Review of “History and Hermeneutics” by Paul Fairfield

With the emergence of philosophical hermeneutics on the contemporary horizon, the humanities and social sciences have gained access to a fertile theoretical framework capable of illuminating their objects of study through the lens of the philosophy of history. In this context, hermeneutics is not merely an interpretative technique but rather unfolds as a fundamental epistemological structure in the constitution of historical knowledge. 

This is the central thesis underpinning History and Hermeneutics by Canadian professor and researcher Paul Fairfield, published by Cambridge University Press. Fairfield belongs to a philosophical tradition that integrates phenomenology, hermeneutics, and political philosophy, with the aim of revitalizing classic philosophical problems from a contemporary perspective. A professor at Queen’s University (Canada), his academic work is distinguished by a clear style and a critical orientation that moves between the interpretation of canonical authors such as Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ricoeur, and the problematization of contemporary issues such as education, authority, and subjectivity. In this sense, History and Hermeneutics situates itself at the intersection of these traditions—specifically between historical epistemology and hermeneutic philosophy—the latter conceived primarily from a Gadamerian standpoint. 

The book defends the hermeneutic nature of historical knowledge through a critical engagement with diverse conceptions, challenging teleological perspectives—such as those of Hegelian origin—that impose universal structures on historical development. In contrast, it underscores contextual interpretation and historical experience. Since Gadamer, hermeneutics has been understood as an ontological theory of understanding, in which the subject is always situated within a tradition that both conditions and enables their horizon of meaning. 

The argument rests on several key pillars: Dilthey’s distinction between understanding (Verstehen) and explanation (Erklären); the relationship between meaning and experience; Heidegger’s notion of historicity and his conception of being-in-the-world; Gadamer’s interpretation of historical understanding and belonging to tradition; and Paul Ricoeur’s view of the historian as a narrator who weaves meaning into temporality. The book also addresses questions such as the possibility of dialogue with the past, the status of historical truth, and the challenges posed by constructivism. 

The work is organized into five sections: Explanation and Understanding, Historical Belonging, Narrative Configuration and Prefiguration, The Constructivist Overcorrection, and Other Developments. All converge in a hermeneutics of history that privileges understanding over explanation, narrative over law, and belonging over objective neutrality. Taken together, these sections articulate a coherent and densely argued theoretical cartography. 

The opening section, Explanation and Understanding, establishes the foundations of the hermeneutic turn by revisiting Wilhelm Dilthey and Hans-Georg Gadamer. Fairfield contends that history should not be conceived as an explanatory science of causes, like physics, but rather as an interpretive discipline that seeks to grasp the meanings of human actions. He critiques positivism and its claim to objectivity, proposing instead a form of knowledge that is phenomenologically situated and linguistically mediated. Central here is the classic Diltheyan distinction between Erklären (explanation), proper to the natural sciences, and Verstehen (understanding), proper to the human sciences. Historical understanding, Fairfield argues, is not merely technical or methodological but an act of imaginative empathy with the experiences of others. Gadamer, for his part, deepens this insight by affirming that we are hermeneutical beings whose mode of being-in-the-world is always already interpretive and linguistically mediated. Consequently, historical knowledge emerges from a position that is inevitably situated, finite, and culturally conditioned. 

The second section, Historical Belonging, explores the ontological status of the historical subject. Drawing on Heidegger and Gadamer, Fairfield argues that the historian cannot be conceived as an external observer of their object, since subject and object belong to the same historical fabric. Here he introduces the idea of the constitutive temporality of human beings: the past is not simply behind us but actively shapes the horizon from which we understand. Heidegger’s notion of Geworfenheit (thrownness) illustrates how every interpretation begins within a prior situation already laden with language, tradition, and expectations. This perspective deepens hermeneutic understanding, though it also heightens the risk of relativism by raising the question of how the past can be accessed from the present. 

The third section, Narrative Configuration and Prefiguration, turns to Paul Ricoeur, who complements the ontological dimension with a narrative theory of historical time. Fairfield shows that history is not only rooted in belonging but also in the narrative configuration that weaves disparate events into an intelligible whole. The historian, like a literary narrator, prefigures and refigures past events through a mimetic structure that confers form and meaning. This perspective reinforces the notion that history is not a mere accumulation of data but a symbolic construction—though not one reducible to arbitrariness or fiction. Yet a crucial question emerges: if history is narratively configured, how can we distinguish legitimate interpretation from ideological distortion? Where do we draw the boundary between historical narrative and fiction? 

The fourth section, The Constructivist Overcorrection and Other Developments, critically engages with the radical constructivist turn that dominates part of contemporary thought. Fairfield acknowledges that constructivism has dismantled the naïve objectivity of positivism but cautions that its excesses risk sliding into historical skepticism, where history dissolves into discourse without reference points. In response, he advocates a middle ground: although all history is interpretive, the past did exist and remains accessible, albeit always from a situated standpoint. This section also considers contemporary developments such as the affective turn, memory studies, and the history of the present, though approached from a fundamentally hermeneutic rather than critical or political perspective. 

Taken together, the sections function as complementary chapters of a single thesis: history must be conceived as an interpretive, situated, narrative, and open-ended practice. Yet significant internal tensions remain: between the critique of objectivism and the aspiration to shared rationality; between the historian’s historical belonging and the task of understanding foreign contexts; and between narrative as a mode of understanding and the need to distinguish it from ideological fiction. Fairfield navigates these tensions with balance, though not always with definitive answers—an approach that mirrors the structural complexity of the contemporary hermeneutic problem itself. 

One of the book’s chief merits lies in its ability to present a clear, rigorous, and pedagogically effective synthesis of the conceptual nuclei linking hermeneutics and history. Without lapsing into scholastic exposition, Fairfield weaves together affinities and tensions among the authors under discussion. Particularly noteworthy is his treatment of the concept of understanding: he avoids reducing it to a cognitive operation or a subjective attitude. By recovering understanding as the ontological structure of Dasein in Heidegger, Fairfield articulates history as lived and situated experience, decisively distancing it from historiographical positivism. 

Fairfield’s reading of Ricoeur is particularly thought-provoking in showing that narration not only structures events but also inscribes the subject within time, conferring upon them a narrative identity. Yet the book largely avoids engaging with contemporary debates on post-truth, historical revisionism, or the political role of memory—topics that would have further enriched its reflections. 

One of the text’s greatest strengths lies in its critique of the radical constructivist turn, without lapsing into a nostalgic defense of positivist objectivity. In this respect, Fairfield’s position stands in fruitful tension with approaches such as Foucauldian constructivism and Latourian critical realism, while maintaining a critical distance from both. He acknowledges that all history is necessarily interpretive, but insists that this does not negate the existence of the past or its capacity to confront us. In a world saturated with competing discourses and narratives, his hermeneutic perspective emerges as a search for meaning that neither abandons rationality nor severs the link between experience and truth. 

This intermediate stance makes it possible to conceive an ontology of understanding that is neither reducible to empirical facticity nor dissolved into pure linguistic play. Instead, it opens a way to reconfigure historical knowledge as an ethical, situated, and responsible practice in the face of the otherness of the past. 

In today’s context—where the digitization of archives, the circulation of memory through social media, and the political instrumentalization of the past are reshaping historical experience—Fairfield’s hermeneutic proposal acquires particular resonance. His defense of situated and narrative understanding provides a critical response to phenomena such as post-truth, historical revisionism, and the media spectacularization of events. Rather than conceiving history as an objective reconstruction of the past, Fairfield presents it as a space of interpretive mediation between past and present, one that enables a re-evaluation of the historian’s role in an era saturated with data and marked by digital immediacy. From this perspective, hermeneutic dialogue with the past is not foreclosed by new regimes of technological truth but rearticulated as a form of interpretive resistance against the logics of simplification and polarization that dominate the present. 

Taken as a whole, History and Hermeneutics is a significant philosophical contribution that reclaims the ontological dimension of history while emphasizing the mediating function of language and interpretation in the constitution of historical knowledge. Fairfield offers a clear and rigorous mapping of the intersections between philosophy and historiography, underscoring the epistemological, ontological, and political stakes of interpretation. Far from closing the discussion, he invites us to conceive of history as an open, unfinished process, traversed by language, experience, and temporality. 

With this in mind, Fairfield’s hermeneutic proposal—centered on historical belonging, narrativity, and linguistic mediation—can be productively extended to the problematization of the subject in Transmodernity. If, as Paul Ricoeur suggests, identity is narratively constituted at the intersection of memory, narrative, and promise, then the hermeneutic condition of the historical subject described by Fairfield finds a new field of application within contemporary technoculture. Artificial intelligence and predictive algorithms do more than process information: they configure narratives, structure temporalities, and shape ways of understanding both the self and the world. From this perspective, rethinking history hermeneutically also requires interrogating the historicity of the technological mediations that permeate our lives, and expanding the concept of historical understanding to encompass new languages, devices, and symbolic assemblages. Though Fairfield does not address this issue directly, his work lays the groundwork for a practical philosophy of history capable of responding to the challenges of the contemporary digital subject.