Hermeneutic

Abstract

So far we have considered the general forms taken by the commerce between author, reader, and text, but not the figures who make romantic hermeneutics different from its precursors . The history of hermeneutics from Schleiermacher to Dilthey is the history of an expan­ sion of the field of study to include not only biblical and secular texts but all human phenomena-from texts to gestures and actions-that use sensory signs to convey an inner spiritual reality . 1 This expansion has consequences for modern semiotics that will not be pursued here, for the romantic period initiates an awareness of empirical 'realities' as tex­ tual phenomena. But it is the increasing sense that signs may not ade­ quately convey interiority that will be the concern of this chapter. To begin with, this inadequacy is the product of a temporal distance be­ tween author and reader that we can overcome through a process of historical reconstruction or re-experiencing (Nacherleben) . 2 More and more, however, the inner meaning of a text is deferred to the future and becomes something to be projected rather than recovered by the reader. This chapter traces the movement from a positive hermeneutics that deepens or completes the text to a negative hermeneutics that resists it. It follows this movement through the work of Schleiermacher and oth­ ers to that of Hegel, which stands ambiguously on the borderline be­ tween the two varieties of hermeneutics, and finally to the work of