Hermeneutics, ontology and dialogue
02
Feb
The word hermeneutics comes from the Greek hermeneuti, hermeneutik or hermeneia,
in a sense given by Philo of Alexandria as “hermeneia is logos expressed in words, manifestation of thought by word,” so it is associated with the god Hermes.
This god in Greek mythology was a mediator, patron of communication and human understanding whose function was to make the divine message intelligible to men, being attributed both to the origin of oral and written language.
Ontological hermeneutics was developed in the Middle Ages, it was based on the idea that there would be normative forms that allowed from interpretative techniques of texts, to make unique interpretations, but from the beginning it was divided into theological hermeneutics (sacra) and philosophical (profane) hermeneutics, and more recently a legal hermeneutics has emerged.
Plato was the first to use it, with the clear aim of overcoming the relativism of the sophists, but the understanding of this as language is due to the already mentioned Philo and Clement of Alexandria, and later Augustine (354-430) developed it As “Christian doctrine,” which, whatever the reading, is admittedly the most effective in the ancient world.
Plato (427 BC) the first to use it. Philo and Clement of Alexandria will understand it as the manifestation of thought by language. Augustine (354-430), who developed in his “Christian Doctrine” the acknowledged most effective hermeneutical theory of the “ancient world”, will use it as a doctrine of interpretation, especially of the obscure passages of Sacred Scripture, the method may help also a universal vision of using language in the interpretation of philosophical and even scientific texts.
Schleimacher will lend this reading, the idea that it is mainly in obscure passages of the Bible to seek the “living truth” because, he says, this is a search for understanding, or as he says: “understanding means, in principle, with each other” and that knowledge is, in principle, understanding.
Understanding and dialogue are correlates because it implies that not only is an interpretive view valid, but one can think of views from angles or distinct aspects in such a way that the truth emerges in the face of a discourse that is not closed, curiously here one can Also calls it hermetic, and there may be dialogue, in the sense that the tone is not raised, but not the dialogic one in the sense of “fusion of horizons”, a concept dear to Gadamer.
Understanding to knowledge as a phenomenon, not as logical-deductive reasoning, only in this case can one understand how Dilthey would say that “to understand is to understand an expression”, differentiating the relations of the spiritual world from causal relations in the nexus of nature, : A seed is planted that will sprout and grow a tree.
For Gadamer (1997), there is a proper foundation of the sciences of the spirit, so that in Dilthey’s hermeneutics more than an instrument, it can become valid as the universal medium of historical consciousness, for which there is no other knowledge Of the truth than to understand the expression, and this depends on the other, not on the instrumentalization of the other, in this sense dialogue may in some cases not promote dialogue, mutual understanding and mutual acceptance.
