ABSTRACT
The task of hermeneutics 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, p. 318). In other words, on this view scholars are not lockèd 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.”
