ABSTRACT
The works of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur offer distinctive paradigms for contemporary hermeneutics. The most immediate difference between them is their diverging positions in regard to the text. Where Gadamer develops a dialogical model of interpretation, in which the text is a "thou" with whom we are engaged in conversation, Ricoeur insists upon the reflective distance of the text as a linguistic object. For Ricoeur, dialogue is an exchange of speech acts between interlocutors, where meaning is determined by ostensive reference to things present in a shared "here" and "now". Hence, the dialogical relation is not ontological; it is an epistemological relation between some subjects. The dialogical model, then, does not alienate the affinity of belonging between the text and its reader, but preserves it from any objectifying moment. Because Ricoeur seeks to continue the epistemological project of hermeneutics after Dilthey, he includes a moment of textual objectification within his more general theory of narrative.
