Pastoral Relationship with People with Intellectual ... - Theses

164ongoing basis. 438 Action researcher Ernest Stringer refers to this as the pursuit ofa “higher level synthesis.” 4395.4.1 The Historic Emergence of the Hermeneutical CircleThe concept of the hermeneutical circle can be traced to pre-Enlightenment religious contexts. One interpretation of this hermeneutical formconceived of the hermeneutical task involved beginning with text-based ideasthat could lead to an understanding of the religious subject under consideration.The ideas presupposed at least a rudimentary understanding of that for which amore thorough understanding was sought. Thus, “understanding turns out to be adevelopment of what is already understood, with the more developedunderstanding returning to illuminate and enlarge one’s starting point.” 440Some more contemporary forms of this hermeneutical structure are basedon the conceptualisation of scholar Martin Heidegger who saw the hermeneuticalcircle as a means of conceptualising, from a phenomenological perspective, 441 thenotion of human being, which he refers to as Dasein. 442Figure 5.1 Heidegger’s Hermeneutical Circle 443ExistentialsForestructureBEINGDasein438 Guba, Egon, and Yvonna Lincoln. Fourth Generation Evaluation. (Newbury Park: SagePublications, Inc., 1989), 143.439 Stringer, Action Research, 42.440 Crotty, The Foundations of Social Research, 92.441 See,Heidegger, Martin. "Being and Time." In Basic Writings, edited by David Krell, 37-114.London: Routledge, 1996.Heidegger interprets the concept of phenomenology as “the science of the Being of beings –ontology.” 84. It seeks “… to let what shows itself be seen from itself …” 81.442 The word Dasein is derived from the German word Existenz meaning existence.Heidegger refers to the term in the sense of “a being that has the possibility of existence ...”See,ibid., 85.443 Crotty, The Foundations of Social Research, 98.