(Redirected from Hermeneutic)'Hermeneutics' may be described as the development and study of
theories of the
interpretation and understanding of texts. In contemporary usage in religious studies, hermeneutics refers to the study of the interpretation of religious texts. It is more broadly used in contemporary philosophy to denote the study of theories and methods of the interpretation of all texts and systems of meaning. The concept of "text" is here extended beyond
written documents to any number of objects subject to interpretation, such as experiences. A hermeneutic is defined as a specific system or method for interpretation, or a specific theory of interpretation. However, the contemporary philosopher
Hans-Georg Gadamer has said that hermeneutics is an approach rather than a method and, further, that the
Hermeneutic circle is the central problem of interpretation.
Essentially, hermeneutics involves cultivating the ability to understand things from somebody else's point of view, and to appreciate the cultural and social forces that may have influenced their outlook. Hermeneutics is the process of applying this understanding to interpreting the meaning of written texts and symbolic artifacts (such as art or sculpture or architecture), which may be either historic or contemporary.
In the last two centuries, the scope of hermeneutics has expanded to include the investigation and interpretation not only of textual and artistic works, but of human behaviour generally, including language and patterns of speech, social institutions, and ritual behaviours (such as religious ceremonies, political rallies, football matches, rock concerts, etc.). Hermeneutics interprets or inquires into the meaning and import of these phenomena, through understanding the point of view and 'inner life' (Dilthey) of an insider, or the first-person perspective of an engaged participant in these phenomena.
Etymology
The word ''hermeneutics'' is a term derived from 'Ερμηνεύς, the
Greek word for ''interpreter''. This is related to the name of the Greek god
Hermes in his role as the interpreter of the messages of the gods. Hermes was believed to play tricks on those he was supposed to give messages to, often changing the messages and influencing the interpretation thereof. The Greek word thus has the basic meaning of one who makes the meaning clear.
Scriptural hermeneutics
Main articles: Biblical hermeneutics,
Pesher,
Tafsir
A common use of the word ''hermeneutics'' refers to a process of scriptural interpretation. Throughout religious history scholars and students of religious texts have sought to mine the wealth of their meanings by developing a variety of different systems of hermeneutics. Philosophical hermeneutics in particular can be seen as a development of scriptural hermeneutics, providing a theoretical backing for various interpretive projects. Thus, philosophical and scriptural hermeneutics can be seen as mutually reinforcing practices.
Rabbi Ishmael of the Amoraic era of Judaism interpreted laws from the Torah through 13 hermeneutic principles. This is the first appearance of hermeneutics in the world, through the
exegetic interpretation of Biblical texts.
History of Western hermeneutics
Hermeneutics in the
Western world, as a general science of text interpretation, can be traced back to two sources. One source was the
ancient Greek rhetoricians' study of literature, which came to fruition in
Alexandria. The other source has been the
Midrashic and
Patristic traditions of
Biblical exegesis, which were contemporary with
Hellenistic culture. Scholars in
antiquity expected a text to be coherent, consistent in
grammar, style and outlook, and they amended obscure or "decadent" readings to comply with their codified rules. By extending the perception of inherent logic of texts, Greeks were able to attribute works with uncertain origin.
Ancient Greece and Rome
Aristotle strikes a chord in his treatise ''
De Interpretatione'' that reverberates through the intervening ages and supplies the key note for many contemporary theories of interpretation. His overture is here:
Words spoken are symbols or signs (symbola) of affections or impressions (pathemata) of the soul (psyche); written words are the signs of words spoken. As writing, so also is speech not the same for all races of men. But the mental affections themselves, of which these words are
primarily signs (semeia), are the same for the whole of mankind, as are also the objects (pragmata) of which those
affections are representations or likenesses, images, copies (homoiomata). (Aristotle, ''On Interpretation'', 1.16a4).
Equally important to later developments are texts on poetry, rhetoric, and
sophistry, including many of Plato's dialogues, such as ''
Cratylus'', ''
Ion'', ''
Gorgias'', ''
Lesser Hippias'', and ''
Republic'', along with Aristotle's ''
Poetics'', ''
Rhetoric'', and ''
On Sophistical Refutations''. However, these texts deal more with the presentation and refutation of arguments, speeches and poems rather than the understanding of texts as texts. As Ramberg and Gjesdal note, "Only with the Stoics, and their reflections on the interpretation of myth, do we encounter something like a methodological awareness of the problems of textual understanding" (Ramberg & Gjesdal).
Some ancient Greek philosophers, particularly Plato, tended to vilify poets and poetry as harmful nonsense—Plato denies entry to poets in his ideal state in ''
The Republic'' until they can prove their value. In the ''Ion'', Plato famously portrays poets as possessed:
You know, none of the epic poets, if they're good, are masters of their subject; they are inspired, possessed, and that is how they utter all those beautiful poems. The same goes for lyric poets if they're good: just as the Corybantes are not in their right minds when they dance, lyric poets, too, are not in their right minds when they make those beautiful lyrics, but as soon as they sail into harmony and rhythm they are possessed by Bacchic frenzy." (Plato ''Ion'', 533e-534a)
The meaning of the poem thus becomes open to ridicule — whatever hints of the truth it may have, the truth is covered by madness. However, another line of thinking arose with
Theagenes of Rhegium, who suggested that instead of taking poetry literally, what was expressed in poems were allegories of nature. Stoic philosophers further developed this idea, reading into the poets not only allegories of natural phenomena, but allegories of ethical behavior.
Aristotle differed with his predecessor, Plato, in the worth of poetry. Both saw art as an act of
mimesis, but where Plato saw a pale, essentially false imitation in art of reality, Aristotle saw the possibility of truth in imitation. As Critic David Richter points out, "for Aristotle, artists must disregard incidental facts to search for deeper universal truths"--instead of being essentially false, poetry may be universally true. (Richter ''The Critical Tradition'', 57). In the Poetics, Aristotle called both the tragedy and the epic noble, with tragedy serving the essential function of purging strong emotions from the audience through
katharsis.
Early Biblical hermeneutics
The early
Jewish
Rabbis and the early
Church Fathers deployed similar
philological tools; their Biblical interpretations stressed
allegorical readings, frequently at the expense of the texts' literal meaning. They sought deeper meanings below the outward appearance of the text. Examples of such interpretations include the views of
Philo of Alexandria,
Origen, and the
Talmudic writings. Traditional Jewish hermeneutics differ from the Greek method in that the rabbis considered the Tanach (the Jewish bibilical canon) to be inviolate. They did not consider inconsistencies in the text to be mistakes or corruptions. These problematic sections of the text were believed to be deliberate and containing meanings which had to be teased out of the text through the process of exegesis. As a result, the rabbinical interpreters created a secondary, esoteric reading of the text based on these problematic sections. This was one of the bases of early Kabbalah and the Gematria, which posited mystical or "secret" meanings to the Biblical text based on the letters of the text themselves and even their numerical value.
Medieval hermeneutics
Medieval Christian interpretations of text incorporated
exegesis into a fourfold mode that emphasized the distinction between the letter and the spirit of the text.
This schema was based on the various ways of interpreting the text utilitized by
the Patristic writers. The
literal sense (''sensus historicus'') of Scripture denotes what the text states or reports directly. The
allegorical sense (''sensus allegoricus'') explains the text with regard to the doctrinal content of church dogma, so that each literal element has a
symbolic meaning. The
moral application of the text to the individual reader or hearer is the third sense, the ''sensus tropologicus'' or ''sensus moralis'', while a fourth level of meaning, the ''sensus anagogicus'', draws out of the text the implicit allusions it contains to secret metaphysical and eschatological knowledge, or ''
gnosis''.
The hermeneutical terminology used here is in part arbitrary. For almost all three interpretations which go beyond the literal explanations are in a general sense "allegorical". The practical application of these three aspects of spiritual interpretation varied considerably. Most of the time, the fourfold sense of the Scriptures was used only partially, dependent upon the content of the text and the idea of the exegete.... We can easily notice that the basic structure is in fact a twofold sense of the Scriptures, that is, the distinction between the ''sensus literalis'' and the ''sensus spiritualis'' or ''mysticus'', and that the number four was derived from a restrictive systematization of the numerous possibilities which existed for the ''sensus spiritualis'' into three interpretive dimensions. (Ebeling 1964, 38).
Hermeneutics in the
Middle Ages witnessed the proliferation of non-literal interpretations of the Bible.
Christian commentators could read
Old Testament narratives ''simultaneously'' as prefigurations of analogous
New Testament episodes, as symbolic lessons about
Church institutions and current teachings, and as personally applicable allegories of the
Spirit. In each case, the meaning of the signs was constrained by imputing a particular intention to the Bible, such as teaching morality, but these interpretive bases were posited by the religious tradition rather than suggested by a preliminary reading of the text.
The customary medieval exegetical technique divided the text in ''glossa'' ("
glosses" or annotations) written between the lines and at the side of the text which was left with wide margins for this very purpose. The text was further divided into ''"
scholia"'' which are long, exegetical passages, often on a separate page.
A similar fourfold categorization is also found in
Rabbinic writings. The fourfold categorizations are: Peshat (simple interpretation), Remez (allusion), Derash (interpretive), and Sod (secret/mystical). It is uncertain whether or not the Rabbinic division of interpretation pre-dates the Patristic version. The medieval period saw the growth of many new categories of
Rabbinic interpretation and explanation of the
Torah, including the emergence of
Kabbalah and the writings of
Maimonides.
Renaissance and Enlightenment
The discipline of hermeneutics emerged with the new
humanist education of the 15th century as a historical and critical
methodology for analyzing texts. In a triumph of early modern hermeneutics, the Italian humanist
Lorenzo Valla proved in 1440 that the "
Donation of Constantine" was a forgery, through intrinsic evidence of the text itself. Thus hermeneutics expanded from its medieval role explaining the correct analysis of the
Bible.
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.
The rationalist
Enlightenment led hermeneuts, especially
Protestant exegetes, to view Scriptural texts as secular Classical texts were viewed. Scripture thus was interpreted as responses to historical or social forces, so that apparent contradictions and difficult passages in the New Testament, for example, might be clarified by comparing their possible meanings with contemporaneous Christian practices.
Schleiermacher
Friedrich Schleiermacher (November 21, 1768 – February 12, 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 the content asserted in terms of the overall organization of the work. He distinguishes between grammatical interpretation and psychological interpretation. The former studies how a work is composed from general ideas, the latter considers the peculiar combinations that characterize the work as a whole. Schleiermacher said that every problem of interpretation is a problem of understanding. He even defined hermeneutics as the art of avoiding misunderstanding. He provides a solution to avoidance of misunderstanding: knowledge of grammatical and psychological laws in trying to understand the text and the writer. There arose in his time a fundamental shift from understanding not only the exact words and their objective meaning to individuality of the speaker or author.
for more information: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
[1]
Dilthey
Wilhelm Dilthey broadened hermeneutics even more by relating interpretation to all historical objectifications. Understanding moves from the outer manifestations of human action and productivity to explore their inner meaning. In his last important essay "The Understanding of Others and Their Manifestations of Life" (1910), Dilthey makes it clear that this move from outer to inner, from expression to what is expressed, is not based on empathy. Empathy involves a direct identification with the other. Interpretation involves an indirect or mediated understanding that can only be attained by placing human expressions in their historical context. Understanding is not a process of reconstructing the state of mind of the author, but one of articulating what is expressed in the work.
Heidegger
Main articles: Martin Heidegger
Since Dilthey, the discipline of hermeneutics has detached itself from this central task and broadened its spectrum to all texts, including
multimedia and to understanding the bases of meaning. In the 20th century,
Martin Heidegger's philosophical hermeneutics shifted the focus from interpretation to existential understanding, which was treated more as a direct, non-mediated, thus in a sense more authentic way of being in the world than simply as a way of knowing.
Advocates of this approach claim that such texts, and the people who produce them, cannot be studied using the same
scientific methods as the
natural sciences, thus use arguments similar to that 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, but, more significantly, provide the reader with a means to share the experiences of the author. Among the key thinkers of this approach is the
sociologist Max Weber.
Contemporary hermeneutics
Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutics is a development of the hermeneutics of his teacher, Heidegger.
Paul Ricoeur developed a hermeneutics based on Heidegger's concepts, although his own work differs in many ways from that of Gadamer's.
Andrés Ortíz-Osés has developed his Symbolic Hermeneutics as the Mediterranean response to north European Hermeneutics. His main statement regarding the symbolic understanding of the world is that the
meaning is the
symbolic healing of the real injury.
Hermeneutics and critical theory
Jürgen Habermas criticized the conservatism of previous hermeneutics, especially Gadamer, because the focus on tradition seemed to undermine possibilities for social criticism and transformation. Habermas 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 of both interaction and communication as well as labor and production for social theory. For Habermas, hermeneutics is one dimension of critical social theory.
Themes in hermeneutics
Hermeneutic circle
The hermeneutic circle describes the process of understanding a text hermeneutically. It refers to the idea that one's understanding of the text as a whole is established by reference to the individual parts and one's understanding of each individual part by reference to the whole. Neither the whole text nor any individual part can be understood without reference to one another, and hence, it is a circle. However, this circular character of interpretation does not make it impossible to interpret a text, rather, it stresses that the meaning of text must be found within its cultural, historical, and literary context.
With
Schleiermacher, hermeneutics begins to stress the importance of the interpreter in the process of interpretation. Schleiermacher's hermeneutics focuses on the importance of the interpreter ''
understanding'' the text as a necessary stage to interpreting it. Understanding, for Schleiermacher, does not simply come from reading the text, but involves knowledge of the historical context of the text and the psychology of the author.
For Postmodernists, the Hermeneutic Circle is especially problematic. This is the result of the fact that in addition to only being able to know the world through the words we use to describe it, we are also confronted with the problem that "whenever people try to establish a certain reading of a text or expression, they allege other readings as the ground for their reading" (Adler 1997: 321-322). In other words, "All meaning systems are open-ended systems of signs referring to signs referring to signs. No concept can therefore have an ultimate, unequivocal meaning" (Waever 1996: 171).
Meaning
Horizon
Hans-Georg Gadamer describes the process of interpreting a text as the fusion of one's own ''horizon'' with the ''horizon of the text''. He has defined ''horizon'' as "The totality of all that can be realized or thought about by a person at a given time in history and in a particular culture."
Applications of hermeneutics
Sociology
In
sociology, hermeneutics means the interpretation and understanding of social events by analysing their meanings to the human participants and their
culture. It enjoyed prominence during the sixties and seventies, and differs from other interpretative schools of sociology in that it emphasizes the importance of the content as well as the form of any given social behaviour. The central principle of hermeneutics is that it is only possible to grasp the meaning of an action or statement by relating it to the whole discourse or world-view from which it originates: for instance, putting a piece of paper in a box might be considered a meaningless action unless put in the context of democratic elections, and the action of putting a ballot paper in a box. One can frequently find reference to the 'hermeneutic circle': that is, relating the whole to the part and the part to the whole. Hermeneutics in sociology was most heavily influenced by German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (see 'Truth and Method', 1960).
Law
Main articles: Jurisprudence
Some scholars argue that
law and theology constitute particular forms of hermeneutics because of their need to interpret legal tradition / scriptural texts. Moreover, the problem of interpretation is central to
legal theory at least since the
11th century. In the
Middle Ages and
Renaissance, the schools of ''
glossatores'', ''
commentatores'' and ''
usus modernus'' distinguished themselves right by their approach to the interpretation of "laws" (mainly,
Justinian's
Corpus Iuris Civilis). The
University of Bologna gave birth to a "legal Renaissance" in the 11th century, when the Corpus Iuris Civilis was rediscovered and started to be systematically studied by people like
Irnerius and
Gratianus. It was an interpretative Renaissance.
After that, interpretation has always been at the center of legal thought.
Savigny and
Betti, among others, made significant contributions also to general hermeneutics.
Legal interpretivism, most famously
Ronald Dworkin's, might be seen as a branch of philosophical hermeneutics.
Computer science
Researchers in
computer science, especially those dealing with
artificial intelligence,
computational linguistics,
knowledge representation, and
protocol analysis, have not failed to notice the commonality of interest that they share with hermeneutics researchers in regard to the character of interpretive agents and the conduct of interpretive activities. For instance, in the abstract to their 1986 AI Memo, Mallery, Hurwitz, and Duffy have the following to say:
Hermeneutics, a branch of continental European philosophy concerned with human understanding and the interpretation of written texts, offers insights that may contribute to the understanding of meaning, translation, architectures for natural language understanding, and even to the methods suitable for scientific inquiry in AI. (Mallery, Hurwitz, Duffy, 1986).
International Relations
Insofar as hermeneutics is a cornerstone of both
critical theory and
constitutive theory, both of which have made important inroads into the
postpositivist branch of
international relations theory and
political science, hermeneutics has been applied to international relations (IR).
Steve Smith (Academic) refers to hermeneutics as the principal way of grounding a foundationalist yet postpositivist IR theory such as critical theory. An example of a postpositivist yet anti-foundationalist IR paradigm would be radical
postmodernism.
Religion and theology
The process by which theological texts are understood relies on a particular hermeneutical viewpoint. Theorists like
Paul Ricoeur have applied modern philosophical hermeneutics to theological texts (in Ricoeur's case, the
Bible).
See also:
Biblical hermeneutics,
Qura'nic hermeneutics,
Talmudical hermeneutics and
Exegesis.
Hermeneutics and semiotics
The being of a symbol consists in the real fact that something surely will be experienced if certain conditions be satisfied. Namely, it will influence the thought and conduct of its interpreter. Every word is a symbol. Every sentence is a symbol. Every book is a symbol. Every representamen depending upon conventions is a symbol. Just as a photograph is an index having an icon incorporated into it, that is, excited in the mind by its force, so a symbol may have an icon or an index incorporated into it, that is, the active law that it is may require its interpretation to involve the calling up of an image, or a composite photograph of many images of past experiences, as ordinary common nouns and verbs do; or it may require its interpretation to refer to the actual surrounding circumstances of the occasion of its embodiment, like such words as ''that'', ''this'', ''I'', ''you'', ''which'', ''here'', ''now'', ''yonder'', etc. Or it may be pure symbol, neither ''iconic'' nor ''indicative'', like the words ''and'', ''or'', ''of'', etc. (Peirce, CP 4.447).
See also
Abductive Inference and Literary Theory – Pragmatism, Hermeneutics and Semiotics written by
Uwe Wirth.
References
★
Aristotle, "On Interpretation",
Harold P. Cooke (trans.), pp. 111–179 in ''Aristotle, Volume 1'',
Loeb Classical Library,
William Heinemann, London, UK, 1938.
★ Ebeling, Gerhard, "The New Hermeneutics and the Early Luther", ''Theology Today'', vol. 21.1, April 1964, p. 34-46
Eprint
★
Hans Köchler, "Zum Gegenstandsbereich der Hermeneutik," in: ''Perspektiven der Philosophie'', Vol. 9 (1983), pp. 331-341. (German)
★
Peirce, C.S., ''Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce'', vols. 1–6,
Charles Hartshorne and
Paul Weiss (eds.), vols. 7–8,
Arthur W. Burks (ed.), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1931–1935, 1958. Cited as CP vol.para.
★ Peirce, C.S. (c. 1903), "Logical Tracts, No. 2", in ''Collected Papers'', CP 4.418–509.
Eprint.
★
Plato, ''Ion'', Paul Woodruff (trans.). in ''Plato: Complete Works''. Ed. John M. Cooper. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997. pp. 937-949.
★ Ramberg, Bjørn, Gjesdal, Kristin, "Hermeneutics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2005 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).
Eprint.
★ Khan, Ali,
The Hermeneutics of Sexual Order
★ Zabala, Santiago,
[2] ''The Hermeneutic Nature of Analytic Philosophy. Introducing Ernst Tugendhat'', New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.
See also
External links
★ Bibliology and Hermeneutics Course",
The Theology Program B&Haudio and video resources from an Evangelcial perspective
★ Ferré, Frederick, "Metaphor in Religious Discourse", ''Dictionary of the History of Ideas'',
Eprint
★ Mallery, John C., Hurwitz, Roger, and Duffy, Gavan, "Hermeneutics: From Textual Explication to Computer Understanding?", 1986, [ftp://publications.ai.mit.edu/ai-publications/pdf/AIM-871.pdf PDF]
★ Mantzavinos, C. "Naturalistic Hermeneutics",
Cambridge University Press
★ Masson, Scott. "The Hermeneutic Circle" http://www.amazon.com/Romanticism-Hermeneutics-Sciences-Nineteenth-Century/dp/0754635031/ref=sr_1_1/105-6534813-1358802?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1185904832&sr=8-1]
★
Palmer, Richard E., "The Liminality of Hermes and the Meaning of Hermeneutics",
Eprint
★ Palmer, Richard E., "The Relevance of Gadamer's Philosophical Hermeneutics to Thirty-Six Topics or Fields of Human Activity", Lecture Delivered at the Department of Philosophy, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, 01 Apr 1999,
Eprint
★ Quintana Paz, Miguel Ángel,
"On Hermeneutical Ethics and Education", a paper on the relevance of Gadamer's Hermeneutics for our understanding of Music, Ethics and our Education in both.
★ Ramberg, Bjorn, and Gjesdal, Kristin, "Hermeneutics", ''
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'',
Eprint
★ Szesnat, Holger, "Philosophical Hermeneutics",
Webpage
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