First used in the middle of the 17th century, the term hermeneutics received its current formulation through the work of Dilthey (see below) in the late 19th century. Dilthey distinguished between the kind of knowledge that can be gained from interpretation from the knowledge we can get from the natural, applied and experimental sciences. These provide us with facts, but unconnected and within no framework, they are of little use: “A useless collection of useful facts,” as Innis observed. Such facts become significant when they are integrated into a large whole where they become causal or mediating, conditioning, factors. In short, facts get interesting when they become part of a story. That story is always already an interpretation. Perhaps the most radical formulation of this comes from Nietzsche who observed: “there are no facts, only interpretations.”
So, for example, I write you an email with one word on it, “EXAM.” Now, we all know what the word means. We can agree that “EXAM” — like Latin sentences, lions, the Parisian striptease, the petit-bourgeoisie, and saluting Africans — is part of a code and takes its meanings there from. So, we have an allusion to an important event, and exam, and no sense whatever. Hermeneutics, and discourse analysis (a related approach: See below), would say that before there is anything like meaning “happens,” there has to be discourse: A sentence, a noun, a verb, context, a speaker and action – in effect, a story. In other words, if anything, the smallest unit of spoken or written meaning is to be found in a sentence, and here we only have bare bones. It is in larger statements, texts or discourses, that we actually articulate meanings and contest them, negotiate and recreate reality. Where there is discourse, or any kind, says hermeneutics, there is interpretation.
hermeneutics
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First used in the middle of the 17th century, the term hermeneutics received its current formulation through the work of Dilthey (see below) in the late 19th century. Dilthey distinguished between the kind of knowledge that can be gained from interpretation from the knowledge we can get from the natural, applied and experimental sciences. These provide us with facts, but unconnected and within no framework, they are of little use: “A useless collection of useful facts,” as Innis observed. Such facts become significant when they are integrated into a large whole where they become causal or mediating, conditioning, factors. In short, facts get interesting when they become part of a story. That story is always already an interpretation. Perhaps the most radical formulation of this comes from Nietzsche who observed: “there are no facts, only interpretations.”
So, for example, I write you an email with one word on it, “EXAM.” Now, we all know what the word means. We can agree that “EXAM” — like Latin sentences, lions, the Parisian striptease, the petit-bourgeoisie, and saluting Africans — is part of a code and takes its meanings there from. So, we have an allusion to an important event, and exam, and no sense whatever. Hermeneutics, and discourse analysis (a related approach: See below), would say that before there is anything like meaning “happens,” there has to be discourse: A sentence, a noun, a verb, context, a speaker and action – in effect, a story. In other words, if anything, the smallest unit of spoken or written meaning is to be found in a sentence, and here we only have bare bones. It is in larger statements, texts or discourses, that we actually articulate meanings and contest them, negotiate and recreate reality. Where there is discourse, or any kind, says hermeneutics, there is interpretation.