interpretation/hermeneutics
concerned with lived experience (Erlebnis), which is held together by a
common meaning. This lived experience is not a physical action as much
as an act of consciousness. Moreover, the goal of the natural sciences is
explanation (Erklären), whereas the task of the human sciences is under-
standing (Verstehen), which opens an interpreter to the world of others
and allows one to discover oneself in the others. What understanding
grasps within the reciprocal interaction between the whole and its parts
is meaning, which is a matter of relationship. Meaning is historical, which
suggests that it changes with the passage of time. Thus, meaning is not
something fixed, firm, or static.
The gist of Dilthey’s program influences twentieth-century thinkers such
as Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), Hans-Georg Gadamer (d. 2002), and
Paul Ricoeur (d. 2005). In order to overcome the psychologism and subjec-
tivity of previous theories of interpretation, Heidegger proposes developing
a hermeneutical ontology that would be grounded in the existential situation
of the interpreter, which frees interpretation from texts and transforms it into
ontology. Heidegger argues that hermeneutics operates in a circle because
any interpreter begins working from the standpoint of one’s prejudices, pre-
understandings, self-interests, and presuppositions. Thus, no interpreter
begins within a neutral vacuum because there is always something that one
brings to the act of interpretation. Gadamer also begins in the hermeneutical
circle, and he retrieves the notion of prejudice in its original sense of being
in relation to it and not detached from it. Gadamer recognizes that prejudg-
ments play an important role in the art of interpretation along with historical
context. An interpreter can understand an ancient text because that person is
connected to an overall tradition, which links the interpreter in a process
called “effective history.” This type of history acknowledges that what hap-
pened in the past shapes later history, constituting a continuum with the past,
which Gadamer calls the fusion of horizons. This goal of interpretation con-
nects the horizon of the interpreter with the text of the past.
Among other things, Paul Ricoeur is concerned with getting beyond
the hermeneutical circle, which he defines as believing in order to under-
stand. Yet, by understanding, persons can believe. Thus, hermeneutics
begins from a prior understanding of that which it attempts to understand.
From this circle of believing and understanding, Ricoeur aims to move
from the hermeneutical circle to re-enactment and ultimately to autono-
mous thought. How does this movement occur? Ricoeur transforms the
hermeneutical circle into a wager that claims: I will understand better if
I follow symbolic thought. Therefore, the wager opens the field of philo-
sophical hermeneutics that seeks to speak to the human situation.
Moreover, the hermeneutical situation and autonomy of the text owes its
creation to the distance between the original author and interpreter.