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Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation theory. Traditional hermeneutics - which includes Biblical hermeneutics - refers to the study of the interpretation of written texts, especially texts in the areas of literature, religion and law. Contemporary or modern hermeneutics encompasses not just issues involving the written text, but everything in the interpretative process. This includes verbal and nonverbal forms of communication as well as prior aspects that impact communication, such as presuppositions, preunderstandings, the meaning and philosophy of language, and semiotics.^[1] Philosophical hermeneutics refers primarily to Hans-Georg Gadamer's theory of knowledge as developed in Truth and Method, and sometimes to Paul Ricoeur^[2]. A hermeneutic (singular) refers to one particular method or strand of interpretation.

Contents 1 Traditional Hermeneutics 2 Etymology 2.1 History 3 Torah exegesis 4 History of Western hermeneutics 4.1 Ancient Greece and Rome 4.2 Early Christian hermeneutics 4.2.1 Apostolic and Sub-apostolic hermeneutics 4.2.2 Schools of Alexandria and Antioch 4.3 Medieval hermeneutics 4.4 Renaissance and Enlightenment 4.5 Schleiermacher 4.6 Dilthey 4.7 Heidegger 4.8 Contemporary hermeneutics 4.9 Critical theory 5 Themes 5.1 Hermeneutic circle 5.2 Meaning 5.3 Horizon 6 Applications 6.1 Archeology 6.2 Sociology 6.3 Law 6.4 Computer science 6.5 International Relations 6.6 Religion and theology 6.7 Architecture 7 References 8 Sources 9 Recommended readings 10 See also 11 External links

[edit] Traditional Hermeneutics

Traditional hermeneutics involves interpretation theories that concern the meaning of written texts. These theories focus on the relationships found between the author, reader and text. E.D. Hirsch argued that the meaning of a text is determined by the author's intent.^[3] Hans-Georg Gadamer argued that the meaning of the text goes beyond the author, and therefore the meaning is determined by the point where the horizons of the reader and the writer meet.^[4] Paul Ricoeur argued that the text is independent of the author's intent and original audience, and therefore the reader determines the meaning of the text.^[5]

Biblical hermeneutics is sometimes divided into two sub-categories - general and special hermeneutics. General hermeneutics is the study of those rules that govern interpretation of the entire biblical text, including grammatical, historical-cultural, contextual, lexical-syntactical, and theological aspects. Special hermeneutics is the study of rules that apply to specific genres, such as parables, allegories, types, and prophecy.^[6] Biblical hermeneutics is often defined as both a science and an art. It is considered a science with regard to its prescribed set of rules, and an art because meaning is not found in a mechanical and rigid application of rules^[7].

[edit] Etymology

The word hermeneutics is a term derived from the Greek word ἑρμηνεύω (hermeneuō, 'translate' or 'interpret'), and is of uncertain origin.^[8] It was introduced into philosophy mainly through the title of Aristotle's work Περὶ Ἑρμηνείας (Peri Hermeneias, 'On Interpretation', more commonly referred by its Latin title De Interpretatione). It is one of the earliest (c.360 BC) extant philosophical works in the Western tradition to deal with the relationship between language and logic in a comprehensive, explicit, and formal way. It is often suggested that the Greek word root is etymologically related to the name of the Greek mythological deity Hermes, which is also of uncertain origin^[8], but may be cognate to a corrupted composite borrowing from Hebrew Har [ha]Emet (Emes) referring to the Biblical Mount Sinai where Moses interpreted the Jewish Law (known as haEmes - the Truth) to the people.^[9]

[edit] History

In the last two thousand years, the scope of hermeneutics has expanded to include the investigation and interpretation not only of oral, textual and artistic works, but of human behaviour generally, including language and patterns of speech, social institutions, and ritual behaviours (such as religious ceremonies, political rallies, football matches, rock concerts, etc.). Hermeneutics interprets or inquires into the meaning and import of these phenomena, through understanding the point of view and 'inner life' (Dilthey) of an insider, or the first-person perspective of an engaged participant in these phenomena.

[edit] Torah exegesis

Rabbinical Eras
Zugot Tannaim Amoraim Savoraim Geonim Rishonim Acharonim

A common use of the word hermeneutics refers to a process of scriptural interpretation. Its earliest example is however found not in the written texts, but in the Jewish Oral Tradition dated to the Second Temple era (515 BCE - 70 CE) that later became the Talmud.

Summaries of the principles by which Torah can be interpreted date back at least to Hillel the Elder, although the thirteen principles set forth in the Baraita of Rabbi Ishmael are perhaps the best known. These principles ranged from standard rules of logic(for example, a fortiori argument (known in Hebrew as קל וחומר (kal v'chomer)), to more expansive ones, like the rule that a passage could be interpreted by reference to another passage in which the same word appears (gezera sheva). The rabbis did not ascribe equal persuasive power to the various principles. ^[10]. This was the first record of hermeneutic rules in the world, through the exegetic interpretation of Biblical texts.^{[citation needed]}

Traditional Jewish hermeneutics differ from the Greek method in that the rabbis considered the Tanakh (the Jewish bibilical canon) to be without error. Any apparent inconsistencies needed to be understood by careful examination of a given text in the context of other texts. There were different levels of interpretation, some used to arrive at the plain meaning of the text, some that expounded the law given in the text, and others that found secret or mystical levels of understanding.

[edit] History of Western hermeneutics

Throughout religious history scholars and students of religious texts have sought to mine the wealth of their meanings by developing a variety of different systems of hermeneutics. Philosophical hermeneutics in particular can be seen as a development of scriptural hermeneutics, providing a theoretical backing for various interpretive projects. Thus, philosophical and scriptural hermeneutics can be seen as mutually reinforcing practices.

Hermeneutics in the Western world, as a general practice of text interpretation, can be traced back to Aristotle's work De Interpretatione (the Latin title by which it is usually known) or On Interpretation (Greek Περὶ Ἑρμηνείας or Peri Hermeneias) which came to fruition in Alexandria. Scholars in antiquity expected a text to be coherent, consistent in grammar, style and outlook, and they amended obscure or "decadent" readings to comply with their codified rules. By extending the perception of inherent logic of texts, Greeks were able to attribute works with uncertain origin.

[edit] Ancient Greece and Rome

Aristotle strikes a chord in his treatise De Interpretatione that reverberates through the intervening ages and supplies the key note for many contemporary theories of interpretation. His overture is here:

Words spoken are symbols or signs (symbola) of affections or impressions (pathemata) of the soul (psyche); written words are the signs of words spoken.

As writing, so also is speech not the same for all races of men.

But the mental affections themselves, of which these words are primarily signs (semeia), are the same for the whole of mankind, as are also the objects (pragmata) of which those affections are representations or likenesses, images, copies (homoiomata).

—Aristotle, On Interpretation, 1.16^a4

Equally important to later developments are texts on poetry, rhetoric, and sophistry, including many of Plato's dialogues, such as Cratylus, Ion, Gorgias, Lesser Hippias, and Republic, along with Aristotle's Poetics, Rhetoric, and On Sophistical Refutations. However, these texts deal more with the presentation and refutation of arguments, speeches and poems rather than the understanding of texts as texts. As Ramberg and Gjesdal note, "Only with the Stoics, and their reflections on the interpretation of myth, do we encounter something like a methodological awareness of the problems of textual understanding." ^[11]

Some ancient Greek philosophers, particularly Plato, tended to vilify poets and poetry as harmful nonsense—Plato denies entry to poets in his ideal state in The Republic until they can prove their value. In the Ion, Plato famously portrays poets as possessed:

You know, none of the epic poets, if they're good, are masters of their subject; they are inspired, possessed, and that is how they utter all those beautiful poems. The same goes for lyric poets if they're good: just as the Corybantes are not in their right minds when they dance, lyric poets, too, are not in their right minds when they make those beautiful lyrics, but as soon as they sail into harmony and rhythm they are possessed by Bacchic frenzy.

—Plato, Ion, 533e-534a

The meaning of the poem thus becomes open to ridicule — whatever hints of the truth it may have, the truth is covered by madness. However, another line of thinking arose with Theagenes of Rhegium, who suggested that instead of taking poetry literally, what was expressed in poems were allegories of nature. Stoic philosophers further developed this idea, reading into the poets not only allegories of natural phenomena, but allegories of ethical behavior.

Aristotle differed with his predecessor, Plato, in the worth of poetry. Both saw art as an act of mimesis, but where Plato saw a pale, essentially false imitation in art of reality, Aristotle saw the possibility of truth in imitation. As critic David Richter points out, "for Aristotle, artists must disregard incidental facts to search for deeper universal truths"--instead of being essentially false, poetry may be universally true. (Richter, The Critical Tradition, 57.) In the Poetics, Aristotle called both the tragedy and the epic noble, with tragedy serving the essential function of purging strong emotions from the audience through katharsis.

[edit] Early Christian hermeneutics

The early Patristic traditions of Biblical exegesis have few unifying characteristics in the beginning but tend toward unification in schools of hermeneutical theory. The early Christian period of Biblical interpretation can be subdivided into the Apostolic and Sub-apostolic period (which dates from the writing of the New Testament to ca. 200) and the Antiochine/Alexandrian division (which spans from ca. 200 to the medieval period).

[edit] Apostolic and Sub-apostolic hermeneutics

The operative hermeneutical principle in the New Testament and earliest Church Fathers was prophecy fulfillment. The Gospels, particularly the Gospel of Matthew, make extensive use of the Old Testament for the purposes of demonstrating that Jesus was the Messiah. Examples include Matthew 1:23, 2:15-18, 3:3, 21:42, Mark 1:2-3, 4:12, Luke 3:4-6, 22:37, John 2:17, 12:15, and notably in Luke 4:18-21 and parallels where Jesus read extensively from Isaiah and makes the claim that the prophecy is fulfilled in the crowds hearing it. The Pauline epistles employ the same principle, as evidenced by 1 Corinthians 1:19 and Ephesians 4:8-10, as does Hebrews (see 8:7-13).

The principle is carried over into the sub-apostolic age as well and through the second century. For example, Irenaeus dedicates an entire chapter in Against Heresies to the defense of Isaiah 7:14, one of the chief prophecies used to validate Jesus as the Messiah.^[12] This is consistent with Irenaeus' general usage. More so than even he, though, the second century apologists tended to interpret and utilize most scripture as being primarily for the purpose of showing prophecy fulfillment. Important among these was Justin Martyr, who made extensive use of scripture to this end. Examples of this usage may be seen in his Apology in which chapters 31-53 are specifically dedicated to proving Christ through prophecy. He uses scripture similarly in Dialogue with Trypho.

And when Herod succeeded Archelaus, having received the authority which had been allotted to him, Pilate sent to him by way of compliment Jesus bound; and God foreknowing that this would happen, had thus spoken: ‘And they brought Him to the Assyrian, a present to the king.’

—^[13]

Here Justin demonstrates that prophecy fulfillment supersedes logical context in hermeneutics. He ignores the christological issues that arise from equating Jesus to the calf idol of Bethel which is the "him" being brought to the king in Hosea 10:6.

It is likely that the high view of prophecy fulfillment is a product of the circumstance of the early church. The primary goal of early authors was a defense of Christianity against attacks from paganism and Judaism as well as suppressing what were considered schismatic or heretical groups. To this end, Martin Jan Mulder suggests that prophecy fulfillment was the primary hermeneutical method because Roman society had a high view of both antiquity and oracles. ^[14] By using the Old Testament to validate Jesus, early Christians sought to tap into both the oracles of the prophets and the antiquity of the Jewish scriptures.

[edit] Schools of Alexandria and Antioch

This section requires expansion.

Beginning as early as the third century, Christian hermeneutics began to split into two primary schools: Alexandria and Antioch. The Alexandrian Biblical interpretations stressed allegorical readings, frequently at the expense of the texts' literal meaning. Primary figures in this school included Origen and Clement of Alexandria. The Antiochene school stressed instead the more literal and historical meaning of the text. Theodore of Mopsuestia and Diodore of Tarsus were the primary figures in the Antiochine school.

[edit] Medieval hermeneutics

Medieval Christian interpretations of text incorporated exegesis into a fourfold mode that emphasized the distinction between the letter and the spirit of the text.

This schema was based on the various ways of interpreting the text utilitized by the Patristic writers. The literal sense (sensus historicus) of Scripture denotes what the text states or reports directly. The allegorical sense (sensus allegoricus) explains the text with regard to the doctrinal content of church dogma, so that each literal element has a symbolic meaning, see also Typology (theology). The moral application of the text to the individual reader or hearer is the third sense, the sensus tropologicus or sensus moralis, while a fourth level of meaning, the sensus anagogicus, draws out of the text the implicit allusions it contains to secret metaphysical and eschatological knowledge, or gnosis.

The hermeneutical terminology used here is in part arbitrary. For almost all three interpretations which go beyond the literal explanations are in a general sense "allegorical". The practical application of these three aspects of spiritual interpretation varied considerably. Most of the time, the fourfold sense of the Scriptures was used only partially, dependent upon the content of the text and the idea of the exegete.... We can easily notice that the basic structure is in fact a twofold sense of the Scriptures, that is, the distinction between the sensus literalis and the sensus spiritualis or mysticus, and that the number four was derived from a restrictive systematization of the numerous possibilities which existed for the sensus spiritualis into three interpretive dimensions.

—^[15]

Hermeneutics in the Middle Ages witnessed the proliferation of non-literal interpretations of the Bible. Christian commentators could read Old Testament narratives simultaneously as prefigurations of analogous New Testament episodes, as symbolic lessons about Church institutions and current teachings, and as personally applicable allegories of the Spirit. In each case, the meaning of the signs was constrained by imputing a particular intention to the Bible, such as teaching morality, but these interpretive bases were posited by the religious tradition rather than suggested by a preliminary reading of the text.

The customary medieval exegetical technique commented on the text in glossae ("glosses" or annotations) written between the lines and at the side of the text which was left with wide margins for this very purpose. The text might be further commented on in scholia which are long, exegetical passages, often on a separate page.

A similar fourfold categorization is also found in Rabbinic writings. The fourfold categorizations are: Peshat (simple interpretation), Remez (allusion), Derash (interpretive), and Sod (secret/mystical). It is uncertain whether or not the Rabbinic division of interpretation pre-dates the Patristic version. The medieval period saw the growth of many new categories of Rabbinic interpretation and explanation of the Torah, including the emergence of Kabbalah and the writings of Maimonides.

[edit] Renaissance and Enlightenment

This section requires expansion.

The discipline of hermeneutics emerged with the new humanist education of the 15th century as a historical and critical methodology for analyzing texts. In a triumph of early modern hermeneutics, the Italian humanist Lorenzo Valla proved in 1440 that the "Donation of Constantine" was a forgery, through intrinsic evidence of the text itself. Thus hermeneutics expanded from its medieval role explaining the correct analysis of the Bible.

However, Biblical hermeneutics did not die off. For example, the Protestant Reformation brought about a renewed interest in the interpretation of the Bible, which took a step away from the interpretive tradition developed during the Middle Ages back to the texts themselves.

The rationalist Enlightenment led hermeneuts, especially Protestant exegetes, to view Scriptural texts as secular Classical texts were viewed. Scripture thus was interpreted as responses to historical or social forces, so that apparent contradictions and difficult passages in the New Testament, for example, might be clarified by comparing their possible meanings with contemporaneous Christian practices.

[edit] Schleiermacher

This section requires expansion.

Friedrich Schleiermacher (November 21, 1768 – February 12, 1834) explored the nature of understanding in relation not just to the problem of deciphering sacred texts, but to all human texts and modes of communication. The interpretation of a text must proceed by framing the content asserted in terms of the overall organization of the work. He distinguishes between grammatical interpretation and psychological interpretation. The former studies how a work is composed from general ideas, the latter considers the peculiar combinations that characterize the work as a whole. Schleiermacher said that every problem of interpretation is a problem of understanding. He even defined hermeneutics as the art of avoiding misunderstanding. He provides a solution to avoidance of misunderstanding: knowledge of grammatical and psychological laws in trying to understand the text and the writer. There arose in his time a fundamental shift from understanding not only the exact words and their objective meaning to individuality of the speaker or author.^[16][11]

[edit] Dilthey

This section requires expansion.

Wilhelm Dilthey^[17] broadened hermeneutics even more by relating interpretation to all historical objectifications. Understanding moves from the outer manifestations of human action and productivity to explore their inner meaning. In his last important essay "The Understanding of Others and Their Manifestations of Life" (1910), Dilthey makes it clear that this move from outer to inner, from expression to what is expressed, is not based on empathy. Empathy involves a direct identification with the other. Interpretation involves an indirect or mediated understanding that can only be attained by placing human expressions in their historical context. Understanding is not a process of reconstructing the state of mind of the author, but one of articulating what is expressed in the work.

[edit] Heidegger

This section requires expansion.

Since Dilthey, the discipline of hermeneutics has detached itself from this central task and broadened its spectrum to all texts, including multimedia and to understanding the bases of meaning. In the 20th century, Martin Heidegger's philosophical hermeneutics shifted the focus from interpretation to existential understanding, which was treated more as a direct, non-mediated, thus in a sense more authentic way of being in the world than simply as a way of knowing.

Advocates of this approach claim that such texts, and the people who produce them, cannot be studied using the same scientific methods as the natural sciences, thus use arguments similar to that of antipositivism. Moreover, they claim that such texts are conventionalized expressions of the experience of the author; thus, the interpretation of such texts will reveal something about the social context in which they were formed, but, more significantly, provide the reader with a means to share the experiences of the author. Among the key thinkers of this approach is the sociologist Max Weber.

[edit] Contemporary hermeneutics

This section requires expansion.

Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutics is a development of the hermeneutics of his teacher, Heidegger.

Paul Ricoeur developed a hermeneutics based on Heidegger's concepts, although his own work differs in many ways from that of Gadamer's.

Andrés Ortíz-Osés has developed his Symbolic Hermeneutics as the Mediterranean response to north European Hermeneutics. His main statement regarding the symbolic understanding of the world is that the meaning is the symbolic healing of the real injury.

[edit] Critical theory

Jürgen Habermas criticized the conservatism of previous hermeneutics, especially Gadamer, because the focus on tradition seemed to undermine possibilities for social criticism and transformation. Habermas also criticized Marxism and previous members of the Frankfurt School for missing the hermeneutical dimension of critical theory. Habermas incorporated the notion of the lifeworld and emphasized the importance of both interaction and communication as well as labor and production for social theory. For Habermas, hermeneutics is one dimension of critical social theory.

[edit] Themes

This section requires expansion.

[edit] Hermeneutic circle

This section requires expansion.

The hermeneutic circle describes the process of understanding a text hermeneutically. It refers to the idea that one's understanding of the text as a whole is established by reference to the individual parts and one's understanding of each individual part by reference to the whole. Neither the whole text nor any individual part can be understood without reference to one another, and hence, it is a circle. However, this circular character of interpretation does not make it impossible to interpret a text, rather, it stresses that the meaning of text must be found within its cultural, historical, and literary context.

With Schleiermacher, hermeneutics begins to stress the importance of the interpreter in the process of interpretation. Schleiermacher's hermeneutics focuses on the importance of the interpreter understanding the text as a necessary stage to interpreting it. Understanding, for Schleiermacher, does not simply come from reading the text, but involves knowledge of the historical context of the text and the psychology of the author.

For Postmodernists, the Hermeneutic Circle is especially problematic. This is the result of the fact that in addition to only being able to know the world through the words we use to describe it, we are also confronted with the problem that "whenever people try to establish a certain reading of a text or expression, they allege other readings as the ground for their reading" ^[18]. In other words, "All meaning systems are open-ended systems of signs referring to signs referring to signs. No concept can therefore have an ultimate, unequivocal meaning" ^[19].

For some, there is evidence of some signs corresponding to real things, as in science. This is a basis for true statements, facts, and universals. Universal ideas are a starting place for what is common for all humans, as in basic mathematical propositions.

[edit] Meaning

The possibility of communication between different beings depends on them being able to agree on the meanings of the signs they may exchange. The great question is, how do we know whether someone else understands the same thing we do when we use language to try to communicate with them, and how do we know that we understand the language the same way the other person did when they issued it? This question has immense practical importance in every field, particularly in such fields as law.

One approach to this is discussed in what has come to be called the theory of mind, or the part of it concerned with building internal mental models of the minds of others, and finding ways in which their understandings of words is similar to or different from our own. Neurologists and others have found that the facility for doing that can be located at a particular site in the brains of human beings, and that damage to that site can render the person unable to understand the behavior of others or how their thinking and feeling might differ from one's own. Some persons may also have enhanced ability to understand the minds of others, compared to most other people.

Much postmodern thought treats all meaning as conventional among contemporaries, but sometimes we need to understand words the way they were understood by people no longer available to interrogate until we can be satisfied that our understandings agree, and we want to be as certain as we can that we understand the words the way the originators did. This includes such things as judicial interpretation of constitutions, statutes, contracts, treaties, and historical interpretation of the historical record, especially writings.

[edit] Horizon

This section requires expansion.

Hans-Georg Gadamer describes the process of interpreting a text as the fusion of one's own horizon with the horizon of the text. He has defined horizon as "The totality of all that can be realized or thought about by a person at a given time in history and in a particular culture."^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Applications

[edit] Archeology

In archeology, hermeneutics means the interpretation and understanding of material by analysing possible meanings or social use. Proponents argue that interpretation of artifacts is unavoidably hermeneutic as we cannot know for certain the meaning behind them, instead we can only apply modern value in the interpretation. This is most common in stone tools, for example, where using descriptions such as "scraper" can be highly subjective and unproven. Opponents claim that a hermeneutic approach is too relativist and that their own interpretations are based on common-sense evaluation.

[edit] Sociology

In sociology, hermeneutics means the interpretation and understanding of social events by analysing their meanings to the human participants and their culture. It enjoyed prominence during the sixties and seventies, and differs from other interpretative schools of sociology in that it emphasizes the importance of the content as well as the form of any given social behaviour. The central principle of hermeneutics is that it is only possible to grasp the meaning of an action or statement by relating it to the whole discourse or world-view from which it originates: for instance, putting a piece of paper in a box might be considered a meaningless action unless put in the context of democratic elections, and the action of putting a ballot paper in a box. One can frequently find reference to the 'hermeneutic circle': that is, relating the whole to the part and the part to the whole. Hermeneutics in sociology was most heavily influenced by German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer ^[20].

The field of marketing has adopted this term from sociology, using the term to refer to qualitative studies in which interviews with (or other forms of text from) one or a small number of people are closely read, analyzed, and interpreted.

[edit] Law

Some scholars argue that law and theology constitute particular forms of hermeneutics because of their need to interpret legal tradition / scriptural texts. Moreover, the problem of interpretation is central to legal theory at least since the 11th century. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the schools of glossatores, commentatores and usus modernus distinguished themselves by their approach to the interpretation of "laws" (mainly, Justinian's Corpus Iuris Civilis). The University of Bologna gave birth to a "legal Renaissance" in the 11th century, when the Corpus Iuris Civilis was rediscovered and started to be systematically studied by people like Irnerius and Gratianus. It was an interpretative Renaissance. After that, interpretation has always been at the center of legal thought. Savigny and Betti, among others, made significant contributions also to general hermeneutics. Legal interpretivism, most famously Ronald Dworkin's, might be seen as a branch of philosophical hermeneutics.

[edit] Computer science

Researchers in computer science, especially those dealing with artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, knowledge representation, and protocol analysis, have not failed to notice the commonality of interest that they share with hermeneutics researchers in regard to the character of interpretive agents and the conduct of interpretive activities. For instance, in the abstract to their 1986 AI Memo, Mallery, Hurwitz, and Duffy have the following to say:

Hermeneutics, a branch of continental European philosophy concerned with human understanding and the interpretation of written texts, offers insights that may contribute to the understanding of meaning, translation, architectures for natural language understanding, and even to the methods suitable for scientific inquiry in AI.

—Mallery, Hurwitz, Duffy, 1986.

[edit] International Relations

Insofar as hermeneutics is a cornerstone of both critical theory and constitutive theory, both of which have made important inroads into the postpositivist branch of international relations theory and political science, hermeneutics has been applied to international relations (IR). Steve Smith (Academic) refers to hermeneutics as the principal way of grounding a foundationalist yet postpositivist IR theory such as critical theory. An example of a postpositivist yet anti-foundationalist IR paradigm would be radical postmodernism.

[edit] Religion and theology

The process by which theological texts are understood relies on a particular hermeneutical viewpoint. Theorists like Paul Ricoeur have applied modern philosophical hermeneutics to theological texts (in Ricoeur's case, the Bible).

[edit] Architecture

Though the interpretation of buildings is clearly of abiding interest, there are several traditions of architectural scholarship that draw explicitly on the hermeneutics of Heidegger and Gadamer. Of note is the work of Lindsay Jones^[21] on the way architecture is received and how that reception changes over time and according to context, ie how a building is interpreted by critics, users, historians, etc. Dalibor Vesely situates hermeneutics within a critique of the application of overly-scientific thinking to architecture.^[22] This tradition fits within a critique of the Enlightenment,^[23] but it has also informed design studio teaching. Snodgrass values historical study and the study of Asian cultures by architects as hermeneutical encounters with otherness ^[24]. He also deploys arguments from hermeneutics to explain design as a process of interpretation^[25]. With Richard Coyne he extends the argument to a consideration of the nature of architectural education and design as a way of thinking.^[26] The latter also expands to a consideration of the use of computers in design.^[27]. Alberto Perez-Gomez is also well known for his application of phenomenology and hermeneutics to architectural history.

[edit] References

[edit] Sources

• Text of On Interpretation, as translated by E. M. Edghill
• Aristotle, On Interpretation, Harold P. Cooke (trans.), in Aristotle, vol. 1 (Loeb Classical Library), pp. 111–179. London: William Heinemann, 1938.
• Ebeling, Gerhard, "The New Hermeneutics and the Early Luther", Theology Today, vol. 21.1, April 1964, pp. 34-46. Eprint.
• Plato, Ion, Paul Woodruff (trans.) in Plato, Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997, pp. 937-949.
• Ramberg, Bjørn, and Gjesdal, Kristin, "Hermeneutics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2005 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Eprint.
• Klein, Ernest, Dr., A complete etymological dictionary of the English language: dealing with the origin of words and their sense development thus illustrating the history of civilization and culture, Elsevier, Oxford, 2000
• Alcalay, Reuben, The complete Hebrew-English dictionary Vol.1, Chemed Books, New York, 1996

[edit] Recommended readings

• Köchler, Hans, "Zum Gegenstandsbereich der Hermeneutik", in Perspektiven der Philosophie, vol. 9 (1983), pp. 331-341.
• Peirce, C.S., Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vols. 1–6, Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (eds.), vols. 7–8, Arthur W. Burks (ed.), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931–1935, 1958. Cited as CP vol.para.
• Peirce, C.S. (c. 1903), "Logical Tracts, No. 2", in Collected Papers, CP 4.418–509. Eprint.
• Khan, Ali, "The Hermeneutics of Sexual Order". Eprint.

[edit] See also

Biblical hermeneutics Qura'nic hermeneutics Computational semiotics Content analysis Deconstruction Discourse analysis Exegesis Interpretation Knowledge representation Literary criticism

Literary theory Meaning (linguistics) Meaning (non-linguistic) Meaning (semiotics) Pesher Philology Semeiotic Semiosis Semiotics

Sign Sign relation Syncretism Tafsir Talmudical hermeneutics Theory of mind Truth Truth theory Understanding Wesleyan Quadrilateral Wikiversity: Center of Hermeneutics

[edit] External links

• Bibliology and Hermeneutics Course", The Theology Program B&Haudio and video resources from an Evangelcial perspective
• Ferré, Frederick, "Metaphor in Religious Discourse", Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Eprint
• Köchler, Hans, "Philosophical Foundations of Civilizational Dialogue. The Hermeneutics of Cultural Self-comprehension versus the Paradigm of Civilizational Conflict." International Seminar on Civilizational Dialogue (3rd: 15-17 September 1997: Kuala Lumpur), BP171.5 ISCD. Kertas kerja persidangan / conference papers. Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Library, 1997.
• Mallery, John C., Hurwitz, Roger, and Duffy, Gavan, "Hermeneutics: From Textual Explication to Computer Understanding?", 1986, PDF
• Mantzavinos, C. "Naturalistic Hermeneutics", Cambridge University Press
• Masson, Scott. "The Hermeneutic Circle" http://www.amazon.com/Romanticism-Hermeneutics-Sciences-Nineteenth-Century/dp/0754635031/ref=sr_1_1/105-6534813-1358802?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1185904832&sr=8-1]
• Palmer, Richard E., "The Liminality of Hermes and the Meaning of Hermeneutics", Eprint
• Palmer, Richard E., "The Relevance of Gadamer's Philosophical Hermeneutics to Thirty-Six Topics or Fields of Human Activity", Lecture Delivered at the Department of Philosophy, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, 01 Apr 1999, Eprint
• Quintana Paz, Miguel Ángel, "On Hermeneutical Ethics and Education", a paper on the relevance of Gadamer's Hermeneutics for our understanding of Music, Ethics and our Education in both.
• Ramberg, Bjorn, and Gjesdal, Kristin, "Hermeneutics", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Eprint
• Szesnat, Holger, "Philosophical Hermeneutics", Webpage
• Law and Hermeneutics in Rabbinic Jurisprudence: A Maimonidean Perspective by Jose Faur, describing the legal theory and hermeneutical process in rabbinic jurisprudence
• Abductive Inference and Literary Theory – Pragmatism, Hermeneutics and Semiotics written by Uwe Wirth

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