Allegorical

◤ Interpretation of
Myth
Philosophy of Hermeneutics
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▪ Language is always an interpretation! Yet, it

marks only the beginning of the interpretation
theory
▪ Language does not constitute a hermeneutics in
any systematic sense. Making things understood
becomes an acute problem only when it no
longer works.
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▪ The necessity for express consideration of

interpretation –of primordial event of
language as interpretation (repetition of
thought) –is owing to the experience of
unintelligibility . Nothing is more human
than this experience.
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Repetition of Thought (interpretation –language)
▪ Begins when understanding is put to the test by the
passages in religious and mythic tradition than have
become objectionable.
▪ HELLENIC PERIOD: philosophy reached the point of
identifying the divine with the rational logos, to speak of
all too human goings-on, such as chicanery and jealousy,
on divine Olympus, no longer seemed appropriate to
godliness and rationality.
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INAPPROPRIATE LANGUAGE needs
ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION.

▪ Originates from the Stoic philosophy

(worked out as a procedure for
systematic, rationalizing, and allegorical
interpretation of myth.
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▪ Allegorical practice serves to accommodate ancient wisdom to the

Zeitgeist of later time.
▪ It may even occurred before the Stoics as indicated by Plato and
Aristotle in the ways how they did rational interpretations of myth.
▪ The very reason for the allegorical practice of interpretation is to
avoid offensive words. This allegorical interpretation lies at the
heart of the hermeneia understood as the mediation or
communication of meaning.
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▪ Once we appreciate the full breadth of the

concept of the hermeneuein, we come to see
that behind what is literally said, something
other, something more lies hidden; and
discovering it requires all the more hermeneutic
effort when the immediate sense, the literal, is
unintelligible.
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▪ It was the Stoa who first systematize this

practice making it a conscious method.
However, while they are the first one to use, it
is doubtful whether they really arrived at a
genuine theory of allegory.
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▪ Allegoria: is not to be found among the Stoics. Instead the
synonymous term HYPONOIA was in circulation among
them which both Plato and Xenophon used.
▪ Hyponoia: is a form of indirect communication that says
one thing in order to make something else understood –
(Talinhaga)—a process that the verb allegorein makes
explicit; it signifies to mean something different (allos)
than what is said (agoreuein)—even than what is “publicly
said”
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▪ Behind this sense that is out there in the

open, in the agora, there is something other,
something deeper that first seems alien to
the agora (obvious interpretation)
---example parables of Jesus.
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▪ The practice of allegoresis (allegorical

interpretation of myth) consists in discovering
something more profound behind the shocking
literal sense. The offensiveness or absurdity of the
immediate meaning serves to indicate that an
allegorical meaning is intended which the
knowledgeable reader or hearer can unlock.
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WHAT CONSTITUTE THIS MEANING?
▪ It simply means that there is something beyond the literal
meaning…always exceeded even to understand it right.
▪ Etymology was one of the preferred means of doing so. The Stoics
were of the opinion that the earliest ancients carried the as yet
unfalsified logos within them and thus could penetrate the essence
of things.
▪ Example: Saturn means time, since Saturn means “sated by years” (quod
saturetur annis). Thus etymology could give access to hidden dimensions
of meaning surpassing the literal.
▪ The
◤ expression allegoria actually derives from rhetorical

and was formulated by a grammarian, Pseudo- Heraclitus,

who defined allegory as a rhetorical trope whereby it was
possible to say one thing and at the same time allude to
something else.
▪ Allegory does not first enter the scene with the
self-conscious act of interpretation; it is already at home in
language. It dwells as it were, immanently within the
expressive function of language: its capacity to let
something else be heard in the utterance.
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▪ It seems clear that the Stoic distinction between the

logos prophorikos and logos endiathetos prepared
the way for the formulation of the rhetorical concept
of allegory.
▪ Spoken discourse is not sufficient unto itself; it
points to something else, whose sign it is.
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▪ Interpretation and understanding clearly have to do with

this inner logos, not with the word itself.
▪ Language invites us to recognize the literal logos, within
its limits and then surpass them. Before it became a
technique of interpretation, allegory (like hyponoia)
simply designated a form of speech, indeed a rhetorical
form, since rhetorical acts are concerned with
communicating meaning.
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▪ Scholars began to distinguish between allegory, the

original figure of speech, which aims at something
beyond literal, and the allegoresis, which means the
explicit interpretive act of tracing the literal back to
the meaning communicated through it (simply a
reverse of the allegory).
 MOTIVES OF ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETAION
◤
OF MYTH --ALLEGORESIS
1. MORAL:
▪ It is intended to purify written tradition of scandalous material.

▪ Pseudo-Heraclitus: allegoresis functions as an antipharmakon tes asebias: an antidote for

impiety.

2. RATIONAL:
▪ The Stoa wanted to show that rational interpretation of the world was compatible with
myth, since this compatibility would support their conviction that all-encompassing logos
was the same everywhere.

3. UTILITARIAN MOTIVE:
▪ No author of that period wanted to be in the position of contradicting the authority of the
ancient poets. For the Stoics, it was extraordinarily important to maintain the authority of
myth
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▪ None of these three motives is completely

outmoded. Today, allegorical
interpretation is on occasion pressed into
service in order to reinterpret morally
objectionable passages, harmonize
reason with poetry, and leave the authority
of the classics unimpaired.
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▪ To the extent that it derived from

these motivations, the Stoic doctrine
of an inner and outer logos as
concretized in allegorical interpretation
of myth gave substantial impetus to
the development of hermeneutics.
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