CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 INTRODUCTION
2.3 THE NEW HERMENEUTIC
2.3.1 Understanding Meaning
As previously discussed, in the introduction, Schleiermacher’s philosophical approach to hermeneutics acted as the catalyst for what has now come to be known as “New Hermeneutics”. He expanded upon the basic theological praxis of interpretation through the theoretical understanding of understanding itself
(Dilthey, 1972: 230).
If the original concept of hermeneutics believed that interpretation could only occur when the parts are understood in juxtaposition with the whole, it would be logical to assume that the observer could only understand a sentence upon its completion.
But how can this be possible when individuals are able to understand words as they are read or spoken, well before they have completed elucidating the subject matter as a whole. This suggests that understanding language cannot operate in the retrospective manner suggested above. Instead the understanding of language occurs simultaneously with the language event. Words are understood the moment that they are spoken, heard or read
(Snodgrass &Coyne, 2006: 36).
“A person who is trying to understand a text is always performing an act of projecting. He projects before himself a meaning for the text as a whole as soon as some initial meaning emerges in the text. Again, the latter emerges only because he is reading the text with particular expectations in regard to a certain meaning.
The working of this fore-project, which is constantly revised in terms of what emerges as he penetrates into the meaning, is understanding what is there” (Gadamer, 2006: 269).
Through Gadamer’s understanding of meaning it can be construed that, when engaged in an interpretation event, initial indications develop into expectations of what the meaning of the whole will be, allowing the interpreter to recognise a sense of understanding in the same moment that speech is heard or the word is read. These indications act as cues which in turn begin to form a preliminary understanding of the whole. As more of the parts are made available to the interpreter, so their preliminary understanding of the whole becomes clearer. These parts are constantly evolving as the whole is better understood and thus the interpreters understanding develops from partially fragmented insights of the parts, into a greater understanding of the whole which in turn helps to revise or reinforce any prior assumptions that developed (Snodgrass &Coyne, 2006: 36-37).
“As soon as we initially discover some elements that can be understood, we sketch out the meaning of the whole text. We cast forward (or fore-cast) a preliminary project, which is progressively corrected as the process of understanding advances…We anticipate end states by reference to which events, both past and present, smoothly coalesce into 'action-orienting stories” (Snodgrass &Coyne, 2006: 36-37).
According to (Gadamer, 2006: 269) the revision of the foreprojection is capable of projecting a new meaning before itself. Even assumptions that conflict may emerge beside each other until further investigation reveals a clearer unity of meaning.
“…interpretation begins with fore-conceptions that are replaced by more suitable ones. This constant process of new projection constitutes the movement of understanding and interpretation” (Gadamer, 2006: 269).
Heidegger states that before we even begin to consciously interpret an object, text or verbal communication, we will have already placed the matter to be interpreted in a certain context, viewed and conceived from a predetermined perspective (Snodgrass &Coyne, 2006: 37).
This process came to be known as ‘Nachbildung’ through which the interpreter is obliged to translate parts from the standpoint of the individual’s own foreprojections of the whole which in turn is defined by their own idiosyncratic sense of life. This philosophical approach moved the act of interpretation away from the realm of natural science and into that of Human studies affirming that understanding is first and foremost an inner reality, a coherence experienced from within. Understanding must therefore be defined as the process by which we intuit (Dilthey, 1972: 231-232).
“Such understanding ranges from the comprehension of the babblings of children to Hamlet or the Critique of Pure Reason. From stones and marble, musical notes, gestures, words and letters, from actions, economic decrees and constitutions, the same human spirit addresses us and demands interpretation”
(Dilthey, 1972: 232).
If understanding relies so heavily upon the interpreter’s own prejudices it must contain some degree of variability determined by the interpreter’s own interests. Logic tells us that if understanding is limited by our own interest, then understanding must be limited as well.
“How impatiently do we listen to many arguments; merely extracting the point that happens to be important to us practically, without any interest in the inner life of the speaker; while at other times we passionately attempt to seize the innermost reality of a speaker through his every expression, his every word” (Dilthey, 1972: 232).
Gadamer, terms these particular forestructures as 'prejudices’, unlike the positivists, Gadamer rejected the notion that all should be conducted by abstracting the information in an endeavour to remove any of the individual researcher’s prejudicial inclinations. While this technique can be extremely beneficial when collecting and interpreting un-bias quantitative information, cracks begin to appear when attempting to interpret the underlying meanings depicted in art, poetry and architecture. Scientific abstraction can often lead to an ethos of alienation resulting in false interpretations of the nature of the work. He aimed instead to rehabilitate prejudice, rescuing it from its pejorative scientific
connotations (Snodgrass &Coyne, 2006: 37-38).
“All understanding, he says, necessarily involves prejudice, fore-meanings that are not fully objectifiable.
These prejudices can either be enabling or disabling, depending on the way in which they are opened up to hermeneutical understanding” (Snodgrass & Coyne 39:2006).
Martin Heidegger asserts that when we interpret the parts of either speech or text as meaningful, it is to say that something is understood as something. Objects are not perceived as simply objects to be adorned with retrospective meaning, interpretation is grounded in the prejudices of the research something we have in advance, a pre-
understanding. An interpretation can therefore never occur without independent presuppositions as all meaning gets its structure from these pre-understandings, which render the subject intelligible. The interpretation has already understood what is to be interpreted (Snodgrass & Coyne, 2006: 38).
“Interpretation does not, so to speak, throw a "significance" over what is nakedly objectively present and does not stick a value on it, but what is encountered in the world is always already in a relevance which is
disclosed in the understanding of world, a relevance which is made explicit by interpretation. Things at hand are always already understood in terms of a totality of relevance… This is the very mode in which it is the essential foundation of everyday, circumspect interpretation. This is always based on afore-having”
(Heidegger, 1996: 140).
The tools of understanding are not alien to the interpreter but are simply there, familiar and already understood. Things are understood long before they are abstracted into objects for our direct inspection. Pre-understandings are thrown forward in every act of interpretation. The interpreter’s own point of view is defined by the pre-understandings of their own past experience, implying that they, themselves are a part of the interpretation event
(Snodgrass & Coyne, 2006: 39).
“We are not simply 'objects' in the. world, objects without a history and as if isolated from the past, but are thrown into the midst of a network of understandings of practices, institutions, conventions, aims, tools, expectations and a multitude of other factors that make us what we are” (Snodgrass & Coyne, 2006: 39).
Forestructures are derived from the clues of parts under investigation and are dependent upon the context of the whole of which they constitute. This context is defined by the interpreters own prejudices or pre-understandings towards the whole. Consequently in can be said that forestructures emerge from pre-understandings determined within the situation itself and cannot be seen as simply subjective anticipations of the completed whole
(Buck and Heath, 1978).
“Meaning is not fixed and firm, but is historical; it changes with time and as the situation changes.
Understanding is in perpetual flux. Meaning is not an immutable object that stands over against us but is an ever-changing part of an ever-changing situation. It is not an object, but neither is it subjective. It is not something we think first and then throw over onto an external object. It is known from within and can only be so known: we cannot get around in front of meaning, any more than we can get around in front of language.
We are embedded in meaning structures, and so cannot view them as objects that can be tested by the criteria of logic. Meaning exists prior to any separation of subject and object. In the interpretive act the Cartesian subject–object dichotomy dissolves” (Snodgrass & Coyne, 2006: 40).