Hermeneutics () "hermeneutics". Collins English Dictionary. is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and Philosophy. As necessary, hermeneutics may include the art of understanding and communication.
Modern hermeneutics includes both verbal and non-verbal communication, The Routledge Companion to Philosophy in Organization Studies, Routledge, 2015, p. 113.Joann McNamara, From Dance to Text and Back to Dance: A Hermeneutics of Dance Interpretive Discourse, PhD thesis, Texas Woman's University, 1994. as well as semiotics, , and pre-understandings. Hermeneutics has been broadly applied in the humanities, especially in law, history and theology.
Hermeneutics was initially applied to the interpretation, or exegesis, of Religious texts, and has been later broadened to questions of general interpretation. p. 2 The terms hermeneutics and exegesis are sometimes used interchangeably. Hermeneutics is a wider discipline which includes written, verbal, and nonverbal communication. Exegesis focuses primarily upon the word and grammar of texts.
Hermeneutic, as a count noun in the singular, refers to some particular method of interpretation (see, in contrast, double hermeneutic).
The early usage of "hermeneutics" places it within the boundaries of the sacred.Grondin, Jean (1994). Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics. Yale University Press. . A Divinity message must be received with implicit uncertainty regarding its truth. This ambiguity is an irrationality; it is a sort of madness that is inflicted upon the receiver of the message. Only one who possesses a rational method of interpretation (i.e., a hermeneutic) could determine the truth or falsity of the message.
Moreover, Hermes was considered the inventor of language and speech, an interpreter, a liar, a thief, and a trickster. These multiple roles made Hermes an ideal representative figure for hermeneutics. As Socrates noted, words have the power to reveal or conceal and can deliver messages in an ambiguous way. The Greek view of language as consisting of signs that could lead to truth or to falsehood was the essence of Hermes, who was said to relish the uneasiness of those who received the messages he delivered.White, R. E., & K. Cooper, Qualitative Research in the Post-Modern Era: Critical Approaches and Selected Methodologies (London: Springer Nature, 2022), p. 63.
Traditional Jewish hermeneutics differed from the Greek method in that the rabbis considered the Tanakh (the Jewish Biblical canon) to be without error. Any apparent inconsistencies had to be understood by means of careful examination of a given text within the context of other texts. There were different levels of interpretation: some were used to arrive at the plain meaning of the text, some expounded the law given in the text, and others found secret or Mysticism levels of understanding.
The foundational text is the Mimamsa Sutras of Jaimini (c. 3rd to 1st century BCE) with a major commentary by Śabara (c. the 5th or 6th century CE). The Mimamsa sutra summed up the basic rules for Vedic interpretation.
The early Church Fathers traditions of biblical exegesis had few unifying characteristics in the beginning but tended toward unification in later schools of biblical hermeneutics.
Augustine offers hermeneutics and homiletics in his De doctrina christiana. He stresses the importance of humility in the study of Scripture. He also regards the duplex commandment of love in Matthew 22 as the heart of Christian faith. In Augustine's hermeneutics, signs have an important role. God can communicate with the believer through the signs of the Scriptures. Thus, humility, love, and the knowledge of signs are an essential hermeneutical presupposition for a sound interpretation of the Scriptures. Although Augustine endorses some teaching of the Platonism of his time, he recasts it according to a theocentric doctrine of the Bible. Similarly, in a practical discipline, he modifies the classical theory of oratory in a Christian way. He underscores the meaning of diligent study of the Bible and prayer as more than mere human knowledge and oratory skills. As a concluding remark, Augustine encourages the interpreter and preacher of the Bible to seek a good manner of life and, most of all, to love God and neighbor.
There is traditionally a fourfold sense of biblical hermeneutics: literal, moral, allegorical (spiritual), and anagogical.
In Judaism, Anagoge is also evident in the medieval Zohar. In Christianity, it can be seen in Mariology.
However, biblical hermeneutics did not die off. For example, the Protestant Reformation brought about a renewed interest in the interpretation of the Bible, which took a step away from the interpretive tradition developed during the Middle Ages back to the texts themselves. Martin Luther and John Calvin emphasized scriptura sui ipsius interpres (scripture interprets itself). Calvin used brevitas et facilitas as an aspect of theological hermeneutics.Myung Jun Ahn, "Brevitas et facilitas : a study of a vital aspect in the theological hermeneutics of John Calvin" [5]
The rationalist Enlightenment led hermeneutists, especially Protestant exegetists, to view Scriptural texts as secular classical texts. They interpreted Scripture as responses to historical or social forces so that, for example, apparent contradictions and difficult passages in the New Testament might be clarified by comparing their possible meanings with contemporary Christian practices.
Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) explored the nature of understanding in relation not just to the problem of deciphering sacred texts but to all human texts and modes of communication.
The interpretation of a text must proceed by framing its content in terms of the overall organization of the work. Schleiermacher distinguished between grammatical interpretation and psychological interpretation. The former studies how a work is composed from general ideas; the latter studies the peculiar combinations that characterize the work as a whole. He said that every problem of interpretation is a problem of understanding and even defined hermeneutics as the art of avoiding misunderstanding. Misunderstanding was to be avoided by means of knowledge of grammatical and psychological laws.
During Schleiermacher's time, a fundamental shift occurred from understanding not merely the exact words and their objective meaning, to an understanding of the writer's distinctive character and point of view.
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century hermeneutics emerged as a theory of understanding ( Verstehen) through the work of Friedrich Schleiermacher ( Romantic hermeneuticsKurt Mueller-Vollmer (ed.), The Hermeneutics Reader, Continuum, 1988, p. 72. and methodological hermeneutics),Edward Joseph Echeverria, Criticism and Commitment: Major Themes in Contemporary "Post-Critical" Philosophy, Rodopi, 1981, p. 221. August Böckh (methodological hermeneutics),Thomas M. Seebohm, Hermeneutics: Method and Methodology, Springer, 2007, p. 55. Wilhelm Dilthey ( epistemological hermeneutics),Jack Martin, Jeff Sugarman, Kathleen L. Slaney (eds.), The Wiley Handbook of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology: Methods, Approaches, and New Directions for Social Sciences, Wiley Blackwell, p. 56. Martin Heidegger ( ontological hermeneutics,Martin Heidegger, Ontology: The Hermeneutics of Facticity, Indiana University Press, 2008, p. 92. hermeneutic phenomenology,Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Phenomenology World-Wide: Foundations – Expanding Dynamics – Life-Engagements A Guide for Research and Study, Springer, 2014, p. 246.Cf. interpretative phenomenological analysis in psychological qualitative research. and transcendental hermeneutic phenomenology), Hans-Georg Gadamer (ontological hermeneutics),Jeff Malpas, Hans-Helmuth Gande (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Hermeneutics, Routledge, 2014, p. 259. Leo Strauss ( Straussian hermeneutics),Winfried Schröder (ed.), Reading between the lines – Leo Strauss and the history of early modern philosophy, Walter de Gruyter, 2015, p. 39, "According to Robert Hunt, 'the Straussian hermeneutic ... sees the course of intellectual history as an ongoing conversation about important philosophical questions'." Paul Ricœur (hermeneutic phenomenology),Don Ihde, Hermeneutic Phenomenology: The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, Northwestern University Press, 1971, p. 198. Walter Benjamin (Marxist hermeneutics), Erasmus: Speculum Scientarium, 25, p. 162: "the different versions of Marxist hermeneutics by the examples of Walter Benjamin's Origins of the German Tragedy , ... and also by Ernst Bloch's Hope the Principle ." Ernst Bloch (Marxist hermeneutics),Richard E. Amacher, Victor Lange, New Perspectives in German Literary Criticism: A Collection of Essays, Princeton University Press, 2015, p. 11. Jacques Derrida ( radical hermeneutics, namely deconstruction),John D. Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic Project, Indiana University Press, 1988, p. 5: "Derrida is the turning point for radical hermeneutics, the point where hermeneutics is pushed to the brink. Radical hermeneutics situates itself in the space which is opened up by the exchange between Heidegger and Derrida..."International Institute for Hermeneutics – About Hermeneutics . Retrieved: 2015-11-08. Richard Kearney (diacritical hermeneutics), Fredric Jameson (Marxist hermeneutics),Mohanty, Satya P. "Jameson's Marxist Hermeneutics and the need for an Adequate Epistemology." In Literary Theory and the Claims of History: Postmodernism, Objectivity, Multicultural Politics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997. pp. 93–115. and John Thompson (critical hermeneutics).
Regarding the relation of hermeneutics with problems of analytic philosophy, there has been, particularly among analytic Heideggerians and those working on Heidegger's philosophy of science, an attempt to try and situate Heidegger's hermeneutic project in debates concerning realism and anti-realism: arguments have been presented both for Heidegger's hermeneutic idealism (the thesis that meaning determines reference or, equivalently, that our understanding of the being of entities is what determines entities as entities)Steven Galt Crowell, Jeff Malpas (eds.), Transcendental Heidegger, Stanford University Press, 2007, pp. 116–117. and for Heidegger's hermeneutic realismHubert L. Dreyfus, Mark A. Wrathall (eds.), Heidegger Reexamined: Truth, realism, and the history of being, Routledge, 2002, pp. 245, 274, 280; Hubert L. Dreyfus, "Heidegger's Hermeneutic Realism," in: David R. Hiley, James Bohman, Richard Shusterman (eds.), The Interpretive Turn: Philosophy, Science, Culture, Cornell University Press, 1991. (the thesis that (a) there is a nature in itself and science can give us an explanation of how that nature works, and (b) that (a) is compatible with the ontological implications of our everyday practices).Hubert L. Dreyfus, Mark A. Wrathall (eds.), Heidegger Reexamined: Truth, realism, and the history of being, Routledge, 2002, p. 245.
Philosophers that worked to combine analytic philosophy with hermeneutics include Georg Henrik von Wright and Peter Winch. Roy J. Howard termed this approach analytic hermeneutics.Roy J. Howard, Three Faces of Hermeneutics: An Introduction to Current Theories of Understanding, University of California Press, 1982, ch. 1.
Other contemporary philosophers influenced by the hermeneutic tradition include Charles Taylor ( engaged hermeneutics) and Dagfinn Føllesdal.
Dilthey divided sciences of the mind (human sciences) into three structural levels: experience, expression, and comprehension.
Advocates of this approach claim that some texts, and the people who produce them, cannot be studied by means of using the same scientific methods that are used in the , thus drawing upon arguments similar to those of antipositivism. Moreover, they claim that such texts are conventionalized expressions of the experience of the author. Thus, the interpretation of such texts will reveal something about the social context in which they were formed, and, more significantly, will provide the reader with a means of sharing the experiences of the author.
The reciprocity between text and context is part of what Heidegger called the hermeneutic circle. Among the key thinkers who elaborated this idea was the Sociology Max Weber.
Gadamer pointed out that prejudice is an element of our understanding and is not per se without value. Indeed, prejudices, in the sense of pre-judgements of the thing we want to understand, are unavoidable. Being alien to a particular tradition is a condition of our understanding. He said that we can never step outside of our tradition—all we can do is try to understand it. This further elaborates the idea of the hermeneutic circle.
In 1992, the Association for Objective Hermeneutics (AGOH) was founded in Frankfurt am Main by scholars of various disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Its goal is to provide all scholars who use the methodology of objective hermeneutics with a means of exchanging information. Association for Objective Hermeneutics website. Accessed: January 27, 2014.
In one of the few translated texts of this German school of hermeneutics, its founders declared:
Paul Ricœur (1913–2005) developed a hermeneutics that is based upon Heidegger's concepts.
Karl-Otto Apel (1922–2017) elaborated a hermeneutics based on American semiotics. He applied his model to discourse ethics with political motivations akin to those of critical theory.
Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929) criticized the conservatism of previous hermeneutists, especially Gadamer, because their focus on tradition seemed to undermine possibilities for social criticism and transformation. He also criticized Marxism and previous members of the Frankfurt School for missing the hermeneutical dimension of critical theory.
Habermas incorporated the notion of the lifeworld and emphasized the importance for social theory of interaction, communication, labor, and production. He viewed hermeneutics as a dimension of critical social theory.
Rudolf Makkreel (b. 1939) has proposed an orientational hermeneutics that brings out the contextualizing function of reflective judgment. It extends ideas of Kant and Dilthey to supplement the dialogical approach of Gadamer with a diagnostic approach that can deal with an ever-changing and multicultural world.
Andrés Ortiz-Osés (1943–2021) developed his symbolic hermeneutics as the Southern Europe response to hermeneutics. His main statement regarding symbolic understanding of the world is that meaning is a healing of injury.
Two scholars who have published criticism of Gadamer's hermeneutics are the Italian jurist Emilio Betti and the American literary theorist E. D. Hirsch.
Other hermeneutic scholars include Jean Grondin (b. 1955) and Maurizio Ferraris (b. 1956).
Proponents argue that interpretation of artifacts is unavoidably hermeneutic because we cannot know for certain the meaning behind them. We can only apply modern values when interpreting. This is most commonly seen in , where descriptions such as "scraper" can be highly subjective and actually unproven until the development of microwear analysis some thirty years ago.
Opponents argue that a hermeneutic approach is too Relativism and that their own interpretations are based on Common sense evaluation.
Gadamer more recently wrote on the topic of education, and more recent treatments of educational issues across various hermeneutical approaches are to be found in Fairfield and Gallagher.
Steve Smith refers to hermeneutics as the principal way of grounding foundationalist yet postpositivist theory of international relations.
Radical postmodernism is an example of a postpositivist anti-foundationalist paradigm of international relations.Østerud, Ø., "Antinomies of Postmodernism in International Studies", Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 33, No. 4 (Nov., 1996), pp. 385–390.
In the Middle Ages and Italian Renaissance, the schools of , commentatores, and usus modernus distinguished themselves by their approach to the interpretation of "laws" (mainly Justinian's Corpus Juris Civilis). The University of Bologna gave birth to a "legal Renaissance" in the 11th century, when the Corpus Juris Civilis was rediscovered and systematically studied by men such as Irnerius and Johannes Gratian. It was an interpretative Renaissance. Subsequently, these were fully developed by Thomas Aquinas and Alberico Gentili.
Since then, interpretation has always been at the center of legal thought. Friedrich Carl von Savigny and Emilio Betti, among others, made significant contributions to general hermeneutics. Legal interpretivism, most famously Ronald Dworkin's, may be seen as a branch of philosophical hermeneutics.
The beginnings of hermeneutic phenomenology stem from a German researcher and student of Husserl, Martin Heidegger. Both researchers attempted to pull out the lived experiences of others through philosophical concepts, but Heidegger's main difference from Husserl was his belief that consciousness was not separate from the world but a formation of who we are as living individuals. Hermeneutic phenomenology stresses that every event or encounter involves some type of interpretation from an individual's background, and that we cannot separate this from an individual's development through life. Ihde also focuses on hermeneutic phenomenology within his early work, and draws connections between Husserl and French philosopher Paul Ricoeur's work in the field. Ricoeur focuses on the importance of symbols and linguistics within hermeneutic phenomenology. Overall, hermeneutic phenomenological research focuses on historical meanings and experiences, and their developmental and social effects on individuals.
Vattimo and Zabala also stated that they view interpretation as anarchy and affirmed that "existence is interpretation" and that "hermeneutics is weak thought."
The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan later extended Freudian hermeneutics into other psychical realms. His early work from the 1930s–1950s is particularly influenced by Heidegger, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty's hermeneutical phenomenology.
Hubert Dreyfus's critique of conventional artificial intelligence has been influential among psychologists who are interested in hermeneutic approaches to meaning and interpretation, as discussed by philosophers such as Martin Heidegger (cf. Embodied cognition) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (cf. Discursive psychology).
Hermeneutics is also influential in humanistic psychology.
Mircea Eliade, as a hermeneutist, understands religion as 'experience of the sacred', and interprets the sacred in relation to the profane.Eliade, Mircea (1987), The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, translated by Willard R. Trask. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. The Romanian scholar underlines that the relation between the sacred and the profane is not of opposition, but of complementarity, having interpreted the profane as a hierophany.Iţu, Mircia (2002), Introducere în hermeneutică ( Introduction to Hermeneutics), Brașov: Orientul latin, p. 63. The hermeneutics of the myth is a part of the hermeneutics of religion. Myth should not be interpreted as an illusion or a lie, because there is truth in myth to be rediscovered.Iţu, Mircia (2007), The Hermeneutics of the Myth, in Lumină lină, number 3, New York, pp. 33–49. Myth is interpreted by Eliade as 'sacred history'. He introduces the concept of 'total hermeneutics'.Eliade, Mircea (1978), La nostalgie des origines. Méthodologie et histoire des religions, Paris: Editions Gallimard, p. 116.
The term was notably used in 2005 by Pope Benedict XVI saying the Second Vatican Council needs to be viewed through the lens of a "hermeneutic of reform" rather than a "hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture". In subsequent discourse, this has become a "hermeneutic of continuity" contrasted with a "hermeneutic of rupture," and applied to dissident tendencies questioning recent church teaching in general and the teaching of Pope Francis. Following this, the term is now widely used: e.g. of suspicion, of tradition and kenosis, and of synodality. Benedict also spoke of the "hermeneutic of the cross", "of faith" necessary for exegesis, "of unity", while deploring a "hermeneutic of politics". Francis has warned against a "hermeneutic of conspiracy". Pope John Paul II taught a "hermeneutic of the gift".
It has been proposed by ergonomist Donald Taylor that mechanist models of human behaviour will only take us so far in terms of accident reduction, and that safety science must look at the meaning of accidents for human beings.
Other scholars in the field have attempted to create safety taxonomies that make use of hermeneutic concepts in terms of their categorisation of qualitative data.
The central principle of sociological hermeneutics is that it is only possible to know the meaning of an act or statement within the context of the discourse or world view from which it originates. Context is critical to comprehension; an action or event that carries substantial weight to one person or culture may be viewed as meaningless or entirely different to another. For example, giving the "thumbs-up" gesture is widely accepted as a sign of a job well done in the United States, while other cultures view it as an insult. Similarly, marking a piece of paper and putting it into a box might be considered a meaningless act unless it is put into the context of an election (the act of putting a Ballot into a box).
Friedrich Schleiermacher, widely regarded as the father of sociological hermeneutics believed that, in order for an interpreter to understand the work of another author, they must familiarize themselves with the historical context in which the author published their thoughts. His work led to the inspiration of Heidegger's "hermeneutic circle" a frequently referenced model that claims one's understanding of individual parts of a text is based on their understanding of the whole text, while the understanding of the whole text is dependent on the understanding of each individual part. Hermeneutics in sociology was also heavily influenced by Gadamer.Charles A. Pressler, Fabio B. Dasilva, Sociology and Interpretation: From Weber to Habermas, SUNY Press, 1996, p. 168.
Dilthey (1833–1911)
Heidegger (1889–1976)
Gadamer (1900–2002)
New hermeneutic
Marxist hermeneutics
Objective hermeneutics
Other recent developments
Applications
Archaeology
Architecture
Education
Environment
International relations
Law
Phenomenology
Political philosophy
Psychoanalysis
Psychology and cognitive science
Religion and theology
Safety science
Sociology
Criticism
See also
Notable precursors
Bibliography
External links
a paper on the relevance of Gadamer's Hermeneutics for our understanding of Music, Ethics and our Education in both.
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