Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics

Jean Grondin is professor of philosophy at the University of Montreal.

• Part 1 On the prehistory of hermeneutics: linguistic delimitations; the semantics of Hermeneuein; allegorical interpretations of myth; Philo - the universality of allegory; Origen - the universality of typology; Augustine - the Universality of the inner logos; Luther - sola scriptura?; Flacius - the universality of the grammatica1. Part 2 Hermeneutics between grammar and critique: Dannhauer - true interpretation and interpretive truth; Chladenius - the universality of the pedagogical ; Meier - the universality of signs; pietism - the universality of the affective. Part 3 Romantic hermeneutics and Schleiermacher: the post-Kantian transition from the enlightenment to romanticism - Ast and Schlegel; Schleiermacher's universalization of misunderstanding; limiting hermeneutics to psychology?; the dialectical ground of hermeneutics. Part 4 The problems of historicism: Boch and the dawn of historical awareness; Droysen's universal historiology - understanding as research in the moral world; dilthey - on the way to hermeneutic. Part 5 Heidegger - hermeneutics as the interpretation of existence: the "fore" of fore-understanding; its transparency in interpretation; the idea of a philosophical hermeneutics of facticity; the derivative status of statements?; hermeneutics after the turn. Part 6 Gadamer and the universe of hermeneutics: back to the human sciences; the overcoming of historicist hermeneutics; effective history as principle; understanding as questioning and therefore application; language as dialogue; the universality of the hermeneutic universe. Part 7 Hermeneutics in dialogue: Betti's epistemological return to the inner spirit; Habermas's critique of hermeneutics in the name of agreement; the deconstructive challenge to hermeneutics.