Intercultural Hermeneutics Contextualized
A Prolegomena to Future Architectural Theories
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5195/errs.2025.689Keywords:
Horizon of experience, text, technical object, cultural milieu, architectureAbstract
This study draws on Bernard Stiegler’s philosophy of technology to develop Paul Ricoeur’s nascent intercultural hermeneutics and contextualize it in the discipline of architecture. The horizon of experience—considered as the boundary of human existence—never fully uncovers itself, yet always partially externalizes and objectifies into artifacts. A parallel reading of Ricoeur’s proposition “texts as the fixation of discourse” and Stiegler’s “technical objects as prostheses” helps illustrate this externalization process. The transmission, aggregation, and interconnection of meaningful artifacts constitute a cultural milieu that features a certain autonomy and internal coherence. Ricoeur’s example is the intertextuality of Greek literature, while Stiegler identified the modern “technical milieu” composed of machine networks. Architecture can be understood as the artifacts relevant to the built environment within a cultural milieu. And architectural theory—unfolds according to Ricoeur’s three-step figurations—is to explore a given cultural milieu and open up multiple horizons of experience for human existence.
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