Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics is the theory and methodology of interpretation, originating in the exegesis of religious texts and expanded by nineteenth-century German philosophy into a general account of how meaning is possible at all. The central problem: understanding a text (or any cultural artifact) requires grasping its context, but grasping its context requires understanding the text — the hermeneutic circle. Rather than a vicious regress, the circle is the normal structure of all interpretation: understanding proceeds by iterating between part and whole, text and context, until they cohere.

Hans-Georg Gadamer's Truth and Method (1960) radicalized hermeneutics by arguing that interpretation is never context-free — every interpreter brings a "horizon" of prior understanding, and understanding is the fusion of horizons between interpreter and text. This means there is no view from nowhere in interpretation, which has consequences for cultural relativism (Gadamer's hermeneutics supports methodological, not philosophical, relativism) and for philosophy of science (theory-ladenness of observation is a hermeneutic claim).

The competing tradition, associated with E.D. Hirsch, insists that the author's intended meaning is the proper object of interpretation — against which all readings can be evaluated objectively. The debate between Gadamerian and Hirschian hermeneutics maps onto the broader contest between constructivism and realism in the theory of meaning. See also Phenomenology and Structuralism.