Review of Hermeneutics: From Structuralism to Paul Ricoeur

Structuralism was influenced by the developments in the science of anthropology, which has made the novel attempt to study language objectively in the same manner as the human artifact in the field of cultural anthropology. Structuralism, whose origins can be traced to the works of Ferdinand de Saussure, was intended “to be a human science, imbued with the full rigor and objectivity of the natural sciences, just as Freud had intended psychoanalysis to be a science of the human psyche.” (Johnson 2002, 228)

Review of Metaphysics: Language and the Problem of Being

Language, according to Heidegger, is the house of Being (Heidegger 1977, 193). It is the place where Being presents itself to Dasein (There-Being); Dasein is the place whereby Being makes itself accessible to man. Language, in this sense, is constitutive of the man’s being-in-the-world (Sallis 1993, 357). St. Thomas, on the other hand, views human language differently. Language, for St. Thomas, is the means whereby the reality of Being as the ultimate cause of all beings is made known to the human intellect.