ABSTRACT
The theory of textual interpretation and analysis. The roots of hermeneutics lie in biblical and legal practices of exegesis. However, modern hermeneutics is generally taken as beginning with the work of Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834). Amongst other things, Schleiermacher contended that (i) hermeneutics is an art of interpretation; (ii) that the meaning of a text is a matter of the original readership for which it was intended; (iii) that interpretation is a circular process, since the parts of a text depend for their meaning upon the whole and vice versa; (iv) that misunderstanding is a precondition of understanding texts (against the view associated with the Enlightenment, which foregrounded the primacy of reason, and thus the clarity of understanding, in interpretation). The most influential aspect of the work of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) was his postulation of a difference between ‘understanding’ and ‘explanation’ as underlying the distinction between the human sciences and the natural sciences. This view, along with Schleiermacher’s identification of meaning with authorial intention, was questioned by the later work of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and Hans Georg Gadamer (1900-).
