The concept of Bildung, sometimes translated as self-cultivation, is at the core of an influential tradition of educational thought. What is the relation between Bildung and interculturality? Drawing on Wilhelm von Humboldt and Hans-Georg Gadamer, and on so-called transformative learning theory, Bildung is interpreted as a process of transforming one’s meaning perspective in encounters with others. A meaning perspective is a set of largely implicit presuppositions underlying one’s habitual ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. Confrontation with alternative perspectives can be an opportunity to become aware of one’s own perspective, to critically assess it and to transform it. Thus conceived, Bildung is closely related to interculturality.
Hume’s ethics is concerned not only with the metaphysical status of moral qualities but equally, if not more, with the problem of determining to what extent and under what conditions issues of moral disagreement and inquiry can be decided by rational argumentation. This paper argues that Hume’s solution to the second problem is a form of perspectivism: the rational decidability of moral issues depends on the existence of shared perspectives, or sets of assumptions and correlated dispositions to feelings, and is largely independent of the metaphysical status of moral qualities. An issue of disagreement may thus be rationally decidable among people with certain dispositions to feeling but not among others. A similar perspectivist reading is suggested for Hume’s analysis of knowledge about causes and effects.
Ett återkommande tema i Hans-Georg Gadamers Sanning och metod (1960) är hans kritik av empatitanken. Att tolka en text handlar inte om att återskapa eller efterlikna en annan människas situation och perspektiv utan snarare om att föra en sorts dialog med henne om die Sache, den sakfråga som texten handlar om. ”Att förstå är primärt att komma överens”, säger Gadamer i en sorts sammanfattande slogan. Vilka är Gadamers invändningar mot empatitanken, och hur allvarliga är de? Jag skisserar problembakgrunden i den hermeneutiska och empatiteoretiska traditionen och diskuterar därefter Gadamers argument.
I essän ”En dialog” (1751) argumenterar David Hume för att det finns universella, kulturoberoende moraliska principer, och i essän ”Om polygami och skilsmässor” (1742) ger han ett entydigt universalistiskt svar på en tillämpat normativ fråga när han hävdar att polygami är förkastligt oberoende av kultur eller tradition. På vilka grunder förkastar Hume polygami? Hur kan han hävda att dessa och andra moraliska argument och ståndpunkter är universellt giltiga? Och hur kan universalismen förenas med den moraliska sentimentalismen? Jag skisserar först argumentet mot polygami i ”Om polygami och skilsmässor” och idén om ett stadigt och allmänt perspektiv i Treatise och Enquiry. Huvuddelen av diskussionen ägnas därefter åt Humes behandling av kulturrelativismens problem i ”En dialog”.
By what criteria can an empathetic interpreter justify the inference from the fact that, when simulating another person, he himself forms such-and-such intentions to act in the imagined situation, to the supposed fact that the person simulated formed or will form the same intentions? It is suggested that the interpreter determines this by normatively assessing the reasons for and against the action, simply following his own subjective or perspective-dependent criteria for what is reasonable to believe, desire, and do in the given situation. If the interpreter finds the other's action to be well-motivated, this is indication that the interpreter shares the perspective of the other, and hence that the explanation is valid. In Hans-Georg Gadamer's words: understanding is, primarily, agreement. A possible objection is that this turns interpretation into something purely subjective and relative. It is argued that the relativity involved is harmless and does not imply relativism in any important sense
Recent theories of critical thinking have stressed the importance of taking into consideration in critical enquiry the perspectives, or presuppositions, of both the speaker whose statements are under scrutiny and the critic himself. The purpose of the paper is to explore this idea from an epistemological (rather than a pedagogical or psychological) point of view. The problem is first placed within the general context of critical thinking theory. Three types of perspective-dependence are then described, and the consequences of each for the possibility of critical discussion discussed. It is concluded that although it is essential in critical discussion to take the other’s perspective into consideration, perspective-dependence does not exclude the possibility of criticism
With his theory of sympathy in the Treatise of Human Nature, Hume has been interpreted as anticipating later hermeneutic theories of understanding. It is argued in the present article that Hume has good reasons to consider a hermeneutic theory of empathetic understanding, that such a theory avoids a serious difficulty in Hume's "official," positivist theory of sympathy, that it is compatible with the complex and subtle form of positivism, or naturalism, developed in Book 1 of the Treatise, and that his analysis of sympathy provides valuable methodological rules for empathetic interpreters. Against the interpretation of James Farr in "Hume, Hermeneutics, and History," it is maintained that Hume's theory does not support a hermeneutics of non-empathetic Verstehen