HERMENEUTICS

 What is it?

Hermeneutics is the art of interpreting texts, the term hermeneutics refers to Greek mythology, that is, to Hermes, the messenger of the gods, to whom is attributed the creation of that which serves understanding among human beings: language and writing. The word hermeneutics also alludes to the art of understanding.

Philosophers:

• Wilhelm Dilthey (1833 - 1911), a Philosophers, historian, sociologist, psychologist and hermeneutics scholar, focused on the study of interpretations and meaning of texts of German origin.

• Friedrich Scheleiermacher (1967) criticized hermeneutics for its unity and proposed a series of basic principles for interpretation.

•   Martin Heidegger (1974) affirms that hermeneutics is not a method that can be designed, he also maintains that the human being is an interpretative being.

Theorists:

•  Hans-Georg Gadamer (1984) thinks that we will never have an objective knowledge of the meaning of a text or of anything else.

•   Paul Ricoeur (1969 - 1971) proposes hermeneutics as the most appropriate method for the human sciences.

Hermeneutic circle

Phases:

1.  In this first phase, the interpreter must recognize in his initial assumptions the historicity of his thinking, in order to then be able to derive a more satisfactory reading of the text.

2.       .   In this second phase the interpreter transcends the reductions of his or her prenotations and ventures into a more complex understanding of the work.

Kinds

• Empathic hermeneutics: Art where the interpreter puts himself in the author's place, through the knowledge of vital relationships.

•  Historical-philosophical hermeneutics: understanding of the texts of the great thinkers.

•  Theological hermeneutics: understanding of biblical texts.

• Legal hermeneutics: understanding of laws.

• Romantic hermeneutics: It is the one that seeks to understand the text better than the author can do. 

• Methodological hermeneutics: It is a research method for social and human sciences.

• Reconstructive hermeneutics: transcends understanding to propose social transformations.

• Bureaucratization: Increased instrumentalization of the world.

• Monitoring: reduction of life into a commodity.

• Dilthey's work: concentrates on the attempt at the methodological and systematic foundation of the sciences of the spirit.

•  Sciences of the spirit: study man and take him as he knows himself: soul, consciousness, spirit.

•  Sciences of nature: sciences that deal with the physical, chemical and mathematical aspects of the world.

• Hermeneutic circle: constant and perfectible understanding of the same text.

•  Historicity: Consciousness of the change of history.