Abstract:

Schleiermacher turned the Biblical Hermeneutic realm into Romantic realm and made hermeneutics a distinct discipline. His successor Wilhelm Dilthey distinguished the Natural Science and Social science claiming understanding (verstehen) as method of Social science.  Both philosophers are associated with German Romanticism. Both of them used the Hermeneutic Circle for understanding. Schleiermacher used hermeneutic circle grammatically and emphatically whereas Dilthey used the hermeneutic circle in larger historical context. Schleiermacher defined man as psychological being whereas Dilthey defined man as historical being. Dilthey’s doctrine of hermeneutics can be viewed as the further advancement of Schleiermacher rather than critical rejection. Purpose of this paper is how Dilthey broadened Schleiermacher’s view.

Key Words: Historical Being, Hermeneutic Circle, Understanding-Explanation dichotomy,

Schleiermacher’s Romantic Turn in Hermeneutics:

In the 18^th century Europe, an Artistic, literary and intellectual movement originated as a response to Enlightenment which is called Romanticism. It was the emotional reaction to the wisdom and truth oriented intellectualism. It divides the world into two categories: Rational and Emotional. Romanticism had captured the heart of ideological slogan raised by French Revolution. It drew back the intellectual eye from universal truth (Rational) and then focused on individual human action, beauty, feelings and emotions.

Schleiermacher was deeply engaged with Romantic literature movement. He invited Romantic tradition in Hermeneutics defining it as an Art of Understanding. He looked actor as an Artist. Before Schleiermacher, there was the tradition of interpreting only Biblical text (i.e. truth about Bible, not any individual Author). Hermeneutics had assumed as the interpretation of God’s message. It was attached with specific field Theology, Jurisprudence and philology. Schleiermacher brings out many specific Hermeneutics into a one province which is called General Hermeneutics or Universal Hermeneutics. He proposed a universal Hermeneutic method applicable to interpret all kinds of text. Assisting futility of divine inspiration for interpretation, he set out to interpret individual action. This was the crucial shift in Hermeneutic tradition from specific branch to general discipline. So, Schleiermacher has been regarded as Father of Modern Hermeneutics. He played the same role as Descartes who had shifted the Scholastic Philosophy into Modern and hence he can be regarded as Descartes of Modern hermeneutics.

Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics goes to grasp the foundation of subject of text. For him, goal of Hermeneutics is ‘understanding text in higher sense’ or the revelation of its meaning. Unlike Biblical Hermeneutics, Content or Truth and Validity of text is not the subject matter of Understanding in Schleiermacher’s Modern Hermeneutics .As a romanticist, he conceived every text as a unique expression of Author. He attacked to the tradition of interpreting without concerning Author’s Intention. That’s why his contemporary period of philosophy was taking psychology seriously. According to him, reading a text is discourse between the interpreter and text itself or text is the means by which authors communicates his thought. So the subject matter of understanding and interpretation is that which has expressed by author. In any action or text, author expresses his inner thought by language. Language expressed by Author is determined by his thought and thought bounds by language. So, he realized the need of understanding author’s intention through expressed language because language is the only one way which reflects the author’s thought.

In this way, Schleiermacher invented two sides of hermeneutics; 1) Grammatical and 2) Psychological. Linguistic or Grammatical part is the understanding of every part of text expressed by author through language. Psychological part of Hermeneutics is the understanding of inner thought of author. It can be revealed by knowing why particular work produced, knowing other works in similar genre by other author and knowing other works by same author in different genre.

The system or Method used by Schleiermacher for the understanding is not philological approach rather the artistic that the cyclical movement from part to whole and whole to part. He looks every grammatical part within the context of whole text and again looks whole text from the perspectives of part. According to him, Inner thought reflects in whole while outer expression reflects in part. Hence understanding whole is related with Psychological interpretation and understanding part is related with Grammatik interpretation. Both the Psychological and Grammatik understanding must goes in balance. Here the key inquiry of Schleiermacher is how to understand author’s Mind which he fulfills by understanding whole. Hence Meaning is given by the understanding of psychology of author which is possible by the interpreter’s Whole-Part discourse with him and hence it is divinated and empathized. He declares that part gives the sense of whole and whole gives the meaning of text. Meaning of text is what author is trying to communicate with reader through language. Revelation of Meaning is the proper understanding of author’s intention which is possible by the fact that author and reader (interpreter) both shares the same reasoning ability. Moreover, he claims that “There is potentiality of Understanding Author’s Thought better than Author.” However, despite his claim on potentiality of Understanding, he also argues that: Good interpretation can only be approximate and hermeneutics is not a Perfect art.

Dilthey’s Critiques on Schleiermacher:

Dilthey saw that Schleiermacher was missing social science on his theory of interpretation. He limited the actor or Author within own inner world. In other word, Schleiermacher conceived the belongingness of text only to author’s period. According to him, we could not interpret it in social context. Dilthey’s project was to link up actor’s inner world with outer socio-cultural context. For Dilthey, Inner world is real but does not reside alone; it always connects with outer world. Criticizing Schleiermacher, Dilthey claims that Man cannot understand himself through reflection or introspection, but only through history. Dilthey wants to emphasize the “intrinsic temporality of all understanding,” that man’s understanding is dependent on past worldviews, interpretations, and a shared world whereas Schleiermacher emphasized on the understanding of permanent author’s intention. It can be assumed as the Dilthey’s shift from Schleiermacher’s text to historical society. Schleiermacher’s methods moves from intuitively from inner intention to outer expression whereas Dilthey moves from outer context to inner expression of author that is why Schleiermacher’s method has based on empathy with state of mind of author. Unlike Schleiermacher, for Dilthey, understanding is not a process of reconstructing the state of mind of author but articulation of what is expressed in his text.

However, Likewise Schleiermacher, Dilthey starts with grammatical analysis and linguistic study, he also says about need of understanding psychology or the intention of writer and actor. He does not rejects the Schleiermacherian view, rather he advanced. He discovered four crucial ideas in Schleiermacher that 1) Hermeneutics is method of understanding, 2) the interpreter and author shares the general human nature which permits the understanding of others, 3) this shared human nature gives understanding of inner life of another (author) and 4) Interpreter can grasp the whole meaning of text. These four ideas flows within the Dilthey’s historical method of interpretation.

Dilthey’s Interpretation on Historicity:

Dilthey endeavored to invent the universal law of social science and interpreting in such basis. First he distinguished between social (human) science and Natural Science. According to him, Natural Science is the explanation of facts and information while Social Science is the understanding of Meaning. For the Understanding of Meaning, Social Science requires interpretation. Interpretation of understudied meaning is the unique method of hermeneutics which is quite different with experiential method of Natural Science. Meaning of any particular sentence in human science cannot be fully understand unless we know the historical circumstances of its utterance and thus historical understanding is very requirements to understand human science.

Granting the method of Hermeneutic Circle established by Schleiermacher, Dilthey viewed the action as individual situation within the series of history. He conceives history as the nexus of particulars interconnected to form a whole. He does not look at isolated event rather understood meaning of action from larger socio-cultural context of past. Individual human actor is the focus point in history. Since we are temporal being in the history, understanding is possible only when we place human action in their historical context. An action as individual situation is part of history which must be viewed within the whole series of history because any action is not only the one’s production, historical context always affects upon it.

According to him, the human sciences give form to the historical world by analyzing the structural systems in terms of which human beings participate in history. Dilthey’s method of interpretation combines understanding of both individual psychology and socio-historical description.

Conclusion:

Hence both Schleiermacher and Dilthey as a romantic, emphasized to interpret meaning of text rather than scholastic emphasis on truth and validity of text. Both of them gave priority to individual author and understanding rather than universal divine inspiration. Both of them belong to the methodological tradition but Dilthey broadened Schleiermacher’s divinatory and empathetic meaning searching it in larger historical context, not only in author’s intention and grammatical text. In other words he mixed Schleiermacher with social science. His whole theory conceives author or writer as the founder of social history.

Bibliography:

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