The FUDEDUR paradigm

The acronym FUDEDUR — Fatti Una Domanda E Datti Una Risposta, “ask yourself a question and give yourself an answer” — has become a stable part of the Italian collective imagination thanks to Gigi Marzullo’s famous late-night interviews. In everyday perception the motto looks like a light, almost ironic invitation to turn one’s gaze inward. Underneath that apparent simplicity, however, it carries a deeper epistemological attitude: an elementary yet effective form of the hermeneutic circle, a cornerstone of the philosophical tradition running from Schleiermacher and Dilthey to Gadamer and Ricoeur.

FUDEDUR can in fact be read as a hermeneutic gesture, in which the subject not only puts questions to itself but also supplies the conditions for understanding and answering them. Understanding is never a passive act: it is the outcome of a dialogical movement that joins questioning, interpretation and self-understanding.

Hermeneutics as the art of interpretation

Hermeneutics began as a discipline devoted to the correct interpretation of texts, above all sacred or legal ones. With Friedrich Schleiermacher it became a general theory of understanding: to interpret means reconstructing the author’s intention and the linguistic context of the text (Hermeneutik, 1838). Schleiermacher introduced the idea that every act of understanding balances two poles:

1. grammatical interpretation (understanding words in their historical and linguistic use);
2. psychological interpretation (understanding the author from within).

This dual movement already anticipates the principle that every interpretive act refers to a question we ask of the text and to an answer we try to construct.

With Wilhelm Dilthey, hermeneutics became the foundation of the human sciences. In Introduction to the Human Sciences (1883), Dilthey stresses that understanding means re-living (Nachleben) the experiences of others and reconfiguring them within our own inner life. The question — “what does this mean?” — and the answer — “what I understand is…” — are articulated within a dynamic process, not a merely rational one.

The twentieth century then brought a radical rethink by Hans-Georg Gadamer, author of Truth and Method (1960). For Gadamer, understanding means entering an endless dialogue between the present and tradition. The interpretive act is structured as an encounter between perspectives: the text addresses us, forces us to ask questions, and we answer through our own pre-understandings. This is where the concept of the hermeneutic circle takes hold: we understand the whole from the parts and the parts from the whole, in a continuous movement.

From the hermeneutic circle to the FUDEDUR paradigm

In its popular form, FUDEDUR evokes a kind of introspection carried out through an imagined dialogue. It is in fact a structure perfectly compatible with the logic of philosophical hermeneutics:

(a) The question as an opening of meaning

Every interpretation begins with a question. For Gadamer, “nothing is understood unless one has entered into a question” (Truth and Method, Part II). In FUDEDUR, the subject obliges itself to a gesture of suspension: it recognises that there is something to clarify, something to bring into consciousness.

(b) The answer as interpretive construction

Giving oneself an answer does not mean closing the matter, but offering a first configuration of meaning. Similarly, for Paul Ricoeur in the trilogy Time and Narrative (1983–1985), understanding arises from a narrative configuration: we organise reality into a coherent form through an interpretive act.

(c) Dialogue with oneself as hermeneutic dialogue

FUDEDUR does not ask us to find the answer, but an answer. That is entirely consistent with the hermeneutic tradition, which rejects definitive solutions: to understand is always to interpret, and to interpret is to reformulate continuously.

Academic examples of the FUDEDUR paradigm in action

To make the parallel clearer, we can point to cases where a FUDEDUR approach coincides with a philosophical or scientific method:

Literary text analysis (Schleiermacher)

The scholar approaching a novel asks: what is the author’s aesthetic intention? They give themselves a provisional answer, the product of a linguistic and psychological reconstruction of the text. → FUDEDUR works as the initial device of the interpretive process.

Historical research (Dilthey)

The historian asks: what did this event mean to those who lived it? And offers an answer reconstructed through sources and testimonies. → The question-and-answer movement is the core of historical interpretation.

Legal understanding (Gadamer)

The judge asks about the meaning of a rule: what did the legislator intend? They offer an answer that holds together tradition, context and the concrete case. → FUDEDUR becomes the elementary form of “situated judgement”.

Hermeneutic psychotherapy (Ricoeur)

The patient works out questions about themselves and attempts narrative answers that build their interpretive identity (Oneself as Another, 1990). → The question-and-answer process is a hermeneutic dialogue that constructs the self.

Why FUDEDUR is a paradigm and not just a slogan

FUDEDUR is often read as an invitation to talk to oneself, to simulate an imaginary interview. But its strength lies not in the irony: it lies in the dialogical structure it proposes. It:

• sets a reflective process in motion,
• forces assumptions to be made explicit,
• invites us to interrogate meaning,
• produces contextual interpretations.

In other words, FUDEDUR translates into colloquial form what hermeneutics develops as a philosophical method: the idea that understanding is born from the movement between question and answer, between the self that questions and the self that interprets.

Main sources

1. F. Schleiermacher, Hermeneutik und Kritik, 1838.
2. W. Dilthey, Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften, 1883.
3. H.-G. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, 1960.
4. P. Ricoeur, Temps et récit, 1983-1985; Soi-même comme un autre, 1990.
5. E. Betti, Teoria generale dell’interpretazione, 1955.