Interpretivism: the way of hermeneutics

The term ‘hermeneutics’ came into modem use in the seventeenth century in the context of biblical studies. Hermeneutics was, and is, the science of biblical interpretation. It provides guidelines for scholars as they engage in the task of interpreting Scripture. The actual explanation of what a biblical text means is known as exegesis. Behind all exegetical activity, governing how it is carried out, lies a complexus of theories, principles, mles and methods. That complexus came to be known as hermeneutics. In broad terms, it could be said that hermeneutics is to exegesis what grammar is to language or logic is to reasoning.

Since then, the word has migrated into many areas of scholarship. Not only has hermeneutics been brought to bear on texts other than the Scriptures, but it has been brought to bear on unwritten sources also— human practices, human events, human situations—in an attempt to ‘read’ these in ways that bring understanding. This outcome squares with the centrality of language in any concept of human being. We are essentially languaged beings. Language is pivotal to, and shapes, the situations in which we find ourselves enmeshed, the events that befall us, the practices we carry out and, in and through all this, the understandings we are able to reach.

An older, more traditional view of language has it representing and articulating our concepts of reality, which in their turn reproduce or reflect reality. As the medieval philosophers would have it, the way things are (ordo essendi) shapes the way we perceive things (ordo cogitandi) and this gets expressed in the way we speak (ordo loquendi). Especially since the ‘linguistic turn’ in philosophy and social science, this has been more or less reversed. It is now language, the way we speak, that is considered to shape what things we see and how we see them, and it is these things shaped for us by language that constitute reality for us. Thus, the ordo loquendi constitutes the ordo cogitandi and, as far as meaningful reality is concerned, even the ordo essendi. Looked at in this light, the realities we have referred to above—our situations, events, practices and meanings—are constituted by language. To bring to bear upon them forms of interpretation that emerged in the first instance as ways of understanding language is not so peculiar after all.

Ricoeur’s famous phrase ‘the symbol gives rise to thought’ expresses the basic premise of hermeneutics: that the symbols of myth, religion, art and ideology all carry messages which may be uncovered by philosophical interpretation. Hermeneutics is defined accordingly as a method for deciphering indirect meaning, a reflective practice of unmasking hidden meanings beneath apparent ones. While this method had originally been used by theologians to investigate the inner meanings of sacred texts, it was radically redeployed by modern thinkers like Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer and Ricoeur to embrace man’s general being in the world as an agent of language. (Kearney 1991, p. 277)

Etymologically ‘hermeneutics’ derives from the Greek word eppriveuei v (hermeneuein), which means ‘to interpret’ or ‘to understand’. Underpinning this meaning in ancient Greek usage are the notions of ‘saying’, ‘explaining’ and ‘translating’, which already suggests the idea of addressing something that is in some way strange, separated in time or place, or outside of one’s experience, with the purpose of rendering it familiar, present and intelligible (Palmer 1969, pp. 12-14).

There is an obvious link between hermeneuein and the god Hermes. Hermes is the fleet-footed divine messenger (he has wings on his feet!). As a messenger, he is bearer of knowledge and understanding. His task is to explain to humans the decisions of the gods. Whether hermeneuein derives from Hermes or the other way round is not certain.

Source: Michael J Crotty (1998), The Foundations of Social Research: Meaning and Perspective in the Research Process, SAGE Publications Ltd; First edition.