ABSTRACT
The task of hermeneutics, according to Richard Rorty, is to charm hermetically sealed-off thinkers out of their self-enclosed practices and to see the relations among scholars as strands of a conversation, a conversation without presuppositions that unites the speakers, but “where the hope of agreement is never lost so long as the conversation lasts” (Rorty, 1979: 318). On this view scholars are not locked in combat over some universal truth but united in society: “persons whose paths through life have fallen together, united by civility rather than by a common goal, much less a common ground” (p. 318).
