Theory & Criticism
Hermeneutics
Hermeneutics is the theory and art of interpreting texts and, in a broader philosophical sense, the doctrine of understanding as a mode of human being. Arising as a method for interpreting Scripture and ancient authors, hermeneutics became a general theory of interpretation through Friedrich Schleiermacher and Wilhelm Dilthey. Martin Heidegger gave it an ontological dimension, and Hans-Georg Gadamer, in 'Truth and Method' (1960), reconceived the concept of the 'hermeneutic circle' (understanding the whole through the part and the parts through the whole), the 'fusion of horizons' of text and reader, and the role of tradition. Paul Ricoeur joined hermeneutics with phenomenology and psychoanalysis. In literary studies, hermeneutics grounds the principles of interpreting a work, emphasizing the dialogic nature of understanding and the historicity of every reading.
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Meaning, origins and distinction — side by side.
Distinction
Two theories of understanding differing in focus. Hermeneutics is a philosophical doctrine of UNDERSTANDING and interpretation itself, of the "hermeneutic circle" and the "fusion of horizons" of text and interpreter (Gadamer). Reception aesthetics is narrower and more concrete: it shifts attention to the READER, their "horizon of expectations" and "places of indeterminacy" that activate perception (Jauss, Iser). Hermeneutics asks how understanding is possible at all; reception aesthetics, how a concrete reader actualises the text.
