Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics is the theory and practice of interpretation: how we understand texts, actions and other people, and what makes an interpretation right.

It began with the interpretation of scripture and law and was made into a general theory by Friedrich Schleiermacher in the early nineteenth century. In the twentieth century Hans-Georg Gadamer, in Truth and Method (1960), argued that understanding always happens from within a tradition, and Paul Ricoeur joined hermeneutics to phenomenology. E. D. Hirsch replied that a text's meaning is fixed by its author's intention. On this site hermeneutics answers questions on interpretation (5.2.3), artistic intention and the philosophy of culture.