HERMENEUTICS/

INTERPRETATION
• should we study these thinkers and texts by situating them in their own context?
• The discovery of true/correct meaning of these texts becomes difficult as our ideas are
already shaped by our times. Our values and biases shape our understandings.
• Rather it is said that the text once published has a life of its own they often outlive their
authors
• These texts and thinkers then acquire a new lives or new meaning in the light of newer or
more accurate interpretations.
• Human search for truth and knowledge is an unending enterprise.
• There is always a background in which perception takes place.
• The Greek word Hermeneuin meant to express, explain, translate or interpret the sacred
message. Originally, it was discussed in the Greek philosophy, later was used extensively in the
interpretation of the Bible.
• However, today it has grown into different domains of human life. It has come out of the
theological domain and has entered into the spheres such as art, aesthetics, literature,
architecture and to all the notions that govern human life. Thus it means study of interpretation
• Heidegger developed the concept of Hermeneutic circle: refers to the idea that ones
understanding of the text as a whole is established by reference to the individual parts and
ones understanding of each individual part by reference to whole.
• Meaning interpretation and relational interpretation: 1) meaning as understood by
author, meaning as understood by particular audiences, the meaning as understood
independently of what authors or particular audiences understood, the meaning as
including both the meaning.
• later would include understanding of the meaning of a text in relation to something else
that the interpreter selects
• the author, the text and the reader are the three basic components of any hermeneutical
enterprise.
• “A text is a group of entities, used as signs, selected, arranged, and intended by an author
to convey a specific meaning to an audience in a certain context”. Despite the ‘horizon of
expectation’, the text can surprise, contradict or even reverse such horizon of
expectation.
• Like the text, the reader too has an impact on the text
• The author cannot be ignored in the hermeneutics. It is his worldview, unconsciously
comes into the text and affects the text.
• The act of interpretation entails a fusion of horizons.
• When we strive for the the true meaning of a text written in the past, it is humanly not
possible for us to do away with our own perceptions and assumptions.
• Meaning the word carries are far greater and surplus to what the author intends. Thus
multiple interpretations
PRE-SOCRATIC GREEK THOUGHT

• Pre-Socratic philosophers were physicists who directed their speculation to determining

what the universe is made of.
• Thales, claimed that the universe is made of water.
• Democritus finally solved the riddle; he claimed that all things are composed of atoms.
• Most basic question: How does anything change from one thing to another?
• What is reality?
• Heraclitus, argued that the basic nature of reality is change itself. reality is nothing more than
material-nothing more, that is, than what we can see or sense (philosophers of becoming). All
things change (become) without any inherent purpose or direction. Atomistic view or monism
• Pannenides, insisted that change is a deception of the senses, that re­ality is ultimately
unchangeable.
• Pythagoras claimed that beneath the changeable universe that we see around us is a sub-
structure of unchangeable mathematical principles. What exists must be a reflection of some
basic reality. (philosophers of being). Pluralism
• Sophists: were roving teachers who began to appear around the early fifth century B.C.
they were advocates of rhetoric than knowledge. Interested in practical affairs.
• The Sophists taught young men from wealthy families who wanted to learn how to get
ahead in life, and particularly those who wanted to learn how to get ahead in politics.
Cared about winning rather than truth
• Gorgias, Protagoras
• They were individualists and considered society and state as conventional. The Sophists
argued that virtue in general is the ability to acquire those things that people agree give
pleasure-wealth, honor, status, and so on­and that political virtue in particular is the
ability to acquire these things by the successful use of power.
• human beings are not innately social creatures. the social and political order and its tra­
ditions, customs, and laws are simply pragmatic arrangements between indi­vidual egotists
• Their political the­ory glorified the individual and encouraged him to do what he wanted
inspite of law and custom.
• Morality is conventional. Man is the measure of all things
• “we take the best and strongest of our fellows from their youth upwards, and tame them like
young lions, enslaving them with spells and incanta­tions, and saying to them that with equality
they must be content, and that the equal is the honourable and the just. But if there were a man
born with enough ability, he would shake off and trample under foot all our formulas and spells
and charms, and all our laws which are against nature; the slave would rise in rebellion and be
lord over us, and the light of natural justice would shine forth” (Plato’s dialogue Gorgias,
young Callicles)
• Speech is great power, can create/stop fear, increase joy, remove sorrow.
• Stoics: these where philosophers who advised how to adjust with bad situations. They
rejected the luxuries of life. the goal of all inquiry is to provide a mode of conduct
characterized by tranquility of mind and certainty of moral worth.
• Provided a way of accommodation for people to whom the human condition no longer
appeared as the mirror of a uniform, calm, and ordered cosmos. 
• Stoicsim: a philosophy of life that maximizes positive emotions, reduces negative
emotions and helps individuals to hone their virtues of character.
• Zeno, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca
• It is not outside forces that make us feel something, it is what we tell ourselves that create
our feelings. our thoughts determine our feelings and our behavior.
• Recognize there is a life after failure
• ‘A consciousness of wrongdoing is the first step to salvation.’ 
• “No person has the power to have everything they want, but it is in their power not to
want what they don’t have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have.” Seneca
• All in all, individuals have enough to get by and be happy, yet they are upset about their
lives because they maintain an insatiable desire for more.
• “I judge you unfortunate because you have never lived through misfortune. You have
passed through life without an opponent—no one can ever know what you are capable of,
not even you.” Seneca
• Politics and ethics
• Ethics: Ethics has to do with values, that is, with whether or not an action or, more
broadly, a way of life is good or evil, right or wrong. Answers question like what is good
conduct, what is good life, how we ought to live in a society.
• ethical statements are immedi­ately recognizable because they are always ought or should
statements: "We ought not to commit murder" or "We should love our fellow human
beings"
• Questions of right and wrong
• in the case of ethical mat­ters, whether we ought or ought not to do something depends
upon the ends we wish to achieve. If Preserving life is end then we ought not to commit
murder.
• Ultimate end of human life is happiness.
• Ethical and political questions are inti­mately connected.
• People do not live as individuals on deserted islands, however, they live among other
human be­ings in political communities in which political decisions must be made.
• No one is self­sufficient says Socrates; people need others in order to survive. And since
hu­mans are by nature social beings, there must be social and political arrange­ments that
are naturally good, that contribute to the harmonious functioning of the social organism