From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hermeneutics (
) is the theory and
methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of
biblical texts,
wisdom literature, and
philosophical texts.
Modern hermeneutics includes both verbal and non-verbal communication as well as
semiotics,
presuppositions, 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
scripture, and has been later broadened to questions of general interpretation. The terms
hermeneutics and
exegesis are sometimes used interchangeably. Hermeneutics is a wider discipline which includes written, verbal, and non-verbal 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.
Etymology
Hermeneutics is derived from the Greek word
ἑρμηνεύω (
hermēneuō, "translate, interpret"), from
ἑρμηνεύς (
hermeneus, "translator, interpreter"), of uncertain etymology (
R. S. P. Beekes (2009) suggests a
Pre-Greek origin). The technical term
ἑρμηνεία (
hermeneia, "interpretation, explanation") was introduced into philosophy mainly through the title of
Aristotle's work
Περὶ Ἑρμηνείας ("Peri Hermeneias"), commonly referred to by its Latin title
De Interpretatione and translated in English as
On Interpretation. It is one of the earliest (c. 360
B.C.) extant philosophical works in the
Western tradition to deal with the relationship between language and logic in a comprehensive, explicit and formal way.
The early usage of "hermeneutics" places it within the boundaries of the
sacred. A
divine
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.
Folk etymology
Hermes, messenger of the gods.
Folk etymology places its origin with
Hermes, the mythological Greek
deity who was the 'messenger of the gods'. Besides being a mediator between the gods and between the gods and men, he led souls to the
underworld upon death.
Hermes was also considered to be 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.
In religious traditions
Talmudic hermeneutics
Summaries of the principles by which Torah can be interpreted date back to, at least,
Hillel the Elder, although the thirteen principles set forth in the
Baraita of Rabbi Ishmael are perhaps the best known. These principles ranged from standard rules of logic (e.g.,
a fortiori argument [known in
Hebrew as קל וחומר —
kal v'chomer])
to more expansive ones, such as the rule that a passage could be
interpreted by reference to another passage in which the same word
appears (
Gezerah Shavah). The
rabbis did not ascribe equal persuasive power to the various principles.
Traditional Jewish hermeneutics differed from the Greek method in that the rabbis considered the
Tanakh
(the Jewish bibilical 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
mystical levels of understanding.
Vedic hermeneutics
Vedic hermeneutics involves the exegesis of the
Vedas, the earliest holy texts of
Hinduism. The
Mimamsa was the leading hermeneutic school and their primary purpose was understanding what
Dharma
(righteous living) involved by a detailed hermeneutic study of the
Vedas. They also derived the rules for the various rituals that had to
be performed precisely.
The foundational text is the
Mimamsa Sutra of
Jaimini (ca. 3rd to 1st century BCE) with a major commentary by
Śabara (ca. the 5th or 6th century CE). The Mimamsa sutra summed up the basic rules for Vedic interpretation.
Buddhist hermeneutics
Buddhist hermeneutics deals with the interpretation of the vast
Buddhist literature, particularly those texts which are said to be spoken by the
Buddha (
Buddhavacana)
and other enlightened beings. Buddhist hermeneutics is deeply tied to
Buddhist spiritual practice and its ultimate aim is to extract
skillful means of reaching spiritual enlightenment or
nirvana.
A central question in Buddhist hermeneutics is which Buddhist teachings
are explicit, representing ultimate truth, and which teachings are
merely conventional or relative.
Biblical hermeneutics
Biblical hermeneutics is the study of the principles of
interpretation of the Bible. While Jewish and Christian biblical
hermeneutics have some overlap, they have distinctly different
interpretive traditions.
The early
patristic 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 corrects and 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 are traditionally fourfold sense of biblical hermeneutics: literal, moral, allegorical (spiritual), and anagogical.
Literal
Encyclopædia Britannica states that literal analysis means “a
biblical text is to be deciphered according to the ‘plain meaning’
expressed by its linguistic construction and historical context.” The
intention of the authors is believed to correspond to the literal
meaning. Literal hermeneutics is often associated with the verbal
inspiration of the Bible.
Moral
Moral
interpretation searches for moral lessons which can be understood from
writings within the Bible. Allegories are often placed in this category.
Allegorical
Allegorical
interpretation states that biblical narratives have a second level of
reference that is more than the people, events and things that are
explicitly mentioned. One type of allegorical interpretation is known as
typological,
where the key figures, events, and establishments of the Old Testament
are viewed as “types” (patterns). In the New Testament this can also
include foreshadowing of people, objects, and events. According to this
theory, readings like Noah’s Ark could be understood by using the Ark as
a “type” of the Christian church that God designed from the start.
Anagogical
This
type of interpretation is more often known as mystical interpretation.
It purports to explain the events of the Bible and how they relate to or
predict what the future holds. This is evident in the
Jewish Kabbalah, which attempts to reveal the mystical significance of the numerical values of
Hebrew words and letters.
In Judaism, anagogical interpretation is also evident in the medieval
Zohar. In Christianity, it can be seen in
Mariology.
Philosophical hermeneutics
Modern hermeneutics
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. This was done through intrinsic evidence of the text
itself. Thus hermeneutics expanded from its medieval role of explaining
the true meaning 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.
Martin Luther and
John Calvin emphasized
scriptura sui ipsius interpres (scripture interprets itself). Calvin used
brevitas et facilitas as an aspect of
theological hermeneutics.
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.
19th- and 20th-century hermeneutics emerged as a theory of understanding (
Verstehen) through the work of
Friedrich Schleiermacher (
Romantic hermeneutics and
methodological hermeneutics),
August Böckh (methodological hermeneutics),
Wilhelm Dilthey (
epistemological hermeneutics),
Martin Heidegger (
ontological hermeneutics,
hermeneutic phenomenology, and
transcendental hermeneutic phenomenology),
Hans-Georg Gadamer (ontological hermeneutics),
Leo Strauss (
Straussian hermeneutics),
Paul Ricœur (hermeneutic phenomenology),
Walter Benjamin (
Marxist hermeneutics),
Ernst Bloch (Marxist hermeneutics),
Jacques Derrida (
radical hermeneutics, namely
deconstruction),
Richard Kearney (
diacritical hermeneutics),
Fredric Jameson (Marxist hermeneutics), 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) and for Heidegger's
hermeneutic realism
(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).
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.
Dilthey (1833–1911)
Wilhelm Dilthey
broadened hermeneutics even more by relating interpretation to
historical objectification. Understanding moves from the outer
manifestations of human action and productivity to the exploration of
their inner meaning. In his last important essay, "The Understanding of
Other Persons and Their Manifestations of Life" (1910), Dilthey made
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. Thus, understanding is not a process of reconstructing the
state of mind of the author, but one of articulating what is expressed
in his work.
Dilthey divided sciences of the mind (
human sciences) into three structural levels: experience, expression, and comprehension.
- Experience means to feel a situation or thing personally.
Dilthey suggested that we can always grasp the meaning of unknown
thought when we try to experience it. His understanding of experience is
very similar to that of phenomenologist Edmund Husserl.
- Expression converts experience into meaning because the discourse
has an appeal to someone outside of oneself. Every saying is an
expression. Dilthey suggested that one can always return to an
expression, especially to its written form, and this practice has the
same objective value as an experiment in science. The possibility of
returning makes scientific analysis possible, and therefore the
humanities may be labeled as science. Moreover, he assumed that an
expression may be "saying" more than the speaker intends because the
expression brings forward meanings which the individual consciousness
may not fully understand.
- The last structural level of the science of the mind, according to
Dilthey, is comprehension, which is a level that contains both
comprehension and incomprehension. Incomprehension means, more or less, wrong understanding.
He assumed that comprehension produces coexistence: "he who
understands, understands others; he who does not understand stays
alone."
Heidegger (1889–1976)
In the 20th century,
Martin Heidegger's philosophical hermeneutics shifted the focus from interpretation to
existential
understanding as rooted in fundamental ontology, which was treated more
as a direct — and thus more authentic — way of being-in-the-world (
In-der-Welt-sein) than merely as "a way of knowing."
For example, he called for a "special hermeneutic of empathy" to
dissolve the classic philosophic issue of "other minds" by putting the
issue in the context of the being-with of human relatedness. (Heidegger
himself did not complete this inquiry.)
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
natural sciences, 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.
Gadamer (1900–2002) et al.
Hans-Georg Gadamer's
hermeneutics is a development of the hermeneutics of his teacher,
Heidegger. Gadamer asserted that methodical contemplation is opposite to
experience and reflection. We can reach the truth only by understanding
or mastering our experience. According to Gadamer, our understanding is
not fixed but rather is changing and always indicating new
perspectives. The most important thing is to unfold the nature of
individual understanding.
Gadamer pointed out that prejudice is an element of our understanding and is not
per se
without value. Indeed, prejudices, in the sense of prejudgments 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.
Bernard Lonergan's (1904–1984) hermeneutics is less well known, but a case for considering his work as the culmination of the
postmodern hermeneutical revolution that began with Heidegger was made in several articles by Lonergan specialist
Frederick G. Lawrence.
Paul Ricœur
(1913–2005) developed a hermeneutics that is based upon Heidegger's
concepts. His work differs in many ways from that of Gadamer.
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.
Mauricio Beuchot coined the term and discipline of
analogic hermeneutics,
which is a type of hermeneutics that is based upon interpretation and
takes into account the plurality of aspects of meaning. He drew
categories both from analytic and continental philosophy, as well as
from the
history of thought.
Two scholars who have published criticism of Gadamer's hermeneutics are the Italian jurist
Emilio Betti and the American literary theorist
E. D. Hirsch.
New hermeneutic
New hermeneutic is the theory and methodology of interpretation to understand Biblical texts through
existentialism.
The essence of new hermeneutic emphasizes not only the existence of
language but also the fact that language is eventually in the history
of individual life. This is called the event of language.
Ernst Fuchs,
Gerhard Ebeling, and
James M. Robinson are the scholars who represent the new hermeneutics.
Marxist hermeneutics
The method of
Marxist hermeneutics has been developed by the work of, primarily,
Walter Benjamin and
Fredric Jameson. Benjamin outlines his theory of the allegory in his study
Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels ("Trauerspiel" literally means "mourning play" but is often translated as "tragic drama").
Fredric Jameson draws on Biblical hermeneutics,
Ernst Bloch, and the work of
Northrop Frye, to advance his theory of Marxist hermeneutics in his influential
The Political Unconscious. Jameson's Marxist hermeneutics is outlined in the first chapter of the book, titled "On Interpretation"
Jameson re-interprets (and secularizes) the fourfold system (or four
levels) of Biblical exegesis (literal; moral; allegorical; anagogical)
to relate interpretation to the Mode of Production, and eventually,
history.
Objective hermeneutics
Karl Popper first used the term "
objective hermeneutics" in his
Objective Knowledge (1972).
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.
In one of the few translated texts of this German school of hermeneutics, its founders declared:
Our approach has grown out of the
empirical study of family interactions as well as reflection upon the
procedures of interpretation employed in our research. For the time
being we shall refer to it as objective hermeneutics in order to
distinguish it clearly from traditional hermeneutic techniques and
orientations. The general significance for sociological analysis
of objective hermeneutics issues from the fact that, in the social
sciences, interpretive methods constitute the fundamental procedures of
measurement and of the generation of research data relevant to theory.
From our perspective, the standard, nonhermeneutic methods of
quantitative social research can only be justified because they permit a
shortcut in generating data (and research "economy" comes about under
specific conditions). Whereas the conventional methodological attitude
in the social sciences justifies qualitative approaches as exploratory
or preparatory activities, to be succeeded by standardized approaches
and techniques as the actual scientific procedures (assuring precision,
validity, and objectivity), we regard hermeneutic procedures as the
basic method for gaining precise and valid knowledge in the social
sciences. However, we do not simply reject alternative approaches
dogmatically. They are in fact useful wherever the loss in precision and
objectivity necessitated by the requirement of research economy can be
condoned and tolerated in the light of prior hermeneutically elucidated
research experiences.
Applications
Archaeology
In
archaeology, hermeneutics means the interpretation and understanding of material through analysis of possible meanings and social uses.
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
stone tools, 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
relativist and that their own interpretations are based on
common-sense evaluation.
Architecture
There are several traditions of architectural scholarship that draw upon the hermeneutics of
Heidegger and
Gadamer, such as
Christian Norberg-Schulz, and
Nader El-Bizri in the circles of
phenomenology.
Lindsay Jones examines the way architecture is received and how that
reception changes with time and context (e.g., how a building is
interpreted by critics, users, and historians).
Dalibor Vesely situates hermeneutics within a critique of the application of overly scientific thinking to architecture. This tradition fits within a critique of the
Enlightenment and has also informed design-studio teaching.
Adrian Snodgrass sees the study of history and Asian cultures by architects as a hermeneutical encounter with otherness. He also deploys arguments from hermeneutics to explain design as a process of interpretation. Along with
Richard Coyne, he extends the argument to the nature of architectural education and design.
Environment
Environmental hermeneutics applies hermeneutics to environmental issues conceived broadly to subjects including "
nature" and "
wilderness"
(both terms are matters of hermeneutical contention), landscapes,
ecosystems, built environments (where it overlaps architectural
hermeneutics), inter-species relationships, the relationship of the body to the world, and more.
International relations
Steve Smith refers to hermeneutics as the principal way of grounding a
foundationalist yet postpositivist theory of international relations.
Law
Some scholars argue that law and theology are particular forms of
hermeneutics because of their need to interpret legal tradition or
scriptural texts. Moreover, the problem of interpretation has been
central to
legal theory since at least the 11th century.
Political philosophy
Italian philosopher
Gianni Vattimo and Spanish philosopher Santiago Zabala in their book
Hermeneutic Communism,
when discussing contemporary capitalist regimes, stated that, "A
politics of descriptions does not impose power in order to dominate as a
philosophy; rather, it is functional for the continued existence of a
society of dominion, which pursues truth in the form of imposition
(violence), conservation (realism), and triumph (history)."
Vattimo and Zabala also stated that they view
interpretation as anarchy and affirmed that "existence is interpretation" and that "hermeneutics is weak thought."
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysts have made ample use of hermeneutics since
Sigmund Freud first gave birth to their discipline. In 1900 Freud wrote that the title he chose for
The Interpretation of Dreams 'makes plain which of the traditional approaches to the problem of dreams I am inclined to follow...[
i.e.] "interpreting" a dream implies assigning a "meaning" to it.'
The French psychoanalyst
Jacques Lacan
later extended Freudian hermeneutics into other psychical realms. His
early work from the 1930s–50s is particularly influenced by Heidegger,
and
Maurice Merleau-Ponty's hermeneutical phenomenology.
Psychology
Religion and theology
The understanding of a
theological text depends upon the reader's particular hermeneutical viewpoint. Some theorists, such as
Paul Ricœur, have applied modern philosophical hermeneutics to theological texts (in Ricœur's case, the Bible).
Mircea Eliade, as a hermeneutist, understands religion as 'experience of the sacred', and interprets the sacred in relation to the profane.
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.
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. Myth is interpreted by Mircea Eliade as 'sacred history'. He introduces the concept of 'total hermeneutics'.
Safety science
In the field of
safety science, and especially in the study of
human reliability, scientists have become increasingly interested in hermeneutic approaches.
It has been proposed by
ergonomist Donald Taylor that
mechanistic
models of human behavior 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.
Sociology
In
sociology,
hermeneutics is the interpretation and understanding of social events
through analysis of their meanings for the human participants in the
events. It enjoyed prominence during the 1960s and 1970s, and differs
from other interpretive schools of sociology in that it emphasizes the
importance of both context and form within any given social behavior.
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, putting a piece of paper into a box might be considered a
meaningless act unless it is put into the context of democratic
elections (the act of putting a
ballot paper 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 German philosopher
Hans-Georg Gadamer.
Criticism
Jürgen Habermas criticizes
Gadamer's
hermeneutics as being unsuitable for understanding society because it
is unable to account for questions of social reality, like labor and
domination.
