A Look at Lawrence K. Schmidt's Understanding Hermeneutics

An Introduction to Understanding Hermeneutics is the Persian title of a book originally called Understanding Hermeneutics, part of the Understanding Movements in Modern Thought series published by Acumen, written by Lawrence K. Schmidt, professor of philosophy at Hendrix College in the United States. This 311-page book, translated by Behnam Khodapanah, has been published by Qoqnoos Publications.

As the title of the book suggests, this work is about hermeneutics and important theories concerning interpretation. By systematically examining the thoughts of major theorists in the field of interpretation, Schmidt provides an introduction to understanding modern hermeneutics. The book is written in seven chapters, and after each heading, key points of that section are mentioned to further clarify the book's content. At the end of each chapter, the key points of that chapter are also listed, aiding in a better understanding of it. We will briefly look at each of its chapters.

The first chapter of the work examines the views and thoughts of the eighteenth-century Protestant theologian, Friedrich Schleiermacher. According to the book's arguments, hermeneutics, for Schleiermacher, is the art of understanding what is expressed in written or spoken language. Every expression in language has a dual relation to the totality of that language and the general thought of the author; therefore, hermeneutics has two interconnected parts: the grammatical part (which relates to the linguistic components of a text) and the psychological part (which is the understanding of the author's thought and the way his ideas are expressed in the text). A problem that almost most theorists in the field of interpretation deal with is the problem of the "hermeneutic circle." The hermeneutic circle is that: to understand the text (the whole), we must understand the meaning of the words (the parts), and to understand the words, we must have an understanding of the text. Schleiermacher's solution in facing the impasse of the hermeneutic circle between the whole and the part is to break this circle by a preliminary (cursory) reading of the text in order to obtain a general understanding of it, so that the relative meaning of the words can be determined. According to Schleiermacher, the interpreter can reconstruct the author's thought and the meaning of his text by using divinatory and comparative methods. For Schleiermacher, hermeneutics requires the interpreter to have a talent for language and understanding others.

The second chapter of the work examines the views and thoughts of Wilhelm Dilthey. The author argues that Dilthey, following Schleiermacher, defined hermeneutics as the science of understanding written records and considers its task to be demonstrating how one can achieve valid understanding objectively in the field of the human sciences. Dilthey's main project is to justify a methodology for the human sciences in contrast to the natural sciences. Accordingly, he distinguishes between the method of the human sciences (understanding) and the method of the natural sciences (explanation). The natural sciences "explain" a phenomenon by subsuming it under causal laws, while the human sciences "understand" the mental or spiritual meanings expressed in external, empirical signs. For Dilthey, humans, unlike physical objects, have an inner mental and emotional life. But we cannot directly and immediately observe another's inner life; rather, we must access it through its empirical manifestations. Methodical understanding is the procedure by which we access the manifestations of other humans' lives, whether they are our contemporaries or in the context of history. Since language is the most complete expression of another's inner life, hermeneutics, as the interpretive understanding of linguistic expressions, models the general procedure of understanding in the human sciences. Dilthey's account of how we can understand another is carefully examined in this chapter.

Chapters three and four are devoted, respectively, to an examination of Heidegger’s views and ideas in his early and later writings. Heidegger, who by shifting attention from the interpretation of texts to an existential interpretation of the human being employs the concept of “hermeneutics” in a completely different way, claims that before we can discuss our knowledge of entities, we must first understand the meaning of Being, especially the meaning of the Being of human beings. Hence philosophy must begin with a precise description of how human beings actually are in real life. This description is phenomenological, because it seeks to understand the human being and its existential structures without importing the presuppositions of traditional metaphysics about it, and its investigation is hermeneutical because this kind of investigation is the interpretive self-understanding that we have of ourselves in life. Thus the hermeneutics of facticity consists of the understanding that Dasein (the human being) has of its own way of being: that is, existence. This analysis reaches its culmination in the book *Being and Time*, of which Schmidt, in the course of explaining Heidegger’s views, provides a precise description of the most important contents. The fourth chapter of the book also examines the later (late) Heidegger’s views on hermeneutics. Accordingly, while the later Heidegger disregards the term “hermeneutics,” language and poetry gain greater importance in his thinking, and the question will be raised as to what extent hermeneutics, even if it is no longer mentioned, remains a part of his thought.

Chapters five and six are devoted to an examination of Gadamer’s views. The author argues that Gadamer provocatively calls the fore-structures of understanding, which Heidegger had identified, “prejudices.” But in his usage, prejudices are not necessarily false; there are also positive prejudices that lead to correct understanding. We inherit our prejudices from our tradition. The epistemological task is to discover those positive prejudices. Understanding is necessarily hermeneutical understanding because, as Heidegger had argued, no one can escape the hermeneutic circle. Understanding, for Gadamer, occurs as a fusion of the past horizon of the text with the present horizon in which the person understands. The central problem of hermeneutics, namely the essential task of application, concerns how the text is brought to speak in the interpreter’s expanded present horizon. Understanding is like a conversation in which the interpreter must listen to and respect the other person’s viewpoints. In this conversation, where various positions are examined, correct understanding is achieved when a position is accepted by all. To explain how this occurs, Gadamer must examine the ontological status of language. He argues that “being that can be understood is language.” Language, in its theoretical being, has the ability to shine forth from itself and convince the parties to the conversation of its truth and veracity. Gadamer concludes that hermeneutical understanding can reveal and guarantee truths that the scientific method is incapable of doing.

Finally, the concluding chapter raises four objections to Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. In this chapter we witness the critiques of Hirsch, Habermas, Ricoeur, and Derrida of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics.

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A Look at Lawrence K. Schmidt’s *Understanding Hermeneutics*

Published in *Farhang-e Emrooz* Magazine, Khordad 1396

Translator: Behnam Khodapanah

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