Abstract
Schleiermacher’s understanding of what confronts hermeneutics remains unsurpassed to the present day. For him, the chief task was the search for the content of hermeneutics as well as the clarification of the foundations of its scientific techniques. Shpet wishes to concentrate on Schleiermacher’s treatment of the fundamental principles of hermeneutics. Although Schleiermacher pays little attention to where to start, his overall position is both sensible and free from the commonplaces that are typically found in treatments of practical disciplines.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Schleiermacher 1835: 344–345.
- 3.
Dilthey 1996: 246.
- 4.
[The German editors note that the typed manuscript they used reads here “subject” instead of “sense” as found in a hand-written copy and which they prefer. See Špet 1993: 147f. The 2005 Russian edition also reads “sense” (smysl).]
- 5.
Schleiermacher 1835: 383–384.
- 6.
Schleiermacher 1835: 344.
- 7.
Schleiermacher 1998: 20.
- 8.
Schleiermacher 1835: 383.
- 9.
Presentation (Darlegung), in his opinion, is only “a special part of the art of speaking and writing, which could depend only on the general principles.” Schleiermacher 1998: 5.
- 10.
- 11.
[The editors of the German translation point out that Shpet erred here. Schleiermacher was not concerned in the pages Shpet references with the language and literature of the peoples speaking the Romance languages (=Romance philology), but with the philology of Romantic literature. See Špet 1993: 150f.]
- 12.
Schleiermacher 1835: 347, 348.
- 13.
Schleiermacher 1835: 351f.
- 14.
Schleiermacher 1998: 7.
- 15.
Schleiermacher 1998: 7.
- 16.
Instead of “rhetoric,” Schleiermacher also uses the word “grammar.” In his opinion, a rhetorical “composition” forms, as it were, one of the particular tasks of grammar. Schleiermacher 1838: 10f. [The English translation omits this particular note judging it to be “misleading.” See Schleiermacher 1998: 7f.] Schleiermacher’s own definition of the relation of hermeneutics and grammar to logic (and to dialectic, which, according to Schleiermacher, is not a formal, but a metaphysical or transcendental discipline – cf. Schleiermacher 1839: 7) is so confused that I dare not discuss it: “The dependence of both (hermeneutics and rhetoric) on the dialectic consists in the fact that the entire development of knowledge depends on both (speech and understanding).” Schleiermacher 1839: 10. Some of the clarifications of this, produced by the editor on the basis of Schleiermacher’s lecture notes (Schleiermacher 1839: 10–11, cf. Schleiermacher 1839: 260), in reality, explain nothing, already to say nothing of their inauthenticity.
- 17.
Schleiermacher 1998: 7.
- 18.
Cf. Schleiermacher 1998: 30, 44.
- 19.
The juxtaposition I have made of the principles and logic of the natural sciences, on the one hand, and the historical sciences, on the other, clearly indicates that the corresponding situation of hermeneutics itself is parallel to the methodologies of the natural sciences.
- 20.
Schleiermacher 1998: 15.
- 21.
- 22.
Schleiermacher 1998: 16.
- 23.
- 24.
- 25.
Schleiermacher 1998: 23.
- 26.
Schleiermacher 1998: 24.
- 27.
Contrasting the divinatory and comparative methods and comparing them with the two mentioned moments of interpretation, he himself asks: “So, I ask you, first of all, whether both of the mentioned methods are also valid for both of the mentioned aspects, or is each method appropriate for only one aspect?” (Schleiermacher 1835: 361). Cf. Schleiermacher 1835: 379 – “This much, however, is also already quite clear, that we cannot avoid the preponderance of the divinatory moment in the face of the psychological issue.”
- 28.
- 29.
[Schleiermacher 1998: 92.]
- 30.
Cf. Schleiermacher 1998: 93.
- 31.
- 32.
With the exception of the instance where a given expression directly communicates something about the psychic experiences of its author, but such cases obviously belong entirely to the grammatical type of interpretation.
- 33.
Interpretation requires an indication of the grounds; a concept, as opposed to this is immediate – “without grounds.” Hence, we see the special logical character of interpretation.
- 34.
There is a parallel here. The heuristic principle in the natural sciences posits a quasi-goal (als ob) and a ground by means of hypothesis, even though mechanical “force” is substituted for it. In this or that form, it is, nevertheless, a personification.
- 35.
Schleiermacher 1835: 375f.
Bibliography
Dilthey, Wilhelm. 1996. The Rise of Hermeneutics. In Hermeneutics and the Study of History, trans. Frederic R. Jameson and Rudolf A. Makkreel. 235–253. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Schleiermacher, Friedrich. 1835. Über den Begriff der Hermeneutik mit Bezug auf F. A. Wolfs Andeutungen und Asts Lehrbuch. In Sämmtliche Werke, Band 3, Abteilung 3. 344–386. Berlin: Reimer.
———. 1838. Hermeneutik und Kritik. In Sämmtliche Werke, Band 7, Abteilung 1. 5–389. Berlin: Reimer.
———. 1839. Dialectik. In Sämmtliche Werke, Band 4, Abteilung 3, Teil 2. Berlin: Reimer.
———. 1998. Hermeneutics and Criticism And Other Writings. Trans. Andrew Bowie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Špet, Gustav G. 1993. Die Hermeneutik und ihre Probleme, hrsg. Alexander Haardt und Roland Daube-Schackat. Aus dem Russ. übers. Erika Freiberger und Alexander Haardt. Freiburg/München: Alber.
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Shpet, G., Nemeth, T. (2019). [Friedrich] Schleiermacher. In: Nemeth, T. (eds) Hermeneutics and Its Problems. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 98. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98941-9_5
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