Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy)

Hermeneutics introduces English-speaking readers to a field of increasing importance in contemporary philosophy and theologyhermeneutics, the theory of understanding, or interpretation. Hermeneutics is concerned with the character of understanding, especially as it is related to interpreting linguistic texts. It goes beyond mere philological methodology, however, to questions of the philosophy of language, the nature of historical understanding, and ultimately the roots of interpretation in existential understanding. Palmer principally treats the conception of hermeneutics enunciated by Heidegger and developed into a philosophical hermeneutics by Hans-Georg Gadamer. He provides a brief overview of the field of hermeneutics by surveying some half-dozen alternate definitions of the term and by examining indetail the contributions of Friedrich Schleiermacher and Wilhelm Dilthey. In the Manifesto which concludes the book, Palmer suggests the potential significance of hermeneutics for literary interpretation. When the context of interpretation is pressed to its limits, hermeneutics becomes the philosophical analysis of what is involved in every act of understanding. In this context, hermeneutics becomes relevant not simply to the humanistic disciplines, in which linguistic and historical understanding are crucial, but to scientific forms of interpretation as well, for it asserts the principles involved in any and every act of interpretation. This book could have been called What Is Hermeneutics? or The Meaning of Hermeneutics, for it is, among other things, a record of its author's own quest for an understanding of a term at once unfamiliar to most educated people and at the same time potentially significant to a number of disciplines concerned with interpretation, especially text interpretation. This study arose out of a more specific project concerning the significance of Bultmannian theory of biblical interpetation for literary theory, during which the need for some fundamental clarification of the development, meaning, and scope of hermeneutics itself became evident. The richly suggestive possibilities of general, nontheological hermeneutics (which actually is the basis for Bultmannian theory and that of the "new hermeneutic") led me to focus solely on the pretheological form of hermeneutics as it relates to theory of literary interpretation. - Preface This classic, first published in 1969, introduces to English-speaking readers a field which is of increasing importance in contemporary philosophy and theology - hermeneutics, the theory of understanding, or interpretation.