ABSTRACT
This chapter considers Betti's epistemology before outlining his methodological insights. Betti consciously sets himself the task of harvesting the wealth of hermeneutical thought that has by now accumulated. He remains within the idealist-romanticist tradition that has so far characterized this sphere of activity. As long as hermeneutics is concerned with objectivations of mind it is possible to distinguish it from metaphysics. The acceptance of the 'objective' existence of manifestations of mind allows Betti to draw a fundamental distinction between two forms of interpretation. Hermeneutical understanding, verstehen, follows the maxim of exegesis that Census non est inferendus sed efferendus. The critique of Abel's conception of verstehen also leads directly to the consideration of an aspect of the hermeneutical understanding of meaning so far not sufficiently dealt with: the historic situatedness of the access to any objectivation of meaning.
