The Schleiermacherian Turn of Hermeneutics from Bible to Romanticism

Authors: Rahim Afaki A

DOI: 10.23880/phij-16000221

Volume 5, Issue 1

Abstract

This paper expounds the details of how hermeneutics took shape as a philosophical tradition out of a religious discourse of interpreting the Biblical meanings. And the major exponent who sets forth the principles and methods for giving rise to hermeneutics as a philosophical tradition with the romanticist orientation redirecting its focus of comprehension from the particularity of Bible to the generality of text is Friedrich Schleiermacher. Given the relatively minor contributions like that of Chladenius’, Ast’s and Wolf’s in terms of the respective themes namely Sehe-Punkt, Geist, hermeneutical circle, Verstehen-quadialogue etc., it is particularly instructive to focus on Schleiermacher’s underpinning the same themes at a higher level to see the historical-thematic growth of hermeneutics as a romanticist discipline. It will be argued here that the incorporation of the legacy of Biblical hermeneutics with the pre-Schleiermacherian Enlightenment philology as well as Romanticist philosophy provided Schleiermacher with the solid ground to erect the superstructure of his canonical Romanticist hermeneutics. Demonstrating this theoretical continuum from the Biblical through the Renaissance to the Romanticist hermeneutics constitutes the bulk of this essay, but the main thread through which that continuity remains unbroken is Schleiermacher’s theoretical underpinnings. It will be shown here how the two dimensions of his hermeneutics namely the lingual nexus between author and his original public and the psychology of the author set a new direction of the discourse of interpretation defined by a shift from the specificity of religion to the generality of philosophy. 

Keywords: Schleiermacher; Bible; Hermeneutics; Romanticism; Language; Authorial psychology

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