SOME ASPECTS OF HERMENEUTICS :

A BRIEF SURVEY

James C. G. Greig
Lecturer in Religious Education,
Jordanhill College of Education, Glasgow

Scope
In Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme M . Jourdain is astounded to learn he has been
speaking prose all his life . To discover one has been practising hermeneutics
may provoke no less commotion . The word itself dismays.
We are all interpreters and our interpretations gain their character from
the position in history and society which is ours . We cannot respond to
others without interpreting their words . We cannot interpret independently
of our linguistic and social inheritance .
The importance of interpreting naturally induces concern for inter-
pretative method and for an understanding of the situation in which
interpretation occurs . These two concerns are the province of hermeneu-
tics . The former traditionally embraces philological studies and here the
emphasis has lain outside the mind of the interpreter and on the mechanics
of coming to terms with the text and its author . More recently there has
been interest in the second concern : the life-situation of the interpreter
and the intrinsic power of the matter to be interpreted to affect his under-
standing of himself. Some writers have attempted to specify the distinction
between these two concerns by reserving hermeneutics for the former and
hermeneutic for the latter.' This seems unnecessarily confusing . Since the
second is concerned with the existential significance of the process of inter-
pretation it would seem adequate to designate it process hermeneutics. 2
The choice of the Greek term hermeneutics may itself call for explanation .
The verb hermineuo can signify `translate', `expound', `express', `describe',
`articulate' . It has a god to itself. Hermes was the messenger-god, the
communicator, the interpreter. When conversation suddenly ceased it
was said that Hermes epeiseleluthe-Hermes has come in . 3 Where fluency
deserts us we cannot but keep silence before its epitome !
The application of the word `hermeneutics' to the science of inter-
pretation and the ontological problem underlying this therefore needs
little further elucidation, though something must be said of its scope . An
artist may interpret a landscape and in programme music a composer
may interpret a story or some imagery . But the critic again will re-
interpret the painting or the composition . Is there then some kind of ulti-
macy in verbal interpretation? It would be quite wrong to limit language
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