Knowra Hermeneutics Hermeneutics Hermeneutics is the theory and practice of interpreting texts, actions, and other expressions of meaning. It examines how interpreters use language, context, and prior understanding to make sense of them.
Hermeneutic circle : A process of understanding in which interpretations of parts depend on the whole, while the whole is revised through its parts. It captures how interpretations of a passage and an entire work continually shape one another.
Biblical exegesis : The critical interpretation and explanation of biblical texts. Early hermeneutical methods grew from efforts to interpret scripture across historical and linguistic distances.
Hans-Georg Gadamer : A German philosopher known for a philosophical hermeneutics centered on tradition, dialogue, and historically situated understanding. His account makes the interpreter’s historical situation part of understanding rather than something to eliminate.
Authorial intention : The purpose or meaning an author intended to communicate through a work. Hermeneutics debates whether intended meaning should govern or merely inform interpretation.
Legal interpretation : The practice of determining the meaning and application of legal texts, including statutes and constitutions. Legal interpretation makes explicit the role of text, precedent, purpose, and context in assigning meaning.
Pre-understanding : The prior assumptions, concepts, and expectations that shape how something is understood. Hermeneutics treats interpreters’ prior understanding as a condition of interpretation, not merely an obstacle.
Augustine of Hippo : A late-antique Christian theologian and philosopher whose works shaped Western thought. Augustine addressed signs, language, and interpretive difficulties in reading scripture.
Paul Ricoeur : A French philosopher whose work joined hermeneutics with phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and theories of narrative and metaphor. Ricoeur explored how interpretation can move between suspicion and the recovery of meaning.
New Criticism : A twentieth-century literary movement that treated the text as an autonomous object for close analysis. Its focus on textual structure contrasts with approaches emphasizing historical context and the interpreter’s situation.
Literary criticism : The analysis and evaluation of literary works using interpretive methods and critical frameworks. Literary criticism applies hermeneutical questions to form, historical setting, and meaning.
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