Hermeneutics as Epistemic Ground: A Foucauldian Trail

By undertaking a critique of Foucault’s archaeology, this paper aims to define hermeneutics as the conscious play of an individual that deals with the incompleteness of given data (contingency) in order to construct a consistent account of her own experience (discourse). The understanding of how Foucauldian analysis detaches itself from dogmatic exegesis provides us with profitable means of knowledge and vindicates the relevance of historical knowledge with regard to some misplaced claims of epistemic fallacies—allegedly embedded in the genealogical project. Accordingly, the epistemological relevance of Foucault’s approach is briefly proven by offering a critical overview of two concepts: the biological concept of the individual and that of shared intentionality. Up to this point, the examined approach does not display the features of ontologically-oriented hermeneutics: hence, it is suggested to redefine its role in terms of what could be called “mild perspectivism”—in order to distinguish it from full-fledged relativism. The epistemic value of perspectivism unveils a more fundamental process of human agency: the construction of subjectivity as the result of recursive knowledge-oriented practices on one’s own self. In conclusion, “second-order” hermeneutics is proposed as the interplay of awareness and discourse-making processes.