ABSTRACT
Hermeneutics is consequently engaged in two tasks: the ascertaining of the exact meaning-content of a word, sentence, and text and the discovery of the instructions contained in symbolic forms. As a technology for correct understanding, hermeneutics has therefore been employed at an early stage in three capacities: one, to assist discussions about the language of the text, giving rise, eventually, to philology; two, to facilitate the exegesis of biblical literature; and three, to guide jurisdiction. The insight that individual parts have to be dealt with in relation to the whole and to the other parts mark a significant step in the development of hermeneutics which, in its early, pre-Schleiermacher, form progressed yet further. Hermeneutics is as much art as it is science; it endeavours to reconstruct the original creative act – 'how it really was'. It is with Schleiermacher that the authors encounter the first attempt to analyse the process of understanding and inquire into the possibilities and limits of it.
