Hermeneutic phenomenology is a philosophical approach aimed at understanding human experiences as they are lived and interpreted by individuals. It emphasizes the interpretation of subjective meanings and the context in which they arise, rather than seeking objective truths. This methodology involves exploring lived experiences through dialogue, interpretation, and reflection to uncover underlying themes and structures that shape human perception and understanding

1. Hermeneutic
Phenomenology
Presented by,
Naresh Kumar Yadav
MPH 2023
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2. Introduction
 Interpretive phenomenology, hermeneutic phenomenology or ‘hermeneutics’, as it is
more commonly known, is the science of interpretation of texts, whereby language, in its
written or spoken form.
 The hermeneutic phenomenologist emphasizes the ‘ordinary language’ of everyday
experience, the words we use on a day-to-day basis, to describe and explain cultural
mores, behaviors, events and actions and the relationship between ‘ordinary language’
and daily social life.
 Hermeneutic phenomenologists strive to understand the nature of human beings and the
meanings they bestow upon the world by examining language in its cultural context.
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3. Underlying philosophical and historical developments
 In the eighteenth century, phenomenology was first practiced as the examination
of religious texts. Explorations of understanding (Verstehen) restricted to ‘religious
exegesis’ (Mueller-Vollmer 1986) were extended to include broader linguistic
understanding.
 In the nineteenth century Dilthey’s work was particularly influential, emphasizing
the need to see text as just one element of understanding within the broader
framework of historical knowledge.
 Dilthey viewed historical knowledge as an interrelationship between experience,
expression and understanding. 3

4. Husserl, Heidegger and interpretive phenomenology
 Husserl concentrated on the subject–object divide and in defiance of Cartesian
thought, which suggested that mind and body were distinct substances with
determinate essences described the relationship between subject and object as
inextricably linked through conscious knowing.
 Husserl argued that by suspending or rendering noninfluential the outer world, it
was possible to clarify how objects appear to consciousness. In order to do this,
Husserl recommended putting reality on hold, ‘bracketing out’ all extraneous
thoughts using ‘the phenomenological reduction’, or epoche.
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5. Husserl, Heidegger and interpretive phenomenology
 Heidegger described human experience as ‘already within the world’, saying that we
relate to the world in integral ways, not as subjects related to objects, but as beings
inseparable from a world of being.
 Heidegger described this situation as ‘Being-in-the-world’, the fundamental ontology –
the meaning of being in general and the ground upon which the human sciences could
be constructed.
 Husserl, Heidegger concentrated on understanding and our interpretation of
phenomena, believing that it was through language and speech that our ‘Being-in-the-
world’ was both manifest and understood.
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6. Hans Georg Gadamer and hermeneutic phenomenology
 Hans Georg Gadamer’s writing on the hierarchy of phenomenological history, it
might be worth re-iterating the major differences between Husserl and
Heidegger.
 Gadamer developed interpretive phenomenological thought into a philosophy of
Gadamerian hermeneutics. Considered as one of the most critical thinkers of the
twentieth century, he concentrated on how language reveals being, building on
the idea that all understanding is phenomenological and that understanding can
only come about through language.
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7. Main features of hermeneutic phenomenology
Art aesthetic as a kind of play
 Gadamer proposed an analysis of the aesthetic experience of art, to reveal the
limitations of the natural science’s concept of ‘truth’. Understanding the art
aesthetic is an experience of self-understanding in relation to something else
that is already understood.
 Gadamer described the art aesthetic as a kind of play with him as a player
absorbed in neither a subjective nor objective way in the game.
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8. Main features of of herme. Pheno. Continue……..
Language and its ontological connections
 Gadamer’s suggestion that language is the precondition for understanding. But
language does two things. Not only does it transpose concepts into a form we can
understand; in the written text it also becomes an object of interpretation.
 Understanding text takes place within the historical context that permeates all
understanding and through which understanding becomes meaningful.
 Thus the original humanity of language means at the same time the fundamental
linguistic quality of man’s being-in-the-world.
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9. Main features of herme. Pheno. Continue……..
Personal prejudice and horizon
 Gadamer strongly believed that it was counter-productive to consider ‘ordinary language’ while
removing oneself from the situation of discovery – putting aside personal opinion and
presupposition.
 Gadamer saw prejudice (or fore-knowledge) in positive terms, as affirmative of all presupposition
that underlies judgement. In order to understand or interpret a phenomenon, he suggested, the
interpreter must both overcome the phenomenon’s strangeness and transform it into something
familiar, thus uniting the horizon of the historical phenomenon with the interpreter’s horizon.
 For Gadamer, prejudice not only gives the hermeneutic problem its real thrust, but is the means
by which the truth about a phenomenon is established. Thus the association between truth and
prejudice is integral to understanding.
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10. Main features of herme. Pheno. Continue……..
‘Historicity’, fusing horizons and the hermeneutic phenomenologistic circle
 It has been argued that the relationship between interpreter and interpreted is
wholly dependent on historical time, with both interpreter and interpreted caught
up in a continuing cultural tradition known as ‘effective history.
 We can only understand the historical horizon through our own contemporary
comprehension, so we need to meld horizons in order to complete the act
successfully. This notion is called the ‘fusing of horizons’ horizon being a metaphor
for our range of vision, which includes the historical perspective.
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11. Distinctions between interpretive and descriptive phenomenology
 Paley suggests that the transcendental idealism espoused by Husserl, by which
we explore pre-reflective experience, removes us from the social world making
judgements about ‘lived experience’ totally inaccessible. This line of thought has
fuelled a divide between Husserlian (descriptivist) and Heideggerian/
Gadamerian (interpretivist/hermeneutic) camps.
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12. Distinctions between interpretive and descriptive phenomenology continue……
Interpretivist upholding that:
 Meaning is unique and cannot be described.
 Interpretation is vital if we are to move beyond the data.
While descriptivists argue:
 Unified meaning can be teased out and described precisely as it presents itself’
 Description is vital to account for variety in phenomena.
Though both descriptivist and interpretivist approaches are concerned with meaning, the
interpretivist is involved with the clarification of meaning in terms of plausible hypotheses or
theoretical models while the descriptivist defines how meanings are presented to consciousness,
precisely as they are presented.
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13. Distinctions between interpretive and descriptive phenomenology continue……
 The descriptivist suggestion that the researcher is the expert in judging the validity
of a subject through the reduction using imaginative variation, contrary to the
interpretivist recommendation for the use of external judges to test the validity of
findings.
 The descriptivist suggestion that all interpretation can be described and that if
data are coherent, coherent descriptions can be made, contrary to the
interpretivist suggestion that data can only be interpreted because humans are
self interpretive.
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14. Key terminology in hermeneutic phenomenology
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15. Key terminology in hermeneutic phenomenology
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16. Key terminology in hermeneutic phenomenology
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17. Hermeneutic phenomenological method
 For the hermeneutic phenomenologist working in health services research today,
there is a marked concentration on the transposition of philosophical
hermeneutics into a workable method for data collection and analysis.
 A number of suggestions have been made for a hermeneutic approach to method
development.
 First, it is advised that researchers using hermeneutic phenomenology should
work closely with others during data collection and analysis with formal/informal
group analysis techniques.
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18. Hermeneutic phenomenological method continue…………
 Second, that others’ experiences and reflections are valid and should be
considered alongside the experiences and reflections of the researcher.
 Third, that researchers should be open to practical and theoretical challenges
during the course of a research study.
 Van Manen describes our understanding actions through verbal or visual
expression as challenging us to return to the pre-reflective state. Pre-reflection
demands that data are collected immediately following the events being
described, before research participants have had time to reflect on their
experiences. 18

19. Hermeneutic phenomenological method continue…………
Van Manen’s (1990: 30–31) method progresses through six basic steps:
1. Turning to a phenomenon which seriously interests us and commits us to the
world
2. Investigating experience as we live it rather than as we conceptualize it;
3. Reflecting on the essential themes which characterize the phenomenon;
4. Describing the phenomenon through the art of writing and rewriting;
5. Maintaining a strong and oriented relation to the phenomenon;
6. Balancing the research context by considering parts and whole.
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20. Hermeneutic phenomenological method continue…………
This method enables researchers to:
 Explore meanings people give to their lives;
 Concentrate on ‘ordinary language’ (descriptions in the participants’ own words);
 Examine phenomena immediately and directly, using first-hand experience;
 Develop ‘conversational relationships’ with research participants;
 Develop trust between researcher and participant;
 Understand the links between meaning, language and the world in which meaning
exists;
 Recognize personal prejudice;
 Search for hidden meanings embedded in the words of research participants.
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21. Data collection
 Van Manen describes twelve different aspects of investigating ‘lived experience’.
The majority of these have their basis in the act of writing, including: ‘diaries and
journals as sources of lived experience’; ‘lived experience descriptions through
protocol writing’ and ‘experiential descriptions in literature’.
 One of the data collection techniques proposed, ‘interviewing to gather personal
stories’ has been described as a vehicle for gathering rich, in-depth data that are
dependent on the interviewees description of events as an example of the
original.
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22. • Hermeneutic interviews encourage the development of ‘conversational
relationships’ between interviewer and interviewee through in-depth
discovery and intimacy and intend to build trust within the relationship by
offering interviewees ‘space’ to translate knowing into telling.
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23. Data analysis
 In a hermeneutic study, data analysis enables the researcher to objectify
and interpret accounts in order to understand more clearly the world of the
research participant.
 Interpretation depends heavily on the use of personal historical
background, concentrating on one’s own response to the language used by
the participant, which carries along with it history and tradition.
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24. Data analysis continue………….
 Explanation must be correlated with understanding to ‘know’ the
phenomenon in all its forms and to develop an interpretive account.
 This process includes ‘fusing horizons’, to compare and contrast a variety
of ideas expressed and to arrive at a definitive understanding of the text.
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25. Data analysis continue………….
Van Manen to consider a thematic analysis approach to interview transcripts. The technique in
question, one of three analytic approaches that van Manen proposes, has been described as ‘the
selective or highlighting approach’ and it consists of four stages
1. Searching for ‘structures of experience’
2. Describing how structures are thematic of the phenomenon.
3. Searching for essential and incidental themes.
4. Explaining and interpreting essential and incidental themes.
Each stage is rigorously selective and it is important to move slowly through the data so as not to
overlook essential detail. Structures of experience, or sentences of great relevance to the research
question, that stand out for the manner in which they are thematic of the phenomenon.
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26. Data analysis continue………….
 Analysis leads to a focusing-in on essential and incidental themes.
 Essential themes are those which, should they be absent from the final
description of the phenomenon, would render the phenomenon
incomplete. They help give shape to the data, and as a cognitive process,
searching for essential themes, encourages a thoughtful and controlled
response to participant stories.
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27. Critical issues
 The main difference between hermeneutic phenomenology and other qualitative
approaches lies in the fact that hermeneutic phenomenologists believe that
humans are self-determining beings. Furthermore, self-determination merits in-
depth examination of how we shape the world through shared history and
understanding.
• Ethnographers concentrate on cultural knowledge and how cultural knowledge is
presented through participants’ day-to-day routines, use of artefacts and cultural
understanding.
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28. Critical issues continue………….
 Hermeneutic phenomenologists, in keeping with an examination of self-
determination, consider how meaning (be it cultural or otherwise) is
revealed through ‘ordinary language.
 The hermeneutic phenomenologist tries to move towards an essential
understanding of our ‘being-in-theworld’ through ‘embodied
understanding’ and interest lies in how we develop awareness of new
meanings in ‘lived experience.
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29. Critical issues continue………..
 The hermeneutic phenomenologist concentrates on ‘lived experience’,
rather than power relationships and prompting activities towards change.
 hermeneutic phenomenology what is important is how meanings are given
to the life-world, not whether situations are appropriate or effective.
 The hermeneutic phenomenologist attempts to uncover reality as it is
experienced, rather than indicate unanticipated conditions and unintended
consequences.
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30. Hermeneutic interviews
Hermeneutic researcher uses interviews to uncover meaning by:
 Gathering experiential narrative material.
 Conducting face-to-face interaction that captures mantic and semantic levels of
understanding.
 Engaging in conversational development.
 Gathering experience as immediately lived.
 Incorporating the views of the participant with those of the researcher.
 Concentrating on the immediacy of data collection.
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31. Hermeneutic interviews continue……….
While other qualitative interviewers are likely to:
 Gather information, sometimes cultural, about actions, behaviours, conversations,
beliefs and artefacts.
 Not necessarily conduct face-to-face interviews (they may also be telephone interviews).
 Emphasize information elicitation.
 Distance themselves from their own experience as immediately lived.
 Dissociate from personal prejudice, pre-supposition and individual assumption.
 Not necessarily concentrate on the immediacy of data collection.
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32. The hermeneutic study: enhancing dependability and validity.
 To encourage study dependability, it is recommended that the researcher keeps a study
diary. The diary helps the researcher note aspects of the research design integral to
findings and conclusions and additional information about the participants themselves.
 Validity is not only apparent through the smooth progression from data collection to
data analysis and study findings but, as already mentioned, through group analysis,
note taking and self-reflection.
 Writing and re-writing reinforces the inbuilt veracity of the study and the researcher’s
ability to show the workings of the text, the ‘re-thinking, re-flecting, re-cognizing. This is
the stage where in-depth analysis is clarified, lived experience displayed and complex
choices illustrated. 32

33. Conclusion
 Hermeneutic phenomenology is a science focused on the interpretation of texts,
emphasizing language in its written or spoken form.
 Influenced by philosophical giants such as Dilthey, Husserl, Heidegger, and
Gadamer, the method delves into the nature of human existence and the
meanings attributed to the world.
 Gadamer's contributions include the play-like nature of the aesthetic experience,
the ontological connections of language, the importance of personal prejudice,
and the concept of "historicity" and fusing horizons.
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34.  The hermeneutic phenomenological method involves steps like exploring
meanings through conversational relationships, concentrating on ordinary
language, and considering personal prejudices.
 Data collection methods, including hermeneutic interviews, aim to gather
rich, in-depth data by building trust through intimate conversations.
 Data analysis focuses on interpreting accounts with attention to personal
historical background and involves "fusing horizons" to understand the text
definitively.
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35.  Differences from other qualitative methods lie in its emphasis on self-determination,
understanding meanings through ordinary language, and focusing on lived experience
over external power dynamics.
 Hermeneutic researchers use interviews to gather experiential narrative material,
engaging in face-to-face interaction and incorporating both participant and researcher
perspectives.
 To enhance dependability and validity, researchers are advised to maintain a study diary,
conduct group analysis, take notes, and engage in self-reflection.
 Writing and re-writing during the analysis stage reinforce the study's veracity, providing a
deeper understanding of lived experiences and illustrating complex choices made
throughout the research process.
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