientation. Instead, she attacks two or three others who "overlook

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the fact that the investigator's position as well as the position of the investigated is socially determined." Her accusation, she goes on to say, focuses on a failing that is "implicit in their approach" (emphasis added). There is a sociological tradition that recognizes the possibility of inferring implicit meanings from various observations, but Hekman is apparently not engaging it in this text. Unfortunately, I was left wondering about the author's grounds for selecting certain texts in the social sciences and for ignoring others that might have impeded her generalizations.

Richard Fenn

Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey