Hermeneutics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Hermeneutics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
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Hermeneutics
First published Wed Dec 9, 2020; substantive revision Wed Apr 30, 2025
Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation. Hermeneutics plays a role
in a number of disciplines whose subject matter demands interpretative
approaches, characteristically, because the disciplinary subject
matter concerns the meaning of human intentions, beliefs, and actions,
or the meaning of human experience as it is preserved in the arts and
literature, historical testimony, and other artifacts. Traditionally,
disciplines that rely on hermeneutics include theology, especially
Biblical studies, jurisprudence, and medicine, as well as some of the
human sciences, social sciences, and humanities. In such contexts,
hermeneutics is sometimes described as an “auxiliary”
study of the arts, methods, and foundations of research appropriate to
a respective disciplinary subject matter (Grondin 1994, 1). For
example, in theology, Biblical hermeneutics concerns the general
principles for the proper interpretation of the Bible. More recently,
applied hermeneutics has been further developed as a research method
for a number of disciplines (see, for example, Moules inter alia
2015).
Within philosophy, however, hermeneutics typically signifies, first, a
disciplinary area and, second, the historical movement in which this
area has been developed. As a disciplinary area, and on analogy with
the designations of other disciplinary areas (such as ‘the
philosophy of mind’ or ‘the philosophy of art’),
hermeneutics might have been named ‘the philosophy of
interpretation.’ Hermeneutics thus treats interpretation itself
as its subject matter and not as an auxiliary to the study of
something else. Philosophically, hermeneutics therefore concerns the
meaning of interpretation—its basic nature, scope and validity,
as well as its place within and implications for human existence; and
it treats interpretation in the context of fundamental philosophical
questions about being and knowing, language and history, art and
aesthetic experience, and practical life.
1. Interpretive Experience
1.1 Understanding as Educative
1.2 Against Foundationalism
1.3 The Hermeneutical Circle
2. Hermeneutics as Historical Movement
2.1 The Art of Interpretation
2.2 Justification of the Human Sciences
2.3 Hermeneutics Today
3. Hermeneutics and Existence
3.1 The Hermeneutics of Facticity
3.2 Difficulties of Self-Interpretation
4. Contemporary Hermeneutics
4.1 Humanism and Art
4.2 Tradition and Prejudice
4.3 Effective History
4.4 Language
5. Symbol, Metaphor, and Narrative
6. Philosophical Controversies
6.1 Hermeneutics and Critical Theory
6.2 Hermeneutics and Deconstruction
7. Postmodern Hermeneutics
8. Further Developments
8.1 Hermeneutics in Anglo-American Philosophy
8.2 Hermeneutics in Ethical and Political Philosophy
8.3 The Return of Normativity to Hermeneutics
8.4 Hermeneutics and New Realism
Bibliography
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1. Interpretive Experience
The topic of this article, then, is hermeneutics insofar as it is
grasped as the philosophy of interpretation and as the historical
movement associated with this area. In this, hermeneutics is
concerned, first of all, to clarify and, in turn, to establish the
scope and validity of interpretive experience.
1.1 Understanding as Educative
In hermeneutics, interpretive experience is typically clarified in
reference to understanding. In this context, when we say that we
understand, what we mean is that we have really gotten at something
through an attempt at interpretation; and, when we say we do not
understand, we mean that we have not really gotten anywhere at all
with our interpretation. For this reason, understanding can be
described as a ‘success’ of interpretation. In
hermeneutics, such success of understanding is not measured by norms
and methods typical of the modern natural sciences and quantitative
social sciences, such as whether our understanding derives from a
repeatable experiment. Neither is the success of understanding
measured by norms inherited from modern philosophy, such as whether
our understanding has indubitable epistemic foundations.
Now, philosophers associated with hermeneutics describe the success of
understanding in a number of manners. However else the success of
understanding is described, though, it is typically also described as
edifying or
educative
. Indeed, Hans-Georg Gadamer, the
philosopher perhaps most closely associated with hermeneutics in our
times, closely connects interpretive experience with education. By
education, he has in mind the concept of formation (
Bildung
that had been developed in Weimar classicism and that continued to
influence nineteenth-century romanticism and historicism in Germany
Truth and Method
, Part
I.1).
Education, as formation, involves more than the acquisition of
expertise, knowledge, or information; it concerns the enlargement of
our person through formal instruction, especially in the arts and
humanities, as well as through extensive and variegated experience.
Accordingly, the success of understanding is educative in that we
learn from our interpretive experience, perhaps not only about a
matter, but thereby also about ourselves, the world, and others.
That the success of understanding is educative in this manner can be
clarified by an example, say, in reading a text such as
Thucydides’
History of the Peloponnesian War
. When we
say that we understand this text, we mean that our attempts to
interpret it (whether rigorously, as in scholarship, or more casually,
as in evening reading) have gotten at something, perhaps: that in
politics, prudent reasoning is not always persuasive enough to stem
the tide of war. Certainly, we have not arrived at this understanding
in result of a repeatable scientific experiment or based on an
indubitable epistemic foundation. But it is not for this reason any
less educative. In this understanding, we have come to something that
we can agree or disagree with, something that in any case expands or
changes our views about the role of reason in politics (and no doubt
then also of public discourse and the causes of war), and, finally,
something that can also teach us something about ourselves and the
world in which we find ourselves.
1.2 Against Foundationalism
Hermeneutics may be said to involve a positive attitude—at once
epistemic, existential, and even ethical and political—toward
the finitude of human understanding, that is, the fact that our
understanding is time and again bested by the things we wish to grasp,
that what we understand remains ineluctably incomplete, even partial,
and open to further consideration. In hermeneutics, the concern is
therefore not primarily to establish norms or methods which would
purport to help us overcome or eradicate aspects of such finitude,
but, instead, to recognize the consequences of our limits.
Accordingly, hermeneutics affirms that we must remain ever vigilant
about how common wisdom and prejudices inform—and can
distort—our perception and judgment, and that even the most
established knowledge may be in need of reconsideration. Moreover, this
finitude of understanding is treated not simply as a regrettable fact
of the human condition but, more importantly, as an important opening
for the pursuit of new and different meaning. In view of this positive
attitude toward the finitude of human understanding, it is no surprise
that hermeneutics opposes foundationalism.
Hermeneutics opposes what can be described as the
‘vertical’ picture of knowledge at issue in
epistemological foundationalism, focusing, instead, on the
‘circularity’ at issue in understanding. In
epistemological foundationalism, our body of beliefs (or at least our
justified beliefs) are sometimes said to have the structure of an
edifice. Some beliefs are distinguished as foundations, ultimately,
because they depend on no further beliefs for their justification;
other beliefs are distinguished as founded, in that their
justification depends on the foundational beliefs (Steup and Neta
2015, Section 4.1). This is a ‘vertical’ picture of human
knowledge in that new beliefs build on established beliefs; new
beliefs are justified on the basis of already justified beliefs, and
these beliefs, in turn, are justified by still other beliefs, all the
way to the foundational beliefs. Inquiry, then, is an
‘upward’ pursuit, one that adds new ‘floors’
to the edifice of what we already know.
1.3 The Hermeneutical Circle
In hermeneutics, by contrast, the emphasis is on the
‘circularity’ of understanding. This emphasis is familiar
from the concept of the hermeneutical circle. Central to hermeneutics,
this concept is not only highly disputed but has also been developed
in a number of distinct manners. Broadly, however, the concept of the
hermeneutical circle signifies that, in interpretive experience, a new
understanding is achieved not on the basis of already securely founded
beliefs. Instead, a new understanding is achieved through renewed
interpretive attention to further possible meanings of those
presuppositions which, sometimes tacitly, inform the understanding
that we already
have.
Philosophers have described such hermeneutically circular
presuppositions in different ways and, since Heidegger, especially in
terms of presuppositions of the existential and historical contexts in
which we find ourselves. This contemporary significance of
hermeneutically circular presuppositions has origins in an older (and
perhaps more commonly known) formulation, namely, that interpretive
experience—classically, that of text
interpretation—involves us in a circular relation of whole and
parts. This formulation derives from antiquity and has a place in the
approaches of nineteenth-century figures such as Schleiermacher and
Dilthey. On the one hand, it is necessary to understand a text as a
whole in order properly to understand any of its parts. On the other
hand, however, it is necessary to understand the text in each of its
parts in order to understand it as a whole.
In contemporary hermeneutics, the concept of the hermeneutical circle
is rarely restricted to the context of text interpretation, and, too,
the circularity of interpretive experience is not necessarily cast in
terms of the relation of whole and parts; indeed, even within
hermeneutics it has been challenged whether interpretive experience is
really circular (Figal 2023). Nevertheless, as Grondin suggests, this
older formulation can help to illustrate the circular character of
interpretive experience (2016, 299). In text interpretation so
conceived, our efforts to understand a text have no firm foundation
from which to begin. Rather, these efforts unfold always
in media
res
, through an interpretation of the whole of a text that
proceeds from presuppositions about the parts; and, no less, through
an interpretation of the parts that proceeds from presuppositions
about the whole. Understanding, then, is not pursued
‘vertically’ by layering beliefs on top of foundations,
but rather ‘circularly,’ in an interpretive movement back
and forth through possible meanings of our presuppositions that by
turns allow a matter to come into view. In this, the pursuit of
understanding does not build ‘higher and higher;’ it goes
‘deeper and deeper,’ gets ‘fuller and fuller,’
or, perhaps ‘richer and richer.’
2. Hermeneutics as Historical Movement
Hermeneutics, taken as a historical movement, is informed by a longer
history that dates back to antiquity. The modern history of
hermeneutics originates with figures in nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century German thought, especially Friedrich Schleiermacher
and Wilhelm Dilthey. Research in hermeneutics today is shaped, in
turn, especially by Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer, as well
as by Paul Ricoeur and others (see Palmer 1969, Grondin 1994, L.
Schmidt 2006, Zimmerman 2015).
2.1 The Art of Interpretation
In accord with a common account of the modern historical origins of
hermeneutics, recognizably philosophical contributions to hermeneutics
originate with Friedrich
Schleiermacher.
Closely associated with German romanticism, Schleiermacher developed
his hermeneutics in the first decades of the nineteenth century. He
proposes a universal hermeneutics that pertains to all linguistic
experience, and not just to the interpretative concerns of specific
disciplines (Scholtz 2015, 68). Schleiermacher characterizes
hermeneutics as the art of interpretation, maintaining that this art
is called for not simply to avoid misunderstandings in regard to
otherwise readily intelligible discourses. Rather, the art of
interpretation is necessary for discourses, paradigmatically written
texts, in regard to which our interpretive experience begins in
misunderstanding (Schleiermacher, “Outline,” §§
15–16). Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics is multifaceted but
keyed to the idea that the success of understanding depends on the
interpretation of two sides of a discourse, the
‘grammatical’ and ‘psychological’
(Schleiermacher, “Outline,” §§ 5–6). By
the ‘grammatical’ side, he means the contributions to the
meaning of the discourse dependent on the general structure of the
language it uses. By the ‘psychological’ side, he has in
view the contributions to the meaning of the discourse dependent on
the individual author’s or creator’s mind. Whereas the
‘grammatical’ side of a discourse is a matter of general
linguistic structures, the ‘psychological’ side finds
expression in linguistic forms that would traditionally be associated
with style.
Schleiermacher indicates that discourses can be differentiated by
whether they are predominated by the ‘grammatical’ or
‘psychological’ and he develops methodological
considerations appropriate to these sides. At the same time, though,
he recognizes that the interpretation of each side is reciprocally
informed by the other (see Schleiermacher, “Outline,”
§ 11, § 12). Interpretation aims at the
“reconstruction” of the meaning of a discourse, but, in
this, the task is “to understand the discourse just as well or
even better than its creator,” a task which, accordingly, is
“infinite” (Schleiermacher, “Outline,” §
18).
2.2 Justification of the Human Sciences
The history of the modern origins of hermeneutics includes distinctive
contributions by Wilhelm Dilthey. Whereas Schleiermacher’s
hermeneutics is closely associated with German romanticism,
Dilthey’s considerations may be grasped in connection with
historicism. ‘Historicism’ refers to a nineteenth- and
early twentieth-century intellectual movement that no longer treated
“human nature, morality, and reason as absolute, eternal, and
universal,” but sought, instead, to grasp these as
“relative, changing and particular,” shaped by historical
context (Beiser 2011, 1). Dilthey’s overall (though never
completed) project was to establish a critique of historical reason
that would secure independent epistemological foundations of research
in the human sciences, that is, the sciences distinguished by their
focus on historical experience (Grondin 1994, 84–90; Bambach
1995, 127–185; Makkreel 2015). In this, Dilthey’s concern
is to defend the legitimacy of the human sciences against charges
either that their legitimacy remains dependent on norms and methods of
the natural sciences or, to his mind worse, that they lack the kind of
legitimacy found in the natural sciences altogether.
Dilthey associates the purpose of the human sciences not with the
explanation of ‘outer’ experience, but, instead, with the
understanding of ‘lived experience’ (
Erlebnis
).
In an important essay, “The Rise of Hermeneutics,” Dilthey
affirms that the understanding achieved in the human sciences involves
interpretation. But this means that hermeneutics, grasped as the
theory of the universal validity of interpretation, does more than lay
out the rules of successful interpretive practice. Hermeneutics
clarifies the validity of the research conducted in the human
sciences. Indeed, he ventures that the “main purpose” of
hermeneutics is “to preserve the general validity of
interpretation against the inroads of romantic caprice and skeptical
subjectivity, and to give a theoretical justification of such
validity, upon which all the certainty of historical knowledge is
founded” (Dilthey, “The Rise of Hermeneutics,”
Section V).
While Schleiermacher and Dilthey are central for the modern historical
origins of hermeneutics, hermeneutics has also been shaped by
contributions from other figures, such as Friedrich Ast. And
hermeneutics has also been influenced by ideas about meaning, history,
and language developed in the period by figures such as Johann
Gottfried Herder, Wilhelm von Humboldt, and Friedrich Schlegel (see
Grondin 1994; Rush 2020).
2.3 Hermeneutics Today
Hermeneutics in our times is demarcated from the modern historical
origins of hermeneutics by the influence of a new use Heidegger makes
of hermeneutics in his early phenomenological inquiries into human
existence. In turn, contemporary hermeneutics remains largely shaped
by Hans-Georg Gadamer’s ‘philosophical
hermeneutics,’ which he describes as an attempt further to
develop and expand on Heidegger’s influential breakthrough.
Current research in hermeneutics also receives contour from Paul
Ricoeur’s contributions to hermeneutics, from philosophical
controversies with critical theory and deconstruction, and from the
emergence of postmodern hermeneutics. Further developments include
innovations in hermeneutics made by some philosophers in the
Anglo-American tradition and the development of hermeneutics in
ethical and political philosophy. Most recently, further developments
include a renewal of interest in normative dimensions of interpretive
experience, and responses in hermeneutics to a recent rise of interest
in realism.
3. Hermeneutics and Existence
The principal impetus for current research in hermeneutics, then, is a
new use Heidegger makes of hermeneutics in his early phenomenological
inquiries into what, in
Being and Time
, he calls the
‘being’ or also, the ‘existentiality,’ of
human ‘existence’ (Heidegger,
Being and Time
§ 7, section C). Heidegger’s philosophy is oriented by the
question of the meaning, or, sense of being (
die Frage nach dem
Sinn des Seins
), but as he argues in
Being and Time
inquiry into this question itself begins with inquiry into the sense
in which human beings can be said to be or exist (Heidegger,
Being
and Time
, §§ 1–4). Heidegger defines inquiry into
the sense of the being of human existence as hermeneutical, that is,
as a matter of self-interpretation. Within this context, Heidegger
leaves behind the idea that hermeneutics is primarily concerned with
the methods or foundations of research in the arts and humanities.
Rather, as he argues, such hermeneutical research is itself only
possible because human beings are, in their very being, interpretive.
For Heidegger, understanding is a mode or possibility of human
existence, and, indeed, one that is projective, oriented toward the
interpretive possibilities available to us in the situations in which
we find ourselves (see especially Heidegger,
Being and Time
§§ 31–32). Accordingly, inquiry into the sense of the
being of human existence is enacted in our own attempts to understand
our own being, as we may interpret our being through the course of our
affairs.
Heidegger’s use of hermeneutics in the context of his early
phenomenological inquiries into human existence can be described as a
breakthrough in the historical movement of hermeneutics (Gadamer,
Truth and Method
, Part II.3). But Heidegger’s
considerations also continue to be a subject of considerable
discussion, and his insights remain at issue, to a greater or lesser
degree, in a range of current philosophers and debates.
Heidegger’s later works are important for hermeneutical
considerations of history, language, art, poetry, and translation, as
well. As Heidegger develops, however, he comes to claim that his paths
of thinking can no longer be served by hermeneutics, and his thought
comes to be characterized by new and different orientations.
3.1 The Hermeneutics of Facticity
Heidegger clarifies the role played by hermeneutics in his early
phenomenological inquiries into human existence through a critical
reconsideration of Husserl’s classical phenomenology, or more
specifically, a critical reconsideration of the aspects of
Husserl’s phenomenology that rely on his transcendental and
eidetic
methods.
In this, Heidegger opposes his own ‘hermeneutical’
phenomenology against Husserl’s ‘transcendental’
approach.
Husserl’s phenomenology is guided by epistemological
considerations, and his principal concern is to find
a priori
foundations for research in the sciences. Husserl believes that modern
science, despite all methodological and technological sophistication,
has failed to account for the basic epistemic foundation on which it
relies. He maintains that this foundation may be discerned in
consciousness—not, however, in any factual consciousness or ego,
but rather in the transcendental ego and its
a priori
eidetic
structures. He argues that phenomenological inquiry into these
structures proceeds methodologically on the basis of what he refers to
as the ‘
epoché
.’ The
epoché
is a universal suspension of the ‘natural
attitude,’ that is, an attitude oriented by our interests in
objects which presuppose their existence. The
epoché
thereby allows us to redirect our awareness to objects in their
appearance as such, without reference to such interests that involve
their existence. In contrast with Cartesian methodological doubt, the
epoché
is not a doubt about the existence of
mind-independent reality, but, instead, a ‘bracketing’ of
our belief in existence that frees us to focus on
a priori
eidetic structures of appearance (see, for example, Husserl,
Ideas
I, §§ 27–32).
Heidegger’s critical reconsideration of Husserl’s
phenomenology is guided not by epistemological concerns, but, instead,
fundamental ontological ones. Heidegger agrees with Husserl that
modern science has failed to account for the grounds on which it
relies, and he also turns to phenomenology in order to bring these
grounds into focus. Yet, Heidegger believes that phenomenology
concerns an origin much deeper than consciousness, the transcendental
ego, and its eidetic structures. For him, phenomenology contributes to
ontology, first of all, by bringing into focus the being, or,
ontological structures, that comprise human existence itself. For the
early Heidegger, these structures involve what he calls
‘facticity.’ By this, he does not mean that human
existence is a fact. Rather, he means that the ontological structures
that comprise human existence are found not in consciousness, but,
instead, in our being in the world—or, as he determines this
terminologically, being-in-the-world (
in-der-Welt-sein
(Heidegger,
Being and Time
, § 12 ff.). Thus, our
attempts to understand ourselves (or, for that matter, to understand
anything else) remain bound by structures of being in the world.
Specifically, our attempts to understand ourselves (or anything else)
remain conditioned by pre-structures that determine in advance which
possibilities of a situation we find relevant, and by moods that
determine in advance our attunement to a situation we are
“thrown” into, that is, a situation that affects us even
though we have not chosen to be in it (Heidegger,
Being and
Time
, §§ 28–34).
Heidegger, on the basis of his consideration of the facticity of human
existence, concludes that it would be a fool’s errand for
phenomenological inquiry to proceed on the basis of Husserl’s
epoché
. After all, the
epoché
merely
allows us to reflect on
a priori
eidetic structures of
consciousness, when what we should be after are structures of our
being in the world. Heidegger argues that phenomenological inquiry
should begin instead with consideration of these structures of being
in the world as they come into view through our own involvement in the
world. Heidegger’s phenomenology proves to be
self-interpretation, as it seeks to clarify the structure of being in
the world on the basis of nothing else than our own individual
experience of being in the world. Thus, phenomenology unfolds as the
explication of the structures of being in the world that, initially at
least, we experience more or less vaguely, more or less tacitly, in
our own everyday involvements with things and others. In
Heidegger’s critical reconsideration of Husserl’s
phenomenology, hermeneutics is a possibility of human existence itself
and, indeed, a possibility that aims at our explication of ourselves
in our very existence.
Heidegger’s conception of a ‘hermeneutical’
phenomenology helps set the stage for the approaches to hermeneutics
developed by Gadamer, Ricoeur, and others. Heidegger’s
conception has also proved to be an impetus for current research on a
tension between what some take to be basic tenets of phenomenology and
hermeneutics. On the one hand, a basic tenet of classical Husserlian
phenomenology is that our experience is grounded in intuition,
ultimately, then, in the immediacy of givenness. On the other hand, as
Heidegger’s approach suggests, our experience always involves
the mediation of interpretation. In response to this tension, some have
tried to reconcile phenomenological and hermeneutical claims about
experience. For example, Claude Romano (2015), Jean-Luc Marion (2013),
and Robert Dostal (2022) have argued, each in rather different
manners, that while all experience begins with givenness, our
experience is only fully realized through interpretation. And,
Hans-Helmut Gander (2017) has examined the possibility of
self-understanding in light of the tension between Husserlian and
Heideggerian approaches in phenomenology.
3.2 Difficulties of Self-Interpretation
Heidegger maintains that our attempts at the self-interpretation of
our existence is fraught with difficulties. One reason, he believes,
is that structures of being in the world are made inconspicuous by the
very involvement in the world that they enable. He famously makes this
case in the course of his phenomenological considerations of the way
we find human existence “initially and for the most part,”
namely, in the undifferentiated “averageness” of everyday
existence (Heidegger,
Being and Time
, 43; § 20). In this
averageness of everyday existence, Heidegger argues, the structure of
the world is given through the purposes we have, the referential
relations that comprise the situations in which we attempt to realize
these ends, and the things we employ in the service of these ends. In
the averageness of everyday existence, our access to this structure is
granted not through reflection on it but, instead, through our
ordinary affairs, as we cognize the structure indirectly through the
things (
Zeuge
, useful things or tools) that we employ to
carry out our projects (Heidegger,
Being and Time
§§ 14–18; see also Heidegger,
Ontology
§ 20). Yet, as he argues, in this form of cognizance,
“circumspection” (
Umsicht
), the structure of the
world itself recedes from view precisely by our absorption in those
projects (Heidegger,
Being and Time
, 69).
Heidegger maintains that the self-interpretation of existence is made
difficult, moreover, because being in the world always also entails
being with others. In this, Heidegger argues that in the averageness
of everyday existence, we tend to interpret ourselves not by what
individuates us from others, but, instead, by what can be attributed
indifferently to anyone. Such interpretations may be attractive
because accessible to anyone, but they come at the price of being
distorting and reductive. In the averageness of everyday existence,
the sense of self that comes into focus through self-interpretation is
not a self in its singular possibilities to be. It is rather a sense
of self characterized by circumscribed possibilities, which, for
Heidegger, finds expression in the pronoun ‘they,’ or
‘one’ (
das Man
)—so that we interpret our
own possibilities restrictively in terms of what ‘one’
thinks, what ‘one’ does, and no more (see Heidegger
Being and Time
, § 27; see also Heidegger,
Ontology
, § 6).
Another, related difficulty of self-interpretation concerns the
historical transmission of interpretations. In this, Heidegger
maintains that, as interpretations of being and the being of existence
are passed down from tradition, the “original sources” of
concrete, existential concern at issue in these interpretations come
to be covered over (Heidegger,
Ontology
, 59). Indeed, for
this reason, Heidegger calls for a “destruction” or,
perhaps, ‘de-structuration’ (
Destruktion
) of such
interpretations that have been passed down from the history of Western
philosophy (see Heidegger,
Being and Time,
§6). This, to
be sure, is a call that has important implications for the study of
the history of philosophy, one that has been influential for
philosophers such as Jacques Derrida, John Sallis, and Claudia
Baracchi. In view of the implications of Heidegger’s call for
‘de-structuration,’ the point of studying philosophers
from the past is not simply to clarify well-worn ideas about them, but
to break through such ideas, wresting from these philosophers ideas
that are oriented by the original existential concerns that animated
their thought in the first place.
4. Contemporary Hermeneutics
Contemporary hermeneutics is largely shaped by Hans-Georg
Gadamer’s ‘philosophical hermeneutics.’
Gadamer’s approach is guided by the insight that the success of
understanding involves a distinctive experience of truth. Consider,
once more, the example of coming to understand something through an
interpretation of Thucydides’
History of the Peloponnesian
War
, namely, that in politics, prudent reasoning is not always
persuasive enough to stem the tide of war. When I come to understand
this, so goes Gadamer’s insight, I experience what I understand
not only as a novel or enriching idea. More than this, I experience
what I have understood as something that makes a claim to be true.
Thus, to understand something means to understand something as true.
The chief issue of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics is to
clarify that such a hermeneutical experience of truth is not only
valid in its own right, but that it is distinct from, and even more
original than, the sense of truth at issue in knowledge secured
through the norms and methods of modern science. Indeed, it is
precisely this concern that Gadamer’s title of his
magnum
opus
is meant to evoke: his philosophical hermeneutics focuses on
a hermeneutical experience of
truth
that cannot be derived
from scientific
method
4.1 Humanism and Art
The
point de départ
for Gadamer’s philosophical
hermeneutics is the concern that the success of the scientific method
has alienated us from the validity of the truth at issue in
interpretive experience. Philosophical hermeneutics therefore begins
with an attempt to recover the sense of truth at issue in interpretive
experience by focusing our attention on motifs from the tradition of
humanism and on the ontology of art. Gadamer’s considerations of
motifs from the tradition of humanism are oriented by Weimar
classicism and its legacy in nineteenth-century German intellectual
life. His account helps us to recover the validity of an experience of
truth that is not measured by scientific method but that, instead,
depends on our education, grasped as formation (
Bildung
through formal education and experience, as well as the concordant
cultivation of capacities, such as common sense (
sensus
communis
), judgment, and taste (Gadamer,
Truth and
Method
, Part I.1.B).
Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics upholds that the primary
example of the hermeneutical experience of truth is found in our
encounters with art. Gadamer believes this becomes clear once we
overcome modern assumptions about the subjectivity of aesthetic
experience, in which the being of art is reduced to that of an
immediately present object that, in turn, has the property of
producing affects, such as aesthetic pleasure, in a subject. In his
hermeneutics, by contrast, the being of art is rather a matter of a
realization or “enactment” (
Vollzug
) that we
participate in (Gadamer,
Truth and Method
, 103). The
experience of an artwork unfolds as an event of interpretation that,
when it is a success, allows us to recognize something that purports
or claims to be true.
In Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, the treatment of the
experience of art is expansive, but a synopsis of his definitive
formulation from
Truth and Method
is instructive. Gadamer,
first, introduces the theme of ‘play,’ or, of the
‘game’ (
Spiel
) to emphasize that the experience
of art is an event of interpretation that exceeds the subjective
intentions or interests of those involved in it (Gadamer,
Truth
and Method
, Part I.II.1.A). Insofar as we agree to play a game,
we give ourselves over to the context of meaning that comprises the
game. We allow ourselves to be oriented by the norms that govern, and
thus enable but never determine, those thoughts and actions which are
appropriate to the playing of the game. Likewise, when we participate
in an experience of an artwork, we give ourselves over to the context
of meaning that comprises the work, and, thus, allow our interpretive
experience to be governed by the limits and possibilities of
interpretation appropriate to the work. When we experience a
performance of Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona’s
The Island
, for example, we allow our interpretive experience
to be governed by limits and possibilities of interpretation that have
to do with apartheid-era South Africa, Robben Island Prison, and
parallels with Sophocles’
Antigone
Gadamer maintains that in our experience of art, such play culminates
in what he calls ‘transformation into structure.’ By this,
he means that our experience of art comes to be that of a work,
grasped in its ‘ideality’ or meaningfulness, in
distinction from the activities involved in its presentation (such as
the activity of actors presenting a drama). With our experience of
such a ‘transformation into structure,’ the work of art
allows us to recognize something as true (Gadamer,
Truth and
Method
, Part I.II.1.B). He describes this interpretive experience
of truth as a process of mediation, by which a claim of truth at issue
in an artwork comes into view through the repeated projection and
supersession of inadequate interpretations, until such mediation
becomes sufficient, or ‘total.’ There is, as anyone who
has experienced an artwork will confirm, no method to ensure the
success of this process of repeated projection and supersession;
success depends on the quality of our interpretive work. The quality
of our work can be enlarged through the formation of our capacities
such as common sense, judgment, and taste. Of course, such formation
may itself be described as circular. After all, we enlarge these
capacities that allow us to interpret artworks among other things,
though our repeated efforts to interpret artworks.
4.2 Tradition and Prejudice
Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics proceeds on the basis of
these considerations of humanism and art as an attempt to establish
the essential elements of the hermeneutical experience of
truth.
In this, the hermeneutical experience of truth is conditioned by
tradition
and
language
The claim that the hermeneutical experience of truth is conditioned by
tradition is not reducible to concern for determining, say, what an
artist or an author
took to be true
through a reconstruction
of the author’s or artist’s intention, the historical
context of the artwork or text under consideration, or both. Quite to
the contrary, the hermeneutical experience of truth concerns something
that holds true for our own existence. Rather, then, the hermeneutical
experience of truth is conditioned by tradition in the sense that it
is limited and made possible by the historical transmission of
meaning. The claim that the hermeneutical experience of truth is
conditioned by tradition stresses the sense of the etymological
origins of the word ‘tradition’ in the Latin
trāditiōn
- (stem of
trāditiō
), a
handing over, delivery or handing down of knowledge (
OED
2020, “tradition, n.”). This claim also stresses the sense
of Gadamer’s German term for tradition,
Überlieferung
, which, translated literally, means a
‘delivering over.’ In this, the hermeneutical experience
of truth involves belonging to a historical tradition. Contrary to a
common misconception of Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics,
traditions are not monoliths. Traditions are more like
processes—idiomatic, dynamic, and evolving—that, to borrow
from Whitman, “contain multitudes” (Whitman,
Song of
Myself
, Sec. 51). Accordingly, to belong to a tradition is not
first to possess an identity derived from a cultural or ethnic
heritage; it is, rather, to be a participant in a movement of handing
down, delivering over, and transformation.
In Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, the hermeneutical
experience of truth, as conditioned by tradition, is thus a matter of
prejudice. Gadamer clarifies the meaning of ‘prejudice’ in
reference to the early Heidegger. Gadamer agrees with Heidegger that
human existence is characterized by facticity, so that understanding,
or, our projection of possibilities, is oriented by
‘pre-structures’ that are a matter of thrownness. Yet,
such ‘pre-structures’ are best described as
‘prejudices’ because they concern more than the individual
situations that comprise our existence. These
‘pre-structures’ are shaped by the larger context of
historically inherited meanings that remain operative, or, in effect,
in such situations of our individual existence in the first place
(Gadamer,
Truth and Method
, Part II.II.1.A).
Tradition, so conceived, proves to be a legitimate source of authority
for the hermeneutical experience of truth. Gadamer’s
philosophical hermeneutics thus comprises a counterpoint to the
rejection of the authority of tradition in modern science. Gadamer
associates this rejection above all with the “prejudice against
prejudice” developed in the European Enlightenment (Gadamer,
Truth and Method
, 270). In this, the
motto
of the
Enlightenment is that we should think for ourselves, basing our
beliefs in our own use of reason and not the authority of tradition,
whether this authority is conceived in terms of superstition,
religious or aristocratic rule, or custom. Gadamer recognizes that the
Enlightenment charge to think for ourselves is legitimate, but he does
not believe it follows from this that tradition cannot be a source of
truth. He writes,
The Enlightenment’s distinction between faith in authority and
using one’s own reason is, in itself, legitimate. If the
prestige of authority displaces one’s own judgment, then
authority is in fact a source of prejudices. But this does not
preclude its being a source of truth, and that is what the
Enlightenment failed to see when it denigrated all authority (Gadamer,
Truth and Method
, 279).
In Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, the experience of truth
does not demand that we liberate ourselves from the authority of
tradition, but, on the contrary, recognizes tradition as a possible
source of our claims of truth. To be sure, tradition is not therefore
a foundation of claims to truth. Tradition is, after all, a process of
transmission, which is ultimately “ungroundable” and
“underivable” (Gadamer,
Truth and Method
, 254,
translation
modified).
Yet, even if it is not a foundation, tradition is a legitimate
interpretive wellspring, in the sense that it makes possible and
shapes all understanding.
4.3 Effective History
The hermeneutical experience of truth is, therefore, governed by the
“principle of history of effect” (Gadamer,
Truth and
Method
, Part II.II.B.iv). This means that our attempts to
understand are always guided more by tradition, and thus prejudice,
than we are able to make explicit to ourselves. This principle, as
Gadamer maintains, has important normative implications for
interpretive experience. These implications follow from the fact that
it is impossible to become completely self-conscious of the prejudices
operative in our attempts to understand. As Gadamer puts the point in
an ontological register, “
to be historically means that
knowledge of oneself can never be complete
” (Gadamer,
Truth and Method
, 302). Because of this, the experience of
truth leads not to self-certainty, but to the insight that we should
proceed always with a Delphic self-knowledge of our limits.
Such Delphic self-knowledge should carry over to our assessment of
knowledge secured by modern science, as well. For, as Gadamer puts the
point, “when a naïve faith in scientific method denies the
existence of effective history, there can be an actual deformation of
knowledge” (Gadamer,
Truth and Method
, 301). This is
evident, first, from the humanistic study of the history of science.
After all, it seems reasonable to believe that knowledge based on the
best results of science today may well have the same fate as now
discredited knowledge which originated in the best results of
scientific research from earlier times. It is also evident that we
should carry over Delphic self-knowledge to our assessment of
scientific knowledge, second, from the fact that scientific inquiry is
always guided by more prejudice than can be kept in check by any
method: for example, in the selection of research questions, in
hypothesis formation, and in any number of metaphysical (or other)
assumptions tacitly or unconsciously used to characterize objects of
inquiry.
Gadamer maintains that the normative implications of the
‘principle of history of effect’ mean that in our
interpretive experience, we should attempt always to expand our
horizons. By horizon, Gadamer has in mind the “range” of
our capacity to understand (Gadamer,
Truth and Method
, 302),
as this is made possible and limited by the breadth and depth of what
we have already come to understand in our lives. In this concept of
horizon, it is not difficult to hear the echo of the humanistic
sensibility that interpretive experience is
educative
. Our
horizon is the formation we have achieved through our interpretive
experience, both from our formal education and from our
life-experience. Thus, the normative demand of interpretive experience
is always to become more educated.
Gadamer describes the expansion of our horizons as a “fusion of
horizons” (Gadamer,
Truth and Method
, 306). This term
is perhaps misleading, however, because it can be mistaken to signify
that an interpreter has a distinct ‘horizon’ that is then
expanded through the assimilation of another distinct horizon, say,
that of a text we are interpreting. Really, though, what Gadamer means
is that in interpretive experience, our attempts to understand can and
should lead us to recognize that our own horizon is not as insular or
narrow as we first thought. Rather, we can and should come to
recognize that our horizon belongs to a larger context of the
historical transmission of meaning, so that when we come to understand
something, we are thereby raised “to a higher level of
universality that overcomes not only our own particularity but also
that of the other” (Gadamer,
Truth and Method
, 305). In
this, ‘fusion’ signifies something closer to the verbal
form of Gadamer’s
Verschmelzung
, that is
verschmeltzen
, to melt together. We expand our horizons
through interpretive experience that melts away at the rigidity of our
horizon, so that we can see how it melts into and mixes with a larger
movement of transmission.
4.4 Language
The hermeneutical experience of truth is conditioned by not only
tradition but also language. In Gadamer’s philosophical
hermeneutics, the relation of truth to language is described in
reference to being. Gadamer expresses this relation in a celebrated
motto
, “being that can be understood is language”
(Gadamer,
Truth and Method
474).
According to this
motto
, language is primarily a
‘medium’ that shows us the being, or meaningful order, of
the world and the things we encounter in it (Gadamer,
Truth and
Method
, Part
III.1).
Thus, language is only secondarily an instrument that we use, among
other things, to represent something, communicate about it, or make
assertions about it. The experience of language as a medium takes
place in what Gadamer calls “
hermeneutical
conversation
” (Gadamer,
Truth and Method
, 388).
The primary example of such hermeneutical conversation is a
conversation between interlocutors about something; but, he believes
that hermeneutical conversation also includes all interpretive
experience, so that the interpretation of artworks and texts is
conceived as a conversation between the interpreter and work about the
subject matter of the work. In hermeneutical conversation,
interlocutors may, of course, use language to represent, communicate
or make assertions. More originally, however, hermeneutical
conversation concerns the being of the matter under consideration.
Hermeneutical conversation is thus an event of interlocution that aims
to show something in its being, as it genuinely or truly is.
The hermeneutical experience of truth can be described as the success
of conversation so conceived. But, in this, truth is not experienced
as a matter of “correctness,” or as this may be clarified,
a matter of correct predication (Gadamer,
Truth and Method
406). In the experience of truth as correct predication, truth is
typically conceived as the property of a proposition, statement or
utterance that suitably connects a subject with a predicate. In the
hermeneutical experience of truth, by contrast, the concern is not
with correct predication in this sense but, instead, with
conversation, grasped as an event of interlocution concerned with the
being of a subject itself. In such a conversation, truth is reached,
if it is reached, not when a subject is suitably connected with
something else, but, instead, when the subject is sufficiently shown
in its own being, as it truly is. The measure of such sufficiency is
established not in advance, but is achieved in the course of
conversation along with the claim of truth that it measures.
Philosophical hermeneutics maintains that the experience of truth as
correct predication is dependent on the hermeneutical experience of
truth. This is because in truth as correctness, the proper connection
of subject and predicate depends in part on the being of the subject.
In predication, the being of the subject is typically either left out
of account or is presumed already to be determined or interpreted.
But, the being of the subject—what it truly is—is a matter
of interpretation. In illustration, we may consider the fictional
conversation presented by Plato in the
Republic
among
Socrates, Glaucon and other interlocutors about justice. In conclusion
of our interpretive experience, we may assert the proposition,
‘justice is nearly impossible to achieve!’ But, whether
this predicate can be connected with the subject of justice in this
manner will depend, ultimately, on the being of justice, and the truth
of the being of justice will depend, in turn, on an interpretation of
it. Truth as correct predication, then, depends on the truth of the
being of something, and such truth is a matter of interpretation.
Finally, in Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, it is claimed
that the hermeneutical experience of truth is ‘universal.’
This does not mean that the hermeneutical experience of truth takes
place every time we converse about something. Rather, it means that
the hermeneutical experience of truth remains always a problem,
whenever we wish to understand something, and even when a conversation
culminates in an experience of truth. Each hermeneutical experience of
truth remains open to further interpretation (see Gadamer, “The
Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem”).
5. Symbol, Metaphor, and Narrative
Current research in hermeneutics receives further contour from Paul
Ricoeur’s considerations of language, and especially of
linguistic forms such as symbolism, metaphor, and narrative. Ricoeur
takes orientation from the claim of the early Heidegger’s
hermeneutical phenomenology that self-understanding is, in the end, to
be grasped in ontological terms. Self-understanding is the
self-interpretation of human existence, grasped as the enactment of
the distinctive possibility of such existence. Ricoeur, however,
proposes a hermeneutical phenomenology that, as he puts it in an
important early essay, ‘grafts’ hermeneutics to
phenomenology in a different manner than Heidegger proposes (Ricoeur,
“Existence and Hermeneutics,” 6). Heidegger believes that
for the self-interpretation of human existence, the interpretations of
the human condition found in the human sciences are derivative; what
is called for is an analysis of the sense of being, or, the
structures, of human existence as these are disclosed through our own
individual being in the world. Ricoeur criticizes Heidegger’s
proposal as a “short route,” or perhaps better, short cut,
that bypasses the significance for our self-interpretation of the
multiple and even conflicting interpretations of the human condition
found in other disciplines and areas of philosophy (Ricoeur,
“Existence and Hermeneutics,” 6). He proposes, instead, a
hermeneutical phenomenology that embraces a “long route”
of self-interpretation, one that is mediated by passing through
hermeneutical considerations of these multiple and conflicting
interpretations (Ricoeur, “Existence and Hermeneutics,”
6).
Ricoeur’s contributions are notoriously difficult to reduce to a
specific position or otherwise categorize, in part because he
practiced what he preached. In his career, his route to
self-understanding was influenced by reflexive philosophy, Husserl and
Heidegger, French structuralism, as well as by contemporary
Anglo-American philosophy (see Ricoeur “On
Interpretation,” 12–15). Moreover, his inquiries range
over topics in areas as diverse as religion, anthropology, psychology,
history, and literature. His contributions to hermeneutics are perhaps
especially characterized, however, by the concern, first, for
possibilities of the mediating role of language to establish critical
distance in interpretive experience and, second, by his focus on the
significance of interpretive experience for ethical and political
agency.
In an early formulation of what he has in mind by the hermeneutical
‘long route’ to self-understanding, Ricoeur maintains that
the pursuit of self-understanding has to be mediated by hermeneutical
considerations of semantic structures of interpretation that are
common to research across the human sciences (Ricoeur,
“Existence and Hermeneutics,” 11). In this,
Ricoeur’s approach is “organized around the central theme
of meaning with multiple or multivocal senses…” or, what
he calls “symbolic senses” (Ricoeur, “Existence and
Hermeneutics,” 11). This involves a novel conception of
interpretation itself. Traditionally in hermeneutics, the purpose of
interpretation is thought of as making apparent the single, unitary
meaning of something. Ricoeur, by contrast, stresses that the aim of
interpretation also includes making apparent the plurality of meanings
at issue in a speech act or text. He writes,
“Interpretation…is the work of thought which consists in
deciphering the hidden meaning in the apparent meaning, in unfolding
levels of meaning implied in the literal meaning” (Ricoeur,
“Existence and Hermeneutics,” 13).
Ricoeur explains that the itinerary of the hermeneutical long route to
self-understanding passes through an analysis of a broad range of
symbolic forms, such as the “cosmic” symbolism revealed by
the phenomenology of religion, the symbolic character of
“desire” revealed by psychoanalysis, and the symbolic
forms revealed by the study of literature and the arts (Ricoeur,
“Existence and Hermeneutics,” 13). In his
Freud and
Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation
, Ricoeur describes Freud,
along with Nietzsche and Marx, as a master of the ‘hermeneutics
of suspicion.’ With this widely referenced idea, Ricoeur argues
that interpretation, as a ‘deciphering of hidden meaning in the
apparent meaning,’ takes on a critical function by exposing
repressed or distorted meaning that lies beneath the surface of
commonly accepted meaning.
Later in his career, Ricoeur’s considerations of the
hermeneutical long route to self-understanding shift attention from a
semantics of symbols to considerations of metaphor and especially
narrative. Ricoeur’s considerations of metaphor build from the
claim that metaphor should be grasped not first as the substitution of
one conventional name for a different one, but, instead, as a
“peculiar predication,” one “consisting in the
attribution to logical subjects of predicates that are incompossible
with them” (Ricoeur, “On Interpretation,” 8).
Crucial for Ricoeur is that metaphorical predication thus not only
concerns what Frege called ‘sense’ but also
‘reference.’ Metaphors are linguistic innovations that
allow us to refer to aspects of reality for which words are otherwise
unavailable (Ricoeur, “On Interpretation,” 10).
Ricoeur maintains that narrative, too, concerns both sense and
reference, but on a different scale. By narrative, he has in mind
“the diverse forms and modes of the game of storytelling”
(Ricoeur, “On Interpretation,” 2) and in his three-volume
treatise
Time and Narrative
, he focuses on the role of
narrative not only in literary fiction but also in the recounting of
history. He argues that while there are a diversity of forms and modes
of narrative, all narratives nevertheless perform a common function,
namely, they mark, organize, and clarify temporal experience (Ricoeur,
“On Interpretation,” 2). In this, he claims that in
narrative the work of such schematization of temporal experience is
achieved by the composition of the plot, or, emplotment. Through
narrative emplotment, we make apparent the meaning of persons,
relations, and events that comprise human affairs—say, in
fiction, those that can happen, and in history, those that have
happened. Crucial for Ricoeur is that narrative emplotment is
referential; as he makes the point in regard to fiction, “the
plots we invent help us to shape our confused, formless, and in the
last resort mute temporal experience” (Ricoeur, “On
Interpretation,” 6).
Ricoeur maintains, however, that the referential function of narrative
is not simply to assert something about the world but has implications
for ethical and political life. In fiction, narrative emplotment not
only helps us evaluate the meaning of human actions, but, moreover,
contributes to the creation of “the horizon of a new relating
that we may call a world” (Ricoeur, “On
Interpretation,” 10; see also Ricoeur, “Imagination in
Discourse and Action”). In so doing, fiction refers to
possibilities of reality that can orient our agency and contribute to
our efforts to reshape reality.
6. Philosophical Controversies
The development of hermeneutics since Gadamer forwarded his
‘philosophical hermeneutics’ in
Truth and Method
has been fostered by philosophical controversies about the
consequences of his project. The most celebrated of these
controversies are about the consequences of philosophical hermeneutics
in relation to critical theory and to
deconstruction.
Although philosophical interest in these controversies is extensive,
in each case, discussion arises in close connection with Gadamer
himself. In the case of the controversy in relation to critical
theory, discussion originates between Jürgen Habermas and Gadamer
over the problem of critique, or, more specifically, the critique of
ideology. In the case of the controversy in relation to
deconstruction, discussion originates between Jacques Derrida and
Gadamer. While the discussion between Derrida and Gadamer is itself
layered and gives rise to new questions over time, it concerns,
consequentially, the question of whether the success of understanding
results in a genuine determinate meaning.
Gadamer’s engagements with Habermas and Derrida themselves are
sometimes hailed as examples, or perhaps case studies, of
Gadamer’s own conception of hermeneutical conversation. Gadamer
has claimed that such conversation proceeds always from
“recognizing in advance the possibility that your partner is
right, even recognizing the possible superiority of your
partner” (Gadamer, “Reflections on My Philosophical
Journey,” 36). Gadamer famously puts this belief into practice
in his discussions with both Habermas and Derrida, and the legacy of
these debates plays an important role in Gadamer’s subsequent
thinking.
6.1 Hermeneutics and Critical Theory
One important controversy about the consequences of Gadamer’s
philosophical hermeneutics, then, concerns whether it offers a basis
for the critique of ideology. This concern is raised with emphasis by
the critical theorist Jürgen Habermas. Habermas, building on
Hegel, Marx and Engels, as well as his original theory of recognition
and communication, maintains that an ideology is a nexus of political
doctrines, beliefs, and attitudes that distort the political realities
they purport to describe. Accordingly, ideologies reinforce equally
distorted power relations that, in turn, prevent the openness of
discussion that is necessary for legitimate democratic political
deliberation and decision-making (see Sypnowich 2019, Sec. 2). In view
of this, one purpose of critical theory is to establish a basis to
critique ideology. Habermas and other critical theorists sought a
basis of critique with the ability to expose even some of our most
cherished political doctrines, beliefs, and attitudes as ideological
distortions that result from forms of domination passed down from
tradition.
Habermas raises the objection against Gadamer’s philosophical
hermeneutics that the hermeneutical experience of truth offers too
little basis for such critique (see Habermas, “The Universality
Claim of
Hermeneutics”).
10
Habermas raises the objection that philosophical hermeneutics, with
its adherence to the authority of tradition, leaves no room for the
critique of ideologies entrenched in the historically transmitted
prejudices on which our experience of truth relies. Moreover, as we
might accordingly worry, what Gadamer describes as the hermeneutical
experience of truth might not be an experience of truth at all, but,
rather, a distorted communication that is complicit in ideology, since
the so-called truth results from a conversation that might not be
open, but oriented by prejudices that reinforce inherited relations of
domination.
While the influence of Habermas’s objection is extensive,
Gadamer has mounted rejoinders on behalf of his philosophical
hermeneutics (see “Reply to My Critics”; see also
“What is Practice? The Conditions of Social Reason”). The
thrust of Gadamer’s argument is, first, that it is actually
Habermas’s position, not his own, that remains uncritical, since
it is naïve to believe in the possibility of a basis of critique
that is somehow not subject to the authority of tradition. And,
Gadamer stresses, second, that the hermeneutical experience of truth
is no blind acceptance of the authority of tradition. Rather, as he
argues, interpretive experience remains critical, in that such
experience unfolds precisely though the questioning what aspects of
our prejudices remain valid and which have become invalid for matters
of concern to us now.
6.2 Hermeneutics and Deconstruction
A further important controversy about the consequences of
Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics arises in the context of
Derrida’s project of deconstruction. While the relation between
hermeneutics and deconstruction is complex, pivotal for the
controversy is whether the success of understanding really achieves a
determinate meaning. Gadamer, as we have seen, maintains that the
success of understanding is to understand something in its being, as
it genuinely or truly is. Moreover, we experience such a truth as a
claim, one that we can agree or disagree with, and that purports to be
justified by the interpretive experience which first gives rise to it.
Yet, as we may now observe, Gadamer’s notion of the success of
understanding thereby trusts in the authenticity of our own experience
that we really have come to understand something determinately, or, in
any case, determinately enough that it makes a claim of truth.
Derrida’s deconstruction poses a challenge to this idea because
Derrida argues that discursive experience is governed by an
operation—or, perhaps better, a structure of
inoperativity—that would preclude the possibility of
understanding something with such determinacy (see Lawlor 2019).
Derrida clarifies the character of this structure of inoperativity in
terms of a number of concepts over the course of his career, but
perhaps none are more influential than that of
différance
” (see Derrida,
“Différance”). Derrida describes
différance
as a twofold structure of difference and
deferral. Building on terms from Saussure’s linguistics,
différance
thus indicates, first of all, that in
discursive experience, determining the meaning of something remains
beyond our reach because linguistic signs present what they are
supposed to signify never
per se
but always only
heterogeneously through signifiers. And
différance
indicates, furthermore, that since this heterogeneity cannot be
superseded, our attempts to determine the meaning of something remain
interminably in deferral (Derrida, “Différance”).
Because discursive experience is thus imbued with heterogeneity, our
attempts to determine the meaning of something remain always
incomplete, and never fully under our control because subject to a
free play of signs (see Derrida, “Différance,”
“Structure, Sign and Play”).
Derrida’s deconstruction poses a challenge to Gadamer’s
notion of the success of understanding as a hermeneutical experience
of truth. Gadamer, as we have said, trusts that our experience of
truth really involves a determinate claim. Derrida’s
considerations suggest, however, that such trust is misplaced. If, in
the success of understanding, our experience purports to involve a
determinate claim to truth, then our experience of this determinacy
must be misguided, since the possibility of determinacy is precluded
in advance by
différance
. As Derrida puts the point
during the 1981 initial meeting with Gadamer, “I am not
convinced that we ever really have this experience that Professor
Gadamer describes, of knowing in a dialogue that one has been
perfectly understood or experiencing the success of
confirmation” (Derrida, “Three Questions to Hans-Georg
Gadamer,” 54). Indeed, in an important early essay, Derrida
maintains that the pursuit of success of such a kind is not merely
misguided, but a symptom of our suppression, perhaps repression, of an
anxiety about the insuperable role of heterogeneity involved in all
interpretive experience (Derrida, “Structure Sign and
Play,” 292).
Gadamer takes up the challenge posed by Derrida’s deconstruction
not primarily as an objection to his hermeneutics but, instead, as an
impetus to dedicate renewed attention to the role played by difference
in interpretive experience. After all, even though philosophical
hermeneutics does not involve the technical notion of
différance
, Gadamer’s hermeneutics makes space
for difference in important regards. First, Gadamer certainly
recognizes that every determinate claim of truth remains open to
further interpretation. And, second, he recognizes that the
hermeneutical experience of a determine claim of truth is itself a
legacy of difference, since interpretive experience unfolds in the
free play of conversation. Gadamer’s response to the challenge
posed by deconstruction unfolds in attempts to expand and deepen these
and related considerations of the role played by difference in
interpretive experience. Gadamer develops this response in a number of
essays, and is led to develop hermeneutical considerations of a number
of themes brought into focus by his encounter with Derrida, such as
the significance of what he calls the eminent text (see for example
Gadamer, “Hermeneutics Tracking the Trace,” and
“Text and Interpretation”). Matters of central concern for
the philosophical controversy between hermeneutics and deconstruction
have also been further developed by several philosophers associated
with hermeneutics, such as John Caputo (1987), James Risser (1997),
Donatella di Cesare (2003), Figal (2010) and others.
7. Postmodern Hermeneutics
The rise of postmodernism has proved to be an important impetus for
developments within hermeneutics. While ‘postmodernism’
signifies a number of things, of particular influence in philosophy is
Jean-François Lyotard’s definition of postmodernism as an
“incredulity toward metanarratives” (Lyotard,
Postmodern Condition
, xxiv). By ‘metanarrative,’
Lyotard has in mind foundational stories of modern Western philosophy,
especially as these foundational stories function to legitimate
discourses in the sciences (Lyotard,
Postmodern Condition
34). Examples of metanarratives include, say, stories about the
objectivity of science or stories about how science contributes to our
progress toward a better society.
Lyotard sees both a danger and a possibility in the postmodern
rejection of metanarratives. Lyotard maintains that postmodern
incredulity toward metanarratives has resulted, first, in the
increased danger that our valuation of knowledge will be reduced to
one, totalizing standard, namely, that of an “information
commodity” produced and exchanged for the accumulation of wealth
and power (Lyotard,
Postmodern Condition
, 5). But, he
believes, the postmodern incredulity toward metanarratives has
resulted in a new possibility, too, of liberating the creation of
narrative meaning from the need to establish legitimating
foundations.
Philosophers of postmodernism have sought to clarify such a postmodern
possibility for the creation of meaning through the development of
hermeneutics (see Vattimo,
Beyond Interpretation
, Gary
Madison 1989, John D. Caputo 1987, 2018; for a creative intervention
in postmodern hermeneutics, see Davey 2006). In this, hermeneutics
places stress on the possibility of interpretive experience to produce
new meaning and shifts away from concerns about truth, being, and
existence.
Probably the most influential conception of postmodern hermeneutics is
embodied in Gianni Vattimo’s notion of ‘weak
thought.’ Vattimo’s hermeneutics is influenced not only by
figures such as Gadamer and Heidegger, but also Nietzsche, as well as
the important Italian philosopher Luigi Pareyson (see Benso, 2018). By
‘weak thought,’ Vattimo has in mind interpretive practices
that incrementally diminish the efficacy of narratives about the
purported ‘being’ of things that have been passed down
from the tradition of Western metaphysics. Vattimo embraces the
postmodern possibility to liberate the creation of meaning from any
needs for foundation or legitimacy. Building on Heidegger and
Nietzsche, Vattimo argues that despite all postmodern incredulity,
narratives passed down about the purported ‘being’ of
things continue to be in effect, often tacitly, in a broad range of
our current beliefs and practices. What is then called for are
interpretive practices that loosen the hold of these narratives, and
thus expose that what they have to say about the ‘being’
of things are not eternal verities but, instead, mockups that are
subject to interpretive revision.
Vattimo, then, defines interpretive experience not in Gadamerian terms
of a conversation that brings something into focus in its being, as it
genuinely is. Rather, he conceives of interpretive experience as a
practice of recovery, even convalescence (
Verwindung
), that
diminishes the effects of interpretations of metaphysical conceptions
of ‘being’ passed down from Western metaphysics (Vattimo,
The End of Modernity
, 11). On his view, such a recovery
requires a distinctive
remembrance
that engages tradition
while twisting free from inherited metaphysical assumptions (Vattimo,
The End of Modernity
, 115); moreover, such recovery involves
a likewise distinctive
faithfulness
pietas
) which
honors interpretive possibilities made available from the past without
thereby acquiescing to the authority of tradition (See Vattimo,
Weak Thought
; see also Moro 2024). Indeed, Vattimo associates
the possibility to liberate meaning through weak thought as the
pursuit of what he calls ‘accomplished nihilism,’ in that
weak thought seeks to unmask every metaphysical conception of
‘being’ which purports to be more than the result of an
interpretation (see Vattimo,
Beyond Interpretation
The
End of Modernity
).
8. Further Developments
Research in hermeneutics is perhaps more diverse now than at any other
period in the historical movement. Current research brings into focus
the relation of hermeneutics to a range of topics in contemporary
philosophy and the history of philosophy (Forster and Gjesdal 2019).
Current research has begun to expand interest in hermeneutical
considerations to contexts such as semantic theory (Da Via and Lynch
2024), social epistemology (see Culbertson 2024), feminist philosophy
(see Warnke 2015), comparative philosophy (see, for example, Nelson
2017), philosophy of embodiment (see, for example, Kearney 2015),
Latin American philosophy (see, for example, Vallega 2019), and
current topics in aesthetics (see Nielson 2023). While it is
impossible to gather all directions of current research in a short
article, some further developments have received particular
attention.
8.1 Hermeneutics in Anglo-American Philosophy
Hermeneutics, grasped as a historical movement, is typically
associated with continental European traditions of thought and the
reception of these traditions in the global context. This reception
has included contributions to the development of hermeneutics made by
noteworthy Anglo-American philosophers. Hermeneutics has been adopted
by Richard Rorty, has been connected with the later Wittgenstein and
Davidson, and has also been taken up by philosophers associated with
the so-called ‘Pittsburgh school,’ Robert Brandom, and
John
McDowell.
11
Rorty, in his now classic
Philosophy and the Mirror of
Nature
, presents a ranging critique of modern philosophy that
focuses on epistemology, especially the idea that knowledge is a
representation or mental ‘mirroring’ of mind-independent
reality. Against epistemology, Rorty proposes hermeneutics, which he
characterizes as “an expression of hope that the cultural space
left behind by the demise of epistemology will not be
filled…” (Rorty 1979, 315). Hermeneutics holds this void
open with what he calls ‘conversation.’ In this,
conversation pursues not the truth, conceived as a correspondence of
mind and mind-independent reality, but, instead, edification (Rorty
1979, 318, 360, 378). Edification, itself Rorty’s proposed
translation of the German
Bildung
(Piercy 2016, 447) concerns
not truth, then, but instead the discovery of new and useful
possibilities.
Philosophers associated with the University of Pittsburgh have also
taken up and developed themes in hermeneutics. Robert Brandom, for his
part, has argued that his inferentialist approach in semantics is able
to support major tenets of Gadamerian hermeneutics, thereby suggesting
that the traditions of inferentialism and hermeneutics can complement
one another (see Brandom 2002 and 2004; see also Lafont 2007). John
McDowell, in his
Mind and World
, also introduces a notion
connected with hermeneutics. In this text, McDowell wishes to resolve
the question of how the mind, ultimately, in the
‘spontaneity’ or freedom of reason, relates to the world.
He argues that the question itself is a symptom of naturalism, the
idea typical of modern science that immutable laws govern everything
in nature. In this, the worry about the place of the spontaneity of
reason in nature arises precisely from our reductive conception of
nature in the first place. McDowell resolves the question of the
relation of reason and nature, then, through the proposal of an
alternative naturalism, one that treats reason as a ‘second
nature,’ or, a process of the realization of potentials.
McDowell draws on notions of tradition and formation
Bildung
) in order to clarify this second nature. He writes,
“human beings are intelligibly initiated into this stretch of
the space of reasons by ethical upbringing, which instills the
appropriate shape to their lives. The resulting habits of thought and
action are second nature” (McDowell 1994, 84).
It is an open question how consistent Rorty’s, McDowell’s
and Brandom’s reactions to hermeneutics are with views developed
within the historical movement of
hermeneutics.
12
Still, Rorty’s and McDowell’s respective critical stances
toward modern epistemology and science, their novel uses of the
concept of formation (
Bildung
), as well as Rorty’s
novel use of the concept of conversation, place them in a productive
exchange with continental philosophical scholars on themes more
customarily associated with nineteenth- and twentieth-century German
philosophy generally as well as with the historical movement of
hermeneutics. Moreover, Rorty’s turn to edification and the
discovery of novel possibilities it affords as an alternative to the
pursuit of truth places him in proximity to postmodern hermeneutics,
in
particular.
13
8.2 Hermeneutics in Ethical and Political Philosophy
Hermeneutics, since Heidegger at least, claims a special affinity with
practical philosophy. Both Heidegger and Gadamer, for example, uphold
Aristotle’s ethics as an important source for their respective
approaches to interpretive
experience.
14
Gadamer, in particular, develops the implications of his hermeneutics
for practical life. Although Gadamer provides no systematic ethical or
political theory, he maintains the significance of interpretive
experience as a counter to the alienation produced in modern,
bureaucratically managed society. He also develops a hermeneutical
approach to the ethical significance of friendship as well as a
related approach to political solidarity (see Gadamer,
“Friendship and Solidarity”; see Vessey 2005). Moreover,
Paul Ricoeur has argued that an important test of the universality of
hermeneutics is the extension of hermeneutical considerations to the
practical sphere. In this, he clarifies that and how interpretive
experience, especially the interpretive experience of narrative, plays
an important role no less in practical agency than political critique
(see Ricoeur,
From Text to Action
).
It is therefore perhaps no surprise that several philosophers have
developed approaches and positions in ethical, social, and political
philosophy in connection with hermeneutics. In ethical philosophy, for
example, Dennis Schmidt has recently argued that Gadamer’s
philosophical hermeneutics comprises an ‘original ethics,’
in that Gadamer clarifies normative implications of interpretive
experience that, however, are irreducible to any ethical system or
principles (see D. Schmidt 2008, 2012 and 2016). Gert-Jan van der
Heiden (2019) has examined ethical considerations of testimony based
on a range of resources in contemporary continental European
philosophy, but perhaps draws in particular on hermeneutical
approaches and themes.
In political philosophy (or, as she describes her own work, in
political theory), Hannah Arendt not only relies on hermeneutics in
her methodological considerations (1994, see also Tatjana Tömmel
and Maurizio Passerin d’Entreves 2024) but also suggests a
hermeneutically inflected conception of solidarity (Gaffney 2018).
Richard Bernstein’s considerations of human rationality
‘beyond objectivism and relativism,’ and the attention he
gives to hermeneutics in this context, has been an important impetus
(Bernstein 1983). Relatedly, Genevieve Lloyd has invoked hermeneutic
motifs to question norms of rationality from a feminist perspective
(Lloyd 1984). Fred Dallmayr’s use of Gadamer’s
hermeneutics in his considerations of political theory, comparative
political theory, and inter-cultural dialogue (see for example
Dallmayr 1987, 1996 and 2009) have been likewise influential.
Current research in political philosophy and political theory on
democracy, and perhaps in particular discussions about deliberative
approaches to democracy, include contributions influenced by
hermeneutics (Walhof 2022). Georgia Warnke, for example, has defended
Gadamer’s hermeneutics as a middle path between subjectivism and
conservatism, and, in turn, she has examined the significance of
hermeneutics for democratic theory, theories of deliberative
democracy, questions of race and identity, and solidarity (see for
example Warnke 1987, 1993, 2002, 2007 and 2012). Lauren Swayne
Barthold has drawn on hermeneutics to develop a feminist approach to
social identity and, more recently, to examine the significance of
civic dialogue to foster pluralistic, democratic communities (see
Barthold 2016 and 2020).
In feminist social epistemology, Miranda Fricker (2009) relies on a
range of feminist, structuralist and other theoretical approaches,
but, in this, argues that the pursuit of epistemic justice requires
the exercise and cultivation of the hermeneutic virtue of recognizing
that in consequence of dynamics within society our interlocutors may
be left without the interpretive resources they need to communicate
their experience. Linda Martίn Alcoff has also drawn
substantially on Gadamer’s hermeneutics in considerations of
race and gender identity (see Alcoff 2006).
8.3 The Return of Normativity to Hermeneutics
Recent research in hermeneutics has seen a rise of interest in the
role played in interpretive experience by a number of normative
matters. In this, some argue that the influence of Heidegger and
Gadamer over contemporary hermeneutics has led to a neglect of
normative considerations in current debate. The basic charge is that
with their stress on existential, traditionary, and linguistic
conditions of interpretive experience, Heidegger and Gadamer take
attention away from questions about what criteria should be used to
evaluate, say, what makes an interpretation good or valuable.
To be sure, it is possible to defend Heidegger and Gadamer against the
charge that their approaches leave too little room for normative
considerations. When it comes to Heidegger, Steven Crowell, for
example, argues that phenomenology as conceived by Husserl and
Heidegger can itself be grasped as inquiry into a “normatively
structured ‘space of meaning’” (Crowell 2016, 238).
Crowell, in his consideration of Heidegger, focuses on
Heidegger’s analysis of human existence, arguing that
Heidegger’s view of the role played by care in human existence
speaks to the possibility of being responsive to norms as such
(Crowell 2013). Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics may be said
to involve a range of normative considerations. Perhaps most
centrally, as we noted above in Section 4.3, Gadamer maintains that
interpretive experience involves the normative concern always to become
more educated, to expand our horizons. Moreover, Gadamer’s
attempts to defend his philosophical hermeneutics against critics has
also brought into focus a number of normative matters. For example, in
response to Habermas, Gadamer clarifies his position that
understanding resists ideology.
Recent interest in the role played in interpretive experience by
normative considerations, though, has also led to a revival of
interest in these matters in hermeneutics before Heidegger. Kristin
Gjesdal, in her
Gadamer and the Legacy of German Idealism
for example, recommends that we return to Schleiermacher in order to
focus attention on “critical-normative standards in
interpretation” (Gjesdal 2009, 7). Rudolf Makkreel, in his
Orientation and Judgment in Hermeneutics
, argues for the
priority of judgment, and with it, reflection and criticism, in
interpretive experience. Really, Makkreel’s project is to
develop an original position or approach within hermeneutics in its
own right, one that takes up hermeneutical considerations in our
contemporary, multi-cultural context, and that relies on a broad range
of philosophers associated with hermeneutics. But, he develops his
view of judgment, and the normative considerations involved in it, in
reference to Kant and Dilthey in particular.
8.4 Hermeneutics and New Realism
Recent developments in hermeneutics have arisen in response to
‘new realism.’ This school of thought is represented
especially by philosophers such as Markus Gabriel, and invites
comparisons with the ‘speculative realism’ of philosophers
such as Quentin Meillassoux and Graham Harman (see Gabriel 2015,
Gabriel 2020, Ferraris 2014, Meillassoux 2008, Harman 2018). While
research in new realism is expansive, one basic tenet is that our
descriptions of things are not distinct from reality but, on the
contrary, are no less real than what they describe (see Gabriel
2015).
The rise of new realism has proved to be an impetus for new
developments in hermeneutics. On the one hand, the interest in new and
speculative realism has led Vattimo not only to defend his postmodern
hermeneutics against all forms of realism, but, moreover to develop a
polemical critique of the motivations, philosophical and otherwise, to
pursue realism of any kind. In this, Vattimo maintains that recent
renewed interest in realism is motivated, in part, by a conservative
reactionism against the consequences of postmodernism. He writes, for
example, that among other roots of realism is “the fundamental
neurosis that follows the late-industrial society as the regressive
reaction of defense against the postmodern Babel of languages and
values” (Vattimo 2016, 77).
Other developments within hermeneutics have found affinities between
new realism (though not speculative realism) and hermeneutics (see
Figal, 2015; see Koch 2016 and 2019). Günter Figal, for example,
introduces a ‘realist’ hermeneutics that opposes the
postmodern view in which interpretations constitute the meaning of
reality, maintaining, by contrast, that interpretive experience
belongs to reality. In this, he focuses on what he calls hermeneutical
space, grasped as what first places us in referential relations to
objects, and, with this, makes available interpretive possibilities to
determine the sense of them (Figal, 2009, 2010 and 2015).
Finally, hermeneutical realism has also led to novel research on
classical figures in hermeneutics. Whereas Vattimo, for example, sees
in Gadamer the seeds of his postmodern hermeneutics (see Vattimo,
“Story of a Comma”), Figal, by contrast, brings into focus
the realism of Gadamer’s concern for the substantiveness
Sachlichkeit
) of interpretive experience (see Figal 2010,
2). Moreover, some philosophers have found that hermeneutical realism
sheds light on central motifs of the later Heidegger (Keiling
2018).
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Main: Vittrio Klostermann; translated as
Self-understanding and
Lifeworld: Basic Traits of a Phenomenological Hermeneutics
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
George, Theodore and Gert-Jan van der Heiden (eds.), 2022,
The
Gadamerian Mind
, London and New York: Routledge.
Gjesdal, Kristin, 2009,
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Idealism
, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Grondin, Jean, 1994,
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Hermeneutics
, New Haven: Yale University Press.
–––, 2016, “The Hermeneutical
Circle,” in Keane & Lawn 2016, pp. 299–305.
Habermas, Jürgen, 1977 [1996], “The
Universalitätsanspruch der Hermeneutik,” in Karl-Otto Apel
et al (eds.),
Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik
, Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, pp. 120–158; translated as “The
Hermeneutic Claim to Universality,” in Gayle Ormiston and Alan
Schrift, (eds.)
The Hermeneutic Tradition from Ast to
Ricoeur
, Albany: State University of New York Press, pp.
245–272.
Harman, Graham, 2018,
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Heidegger, Martin, 1923 [1999], Summer Semester Lecture Course,
Ontologie
(Hermeneutik der Faktizität)
Gesamtausgabe
, Volume 63, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann;
translated as
Ontology—The Hermeneutics of Facticity
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
–––, 1927 [2010],
Sein und Zeit
Tübingen: Max Niemeyer; translated as
Being and Time
Albany: State University of New York Press.
–––, 1946 [1998], “Brief über den
Humanismus,” Letter to Jean Beaufret; 1949, revised and expanded
version, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann; translated as “Letter
on Humanism,” in
Pathmarks
, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, pp. 239–276.
–––, 1959 [1971], “Der Weg zur
Sprache,” in
Unterwegs zur Sprache
, Pfullingen: Verlag
Günter Neske, pp. 239–268; translated as “The Way to
Language” in
On the Way to Language
, New York: Harper
& Row, pp. 111–138.
Hirsch, E. D., Jr., 1967,
Validity in Interpretation
, New
Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Husserl, Edmund, 1913 [1982],
Ideen zu einer reinen
Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, Erstes
Buch, Allgemeine Einführung in die reine
Phänomenologie
, Halle: Max Niemeyer; translated as
Ideas
Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological
Philosophy, First Book: General Introduction to a Pure
Phenomenology
(Collected Works: Volume 2), The Hague: M.
Nijhoff.
–––, 1931 [1993],
Méditations
Cartésiennes: Introduction à la
phénoménologie
, Paris: Armand Collin; translated as
Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology
ninth impression, Dordtrecht, NL: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Keane, Niall and Chris Lawn (eds.), 2016,
The Blackwell
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, Chichester, UK: Wiley Blackwell.
Kearney, Richard, “The Wager of Carnal Hermeneutics,”
in Richard Kearney and Brian Treanor (eds.),
Carnal
Hermeneutics
, New York: Fordham University Press, pp.
15–56.
Keiling, Tobias, 2018, “Phenomenology and Ontology in the
Later Heidegger,” in Dan Zahavi (ed.),
The Oxford Handbook
of the History of Phenomenology
, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
pp. 251–267.
Koch, Anton Friedrich, 2016,
Hermeneutischer
Realismus
, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
–––, 2019, “Wahrheit, Subjektivität
und die Lesbarkeit der Dinge,”
International Yearbook for
Hermeneutics
, 18: 34–45.
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LaFont, Cristina, 2008, “Meaning and Interpretation: Can
Brandomian Scorekeepers be Gadamerian Hermeneuts?”
Philosophy Compass
, (3)1: 17–29.
Liakos, David and Theodore George, 2019, “Hermeneutics in
Post-war Continental European Philosophy,” in Kelly Becker and
Iain D. Thompson (eds.),
The Cambridge History of Philosophy
1945–2015
, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
pp. 399–415.
Lloyd, Genevieve, 1984,
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, London: Methuen.
Lotz, Christian, 2011, Review of
Gadamer and the Legacy of
German Idealism
Journal of the History of Philosophy
49 (1), pp. 131–132.
Rudolf A. Makkreel, 2015,
Orientation and Judgment in
Hermeneutics
, Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Jeff Malpas and Hans-Helmut Gander (eds.), 2015,
Routledge
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, London: Routledge,
Marion, Jean-Luc, 2013,
Givenness & Hermeneutics
Marquette: Marquette University Press
Meillassoux, Quentin, 2006 [2008],
Après la finitude.
Essai sur la nécessité de la contingence
, Paris:
Éditions du Seuil; translated as
After Finitude: An Essay
on the Necessity of Contingency
, New York: Continuum.
Moules, Nancy, Graham McCaffrey, James C. Field and Catherine M.
Laing (eds)., 2015,
Conducting Hermeneutic Research: From Theory
to Practice
, New York: Peter Lang.
Moro, Simonette (ed.), 2024,
The Vattimo Dictionary
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Nelson, Eric S., 2017,
Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in
early Twentieth-Century Thought
, London: Bloomsbury
Academic.
Nielson, Cynthia R., 2023,
Gadamer’s Hermeneutical
Aesthetics: Art as a Performative, Dynamic, and Communal Event
London and New York: Routledge.
Nielson, Cynthia R. and Greg Lynch, 2022,
Gadamer’s
Truth and Method: A Polyphonic Commentary
, Lanham, Boulder, New
York, London: Rowman & Littlefield
Palmer, Richard E., 1969,
Hermeneutics
, Evanston:
Northwestern University Press.
Piercy, Robert, 2016, “Richard Rorty,” in Keane &
Lawn 2016, pp. 446–450.
Ramberg, Bjørn Torgrim, 2015, “Davidson and Rorty:
Triangulation and Anti-foundationalism,” in Jeff Malpas and
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Hermeneutics
, London: Routledge, pp. 216–235.
Ricoeur, Paul, 1965 [1970],
De l’interprétation.
Essai sur Freud
, Paris: Éditions du Seuil; translated as
Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation
, New Haven
and London: Yale University Press.
–––, 1969 [1974], “Existence et
Herméneutique,” in
Le conflit des interpretations:
essais d’herméneutique
, Paris: Éditions du
Seuil, 23–50; translated as “Existence and
Hermeneutics,” in Don Ihde (ed.),
The Conflict of
Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics
, Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, pp. 3–24.
–––, 1973 [1990], “Herméneutique et
critique des ideologies,” Paris: Aubier, Editions Montaigne, pp.
25–64; translated as “Hermeneutics and the Critique of
Ideology,” in Gayle Ormiston and Alan Schrift, (eds.),
The
Hermeneutic Tradition from Ast to Ricoeur
, Albany: State
University of New York Press, pp. 298–334.
–––, 1983–85 [1985–88],
Temps et
Récit
, Paris: Éditions du Seuil; translated as
Time and Narrative
, Volumes 1–3, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
–––, 1986 [1991], “De
l’interprétation,” in
De Texte à
l’action: Essais d’hermeneutique II
, Paris:
Éditions du Seuil, 13–40; translated as “On
Interpretation,” in
From Text to Action: Essays in
Hermeneutics II
, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, pp.
1–20.
Risser, James, 1997,
Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other:
Re-reading Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics
, Albany:
State University of New York Press.
Romano, Claude, 2010 [2015],
Au coeur de la raison, La
Phénoménologie
, Paris: Gallimard; translated as
At The Heart of Reason
. Evanston: Northwestern University
Press.
Rorty, Richard, 1979,
Philosophy and the Mirror of
Nature
, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Rush, Fred, 2019, “Hermeneutics and Romanticism,” in
The Cambridge Companion to Hermeneutics
, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, pp. 65–86.
Scholtz, Gunter, “Ast and Schleiermacher: Hermeneutics and
Critical Philosophy,” in J. Malpas and H. Gander (eds.),
The
Routledge Companion to Hermeneutics
, London: Routledge, pp.
62–73.
Schmidt, Dennis J., 2008, “Hermeneutics as Original
Ethics,” in Shannon Sullivan and Dennis J. Schmidt (eds.),
Difficulties of Ethical Life
, New York: Fordham
University Press, pp. 35–47.
–––, 2012, “On the Sources of Ethical
Life,”
Research in Phenomenology
, 41(1):
35–48.
–––, 2016, “Hermeneutics and Ethical Life:
On the Return of Factical Life,” in Keane & Lawn 2016, pp.
65–71.
Schmidt, Lawrence K., 2006,
Understanding Hermeneutics
Slough, UK: Acumen Press.
Schleiermacher, Friedrich 1819 [1990], “III: Die
Kompendienartige Darstellung von 1819,” in 1974,
Hermeneutik
, Heidelberg: C. Winter; translated as
The Hermeneutics
: Outline of the 1819 Lectures,”
in Ormiston, Gayle L. and Alan Schrift (eds.),
The Hermeneutical
Tradition from Ast to Ricoeur
, Albany: State University of New
York Press, pp. 85–100.
Steup, Matthias and Neta, Ram, “Epistemology,”
The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Fall 2020 Edition), Edward
N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL =
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Sypnowich, Christine, “Law and Ideology,”
The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Summer 2019 Edition), Edward
N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
.
Taylor, Charles, 1980, “Understanding in Human
Science,”
The Review of Metaphysics
, 34(1):
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Thucydides,
History of the Peloponnesian War
, cited in
Thucydides, 1972,
History of the Peloponnesian War
, London:
Penguin Classics.
“tradition, n,” 2020,
OED Online
, Oxford
University Press,
(accessed August 02, 2020).
Tatjana Tömmel and Maurizio Passerin d’Entreves,
2024, “Hannah Arent,” in
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Philosophy
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van der Heiden, Gert-Jan, 2019,
The Voice of Misery: A
Continental Philosophy of Testimony
, Albany: State University of
New York Press.
Vessey, David, 2005, “Gadamer’s Account of Friendship
as an Alternative to an Account of Intersubjectivity,”
Philosophy Today
, 49(5): 61–67.
Vattimo, Gianni, 1994 [1997],
Oltre
l’interpretazione: Il significato dell’ermeneutica per
la filosofia
, Rome: Editori Laterza; translated as
Beyond
Interpretation: The Meaning of Hermeneutics for Philosophy
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.
–––, 1985 [1988],
La fine della
modernità
, Milan: Garzanti; translated as
The End of
Modernity: Nihilism and Hermeneutics in Postmodern Culture
Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
–––, 2012 [2017],
Della realtà
Milan: Garzanti; translated as
Of Reality: The Purposes of
Philosophy
, New York: Columbia University Press.
–––, 2000 [2010],
Storia di una virgola:
Gadamer e il senso dell’essere
Iride: Filosofia e
Discussione Pubblica
, 13 (2): 323–336; translated as
“The Story of a Comma,” in
The Responsibility of the
Philosopher
, New York: Columbia University Press, pp.
56–59.
Vattimo, Gianna and Pier Aldo Rovatti (eds.), 1983 [2012],
Il
pensio debole
, Milan: Feltrinelli.
Weak Thought
, Albany:
State University of New York Press.
Walhof, Darren, 2022, “Gadamer’s Contribution to
Political Theory,” in Theodore George and Gert-Jan van der
Heiden (eds.),
The Gadamerian Mind
, London and New York:
Routledge, pp. 418–431.
Warnke, Georgia, 1987,
Gadamer: Hermeneutics, Tradition, and
Reason
, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
–––, 1993,
Justice and
Interpretation
, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
–––, 1999,
Legitimate Differences:
Interpretation in the Abortion Controversy and Other Public
Debates
, Berkley, CA: University of California Press.
–––, 2002, “Hermeneutics, Ethics, and
Politics,” in Robert J. Dostal (ed.),
Cambridge Companion to
Gadamer
, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.
79–101.
–––, 2012, “Solidarity and Tradition in
Gadamer’s Hermeneutics,” in
History and Theory:
Studies in the Philosophy of History
, 51(4):
6–22.
–––, 2015, “Hermeneutics and
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The
Routledge Companion to Hermeneutics
, New York and London:
Routledge.
Whitman, Walt, 1855,
Song of Myself
, cited in Gottesman,
Ronald, Laurence B. Holland, David Kalstone, Francis Murphy, Hershel
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The Norton Anthology
of American Literature
, Volume 1, New York: W. W. Norton &
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Vallega, Alejandro A., 2019, “Exordio: Towards a
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the Movement of Effected Historical Consciousness in Hans-Georg
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, 49(2):
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Zimmerman, J., 2015,
Hermeneutics: A Very Short
Introduction
, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank David Liakos, co-author of Liakos and
George 2019, for consultation on this entry, as well as Tobias Keiling
for consultation, in particular, about hermeneutics and new realism.
The author is also grateful for very helpful comments made by a referee
in the peer-review process.
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