The goal of qualitative inquiry is not that of explanation and verification but rather understanding. As such an appropriate ontology and epistemology must be reviewed and adopted. Jardine (1992) states “Hermeneutic inquiry has as its goal to educe understanding, to bring forth the presuppositions in which we already live. Its task, therefore, is not to methodically achieve a relationship to some matter and to secure understanding in such a method. Rather, its task is to recollect the contours and textures of the life we are already living, a life that is not secured by the methods we can wield to render such a life our object”. From this statement it is clear that there are concrete parallels between the aims of qualitative research and a hermeneutical paradigm. Following the desire to provide an understanding of a complex phenomenon and as such explain (Rennie, 2012), a hermeneutic methodological paradigm has been adopted and embraced as an ontological lens of which to view reality and as such attempt to conduct an investigation that through understanding can make known that which can affect practicable change (Rennie, 2012).
In contrast to the post-positivist perspective, which forms the majority of empirical research, with a deterministic view of reality and process of investigation that investigates an objective reality by careful observation and impartial calculation. Hermeneutics is the generation of knowledge through eduction and interpretation with the goal of a deeper understanding of the subject in question (McCaffrey, Raffin-Bouchal, & Moules, 2012; Moules et al., 2015). According to Spiegelberg (1978) hermeneutics is a “process and method for bringing out and making manifest what is normally hidden in human experience and human relations”. Hermeneutics gives researchers a way to investigate and understand complex human topics (McCaffrey, Raffin-Bouchal, & Moules, 2012; Moules et al., 2015). Within hermeneutics the active role of the researcher is embraced rather than rejected through critical self-reflection and the principle that by the researcher embedding themselves within the life world of the topic under investigation actually brings forth deep and insightful discoveries in comparison to a titan like, detached observer from above (Moules 2002). Hermeneutic inquiry allows through the interpretative processes, the understanding of human experiences from multiple perspectives that are constrained and difficult to access through the recognition of culture, history, language and tradition. Hermeneutics is a flexible discipline that promotes researcher reflexivity (within paradigmatic boundaries) on the most appropriate method to uncover the subject under investigation. This attitude is attractive to qualitative researchers as the topics often under investigation are often deep, nuanced and under researched (Barker, Pistrang & Elliott, 2002).
Hermeneutics is interpretation, from the Greek hermeneuin and Latin interpretari Moules, McCaffrey 2014). Hermeneutics is to comprehend a particular phenomenon through an active dynamic between that of the interpreter and that of which to be understood, whether that be art, a religious text, a Shakespeare play or the subject of a scientific investigation (Zimmerman, 2015). A common misconception of hermeneutics is that it is relativistic (Zimmerman, 2015), in such that the truth found through interpretation is a linguistic construction of a multiplicity of meanings not connected to a fundamental reality (Rorty, 1979). Hermeneutics in fact is more aligned to a critical realism as Zimmerman (2015) states “an objective reality discloses itself to us through language”.
Language, speech or Logos (Elden, 2005) within hermeneutics rather than being considered a tool is considered the medium to which humans understand and disclose reality and meaning (Gadamer, Heidegger, Truth and Method). Human beings understand themselves within their historicity or preunderstanding (Gadamer, Heidegger). As children we are inducted into the complex web of language that has been formed by humans over millennia, within this web includes; culture, history and knowledge and it is within this structure that we learn to orient ourselves to meaning and existence through language, as Heidegger (REF) stated “language is the house of being”. This understanding of language as seen by Gadamer is a further rebuttal to relativism, in that, knowledge is not something we acquire as viewed in the unnatural cartesian dichotomous subject/object mode of being but rather knowledge is a process or dynamic game that we are engaged within (Gadamer, Truth and Method). Further to this concept of knowledge being a dynamic to which we are in fact