SOME AXIOMS OF GENERAL HERMENEUTICS

Axiom 1: The true object of speech is the impartation of thought.

- This is the foundation of all hermeneutics.

Axiom 2: Language is a reliable medium of communication.

- Presupposes that language employed be grammatically correct, clear in statement, accurately expressing the thought to be communicated to others.

Axiom 3: Usage determines the meaning of words.

- Usage of words may in time change radically in meaning or become obsolete. E.g. “salvage”

- Notice that a standard dictionary contains many definitions of a single term.

Axiom 4: The function of a word depends on its association with other words.

- Underlies the importance of context in order to interpret the text. E.g. “top,” “pen”

Axiom 5: The true object of interpretation is to apprehend the exact thought of the author.

- Herein lies the crucial distinction between exigesis and eisigesis.

Axiom 6: Truth must accord with truth; and statements of truth apparently discrepant can be harmonized if the facts are known.

- Discrepancies in truth-statements are resolved when pertinent facts are known.

Axiom 7: An assertion of truth necessarily excludes that to which it is essentially opposed and no more.

- The hermeneutic application of the logical principle of non-contradiction.

Axiom 8: One cannot interpret without understanding that which he interprets.

- To understand the thought of another is to conceive it in one’s mind and to reproduce it to others without change or modification.

- - Clinton Lockhart, Principles of Interpretation, pp. 18ff.

ORIGEN AND THE ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL

LUMINARIES OF THE ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL

St. Clement of Alexandria( c. 150 – c. 215/217)

Origen( c. 284/285– c. 253/254)

Philo Judaeus( 20 BCE – 50 CE)

Origen: the Universality of Typology- As an interpreter and theologian, Origen sees

himself foremost as a Scriptural exegete, developing biblical textual criticism and exegesis.

- Hebrew Scripture must be read as exclusively relating to Jesus: “Search the Scriptures, [they] testify of me” (Jn 3:39), cf. also Jn 5:46.

- Typology= refers to allegoresis relating the Hebrew Testament with the person of Jesus.

- Typology is not the same as allegory, the latter subject to interpretive arbitrariness and frivolity.

- Being the Word of God, Scriptures may only be plumbed in all its depth by the pneumatic way of spiritual interpretation, as it’s inspired by God himself.

- Everything in Scripture has a spiritual meaning, and not always historical meaning.

- Just as the cosmos and human being have three levels (body, soul, spirit), so too Scripture has a threefold meaning: The basis of this is Origen’s reading of Proverbs 22:20. These three are the levels of biblical meaning.

- Somatic-literal-historical sense- Psychical-moral sense- Pneumatic-allegorical-theological sense

- Nonetheless, Origen was greatly criticized in his allegorical reading of Scriptures giving emphasis (and sometimes discounting the historical) on the pneumatic.

- Origen’s allegoresis is different from that of Philo because the former’s allegory is more properly that of a typology.

- The greatest hermeneutic challenge of early Christianity is how to interpret the Hebrew Scriptures in the light of belief in Christ.

- Allegory was not used only for the Hebrew Scriptures, it was also the case in the New Testament, particularly how the text foretells of the divine parousia (cf. Revelation).

- Like Philo, Origen universalizes typology in the interpretation of scriptures.

- It became an integral part of the theological culture of Middle Ages. Indeed the fourfold sense of Scriptures as it was definitely formulated by John Cassian (c. 360 – 430/35) can be traced directly from Origen.

- Most memorable formulation in the Middle Ages is given by Augustine of Dacia: the literal teaches us what happened, the allegorical what to believe, the moral what we ought to do, and the anagogic what we are striving toward.

- This fourfold sense was rejected by Luther.

History of Biblical Interpretation- The Bible plays an important part in the Jewish and

Christian economy of salvation because it is a receptacle of divine revelation. Although there appears a consensus on this regard, the matter of interpretation has not generated a uniform hermeneutical principle for its interpretation.

- For some, biblical interpretation must always be literal because God’s word is explicit and complete.

- For some, biblical interpretation must always have a deeper spiritual meaning because God’s message and truth is evidently profound.

- In the history of Biblical interpretation, there are four major types of hermeneutics: Literal, Moral, Allegorical and Anagogical Interpretations.

1. Literal InterpretationLiteral interpretation = Bible needs to be read according to the “plain meaning” conveyed by its grammatical construction and historical context.

- Literal meaning is equal or reasonably corresponds to author’s intention.

- In biblical exegesis, this type of interpretation is associated with the belief in verbal inspiration of the Bible, that is, the words were divinely chosen.

- This type criticized, especially its extreme forms, for the neglect of the individuality of style and vocabulary found in various Biblical authors.

- Exponents, foremost is Jerome (4th cen) who championed a literal interpretation of the Bible due to excesses in allegorical interpretation. Others include Thomas Aquinas, Nicholas of Lyra, John Colet, Martin Luther, and John Calvin.

2. Moral Interpretation- Moral interpretation = exegetical principles

aimed at the ethical lessons that may be drawn from the Bible.

- A form of allegorizing is also employed to this moral effect.- For example, in The Letter of Barnabas (c. 100 CE) the

dietary laws prescribed in the Book of Leviticus forbidding the flesh of certain animals are read to mean the vices imaginatively associated with those animals.

3. Allegorical Interpretation- Allegorical interpretation = there exists a

second level of reference beyond persons, things and events explicitly mentioned in the text. A particular form of this allegorical interpretation is the typological, meaning, persons and events in the Old Testament are read as types or foreshadowings of persons and events in the New Testament.

- a. For example, the story of Noah’s Ark is read as referring to the Christian Church, and this has been the intention of God since the beginning.

- The allegorical interpretation is drawn from the works of Philo, a Jewish philosopher who employed Platonic and Stoic categories to interpret Jewish scriptures.

- This was later adopted by Clement of Alexandria, seeking the allegorical meaning of biblical texts. Clement discovered that there are deep philosophical truths beneath plain-sounding narratives.

- Clement’s successor Origen, systematized these hermeneutical principles, distinguishing them between the literal, moral and spiritual senses (the last being the highest). In the Middle Ages, Origen’s threefold division was expanded with the division of the spiritual into the allegorical and the anagogical.

4. Anagogical or Mystical Interpretation- Anagogical or mystical interpretation = seeks

to interpret biblical events as relating to or prefiguring the life to come.

- For example, in the Jewish tradition, the Kabbala is an anagogical reading exemplifying the mystical significance of numerical values of Hebrew letters and words (see also the medieval Zohar).

- Example in the Christian tradition, the anagogical interpretation associated with Mariology often fall under this category.

- However, hermeneutics became a separate discipline only until the Renaissance, Reformation and thereafter.

- It starts as a reaction against the Catholic insistence on church authority and tradition (reaffirmed at the council of Trent in 1546) concerning the understanding and the interpretation of Scriptures.

- Protestant Reformers advance the principles of perspicuity (perspecuitas), and of the self-sufficiency of the Bible (that is, the basic intelligibility and non-contradictory nature of the bible).

HERMENEUTICS AND THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION

MARTIN LUTHER (1483-1546)Founder of the Protestant Reformation

LUTHER: SOLA SCRIPTURA?- Scholarship in hermeneutics was

cultivated primarily by the Protestants.- Dilthey: hermeneutic science coincided

with Protestantism- Question: did Luther himself develop a

hermeneutic theory? - Luther’s preoccupation was primarily

exigesis.- He disdains philosophy and theory (empty

scholasticism)

SOLA SCRIPTURA: LUTHER’S STARTING POINT

- Luther made use of the principle of “sola scriptura” against tradition and Church magisterium.

- This principle is not original to Luther. Visible already in the Patristic tradition, esp. St. Augustine. - Augustine affirms the primacy of scriptura- Also affirms the basic intelligibility of

scriptures, in contrast to Alexandrian allegoresis.

- Luther’s rejection of allegoresis signified a decisive return to sensus literalis.- Literal meaning, rightly understood,

contains its own proper spiritual significance.

- The Spirit is encountered in the Word as fulfilled by faith, not in some Beyond.

- Scripture is sui ipsius interpres: it is its own key: a word of Scripture is always tied to the fulfillment of the Verbum (cf. Augustine).

- Sola scriptura in the Protestant tradition failed to be satisfactory particularly in elucidating ambiguities in Scriptures.

- The Counter Reformation Council of Trent (1546): Scripture is inadequate per se. There is a necessary recourse to tradition. - Opposition between Scripture and tradition

is only artificial since they both stem from the same Holy Spirit.

- A more explicit hermeneutics was then exigent upon Protestantism.

MATTHIAS FLACIUS ILLYRICUS (1520-1575)Lutheran Reformer; , the most important Protestant theorist and apologist of biblical interpretation.

FLACIUS: UNIVERSALITY OF THE GRAMMATICAL

- Clavis Scripturae Sacrae (1567) = laid the firm basis for Protestant hermeneutics, by drawing on the Aristotelian rhetorical tradition and the biblical exigesis of Origen.- The first book which can be described as a

genuine Protestant theory of hermeneutics.- Offers a key (clavis) for deciphering

obscure passages of Scriptures.

TWO PRINCIPAL ARGUMENTS- if the Scriptures had not been

understood properly, it doesn’t mean that the church should impose an external interpretation to make them intelligible. This only shows the insufficient knowledge and faulty preparation of interpreters.

- In accordance with the opinion of other reformers like Luther and Melanchton, the Scriptures contain an internal coherence and continuity

- Importance of grammatical knowledge: mastery of the letter, the gramma, was to provide the universal key to Scripture (part 1 of Clavis was a pure lexicon of the Bible).

- Follows the principle of parallel passages of St. Augustine.

- Makes explicit appeal to St. Augustine and other Church Fathers.

- “Scopus” = the importance of considering the view with respect to which a book was composed.- This attention to scopus gives way from

the grammatical consideration to the intention of the author.

HERMENEUTICS BETWEEN GRAMMAR AND CRITIQUE

JOHANN CONRAD DANNHAUER (1603-1666)True Interpretation and Interpretative Truth

- Most historians of hermeneutics pass over him in silence.

- Mostly noted as one of the first to use “hermeneutics” in the titles of their books- He wrote Hermeneutica sacra sive

methodus exponendarum sacrum litterarum (1654)

- He already created the neologism hermeneutica in 1629

- The Idea of a Good Interpreter (1630): projected a universal hermeneutics: hermeneutica generalis.

HERMENEUTICA GENERALIS- Such an idea arose in search of a new

scientific methodology emancipated from scholasticism.

- Dannhauer argues that the vertibule of all sciences must contain a universal science of interpretation.- Everything knowable has a corresponding

science; interpretive procedure is knowable; there must therefore be a science corresponding to it.

- “philosophical hermeneutics” it is universal since it must be applicable in all sciences.

HERMENEUTICA GENERALIS- Dannhauer proposes a universal

hermeneutics grounded in philosophy but enabling other disciplines to interpret written expressions according to their meaning.- Only one hermeneutics but its objects are

different- That knowledge depends on the

interpretation of texts is brought about by the spread of printing.

- The Renaissance necessarily brought about the appearance of a universal hermeneutics.

- Hermeneutics had to be a propaedeutic science (taking the place of logic).

- Hermeneutics consists of “logical analysis” = tracing statements back to their intended meaning. - Whereas pure logical analysis sets itself

the task of constituting the truth of intended meaning with respect to content by retracing it to its deepest foundations, hermeneutics contented itself with determing intended meaning as such, regardless of whether the meaning is true or false with respect to content.

HERMENEUTICA GENERALIS- In Dannhauer’s time, the distinction

between sententia (truth of assertion) and sensus (meaning of the sense) is already present.- What’s new for Dannhauer is that he used

this to define the goals of a universalist hermeneutics.

- Task of hermeneutics: to establish the ‘hermeneutic truth’ (what the author wanted to say) regardless of whether this is logically or factual correct.

THE IDEA OF THE GOOD INTERPRETER- The “Good Interpreter” = he is the one

who analyzes all discourses insofar as they are obscure yet ‘exponible’ (interpretable) in order to distinguish their true from their false meaning.

- The strategy of Dannhauer, to integrate a universal hermeneutics into logic.

JOHANN MARTIN CHLADENIUS (1710-1759)The Universality of the Pedagogical

- Einleitung zur richtigen Auslegung vernünftiger Reden und Schriften (Introduction to the Correct Interpretation of Reasonable Discourses and Books, 1742)

- he seeks to provide here a consistent theory of interpretation, with a set of practical rules for those whose disciplines require of them principles of interpretation.).

- Chladenius opened up a new horizon in philosophical hermeneutics by severing hermeneutics from a theory of logic to a second branch of human knowledge.- Two ways by which scholars increase knowledge:

- By means of their own thoughts and discoveries- They occupy themselves with things that others before

them have thought of and give directions for understanding others writings, that is, they interpret.

- To these two correspond two cognitive rules:- The first teaches us how to think correctly (theory of

reason)- The second teaches us how to interpret correctly

(general theory of interpretation).

- Chladenius defines hermeneutics as the art of attaining the perfect or complete understanding of utterances (vollständiges Verstehen)—whether they are speeches (Reden) or writings (Schriften).

- “Interpretation is nothing but adducing the concepts necessary to the complete understanding of the passage.”

FOUR KINDS OF OBSCURITY1. Obscurity resulting from textually

corrupt passages. This is not the task of the hermeneutician but of the criticus. Critique here refers to the philological science of editing, revising, and correcting ancient texts. Critique is a purely factual science of determining the status of the text.

- It needs to be noted here though that recognizing a particular passage as corrupt is already an hermeneutic act of the first order.

- In the 19th century there is a binary distinction between hermeneutics and critique, based on the 18th century trinary distinction between grammar, hermenteutics and critique. All deals with rules to understand and explain written texts

2. Obscurity derived from insufficient insight into the language of the book. Obscurity here is rectified with the help of the philologus or language teacher. Likewise, not the concern of the hermeneutician.

3. Passages or words that are ambiguous in themselves. Ambiguities here are not to be cleared up but simply accepted as such or censured.

4. The obscurity that applies strictly to hermeneutics is the one due to insufficient background knowledge. Although sometimes the texts themselves are clear, they remain unintelligible because we lack historical or factual knowledge. We are unacquainted with the subject matter or with what the author really wanted to say.

- There is nothing trivial here. Language always tries to express something literally, but this “something” often enough remains in the dark, because the words do not occasion the same meaning or effect in the receiver as intended by the speaker.

- In the words of Chladenius: “A thought that is to be conveyed to the reader by words often presupposes other conceptions without which it is not conceivable: if the reader is not already in possession of these conceptions, therefore, the words cannot effect the same result in him as in another reader who is thoroughly knowledgeable about these conceptions.”

- There is an inherent universality in this situation.

- His concept of hermeneutics is far from those of the Romantic and post-Romantic schools of hermeneutics. This can be seen in three aspects of his theory:- His concept of hermeneutics- The implied notion of the nature of verbal

meanings- This theory of the point of view (Sehe-

Punckt) regarding historical writings. The German Sehepunkt is the translation of the Latin scopus (also found in Augustine and in Flacius)

SEHE-PUNCKT- Sehe-Punckt (point of view or

perspective): Chladenius is best known for this doctrine introduced into historical methodology. If two historians’ account of the same event differs, it does not mean that there is a contradiction, or that only one can be true.- The viewpoint is unavoidable if one is to

give due justice to the ways people conceive things. Here there is no danger of objectivity. “the event is one and the same, but the concept of it different and manifold” (p. 69).

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GEORG FRIEDRICH MEIER (1718-1777)The Universality of Signs

- Meier wrote the book Versuch einer allgemeinen Auslegungskunst (1757)

- Meier’s interpretation theory comprehends the totality of all signs, even the natural.- Hermeneutics of human discourse is only

part of the universal hermeneutics that includes signs of all kinds.

- Everything in the world is now a sign.

HERMENEUTIC TRUTH- Hermeneutics is strictly concerned with

the hermeneutic, rather than the logical or metaphysical truth.

- Hermeneutic truth = author’s viewpoint (mens auctoris)- Authorial self-interpertation enjoys a

special privilege- Every author is the best interpreter of his

own words.

PRINCIPLE OF HERMENEUTIC EQUITY

ROMANTIC HERMENEUTICSAND SCHLEIERMACHER

POST-KANTIAN TRANSITION FROM THE ENLIGHTENMENT TO ROMANTICISM

ROMANTICISM- If Romanticism is an unsatisfiable

longing for completeness, 19th century hermeneutics was certainly Romantic.

- Philosophers were hesitant to publish their works. Only student notes exist, mostly.

TRANSITION- Highly characterized by discontinuity.

Schleiermacher seems oblivious to the numerous examples of universal hermeneutics developed before him.

- Reason for break: Kant.- Kantianism dissolved the Rationalism to

which Dannhauer, Spinoza, Chladenius and Meier owed their allegiance.

CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON- Rationalism’s presupposition was that

the human mind, though finite, could by means of thought come to penetrate the logical and regular construction of the world.

- Thinking was guided by a principle of reason, this is our reason.

- The order produced or discovered by reason is valid only for the world of phenomena.- Noumena disappears into pure

unintelligibility.

NOUMENON = PHENOMENON- The distinction between the two lies

the root of Romanticism and the emergence of hermeneutics.- If every approach to the world involves a

subjective interpretation or viewpoint, a philosophical investigation must begin with the interpreting subject.

- Can objectivity be achieved in hermeneutics and science?

- The worldlessness of the subject and the reduction of the autarchy of reason gave rise to “idealistic” hermeneutics, the revitalizaion of the Greek spirit.

GEORG ANTON FRIEDRICH AST (1778-1841)

- Authored the book Grundlinien der Grammatik, Hermeneutik und Kritik (1808).- Its aim was to rediscover, through

intuition, the undivided unity of the spirit that expressed itself not only in antiquity but in all history.

- All understanding would be impossible were it not for the originary unity of all cognizing spirit.

- Scopus = every individual utterance must be conceived by an appeal to the whole of spirit.

“HERMENEUTIC CIRCLE”- Earliest formulation of what later would

be called the hermeneutic circle:- “The fundamental law of all

understanding and knowing is to discover the spirit of the whole in the individual and to grasp the individual in terms of the whole.”

- This whole=part mutually conditions each other, constituting one harmonious life.

KARL WILHELM FRIEDRICH SCHLEGEL (1772-1829)

- Classical division of philology: grammar, criticism and hermeneutics.- In order to understand a text correctly, the

interpreter needs a reliable critical edition, but in order to edit the text, critique needs the aid of hermeneutics.

- If hermeneutics were to come to fruition, knowledge of antiquity would be necessary.

- Envisioned a “philosophical hermeneutics”- Modeled on the exemplary classicality of

the ancients.- To transform what was intuitive know-how

into a systematic and self-conscious methodology for philology.

- To arrive at a self-understanding of understanding.

- Schlegel’s hermeneutics represent a universal function of post-Kantian hermeneutic theory.

- The hermeneutic subject, increasingly worldless and unsure of itself becomes Romantic: it gropes toward antiquity to discover the artful rules governing its activity.

- Task of Schleiermacher: incorporate the subject’s fundamental uncertainty into a universal art of understanding.

FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER (1768-1834)

- Schleiermacher represents a watershed between 19th and 20th century hermeneutics. He not only synthesized the major trends on hermeneutics before him, but he also laid the foundation for its eventual development.

SCHLEIERMACHER AS ROMANTIC- Through the poetics and aesthetics of

such poets as Fichte and Schelling, among others, hermeneutics emerges as a concern for the idea of the author as creator and of the work of art as an expression of his creative self.

- Conception of the organic unity of a work

- Style as the inner form of the work- A concept of the symbolic nature of art

giving rise to the possibility of infinite interpretations.

UNIVERSALIZATION OF MISUNDERSTANDING

- His career is truly focused on hermeneutics but never allowed his theory to be published.

- Hermeneutics: “every act of understanding is the inverse of an act of speech, in that the thought underlying the speech must enter consciousness.”- What needs to be done is to trace the

thought that the speaker wanted to express.

- Understanding has no other object than language.

- “Everything presupposed in hermeneutics is but language.”

- Language can be viewed in two ways:- Any utterance is an instance of the overall

usage of a language community.- this is the grammatical side of interpretation.

- Expression must be understood as part of the speaker’s life-process, his internal or mental history

- This is the psychological or technical side of interpretation.

TRANSCENDENTAL TURN- What Schleiermacher does is to ground

hermeneutics in a concept of undestanding. Since then, “understanding” has become the cornerstone of hermeneutic theory.- in Schleiermacher, hermeneutics is no

longer about decoding of given meaning or clearing away obstacles to achieve understanding rather, it’s about illuminating the conditions for the possibility of understanding and its modes of interpretation.

- Old hermeneutics: a reader understands everything unless or until he encounters contradictions or nonsensical passages.

- New hermeneutics, as radically advanced by Schleiermacher: we cannot claim to understand anything that we cannot perceive an construct as necessary. Understanding is an unending task.

LINGUISTIC TURN- understanding is an activity analogous

to that of speaking. Both derive from man’s linguisticality or capacity for speech, that is, his knowledge of language, and his mastery of speech.

- Every person is equipped with a basic linguistic disposition.

- Speech acts correspond to acts of understanding

AUTHOR- The primordial author is not a fixed

substance. It is fluid and dynamic.- The authorial act constitutes itself in

the creation of the work. It is the act which synthesizes the two planes: the system of language, and the inner system of thought.

UNDERSTANDING / INTERPRETATION- Schleiermacher does not offer a clear

distinction between understanding and interpretation. He seems to imply that these two are analogous.

THE PROBLEMS OF HISTORICISM

AUGUST BÖCKH (1785-1867)The Dawn of Historical Awareness

- Schleiermacher wanted to limit the hermeneutic circle to the written text and the author’s individuality.- To avoid the arbitrariness of the circle.- To maintain logical coherence (logical basis

of the circle)- This idea of a coherent whole is

concretized in the historical context. This is historicism in the 19th century.

- Historicism- To avoid anachronism, judging other times

to our own standards.- Point is to interpret historical events

immanently.- There is a problem of historicism leading to

relativism.

BÖCKH- Unlike philosophy, philology is not

productive but reproductive and reconstructive.- For Böckh, understanding is defined as

“knowing the known.”- What is understood is something that is

already known.- The significance of Böckh is his standing

invitation to further research.- Böckh adds historical interpretation = to

understand, the meaning must be situated in its historical relationship.

JOHANN GUSTAV DROYSEN (1808-1884)

Universal Historiology: Understanding as Research in the Moral World

UNIVERSAL HISTORIOLOGY- It was Droysen who fully grasped the

methodological problem of historicism- “understanding” assumes a central

significance in methodology. It now becomes a specific procedure for the historical sciences.- The success of the natural sciences is its

clear methodological consciousness.- Historical sciences needs to develop its

own methodology

2 PATTERNS TO AVOID IN HISTORIOGRAPHY

- Positivist pattern = subordinate history to the mathematical method, hence the search for statistical laws governing history.

- Narrative pattern = historiography is merely narrative, chatty, and in brief a dilettantish art-form.

- The goal of historiology is to determine not the laws of history but the laws governing historical research and knowledge.

- Droysen follows Kant, employing two basic ways of conceiving the spirit: nature and history (space and time)- Space / nature = what is static- Time / history = what changes- Method of natural sciences = discovering

the normative laws of observed phenomena

- Method of historical sciences = understanding through research.

- For Droysen, historical understanding is built up by the interpreter’s recurring to the power, the might, the inwardness that manifests itself in historical expressions.

- What we try to understand is not the past itself, but what is retained. Historical understanding concerns itself with the vestiges of the past handed down to us.

- Historians don’t deal with the objectivity of the past.

- The nature of the increasing continuity of history can only be ideal and moral.

- To understand history is to understand the progressively developing moral powers (family, language, religion, law, etc.)

WILHELM DILTHEY (1833-1911)On the Way to Hermeneutics

HEIDEGGER: HERMENEUTICS AS THE INTERPRETATION OF EXISTENCE

MARTIN HEIDEGGER (1889-1976)- In him, hermeneutics is elevated to the

center of philosophical concern.- His hermeneutical theory is to be found

in his early lectures (before Being and Time)

- Important is his lectures on “Hermeneutics of Facticity.”

- Influenced by Schleiermacher, Droysen and Dilthey.

THE “FORE” OF FORE-UNDERSTANDING- Fore-structure of understanding:

human understanding takes its direction from the fore-understanding deriving from its particular existential situation, and this fore-understanding stakes out the thematic framework and parameters of every interpretation (Rudolf Bultmann).

THE “FORE”- Fore-structure = Dasein is

characterized by an interpretative tendency special to it that comes be-fore every statement- A disposition the fundamental character of

which is care- And which is always under threat of being

concealed by the fact that propositional judgments tend to take center stage.

- Hermeneutics of Facticity: hermeneutics of everything that is at work behind statements.

UNDERSTANDING- Understanding as theoretical intelligere

concerned with construing meaningful entities in an intelligible manner.

- Droysen and Dilthey: understanding rose to an autonomous status of knowledge grounding historical sciences

- Heidegger: understanding as more like readiness or facticity than knowledge.

- Understanding as a practical or existential mode of being

- It is less “knowledge” than “knowing one’s way around” characterized by “care”

- This understanding is universal, and implicit.

CARE (SORGE)- Hermeneutic “as” (in contrast to

propositional “as”) = a primally interpretive fore-understanding of the world operating in the world of Dasein.

- From care stems the specific character of our understanding as project.

- Our projections are not matters of choice, we are “thrown” into them. This is facticity.

ITS TRANSPARENCY IN INTERPRETATION

“From the fact that words are absent, it cannot be concluded that interpretation is absent.”- Heidegger, Being and Time

- Traditional hermeneutics: interpretation is a means to understanding. To interpret is to understand (cf. Chladenius).

- Heidegger’s hermeneutics: the primary thing is understanding and then interpretation, as a way of extending understanding.- Interpretation is the unfolding of what is

already implicated in understanding.

“In it the understanding appropriates understandingly that which is understood by it. In interpretation, understanding does not become something different. It becomes itself.”

In interpretation, fore-understanding achieves transparency.

First task: to become reflectively conscious of one’s own fore-structure of understanding.

IDEA OF A PHILOSOPHICAL HERMENEUTICS OF FACTICITY

- Heidegger’s hermeneutics is the radicalization of the interpretative dispositions immanent in understanding.

- Schleiermacher and Dilthey: hermeneutics is the art or technique of understanding, the purpose of which is to construct a methodological foundation for human sciences.

- For Heidegger, the subject matter of hermeneutics is interpretation itself, not theory of interpretation.

- Goal of philosophical hermeneutics: the self-interpretation of facticity, the interpretation of interpretation, so that Dasein can become transparent to itself.

- Hermeneutics fulfills its task only on the way to destruction: destruction is the dismantling of tradition to the extent that it conceals existence from itself.

DERIVATIVE STATUS OF STATEMENTS?- Interpretation doesn’t take place

outside of language. The interpretation of interpretation is not to overlook or repress language.

- Rather, he is opposing the tendency of statements to monopolize our view of language.

- For Heidegger: in every spoken word Dasein’s care also makes itself heard.

- Discourse = the self-interpretation of Dasein as it manifests itself in its usual unselfconscious use of language.

HERMENEUTICS AFTER THE TURN- The hermeneutic understanding of

language has not disappeared from his thought after the turn- Although he still has suspicion of

statements arguing that propositions never have full expression of philosophical truth.

- The hermeneutical task remains the same: to elucidate the interpreter’s own situation.

- For the later Heidegger, hermeneutics becomes another word for language, understood as the bringing of news for the sake of co-respondent hearing and understanding.

GADAMER AND THE UNIVERSE OF

HERMENEUTICS

BACK TO THE HUMAN SCIENCES- For Heidegger, the attempt to

methodologize understanding is a desperate attempt to discover a “firm foothold”, even though that seemed precluded by the historicity of the 19th century.- The idea of a timeless, ultimate basis is a

flight of humanity from its own temporality- The notion of an absolute truth is the

repression or forgetting of one’s temporality.

- When Gadamer reopens a dialogue with the human sciences, it is not to develop its methodology, but rather to demonstrate the untenability of the idea of a universally valid knowledge.

- Gadamer questions whether the demand for method is really appropriate for the human sciences.

HELMHOLTZ’S HEIDELBERG LECTURE (1862)

- For Helmholtz, the natural sciences derive rules and laws from the collected materials of experience by means of logical induction.

- The human sciences proceed in a different manner:- they arrive at knowledge by employing a

psychological sense of tact.- That is, by an artistic induction where

there are no definable rules.

- Gadamer: the scientific character of the human sciences “can be understood more easily from the tradition of the concept of Bildung than from the modern idea of scientific method.”

- Gadamer returns to humanistic tradition in order to make just cognitive claims proper to the human sciences.

- Before Kant’s Critique of Judgment, humanistic concepts of taste and judgment had a cognitive function. After it, these were subjectivized and aestheticized, denying them of any cognitive value.- Whatever did not measure up to the

standard of objectivity in the methodology of the natural sciences are considered subjective and aesthetic.

- This scenario compelled the human sciences to rely on the methodology of the natural sciences.

OVERCOMING OF HISTORICIST HERMENEUTICS

- Hermeneutics of the human sciences, second part of Truth and Method.

- 19th century history of hermeneutics: Basic aporia of historicism: though there is the recognition of the universal historicity of all human knowledge, there is still an aim towards absolute knowledge.- This historicism will only be overcome with

Husserl’s lifeworld and Heidegger’s facticity.

HEIDEGGER AND HERMENEUTIC CIRCLE- Ontological structure of hermeneutic

circle- Ontological here means universal.- The circle is universal because every act of

understanding is conditioned by its motivation and prejudices (fore-understandings).

- The principle of historicity is applied to historicism itself resulting in a more appropriate understanding of knowledge.

- There is no question of setting aside prejudices, one needs to recognize them and work them our interpretively.

- What Gadamer finds significant in Heidegger: the mean between positivist dissolution of the self and Nietzsche’s universal perspectivism.

- Temporal distance = through this we can solve the question of critique in hermeneutics, namely how to distinguish the true prejudices, by which we understand, from the false ones, by which we misunderstand.

EFFECTIVE HISTORY AS PRINCIPLE- “historically effected consciousness is

more being than consciousness”- History of effect or influence is the study of

a work’s reception and interpretation.- Consciousness of historical effect =

becoming aware of one’s own hermeneutic situation and the productivity of temporal distance.

- This is becoming aware of one’s own fore-understanding.

- It is history that determines the background of our values, cognitions, and even our critical judgments.- Our consciousness is thus “effected” or

influenced by history- It is the consciousness of our finitude.

UNDERSTANDING AS QUESTIONING AND THEREFORE APPLICATION

- Before Heidegger, application was something subsequent to hermeneutic understanding.

- For Gadamer, application is anything but after-the-fact.

- Understanding involves applying a meaning to our situation, to the question we want answered.- This is shown in a negative example: non-

understanding. We don’t understand because it says nothing to us.

- Understanding is not merely reproductive but productive activity because of application.- This is why we understand differently.- To understand a text from the past means

to translate it into our situation, to hear in it an answer to the questions of our time.

- The hermeneutics of application belong to the dialectic of question and answer.

LANGUAGE AS DIALOGUE- “Being that can be understood is

language.”- For some, this is the reduction of all being

to language.- For Gadamer, his emphasis on language is

against propositional logic dominating Western philosophy.

- Language is not in proposition but in dialogue. (proposition here is an understanding of sentence as a self-sufficient unity of meaning.)

- Propositions are merely abstractions.

- Against the prosopitional view, Gadamer introduces the question and answer and the view that understanding is participation, and not isolation.

- In everything said, there is something left unsaid. The inner word.

UNIVERSALITY OF THE HERMENEUTIC UNIVERSE

- The universal dimension of hermeneutics therefore is that of the inner word, the dialogue from which every expression receives its life.

- What is universal is our finiture.