Hermeneutics and Social Identity

During at least the last four decades, the relationship between hermeneutics and politics has received a significant amount of attention. Charles Taylor, Michael Walzer, and others look to the understanding of meanings that hermeneutics explores and, specifically, to the understanding of the meanings that social goods, cultural activities, and past histories have for those who share them. The questions they ask concern how we are to understand our political traditions, their contents, and ourselves, and what consequences follow these understandings. Thus Taylor examines the large structures of thought that orient secularism in the West. Among other projects, Walzer looks to the different meanings different goods hold for different communities and argues that the answer to the question of how to distribute those goods must follow from those meanings.