‘Conversation is a process of coming to an understanding. Thus it belongs to every true conversation that each person opens himself to the other, truly accepts his point of view as valid and transposes himself into the other to such an extent that he understands not the individual, but what he says.
What is to be grasped is the substantive rightness of his opinion, so that we can be at one with each other on the subject. Thus we do not relate the other’s opinion to him but to our own opinions and views. Where a person is concerned with the other as individuality - e.g. in a therapeutic
conversation or the interrogation of a man accused of a crime - this is not really a situation in which two people are trying to come to an
understanding.’ (Gadamer, 1975, p.387)
Gadamer makes clear the difference between knowledge of an object and
understanding of an interlocutor (Taylor, 2002). Knowledge of an object is appropriate to natural science and can be described as a unilateral process (with mind on one side and object on the other) with the ultimate goal of knowledge which is fully secure, and the intent of which is instrumental control. Understanding of an interlocutor by contrast is always bilateral involving both speaker and listener (author and reader, researcher and research participant, etc.); it is party-dependent, insomuch as either party to this bilateral relationship are liable to change over time; and the goals of such
understanding are always open to revision, insomuch as ‘coming to an understanding [of another person] may require that I give some ground in my objectives. The end of the operation is not control, or else I am engaging in a sham, designed to manipulate my partner while pretending to negotiate.” (Taylor, 2002, p.128).
Hermeneutic conversation
Gadamer’s account of conversation as the basis of human understanding is therefore extremely helpful in reminding the researcher how such conversations need to be conducted if they are not to result in the sham described above by Taylor. Gadamer is just as interested as MacIntyre in language and the problems of translation. He
spends some time comparing the process of understanding in ordinary conversation with the process of hermeneutic interpretation of a text, and concludes:
“Thus it is perfectly legitimate to speak of a hermeneutical conversation.
But from this it follows that hermeneutical conversation, like real conversation, finds a common language, and that finding a common language is not, any more than in a real conversation, preparing a tool for the purpose of reaching understanding but, rather, coincides with the very act of understanding and reaching agreement. Even between partners of this “conversation” a communication like that between two people takes place that is more than mere accommodation. The text brings a subject matter into language, but that it does so is ultimately the achievement of the interpreter. Both have a share in it” (Gadamer, 1975, pp. 389-390).
Understanding is a joint enterprise, which brings into language a new subject, and Gadamer defines understanding as both linguistic and historically situated: “The linguisticality of understanding is the concretion of historically effected consciousness” (Gadamer, 1975, pp. 389-390).
Natural and genuine conversation
This is important for a researcher hoping to follow philosophical hermeneutics in conducting interviews. For understanding to be possible, the researcher must engage in genuine conversation. The researcher cannot, in Gadamer’s view, stand back from the conversation and observe his interlocutor as an object of study in themselves. As far as possible, the researcher will need to engage with the other as a rational agent and as a co-creator of an understanding or agreement on some topic which is of interest to both parties. ‘As far as possible’, because in some cases it may not be possible for the researcher to engage in this way: there may be occasions on which the views expressed by the other are sufficiently repellent that no such rapport is available.
More commonly, there may be simply points on which honest disagreement needs to be acknowledged, in order to preserve the relationship of mutual respect which a genuine conversation implies. Again, this is not to say that a good conversation should be an argument (and the more so with a research interview), but only that the focus must remain on the views being expressed, the story being told, not on the interlocutor as an individual.
There are two main consequences of this, which are in keeping with MacIntyre’s stance, and to some extent enable the researcher to accommodate his views on objectivity as openness to conflict. First is the general attitude which the researcher will need to maintain: any interview based on Gadamer’s notion of a genuine
conversation comprises two rational agents in a meeting of views, not a student and an object of study. Second, it follows from that principle, that whilst there is an onus on the researcher to make the effort to understand the other’s viewpoint (the researcher has requested the interview, after all), there is also an obligation on the researcher to offer a view in return when appropriate. In other words, the researcher cannot pretend not to have relevant views and cannot simply withhold views during the conversation.
Judgement will therefore be required as to when such moments arise, but these
judgements will not be on the basis of pre-planned tactics designed to elicit a particular kind of response. Such tactics would, again, be a recipe for an inauthentic
conversation in Gadamer’s terms.
3.9 MacIntyrean enquiry
As summarised in Section 2.11 above there is a growing movement of academics who are using MacIntyre’s thinking as a basis for empirical enquiry. Beadle and Moore (2011) explore the way in which MacIntyre has influenced research in organisation theory. They make the case that “a set of philosophical commitments unite
MacIntyrean and hermeneutic attitudes towards research methods. The intimacy between social structures, social roles … and the tradition-constituted framework through which notions as fundamental as agency and context are understood provides distinctive boundaries around the conduct of research.” They cite a number of
MacIntyrean empirical studies which are characterised by an emphasis on thick descriptions created through narrative, and suggest that empirical work claiming to follow MacIntyre’s philosophy would exclude certain types of enquiry. They refer to the following list of exclusions from Coe and Beadle (2008):
‘enquiries which do not relate themselves (including the possibility of critically relating themselves) to a tradition-constituted community of enquiry;
enquiries seeking to create law-like generalizations through the testing of hypotheses about causation through measurement of a defined list of variables;
enquiries which do not report their findings in a narrative form;
enquiries which exclude agents’ self-understandings in attempting to account for their behaviour;
enquiries which exclude either features of institutions (structure) or the agency of subjects in their explanations;
enquiries which do not recognize the ineliminable presence of the enquirers’
judgments in the accounts they present.’ (Coe and Beadle, 2008, p.10) The authors include the point of caution that the second bullet point does not exclude quantitative research, only research which makes positivist assumptions about the creation of law-like generalisations. This is a useful list, but is cast in the negative in order to describe limits to what might be considered MacIntyrean research; it is not a formula for research design. What it can do is to provide boundaries to potential research designs.
We are now in a position to state in a positive mode, six principles of enquiry. These match the six principles of epistemology already explored in the current chapter and are designed to be compatible with the boundaries set by Coe and Beadle (2008).
They are stated here following the same sequence as that explored in the sections 3.3 to 3.8 above:
Principle 1. Moral enquiry is constituted in relation to particular traditions. Traditions provide those bases in rationality from which the researcher enquires and from which participants or respondents answer.
Principle 2. Narrative is both a medium of discovery and a medium for reporting; i.e.
the self-understandings of research participants are encountered in the form of narrative, and research findings are presented likewise in the form of narrative.
Principle 3. Plain persons are also always moral philosophers; as moral agents in their day-to-day practice, plain persons are at least as well placed as professional philosophers to develop cogent moral theory.
Principle 4. Claims to truth are provisional. Truth is the aim of enquiry; rationality provides the resources by which enquiry is carried through. Truth cannot be claimed as the outcome of any particular piece of research, only progress towards the truth;
theories generated by empirical research are always to some degree provisional.
Principle 5. All understanding is conditioned by culturally established prejudgements, a set of assumptions which make a particular agent’s horizon of understanding
available to them. Again this includes researcher and research participant.
Principle 6. Human understanding is reached through conversations, both natural and hermeneutic, and all genuine conversations are places in which some fusion of horizons is ventured. Conversation is a paradigm for the hermeneutic circle.
Because this list is positively stated, it is more directive than Coe and Beadle’s list of exclusions quoted above, but it matches those limitations, allowing that the emphasis and language is in some respects different, mainly because of the introduction of concepts drawn from Gadamer. In both cases the language is not yet fully the mainstream terminology of doctoral research; the terms interpretation / interpretive, data, data collection, analysis, coding etc., have not appeared in the set. Most of these terms will reappear in further discussion, but it will have been helpful to have filled out this background first; ‘data’, for instance, will reappear as some form of narrative and/or transcript of conversation. For similar reasons, time has been taken up to this point to discuss at length the key notions arising from MacIntyre and Gadamer, in order that terms will be less open to misinterpretation. So, for instance, the use of ‘narrative’
here does not imply what has become known as ‘narrative analysis’ (Cresswell, 2013, pp.70-76).
The above six list of six principles may be represented in diagrammatic form as follows:
Figure 1: Research Design Scheme
The above diagram is intended as a visual representation of the six key principles of the research: conversation, narrative, prejudgement, tradition, plain persons,
provisional truth status. Conversation and narrative occupy a central place, and are particularly relevant to the gathering of primary data: primary data is generated through conversations, and those conversations concern narratives, especially participants’
narratives of their own professional lives. On the left of the diagram are those principles which particularly inform the background to the gathering and analysis of primary data, and on the right of the diagram is the principle concerning the status of the research findings with regard to truth and rationality. However, this diagram is not intended to convey an adequate sense of sequencing.
Central to the scheme is the enactment of conversations, both natural and
hermeneutic. In particular, in this model primary data is generated through research conversations. These conversations are in the form of ‘semi-structured interviews’, but because they are explicitly genuine conversations, they also have the following
characteristics:
the conversation is led by neither party, but by both, so that the route that the conversation takes cannot be described in advance;
there is no attempt to exclude certain types of contribution from the research participant, who may, for instance, offer theories of their own;
Provisional claims Narrative
Conversation Tradition
Plain Persons
Prejudgement
the researcher likewise offers his own views (prejudgements) where appropriate, including on occasion his understanding of relevant academic theory, and there is no pretence of a neutral standpoint;
disagreement is possible in the conversation, including the possibility of a fundamental failure to understand one another;
conversational gambits may be used in an ordinary way by both parties, but there is no attempt by the researcher to manipulate the other into a given type of response in a pre-planned way; the research participant is at all times treated as a rational agent.
As with any diagrammatic scheme, there is much that is not stated here. Perhaps the most important omission to highlight here is the idea of reflexivity. This is a strong theme in Gadamer, and he is keen to stress that his rehabilitation of the idea of prejudgement is not an excuse for a lack of rigour in the researcher, or a lack of
engagement in conversation. As Gadamer has it, ‘a person who is not ready to put his or her own prejudices in question is also someone to whom there is no point talking’
(Gadamer, 2001, pp.44). This places an obligation on the researcher to continuously reflect on and question his own prejudices, and his own historical standpoint, including his position in any given tradition (Gadamer, 2001, p.46). Reflexivity is therefore an essential theme which runs throughout this kind of research method and is implicit in all elements of the above scheme.