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transcendental discipline). As Gadamer stated in this regard, “The human sciences are notonly a problem for philosophy, on the contrary, they represent a problem of philosophy.”(PHC, 112) As the philosophical-theoretical “science” of the human lifeworld, hermeneutics,one might say, is in its very essence a philosophy of the human sciences. Hermeneuticsis nothing other than, as Gadamer says, the theory of the practice of interpretation, thereflective analysis of what is “at play in the practical experience of understanding.” (RAS,112) And thus, as he also says, “as the theory of interpretation or explication, it is not justa theory.” (RAS, 93) Hermeneutics, one might say, is theory “with practical intent.” Inthe last analysis, the ultimate justification of hermeneutic theory, as a theory of practice,is its significance for practice.Just as Merleau-Ponty went further than Heidegger in the exploration of the bodilynature of our being-in-the-world, so likewise Ricoeur has gone further than Gadamer indealing with methodological issues confronting the human sciences and in entering intoa full-fledged debate with various human disciplines such as psychoanalysis, linguistics,historiography, and literary studies. He has always held the conviction that “philosophycannot exist on its own” (BSS, 653) and that, in fact, it “perishes if its dialogue with thesciences…were to be interrupted.” (IA, 39) He has in this regard voiced a criticism ofGadamer’s stance in relation to which, as he says, he has “taken a certain distance.” (CC,73) According to Ricoeur, Gadamer’s way of opposing truth and method (the “and” in thetitle of Gadamer’s magnum opus functioning in fact as a kind of disjunctive) seemed toRicoeur to have the unfortunate effect of continuing the “anti-methodological conclusionsof Heideggerian philosophy.” 120 Thus, Ricoeur viewed his own endeavors as fallingmore under the heading of “methodological hermeneutics” than that of “ontologicalhermeneutics” and defined his own approach vis-à-vis both Heidegger and Gadamer aswanting to contribute “to this ontological vehemence an analytical precision which itwould otherwise lack.” (OI, 196) Although Ricoeur fully subscribed to the basic ontologicalconcerns of Heidegger and Gadamer, he nonetheless felt that their preoccupationwith fundamental ontology tended to hinder philosophical hermeneutics from entering intoa productive dialogue with the more empirically oriented sciences. While, as he once said,ontology may be the “promised land” of phenomenological reflection, “like Moses, thespeaking and reflecting subject can only glimpse this land before dying.” (CI, 24)In attempting to work out a methodological hermeneutics in dialogue with the empiricalsciences, Ricoeur was here also, as it were, following in the footsteps of Merleau-Ponty,whose way of thinking represented a methodological alternative to Heidegger’s “ontologism.”Whereas Heidegger’s religious-like preoccupation with “Being” 121 effectivelyprecluded him from taking much of an interest in the social sciences and the moremundane realm of human affairs, Merleau-Ponty’s concern to explore the bodily natureof our being-in-the-world with the aid of the empirical sciences led him to devote a greatdeal of attention to the relation between phenomenology and the human sciences in hislectures at the Sorbonne in the early 1950s. 122 And when, in his later work, Merleau-Ponty turned his attention to explicitly ontological issues (under, in part, the influence ofthe later Heidegger), his way of doing so again contrasted with that of Heidegger. Unlikethe later Heidegger who wanted to think Being directly, to “think Being without regard120See Paul Ricoeur, “Langage (Philosophie),” in Encyclopaedia Universalis (1971), 9:780; see alsoRicoeur, Main Trends in Philosophy, 268-69.121As Gadamer observes, Heidegger’s preoccupation with “Being,” with the Sein of Da-Sein, “meantthe search for God. He was a seeker of God his entire life.” Gadamer, A Century of Philosophy, 122, 127.122See, for instance, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s “Les sciences de l’homme et la phénoménologie,”trans. John Wild, as “Phenomenology and the Sciences of Man,” in PriP.37