Theoretical and Epistemological Problems in Western Philosophy of The 19th-20th Centuries

Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics is the art and theory of interpreting texts. In this sense, it has been recognized since Antiquity. The works of Homer and Hesiod, which served as foundational texts for ancient philosophy, necessitated interpretation. Likewise, the writings of the ancient philosophers themselves often required elucidation for deeper understanding. Hermeneutics is essential wherever the meaning of an utterance seems concealed from immediate perception, encrypted, and therefore in need of clarification and interpretation. This broad application of hermeneutics became prominent in medieval philosophy, as many of its problems and approaches stemmed from varying interpretations of biblical dogmas. The Bible, according to most theologians, requires interpretation; it cannot be understood literally. Thus, medieval scholasticism fundamentally revolves around the interpretation of the Bible and other canonical texts, allowing us to assert that all medieval philosophy is, to some extent, hermeneutic.

However, hermeneutics as a distinct method for understanding the humanities and as a specific philosophical orientation emerged much later, linked to the development of humanistic knowledge. A key feature of the humanities, particularly historical studies, is that their objects are mediated through language and text. While the natural sciences deal directly with phenomena in nature—aiming to explain natural processes and identify universal connections and laws—the humanities and historical sciences engage with historical reality not directly, but through its fixation in language and text. Thus, Dilthey (1833-1911), a representative of life philosophy, described hermeneutics as "the art of understanding life expressions fixed in writing." The study of culture and social phenomena is possible only through understanding and interpretation. Yet understanding emerges as a result of reconstructing the content of a text based on interpretation. The procedures and methodologies of understanding must adhere to certain rules. First, they require that the reconstruction aligns with the author's perspective. Second, we must recognize the autonomy and integrity of the text, which necessitates the principle of the hermeneutic circle: the meaning of the whole can be clarified through understanding its constituent parts, yet the meaning of those parts can only be grasped in light of the unity of the whole. Third, to comprehend the content of a foreign text from the past, we must consider the rule of relevance in understanding, which states that the researcher cannot entirely eliminate the subjective element; they must correlate the author's intent with the "spiritual horizon" of their own era and personal stance. Only under such conditions can we speak of truth in the humanities.

The establishment of hermeneutics not only as a method for understanding the humanities but also as a distinct direction in 20th-century philosophy is primarily associated with the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002), a pupil of Martin Heidegger. Heidegger profoundly influenced Gadamer, as did the founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl. Husserl's phenomenology impacted Gadamer by clarifying the content and significance of phenomena, a pursuit intimately connected with understanding and interpretation. Conversely, understanding and interpretation are always directed toward the search for meaning. These two procedures appear intertwined, and at this juncture, phenomenology and hermeneutics intersect.

However, Heidegger's philosophy exerted an even greater influence on Gadamer. Gadamer associates hermeneutics with the notion that it transcends the "limited horizon of interests within scientific-methodological discourse." Heidegger views understanding and interpretation not merely as ways to interpret texts, but as existential conditions of human being. Language itself, through which these processes unfold, constitutes being—"the house of being." It is not man who speaks through language; rather, language speaks through man. These ideas played a significant role in shaping Gadamer's philosophy and in his development of hermeneutics—from a hermeneutics of spirit to a hermeneutics of being. "Understanding and interpreting texts," Gadamer asserts, "is not solely a scientific task; it evidently pertains to the entirety of human experience as a whole."

Naturally, the science occupies a central place in hermeneutics. "In an age when superstition gives way to belief in science," elucidating the conditions and limits of science, the conditions of truth that precede the logic of scientific inquiry, becomes the task of hermeneutic philosophy. However, Gadamer's philosophy of hermeneutics, particularly in its understanding of truth, fundamentally differs from classical hermeneutics as a method of knowledge in the humanities. While certain interpretive techniques are shared—such as the hermeneutic circle—the methods themselves emphasize fundamentally different and even opposing aspects of interpreting fixed events of the past.

According to the classical tradition, interpreting a text requires immersing oneself in the author's world, understanding their motives and experiences, and penetrating their psychological landscape. Furthermore, we must also consider the subjective element of the interpreter. To reconstruct past experiences and foreign thoughts, they must be correlated with the historian's own worldview. In classical understanding and interpretation, emphasis is placed on the psychological characteristics of both the author and the historian—their perceptions of events, thereby focusing on the subjective aspects of understanding and interpretation.

Gadamer approaches this differently. He does not believe that actualizing the personal element of the text's author aids in exploring or understanding historical reality. On the contrary, he posits that such actualization will not facilitate but rather hinder the pursuit of truth, obscuring rather than clarifying the genuine meaning and content of historical events. Gadamer directs his attention to other moments that precede understanding and interpretation, such as preconceptions, tradition, prejudices, and the horizon of understanding. All these concepts are closely related and signify the historicity of human experience, conditioned by societal systems. When we speak of preconception, we refer to an established societal system that signifies a historically stable, scientifically unprovable norm. It represents not only the subject of empirical rationalization but also the framework within which methodological work "inserts" itself. The "horizon of understanding," in turn, encompasses a collection of prejudices and preconceptions shaped by tradition, serving as preconditions for examining all factual premises of a phenomenon. Prejudices, in this context, are not solely negative aspects that distort understanding and interpretation; they also represent the structures embedded in language that define our linguistic, cognitive, and perceptive activities. Language plays a crucial role here, as it largely conditions our cognitive processes and significantly shapes meanings and interpretations. Language is the mode of our being, our speaking, the condition of knowledge and understanding, and it is primarily the object of philosophical hermeneutics. Thus, Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, while not entirely excluding the subjective preconditions of consciousness and science, focuses on investigating the objective conditions that precede historical and scientific knowledge, preceding understanding and interpretation. Hermeneutics of spirit transforms into a hermeneutics of being in the exploration of the preconditions and conditions of human existence and scientific cognition.