the art or theory of interpretation,
as well as a type of philosophy that starts with
questions of interpretation. Originally concerned
more narrowly with interpreting sacred texts,
the term acquired a much broader significance in
its historical development and finally became a
philosophical position in twentieth-century German
philosophy. There are two competing positions
in hermeneutics: whereas the first follows
Dilthey and sees interpretation or Verstehen as a
method for the historical and human sciences,
the second follows Heidegger and sees it as an
“ontological event,” an interaction between
interpreter and text that is part of the history of
what is understood. Providing rules or criteria for
understanding what an author or native “really”
meant is a typical problem for the first approach.
The interpretation of the law provides an example
for the second view, since the process of
applying the law inevitably transforms it. In general,
hermeneutics is the analysis of this process
and its conditions of possibility. It has typically
focused on the interpretation of ancient texts
and distant peoples, cases where the unproblematic
everyday understanding and communication
cannot be assumed.
Schleiermacher’s analysis of understanding
and expression related to texts and speech marks
the beginning of hermeneutics in the modern
sense of a scientific methodology. This emphasis
on methodology continues in nineteenth-century
historicism and culminates in Dilthey’s
attempt to ground the human sciences in a theory
of interpretation, understood as the imaginative
but publicly verifiable reenactment of the
subjective experiences of others. Such a method
of interpretation reveals the possibility of an
objective knowledge of human beings not accessible
to empiricist inquiry and thus of a distinct
methodology for the human sciences. One result
of the analysis of interpretation in the nineteenth
century was the recognition of “the
hermeneutic circle,” first developed by SchleierHerder,
Johann Gottfried von hermeneutics
377
4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 377
macher. The circularity of interpretation concerns
the relation of parts to the whole: the interpretation
of each part is dependent on the
interpretation of the whole. But interpretation is
circular in a stronger sense: if every interpretation
is itself based on interpretation, then the circle
of interpretation, even if it is not vicious,
cannot be escaped.
Twentieth-century hermeneutics advanced by
Heidegger and Gadamer radicalize this notion of
the hermeneutic circle, seeing it as a feature of
all knowledge and activity. Hermeneutics is then
no longer the method of the human sciences but
“universal,” and interpretation is part of the
finite and situated character of all human knowing.
“Philosophical hermeneutics” therefore criticizes
Cartesian foundationalism in epistemology
and Enlightenment universalism in ethics, seeing
science as a cultural practice and prejudices
(or prejudgments) as ineliminable in all judgments.
Positively, it emphasizes understanding
as continuing a historical tradition, as well as dialogical
openness, in which prejudices are challenged
and horizons broadened.
See also GADAMER, HEIDEGGER, HISTORICISM,
SCHLEIERMACHER, VERSTEHEN. J.Bo