Understanding Hermeneutics

Lawrence Kennedy Schmidt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134943838
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría filosóficas

This series provides short, accessible and lively introduction to the major schools, movements and traditions in philosophy and the history of ideas since the beginning of the Enlightenment. All books in the series are written for undergraduates meeting the subject for the first time. Hermeneutics concerns itself with the theory of understanding and the interpretation of language. The question of how to correctly interpret and understand others remains one of the most contested branches of philosophy. In Understanding Hermeneutics Lawrence Schmidt provides an introduction to modern hermeneutics through a systematic examination of the ideas of its key philosophical proponents. Chapter 1 examines the ideas, of the Protestant theologian, Friedrich Schleiermacher, who argues that misunderstanding is always possible so we must always employ interpretation if we are to understnad correctly. Chapter 2 discusses the ideas of Dilthey, who maintains that understanding in the humanities is fundamentally different from explanation in the natural sciences, and who presents a methodology to judge what another person means or feels by means of their language and also their gestures, facial expressions, and manners of acting. Chapter 3 explores the ideas of Heidegger who radicalizes the concept by shifting its focus from interpreting texts to an existential interpretation of human being. In Chapter 4 the recent ideas of Gadamer are examined, which extend to examining the structures of hermeneutic experience and to question the supremacy of the natural sciences as models for truth. The final chapters consider some of the criticisms and controversies surrounding hermeneutics, including the work of Habermas, Hirsch, Ricoeur and Derrida, and the prospects for the future of hermeneutics.

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Schleiermacher’s universal hermeneutics

Schleiermacher understands himself as proposing a new general or universal hermeneutics that would unite and support the particular disciplines of legal, biblical and philological hermeneutics. He faults his predecessors, Friedrich Ast and Friedrich A. Wolf, for limiting hermeneutics to the study of classical languages. Even if we now think that Schleiermacher was not the first to develop a universal theory, Schleiermacher himself and the tradition that followed have considered his hermeneutics to be the first universal theory. Schleiermacher declares, "Hermeneutics as the art of understanding does not yet exist in a general manner, there are instead only several forms of specific hermeneutics" (HC: 5). The particular rules of interpretation employed in the different specific hermeneutic theories require justification in a universal theory of interpretation.

The art of understanding

Hermeneutics is the art of understanding. By "art" Schleiermacher does not mean that hermeneutics is merely a subjective, creative process. Rather, at that time "art" included the sense of knowing how to do something, which is the shared meaning in the terms "technical arts" and "fine arts". As an art hermeneutics includes methodological rules but their application is not rule-bound, as would be the case in a mechanical procedure. Schleiermacher states: "Every single language could perhaps be learned via rules, and what can be learned in this way

Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher

768	born on 21 November in Breslau, Silesia (now Poland)
785	attends Moravian seminary at Barby
787	enters the University of Halle studying theology and Kant
790	passes the theological exams in Berlin
790–93	tutor in East Prussia
794	becomes an assistant pastor in Landsberg
796	becomes Pastor of Charite near Berlin and participates in the Romantic circle in Berlin
799	publishes On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers
804	becomes the university preacher and professor of theology at the University of Halle
804–28	publishes a German translation of Plato's works
809	becomes the preacher for the Holy Trinity Church in Berlin
810	also becomes professor of theology at the new University of Berlin, which he helps Wilhelm von Humboldt found
821–22	publishes The Christian Faith
834	dies on 6 February in Berlin

is mechanism. Art is that for which there admittedly are rules. But the combinatory application of these rules cannot in turn be rule-bound" (HC: 229). Schleiermacher contrasts hermeneutics as the art of understanding with the art of speaking, which is rhetoric and deals with the externalization of thought. Speaking moves from the inner thought to its external expression in language, while hermeneutics moves from the external expression back to the thinking as the meaning of that expression. "No one can think without words. Without words the thought is not yet completed and clear" (HC: 8).

Hermeneutics is the art of understanding, so the goal of hermeneutic practice is to understand correctly what has been expressed by another, especially in written form. "Every utterance has a dual relationship, to the totality of language and to the whole thought of its originator" (ibid.). To say or write something presupposes that particular language. Clear thoughts occur, as Schleiermacher says, when the appropriate words have been discovered. Since language communicates it must be common to the speaker and listener. Words have their meaning in relation to the other words of that language. There is not just one meaning for a word that is represented by only one object. "Language is infinite because each element is determinable in a particular manner via the rest of the elements" (HC: 11). Because of this relatedness every utterance refers at least indirectly to all the other words and so to the totality of that language at that time. Although the speakers language is determined before his thinking, new thoughts can be expressed by the unique manner in which the speaker uses this common language. For some reason the speaker tries to communicate this particular thought, which is related to his other thoughts. This act of speaking occurs within the life of the speaker and hence indirectly relates to an individual's life, which is itself part of a society at a particular time. "Every language user can only be understood via their nationality and their era" (HC: 9).

Hermeneutics as understanding linguistic expressions could be thought to include all disciplines, but Schleiermacher restricts the scope of hermeneutics. We already noted that rhetoric concerns the expression of thoughts in language, whereas hermeneutics is the reverse process of discovering the thoughts behind an expression. Criticism, which Schleiermacher also discusses, is concerned with judgements about the authenticity of a part of a text or a text. Clearly hermeneutics and criticism depend on each other, for one must have the correct text in order to understand and explain completely what the author meant, but in order to judge a text's authenticity, one must have first understood it. Schleiermacher grants priority to the hermeneutic endeavour since some understanding of a text must have occurred before any judgement concerning authenticity can be made. Explication, as the presentation and justification of one's understanding, is just the expression of what one has hermeneutically understood.

Hermeneutics as the art of understanding utterances in their dual aspects has, therefore, two parts: the grammatical, which interprets the utterance "as derived from language", and the technical or psychological, which interprets the utterance "as a fact in the thinker" (HC: 8), Schleiermacher refers to this second part with both terms, "technical" and "psychological", but appears to have decided on "psychological" in the end, which will be used here. Hermeneutics requires both grammatical and psychological interpretation. Schleiermacher maintains it would be wrong in general to place the psychological over the grammatical; rather, the priority depends on the aim of the interpreter. If one is interested primarily in language as the means by which an individual communicates his thoughts, then the psychological will be more important. Whereas if one is interested in language as it determines the thinking of individuals at a particular time, then the grammatical side will predominate. However, both are always required to some degree, for to use just grammatical interpretation would imply complete knowledge of the language, whereas to use only the psychological would imply complete knowledge of the person, and neither of these is possible. Therefore, "one must move from one to the other, and no rules can be given for how this is to be done" (HC: 11). That is why hermeneutics is an art.

Schleiermacher distinguishes a lax practice of hermeneutics from a strict practice. The lax practice, which had previously been the main one, assumes that understanding usually succeeds and hermeneutics is required only in difficult cases in order to avoid misunderstanding. Universal hermeneutics is the strict practice and "assumes that misunderstanding results as a matter of course" (HC: 22). Misunderstanding occurs because of hastiness or prejudice. Prejudice, Schleiermacher notes, is one's preference for one's own perspective and therefore one misreads what the author meant by adding something not intended or leaving something out. Although misunderstanding is assumed in the strict practice of hermeneutics, there is a continuum between a minimum and maximum need for hermeneutics. The minimum need is required in everyday conversations, for example about the weather or business dealings. The maximum need can occur in both aspects of an utterance. Grammatical interpretation is required in "the most productive and least repetitious, the classical", while psychological interpretation is needed in "the most individual and least common, the original" (HC: 13). Both types of interpretation are required in the work of genius.

The goal of hermeneutics is "to understand the utterance at first just as well and then better than its author" (HC: 23). One understands an author better by making explicit what is unconscious in the author's creative process. In order to begin the hermeneutic process one must endeavour to place oneself objectively and subjectively in the position of the author, objectively by learning the language as the author possessed it, and subjectively by learning about the authors life and thinking. However, to place oneself completely in the position of the author requires the completion of the interpretation.

Hermeneutics therefore "depends on the talent for language and the talent for knowledge of individual people" (HC: 11). On the grammatical side one needs a talent for interpreting language in the sense of its possibilities of expression, for example its analogies and metaphors. Schleiermacher notes that there are two sides to this talent that rarely coincide in one person. One is the extensive talent for comparing different languages; the other is the intensive talent for penetrating into the interior of one's own language. Similarly the talent for understanding others has both aspects. The extensive talent concerns understanding the individuality of one person through comparison to others, and so, to be able to reconstruct the "way of behaving of other people" (HC:

Key Point

Hermeneutics is the art of understanding what is expressed in written or spoken language. Every expression in language has a dual relationship to the totality of that: language and to the whole thinking of the author, so hermeneutics has two interconnected parts, the grammatical and the psychological. Strict hermeneutic practice presupposes that misunderstanding usually occurs so that interpretation is always required. The goal of hermeneutics is to reconstruct the creative process of the author and even to understand him better than he understood himself.

13). The intensive talent concerns the "individual meaning of a person and of their particularities in relation to the concept of a human being" (ibid.).

Hermeneutics is the art of understanding what another means by her expressions in language. One needs to know about the language the author used: the grammatical side. One also needs to understand how the author thinks with reference to her particular culture and historical time: the psychological side. The goal of hermeneutics is to be able to reconstruct how the authors use of language is able to present her ideas. To interpret well requires a talent for understanding both the language and the individuality of the author.

The hermeneutic circle

Since expressions in language relate to the totality of that language at that time and to the whole thinking of the author as embedded in the history of an era, there exists an interdependence of whole and part, which is known as the hermeneutic circle. "Complete knowledge is always in this apparent circle, that each particular can only be understood via the general, of which it is a part, and vice versa" (HC: 24). This whole–part interdependence exists on several levels. We have already mentioned the hermeneutic circle in relation to understanding a whole sentence made up by its parts, the words. In this case the hermeneutic circle implies that one cannot understand the whole sentence until one has understood the parts, but one cannot understand the parts, a word's specific meaning, until one has understood the whole sentence. At the more general level of one text, the hermeneutic circle means: a specific text, as the whole, can only be understood from an understanding of the parts, the sentences, but the meaning of the sentences "can only be understood from out of the whole" (HC: 27). At a still more general level the circle concerns an authors work, as a part, in relation to the whole of his culture. In order to understand an authors writings, one must understand the language and history of his time, but in order to understand that language and history, one needs to have understood the writings of that time, including the author's. It would appear that understanding cannot get started at any level without making some, possibly prejudicial, presupposition about the meaning of either the parts or the whole.

However, Schleiermacher asserts that the hermeneutic circle is only an "apparent circle", since there is a way to break this interdependence. One must begin with a "cursory reading to get an overview of the whole" and "for this provisional understanding the knowledge of the particular that results from the general knowledge of the language is sufficient" (ibid.). The initial overview allows the central ideas and the direction of the text to be determined and then in subsequent readings the specific ideas and their development can be coordinated with the main ones. This results in a general methodological rule: one must begin the hermeneutic task with a general overview, and then return to the grammatical and psychological interpretation of the parts. If both interpretations agree, then one can proceed to the next part; if they disagree, one needs to discover the source of the disagreement.

If you have insufficient knowledge of a language, for example a foreign language you do not know or barely know, you could not begin the process of interpretation. This is like being caught in the interdependency of the hermeneutic circle. However, with a better understanding of that language, if not yet proficiency, you could begin to decipher the text. This stage would be analogous to the first general reading of a text and you could begin to escape the hermeneutic circle. Schleiermacher's point is that even if you are very proficient, you cannot just read and really understand the text right away, since the strict practice of hermeneutics assumes misunderstanding. You must start with a general overview and then begin again by interpreting each of the parts until you can reconstruct the whole text in its genesis, structure and meaning.

Key Point

The hermeneutic circle states that one cannot understand the whole until one has understood the parts, but that one cannot understand the parts until one has understood the whole. Schleiermacher breaks the impasse of the hermeneutic circle because with Sufficient knowledge of the language one can and must first conduct a cursory reading to get an overview of the whole. This reading then allows for the detailed interpretation of the parts.

Grammatical interpretation

As we have noted, the aim of hermeneutics is to reconstruct the utterance of the author. On the grammatical side one must understand the author's language. Hence Schleiermacher's first canon for grammatical interpretation states: "Everything in a given utterance which requires a more precise determination may only be determined from the language area which is common to the author and his original audience" (HC: 30). Languages change throughout time. Words take on new meanings and lose meanings. Thoughts are expressed in different ways. We broadly distinguish among contemporary English, Middle English and Old English. To understand Chaucer we must either learn Middle English or accept a translation, which means that the translator has already made many determinations for us on the grammatical side. The situation is more complex when the author writes in a foreign language. Before interpretation can even begin one must know enough of the language used by the author to gain the first general overview that precedes all grammatical interpretation.

Since speaking or writing is the author's attempt to communicate to her audience, a common use of language is presupposed. The first canon says that in order to determine what the author means by a statement it must be read from the position of that shared use of language. To interpret a statement from the contemporary understanding of language, when that statement comes from a previous use of language, leads to misunderstandings. When Democritus speaks of atoms, we would misunderstand if we thought of electrons, protons and neutrons. Schleiermacher maintains that the author's place in history, his education, his occupation and even his dialect may play a role in the determination of his language. Since the author also intends to communicate, the language he employs must also be the language of the intended audience. This is not to say that an author cannot create something new in language. Because of the shared meanings, a new metaphor, for example, can be understood by the reader from its context.

Schleiermacher remarks that although some people distinguish the meaning of a word, the sense of a proposition and the significance of a proposition in its context, this does not strictly agree with language use. He suggests that in the case of an epigram or gnomic expression the distinction between sense and significance would collapse. He proposes that one should think in terms of the more indeterminate and the more determinate expressions, where the "move from the more indeterminate to the determinate is an endless task in every process of explication" (HC: 31). Here the relation of the hermeneutic circle comes into play. Every part of an utterance alone is indeterminate as to its meaning just as the single sentence torn from its context is indeterminate. Only from the context of the whole may the meaning of the parts be understood and vice versa.

The second canon for grammatical interpretation is: "The sense of every word in a given location must be determined according to its being-together with those that surround it" (HC: 44). Since most words have multiple meanings, the specific meaning intended by the author can only be discovered by examining the context in which it appears. For example, the word "plastic" can mean malleable or the synthetic substance. Although the phrase "plastic toy" would today probably mean a toy made of that synthetic material, it could mean a toy that could be shaped as in the sentence: "The plastic toy became a dragon in the child's hands." The interpreter moves back and forth between the canon concerning the specific language and the one about the meaning of words. One moves from the first to the second when one understands that each word has its own language area. For example, "plastic" today is more likely to refer to the material whereas two centuries ago it would mean something malleable. On the other hand, one moves from the second to the first when the meaning of a passage is not clear and one examines similar passages by that author or even other texts of that particular language area.

When problems arise for the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Dedication
• Copyright
• Contents
• Abbreviations and references
• Introduction: what is hermeneutics?
• 1 Schleiermacher's universal hermeneutics
• 2 Dilthey's hermeneutic understanding
• 3 Heidegger's hermeneutic ontology
• 4 Hermeneutics in the later Heidegger
• 5 Gadamer's theory of hermeneutic experience
• 6 Gadamer's ontological turn towards language
• 7 Hermeneutic controversies
• Questions for discussion and revision
• Further reading
• Index