Analysis of the Hermeneutical Method of Interpretation

Introduction

Hermeneutics as a method of interpretation relates to the difficulties encountered when dealing with meaningful human actions and the production of such actions, the most important texts. As a method of discipline, it provides a toolbox designed to effectively treat problems in interpreting human actions, texts and other meaningful content.In this paper we tend to explicate our understanding of this method from the perspective of different scholars and from our own group discussion.

The Hermeneutical Method

The word Hermeneutics etymologically comes from a Greek word hermeneuo, which means to translate or interpret from hermeneus a translator or interpreter. The technical term hermeneia which is an interpretation or an explanation came into philosophy originally through Plato meaning a messenger and then passed on to Aristotle who reveals it in his work known as Peri Hermeneias, which is referred to as On Interpretation. In this work he says that every message has a part called the “elocucio” meaning the text itself or more so the explanation in the text and after that there is an interpretation by the reader of the text referred to as interpretasio and then we have the eplicacio which is the text of the interpreter. Hermeneutics can be understood as: “A theory, methodology and praxis of interpretation that is geared towards the recapturing of meaning of a text, or a text-analogue, that is temporally or culturally distant, or obscured by ideology and false consciousness.”[1] [1: Demeterio, “The Philosophy of Interpretation” https://www.essaysforstudent.com/Philosophy/Hermeneutics-The-Philosophy-of-Interpretation/104938.html, (Aug,20,2019) ]

The term Hermeneutics is generally identified as the philosophical art of interpretation and also broadly referred to as the theory and methodology of interpretation. Textual meaning, preunderstanding, tradition, dialogue and interpretation are the basic themes of hermeneutic phenomenology.It is considered to be an art because is proceeds with a free genius act of dealing with the original meaning of the text, recreating the textual meaning which lays bare for open interpretation. This is made possible by the recognition that texts do have their own proper temporal context. They are objects embedded with specific world-views.

Historical Background

In hermeneutics as an art of interpretation, it takes a circular movement from an ancient way of understanding from the elements themselves, so that a harmonious understanding occurs in interpretation after the interpreter taking into consideration the “alterity” of the text.The translation made by the interpreter then makes the text to give different meaning to different readers.In hermeneutics we try to look at how we come to these interpretations in such a way that is clear and traceable. Hermeneutic phenomenology is also a qualitative research methodology. It is closely related to phenomenological philosophy. The foremost representatives of this movement are Heidegger, Ricoeur, Gadamer and Hirsch and many others

According to Martin Heidegger (2008), this multi-dimensional opening to the meaning of the text is possible because of the capacity of the reader to situate text according to the context of his own life. The human person then, which Heidegger calls “Dasein” sees life as a text to be analyse, hence to interpret. For Dasein, life is a text that needs an interpretation. But the kind of interpretation is anchored on the need to know its meaning that is the Being of life. And for Heidegger (2008), this being of life (the meaning of man’s being-in-the-world) has already been forgotten, especially by philosophers who seem to reduce the meaning of life (Being) into a mere spate of ideas. Thus, in his main work, being and Time, Heidegger raises the need for a reinterpretation of meaning, of being, by not anymore following the errors of the past philosophers. Here, he starts with the human individual herself as the legitimate starting point of what Heidegger frames as “the interpretation of the meaning of being.”[2] [2: Philo Notes, “Methods of Philosophizing” https://philonotes.com/index.php/phenomenological-method/ (Sept 07th 2019)]

A few years after the first appearance of the original German edition of Wahrheit und Methode in 1960, E.D. Hirsch produced Validity in Interpretation, in which he established a strong critique of Gadamer’s hermeneutics. Hirsch is primarily concerned with the general stability of meaning and validity of translation, and indeed sees Gadamer as someone who presents a very dangerous view of the subject matter, which leads to disruption of meaning and all the reasons for seeking knowledge.Hirsch has put it that validity requires a norm, and more so a meaning that is stable and determinate no matter how broad its range of implication and application.

A stable and determinate meaning requires an author’s determining will, and it is sometimes important, therefore, to decide which author is the one being interpreted when we confront texts that have been spoken and spoken again. All valid interpretation of every sort,” he concludes, “is founded on the re-cognition of what an author meant.”[3] Hirsch’s theory of interpretation is completely predicated on the authorial meaning, which, he argues, is in principle reproducible. Drawing on Husserl’s phenomenology, Hirsch argues that meaning is a repeatable and reproducible intentional object, for “an unlimited number of different intentional acts can intend the same verbal meaning.”[4] Interpretation is thus the recognition or reproduction of the same intentional object or verbal meaning as the author originally intended. Hirsch’s emphasis on authorial intention as the stable and reproducible meaning goes directly against Gadamer’s argument for the historicity of understanding and the irrelevance of the authorial intention, as well as his famous statement that “we understand in a different way if we understand at all.”[5]

Difference in understanding comes from different subjectivities in different times and spaces and that is, from the ontological situation of Dasein that Heidegger brings into the discussion of hermeneutics. As each person exists in a different situation than the author or anyone else, and has a different horizon of expectations, it is impossible to reproduce exactly what the author or the other person intends. According to Gadamer, a phenomenological description of the hermeneutic process cannot ignore the historicity of understanding, the fact that we all start with what Heidegger calls the fore-structure of understanding, or what Gadamer deliberately calls our prejudices and that is, prejudgments and anticipations of what we are to understand. For Hirsch, however, to talk about historicity and differences of understanding would be to undermine the stability of meaning and the validity of interpretation. Of course he knows that different people may have different interpretations of the same text or event, but he brushes this aside by differentiating meaning (which does not change) from significance (which does change). Hirsch maintains: [3: E.D. Hirsch, Jr, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), 126] [4: Ibid.,38] [5: Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 297]

The meaning of a text is that which the author meant by his use of particular linguistic symbols. Being linguistic, this meaning is communal, that is, self-identical and reproducible in more than one consciousness. Being reproducible, it is the same whenever and wherever it is understood by another. However, each time this meaning is construed, its meaning to the construer (its significance) is different. Since his situation is different, so is the character of his relationship to the construed meaning.[6] [6: Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, 255]

Importance of Hermeneutics as a Philosphical Method

Hermeneutics shows as that we don’t actually perceive the world by seeing first objects and then clothing them with meanings afterwards but rather every act of seeing is putting the world together in a certain way based on our personal history and cultural tradition. Even our professions make us look at the word in a certain ways. Physicists for example will tend to look at the world in terms of quantified objects, causality, and mathematics.

The western culture has been conditioned to think of “objective knowledge as something neutral and disinterested.”[7] Hermeneutic thinkers have shown the contrary, actually every pursuits of knowledge be it I sciences of in the humanities is based on personal commitments, creative imaginations and passions. [7: Hans A. “Treatise of critical reason” https://books.google.co.ke › books (Sept 11th 2019)]

In the course of interpretation, hermeneutics brings understanding and meaning to interpreted texts. It brings a particular work to the present context which makes it easy to apply to current or present situations.

Fusion of horizons. ‘Understanding’ is the fusion of our past and present horizon. Indeed, the present cannot be formed without the past. Past and present cannot exist without each other and “understanding is always the fusion of these horizons supposedly existing by themselves”[8] This central hermeneutic term describes the nature of understanding as integrating what is unfamiliar to us into our own familiar context. So when we understand something we fuse someone else’s view with our own and in this we are transformed because of the broadness of our mind. [8: Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method.297]

Hermeneutics helps in interpretation and understanding things from someone else's perspective. It can be applied to situations where we encounter meanings that are not easily understood but require some effort to interpret. He originally applied this to an interpreter and a religious text but in a later essay he describes “its (hermeneutics) fundamental significance for our entire understanding of the world and thus for all the various forms in which this understanding manifests itself: from inter-human communication to manipulation of society”[9] [9: Gadamer H-G. On the scope and function of hermeneutical reflection (1967) In: Linge DE, editor. Philosophical hermeneutics. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press; 1977. pp. 18–43.]

Western culture has been conditioned to think that tradition is the opposite of critical thinking while in reality tradition is crucial for it gives us the first tools of discovery and teaches us what is worthy knowing so we don’t need to be stuck in tradition but we need to discover its proper role for interpretation. The hermeneutic circle: even people who do not know a lot about hermeneutics have heard about the hermeneutic circle which simply means that all understanding is context dependant.

The hermeneutic circle is a prominent and recurring theme in the discussion ever since the philologist Friedrich Ast (1808: 178), who was probably the first to do so, drew attention to the circularity of interpretation: “The foundational law of all understanding and knowledge”, he claimed, is “to find the spirit of the whole through the individual, and through the whole to grasp the individual”. Friedrich Schleiermacher in a lecture of 1829 adopts as a principle the notion that the same way that the whole is, of course, understood in reference to the individual, so too, the individual can only be understood in reference to the whole. (1999: 329ff.) [10] [10: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy “The Hermeneutic Circle ” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hermeneutics/#HermCircle (Sept 11th 2019)]

One should note that hermeneutics is not relativism. Perhaps this misconception is much common about hermeneutics that its insistence on the interpretation of nature of all knowledge destroys objectivity. Hermeneutics is not relativism, to say that interpretation means we can see the world in many different ways doesn’t means we simply make up the world. So hermeneutics is critical realism from which a person’s involvement is essential to how we understand things therefor we don’t construct the world but the world discloses itself to us based on our angle of vision.

Hermeneutics is an antidote to fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is the in ability recognise that even our deeply felt convictions are mediated through language, tradition, and history. In this sense not only religious thoughts but also scientists and atheists can fall into relativism.

Conclusion

Throughout its historical development hermeneutics has dealt with specific problems of interpretation, arising within specific disciplines like jurisprudence, theology and literature, which have not been the focus of this article. The aim was indeed to show what kind of general problems of interpretation are treated by the discipline of hermeneutics and to identify some important procedures leading to their efficacious solution and always keeping in mind that these procedures, like all epistemological procedures, are bound to remain fallible.