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Rensberger’s hermeneutic approach was an eclectic one based upon textual hermeneutics that could be described as quite moderate. The philosophers have taken a more structured approach and have attempted to extend the applicability of hermeneutic theory to other disciplines. Through review of some the basic theories their implications for archaeology can be examined. According to Donald R. Kelley, hermeneutics probably began with civilization itself. He wrote:
Contemporary theory includes quite qualified systems such as the postmodern hermeneutics of suspicion and retrieval advocated by Paul Riceur, the less restrictive hermeneutics of metacriticism of Hans-Georg Gadamer resting on the boundary-line between modern and post-modern thought, and the hermeneutics of understanding illustrated in the modernist thinking of Emilio Betti. "Intellectual fashion aside," wrote Donald R. Kelley, "the main attraction of hermeneutics seems to be its promise of alternatives to intimidating behaviorist, quantitative, or abstract-structuralist approaches to the human sciences" (Kelley 1983:644). Shaun Gallagher proposed a four-fold topology of hermeneutics -- conservative (associated with Schleiermacher, Dilthey, and Betti), moderate (from Gadamer and Ricoeur), critical (from Haberman and Karl-Otto after Marx, Freud, and the Frankfort School of social criticism), and radical (derived from Nietzsche and Heidegger) (Gallagher 1992:9-10).
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