HERMENEUTICAL METHOD: ORIGIN, CHARACTERISTICS, STEPS AND EXAMPLE - PHILOSOPHY - 2025

The hermeneutical method corresponds to a technique of interpretation of texts, writings or artistic works from different fields. Its main purpose is to serve as an aid in the comprehensive area of ​​a text.

The term "hermeneutics" comes from the Greek ἑρμηνευτικὴτέχνη (hermeneutiké tejne), which in turn is composed of three words: hermeneuo, which means "to decipher"; tekhné, which means "art"; and the suffix –tikos that refers to the expression “related to”.

The hermeneutical method corresponds to the analysis of texts of various characteristics. Source: pixabay, com

In its beginnings, hermeneutics was used in theology for the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. Later, from the 19th century on, it was used in other disciplines such as philosophy, law and literature, becoming a complementary element of great importance.

Origin

From the etymological point of view, the word "hermeneutics" comes from the name of the god Hermes, and refers to his function as a messenger of the god Zeus - father of gods and men - before mortals.

Also of Zeus before Hades -god of the underworld-, and of the latter before mortals, for which he had to interpret or translate and mediate.

Teleological hermeneutics, which was called perceptual, sought the reformist interpretation of the Bible, since for the reformists the interpretation that the dogmatic tradition of the Church made of the Bible distorted its true meaning.

Middle Ages

Plato was the one who spoke of hermeneutics as a special technique of interpretation in oracles or divine designs, and his disciple Aristotle considered it essential in the understanding of discourses.

Aristotle considered speech as an effort to mediate, which is to translate thought into words that enable the interlocutor to understand what intelligence wants to convey.

In this stage, hermeneutics was the fundamental basis for the exegesis of biblical texts that was carried out from Christian and Jewish pulpits.

It was used in a literal or symbolic sense; the literal made a linguistic textual study, and the symbolic one focuses on the hidden meaning of said text, delving more deeply into the literal sense of the text.

Modern age

Hermeneutics as we know it today was outlined at the beginning of the Modern Age. Before this, this Greek word was not known, nor was it used as a terminology to refer to a theory of methods of interpretation.

According to various authors, this word was used for the first time as a title in a work by the exegete Dannhauer in 1654, who replaced the word interpretatio with "hermeneutics" in his work Hermeneutics sacra sive methodus ex ponedarum sacrarum litterarum.

Thus, from that moment on, the word interpretatio was replaced by "hermeneutics" in most of the titles of writings, manuscripts, speeches and books of that time, especially in the works of biblical exegesis by Protestant authors.

At the end of the 18th century, in Catholic theology it began to be replaced by the word hermeneutic in different works, such as the works of Fischer Institutiones hermeneuticae Novi Testamenti, or that of Arigler, called Hermeneutica generalis.

At the same time the first German works appeared that used the same term. This period is known as romantic hermeneutics.

Contemporary age

Friedrich Schleiermacher

Schleiermacher is credited with the title of father of hermeneutics. Despite the existence of previous hermeneutics, he proposed that through the systematization of this element it was feasible to access an understanding that was aware of the wonders of the human sciences.

This he proposed as an alternative to the positivist current, which said that knowledge of the world was exhausted in objectivity and in the exposition of natural laws with which an explanation of the events of the universe could be given.

Schleiermacher considered positivism to be full of excessive claims and incapable of grasping the complexity of the phenomena of the human sciences.

Schleiermacher's general hermeneutics conceived of understanding as a skill, in which the action of understanding is generated inversely to the act of speaking. While in the act of speaking something is thought and then a word is manifested, in the act of understanding one must start from the word to arrive at what is thought.

On the other hand, Schleiermacher's general hermeneutics is devoted to the understanding of language. For this it makes use of two aspects: one grammatical and the other psychological or technical.

The first aspect - the grammatical one - explains the expressions with which it deals from a general linguistic context, while the technical or psychological is based on the fact that people do not think the same things despite using the same words. The task of this psychological field is to decipher the meaning from the soul that produces it.

In this way, the concept of hermeneutics underwent important transformations at this time and a differentiation between sacred and profane was created: the former is represented by the novelty of Friedrich Schleiermacher's general hermeneutics; and the second is focused on classical antiquity.

Wilhelm Dilthey

Based partially on the general hermeneutics of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) conceived it as a historical interpretation based on prior knowledge of the data of the reality that one tries to understand.

Dilthey stated that hermeneutics is capable of making a historical era understand better than those who lived in it could understand it.

History is a man-left document that precedes any other text. It is the horizon of understanding, from which any phenomenon of the past can be understood and vice versa.

The importance of Dilthey is that he is said to have observed the mere hermeneutical problem, that life can only understand life through meanings that are exposed by means of signs that are transcendent and rise above the historical flow.

Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger redirected hermeneutics by giving it an ontological approach, from the being of man as a subject that experiences this activity.

He agreed with the approach made by Dilthey when he considered hermeneutics as a self-explanation of the compression of life, since this is an essential feature of man.

Thus, the principles of hermeneutics on which Heidegger based himself are as follows. On the one hand, understanding is the very being of man, who uses understanding to solve situations in which he lives as satisfactorily as possible.

On the other hand, the self-understanding that exists in this context originates as a consequence of familiarity with the everyday reality of things.

Likewise, Heidegger called the understanding process hermeneutical circle, which is an anticipatory structure of every act of understanding, without which we could not live coherently because we seek to identify every new situation with something that has already been previously experienced by us.

The other principles to which this philosopher refers are temporality and language. Temporality introduces the finite and historical character of all understanding and interpretation of being, while language is the channel that enables the articulation of interpretation and that is established in the structures of man's being.

Hans-georg gadamer

He was a disciple of Heidegger and is considered the father of philosophical hermeneutics. He achieved worldwide fame with his work Truth and Method, published in 1960.

Gadamer, like his teacher, does not understand compression as a system of norms aimed at the correct understanding of certain types of phenomena, but rather as a reflection on what happens in man when he really understands.

Thus, for Gadamer hermeneutics is the examination of conditions in which understanding has a place, and it must consider the way in which a relationship is expressed as a transmission of tradition through language, and not as an object to be understood and interpret.

So that understanding is the linguistic act par excellence; allows us to understand the meaning of something that is linguistic in nature, which allows us to grasp the meaning of a reality. This corresponds to the center of hermeneutical thought exposed by Gadamer.

characteristics

-Conceive that the human being by nature is interpretive.

-The hermeneutical circle is infinite. There is no absolute truth, but hermeneutics expresses its own truth.

-The truth can only be partial, transitory and relative.

-Hermeneutics is deconstructive, which means that only by deconstructing life, it will be rebuilt in another way.

-There is no scientific method

-The individual cannot be separated from the object.

Steps of the hermeneutical method

Some authors indicate that hermeneutical research has three main phases and two levels.

The stages refer to the establishment of a group of text called "canon" to interpret, the interpretation of those texts and the establishment of theories.

Thus, it is appreciated that the first stage of the hermeneutical method corresponds to the empirical level and the other two stages belong to the interpretive level, so the research arises after an exploration of the bibliography and the identification of a problem.

In this sense, below we will describe the most relevant steps that all hermeneutical research must include:

Identification of a problem (according to the bibliography on the subject)

In any method that is applied for the development of an investigation with the goal of achieving the stated objective, the problem statement is carried out.

This approach can be done in different ways: either by asking questions or simply by identifying the situation to be investigated.

Identification of relevant texts (according to the empirical stage)

In this stage, all the texts used are taken into account -including the essays that were made in the research process to strengthen creativity, narrative and text production- in order to create new theories in the educational field. Researchers could use their own readers or topics.

Text validation

Responds to the researcher's internal questions about whether the quantity and quality of texts is appropriate for making interpretations. This is called internal criticism.

Analysis of data

It is also called a search for patterns in the texts, and it has to do with the fact that, when analyzing the extracted data, the researcher has no limits regarding the type and number of data that must be analyzed. On the contrary, the researcher is the one who sets his own limits and chooses the number of samples to study.

Likewise, there are multiple hermeneutical approaches that comprise theories, the explanation of patterns and the generation of an interpretation.

The texts are analyzed in the area in which they were created, separately, in sections and according to the approach that the author wanted to give, to later form the complete writer in an integral whole.

Dialectics

It is also known for the relationship of the new interpretation with the existing ones. That is, after making an individual interpretation in an investigation, it does not end there, but rather opens to the methodological community in an existential way.

Examples

Adam and Eve

An example of the method of hermeneutics in sacred hermeneutics. It is constituted by what the Bible mentions about the serpent that tempted Eve and Adam in paradise to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; after doing so they were expelled from the Garden of Eden.

Then, it is worth wondering if the serpent was spiritual or was really a serpent, since in the Gospel of Saint Luke, chapter 10, verse 16 to 20, Jesus Christ identifies it as a demonic spirit, as a representation of evil and disobedience.

Lamps and drawers

The following phrase is widely used in everyday life and can help both to develop and understand the method of hermeneutics: “There is no person who lights a lamp to store it inside a drawer; rather, she places it on top of the shelf so that it can illuminate the entire space ”.

The above text has multiple interpretations. The most widely accepted is the one that refers to the fact that the writer wants to convey that nobody has things to keep them but that they are to be used, or also that talents should not be hidden but should be exploited.

References

1. Machado, M. “Application of the Hermeneutical Method. A look at the horizon ”(2017) in Red Social Educativa. Retrieved on April 8, 2019 fromRed Social Educativa: redsocial.rededuca.ne
2. Aranda, F. "Origin, development, dimensions and regionalization of hermeneutics (What does hermeneutic activity consist of?)" (2005) in Academia. Retrieved on April 7, 2019 from Academia: academia.edu
3. De la Maza, L. "Foundations of hermeneutical philosophy: Heidegger and Gadamer" (2005) in Scielo. Retrieved on April 7, 2019 from Scielo: cielo.conicyt.cl
4. "The hermeneutical analysis" (2018) in LiterarySomnia. Retrieved on April 8, 2019 from LiterarySomnia: literarysomnia.com
5. Addeo, F. "Hermeneutic as a Research Method" (S / F) in Academia. Retrieved on April 8, 2019 from Academia: academia.edu
6. "Hermeneutics" (S / F) in Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved April 7, 2019 from Encyclopedia Britannica: britannica.com