Phenomenological Hermeneutics Seen from America

This study sustains the appropriateness of applying the steps for phenomenologicalhermeneutics, or perhaps it should be said a phenomenological hermeneutic, to the understanding of Latin America in a line that brings together the philosophical work of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur. Within a broad, diversified hermeneutic panorama, the study alludes to the importance of phenomenology as a prior step to an interpretive hermeneutic, according to Paul Ricoeur. Reference is made to the phenomenological method that proceeds through successive reductions or suspensions of judgment, permitting an unprejudiced access to the physical, anthropological and social realities of the subcontinent, directed toward showing its own identity. In a second phase, that unprejudiced capturing admits and reclaims its complementation through an actual hermeneutic, capable of broadening that horizon of understanding toward history and the total human experience. In this second phase, the possibility of applying a basic notion about all hermeneutics, the hermeneutic circle, is highlighted. Consequently, the paper will not deal with an undetermined hermeneutic but rather with the adoption of situated thought. Interpreting Latin America from Latin America will be the proposed horizon in this orientation, within which the Argentinean philosopher, Rodolfo Kusch, has taken significant steps.