The purpose of this research is to examine hermeneutics and feminism as philosophical positions, with a view toward determining the implications for nursing science if both were adopted for or by the discipline. The plan of the research will be to review and critique the philosophical viewpoints, to compare and contrast their strengths and weaknesses, and then to discuss how and whether they might have relevance for to nursing science praxis.
Hermeneutics is the name given to social science and philosophical methodology that seeks to interpret meanings of given social and political contexts and the significance of discrete social and political phenomena and human experience more generally. Traditionally, the term has been associated with textual analysis, mainly biblical exegesis, but over time, and especially in recent years, it has been enlarged and absorbed by a whole range of disciplines in search of interpretive strategies and explanatory power consistent with the scientific method. According to Bontekoe (1996), the evolution and enlargement of hermeneutics has been largely to the good. He essentially argues that hermeneutics methodology in the modern period has enabled practitioners to engage with and bridge the gap between the content and spirit of the age on one hand and the natural sciences on the other. In other words, hermeneutics fuses methods of epistemology with scientific method, applying them to subjects typical of the humanities and social sciences as well as to texts (and by extension language more generally), in order to reach meaning.
Broadly speaking, hermeneutics is a systematic strategy of critical thinking. This implies that its principal assumption is that experience and phenomena are meant to be scrutinized empirically, then critiqued and judged with reference to what is known. In this regard, Ferraris's History of Hermeneutics demonstrates that "the domain of interpretation" has been universalized, or s...