Monday, August 3, 2009
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Hermeneutics!
The subscript for this blog daringly proclaims: "Adventures in Hermeneutics". But what is hermeneutics, anyway? I find it helpful to remind myself of this on occasion. No matter what discipline you're in, its always good to think about its premises as a totality from time to time, so that you don't miss the forest for the trees, as they say. I make that mistake all the time, but I'm working on it, among other things.
Thankfully, one of the many wonders of the internet is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, an reliable, scholarly and academic source that is completely free. They define hermeneutics (in the "Hermeneutics" entry) this way: "The term hermeneutics covers both the first order art and the second order theory of understanding and interpretation of linguistic and non-linguistic expressions." So in a nutshell, hermeneutics is the art of interpreting anything that human beings have made, and includes theories proposing the most ideal ways to accomplish this (such as aesthetic theories advocating a particular approach, {e.g. Emotivism, the idea that a work of art is successful insofar as it conveys emotion effectively}). Hermeneutics started out as being the art of interpreting sacred religious texts (so, something like Biblical hermeneutics refers to a discipline in theology, usually) and later legal texts. These days, however, hermeneutics has expanded to include everything from ontology (the study of being) to semiotics (the study of signs and their meanings). I don't know nearly enough about the history of modern hermeneutics to make any sweeping statements about the last 200 years other than the fact that the expansion of the scope of hermeneutics has lead to some interesting ideas about what we can interpret and how.
In The Glass Bead Game, Hermann Hesse puts into the mouth of one of his characters: "We should be mindful of everything, for we can interpret everything"(p.67 of the Bantam ed.). That's my basic philosophy about the importance of interpretation. I originally became interested in it, although I had no knowledge of the discipline itself, from listening to Kate Bush records. I would listen & think "So, this woman is screaming about Houdini, but what the hell does it mean?" Like all philosophy, I suppose hermeneutics begins in wonder, a wonder at what a piece of music, a novel or a painting means. Consequently, most of my day-to-day thinking amounts to trying to figure out what various things mean, anything from TV commercials to works of installation art. But can we ever give a definitive interpretation of anything, beyond the most obvious things that can be said about it? This, like many other questions, remains open.
Thankfully, one of the many wonders of the internet is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, an reliable, scholarly and academic source that is completely free. They define hermeneutics (in the "Hermeneutics" entry) this way: "The term hermeneutics covers both the first order art and the second order theory of understanding and interpretation of linguistic and non-linguistic expressions." So in a nutshell, hermeneutics is the art of interpreting anything that human beings have made, and includes theories proposing the most ideal ways to accomplish this (such as aesthetic theories advocating a particular approach, {e.g. Emotivism, the idea that a work of art is successful insofar as it conveys emotion effectively}). Hermeneutics started out as being the art of interpreting sacred religious texts (so, something like Biblical hermeneutics refers to a discipline in theology, usually) and later legal texts. These days, however, hermeneutics has expanded to include everything from ontology (the study of being) to semiotics (the study of signs and their meanings). I don't know nearly enough about the history of modern hermeneutics to make any sweeping statements about the last 200 years other than the fact that the expansion of the scope of hermeneutics has lead to some interesting ideas about what we can interpret and how.
In The Glass Bead Game, Hermann Hesse puts into the mouth of one of his characters: "We should be mindful of everything, for we can interpret everything"(p.67 of the Bantam ed.). That's my basic philosophy about the importance of interpretation. I originally became interested in it, although I had no knowledge of the discipline itself, from listening to Kate Bush records. I would listen & think "So, this woman is screaming about Houdini, but what the hell does it mean?" Like all philosophy, I suppose hermeneutics begins in wonder, a wonder at what a piece of music, a novel or a painting means. Consequently, most of my day-to-day thinking amounts to trying to figure out what various things mean, anything from TV commercials to works of installation art. But can we ever give a definitive interpretation of anything, beyond the most obvious things that can be said about it? This, like many other questions, remains open.
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