ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the use of the somewhat fashionable term hermeneutics as a thematic means of tying together the certain articles. For hermeneutics was first employed to denote the interpretation of texts—in particular biblical texts—and two of Georges Sorel's lengthiest books are devoted precisely to this undertaking. Despite the difficulties in drawing analogies in the social sciences, Sorel maintains that certain parallels can be seen between religion and other activities, in particular, that the characteristics of the "free spirit" found in religion can also be seen in the history of art. Sorel compares historical interpretation to the restoration of an antique object according to the authority of written documents. Sorel condemns the stagnant formalism of most of the schools of modern social science in general and of the Marxist schools in particular.
