Interpretation (hermeneutics)

Interpretation is the activity of assigning and defending meaning in texts, actions, artworks, or other objects of understanding. Hermeneutics examines how this activity works and what makes interpretations warranted.

Hermeneutic circle: A process of understanding in which parts are interpreted through a whole and the whole through its parts. It describes how interpretations refine each other as details and overall meaning are reconsidered.
Biblical exegesis: The critical interpretation of biblical texts, including their language, history, and theological meaning. Biblical commentary supplied a major early setting for systematic reflection on interpretation.
Intentionalism: The view that an author's intended meaning is central to determining a work's meaning. It gives authorial purpose a stronger role than many reader-centered approaches allow.
Legal interpretation: The practice of determining the meaning and application of legal texts, precedents, and constitutional provisions. Legal disputes make explicit how wording, precedent, purpose, and context compete in interpretation.
Historicity: The condition of being shaped by a particular historical situation and its inherited assumptions. Historicity means interpreters and the objects they study belong to histories that affect meaning.
Pre-understanding: The background assumptions and expectations that shape understanding before explicit interpretation begins. It explains why interpretation never starts from a completely neutral standpoint.
Friedrich Schleiermacher: A German theologian and philosopher who developed a general theory of textual understanding. He helped extend hermeneutics beyond specialized interpretation of scripture and law.
Reader-response criticism: A family of literary approaches that treats readers' activity as central to the production of meaning. It locates meaning partly in the encounter between a work and its interpreters.
Historical method: The practices historians use to investigate and explain the past from surviving evidence. Historical interpretation tests claims against sources whose meanings depend on their circumstances.
Horizons of understanding: The historically formed range of assumptions and possibilities through which something can be understood. The idea clarifies how understanding can change through engagement with unfamiliar perspectives.

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AestheticsRelated: Interpretation helps explain how context changes the perceived significance of an artwork.