Hermeneutic

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