American International Journal of Social Science

The Ricoeurian Way: Towards A Critical Hermeneutics for the Human and Social Sciences
Vinicio Busacchi

Abstract
Focusing on Paul Ricoeur’s philosophical methodology as practised in his mature speculative work, it is possible to profile a hermeneutical procedural model: that of a critical hermeneutics, methodologically and epistemologically structured, for the most part by following the theory of the arc herméneutique. Ricoeur’s reinterpretation of Freudian psychoanalysis offers one of the first theoretical and disciplinary bases for this theory and his practice of philosophy offers in itself the model of a philosophy exercised as a practical theory and as a human and social science. Indeed, Ricoeur’s critical hermeneutics is at once a philosophy, a philosophical approach, and a methodological model for the human and social sciences, which works to coordinate explanation and understanding under the rule of interpretation.

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