Beyond Human Hermeneutics to Post-Human Hermeneutics
Two Volume Set

Book Abstract

Is hermeneutics really so important that, as Friedrich Nietzsche once claimed, “There are no facts, only interpretations”? (TE 2017) This extreme view on hermeneutics can be contrasted with the cautious one by Rob Lowe, who rebuked by saying that “feng shui,” for example, “isn’t open to interpretation.” (BQ 2017)

Contrary to these opposing views (and other ones as will be discussed in the book), hermeneutics (in relation to physicalness and conceptualness—as well as other dichotomies) is neither possible (or impossible) nor desirable (or undesirable) to the extent that the respective ideologues (on different sides) would like us to believe, such that there is no physicalness without conceptualness (and vice versa), to be explained by the “empiricalness-nonempiricalness principle,” the “fiction-reality principle,” the “absoluteness-relativeness principle,” the “persuasiveness-nonpersuasiveness principle,” and other ones in “existential dialectics” (in Chapter Four).

Yet, this challenge to the conventional debate does not mean that hermeneutics, as a field of study, has no use, or that those diverse fields (related to hermeneutics)—such as communication studies, semantics, law, history, theology,  psychology, computer science, sociology, political science, anthropology, philosophy, literature, and so on—should be dismissed. (WK 2017) Of course, neither of these extreme views is reasonable.

Instead, this book offers an alternative (better) way to understand the future of hermeneutics (and related fields) in regard to the dialectic relationship between physicalness and conceptualness (and those in other dichotomies)—while learning from different approaches in the literature but without favoring any one of them (nor integrating them, since they are not necessarily compatible with each other). More specifically, this book offers a new theory (that is, the physical-conceptual theory of hermeneutics) to go beyond the existing approaches in a novel way and is organized in four chapters.

This seminal project will fundamentally change the way that we think about hermeneutics (in relation to the dialectic relationship between physicalness and conceptualness—as well as those in other dichotomies) from the combined perspectives of the mind, nature, society, and culture, with enormous implications for the human future and what I originally called its “post-human” fate.