Title: The potential for philosophical hermeneutics to clarify problems in Australian perceptions of Asia: the case of JapanSubmitted by: Chris Coney, The Australian National UniversityPhilosophical hermeneutics has been almost entirely ignored by Australian historians to this day. This body of knowledge, and especially the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, has great potential to open up very interesting new perspectives on cross-cultural perception. The three key areas are 1. preunderstanding and prejudice (the latter does not have a negative connotation), 2. horizon of understanding, and 3. the fusion of the horizon of the observer with that of the object/text etc to be understood in an act of new understanding. At the prereflective stage children imbibe a worldview the content of which determines how things in the world are understood. Later in life with reflective and critical capacities humans expand this prereflective worldview into an horizon of understanding that is capable of continuous enrichment. The latter occurs when new things are learned. This paper discusses how hermeneutics provides new insights into the diversity of Australian perceptions of Japan and how and why this diversity came about. It will also briefly discuss the criticisms of hermeneutics developed by Habermas who shows that the critique of ideologies like racism and Orientalism cannot be advanced within the framework of hermeneutics, but only through a critique of ideology founded on a theory of the idea of undistorted communication. Return to Abstracts menuCarol Burnett Phone: 61 - 3 - 9349 1899 Email: c.burnett@asialink.unimelb.edu.au
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