The Critique Upon Postmodernist Hermeneutics

This thesis is a further study of the theory discussed in Chen Haifei's doctoral thesis of 2004, titled On Understanding -The Rebuilding of Hermeneutics from Marxist Perspective. It is aimed at analyzing and commenting the primary theory of postmodernist hermeneutics and its influence on the present understanding movement of Marxism.Hermeneutics is the discipline which regards understanding as its research object, which is the reflection of understanding, or is the understanding of understanding. It concludes two dimensions, one is affirmative, which studies how the understanding is possible; the other is negative, which studies how the understanding is impossible. Hermeneutics experiences four phases and forms, that is, partial hermeneutics, general hermeneutics, philosophical hermeneutics and postmodernist hermeneutics. Traditional hermeneutics, which contains partial hermeneutics and general hermeneutics, belongs to the affirmative dimension of hermeneutics with modern philosophical hermeneutics along, while postmodernist hermeneutics belongs to the negative dimensions of hermeneutics.Postmodernist hermeneutics embodies the characteristics of postmodernism, whose main schools are deconstructionist hermeneutics and neo-pragmatism hermeneutics. Derrida and the Yale School are the representatives of the former, and Rorty is of the latter. As for postmodernist hermeneutics, its basic concern is how the understanding is impossible, its core problem is the relation of intertextuality and text' polysemic, its basic principle is the understanding' subjectivity, its aim is to discard the role of author and refuse the text' original meaning, its important way is to ignore the history, to shift the place, or to change the time. It isolates the relation of understanding and interpretation, expands the object of understanding into the field of cognition, lays emphasis on the aesthetics or the pragmatism of the text partially so that it substitutes the text meaning for the grasped meaning. Thus postmodernist hermeneutics negates the traditional concerns and aims of former hermeneutics, abolishes the certainty of epistemology, the object of understanding, the validity of understanding, etc. and wipes out the traditional viewpoints of subjectivity, truth, history, knowledge and values, etc. as a result.The thesis bases on Marxist standpoints, methodology and objective practice of understanding, persists in the texts and critique, makes use of logic and history, analysis and synthesis, abstract and concrete, intertextuality, etc. to depict eight chapters as follows. Chapter 1 and chapter 2 introduce the background and main points of postmodernist hermeneutics. Chapter 3, 4, 5 comments on the...