Philosophical Methods: Transcendental, Linguistic, Hermeneutic
***Transcendental Method***
Created by Kant, it seeks the base of knowledge and to give it reason. Because all rational human knowledge is necessary, Kant tries to answer three questions: What can I know? What should I do? What am I allowed to expect? In summary: What is man? To give reason for our being, it is necessary to discover the conditions necessary for every individual, time, and place. Kant looks for the conditions that allow us to learn, act, and expect in the way we do, the human way. The transcendental subject, as Kant calls it, is a set of structures and empirical-rational conditions. The method looks for the ordinary, universal, and necessary in reality. Kant searches in the order of reason itself, producing the Copernican investment in philosophy. Kant attempts to explain our knowledge from the study of the transcendental subject. He discovers that man has two sources of knowledge:
- The faculty of sensibility
- The intellectual faculties: reason and understanding
The philosophical task undertaken by Kant will be pursued by Hegel, another impulse of transcendental philosophy.
***Linguistic Analytical Method***
This method of analysis is called the philosophy of language. It was born in the 20th century. Its advocates believe that most philosophical problems arise because terms are vague, and philosophical obscurity results in confusion. The task of philosophy is to analyze language and try to clarify it. These philosophers concentrate their interest in two orientations:
Formal Language Analysis
Follows logic and semantics. Logic, as a perfect language ideal for even the propositions of logic, says nothing about the world; it shows the common formal properties of language and the world. Everything it says is true. The philosophy of science is responsible for the logical clarification of thoughts.
Informal Language Analysis
Considers informal logic and that there are different ways of using language, which Wittgenstein called linguistic games. They are not just ways of using language but models that describe communicative situations closely intertwined with forms of life. Multiple language games continually produce new ones while leaving some that are no longer used.
***Hermeneutic Method***
- The task of hermeneutics was the art of interpreting and understanding the meaning of texts.
- In the 19th century, the work of F. Schleiermacher and W. Dilthey took this art beyond texts and universalized it.
- All human actions or historical events need to be understood and interpreted because they have a sense.
- The social sciences deal with human actions. They cannot simply try to explain their causes; they should seek to understand and interpret the meaning of these actions.
- It suggests two things:
- The method of modern science, to explain chance events, is insufficient to understand history because meaning is not explained; we understand it from experience.
- The response is structured in two ways:
- Non-normative hermeneutics: Philosophy is considered to conform to discover elements that enable understanding and tradition. Comprehension or understanding is different for each person, and there is no way to progress and get better understandings (Gadamer and Rorty).
- The Regulatory Response: Tries to find, among the elements that make understanding possible, criteria from which to criticize false understandings. It is possible to make progress in understanding.
- Those who do not respect compressions’ validity claims are incorrect.