HERMENEUTICS109associated with the famous statement,
attributed to Heraclitus, that it is not pos-
sible to step in the same river twice.
Sometimes this is taken to mean that
nothing is stable, but this is probably not
what Heraclitus meant. Rather, the logos
is stable, and a discerning observer will
see that all things become their opposite:
e.g., heat becomes cold, wet becomes dry,
what is living dies, and what is unliving
comes to life. See also PRE-SOCRATICS.
HERBERT OF CHERBURY, EDWARD
(1583–1648). His theology stressed key
Christian teachings that relied minimally
on revelation. His work is thereby linked
to the deist movement which dispatched
with revelation altogether. His work
includes On Tr uth (1624), On the Causes
of Errors (1645), and The Ancient Religion
of the Gentiles (1663).
HERMENEUTICS. A complex term,
hermeneutics is generally about the
theory of interpretation. While many
histories of hermeneutics begin with
the Reformation’s emphasis on scripture,
the breadth of hermeneutical thinking
stretches back to Aristotle and includes
medieval scriptural interpretation strate-
gies. Aristotle understood the Greek word
hermeneia to be articulate speech. His
work On Interpretation studied articulate
speech and the things to which that
speech related. Later, Church fathers were
forced to wrestle with how to interpret
their sacred texts. The concern in the
early Church for allegorical readings
of difficult passages, in Clement of
Alexandria for example, later blossomed
into a strategy for interpreting the bible
including four levels of meaning: literal-
historical, allegorical, tropological, and
analogical. With the Reformation, the
centrality of Scripture created new energy
in exegetical methods and efforts.
The word “hermeneutics” was first
used by J. C. Dannhauer in connection
with exegesis as the “art of interpretation.”
Friedrich Schleiermacher generalized the
idea of hermeneutics across all disci-
plines, subsuming biblical exegesis under
a more universal hermeneutical method-
ology. In the twentieth century, Martin
Heidegger’s “hermeneutics of facticity”
changed the course of hermeneutical
thought. Hermeneutics moved from tex-
tual study and the understanding of an
author to the concept of understanding
as such. Hans-Georg Gadamer, a student
of Heidegger, developed the notion of a
“hermeneutical philosophy” which cen-
tered on the interpretive and linguistic
character of all understanding. The French
post-structuralist philosopher Paul Ricoeur
extended Gadamer’s hermeneutical phi-
losophy to include important insights in
ideology critique and critical theory.
Jacques Derrida, a student of Ricoeur,
developed a deconstructionist project that
challenged the ontological dimensions
of hermeneutical philosophy. Important
texts in hermeneutical philosophy include:
Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Hermeneutics
and Critique (1838), Martin Heidegger’s