FINAL PAPERS

HERMENEUTICS: Thinkers discussed with their hermeneutical theories

December 31, 2021 | Friday

Sem. Dale Andrew S. Aguihap

3rd year Philosophy | Class of Servites

To understand or comprehend well on the topic of Hermeneutics we base our sources upon two
good thinkers which do comprehend the hermeneutical thought and method.
According to many theories, their main point of hermeneutics is that the theory and methodology
of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and
philosophical texts. Hermeneutics is more than interpretative principles or methods used when
immediate comprehension fails and includes the art of understanding and communication.1
Now to head to the main topic. We proceeed to Friedrich D. E. Schleimarcher
For Schleimarcher, hermeneutics deals only with the art of understanding, not with the
presentation of what has been understood. Interpretation is a much more difficult task than is
generally realized: contrary to a common misconception that “understanding occurs as a matter
of course”, in fact “misunderstanding occurs as a matter of course, and so understanding must be
willed and sought at every point”2.
It is essential to distinguish clearly between the question of the meaning of a text or discourse
and the question of its truth. Assuming that a text or discourse must be true will often lead to
serious misinterpretation. Before the interpretation proper of a text or discourse can even begin,
the interpreter must acquire a good knowledge of its historical context.
Every act of speaking is based on something having been thought. This statement, too,
could be reversed, but with respect to communication the first formulation holds because
the art of understanding deals only with an advanced stage of thinking.3
Ideal interpretation is of its nature a holistic activity. In particular, any given piece of text needs
to be interpreted in light of the whole text to which it belongs, and both need to be interpreted in
light of the wider language in which they are written, their larger historical context, a wider pre-
existing genre, the author’s whole body, and the author’s overall mind-set. Schleiermacher
recommends that we first read through and interpret as best we can each of the parts of the text in
turn in order in so doing to arrive at an approximate overall interpretation of the text, and that we
then apply this approximate overall interpretation in order to refine our initial interpretations of
1
Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2021, April 5). hermeneutics. Encyclopedia Britannica.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/hermeneutics-principles-of-biblical-interpretation
2
Ricoeur, P. (1977). SCHLEIERMACHER’S HERMENEUTICS. The Monist, 60(2), 181–197.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/27902471
3
Mueller-Vollmer, K. (1988). The Hermeneutics Reader: Texts of the German Tradition from the Enlightenment to
the Present (Revised ed.). Continuum.
each of the particular parts, which in turn gives us an improved overall interpretation, which can
then be re-applied toward still further refinement of the interpretations of the parts, and so on.
Now on the other hand, we proceed to Martin Heidegger.
Heidegger’s philosophy is oriented by the question of the meaning, or, sense of being, but as he
argues in Being and Time, inquiry into this question itself begins with inquiry into the sense in
which human beings can be said to be or exist. He defines inquiry into the sense of the being of

human existence as hermeneutical, that is, as a matter of self-interpretation. Heidegger's study,

however, was of a specific type of Being, the human being, referred to by Heidegger as "Dasein',
which literally means 'Being-there‘. By using the expression Dasein, Heidegger called attention
to the fact that a human being cannot be taken into account except as being an existent in the
middle of a world amongst other things.
Understanding is the Being of such potentiality-for-Being, which is never something still
outstanding as not yet present-at-hand, but which, as something, which is essentially
never present-at-hand, ‘is’ with the Being of Dasein, in the sense of existence. Dasein is
such that in every case it has understood (or alternatively, not understood) that it is to be
thus or thus.4
For Heidegger, understanding is a mode or possibility of human existence, and one that is
projective, oriented toward the interpretive possibilities available to us in the situations in which
we find ourselves. Accordingly, inquiry into the sense of the being of human existence is enacted
in our own attempts to understand our own being, as we may interpret our being through the
course of our affairs.
In conclusion, both great thinker have thier own way of describing and explaining the
hermeneutical ways of interpretation and understanding. Both may not seem to be in the same
method but it leads to one thought which is the hermeneutical method.
In hermeneutics, interpretive experience is typically clarified in reference to understanding. In
this context, when we say that we understand, what we mean is that we have really gotten at
something through an attempt at interpretation; and, when we say we do not understand, we
mean that we have not really gotten anywhere at all with our interpretation. For this reason,
understanding can be described as a ‘success’ of interpretation

4
Laverty, S. M. (2003). Hermeneutic Phenomenology and Phenomenology: A Comparison of Historical and
Methodological Considerations. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2(3), 21–35.
https://doi.org/10.1177/160940690300200303