NIETZSCHE AND CONTEMPORARY META-SCIENCE: Contributions to the Interpretive Turn

This essay suggests Friedrich Nietzsche has a contribution to make to the theoretical enterprise of social science. Contemporary theorizing, reflecting an increased attention to language, has been focusing on the dialogical mode of production and, of course, on hermeneutics. This has led to a renewal of interest in Friedrich Nietzsche. In this essay, two alternative models of the hermeneutic circle are examined: one arising out of the work of the school of Konstanz; the other associated primarily with the work of Juergen Habermas. The former presents a circular image of the "conversational" situation; the latter portrays a time schedule of the process based on the psychoanalytic process of therapy. Nietzsche's contributions are suggested to be significant, in the first model, in regard to the mode of production and, in the second, the stage of the quasi-naturalistic turn. Nietzsche's way to truth is through constant and relentless criticizing. In contrast to the rationalistic practices of Western philosophy, Nietzsche exercised an art of interpreting based on the use of metaphor and aphorism. This practice seems to reflect Nietzsche's concern to communicate truth in a world he saw as inherently ambiguous and dynamic, thus, rendering propositional truth impossible. Nietzsche radically challenges the rational foundations on which we stand. Thus he presents us with a mode of knowledge production that reclaims traditions lost to science. In addition, Nietzsche shows, by word and example, that his existential approach offers a way to see life as a text and source for quasi-naturalistic forays toward understanding. In this way Nietzsche shows that the traditional concept of knowledge is a pseudo-concept by revealing the intimate and inseparable connection between life and knowledge. Knowledge is rooted in life; it is a manifestation of concrete psychological and political realities. Consequently, it makes sense not to ignore life as a source for explanation when examining resources for re-establishing communication when the hermeneutic circle breaks down in a moment of misunderstanding.