In simple word, Hermeneutic is a branch of knowledge that deals with the interpretations of literary texts.
Ancient Hermeneutics- Aristotle (384 BC-322 BC)
Transmuting (changed) what is beyond human understanding into a form that human intelligence is able to grasp or understand.
Conservative Hermeneutics
Primary concern is to gain interpretation of text to gain understanding of them. This tradition is based on the view that meaning is relatively fixed and that is embodied in language structures. Thus, the aim of interpretation is to use the appropriate techniques to uncover that meaning.
Development of conservative Hermeneutics
It was the shift into understanding the author’s intentionality. The aim of interpretation is to reproduce the meaning of intention of the author.
Schleiermacher further believed that for this approach to be successful, a person must be familiar with the language of the author as it was used at the time the text was written and must be able to get into the mindset of the author and the original lived experience (Moran, 2000).
Meaning of the part is only understood within the context of the whole; but the whole is never given unless through an understanding of the parts. Understanding therefore requires a circular movement from parts to whole and whole to parts. By dialectical interaction between the whole and the part, each gives the other meaning and understanding is seen to be circular.
Dilthey -Lived Experiences (Erlebnis)
Dilthey (1833-1911) believed in lived Experiences. For him, Knowledge in the social sciences was fundamentally different from that of knowledge in the natural sciences.
History and our response to it becomes the key to unlock the secrets of human life (Wachterhauser, 1986). We have the capacity for self-interpretation implies that we have the capacity to define and shape our own lives in response to historical situations.
Edmund Husserl
Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) believed that a split between subjective and objective thinking was ridiculous since subjectivity gets its bearings from the very world that is taken as an object. From Husserl on, words like “understanding”, “interpretation” and “meaningfulness” are rooted in the dialogical, intersubjective, and conversational nature of human experience.
Martin Heidegger – Ontological Hermeneutics
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) abandons the term “subject” and introduces his notion of “Dasein”, in which self and the world belong together in a single entity. Dasein translates literally as “there-being” and insists on the contingent situatedness of our condition in space and time. We will always find ourselves in a set of spatio-temporal circumstances, that are never entirely of our own making and that we cannot leave behind at will (Wachterhauser, 1986). He also posited that self and world are not two beings, like subject and object. Rather, self and world are the unity of the structure of “being-in-the-world” (Steele, 1997), and with this emphasis, hermeneutics took a decidedly ontological turn.
Moderate or Philosophical hermeneutics- Hans-Georg Gadamer
Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) Philosophical hermeneutics is not concerned with methods of interpretation and understanding but rather with the question of what enables understanding to occur.
“Being that can be understood is language”, all understanding is interpretation, and all interpretation takes place in the medium of language (Gadamer, 1975). Gadamer believed that we are conditioned by prejudices that are embedded in language which limits our interpretive powers and prevents one from gaining absolute meaning.
we never achieve a complete or objective interpretation since we are limited by our own language and historical situation (Gallagher, 1992).
Hermeneutics is not about the recovery of existing meanings, but instead, the creation of meaning itself and understanding is composed of both previous and new meanings (Smits, 2001b).
The philosophers of the Enlightenment erred in their belief that prejudices were purely negative and something which had to be overcome in the search for objective truth.
On the contrary, Gadamer maintains prejudice is a necessary condition of all historical (and other) understanding (Mueller-Volmer, 1985). For Gadamer, our prejudices do not constitute a willful blindness, which prevents us from grasping the truth; rather they are what we stand on to help launch our understanding.
Effective Historical consciousness
Gadamer believed that the historical object and the
Hermeneutical operation of the interpreter is both a part of an historical and cultural operation tradition or continuum which he calls “effective history”. This continuum is the ultimate cause of the prejudices which guide our understanding and because prejudices function as a necessary condition of historical understanding, Gadamer argues, prejudices should be made the object of hermeneutical reflection.
Fusion of Horizon
Gadamer further defines horizon as the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point. The horizon of the past, out of which all human lives and tradition exist, is always in motion and the hermeneutic act brings the horizons of the past and present into fusion (Steele, 1997). Gadamer enlarges our understanding of how truth does not necessarily exist in the world, but is continually fixed and unfixed in our continual relationships with a world. For Gadamer, hermeneutics is not about locating or fixing truth; rather it is about the ongoing process of understanding the conditions necessary for understanding to occur (Sumara, 1994).
Drop your thoughts below!