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Monday, March 30, 2009

Hermeneutics is for everyone

"Hermeneutics is the basis for the whole complex of the humanities. Hermeneutics means "theory of intepretations". In a more radical
sense, however, interpretation is not just a specialty of the humanities and of our encounter with texts.
Because the world is organized by linguistically articulated social patterns, interpretation is the primary access to our experience
of the world. Learning a vernacular language means being introduced into the experience of the world. Even our epistemological approach
to knowledge and cognition cannot avoid passing through this hermeneutical dimension, that is, the ongoing reinterpretation of statements which are themselves interpretations of our being-in-a-world.
Therefore hermeneutics is for everyone."

"Religious and Poetical Speaking" Gadamer from Myth, Symobl and Reality Vol. 1 -1980

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