The Hermeneutics: Outline of the 1819 Lectures

Abstract

1. [We speak of] only the art of understanding, not the exposition of the understanding.2 The latter would only be a specialized part of the art of speaking and writing that could only be dependent on the general principles of hermeneutics. 2. This refers as well to difficult points in foreign-language texts. In reading them, one more often presumes familiarity with the subject matter and the language. When one is familiar with both, the distinction between them becomes difficult to make because one has perhaps not understood properly the more apparent. Only an artistic understanding consistently grasps the discourse [Reden] of a text [Schrift].3 3. Usually one supposes that one could rely on a healthy knowledge of human nature for formulating the general principles of interpretation. But then there is the danger that one would also tend to rely on a healthy feeling about the exceptional qualities of a text in determining what they meant.