Reasonable, Ruled, Responsible

Abstract

The paper begins by posing the theoretical problem of the foundation of reasonable interpretation and arguing that it cannot be realized by calculable rules or pure common sense or a hermeneutic “art”. There must be rules that make the interpretation strategy explicit. This thesis is studied with the example of the Talmud, who theorises different levels of interpretation and above all builds lists of rules of the correct argument. It is shown how these rules have a rhetoric character and are governed by some meta-principles, such as the total significance of the sacred text, the hierarchy of sources, the principle of majority of the competent ones, to show at the end that in this tradition reasonableness is evaluated in terms of responsibility for interpretation.