Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially of textual sources. It investigates how meaning is produced, understood, and conveyed across different contexts. While its origins lie in the interpretation of religious scriptures, modern hermeneutics also addresses literature, philosophy, law, anthropology, and the social sciences, treating interpretation as a central problem in human understanding.

Historically, hermeneutics emerged from biblical exegesis and classical rhetoric. Friedrich Schleiermacher emphasized the unity of linguistic, psychological, and historical factors in interpretation. Wilhelm Dilthey extended hermeneutics to the human sciences, arguing that understanding arises from reconstructing lived experience. In the 20th century, Hans-Georg Gadamer framed interpretation as a dialogic process in which understanding results from the fusion of the reader’s and the text’s horizons. Paul Ricoeur integrated hermeneutics with phenomenology and critical theory, highlighting narrative meaning and the balance between sympathy and critique.

Core concepts include the hermeneutic circle—the idea that interpretation moves between parts and whole—and the fusion of horizons, where reader and text contribute to meaning. Pre-understandings or prejudices influence interpretation and should be acknowledged. Methods vary by domain, ranging from exegesis and philology to historical-critical analysis, legal interpretation, and literary theory.

Contemporary debates address the hermeneutics of suspicion, which challenges texts for hidden ideologies or power structures, and issues of cross-cultural and postcolonial interpretation, as well as the implications of digital texts. Hermeneutics remains influential in theology, law, literature, philosophy, and the social sciences as a general framework for understanding how humans interpret meaning.