Hermeneutics

Method categorization
Quantitative	Qualitative
Inductive	Deductive
Individual	System	Global
Past	Present	Future

Annotation: Hermeneutics describes two things: first, a scientific method that will be described in this entry. Second, a branch of philosophy that revolves around the ontological question of how to understand not only texts and symbols, but life in general. It is a field that deals with the characteristics of knowledge. This meaning of Hermeneutics will not be dealt with in this entry. For more information, refer to sources (1) and (2) in the References.

Short Definition

The word hermeneutics derives from the Greek word hermeneuein, which basically means “to explain”. It is the art of interpreting texts and understanding the meaning of human creations and interactions. Speaking in methodological terms, hermeneutics is a pool of methods for interpreting and understanding texts, mostly used in the humanities and social sciences.

Historical Background

Antiquity: xxx

Middle Ages: xxx

Early Modernity: xxx

Late Modernity: During the last decades and centuries, Hermeneutics has emerged into a field of philosophy, whereas the origins of it lie in a rather methodological approach. Since this will be the focus of this entry, the more recent history of the term and concept Hermeneutics will not be elaborated in detail. "It has recently emerged as a central topic in the philosophy of the social sciences, the philosophy of art and language and in literary criticism - even though its modern origin points back to the early ninteenth century." (Bleicher, Introduction) As a method, Hermeneutics is nowadays mostly used in the social sciences and humanities, including theology, law, psychology, philosophy and history, with diverging methodological characteristics. ([wikipedia..](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeneutik_%28Methode%29).)

Key Figures

• Schleiermacher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst (1768-1834): After finishing his studies in theology, philosophy and philology, Schleiermacher worked as a private teacher, preacher, and later professor for theology. In Berlin he became friends with Friedrich Schlegel, he joined the academy of sciences and became its secretary of philosophy. Schleiermacher can be seen as the founder of methodological – also called systematic – hermeneutics, the new branch that dropped the traditional view of texts as keepers and producers of truth. He instead highlighted the importance of differentiating between grammatical and psychological interpretation.
• Dilthey, Wilhelm (1833-1911): Dilthey lived from 1833 to 1911 and was a German philosopher. He took up the theory of the hermeneutic circle which was first mentioned by Schleiermacher and Friedrich Ast: Each individual part is revealed through the whole, and the whole through the individual. This points out that every fact, observation, or statement is always already connected to certain preconceptions. In Dilthey’s opinion this was true not only for humanities but also for the theories of natural sciences. Dilthey influenced many other famous philosophers such as Husserl, Heidegger, or Cassirer.
• Heidegger, Martin (1889-1976): For Martin Heidegger, a German philosopher, hermeneutics is the existential basis of our human experience - according to him, being is itself shaped by understanding and interpretation. His philosophical concept of hermeneutics was and is important for the following theories and analyses.
• Gadamer, Hans-Georg: Gadamer (1900-2002) was one of the most influential German philosophers of the 20th century. He as highly influenced by Martin Heidegger and turned away from Schleiermachers and Diltheys methodological hermeneutics. Instead, he had a universal approach to the topic of understanding meaning. Hermeneutics for him is not only a method but the basis of human existence. In his main work – Wahrheit und Methode (truth and method) – Gadamer points out that to interpret, one needs to be open, willing to reflect, and conscious of any prejudices and presumptions.
• Habermas, Jürgen and Oevermann, Ulrich: The German philosopher and sociologist Habermas criticizes Gadamer’s universial view on hermeneutics. Oevermann, who is a German sociologist, used to be an assistant of Habermas at the Frankfurt School. He coined the term Objective Hermeneutics, a method that is predominantly used in social sciences and sociology.

Goals

• Hermeneutics as a method "(...) offers a toolbox for efficiently treating problems of the interpretation of human actions, texts and other meaningful material." (SEP)
• "Hermeneutics can loosely be defined as the theory or philosophy of the interpretation of meaning." (Bleicher, Introduction)
• A clear distinction between interpretation as an activity directed at the appropriation of the meaning of a text and textual criticism as an activity that is concerned with the significance of a text with respect to different values.(1)([…] Meaning is that which is represented by a text; it is what the author meant by his use of a particular sign sequence. Significance, on the other hand, names a relationship between that meaning and a person, or a conception, or a situation.)
• Depending on the various theorists, the major goal of interpretation is either decoding and understanding the author's intention at the time of writing, understanding a text only through itself, or through the social and cultural context (Skinner 1969)
• Hermeneutics as a technological discipline (Albert 2003): Its technological character manifests itself in positively acknowledging the plurality of aims towards which interpretative activities can aim.

How it Works

There are many different approaches to actually using hermeneutics as a method and as you may have noticed while reading the information on some of the key figures above, scholars have agreed or disagreed on theories created before. However, here are some steps and principles you can follow if you choose a hermenetic strategy to deal with texts:

The Hermeneutic Process

These three steps are a basic guideline of how the hermeneutic process should look like:

1. elocutio (or diction): the studying of the object of interpretation itself, the pre-given text
2. interpretatio (or interpretation): the act of interpreting, analysing and understanding the given text
3. explicatio (or explanation): the result of the interpretation or the text written by the interpretor as a result of the interpretation

Steps of Interpretation

This formular of interpreting a text draws on Schleiermacher's idea that a given text follows the author's internal perspective. As you may remember, this method has been criticized and altered by later philosophers like Gadamer, in whose opinion the author's intention should not play a role in the interpretation process. However, the principle of psychological interpretation is still a very important step in the historical analysis of primary sources for example.

1. Grammatical interpretation (objective): This is the first step of interpretation according to Schleiermacher. Grammatical interpretation is all about understanding the relations between words and the sentences they appear in, sentences and paragraphs, paragraphs and chapters and finally their relation to the whole text. This is important, because "the meaning of a complex expression is supposed to be fully determined by its structure and the meanings of its constituents". (1)
2. Psychological interpretation (subjective): The second step asks you to interpret the text as a part of the author's internal world or soul. it reveals the author's subjective intention as well as his thoughts and feelings towards the subject. The historical, societal, cultural, political, religious background of an author influences the meaning of his work.

5 Principles of Objective Hermeneutics

The qualitative method of empirical research, "Objective Hermeneutics", was introduced by Ulrich Oevermann. Here are the five principles or rules you should follow when using this method:

1. Context-freedom: The initial interpretation of a text should not be influenced by its context. The interpretor should create his own contextual image based on the text only and can compare this image with the context afterwards and then reevaluate it.
2. Literality: The text speaks for itself and should not be judged at first (e.g. do not judge spelling or grammar mistakes as 'wrong' - they might have been made consciously to convey a specific message).
3. Sequentiality: Analyse a text chronologically. Do not skip passages or jump back and forth.
4. Extensivity: The extensivity principle makes clear that every little detail of a text must be included in the interpretation, no matter how irrelevant it seems.
5. Frugality:

The Hermeneutic Circle

there is nothing beyond understanding a text, than understanding the sentences which compose it, It is enough if the sentence as whole has meaning; thereby also its parts obtain their meanings. (1)

Strengths & challenges

• A central challenge to most forms of hermeneutics is the subjectivity of the interpretor. As Gadamer proposes it is crucial that the interpretor is conscious of his own prejdices and expectations before studying a text.
• Failure to consider this simple and essential distinction has been the source of enormous confusion in hermeneutic theory. (1)
• assuming that authorial intention is indeed the goal of interpretation, how exactly it can be tracked

of how subjective meanings can be rendered objective without imposing the interpreter's (= researcher's) subjectivity upon the content is a central challenge to Hermeneutics (2)

Key publications

Hans-Georg Gadamer: Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1960

References

(1) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2016. *Hermeneutics.* Last accessed on 15.07.2020. Available at [1](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hermeneutics/#Intr) (2) Bleicher, J. 2017. Contemporary Hermeneutics: Hermeneutics as Method, Philosophy and Critique. Routledge. (3) Seebohm, T.M. 2004. Hermeneutics. Method and Methodology. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht.

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