All Topics  
Hermeneutics

 

   Email Print
   Bookmark   Link






 

Hermeneutics



 
 
Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation theory. Traditional hermeneutics - which includes Biblical hermeneutics
Biblical hermeneutics

Biblical hermeneutics is the study of the principles of interpretation concerning the books of the Bible. It is part of the more broad field of hermeneutics which involves not just the study of principles for the text, but includes all forms of communication: verbal, nonverbal and written....
 - refers to the study of the interpretation of written texts, especially texts in the areas of literature, religion and law. Contemporary or modern hermeneutics encompasses not just issues involving the written text, but everything in the interpretative process. This includes verbal and nonverbal forms of communication as well as prior aspects that impact communication, such as presuppositions, preunderstandings, the meaning and philosophy of language
Philosophy of language

Philosophy of language is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language. As a topic, the philosophy of language for Analytic philosophys is concerned with four central problems: the nature of Meaning , language use, language cognition, and the relationship between language and reality....
, and semiotics
Semiotics

'Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of sign processes , or signification and communication, sign and symbols, both individually and grouped into sign systems....
.






Discussion
Ask a question about 'Hermeneutics'
Start a new discussion about 'Hermeneutics'
Answer questions from other users
Full Discussion Forum



Recent Posts









Encyclopedia


Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation theory. Traditional hermeneutics - which includes Biblical hermeneutics
Biblical hermeneutics

Biblical hermeneutics is the study of the principles of interpretation concerning the books of the Bible. It is part of the more broad field of hermeneutics which involves not just the study of principles for the text, but includes all forms of communication: verbal, nonverbal and written....
 - refers to the study of the interpretation of written texts, especially texts in the areas of literature, religion and law. Contemporary or modern hermeneutics encompasses not just issues involving the written text, but everything in the interpretative process. This includes verbal and nonverbal forms of communication as well as prior aspects that impact communication, such as presuppositions, preunderstandings, the meaning and philosophy of language
Philosophy of language

Philosophy of language is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language. As a topic, the philosophy of language for Analytic philosophys is concerned with four central problems: the nature of Meaning , language use, language cognition, and the relationship between language and reality....
, and semiotics
Semiotics

'Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of sign processes , or signification and communication, sign and symbols, both individually and grouped into sign systems....
. Philosophical hermeneutics refers primarily to Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer

Hans-Georg Gadamer was a Germany philosopher of the continental philosophy, best known for his 1960 magnum opus, Truth and Method ....
's theory of knowledge as developed in Truth and Method, and sometimes to Paul Ricoeur. A hermeneutic (singular) refers to one particular method or strand of interpretation.

Traditional Hermeneutics

Traditional hermeneutics involves interpretation theories that concern the meaning of written texts. These theories focus on the relationships found between the author, reader and text. E.D. Hirsch argued that the meaning of a text is determined by the author's intent. Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer

Hans-Georg Gadamer was a Germany philosopher of the continental philosophy, best known for his 1960 magnum opus, Truth and Method ....
 argued that the meaning of the text goes beyond the author, and therefore the subject matter is what determines the meaning. Paul Ricoeur
Paul Ricoeur

Paul Ric?ur was a French people Philosophy best known for combining Phenomenology description with Hermeneutics interpretation. As such, he is connected to two other major hermeneutic phenomenologists, Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer....
 argued that the text is independent of the author's intent and original audience, and therefore the reader determines the meaning of the text.

Biblical hermeneutics
Biblical hermeneutics

Biblical hermeneutics is the study of the principles of interpretation concerning the books of the Bible. It is part of the more broad field of hermeneutics which involves not just the study of principles for the text, but includes all forms of communication: verbal, nonverbal and written....
 is sometimes divided into two sub-categories - general and special hermeneutics. General hermeneutics is the study of those rules that govern interpretation of the entire biblical text, including grammatical, historical-cultural, contextual, lexical-syntactical, and theological aspects. Special hermeneutics is the study of rules that apply to specific genres, such as parables, allegories, types, and prophecy. Biblical hermeneutics is often defined as both a science and an art. It is considered a science with regard to its prescribed set of rules, and an art because meaning is not found in a mechanical and rigid application of rules.

Etymology

The word hermeneutics is a term derived from the Greek word (hermeneuo, 'translate' or 'interpret'), and is of uncertain origin. It was introduced into philosophy mainly through the title of Aristotle
Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greeks philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, Poetics , theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology....
's work ?e?? ??µ??e?a? (Peri Hermeneias, 'On Interpretation', more commonly referred by its Latin title De Interpretatione). It is one of the earliest (c.360 BC) extant philosophical works in the Western tradition
Western philosophy

Western philosophy is a term that refers to philosophy thinking in the Western world, as distinct from Eastern philosophy and the varieties of indigenous philosophies....
 to deal with the relationship between language and logic in a comprehensive, explicit, and formal way. It is often suggested that the Greek word root
Root (linguistics)

The root is the primary lexicology unit of a word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantics content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents....
 is etymologically related to the name of the Greek mythological deity Hermes
Hermes

Hermes is the messenger of the gods in Greek mythology. An Twelve Olympians, he is also the patron of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of thieves and road travelers, of orators and wit, of literature and poets, of athletics, of weights and measures, of invention, of general commerce, and of the cunni...
, which is also of uncertain origin, but may be cognate to a corrupted composite borrowing
Language contact

Language contact occurs when speakers of distinct speech varieties interact. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics....
 from Hebrew Har [ha]Emet (Emes) referring to the Biblical Mount Sinai
Biblical Mount Sinai

The Biblical Mount Sinai is an ambiguously located mountain at which the Hebrew Bible states that the Ten Commandments were given to Moses by Tetragrammaton....
 where Moses
Moses

Moses is a Hebrew Bible Hebrews religious leader, lawgiver, prophet, to whom the Mosaic authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed. Also called Moshe Rabbeinu in Hebrew , he is the most important prophet in Judaism, and also an important prophet of Christianity, Islam, the Bah?'? Faith, Rastafari movement, Chrislam and many ot...
 interpreted the Jewish Law
Torah

The term "Torah" , or Five Books of Moses or Pentateuch, refers to the entirety of Judaism's founding Halakha and ethical religious texts....
 (known as haEmes - the Truth) to the people.

History

In the last two thousand years, the scope of hermeneutics has expanded to include the investigation and interpretation not only of oral, textual and artistic works, but of human behaviour generally, including language and patterns of speech, social institutions, and ritual behaviours (such as religious ceremonies, political rallies, football matches, rock concerts, etc.). Hermeneutics interprets or inquires into the meaning and import of these phenomena, through understanding the point of view and 'inner life' (Dilthey) of an insider, or the first-person perspective of an engaged participant in these phenomena.

Torah exegesis

A common use of the word hermeneutics refers to a process of scriptural
Torah

The term "Torah" , or Five Books of Moses or Pentateuch, refers to the entirety of Judaism's founding Halakha and ethical religious texts....
 interpretation. Its earliest example is however found not in the written texts, but in the Jewish Oral Tradition
Oral Torah

A term used to denote the legal and interpretative traditions which were transmitted Speech, and which were not written in the Torah. According to Rabbinic Judaism, the oral Torah, oral Law, or oral tradition was given by God orally to Moses in conjunction with the written Torah ....
 dated to the Second Temple
Second Temple

The Second Temple was the reconstructed Temple in Jerusalem which stood between 516 BCE and 70 CE. During this time, it was the center of Judaism worship, which focused on the sacrifices known as the korbanot....
 era (515 BCE - 70 CE) that later became the Talmud
Talmud

The Talmud is a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Halakha, Jewish ethics, customs, and history. It is a central text of mainstream Judaism....
.

Summaries of the principles by which Torah can be interpreted date back at least to Hillel the Elder
Hillel the Elder

Hillel was a famous Jewish religious leader, one of the most important figures in Jewish history. He is associated with the development of the Mishnah and the Talmud....
, although the thirteen principles set forth in the Baraita of Rabbi Ishmael
Baraita of Rabbi Ishmael

The Baraita of Rabbi Ishmael is a baraita which explains the 13 rules of R. Ishmael, and their application, by means of illustrations from the Bible....
 are perhaps the best known. These principle ranged from standard rules of logic(for example, a fortiori argument
A fortiori argument

The Latin phrase literally means one of the following:* "from the stronger"* "even more so"* "with even stronger reason"It denotes a proof of a claim by means of an already proved stronger claim....
 (known in Hebrew
Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic languages of the Afro-Asiatic languages. Modern Hebrew is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel and Classical Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jews communities around the world....
 as ?? ????? (kal v'chomer)), to more expansive ones, like the rule that a passage could be interpreted by reference to another passage in which the same word appears (gezera sheva). The rabbis did not ascribe equal persuasive power to the various principles. . This was the first record of hermeneutic rules in the world, through the exegetic
Exegesis

Exegesis is a critical explanation or interpretation of a text.Biblical exegesis is a critical explanation or interpretation of the Bible....
 interpretation of Biblical texts.

Traditional Jewish hermeneutics differ from the Greek method in that the rabbis considered the Tanakh
Tanakh

The Tanakh is the Bible used in Judaism. The name "Tanakh" is a Hebrew language Acronym and initialism formed from the initial Hebrew alphabet of the Tanakh's three traditional subdivisions: The Torah , Nevi'im and Ketuvim - hence TaNaKh....
 (the Jewish bibilical canon) to be without error. Any apparent inconsistencies needed to be understood by careful examination of a given text in the context of other texts. There were different levels of interpretation, some used to arrive at the plain meaning of the text, some that expounded the law given in the text, and others that found secret or mystical levels of understanding.

History of Western hermeneutics

Throughout religious history scholars and students of religious texts have sought to mine the wealth of their meanings by developing a variety of different systems of hermeneutics. Philosophical hermeneutics in particular can be seen as a development of scriptural hermeneutics, providing a theoretical backing for various interpretive projects. Thus, philosophical and scriptural hermeneutics can be seen as mutually reinforcing practices.

Hermeneutics in the Western world
Western world

The term Western world, the West or the Occident can have multiple meanings dependent on its context . Accordingly, the basic definition of what constitutes "the West" varies, expanding and contracting over time, in relation to various historical circumstances....
, as a general practice of text interpretation, can be traced back to Aristotle
Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greeks philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, Poetics , theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology....
's work De Interpretatione (the Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
 title by which it is usually known) or On Interpretation (Greek
Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
 ?e?? ??µ??e?a? or Peri Hermeneias) which came to fruition in Alexandria
Alexandria

Alexandria , with a population of 4.1 million, is the second-largest city in Egypt, and is the country's largest seaport, serving about 80% of Egypt's imports and exports....
. Scholars in antiquity
Ancient history

Ancient history is the history from the History of writing until the Early Middle Ages in Europe, the Qin Dynasty in China, the Chola Empire in India, and some less defined point in the rest of the world ....
 expected a text to be coherent, consistent in grammar
Grammar

Grammar is the field of linguistics that covers the conventions governing the use of any given natural language. It includes morphology and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, phonology, semantics, and pragmatics....
, style and outlook, and they amended obscure or "decadent" readings to comply with their codified rules. By extending the perception of inherent logic of texts, Greeks were able to attribute works with uncertain origin.

Ancient Greece and Rome

Aristotle
Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greeks philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, Poetics , theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology....
 strikes a chord in his treatise De Interpretatione that reverberates through the intervening ages and supplies the key note for many contemporary theories of interpretation. His overture is here:

Equally important to later developments are texts on poetry, rhetoric, and sophistry, including many of Plato's dialogues, such as Cratylus
Cratylus (dialogue)

Cratylus is the name of a dialogue by Plato. Most modern scholars agree that it was written mostly during Plato's so-called middle period....
, Ion
Ion (dialogue)

In Plato's Ion Socrates discusses with the title character the question of whether the rhapsode, a professional performer of poetry, gives his performance on account of his skill and knowledge or by virtue of divine possession....
, Gorgias
Gorgias (dialogue)

Gorgias is an important Socratic Dialogue in which Plato sets the rhetoric, whose specialty is persuasion, in opposition to the philosopher, whose specialty is dissuasion, or refutation....
, Lesser Hippias, and Republic
Republic (Plato)

The Republic is a Socratic dialogue by Plato, written in approximately 380 BC. It is one of the most influential works of philosophy and Political philosophy, and Plato's best known work....
, along with Aristotle's Poetics, Rhetoric
Rhetoric (Aristotle)

Aristotle's Rhetoric is an ancient Greek treatise on the art of persuasion, dating from the fourth century BCE. In Greek, it is titled ?????S ????????S, in Latin Ars Rhetorica. In English, its title varies: typically it is titled the Rhetoric, the Art of Rhetoric, or a Treatise on Rhetoric....
, and On Sophistical Refutations
On Sophistical Refutations

On Sophistical Refutations is a text in Aristotle's Organon.Aristotle identified thirteen Fallacy, as follows:Verbal fallacies* Accent or emphasis...
. However, these texts deal more with the presentation and refutation of arguments, speeches and poems rather than the understanding of texts as texts. As Ramberg and Gjesdal note, "Only with the Stoics, and their reflections on the interpretation of myth, do we encounter something like a methodological awareness of the problems of textual understanding."

Some ancient Greek philosophers, particularly Plato, tended to vilify poets and poetry as harmful nonsense—Plato denies entry to poets in his ideal state in The Republic until they can prove their value. In the Ion, Plato famously portrays poets as possessed:

The meaning of the poem thus becomes open to ridicule — whatever hints of the truth it may have, the truth is covered by madness. However, another line of thinking arose with Theagenes of Rhegium
Theagenes of Rhegium

Theagenes of Rhegium was a Greek literary critic of the sixth century BC. He is noted for having defended the mythology of Homer, from more rationalist attacks....
, who suggested that instead of taking poetry literally, what was expressed in poems were allegories of nature. Stoic philosophers further developed this idea, reading into the poets not only allegories of natural phenomena, but allegories of ethical behavior.

Aristotle differed with his predecessor, Plato, in the worth of poetry. Both saw art as an act of mimesis
Mimesis

Mimesis is a Critical theory and philosophical term that carries a wide range of meanings, which include: imitation, Representation , mimicry, imitatio, nonsensuous similarity, the act of Resemblance, the act of expression, and the Impression management....
, but where Plato saw a pale, essentially false imitation in art of reality, Aristotle saw the possibility of truth in imitation. As critic David Richter points out, "for Aristotle, artists must disregard incidental facts to search for deeper universal truths"--instead of being essentially false, poetry may be universally true. (Richter, The Critical Tradition, 57.) In the Poetics, Aristotle called both the tragedy and the epic noble, with tragedy serving the essential function of purging strong emotions from the audience through katharsis.

Early Christian hermeneutics

The early Patristic
Church Fathers

The Church Fathers, Early Church Fathers, or Fathers of the Church are the early and influential theology and writers in the Christian Church, particularly those of the first five centuries of Christian history....
 traditions of Biblical
Bible

The Bible is the central religious text of Judaism and Christianity. The exact Books of the Bible is dependent on the religious traditions of specific denominations....
 exegesis
Exegesis

Exegesis is a critical explanation or interpretation of a text.Biblical exegesis is a critical explanation or interpretation of the Bible....
 have few unifying characteristics in the beginning but tend toward unification in schools of hermeneutical theory. The early Christian period of Biblical interpretation can be subdivided into the Apostolic and Sub-apostolic period (which dates from the writing of the New Testament
New Testament

The New Testament is the name given to the second major division of the Christianity Bible, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
 to ca. 200) and the Antiochine/Alexandrian division (which spans from ca. 200 to the medieval period).
Apostolic and Sub-apostolic hermeneutics
The operative hermeneutical principle in the New Testament and earliest Church Fathers was prophecy fulfillment. The Gospels
Gospel

In Christianity, a gospel is generally one of the first four books of the New Testament that describe the birth, life, ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus....
, particularly the Gospel of Matthew
Gospel of Matthew

The Gospel of Matthew is one of the four canonical gospels in the New Testament and is a synoptic gospel. It narrates an account of the New Testament view on Jesus' life and Ministry of Jesus of Jesus of Nazareth....
, make extensive use of the Old Testament for the purposes of demonstrating that Jesus was the Messiah. Examples include Matthew 1:23, 2:15-18, 3:3, 21:42, Mark 1:2-3, 4:12, Luke 3:4-6, 22:37, John 2:17, 12:15, and notably in Luke 4:18-21 and parallels where Jesus read extensively from Isaiah and makes the claim that the prophecy is fulfilled in the crowds hearing it. The Pauline epistles
Pauline epistles

The Pauline epistles, Epistles of Paul, or Letters of Paul, are the thirteen New Testament books which have the name Paul as the first word, hence claiming authorship by Paul the Apostle....
 employ the same principle, as evidenced by 1 Corinthians 1:19 and Ephesians 4:8-10, as does Hebrews (see 8:7-13).

The principle is carried over into the sub-apostolic age as well and through the second century. For example, Irenaeus
Irenaeus

Saint Irenaeus , was a Catholic Bishop of Lugdunum in Gaul, then a part of the Roman Empire . He was an early church father and apologist, and his writings were formative in the early development of Christian theology....
 dedicates an entire chapter in Against Heresies
On the Detection and Overthrow of the So-Called Gnosis

On the Detection and Overthrow of the So-Called Gnosis , commonly called Against Heresies , is a five-volume work written by St. Irenaeus in the second century....
 to the defense of Isaiah 7:14, one of the chief prophecies used to validate Jesus as the Messiah. This is consistent with Irenaeus' general usage. More so than even he, though, the second century apologists
Apologetics

Apologists are authors, Personal journals, editors of Action research or Peer-reviews, and Reformism known for taking on the points in arguments, conflicts or positions that are either placed under popular scrutiny or viewed under Persecution examinations....
 tended to interpret and utilize most scripture as being primarily for the purpose of showing prophecy fulfillment. Important among these was Justin Martyr
Justin Martyr

Saint Justin Martyr was an early Christian apologetics and saint. His works represent the earliest surviving Christian "apologies" of notable size....
, who made extensive use of scripture to this end. Examples of this usage may be seen in his Apology in which chapters 31-53 are specifically dedicated to proving Christ through prophecy. He uses scripture similarly in Dialogue with Trypho.

Here Justin demonstrates that prophecy fulfillment supersedes logical context in hermeneutics. He ignores the christological issues that arise from equating Jesus to the calf idol of Bethel which is the "him" being brought to the king in Hosea 10:6.

It is likely that the high view of prophecy fulfillment is a product of the circumstance of the early church. The primary goal of early authors was a defense of Christianity against attacks from paganism and Judaism as well as suppressing what were considered schismatic or heretical groups. To this end, Martin Jan Mulder suggests that prophecy fulfillment was the primary hermeneutical method because Roman society had a high view of both antiquity and oracles. By using the Old Testament to validate Jesus, early Christians sought to tap into both the oracles of the prophets and the antiquity of the Jewish scriptures.

Schools of Alexandria and Antioch
Beginning as early as the third century, Christian hermeneutics began to split into two primary schools: Alexandria and Antioch. The Alexandrian Biblical interpretations stressed allegorical
Allegory

Allegory is generally treated as a figure of rhetoric, but an allegory does not have to be expressed in language: it may be addressed to the eye, and is often found in realistic painting, sculpture or some other form of Mimesis, or representative art....
 readings, frequently at the expense of the texts' literal meaning. Primary figures in this school included Origen and Clement of Alexandria
Clement of Alexandria

Clement of Alexandria , was the first notable member of the Christianity of Alexandria, and one of its most distinguished teachers. He was born about the middle of the 2nd century, and died between 211 and 216....
. The Antiochene school stressed instead the more literal and historical meaning of the text. Theodore of Mopsuestia
Theodore of Mopsuestia

Theodore the Interpreter , was bishop of Mopsuestia from 392 to 428 AD. He is also known as Theodore of Antioch, from the place of his birth and presbyterate....
 and Diodore of Tarsus were the primary figures in the Antiochine school.

Medieval hermeneutics

Medieval Christian
Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism#Christian view religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus and interpreted by Christians to have been prophesied in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament....
 interpretations of text incorporated exegesis
Exegesis

Exegesis is a critical explanation or interpretation of a text.Biblical exegesis is a critical explanation or interpretation of the Bible....
 into a fourfold mode that emphasized the distinction between the letter and the spirit of the text
Letter and spirit of the law

The letter of the law versus the spirit of the law is an idiomatic antithesis. When one obeys the letter of the law but not the spirit, he is obeying the literal interpretation of the words of the law, but not the intent of those who wrote the law....
.

This schema was based on the various ways of interpreting the text utilitized by the Patristic writers
Patristics

Patristics or Patrology is the study of early Christian writers, known as the Church Fathers. The names derive from the Latin pater . The period is generally considered to run from the end of New Testament times until around the 8th century....
. The literal sense
Literal and figurative language

Literal and Figurative Languages have been divided into two separate classes by more traditional systems for analyzing language. In short, literal language refers to facts without any exaggerations or alterations of the subject at hand while figurative language states the facts with comparisons to similar events and some possible exaggera...
 (sensus historicus) of Scripture denotes what the text states or reports directly. The allegorical sense
Allegory

Allegory is generally treated as a figure of rhetoric, but an allegory does not have to be expressed in language: it may be addressed to the eye, and is often found in realistic painting, sculpture or some other form of Mimesis, or representative art....
 (sensus allegoricus) explains the text with regard to the doctrinal content of church dogma, so that each literal element has a symbol
Symbol

A symbol is something such as an entity, picture, written word, sound, or particular mark that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention....
ic meaning, see also Typology (theology)
Typology (theology)

Typology is a theology doctrine of theory of types and their antitypes found in Scripture. What is referred to as Medieval allegory actually began in the Early Church as a method for synthesizing the seeming discontinuities between the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible ....
. The moral application
Ethics

Ethics is a word for a philosophy that encompasses proper conduct and good living. It is significantly broader than the common conception of ethics as the analyzing of right and wrong....
 of the text to the individual reader or hearer is the third sense, the sensus tropologicus or sensus moralis, while a fourth level of meaning, the sensus anagogicus, draws out of the text the implicit allusions it contains to secret metaphysical and eschatological knowledge, or gnosis
Gnosis

Gnosis is the spiritual knowledge of a saint or mysticism human being. In the cultures of the term gnosis was a special knowledge or insight into the infinite, divine and uncreated in all and above all, rather than knowledge strictly into the finite, natural or material world which is called Epistemological knowledge....
.

Hermeneutics in the Middle Ages
Middle Ages

File:Karl 1 mit papst gelasius gregor1 sacramentar v karl d kahlen.jpgThe Middle Ages of European history are a period in history which lasted for roughly a millennium, commonly dated from the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century to the beginning of the Early Modern Period in the 16th century, marked by the division of Western Christi...
 witnessed the proliferation of non-literal interpretations of the Bible. Christian
Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism#Christian view religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus and interpreted by Christians to have been prophesied in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament....
 commentators could read Old Testament
Old Testament

In Western Christianity, the Old Testament refers to the books that form the first of the two-part Christianity Bible Biblical canon. These works correspond to the Hebrew Bible , with some variations and additions....
 narratives simultaneously as prefigurations of analogous New Testament
New Testament

The New Testament is the name given to the second major division of the Christianity Bible, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
 episodes, as symbolic lessons about Church
Christian Church

Christian Church and the word church are used to denote both a Christian Groups of people and a Church . The word church is usually, but not exclusively, associated with Christianity....
 institutions and current teachings, and as personally applicable allegories of the Spirit
Spirit

The English word "spirit" comes from the Latin "spiritus" . The term is commonly used to refer to a supernatural being which is transcendence and therefore metaphysical in nature....
. In each case, the meaning of the signs was constrained by imputing a particular intention to the Bible, such as teaching morality, but these interpretive bases were posited by the religious tradition rather than suggested by a preliminary reading of the text.

The customary medieval exegetical technique commented on the text in glossae ("gloss
Gloss

A gloss is a brief summary of a word's meaning, equivalent to the dictionary entry of that word, but only a word or two in length. It is typically used for the meaning of a word in another language, and hence a simple translation....
es" or annotations) written between the lines and at the side of the text which was left with wide margins for this very purpose. The text might be further commented on in scholia which are long, exegetical passages, often on a separate page.

A similar fourfold categorization is also found in Rabbinic writings. The fourfold categorizations are: Peshat (simple interpretation), Remez (allusion), Derash (interpretive), and Sod (secret/mystical). It is uncertain whether or not the Rabbinic division of interpretation pre-dates the Patristic version. The medieval period saw the growth of many new categories of Rabbinic interpretation
Rabbinic literature

Rabbinic literature, in its broadest sense, can mean the entire spectrum of rabbinic writings throughout Judaism history. But the term often refers specifically to literature from the Talmudic era, as opposed to medieval and modern rabbinic writing, and thus corresponds with the Hebrew language term Sifrut Hazal ....
 and explanation of the Torah
Torah

The term "Torah" , or Five Books of Moses or Pentateuch, refers to the entirety of Judaism's founding Halakha and ethical religious texts....
, including the emergence of Kabbalah
Kabbalah

Kabbalah is a discipline and school of thought discussing the mysticism aspect of Judaism. It is a set of esoteric teachings that are meant to explain the relationship between an infinite, eternal and essentially unknowable Creator deity with the finite and mortal universe of His creation....
 and the writings of Maimonides
Maimonides

Moses Maimonides, also known as Rabbi Moses ben Maimon , the Rambam, and Musa ibn Maymun , was born in C?rdoba, Spain, Spain on March 30, 1135, and died in Egypt on December 13, 1204.....
.

Renaissance and Enlightenment

The discipline of hermeneutics emerged with the new humanist
Humanism

Humanism is a broad category of ethics that affirm the dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right and wrong by appealing to universal human qualities, particularly rationalism, without resorting to the supernatural or alleged divine authority from religious texts....
 education of the 15th century as a historical and critical methodology
Methodology

Methodology can be defined as:# "the analysis of the principles of methods, rules, and postulates employed by a discipline";# "the systematic study of methods that are, can be, or have been applied within a discipline"; or...
 for analyzing texts. In a triumph of early modern hermeneutics, the Italian humanist Lorenzo Valla
Lorenzo Valla

Lorenzo Valla was an Italy Renaissance humanism, rhetorician, and education. His family was from Piacenza; his father, Luca della Valla, was a lawyer....
 proved in 1440 that the "Donation of Constantine
Donation of Constantine

The Donation of Constantine is a forged Roman Empire decree in which the emperor Constantine transfers authority over Rome and the western part of the Roman Empire to the pope....
" was a forgery, through intrinsic evidence of the text itself. Thus hermeneutics expanded from its medieval role explaining the correct analysis of the Bible
Bible

The Bible is the central religious text of Judaism and Christianity. The exact Books of the Bible is dependent on the religious traditions of specific denominations....
.

However, Biblical hermeneutics did not die off. For example, the Protestant Reformation
Protestant Reformation

The Protestant Reformation was a Christian reform movement in Europe. It is thought to have begun in 1517 with Martin Luther's Ninety-Five Theses and may be considered to have ended with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648....
 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.

The rationalist Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment

The Age of Enlightenment or The Enlightenment is a term used to describe a time in Western philosophy and cultural life centered upon the eighteenth century, in which rationalism was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy for authority....
 led hermeneuts, especially Protestant exegetes, to view Scriptural texts as secular Classical texts were viewed. Scripture thus was interpreted as responses to historical or social forces, so that apparent contradictions and difficult passages in the New Testament, for example, might be clarified by comparing their possible meanings with contemporaneous Christian practices.

Schleiermacher

Friedrich Schleiermacher (November 21, 1768 – February 12, 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 the content asserted in terms of the overall organization of the work. He distinguishes between grammatical interpretation and psychological interpretation. The former studies how a work is composed from general ideas, the latter considers the peculiar combinations that characterize the work as a whole. Schleiermacher said that every problem of interpretation is a problem of understanding. He even defined hermeneutics as the art of avoiding misunderstanding. He provides a solution to avoidance of misunderstanding: knowledge of grammatical and psychological laws in trying to understand the text and the writer. There arose in his time a fundamental shift from understanding not only the exact words and their objective meaning to individuality of the speaker or author.

Dilthey

Wilhelm Dilthey
Wilhelm Dilthey

Wilhelm Dilthey was a Germany historian, psychologist, sociologist, student of hermeneutics, and philosopher. He could be considered an empiricist, in contrast to the idealism prevalent in Germany at the time, but his account of what constitutes the empirical and experiential differs from British empiricism and positivism in its central epi...
 broadened hermeneutics even more by relating interpretation to all historical objectifications. Understanding moves from the outer manifestations of human action and productivity to explore their inner meaning. In his last important essay "The Understanding of Others and Their Manifestations of Life" (1910), Dilthey makes it clear that this move from outer to inner, from expression to what is expressed, is not based on empathy
Empathy

Empathy is the capacity to share and understand another's emotion and feelings. It is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes", or in some way experience what the other person is feeling....
. 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. Understanding is not a process of reconstructing the state of mind of the author, but one of articulating what is expressed in the work.

Heidegger

Since Dilthey, the discipline of hermeneutics has detached itself from this central task and broadened its spectrum to all texts, including multimedia
Multimedia

Multimedia is media and content that utilizes a combination of different content format. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms....
 and to understanding the bases of meaning. In the 20th century, Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger was an influential Germany Philosophy. His best known book, Being and Time, is generally considered to be one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th century....
's philosophical hermeneutics shifted the focus from interpretation to existential understanding, which was treated more as a direct, non-mediated, thus in a sense more authentic way of being in the world than simply as a way of knowing.

Advocates of this approach claim that such texts, and the people who produce them, cannot be studied using the same scientific method
Scientific method

Scientific method refers to techniques for investigating phenomenon, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and Measure evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning....
s as the natural science
Natural science

In science, the term natural science refers to a methodological naturalism approach to the study of the universe, which is understood as obeying rules or law of nature origin....
s, thus use arguments similar to that of antipositivism
Antipositivism

Antipositivism is the view in sociology that social sciences need to create and use different scientific methods than those used in the field of natural sciences....
. Moreover, they claim that such texts are conventionalized expressions of the experience of the author; thus, the interpretation
Interpretation

An interpretation is an explanation of the meaning of some Object of attention. It also refers to making ideas more understanding, including translation....
 of such texts will reveal something about the social context in which they were formed, but, more significantly, provide the reader with a means to share the experiences of the author. Among the key thinkers of this approach is the sociologist
Sociology

Sociology is a branch of the social sciences that uses systematic methods of Empiricism and critical theory to develop and refine a body of knowledge about human social structure and activity, sometimes with the goal of applying such knowledge to the pursuit of social welfare....
 Max Weber
Max Weber

Maximilian Carl Emil Weber was one of the most profoundly influential thinkers of the twentieth century. Born in Germany, Weber became a lawyer, politician, scholar, political economy, and sociology....
.

Contemporary hermeneutics

Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer

Hans-Georg Gadamer was a Germany philosopher of the continental philosophy, best known for his 1960 magnum opus, Truth and Method ....
's hermeneutics is a development of the hermeneutics of his teacher, Heidegger.

Paul Ricoeur
Paul Ricoeur

Paul Ric?ur was a French people Philosophy best known for combining Phenomenology description with Hermeneutics interpretation. As such, he is connected to two other major hermeneutic phenomenologists, Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer....
 developed a hermeneutics based on Heidegger's concepts, although his own work differs in many ways from that of Gadamer's.

Andrés Ortíz-Osés
Andrés Ortiz-Osés

Andr?s Ortiz-Os?s is a Spanish philosopher. He studied theology in Comillas and Rome and then moved to The Institute of Philosophy in Innsbruck where he earned a Ph.D in hermeneutics....
 has developed his Symbolic Hermeneutics as the Mediterranean response to north European Hermeneutics. His main statement regarding the symbolic understanding of the world is that the meaning
Meaning (non-linguistic)

A non-linguistic meaning is an actual or possible derivation from sentence, which is not associated with signs that have any original or primary intent of communication....
 is the symbolic healing of the real injury.

Critical theory

Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas

J?rgen Habermas is a Germany philosopher and sociologist in the tradition of critical theory and American pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his work on the concept of the public sphere, the topic of his first book....
 criticized the conservatism of previous hermeneutics, especially Gadamer, because the focus on tradition seemed to undermine possibilities for social criticism and transformation. Habermas also criticized Marxism
Marxism

Marxism is the political philosophy and practice derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxism holds at its core a Marxist analysis of Critique of capitalism and a theory of social change....
 and previous members of the Frankfurt School
Frankfurt School

The Frankfurt School is a school of neo-Marxism critical theory, social research, and philosophy. The grouping emerged at the Institute for Social Research of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main in Germany when Max Horkheimer became the Institute's director in 1930....
 for missing the hermeneutical dimension of critical theory
Critical theory

In the humanities and social sciences, critical theory is the examination and critique of society and literature, drawing from knowledge across social sciences and humanities disciplines....
. Habermas incorporated the notion of the lifeworld
Lifeworld

Lifeworld may be conceived as a universe of what is self-evident or given, a world that subjects may experience together. For Husserl, the lifeworld is the fundament for all epistemological enquiries....
 and emphasized the importance of both interaction and communication as well as labor and production for social theory. For Habermas, hermeneutics is one dimension of critical social theory.

Themes


Hermeneutic circle

The hermeneutic circle describes the process of understanding a text hermeneutically. It refers to the idea that one's understanding of the text as a whole is established by reference to the individual parts and one's understanding of each individual part by reference to the whole. Neither the whole text nor any individual part can be understood without reference to one another, and hence, it is a circle. However, this circular character of interpretation does not make it impossible to interpret a text, rather, it stresses that the meaning of text must be found within its cultural, historical, and literary context.

With Schleiermacher, hermeneutics begins to stress the importance of the interpreter in the process of interpretation. Schleiermacher's hermeneutics focuses on the importance of the interpreter understanding
Understanding

Understanding is a psychology process related to an abstract or physical object, such as a person, situation, or message whereby one is able to think about it and use concepts to deal adequately with that object....
 the text as a necessary stage to interpreting it. Understanding, for Schleiermacher, does not simply come from reading the text, but involves knowledge of the historical context of the text and the psychology of the author.

For Postmodernists, the Hermeneutic Circle is especially problematic. This is the result of the fact that in addition to only being able to know the world through the words we use to describe it, we are also confronted with the problem that "whenever people try to establish a certain reading of a text or expression, they allege other readings as the ground for their reading" . In other words, "All meaning systems are open-ended systems of signs referring to signs referring to signs. No concept can therefore have an ultimate, unequivocal meaning" .

For some, there is evidence of some signs corresponding to real things, as in science. This is a basis for true statements, facts, and universals. Universal ideas are a starting place for what is common for all humans, as in basic mathematical propositions.

Meaning


The possibility of communication between different beings depends on them being able to agree on the meanings of the signs they may exchange. The great question is, how do we know whether someone else understands the same thing we do when we use language to try to communicate with them, and how do we know that we understand the language the same way the other person did when they issued it? This question has immense practical importance in every field, particularly in such fields as law.

One approach to this is discussed in what has come to be called the theory of mind
Theory of mind

Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states?beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.?to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one's own....
, or the part of it concerned with building internal mental models of the minds of others, and finding ways in which their understandings of words is similar to or different from our own. Neurologists and others have found that the facility for doing that can be located at a particular site in the brains of human beings, and that damage to that site can render the person unable to understand the behavior of others or how their thinking and feeling might differ from one's own. Some persons may also have enhanced ability to understand the minds of others, compared to most other people.

Much postmodern thought treats all meaning as conventional among contemporaries, but sometimes we need to understand words the way they were understood by people no longer available to interrogate until we can be satisfied that our understandings agree, and we want to be as certain as we can that we understand the words the way the originators did. This includes such things as judicial interpretation
Judicial interpretation

Judicial interpretation is a theory or mode of thought that explains how the judiciary should interpret the law, particularly constitutional documents and legislation ....
 of constitutions, statutes, contracts, treaties, and historical interpretation
Historical method

The historical method comprises the techniques and guidelines by which historians use primary sources and other evidence to research and then to historiography....
 of the historical record, especially writings.

Horizon

Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer

Hans-Georg Gadamer was a Germany philosopher of the continental philosophy, best known for his 1960 magnum opus, Truth and Method ....
 describes the process of interpreting a text as the fusion of one's own horizon with the horizon of the text. He has defined horizon as "The totality of all that can be realized or thought about by a person at a given time in history and in a particular culture."

Applications


Archeology

In archeology, hermeneutics means the interpretation and understanding of material by analysing possible meanings or social use. Proponents argue that interpretation of artifacts is unavoidably hermeneutic as we cannot know for certain the meaning behind them, instead we can only apply modern value in the interpretation. This is most common in stone tools, for example, where using descriptions such as "scraper" can be highly subjective and unproven. Opponents claim that a hermeneutic approach is too relativist and that their own interpretations are based on common-sense
Common sense

For the pamphlet by Thomas Paine see Common Sense . For use with Wikipedia see WP:COMMON SENSE.Common sense , based on a strict interpretation of the term, consists of what people in common would agree on: that which they "sense" as their common natural understanding....
 evaluation.

Sociology

In sociology
Sociology

Sociology is a branch of the social sciences that uses systematic methods of Empiricism and critical theory to develop and refine a body of knowledge about human social structure and activity, sometimes with the goal of applying such knowledge to the pursuit of social welfare....
, hermeneutics means the interpretation and understanding of social events by analysing their meanings to the human participants and their culture
Culture

Culture is difficult to define. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions....
. It enjoyed prominence during the sixties and seventies, and differs from other interpretative schools of sociology in that it emphasizes the importance of the content as well as the form of any given social behaviour. The central principle of hermeneutics is that it is only possible to grasp the meaning of an action or statement by relating it to the whole discourse or world-view from which it originates: for instance, putting a piece of paper in a box might be considered a meaningless action unless put in the context of democratic elections, and the action of putting a ballot paper in a box. One can frequently find reference to the 'hermeneutic circle': that is, relating the whole to the part and the part to the whole. Hermeneutics in sociology was most heavily influenced by German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer .

The field of marketing
Marketing

Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large....
 has adopted this term from sociology, using the term to refer to qualitative studies in which interviews with (or other forms of text from) one or a small number of people are closely read, analyzed, and interpreted.

Law

Some scholars argue that law
LAW

LAW may refer to:* Anti-tank warfare, e.g. the US Army M72 LAW or the British Army LAW 80*Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights ...
 and theology constitute particular forms of hermeneutics because of their need to interpret legal tradition / scriptural texts. Moreover, the problem of interpretation is central to legal theory at least since the 11th century. In the Middle Ages
Middle Ages

File:Karl 1 mit papst gelasius gregor1 sacramentar v karl d kahlen.jpgThe Middle Ages of European history are a period in history which lasted for roughly a millennium, commonly dated from the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century to the beginning of the Early Modern Period in the 16th century, marked by the division of Western Christi...
 and Renaissance
Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe....
, the schools of glossatores, commentatores and usus modernus distinguished themselves by their approach to the interpretation of "laws" (mainly, Justinian's Corpus Iuris Civilis). The University of Bologna
University of Bologna

The University of Bologna is the oldest continually operating degree-granting university in the world:, the word 'university' being first used by this institution at its foundation....
 gave birth to a "legal Renaissance" in the 11th century, when the Corpus Iuris Civilis was rediscovered and started to be systematically studied by people like Irnerius
Irnerius

Irnerius , sometimes referred to as lucerna juris , was an Italy jurist, and founder of the School of Glossators.He taught the newly recovered Roman lawcode of Justinian I, the Corpus Juris Civilis, among the liberal arts at the University of Bologna, his native city....
 and Gratianus
Gratian (jurist)

Gratian, was a 12th century Canon law yer from Bologna. He is sometimes wrongly referred to as Franciscus Gratianus, or Johannes Gratianus, or Giovanni Graziano....
. It was an interpretative Renaissance. After that, interpretation has always been at the center of legal thought. Savigny and Betti
Emilio Betti

Emilio Betti was an Italy jurist, Roman Law scholar, philosopher and theologian. He is best known for his contributions to hermeneutics, part of a broad interest in interpretation....
, among others, made significant contributions also to general hermeneutics. Legal interpretivism, most famously Ronald Dworkin
Ronald Dworkin

Ronald Dworkin, Queens Counsel, British Academy is an United States legal philosopher, currently professor of Jurisprudence at University College London and the New York University School of Law, and former professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Oxford....
's, might be seen as a branch of philosophical hermeneutics.

Computer science

Researchers in computer science
Computer science

Computer science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation, and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems....
, especially those dealing with artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science which aims to create it. Major AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents,"...
, computational linguistics
Computational linguistics

Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field dealing with the Statistics and/or rule-based modeling of natural language from a computational perspective....
, knowledge representation
Knowledge representation

Knowledge representation is an area in artificial intelligence that is concerned with how to formally "think", that is, how to use a symbol system to represent "a domain of discourse" - that which can be talked about, along with functions that may or may not be within the domain of discourse that allow inference about the objects within the...
, and protocol analysis
Protocol analysis

Protocol analysis is a psychology research method that elicits verbal reports from research participants. Protocol analysis is used to study thinking in cognitive psychology , cognitive science , and behavior analysis ....
, have not failed to notice the commonality of interest that they share with hermeneutics researchers in regard to the character of interpretive agents and the conduct of interpretive activities. For instance, in the abstract to their 1986 AI Memo, Mallery, Hurwitz, and Duffy have the following to say:

International Relations

Insofar as hermeneutics is a cornerstone of both critical theory
Critical theory

In the humanities and social sciences, critical theory is the examination and critique of society and literature, drawing from knowledge across social sciences and humanities disciplines....
 and constitutive theory, both of which have made important inroads into the postpositivist branch of international relations theory
International relations theory

International relations theory attempts to provide a Model upon which international relations can be analyzed. Each theory is reductive and essentialist to different degrees, relying on different sets of assumptions respectively....
 and political science
Political science

Political science is a social science concerned with the theory and practice of politics and the description and analysis of political systems and political behavior....
, hermeneutics has been applied to international relations (IR). Steve Smith (Academic)
Steve Smith (academic)

Steve Smith, Academy of Learned Societies for the Social Sciences, , is a prominent international relations theorist, professor, and senior university manager....
 refers to hermeneutics as the principal way of grounding a foundationalist yet postpositivist IR theory such as critical theory. An example of a postpositivist yet anti-foundationalist IR paradigm would be radical postmodernism
Postmodernism

Postmodernism literally means 'after the modernist movement'. While "modern" itself refers to something "related to the present", the movement of modernism and the following reaction of postmodernism are defined by a set of perspectives....
.

Religion and theology


The process by which theological texts are understood relies on a particular hermeneutical viewpoint. Theorists like Paul Ricoeur
Paul Ricoeur

Paul Ric?ur was a French people Philosophy best known for combining Phenomenology description with Hermeneutics interpretation. As such, he is connected to two other major hermeneutic phenomenologists, Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer....
 have applied modern philosophical hermeneutics to theological texts (in Ricoeur's case, the Bible
Bible

The Bible is the central religious text of Judaism and Christianity. The exact Books of the Bible is dependent on the religious traditions of specific denominations....
).

Architecture

Though the interpretation of buildings is clearly of abiding interest, there are several traditions of architectural scholarship that draw explicitly on the hermeneutics of Heidegger and Gadamer. Of note is the work of Lindsay Jones on the way architecture is received and how that reception changes over time and according to context, ie how a building is interpreted by critics, users, historians, etc. 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, but it has also informed design studio teaching. Snodgrass values historical study and the study of Asian cultures by architects as hermeneutical encounters with otherness . He also deploys arguments from hermeneutics to explain design as a process of interpretation. With Richard Coyne he extends the argument to a consideration of the nature of architectural education and design as a way of thinking. The latter also expands to a consideration of the use of computers in design.. Alberto Perez-Gomez
Alberto Pérez-Gómez

Alberto P?rez-G?mez is an architectural history and is also known as a theorist and a promoter of Phenomenology . Born December 24, 1949 in Mexico City, Mexico, he graduated as an engineer and architect from the National Polytechnic Institute and pursued graduate studies in the history and theory of architecture at the University of Essex whe...
 is also well known for his application of phenomenology and hermeneutics to architectural history.

Sources

  • , as translated by E. M. Edghill
    Ella Mary Edghill

    Ella Mary Edghill Master of Arts was a British translator known primarily for her translation of Categories which appeared in Volume 1 of the The Works of Aristotle series, edited by W....
  • Aristotle
    Aristotle

    Aristotle was a Greeks philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, Poetics , theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology....
    , On Interpretation, Harold P. Cooke (trans.), in Aristotle, vol. 1 (Loeb Classical Library
    Loeb Classical Library

    The Loeb Classical Library is a series of books, today published by the Harvard University Press, which presents important works of ancient Greek Literature and Latin Literature in a way designed to make the text accessible to the broadest possible audience, by presenting the original Greek or Latin text on each left-hand leaf, and a fairly...
    ), pp. 111–179. London: William Heinemann
    Heinemann (book publisher)

    Heinemann is a UK publishing house founded by William Heinemann in Covent Garden, London in 1890. On William Heinemann's death in 1920 a majority stake was purchased by U.S....
    , 1938.
  • Ebeling, Gerhard, "The New Hermeneutics and the Early Luther", Theology Today, vol. 21.1, April 1964, pp. 34-46. .
  • Plato
    Plato

    Plato , was a Classical Greece Greeks philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Platonic Academy in Ancient Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the western world....
    , Ion, Paul Woodruff (trans.) in Plato, Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997, pp. 937-949.
  • Ramberg, Bjørn, and Gjesdal, Kristin, "Hermeneutics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2005 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). .
  • Klein, Ernest, Dr., A complete etymological dictionary of the English language: dealing with the origin of words and their sense development thus illustrating the history of civilization and culture, Elsevier, Oxford, 2000
  • Alcalay, Reuben, The complete Hebrew-English dictionary Vol.1, Chemed Books, New York, 1996


Recommended readings

  • Köchler, Hans
    Hans Köchler

    Hans K?chler is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and president of the International Progress Organization, a non-governmental organization in consultative status with the United Nations....
    , "Zum Gegenstandsbereich der Hermeneutik", in Perspektiven der Philosophie, vol. 9 (1983), pp. 331-341.
  • Peirce, C.S.
    Charles Peirce

    Charles Sanders Peirce was an American logician, mathematics, Philosophy, and science, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Peirce was educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for 30 years....
    , Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vols. 1–6, Charles Hartshorne
    Charles Hartshorne

    Charles Hartshorne was a prominent American philosopher who concentrated primarily on the philosophy of religion and metaphysics. He developed the Neoclassicism idea of God and produced a modal logic Arguments for the existence of God that was a development of Anselm of Canterbury's Ontological Argument....
     and Paul Weiss
    Paul Weiss (philosopher)

    Paul Weiss was an United States philosophy, known for his work in metaphysics and for his efforts to reverse age discrimination policies at American university....
     (eds.), vols. 7–8, Arthur W. Burks (ed.), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931–1935, 1958. Cited as CP vol.para.
  • Peirce, C.S. (c. 1903), "Logical Tracts, No. 2", in Collected Papers, CP 4.418–509. .
  • Khan, Ali, "The Hermeneutics of Sexual Order". .


See also

  • Biblical hermeneutics
    Biblical hermeneutics

    Biblical hermeneutics is the study of the principles of interpretation concerning the books of the Bible. It is part of the more broad field of hermeneutics which involves not just the study of principles for the text, but includes all forms of communication: verbal, nonverbal and written....
  • Qura'nic hermeneutics
  • Computational semiotics
    Computational semiotics

    Computational semiotics is an interdisciplinary field that applies, conducts, and draws on research in logic, mathematics, the theory of computation and computer programming of computer science, formal language and natural language linguistics, the cognitive sciences generally, and semiotics proper....
  • Content analysis
    Content analysis

    Content analysis is a methodology in the social sciences for studying the content of communication. Earl Babbie defines it as "the study of recorded human communications, such as books, websites, paintings and laws." It is most commonly used by researchers in the social sciences to analyze recorded transcripts of interviews with participants....
  • Deconstruction
    Deconstruction

    Deconstruction is a term used in philosophy, literary criticism, and the social sciences, popularised through its usage by Jacques Derrida in the 1960s....
  • Discourse analysis
    Discourse analysis

    Discourse analysis , or discourse studies, is a general term for a number of approaches to analyzing written, spoken or signed language use....
  • Exegesis
    Exegesis

    Exegesis is a critical explanation or interpretation of a text.Biblical exegesis is a critical explanation or interpretation of the Bible....
  • Interpretation
    Interpretation

    An interpretation is an explanation of the meaning of some Object of attention. It also refers to making ideas more understanding, including translation....
  • Knowledge representation
    Knowledge representation

    Knowledge representation is an area in artificial intelligence that is concerned with how to formally "think", that is, how to use a symbol system to represent "a domain of discourse" - that which can be talked about, along with functions that may or may not be within the domain of discourse that allow inference about the objects within the...
  • Literary criticism
    Literary criticism

    Literary criticism is the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals....
  • Literary theory
    Literary theory

    Literary theory in a strict sense is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for analyzing literature. However, literary scholarship since the 19th century often includes?in addition to, or even instead of literary theory in the strict sense?considerations of intellectual history, moral philosophy, social prophecy,...
  • Meaning (linguistics)
    Meaning (linguistics)

    Linguistic strings can be made up of phenomena such as words, phrases, and sentences, each of which has a different kind of meaning. Individual words, such as the word "bachelor", refer to some abstract concept....
  • Meaning (non-linguistic)
    Meaning (non-linguistic)

    A non-linguistic meaning is an actual or possible derivation from sentence, which is not associated with signs that have any original or primary intent of communication....
  • Meaning (semiotics)
    Meaning (semiotics)

    In semiotics, the meaning of a sign is its place in a sign relation, in other words, the set of roles that it occupies within a given sign relation....
  • Pesher
    Pesher

    Pesher is a Hebrew language word meaning "interpretation" in the sense of "solution". It became known from one group of texts, numbering some hundreds, among the Dead Sea Scrolls....
  • Philology
    Philology

    Philology, derived from the Greek language considers both morphology and Meaning in linguistic expression, combining linguistics and literary studies....
  • Semeiotic
    Semeiotic

    Semeiotic is a term used by Charles Sanders Peirce to distinguish his theory of triadic relation sign relations from other approaches to the same subject matter....
  • Semiosis
    Semiosis

    Semiosis is any form of activity, conduct, or process that involves sign , including the production of meaning . Briefly ? semiosis is sign process....
  • Semiotics
    Semiotics

    'Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of sign processes , or signification and communication, sign and symbols, both individually and grouped into sign systems....
  • Sign
    Sign (semiotics)

    In semiotics, a sign is "something that stands for something else, to someone in some capacity". It may be understood as a discrete unit of Meaning , and includes words, images, gestures, scents, tastes, textures, sounds – essentially all of the ways in which information can be communicated as a message by any sentient, reasoning m...
  • Sign relation
    Sign relation

    A sign relation is the basic construct in the theory of signs, also known as semeiotic or semiotics, as developed by Charles Sanders Peirce....
  • Syncretism
    Syncretism

    Syncretism consists of the attempt to reconcile disparate or contrary beliefs, often while melding practices of various schools of thought. The term may refer to attempts to merge and analogy several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion, and thus assert an underlying unity allowing for an inclu...
  • Tafsir
    Tafsir

    Tafsir is the Arabic word for exegesis or commentary, usually of the Qur'an. It does not include esoteric or mystical interpretations, which are covered by the related word Ta'wil....
  • Talmudical hermeneutics
    Talmudical Hermeneutics

    Talmudical Hermeneutics refers to the science which defines the rules and methods for the investigation and exact determination of the meaning of the Tanach, both legal and historical....
  • Theory of mind
    Theory of mind

    Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states?beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.?to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one's own....
  • Truth
    Truth

    semantic fields for the word truth extend from honesty, good faith, and sincerity in general, to agreement with fact or reality in particular....
  • Truth theory
  • Understanding
    Understanding

    Understanding is a psychology process related to an abstract or physical object, such as a person, situation, or message whereby one is able to think about it and use concepts to deal adequately with that object....
  • Wesleyan Quadrilateral
    Wesleyan Quadrilateral

    The Wesleyan Quadrilateral is a methodology for Christian theology that is credited to John Wesley, leader of the Methodism in the late 18th Century....
  • Wikiversity: Center of Hermeneutics


External links

  • Bibliology and Hermeneutics Course", audio and video resources from an Evangelcial perspective
  • Ferré, Frederick, "Metaphor in Religious Discourse", Dictionary of the History of Ideas,
  • Köchler, Hans
    Hans Köchler

    Hans K?chler is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and president of the International Progress Organization, a non-governmental organization in consultative status with the United Nations....
    , "Philosophical Foundations of Civilizational Dialogue. The Hermeneutics of Cultural Self-comprehension versus the Paradigm of Civilizational Conflict." International Seminar on Civilizational Dialogue (3rd: 15-17 September 1997: Kuala Lumpur), BP171.5 ISCD. Kertas kerja persidangan / conference papers. Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Library, 1997.
  • Mallery, John C., Hurwitz, Roger, and Duffy, Gavan, "Hermeneutics: From Textual Explication to Computer Understanding?", 1986, [ftp://publications.ai.mit.edu/ai-publications/pdf/AIM-871.pdf PDF]
  • Mantzavinos, C. "Naturalistic Hermeneutics",
  • Masson, Scott. "The Hermeneutic Circle" http://www.amazon.com/Romanticism-Hermeneutics-Sciences-Nineteenth-Century/dp/0754635031/ref=sr_1_1/105-6534813-1358802?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1185904832&sr=8-1]
  • , "The Liminality of Hermes and the Meaning of Hermeneutics",
  • Palmer, Richard E., "The Relevance of Gadamer's Philosophical Hermeneutics to Thirty-Six Topics or Fields of Human Activity", Lecture Delivered at the Department of Philosophy, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, 01 Apr 1999,
  • Quintana Paz, Miguel Ángel, , a paper on the relevance of Gadamer's Hermeneutics for our understanding of Music, Ethics and our Education in both.
  • Ramberg, Bjorn, and Gjesdal, Kristin, "Hermeneutics", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

    The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a Open access online encyclopedia of philosophy maintained by Stanford University. The SEP was initially developed with U.S....
    ,
  • Szesnat, Holger, "Philosophical Hermeneutics",
  • by Jose Faur, describing the legal theory and hermeneutical process in rabbinic jurisprudence
  • written by