The Erklären-Verstehen dichotomy from Paul Ricoeur´ s perspective: the development of the «hermeneutics of the text».

The following presentation intends to briefly expose some consequences that Paul Ricoeur´ s perspective of methodology of sciences may have, and at this opportunity we pretend to show the importance of the reformulation made by the author of the famous «Erklären»-«Verstehen» dichotomy, which the author tried to overcome with the notion of the «hermeneutic of the text». We consider that this doctrine is essential for text analyse and reflexion.
It is known that Paul Ricoeur put into question throughout his works the dichotomy stated by W. Dilthey between «explanation» (Erklären) and understanding (Verstehen), especially within the field of human sciences, the «Geisteswissenschaften» according to Dilthey, and extended also his conclusions to science in general.
Dilthey tried to endow human sciences with a methodology and an epistemology at the same level of the «Naturwissenschaften», the sciences of nature. Moreover, the German master established a sort of correspondence between «explanation» and the «Naturwissenschaft» and, on the other side, between «understanding» and the «Geisteswissenschaft».
At this point it is now necessary to place the detachment taken by Ricoeur from Dilthey´ s «psychology of comprehension» and from the dichotomy just commented, because Ricoeur doesn´t agree with the way that Dilthey separates and isolates «explanation» and «understanding» or «interpreting», where «explanation» is the proper behaviour of natural scientists and «interpreting» the one according to social or human ones. The path taken by Ricoeur to perform this reformulation grounds in the notion of «hermeneutic of the text», with which Ricoeur refocuses the relationships between the two terms stated by Dilthey´ s philosophy.