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indispensable to Aristotelian ethics, to the practice of phronesis, and, I would like to suggest, to
the human sciences. Put rather too simplistically but in the spirit of speculative engagement, the
human sciences and in turn the philosophy of the human sciences must remain human. For
Aristotle both in Gadamer’s reading and our own, it is the good that directs human action, and it
is the light of the good that can illuminate the purposes of that action. Recall that Gadamer’s
reading of Aristotle understands this idea of the good not in terms of an absolute outside of and
separate from experience and practice, but rather as fixed upon through dialogue. If the human
sciences—and it should now be clear that we take this to mean the philosophy and practice of the
human sciences—are to understand something of human action, they must partake of the
dialogue through which this good is discovered and enacted, not attempt to stand apart from the
human practice that they hope to understand and describe.
Convention