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In Hermeneutics, especially "philosophical hermeneutics," 1966–1976 was a decade of ferment, internal development, dialogue with contemporary currents of thought, and in all a lively "conflict of interpretations." Paul Ricoeur's observation in De l"interprétation (1965) that the problems of language and text interpretation had become the "crossroads of contemporary thought" may be said to extent through the decade. In addition to traditional hermeneutics theological hermeneutics, and the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, other movements of thought came to the fore — such as structuralism, semiotics, Lacan's language-centered Freudian psychoanalysis, Foucault, and the renewed interest in the philosophy of Nietzsche. These latter developments drew international attention to France as a center for new strides forward in theory of language and theory of textual interpretation. Of course, some French intellectuals even went so far as to see semiology and hermeneutics as "two fierce enemies' (Foucault) [1], or to argue that hermeneutics was passé because Tintertextualité evince l"intersubjectivité" (Kristeva). [2]. But hermeneutics, as a perennial problem and as a body of philosophical reflection on interpretation, transcends such easy dichotomizations.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-010-9940-0_16

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