Schleiemacher - From Hermeneutics

From Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics: The art of understanding

1. Hermeneutics does not yet exist in general.
1. We speak to the art of understanding, not the exposition of the understanding.
2. Having a familiarity with language and the subject can blur understanding.
3. There is a danger with relying on the exceptional qualities of text to determine what they mean.
2. It is difficult to determine the nature of hermeneutics.
1. It was considered a category of logic, but all pretense of logic vanishes during practice.
1. Theories speak to being understood rather than learning how to understand.
3. Hermeneutics is the art of relating discourse and understanding to each other. 
1. Discourse is an outer sphere of thought and requires hermeneutics to be considered as art.
4. Discourse is the median of sharing thought.
1. Discourse is the mediation of thought among individuals.
1. Thought only becomes complete during interior discourse.
1. People require the art of discourse to transform thoughts into expressions that then require exposition.
2. One must come to grasp the underlying thoughts of the speaker.
3. Knowledge is dependent on both discourse and understanding, both language and thought.
5. Understanding derives from the language and as it derives from the mind of the thinker.
1. Every speech derives from a given language.
1. Language comes into being because of discourse.
2. Language is a shared knowledge.
2. Every discourse depends on earlier thought.
1. The art of understanding is progressive in nature.
3. People become a center that language forms around.
1. And as speaker to be understood, but only to the limits of language.
2. Man is always growing, and things become restate with other intellections.
6. Understanding is only an interaction of the two elements.
1. Discourse can be understood as fact of spirit, if it is understood as a characteristic of the language.
1. Language modifies spirit (language modifies being and creative interpretation)
2. Discourse can be understood as the modification of language, if it is understood of the spirit.
1. Language is modified through new experiences and new meaning.
7. Grammatical interpretation and the psychological are equal.
8. The essential hermeneutical task is to handle every part in such a way that the handling of the other parts will produce no change in the results.
1. The grammatical, the psychological, the language and creative interpretation.
9. 9. Exposition is an art.
1. Every part stands by itself.
1. Every composition is a finite certainty out of the infinite uncertainty.
2. Language is an infinite.
3. The psychological is infinite, because every perspective of a individual is infinite.
1. External influences disappear in to the horizon.
2. A composition based in the infinite cannot be defined by rules.
10. The successful performance of the art depends on a linguistic talent and a talent for assessing individual human nature.
1. Linguistic talent is shared
1. but the hermeneutical develops differently.
2. Hermeneutical mistakes occur based on the lack of linguistic talent, or in its faulty application.

• Grammatical - how a word functions in a sentence.
• Psychological - How the sentence affects us.

There is grammatical significance and there is psychological significance.

• Both are always used, but in different proportions.
• But they are not dependent on each other for influence or significance.
• Texts should be critiqued relative to their use of language (grammatical or psychological).

Test should be interpreted relative to their time and significance.

• It is in error to critique an old work relative to contemporary times.
• Things will be out of context.
• New concepts have since developed.

Allegory:

• Presupposes the idea that meaning is lacking in the immediate context,
• and that a figurative example is needed.

Interpreting texts

• Question if the explicit thoughts inspire the implicit.
• The danger is the explicit can inspire something else.
• Myths have no technical interpretation.
• Careless interpretation may inspire interpretation toward a pre-determined goal.
• Or a goal that is easy to attain.
• Two things should be avoided
• Interpreting words out of context of the original speaker
• and giving them different meaning.
• Qualitative error.
• Interpreting the text by giving inappropriate value to the text.
• Leads to qualitative errors.
• Determining something is less important, or more important, than the writer intended.
• There is also a difference between passive and active interpretations.

Interpretation can only occur through positive rules, with an eye toward the negative.

• The objective historical reconstruction considers the text self-contained,
• and examines the discourse relative to the totality of language.
• The subjective historical reconstruction considers the text as the product of the soul.
• It is possible for us to understand a text better than the author,
• Because we have newer concepts.
• One must understand language in the same capacity as the author.
• The history and vocabulary of the time in history.
• The aim is to find the main idea, on which the others can be measure.

Schleiermacher, Friedrich. Hermeneutics. Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. V. B. Leitch (ed). New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2010. 521-540. Print.