SCHLEIERMACHER’S HERMENEUTICS

SCHLEIERMACHER’S HERMENEUTICS

Oleh: M.Holil

A.      PREFACE

Understanding any kind of text more over scriptures is quite importance, it’s a bit difficult, of course, to understand the text especially scripture where God expresses His revelation through it and which contain divine-minded, applicable in any time but spaceless and timeless. But what ever the texts are, the interpreter must find their meaning by utilizing the soul of hermes, currently known as hermeneutics, and explain his understanding to others.

Hermeneutics as the art of understanding appears as the answer for problematical understanding of texts, by hermeneutics one can understand all texts.  But the question is, can we understand all the texts which have different characteristic by hermeneutics only? Isn’t it need different rule for different object? Is the understanding of them is quite objective? And if it’s true what hermeneutics is it?

Schleieramcher, a great prominent widely famous by his Hermeneutical circle, has given the answer. In his point of view, the texts must be occupied the same as well as without any differentiation, even the scripture is no more than common texts. It contains language, grammatical and psychological. Language is used as the tool of communication, one cannot communicate anyone without language. Language is consisted of Grammatical, and grammatical is easy to learn. By grammatical one can understand what others write, and it’s still miracle that one can understand what the other write only by reading.

An objective understanding also can be reached by psychological approach, because the writer wrote the texts by involving his mentality as well as the interpreter has. To reach its objectivity one will know through writer’s biography and the psychology and the social life of the writer when he wrote the text, whether the writer in pressure or in happy condition it will consequently takes the effect. Then the interpreter should act, contemplate and imagine as if he was the writer. It’s quite difficult, but it’s no impossible. It needs both skill of understanding and a sense of feeling other man.

Hermeneutics, derived from the word hermes as the interpreter of revelation in ancient Greek, is a gift for man. It historically has beneficial rule in Europe since the end of the dark age, when previously each texts has their own hermeneutics, the hermeneutics of historical text cannot be occupied in the scripture and reciprocally the hermeneutics of scripture cannot be applied in the historical texts, because they are different. But after Schleiermacher, hermeneutics has totally turning point. He formulated a General Hermeneutics to understand any texts.

B.       THE TWO PHILOLOGISTS

A proverb said that man is standing on the shoulder of a great giant, it occurs to whom ever the man is, it means that what we are talking is the composed of the last big man, the thought of man previously alive before us constructed our mind and we become what we are now. Hence, our knowledge is the result of their thinking, it’s not a tale for It also happened to Schleiermacher, The general hermeneutics formulated by him is constructed by the prominent influencing him, otherwise it is rather complicated to understand if we don’t understand his two forerunners.

The two forerunners influencing on Schleiermacher are the philologist both Friedrich Ast (1778-1841) and Friedrich August Wolf (1759-1824), understanding their philology will make us easier to understand Schleiermacher’s general hermeneutics, or it can be simply stated that this philology of the two prominent is a prerequisite of understanding Schleiermacher’s General Hermeneutics because their works have a great influence on him especially in his hermeneutical circle.

The writer or author wants that readers objectively understand what the author wrote and deliver its meaning to others, as it’s explain by friedrich Ast, through Grundlinen der Grammatic, that the aim and the object of philology is to grasp the spirit or geist of antiquity revealed in literary heritage outer and inner form. While Friedrich August Wolf aim at grasping the written or even spoken thoughts of an author as he would have them to be grasped, hence interpreter must be “temperamentally suited” to understanding the subject in order to explain it to others (understand and then explain) and He must have a general talent/an aptitude for dialogue (lightness of soul) for empathizing with the thoughts of others. It lightly seems that the aim of philology of the two prominent is the same, grasping the meaning of the text.

The understanding of the text can be reached through four elements; words or language, study writings of antiquity, grammar and hermeneutics. It’s no matter where and when one lives, he needs a language which is consisted of words to communicate and it becomes an instrument of communication. Then through studying the writing of antiquity, for all place and time have their own characteristic of writings, for instance, the writing during independent day will totally express the heroism and so on. Then through Grammatical, the language used by the writer spontaneously include grammatical rule which will brings the interpreter understands the text.

By those three, elements the interpreter understands the text, but how about the spirit of the text? How is it found? The answer is hermeneutics. But how does hermeneutics brings the interpreter to understand the spirit? It’s the task of hermeneutics to find the spirit of the texts, as will be more clearly explained later in the discussion of hermeneutical circle that the spirit of the whole is found in individual part, the part is understood from the whole and the whole is understood from the inner harmony of its part.

Through the explanation above it can be classified the three levels of understanding as the task of interpretation

1. The historical, understanding in relation to the content of the work (artistic, scientific, general)
2. The grammatical, understanding in relation to the language
3. The geistige, understanding the work in relation to the total of the author and the total view (geist) of the age

C.      GENERAL HERMENEUTICS AND HERMENEUTICAL CIRCLE

Even Schleiermacher has been in shed light on Friedrich August, but it still appears the distinction between them. For friedrich, different hermeneutics was needed for history, poetry and religious text or the interpreter will meet specific problems of interpretation, but according Schleiermacher hermeneutics should serves as the basis and core of all, no matter what the texts are, they must be in language and thus grammar is used to find the meaning

In the view of Schleiermacher, hermeneutics is always in relation with the letter that the interpreter should understand it. Understanding does not constantly comes to the interpreter, it needs some processes by utilizing his mind, the speaker or writer utters sentences to express his intention while the hearer or reader receives a series of mere worlds and then define the meaning of what the text implies.

As the clarification, that At the time speaker or writer constructs the sentences the hearer tries to penetrate into the structures of the sentences by grammatical to understand the whole texts but to get the spirit of it the interpreter should reexperience the mental processes of the writer when the author write the text. So the objective understanding can be attained. So it’s reasonable when Schleiermacher affirm that it’s quite possible to objectively understand the meaning of what the author wrote.

The Objective understanding is easily attained and reached because of the circle existence within the text. The circle is that a whole brings a definition of the part and reciprocally the parts construct the whole, it means that we understand the meaning of individual words by seeing into the whole of sentence and reciprocally the meaning of the whole depends on the meaning of the individual words.

It looks a bit contradiction and confusing that how we can previously identify the parts if we cannot understand the whole, and reciprocally how we can understand the whole if we cannot identify the parts. Otherwise, we will understand nothing, the text cannot be understood anymore. But it’s not big deal because the understanding will still come because between the author and the speaker have sharing knowledge, that the identification suddenly flows by this sharing. The interpreter has pre-knowledge which will bring the interpreter into understanding the meaning of the text.

After the understanding is objectively reached by interpreter, it depends on the interpreter whether to explain the understanding or not, after all the explanation cannot be randomly delivered, it needs some consideration; the explainer must know for whom the explanation is designed, for it will depends on the level of readers, whether they are enthusiastic beginner, disinterested readers or discerning scholar.

D.      CLOSING

It’s actually not the ending of the Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics and need to be further discussed; his spirit will always inspire the interpreter to understand the text. it’s the task of interpreter to understand and explain uninterpretable text like the fortuneteller will always interpret the unnterpretable symbol, symbol of existence.

Hope by writing this paper, the writer will be more wisely interpret everything appears in this world and beneficial for every form divinity. The texts are the manifestations which want to express divine impression, and our task is to understand it. Any criticism about the contents and writing, kindly contact the writer.