Chapter 1: The Effectiveness of Symbols: Mediology and Hermeneutics

As I explained in the Introduction, my approach in this book combines social theory of action and hermeneutics. The term “hermeneutics” is not new in social theory – it is often used in expositions of comprehensive sociological theories.1 However, the integration of the philosophical subdiscipline of hermeneutics into social theories is still sometimes met with scepticism. Is philosophical hermeneutics not the study of how to read texts? Is it not fatally bound to tradition? In this chapter, I want to pre-empt this possible objection and in this way also take the first steps in explicating my approach to action. Hermeneutics did indeed start out as the study of thorough reading. But more than a century’s philosophical research has expanded the field of hermeneutics to include all aspects of human reality. Action is certainly included. My primary interlocutor in this book, Paul Ricœur, is one of the philosophers who mastered the scholarly tradition of hermeneutics, but expanded it explicitly to a hermeneutics of agents and action, or as he often said, the acting and suffering human. The title of his book, From Text to Action, succinctly captures this point – this book is our major reference to his work in the present chapter. Making action an object of hermeneutic study simply means that it is studied not as a series of impersonal events, but as forms of doings that have meaning for those concerned in and by it. Here, hermeneutics is thus the study of meaning in action and of the interpretation of action. Accordingly, Ricœur’s hermeneutics of human capabilities (also called a hermeneutics of the capable human) will remain with us throughout this book.2 However, instead of simply proclaiming the usefulness of a hermeneutic approach to a social theory of action, I would like to defend it. In order to do so, I chose as my second interlocutor in this chapter someone who has explicitly expressed his doubts about the value of hermeneutics: Régis Debray.3 Debray is an interesting fencing partner for two very spe-