Hermeneutics: An Introduction to Interpretive Theory

distinguishes between the signifie (thing signified) and the significant (signifier),

Saussure

What is the "meaning" of being? This is not a question of what we know and how we may guarantee interpretive accuracy. Rather, it is a question about our mode of knowing, a question about our living as knowers, not about the status or content of our knowledge per se.

Two of the most important developments in phenomenological hermeneutics include Husserl'sdescriptive method and critical examination of consciousness, and Heidegger's proposal that understanding and interpretation always arise from the perspective provided by one's own life-world or situation, including one's prejudices and presuppositions.

For our purposes there are six distinct hermeneutical trends that, while overlapping in many areas, are worth examining in detail: romantic, phenomenological and existential, philosophical, critical, structural, and poststructural (deconstruction).

Hermeneutics does not and cannot guarantee the fixed meaning of a text, a laboratory experiment, or a work of art. Thus the very goals of hermeneutics, and not only the methods and practices, have been thrown open to debate and discussion.

radical deconstructionists, have simply given up, or at the very least have become radically skeptical about ever having a comprehensive theory of interpretation or a hermeneutic.

most hermeneuts no longer try to answer what a particular passage "really means" in a complete and total way or what an author "really intended."

In sum, hermeneutics - once something characterized by specific tools of thought within a handful of disciplines - has become a general theory of understanding for all spheres of human awareness.