1. Cultural products are "texts" (understood in a broad sense) and must be interpreted as such. [49]
2. The primary function of a text is to communicate meaning from an "author" to a "reader".
3. The primary aim of textual analysis is understanding, not explanation.
4. "Language", also understood in a broad sense, is the primary medium of the communication of meanings. [50]
Schleiermacher and the Romantics stressed the significance
of individuality based on inner life and reflection --
subjectivity -- within communities of subjects (family,
nation, church, etc.) This emphasis on the individual and particular
was in contrast to the Enlightenment emphasis on universal truths
and objective (scientific, mathematical) explanations. Understanding
practiced as an "art" replaced Reason as the ultimate
human activity.
"Culture was thus the outcome of this reciprocal interaction between irreducible subjects self-consciously aware of their own uniqueness and the various communities in which their personalities could find expression....Subject and community thus lived in and through one another and culture was the organic, living result of the historical unfolding of this reciprocal interaction." [51]
The model for communication is dialogue between author and reader brought about by the sharing of an author's thoughts expressed through the text.
Two aspects of interpretation:
1. With respect to grammatical interpretation, we must understand the individual words to understand a sentence. But the individual words are understandable only in the context of the sentence. (The same relation applies to paragraphs and chapters in a book.) [52]
2. With respect to psychological ("technical") interpretation, "we can not understand the thought or concept of an author without understanding the general biographical and historical context in which the thought or concept arose". But this is possible only if we already know what contextual factors are relevant. And to determine that, we must understand the thought or concept of the author. [53]
3. In a general sense, we must understand the parts in order to grasp the whole, and vice versa.
Dilthey was influential in the development of what came to be known as "lebensphilosophie", i.e. a philosophy of "lived experience". It was a philosophical practice based on commonly shared, everyday skills and insights. This approach was in sharp contrast to the major system building philosophies which took natural science as the model for knowledge.
Dilthey distinguished between the "natural" and the "human" sciences. He argued that the human sciences are irreducible to the natural sciences. Lebensphilosophie was one (perhaps the first) attempt to provide a separate philosophical approach to the social sciences and humanities based on the key concept of understanding as distinct from so-called "objective" Reason.
Dilthey's model of human understanding can be represented schematically
in the following way:
Reason was not the defining feature of human understanding and action. For Dilthey, "[r]eason, feeling, aesthetic appreciation, and so forth were all merely different manifestations or modalities of understanding." [54]
Culture was described as..."the objectification
of the meanings that make up lived experience. And understanding
as "the process by which we interpret these objectifications
of lived experience in order to gain access to the lived experiences
that they express." [54]
1. All understanding starts from one's "preunderstanding" and "Being in the world" (Dasein). It arises out of a questioning and a purpose. Thus, disinterestedness in its pure form is an impossibility. [55]
2. All interpretation requires an articulation -- a "saying" or statement of the meaning of a text. But "saying" also entails a "concealment" -- an exclusion or focus which leaves the "preunderstanding" (context and interests) "unsaid". Thus, hermeneutics must attend to both the "saying" and the "unsaid". [56]
3. Heidegger emphasized that meanings were not objects that could be exchanged, but were part of "temporality". Articulating this involved a reconception of "past", "present", and "future" which Heidegger referred to as temporal ek-stases -- the ways in which human being, Dasein, "stands out or away" from itself. [56]
For Heidegger, then, hermeneutics is "an engaged appropriation
of what is significant from the past, growing out of present concerns,
in anticipation of a meaningful future." [57]
For Gadamer, "the interpretive activity of understanding is the condition for the emergence of any truth, prior to and independent of any subsequently adopted method". [60]
What is truth and how is it uncovered prior to any method? All understanding takes place within a "horizon". "Historicality and linguisticality together constitute the ultimate horizon of all human understanding." [60]
A "fusion of horizons" is an event which occurs when "we bring the prejudgments of our own tradition to bear on the historical horizon of the text itself, through interpretation". Thus is not a reductive appropriation of a text to either pole, but a dialogue within which new meaning is created.
Meaning does not reside in "the subjective feelings of the interpreter" nor in "the intentions of the author". [61] Rather, meaning emerges from the engagement of reader and text. A question is posed -- a set of interests are put into play as one reads the text. As the engagement develops, the text poses its own questions -- the interests and concerns surrounding the writing of the text. Through this process, both reader and text are changed.
According to Heidegger and Gadamer, all of this depends on
language as well as history. Both are essential
components of understanding in that they create the environment
-- the medium -- within which human understanding is made possible.
Geertz applies hermeneutics to the description and interpretation of social practices and cultural events. He claims that there is no unambiguous object of ethnographic interpretation. Description and interpretation are further complicated by language differences and communicative practices.
© T. R. Quigley, 1998