toward others are driven by the fear of relativism. In contrast, by insisting on the interpretive nature of all human knowledge without falling into relativism, hermeneutics encourages the interpretive humility essential to any dialogue. Acknowledging the profound mediation of even our deepest beliefs through history, tradition, and language should induce us to admit that we could be wrong and are thus open to correction. The awareness that our own interpretive framework can benefit from another's encourages conversation in order to learn. By contrast, the belief that truth is something self-evident only an obstinate fool would reject fosters a basic stance of confrontation. Insofar as henneneutic philosophy encourages conversation among those of different faiths and cultures, hermeneutics will remain an essential part of our future.
Appendix
This Very Short Introduction was written to demonstrate the essentially interpretive nature of human knowledge. To achieve this end, the volume focuses on showing the practical workings of hermeneutics in the main disciplines of knowledge. This focus on the practical did not allow us to deal with philosophical criticisms of hermeneutics, or to mention important henneneutic developments. For the reader interested in these more abstract aspects of hermeneutics, this appendix sketches some of the most important debates concerning henneneutic philosophy.
Safeguarding objectivity (Emilio Betti versus Gadamer)
The eminent Italian legal theorist Emilio Betti (1890-1968) was one of the first major critics of philosophical hermeneutics. Betti feared that Heidegger's elimination of the traditional subject-object division for interpretation opened the door to subjectivism. For Betti, texts are accurate representations of the author's mind (mens auctaris), whose originally intended meaning the reader should reconstruct through the use of reliable interpretive methods. Betti warned that Heidegger and Gadamer undermined such objective communication with their existential definition of the henneneutic circle. For traditional philology, the henneneutic circle pertained only to the inner workings of the text as an object to be analysed by a dispassionate, analytical reader. Chapters 2 and 3 of this volume describe how Heidegger and Gadamer extended this traditional henneneutic circle of part and whole to include the reader's own subjectivity and cultural beliefs.
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Betti argued that making the reader's own historical situation essential to interpretation would open the door to interpretive relativism, threatening especially the normative authority of legal and theological texts.
Betti saw this loss of objective meaning most clearly in Gadamer's claim that interpretation and personal application are inseparable. Betti insisted on a two-step approach to interpretation. First, the interpreter had to do the objective historical work of determining precisely what an author had intended to say and to judge how successfully the author had expressed his intention in a text. In a second step, the interpreter then applied the recovered meaning to her own context. Betti charged Gadamer with collapsing this distinction between the original meaning of an author's text and the significance of this meaning for the interpreter's present context. Gadamer replied that human consciousness does not divide interpretive activity into two steps of reconstruction and interpretation. Rather, application is always intrinsic to the interpretive process because even the historian must read a text from within his own cultural horizon and interests.""~ Betti's criticism provided the basic platform for E. D. Hirsch's similar objections to Gadamer, which is described in Chapter 4.
Ideology criticism (Jürgen Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel versus Gadamer)
If we derive knowledge about ourselves and the world from our participation in our respective cultural traditions, what keeps us from merely repeating tradition uncritically? What mechanism allows us to achieve critical distance from these traditions and to detect ideological distortions of language and meaning? This was the question put to hermeneutics by the philosophers Jürgen Habermas (1929- ) and Karl-Otto Apel (1922- ). They agreed with Gadamer's critique of scientific objectivism, but they worried that he was too optimistic about tradition and the power of language to convey truthful insights about our human condition. After all, language and tradition can equally serve as instruments of manipulation and oppression. Thus Habermas and Apel contested the universal claim of hermeneutics that every aspect of knowledge is dependent on tradition. They argued that Gadamer emphasized too much the historical nature of human
consciousness and paid insufficient attention to the need for critical reflection whereby we evaluate tradition in order to emancipate ourselves from dehumanizing social practices. They suggested that hermeneutics, as a description of how understanding comes about through our being in the world (i.e. an antological description of understanding), requires a complementary critical evaluative dimension. Habermas and Apel thought that the social sciences could offer such a critical dimension. They modelled this critical function on psychoanalysis. A psychoanalyst takes an observing stance during communication with her patient in order to detect destructive beliefs stemming from deeply repressed traumatic experiences in the patient's past. In the same way, the social sciences provide a 'depth hermeneutic* for filtering out ideologically distorted communications (snch as propaganda) and destructive cultural attitudes contained in traditions.
Gadamer replied that his hermeneutic philosophy was concerned solely with describing what happens when we understand. He dealt with the conditions for understanding and not with their moral evaluation. He merely wanted to show that all understanding depends on tradition and acknowledged authorities. If his description is correct, then Apel and Habermas were wrong to suggest psychoanalysis as a guardian of truth that is exempt from interpretation. For according to Gadamer, every evaluating judgement depends itself on some tradition and authority. Even in the suggested psychoanalytic scenario, the patient submits to the expertise of his doctor. Yet Apel's and Habermas s concern is certainly legitimate. How can we prevent blindness and even enslavement to bad traditions? Gadamer responded that the hermeneutic process itself contains a critical element. In his description of the hermeneutic circle, he insisted on the reader's task of shaping understanding according to the subject-matter presented by the text and thus of abandoning incorrect {unsachgemajie) pre-judgments in the course of interpretation. Interpretation thus becomes a constant process of revision and replacement in the quest for an ever more adequate understanding of a text. Moreover, tradition constantly changes because the reader always has to appropriate the past creatively. For Gadamer, critical reflection was thus an intrinsic part of the mediation between past and present that characterizes our historical existence.
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Critical hermeneutics (Paul Ricoeur)
Along with Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) was the most important hermeneutic philosopher of the 20th century, Ricoeur was already developing a hermeneutic view of knowledge in the contexts of Husserl's phenomenology, Heidegger's existential philosophy, Freudian psychology, and French language philosophy (called Structuralism) before he encountered Gadamer's book Truth and Method. Ricoeur's basic goal was to work out the proper relationship between the self and the objective semiotic structures (signs, symbols, texts) by which we communicate meaning and gain self-understanding. With Gadamer, Ricoeur upheld that all thought occurs in language, so that even our innermost reflections take place within linguistic structures we can analyse and interpret Ricoeur thus mediated between Romantic and Structuralist views of interpretation. Against Romantic hermeneutics that advocated the reader's empathic identification with authorial consciousness, Ricoeur contended that the object of interpretation is not experience asfeltby the author, but the meaning of such experiences as inscribed and traceable in       —— linguistic and symbolic expressions. At the same time, he also rejected Structuralist theories that reduced the self to a passive channel of pre-existing language systems. For him, language does not speak—rather, people do. Similarly, Ricoeur wanted to combine critical views of language and the self as inherently unstable (advocated by the 'hermeneutics of suspicion' represented by Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud), with a basic trust in the reliability of meaning and its communication as found in ancient interpretation, but also in Husserl and Gadamer. Ricoeur argued that the masters of suspicion help us destroy naive conceptions of unmediated contact with reality, thus asserting the need for interpretation. Yet this necessary critical detour is not the final state of affairs—lest one remain mired in scepticism—but forms merely part of the greater effort to grasp meaning more profoundly within a 'second naivete'.
Ricoeur's criticism of hermeneutic philosophy was that Heidegger and Gadamer circumvent the necessary explanatory moment demanded by the linguistic structures we inhabit They stressed intuitive understanding of a text at the cost of a verifying explanation of how we obtained our reading. Ricoeur agreed with Habermas and Apel that in their eagerness to criticize scientific objectivism, Gadamer focused too much on a pre-scientific, intuitive understanding conveyed through
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our immersion in tradition. This focus downplayed the important explanatory moment that allows us to validate our interpretations. Contrary to Apel and Habermas, however, Ricoeur did not advocate a regulatory science external to the hermeneutic process. Instead, he sought to combine understanding and explanation into one dialectical interpretive movement of distanciation and engagement. pistanciation requires linguistic analysis and a moment of critical reflection concerning the content of a text. In contrast to personal dialogue, the reader has to reconstruct an author's intended meaning using the linguistic-grammatical structures through which the author inscribed her views in a text that is no longer under authorial control. (Ricoeur calls this the text's 'semantic autonomy'.) This demonstrable process of explanation, however, is also one in which the reader engages the text's meaning based on his personal interest. What he engages, however, is not the consciousness of the author but the semantic world opened up by the text (see Chapter <&). In this way, argued Ricoeur, the appropriation of the text (what it means to me), occurs via analytical procedures that are neither mathematically certain nor relegate understanding to a merely arbitrary, subjective insight
Hermeneutics, ethics, and deconstruction (Jacques Derrida)
Another major hermeneutic debate concerns the ethical dimension of interpretation. Most famously, the French philosopher, Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), described the hermeneutic impulse to understand another as a form of violence that seeks to overcome the other's particularity and unique difference. During a famous meeting with Gadamer in Paris (1981), Derrida suggested that behind the hermeneutic will to understand another lies an old metaphysical will to power, the desire to master and control difference. Hermeneutics' quest for meaning is thus really a quest for domination. While both Gadamer and Derrida derived their philosophies from Heidegger, Derrida claimed to have overcome the latter's residual 'logocentric' (i.e. reason or meaning-centred) thought patterns. Derrida's deconstructiomst philosophy fallowed Heidegger in carefully tracing the history of philosophical concepts to question settled meanings. Derrida claimed, however, that Heidegger was still seduced by the desire for meaning when he searched for the significance of the question of Being. Derrida renounced such desire. Instead, he
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proclaimed himself a follower ofthe more radical hermeneutics of Friedrich Nietzsche (184-4-1900), revelling in the play of endlessly deferred meaning. In ethical terms, borrowed from the French ethjcist Emmanuel Levinas (1906-95), deconstruction is oriented toward radical hospitality that allows another to disrupt one's expectations ind does not seek to interpret another's communication in order to issimilate his views to the framework of my own interpretive horizon.
GJadamer responded that his hermeneutic philosophy resisted the foreclosure of meaning just as much as Derrida's deconstruction, ivithout, however, giving up the willingness to dialogue in an effort to inderstand one another. And, indeed, Gadamer's concept of nterpretive horizon entails that one's own standpoint changes even as me understands another person or text more deeply. Certainly, the iision of horizons that happens in understanding does integrate mothers perspective into one's own, but not as a one-sided sssimilatiort. When we understand another's viewpoint, even if we do lot agree with it, our outlook has changed already. This essentially lonstantly progressing, open-ended hermeneutic process, however,—— equires ears open to another's voice. This willingness to listen, Sadamer countered, is necessary even for Derrida in everyday life, inless he wanted to live somewhere on an island in total isolation. But Jadamer did not just defend his hermeneutic, he also issued a hallenge to Derrida. Gadamer turned the deconstruct!ve tables by barging Derrida himself with crypto-PIatonism: does not Derrida's iwn radical distrust of language and meaning evidence a hidden desire □r an ethically pure state in which communication poses no risk? Is lot his idea of irreducible otherness and difference beyond language nd interpretation itself a Platonic desire for purity? In an interview awards the end of his life, Gadamer believed to have convinced )erridathat hermeneutic understanding is a transformative experience hat does not assimilate another's meaning but allows for the constant svision of meaning. In 2003, Derrida himself, in a moving speech in leidelberg, commemorating Gadamer's death, conceded that econstruction as the disruption of sense and hermeneutics as the *ekmg of meaning are two equally needed sides in our human quest 5r truth. The Derrida-Gadamer debate has been continued into the 1st century by the Derrida acolyte John Caputo and the Ricoeur -.udent Richard Kearney. While Caputo in his advocacy of'radical ermeneutics* continued to defend unconditional hospitality and gnosticism about meaning, Kearney stood for 'critical hermeneutics'.
Kearney defended the need for hermeneutic discernment lest either guest or meaning to whom we open our door turn out to be monstrous and destructive.
Hermeneutics and pragmatism (Richard Rorty)
The American philosopher Richard Rorty (1S31-20O7) has been instrumental in making known Gadamer's philosophy in the English-speaking world. Gadamer's work helped Rorty sort out the problems he faced within his own tradition of analytic philosophy. Gadamer's emphasis on a historically shaped consciousness allowed Rorty to criticize the foundational belief in analytic philosophy that the human mind mirrors reality so that truth can be determined by rigorous linguistic analysis. In his seminal book, Philosophy and the Mirror ofNature (1979), Rorty thus interpreted Gadamer's axiom that 'being which can be understood is language', to mean that being is nothing but language. In the absence of any actual correspondence between thought and reality, truth for Rorty becomes simply what we interpret it to be. Formerly, philosophers thought of themselves as some kind of scientist whose concepts mirrored reality more or less adequately. Once we grasp, however, that our descriptions construct the meaning we give things, we realize that philosophers are not scientists but rhetoricians and poets who shape how we imagine life. Now, the tasks of philosophy and education are therefore no longer to come up with better descriptions of reality but rather to foster those interpretations of reality we deem the most edifying or useful for our society. As the Canadian hermeneutics scholar Jean Grondin pointed out, Rorty misappropriated hermeneutic philosophy for his own purposes. While it is true that Gadamer, following Heidegger, had opposed idealist notions of timeless innate ideas, Rorty's nihilistic inversion of this idealism is foreign to Gadamer's hermeneutics. For Gadamer, neither our language nor practice determines being. The whole point of his thinking is that being, an objective reality, discloses itself through language. Hermeneutics is thus closer to a critical realism than the kind of nominalist relativism Rorty advocated.
Hermeneutics and weak thought (Gianni Vattimo)
Another important hermeneutic development is the concept of'weak thought' (pcnsiero debole) advanced by the Italian philosopher Gianni
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Vattimo (1935- ) in the early ig80s. Vattimo's
view of hermeneutics is quite similar to that of Rarty, who, in fact, endorsed the term 'weak
thought' in his own writings. "Weak thought' denotes the claim that there are no 'strong' objective essential, timeless meanings. Hence interpretation does not represent pre-existent meaning but generates meaning. We don't discover the world through interpretation, but we create our world by describing and thus by interpreting it. For Vattimo, this interpretive quality of being is not relativism but our very chance at remaking our world in better ways. Weak thought thus becomes the very basis for human emancipation. For this reason, | Vattimo also called weak thought 'good nihilism', because it breaks down or deconstructs the status quo. In his baok,Aficr Christianity, Vattimo linked his nihilistic hermeneutics to religion by explaining 'weak thought' in terms of God's self-emptying (kenosis) into history 1 in the incarnation. On this view, secularization and the continual ! breaking down and weakening of supposedly timeless institutions | such as religious or social hierarchies are all part of the incarnation's 1 ongoing effect in history. I
_____....... I
The influence of philosophical hermeneutics on theological ! interpretation j
Theological debates about philosophical hermeneutics are essentially ,! concerned with the mediation of divine revelation through human j language and reason. Can human reason by itself obtain true i knowledge of God and the most authentic life this God ordained for humanity? Judaism, Islam, and Christianity insist that finite human reason does indeed require divine revelation for understanding the purpose of life. Yet is revelation opposed to or compatible with reason? To what extent can reason, and that means philosophy help interpret the divine message? In the 18th and 19th centuries, increasing confidence in reason apart from faith led to the gradual separation of theology and biblical exegesis. On the one hand, theology had become an intellectual exercise or the endless analysis of dogma, and theologians preached morality. Professional exegetes, on the other hand, were not guided by faith commitments but by a supposedly neutral, scientific method. They were essentially philologists and historicists, occupied with the historical and grammatical analysis of biblical texts in order to obtain the objective meaning of each textual unit. After two world wars, however, neither moral theology nor
mere objective historical analysis—which advanced its own ideologically motivated interpretations under the cloak of neutral objectivity—satisfied peoples' need for religious and moral guidance. The Theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968) first gave voice to the need for God's revelation to speak once again in fresh ways on its own terms. Barth showed that the supposedly neutral historical-grammatical exegesis operated on an implicit rationalism that had created God in accordance with its own tame bourgeoisie vision of the Christian life. Earth's break with the theological moralism of cultural Protestantism required a renewed emphasis on revelation: God speaks to us through the Bible and the sermon in a way that shatters our comfortable cultural prejudices. Indeed, we need philosophy and critical tools for interpretation, but we cannot ever rely on them or allow them to limit how God may speak to us,
Barth thus emphasized that God speaks to the church but did not concern himself overmuch with haw he does so. By contrast, the Protestant exegete, Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976), who shared Earth's concern for divine revelation, focused on just this issue, and turned to philosophy for help. Bultmann drew heavily on Heidegger's work to analyse the existential conditions under which modern people could interpret and listen to God's revelation. Bultmann did not follow Heidegger's thinking uncritically, but he recognized in Heidegger's philosophy a call to authentic freedom that could connect modern readers with the gospel's invitation to authentic selfhood. Bultmann's whole programme of'demythologization' was essentially an attempt to detect this biblical call to freedom in the mythical language of the New Testament.
Earth's and Bultmann's desire for a hermeneutics that allowed a modern person to listen anew to God's revelation in the Bible was continued in the next generation by the so-called 'New Hermeneutic* of Ernst Fuchs (1903-83) and Gerhard Ebeling (1912-2001). Bultmann had drawn on Heidegger's existential analysis of human life to depict theological hermeneutics as a quest for authentic existence in a modern world. Fuchs and Ebeling, by contrast, turned to the later Heidegger's focus on language as the most important medium for self-understanding. Heidegger had rejected analytic instrumental views of language for the view that language was the medium that disclosed our all important relation to Being and its call to us. This
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reference to Being in Heidegger is quite enigmatic, but his basic point is simple enough: what gives objects and human relations meaning is something that is greater than their sum total. Authentic existence requires that we do not make up reality but that we participate in something greater. This something greater shines through in our use ind analysis of language.
Fuchs transferred this view to theology: Jesus's language of love in the !tfew Testament is the true language of authentic existence under Gad. Thus interpreting the Bible is learning the authentic language of faith jy trying to speak this language in life itself* Gerhard Ebeling differed Tom Fuchs in combining Heidegger's foundational view of language nore strongly with Reformation theology. He focused on God's :reative word of revelation as a 'word event' that speaks throughout listory by constantly renewing itself. Theology, for Ebeling, is undamentally hermeneutical because the very purpose of theology is iritically to engage the text and our own presuppositions in order to dlow God to speak. Thus, the New Hermeneutic combines ihibsaphical and theological hermeneutics but also remains quite irmly subservient to the traditional Reformation doctrine of the vord: hermeneutics remains essentially a function of theology. Today, he importance of philosophical hermeneutics for theology and liblical studies is increasingly recognized among theologians of all onfessions. In recent years, a number of biblical scholars have drawn m philosophical hermeneutics to advocate the renewal of explicitly heological interpretation.
References
Chapter 1: What is hermeneutics?
M. Heidegger, On the Way to Language (Harper & Row, 19S2), p. 29. Quotation from Hie Apology of Socrates 3Ba is from the Loeb Classic Library edition.
C. Taylor, Sources of the Se£f (Harvard University Press, 19S9), p. 21. J. Macmurray, Interpreting the Universe (Humanities Press, 199 S), p. 7
Chapter 2: Hermeneutics: a brief history
M. Aurelius, Meditations, from the Everyman's Library (Knopf, 1992), p. 45.
R, Descartes, 'Preface to the Reader', in A Discourse on Method from the Everyman's Library, trans. John Veitch (Hackett, 1986), p. 6.
W. J. Goethe, Faust, trans. Albert Latham, vol. 1 (X M. Dent & Sons, 1908), p. 31.
F. Schleiermacher, 'Monologen', in Philasophische Schriften (Union Verlag, 1984), p. 72.
W. Dilthey, The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences (Princeton University Press, 2002), pp. 229 and 163.
M. Heidegger, Ontology—The Hermeneutics ofFacticity (Indiana University Press, 1999), PP- 4 and 14. This translation by John van Buren does not capture the sense of Augen eingesetzt1, the literal putting in of eyes rather than merely opening them.
M. Heidegger, 'Poetically Man Dwells', in Poetry, Language, Thought (Perennial Classics, 2001), pp. 211-27-
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Chapter 3: Philosophical hermeneutics
H. Gadamer, Truth and Method (Rloomsbuvy Academic, 2013), p. 312 I have cited this edition as the only English version currently in print The phrase 'the conversation that we are' is from this same edition, p. 386.
Plato, Apology, from the Loeb Classic Library (Harvard University
press, 19 62), pp. 68-145. EL Pullins, 'Deathless Soul', in Plato's Phaeda (Focus Publishing, lggg)
p. 97-
W. Shakespeare, Othello (Oxford University Press, 2006).
Zhapter 4: Hermeneutics and the humanities
W. Shakespeare, Hamlet (Oxford University Press, 2008).
i. D. Hirsch, Jr, Aims of Interpretation (University of Chicago Press, lS76),p.21.
I. D. Hirsch, Jr, Validity in Interpretation (Yale University Press, 1967), pp. a, 47, and 106.
Ihapter 5: Hermeneutics and theology
A. Ruthven, Islam: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University
Press, 2012), p. 21. . L. Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path (Oxford University Press,
2010), p. IS.
A. Ayoub, Islam: Faith and History (One World, 2004), p. 41. !"he quotation 'an interpretation of its meaning1 can be found
in S. Murata and W. Chittick, The Vision of Islam (Paragon, 2006),
p.xvi.
Ramadan, Islam, the West and the Challenges of Modernity (The
Islamic Foundation, 2001), pp. 16-17. Lverroes, The Book of the Decisive Treatise (Brigham Young University
Press, 2001), p. lfl (27-9-13). '. M. Dormer, 'The Historical Context', in The Cambridge Companion
to Islam (Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 23. JI scriptural references are from the New Revised Standard Version
(Oxford University Press, 1998).
Nemvirth, 'Structural, Linguistic, and Literary Features', in The Cambridge Companion to Islam (Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 97.
M. Ruthven, Islam: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University
Press, 2012), p. 40. J. Brown, Hadith (One World, 2009), p. 3.
This 2007 reformist translation of the Quran is available from <http://
\v\vw.studyquran.org/resources/Q.uran_Reformist_Translation.
pdf>. The quote is from p. 11 of the pdf document. T. Aquinas, Commentary on Epistle to Galatians, chapter 4, lecture 7,
from the Aquinas Scripture Series (Magi Books, 1966), p. 138. M. Luther, Assertio Omnium Articulorum Martini Lutheri Per Bullam
Leonis X: Novissiman Damnatorum (1520)', in Lateinisch-Deutsche
Studienausgabe: DerMcnsch vor Gott, vol. 1 (Evangelische
Verlagsanstalt, 2006), p. 81. M. Luther, 'Prefaces to the Old Testament', in Luther's Works, vol. 35
Word and Sacrament (Fortress Press, I960), p. 236. R. Bultmann, 'New Testament and Mythology', in Kerygma and Myth:
A Theological Debate. (Harper & Row, 1961), pp. 3 and 32. J. Green, Practicing Theological Inierpretation (Baker Academic,
2011), p. 4.
Chapter 6: Hermeneutics and law
S. Pufendorf, Preface to On the Duty of Man and Citizen (Cambridge
University Press, 1991), pp. 6-13. R. Dworkin, Law's Empire (Belknap Press, 1986), p. 7. J. Austin, Lecture on Jurisprudence, in The Philosophy of Positive Law
(John Murray, 1885), p. 214. J. Austin, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (John Murray,
1832), p. 209-
H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law (Oxford University Press, 2012),
pp. 107,98, and 139-D. Patterson, Law and Truth (Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 68. H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law (Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 109. A. Scalia, 'Common-Law Courts in a Civil-Law System: The Role of
United States Federal Courts in Interpreting the Constitution and
Laws', in A Matter of Interpretation (Princeton University Press,
1998), p. 13.
Chapter 7: Hermeneutics and science
F. Bacon, *Novum Organum', in The Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon (Routledge, 2011), p. 261.
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'. Laplace,   Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (Wiley & Sons '      r-      .» a j-
^•p-4- y   s*       :  Further reading
f. R- Hansen, Patterns of Discovery (Cambridge University Press
S^Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago Press, 2012), pp. 52-110. '. Danielson, The Book of the Cosmos: Imagining the Universe from Merachtus to Hawlcing (Perseus, 2002), p. 150.
Chapter 1: What is hermeneutics?
W. Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, 3 volumes (Oxford
University Press, 1943-5). B. A. Kimball, The Liberal Arts Tradition (University Press of
America, 2010).
J. Macmurray, Interpreting the Universe (Humanities Press, 1996). Written completely jargon free, this set of philosophy lectures explains the interpretive nature of human lmovvledge.
Chapter 2: Hermeneutics: a brief history
L. K. Dupre, The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundations
of Modern Culture (Yale University Press, 2004). K. E. Palmer, Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleicrmachcr,
Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer (Northwestern University Press,
19 69).
Chapter 3: Philosophical hermeneutics
H. G. Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics (University of California Press, 2008). While not a substitute for reading Truth and Method, this brief essay collection provides essential elements of Gadamer's hermeneutic philosophy.
J. Grondin, Introduction ta Philosophical Hermeneutics (Yale University Press, 1994-). The best scholarly introduction to this topic.
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147
!
R_ Palmer, Gadamer in Conversation (Yale University Press, 2O01),
Contains an interview of Gadamer by Carsten Dutt, which provides
easy access to Gadamer's hermeneutic philosophy. L. K. Schmidt, Understanding Hermeneutics (Acumen, 2006). A
reader-friendly, jargon-free introduction to the basic figures and
ideas of philosophical herraeneutics.
Chapter 4: Hermeneutics and the humanities
N. Frye, The Educated Imagination (Indiana University Press, 1967).
These radio lectures are still among the best defences of literary
studies and their essential role for society. J. P. Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on
Language, Action, and Interpretation (Cambridge University
Press, 1981).
M. Terras, J. Nyhan, and E. Vanhoutte (eds.), Defining Digital
Humanities: A Reader (Ashgate Publishing, 2013). A great essay
collection on trends in the digital humanities. J. Weinsheimer, Philosophical Hermeneutics andLiterary Theory '■
(Yale University Press, 1991). An essential text for understanding
the relation of hermeneutics to literary studies.
ChapterS: Hermeneutics and theology
J. A. C. Brown, Hadith: Muhammad's Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World (Oneworid Publications, 2009).
I. L. Esposito, Islam: Tlie Straight Path, 4th edition (Oxford University Press, 2011).
^ngelika Neuwirth. Scripture, Poetry, and tkeMalcing of a Community. Reading the Quran as a Literary Text. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2014. For the last decades, Neuwirth has spearheaded an international effort by Islam scholars to read the Quran historically and thus contrary to the established tradition.
A. J. Gorman, Scripture: An Ecumenical Introduction to the Bible and its Interpretation (Hendrickson Publishers, 2005).
. B. Green, Practicing Theological Interpretation (Baker Academic, 2011). For those interested in the nuts and bolts of theological interpretation and its critique of historical criticism, this is the clearest explanation on the market
V. Jeanrond, Theological Hermeneutics: Development and Significance (SCM Press, 2002). At roughly 200 pages, the best
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introduction to the history and main issues in theological hermeneutics.
J. L. Kugel and R. A Greer, Early Biblical Interpretation (The Westminster Press, 19S6).
A. C. Tliiselton, Hermeneutics: An Introduction (Eerdmans, 2009). The foremost theological voice on hermeneutics and theology offers a detailed survey of past and current views on this topic.
M. Westphal, Wliose Community? Wfiich Interpretation? (Baker
Academic, 2009). Written for the non-specialist, this book outlines the importance of philosophical hermeneutics for theology.
Chapter 6: Hermeneutics and law
J. Arthur and W. H. Sbaw, Reading in the Philosophy of Law (Pearson, 2009). Provides current essays on all aspects of and different positions on legal theories and problems.
G. Leyh, Legal Hermeneutics: History, Tlieory, and Practice
(University of California Press, 1992). An older collection of essays, but still a great introduction to the interpretive nature of legal practice.
D. Lloyd, The Idea of Lain (Penguin, 1991). This work provides historical and comparative overview of all major concepts and issues relating to the meaning of law.
Chapter 7: Hermeneutics and science
M. Polanyi and H. Prosch, Meaning (University of Chicago Press, 1996). Building on Polanyi's Giftbrd Lectures, Personal Knowledge, this book extends the hermeneutic nature of science to the humanities.
E. G. Slingerland, What Science Offers the Humanities: Integrating Body and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2008). Not an easy read, but a rare attempt to show how body and mind interact to interpret reality.
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Index
A
Abraham (biblical) 84 Abrahamic religions 72-3 Adam (biblical) 84 allegorical interpretation 77, 84-6 analytical interpretation 2,36, 120-1,130,133,137,139,141
see also objectivism; positivism analytic philosophy 120,130,139 ancient thought-world 5-6,19-21,
22, 23, 84-5, 95, S3-101 Apel, Karl-Otto 134-5,136,137 application
of the Christian Bible 96-7
as intrinsic to interpretation 51-3, 96,134
of the law/legal texts 72,98-101, 105-6,109-10,114-15
of the Quran 75
of sacred texts 72
oftheTorah 82 Aquinas, Thomas 86 Aristotle 3,5,21,51-2,128 art 5-6
experience of 40
power of 8, 54-6 Augustine, St (church father) 84 Aurelius, Marcus 20 Austin, John 102-3
authority 43-5,125 in Islamic tradition 74-7, 88-90
in Judeo-Christian tradition
20-1, 77,90-1, 94-5 and legal tradition 103,
107, HO of sacred texts 19-21, 72-95 of the text 21,90-7,134 of tradition 21,80-90 authorship 55,59-67,111-12,
133-4,136-8 of sacred texts 21,74, 75,77.
97,128
attentiveness (Besorgnis) 36
B
Bacon, Francis 117-18 Balthasar, Hans-Urs von 79 Barth, Karl 72,94-5, g6,141 Borthes, Roland 60 Barton, John 96-7 Being 9, 26, 28,34-8, 40-5,47
historical nature of 6,13,32-3, 38, 40-1, 43-5,135,139
language and 15,37,41-3, 139-40,141-2 see also ontology Betti,Emilio 133-4
151
ble (Christian) 21, 72, 74,77, 80-8,90-7,100-1,128, 1*1-2
smarck, Otto von 31-2 mhoeffer, Dietrich 94-5 iltmann, Rudolf 5, 94-5,141 íms, Robert 68
rion (biblical) 82, 83, 88
nonical criticism 97
puto, John 138
ravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi
da 77-8 map, Rudolph 120 dlds, Brevard 97 irist 20,75,79,82-4,85,
86-8,142 ristianity 20, 21, 77-80,82-8,
90-7,128,140 uputation 70-1,123-4 mte, August 119-20 nmitment 69,95,120,122,
126-7,129 nmunication 3,9-10,13-15,28,
65, 73 jf meaning 136 vritten/textual 3,57-8 ice also dialogue isciousness 10,11,12, 33-4, 42 Luthorial 136 ;od- 26
listoricaliy effected 40-1,80,
134-5,139 lstitution(s) 13,98,104,110 istitution, American 98,106,
112-15 pernicus 21,127 enant (biblical) 83,84
onstruction 137-9
lida, Jacques 48, 60,137-9
Descartes, René 22-3,25, 29,33,
34, 38 dialogue 24,57,59, 66 as a model for understanding 28,
45, 47,132 with tradition 13,19, 41-3, 50,
82,131 digital humanities 70-1 Dilthey, Wilhelm 6, 29-33, 34,
35,40
distance, temporal 13,35,41,53 distanciation/engagemmt 137 Dworkin, Ronald 101,113-14 divine revelation see inspiration
Ebeling, Gerhard 141-2 Einstein, Albert 127 Enlightenment, the 22, 38, 43-4 epistemology 21-2,28,33-6 equity, maxim of 105-6 avegesis 58,79,90-1,140-1 existentials (Existentialien) 35,
36-7,141 experience 48-9,51-3, 63-4, 122-7,130 life 29-34, 38, 40, 44, 53 personal nature of 48-9, 66-7,
119,122-3 sensory 14-15,33
faith, rule of 86-8,91,97 form criticism 94 Fnucault, Michel 60 foundationalism 21-2,23, 64 Frei, Hans 96 French Revolution 41 Freud, Sigmund 136 Fuchs, Ernst 141-2 fundamentalism 69, 73,94,131-2 fundamentalists 1,24,97 Fyerabend, Paul 125
Gadamer, Hans-Georg 39-54 and application 51-2,110,122 Apel, Karl-Otto 134-5 and Betti Emilio 133-4 and 'the conversation that we
are' 41-3 and Derrida, Jacques 48, 137-9
and Dilthey, Wilhelm 39,40
and Frei, Hans 9fi
and the "fusion of horizons'
49-51, 67, 68, 79-80,138 Habermas, Jürgen 134-5 and Hegel, G. W. F. 48 and Heidegger, Martin 39-40,
133,136,137 and the hermeneutic circle 51,
133,135 and Hirsch, E. D. 60, 62-3,134 and the humanities 69 and knowing 53-4 and language 41-3,47,
134-5,139 and Louth, Andrew 96 and philosophical hermeneutics
6, 7, 39-54,96,135,138 and Ricoeur, Paul 62-3,136-7 and Rorty, Richard 139 and tradition 43-5, 80,110,123,
134-5
Truth andMethodhy 6,39,69 see also historical consciousness; mediation
Galileo 128
Gibbon, Edward 67
Goethe 25
Gregory of Nyssa 85
Grondin, Jean 139
H
Habermas, Jürgen 134-7 Hadiths 88-9,90
Hanson, Norwood Russell 125 Hart, Herbert L. A 103-5 Hebrew Bible {Tanalch) 74,
B0-3, 88 Hegel, G.W.F. 48 Heidegger, Martin 3-4, 6,15, 34-8,95,136,137 and Betti, Emilio 133 and Bultmann, Rudolf 141-2 and Gadamer 39-40,41,133,
136,137 hammer 36,104 hermeneutic(s)
central claims of 10-15,18,38, 57,69
critical element of 135-9
critiques of 133-42
and deconstruction 137-9
definition of 3, 6
and digital culture 70-1,131
etymology of 3-5
future of 130-2
and ideology criticism 134-5
as a method/art of understanding
2, 5-9 'New' 141-2
objectivity/subjectivily of 4-5, 16-17, 49-54,59-65,133-4, 136-7,139,140
and pragmatism 139
principles 2,6,19,34-5, 84
'radical' 138
and relativism 15-18,46,53-4,
134,140 recent trends in 96-7 of scientific discovery 16-17,
125-9
as theory of understanding 6-7, 24,34
universality of 1-2,10-18,34-8, 43-5, 53, 69, 89,101,106, 114-15,122,125,130,131-2, 134-5
hermeneutic challenge, the 49-51, 79-80
152
153
irmeneutic circle 25-7, 36-7,
51, 67,133-4,135 Christian 8 6-8 and law US
and scientific knowledge 12g nneneurjc objectivism
59-62, 64 rmeneutics, critical 136-7,138 rmeneutics, legal 52 rmeneutics, philosophical 6-7,
S-ll, 35, 39,45-6, 51-2, 54,
55-6, 62, 67, 80, 93, 96,130-2,
133-42 rmeneutics, romantic 136 rmeneutics, theological 52, 72,
85, 90-7,140-2 rmes 3, 4
rsch, E. D, 59-64,134 listorical consciousness 32-3, 40-2
ee alsu consciousness;............
historically effected torical criticism 75,91-7 tory 5,12,17-18, 2g, 65,93,
114,132 nportance of 32-3, 38,43 m also tradition mer 5,19, 62, 85 izons 18,48-54, 73,82, 93, 97 ision of 49-51, 54, 67, 80,97,
134,138
lanities, the 30-2,43,
57-71,116 efenee of 39, 69-71 :c also digital humanities iserl, Edmund 33-4,39,
40,136 athesis
eaningas 65-6 ientific 9,61
logy criticism 134-5 ad 75
imagination 54, 63,66,67-9, 71, 119,131 scientific 118,125,127,129 inspiration divine 72-80,97,140-2 verbal 77, BO, 91 interpretation 1-2,24,46,55 application and 52, 72, 75,98-9,
110,115,134 ethical dimension of 137-9 as integration 2, 7,9-10, 47-51, 54-6, 63-4, 68-9, 71,121-5,129 □f Islamic texts 74-7, 80, 88-90 of JudeD-Christian texts 20-1,
73-4,77-88,140-2 language and 3,10,14-15,20-1, 27-8, 28-9, 59,110,116,136-7, 138,141-2 of legal texts 101-15 passive aspect of 54 as reconstruction 27-8,29,31-2,
58, 62, 63-4, 94,134 □f sacred texts 72-3 scientific 31,35, 66,93-4,102,
109,116-21,123-5 textual 19-20,27,49-56,
57-71,111-15,133-4,136-7 theological 20-1,52, 72-97,128,
134,140-2 and theory 6-7
as translation 3-5,31, 73,75,90, 97,110
of truth 5,9-10,14,16-17, 20-2,
46, 52,73-80, 84-5, 88, 93-5,
130,135,138-9 universality of 1,9-10,14-18,
34-8, 53, 69, 89,101,106,115,
121-2,125,130,131-2 validity of 23,59-66,137 see also allegorical interpretation;
exegesis; mediation; spiritual
interpretation intuition 8,17, 28, 55,110,124,
127,129,136
intuitionism 60 Irenaeus (church father) 88 Islam 74-7, 88-90,140 Israel 81-4
Jesus sec Christ
Judaism 20, 73-4, 80-2, 83, 84,140 jurisprudence 72, gg, 102,109 Justice (lustitia) 98-100 justice 15,45,90,98-101,102, 108,114
K
Kant, Immanuel 22 Kearney, Richard 138-9 Kelsen, Hans 107-8 knowledge
in the ancient world 5,19-21 hermeneutk ideal of 53,131-2,
133,136 modern ideal of 42,44,51,54,
109,117,119-20,122,125 participatory nature of 12, 20,
23, 40-1, 42,122-3,134 personal nature of 2, 7-8,9-10, 17-18, 71,118,120-5,127, 129,130,132,133 scientific 7,12,17, 22-3, 24, 54,
116-30 theories of 6-7,21-34 transmission of 15,19,50,125-6 see also epistemology Kuhn, Thomas 127
language 2,6,9,18,20,24,57,69, 110,116,131,132,134,136-7,140 English 14,113,116 Gadamer and 41-3,47,134,139 Heidegger, Martin and 15,37, 136,141-2
importance of 10,11,13-15, IS, 20, 27, 28-9, 37, 41-3, 47, 69, 134,136,141-2 metaphorieity of 14,47, 67-9 objectivity of 42,134,138,139 sacramental quality of 85 Schleiermacher and 25,27-9 Laplace, Pierre-Simon 118-19 law 13,20,58, 72 in Greco-Roman culture 99-100 hermeneutics and 1,52,98-101, 109-13
importance of tradition in 110, 113-15
as integrity 113-15
in legal positivism 101-2,105-6
in legal realism 107
in natural law 107-8
of nature 16,30,118,120,122
religious/divine 72, 77, 82, 89-90,101,102
validity of 103-5,107-8
see also jurisprudence; rules of recognition; Sharia legal conventionalism 106 legal positivism 101-B, 114 legal realism 107 Levinas, Emmanuel 138 literalism 73, 76, 85-6,94,96, 111 literature 20, 34,40,63,67-9,
109,129,130 Logos 20-1,25 logocentrism 137 Louth, Andrew 96 Luther, Martin 90-1,92
M
MacMurray, John 12 Marx, Karl 136 materialism, reductive 119 mediation 3, 33,47-51, 66, 73,74,
77-9, 89, 95,132,135,136 metaphors 14,45-7,67-9,70,127 methodology 7,39
154
155
Midrash 82
moral reasoning 52,106 moral relativism 16,115 morals/morality 5,20,25, 30, 39, 62, 67, 85-6, 90,135,140-1 in law 52,99-100,108-10,113, 114-15
in legal positivism 102-3,105-7 modern attitudes towards
54,113,119 see also natural law; truth, moral Moses (biblical) 74, 83, 85 Muhammad (prophet) 75, 76, 88-9
N
narrative theology 96 natural law 99,101,107-8,120 ISJew Critics/Criticism 60 Nietzsche, Friedrich 136,138 lihilism 139,140
ibjectivism 17,53-4
hermeneutic 59-62,64
scientific 17,54, 61,117-21,134 ibjectivity 17, 23, 31-2, 40, 42, 51, 53, 64-66,121,133-4,140-1
see also truth, objective bservatibn 8,12,17, 47, 51, 53,103
scientific 116, lie, 119, 124-5,129,140-1 otology 26,28, 34,40,135
aradigm 69,126-7,129 asteur, Louis 129 atterson, Dennis 104 lul (biblical) 82-4, 86,138 3rception 7-8,14-15, 23, 33-4, 38, 39, 43-4, 53,66,123
perspective 17-18, 38,48-9, 51,58,
69, B6,138 phenomena 33,66,117,127 phenomenology 33-4, g6,136 philology 133,140 philosophy 5,19,20, 22,33,34, 58, 69,121,139
existential 95,136,141
moral 54
natural 117
rationalist 93
see also analytic philosophy; hermeneutics, philosophical Plato 3, 5, 20, 62, 67,71
dialogues 5,13,50 poetry 5-6,19, 20, 34, 62,
68,129 Polanyi, Michael 121-3 positivism 60 see also legal positivism; scientific positivism prejudice 13, 22, 38, 44, 53, 60 pre-understanding 15, 37,38 propositions, legal 98-9,101 Protestant Reformation 77,90-1 Protestantism 77,90,95,142 psychoanalysis 135 Pufendorf, Samuel 101
Quran 1,72,74-7,80,88-90
R
rabbis, Jewish 81, 82, 85, 86 Ramadan, Tariq 75 rationalism 22-3,29-30,94,141 reason
in ancient thought 20, g9-101 disengaged/abstract 12 Enlightenment 12, 22-3,43-4, 140
faith and 74, 75-7, 89,90,140
limits of 45, 65
mathematical 71
truth and 5,12, 20, 22, 45, 52,
77,90,117 universal 18 see also moral reasoning redaction/redactive interpretation
SO-1
relativism 15-18, 46, 53-4, 59-64, 102,113,115,121,132,134, 139,140 in law 113,115 relation to subjectivity 16-18 Reimarus, Samuel 93 religion 5,20,54, 67, 69,116,140 science and 21,23-4,27,
126,130 see also Abrahamic religions rhetoric 5-6,19 Ricoeur, Paul 59, 60, 62-4, 66,
111, 112,136-7,138 romanticism 24-5 Rorty, Richard 139,140 rules of recognition 103-5,106 Rushd, Ibn (Averroes) 77 Russell, Bertrand 120
Scalia, Antonin 111,113 Schleiermacher, Friedrich Daniel
6, 23-9, 31,32, 35, 39, 60 science(s) as art 123-5 etymology of 116 human 7,12,30-1,39 importance of tradition in 125-9
as knowledge 7,9,12-13, 23, 24,
29-30, 54,116-30 medieval 21,117 modern 93,117 natural 30,39, 69,109,116,
123,130
objectivity of the 12,23, 29-32,
35,116-21 and religion 21, 23-4, 27,
126.130 social 135
subjectivity of the 17,121-30 scientific method 12,17,23,102,
117-18,120,121,125,140 scientific objectivism 17,54, 61,
117-21,136 scientific positivism 118-21 scientific rcvolution(s) 117,
127.131
scripture 77, S3, 87, 88,90,91,96 sec also Bible; Quran; To rah
self, the 11-15,136
disengaged 11-13, 40, 42, 53,93
engaged 11, 35,53,123,131 self-understanding 5-6,19-20, 32-3, 37, 55-6, 67,136,141 Shakespeare 8,25,27,59,65 Sharia 89
Socrates 5,49,50,51 sola scriptum 90-1 source criticism 94 Spirit (Geht) 25,26-7 spiritual interpretation S4-6 Sprat, Thomas 14 Structuralism 136 subject-object division 11,133 subjectivism 42,52,53,133-4 Sünna 89,90
T
Talmud 81,82 Taylor, Charles 11 Ten Commandments
(biblical) 101 text(s) 13,15,40,45
application of 51-3, 72, 75,82,
96-7,106,109-10,124-5,134 authority of 19-21,134
155
157
ext(s) (ctwií.) interpretation of 1,3, fi, 8-9, 23, 25-8, 31-2,36, 37, 45, 49-56, 58-71, 72-97,101-15,117, 122,130,133-7,140-2 legal S, 21,82,106,101-15 reconstruction of 58, 63-4,
133,137 sacred/religious 1,19-21, 72-97,
101,114,140-2 ixting 57-9 "xtualism 110-13 leory 6, S6,120,125-9 hiselton, Anthony 9fi blkien, J. R. R. 130 olstoy, Leo 61, 62, 67 □rah 72,74,81,82,84 adirion 131,132 in Christianity 77, 80-4, 86-8,
91-3 etymology of 45 importance of 21,43-5,55, 71,
80, 86-8 in Islam 88-90 and law 98,100,103,106,108,
110,114-15 and science 123,125-6,129 and understanding 6,9,11, 13,18, 22, 37, 38,47, 50, 53,134-5,137 anslation 3,18, 73, 75, 90,
97, no uth(s)
in art 34, 39-40, 54-6, 69,130 canon of 88
communication of 9, 20,47,134 disruptive power af 48 divine/spiritual 20-1,73,77,
84-6, 88,90,93,95 as an event 12-13 hermeneutic view of 10,16-18,
75,9*, 132,138,139 moral 5,52 'naked' 14,15 nature of 10
reason and 5,12, 20, 22, 45, 52,
75-7,90,117 sec also ibundationalism truth, objective 7,12-13,15-18,19,
24,93-4,117,120 truth, subjective 16-17,46,54 truth statement(s) 28,120,130 typology 84
u
understanding 7-9 application of 51-3,72,97,110 art of 2, 54
as basic life impulse 2,121-2 circular nature of 25-7,51, 67 computational 70-1,131,135 conditions for 6-7,10-15,18,24,
28, 32, 70-1,131,135 as conversation 42,57, 60 as experience 29-34,35,37-8,
40,138 explanation and 30-1 faith and 126,130,140 as hearing 45, 47,52 as integration 2,7,9-10,47-51,
54-6, 63-4,68-9, 71,121-5,
129,138
as interpretation 7-10,14,15-18 intuitive 8,17,2B, 55,110,124,
127,129,136 language and 3, 6,10,13-15,
20-1, 25, 37, 28-9, 35, 37,
41-3, 47, 68-9, 89,110,131,
136,138,141-2 mechanistic 119-20 as mediation 3,33,47-51,73,
74,77,89,135 metaphorical 68 objective 17,40,42,137 ontology of 26-7 practical 2, B-9,12, 39-40, 72,
121,131
role of tradition/authority in 43-4, 50-1,80,86,89,125-6,134-5
as seeing 45-7 as translation 3, 73,97,110 see also pre-understanding; self-understanding
V
Vattimo, Gianni 139-40 verbum 20
viewpoint see perspective virtue 5, 49, 62 vitalism 128
w
'weak thought' 139-40 world 35-6,66 mind- 21-38
•Mrova fo 1,(0 * BR* O í1r>
158
159