Hermeneutics: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions #448

by Jens Zimmermann

Hermeneutics is the branch of knowledge that deals with interpretation, a behaviour that is intrinsic to our daily lives. As humans, we decipher the meaning of newspaper articles, books, legal matters, religious texts, political speeches, emails, and even dinner conversations every day . But how is knowledge mediated through these forms? What constitutes the process of interpretation? And how do we draw meaning from the world around us so that we might understand our position in it?

In this Very Short Introduction Jens Zimmerman traces the history of hermeneutic theory, setting out its key elements, and demonstrating how they can be applied to a broad range of disciplines: theology; literature; law; and natural and social sciences. Demonstrating the longstanding and wide-ranging necessity of interpretation, Zimmerman reveals its signifiance in our current social and political landscape.

ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.


Very Short Introduction #448

Genres: Philosophy, Theology, Nonfiction, Psychology, Education, Literature, History

159 pages, Paperback

First published August 27, 2015

About the author

Jens Zimmermann (b. 1965) is a Christian philosopher and theologian who specializes in hermeneutics and the philosophical and theological roots of humanism. He is currently J.I. Packer Chair of Theology at Regent College.

Reviews

[Paul Sánchez Keighley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first book of the Very Short Introductions series I’ve read and I’m frankly pleased with the result. It does what it says on the cover.

Hermeneutics has been very meaningful to me ever since I discovered it at uni. Admittedly, I did have a small Platonic crush on the lecturer - a solemn mediaevalist with a booming Shakespearian voice that could fill a colosseum - and, as you will discover if you read Zimmermann’s book, this bit of personal trivia might well have had to do with why hermeneutics remains an essential part of my worldview to this day.

Learning hermeneutics changed the way I see the world. Like when I first learned about feminism or the first time I wore prescription glasses, I started noticing details all around me that I hadn’t previously been aware of.

So what is hermeneutics? It’s a line of philosophical inquiry into the nature of interpretation. According to hermeneutics, interpreting is our default approach to the world and knowledge about the world. We are, simply put, interpreting animals.

One of the most beautiful insights of hermeneutics was penned by 20th century philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer. You know how when we learn languages, travel or read a book we say we are ‘expanding our horizons’? As if our horizons are this finite field that can be enhanced by feeding it external inputs? Rather than that, Gadamer claimed the process of learning from external sources is more of a ‘fusion of horizons’. Knowledge isn’t transmitted neatly from mind to mind, or even from paper to mind. We can’t copy-paste another person’s ideas into our own. Like water, knowledge takes on the shape of the container, and that is why we understand. We inevitably view the world through the lens of our personal experience, so the intended meaning of a book’s author, for instance, merges with our worldview the moment we read it. Each and every individual is a source of unique insights into all matters worldly or otherwise.

Much of what is touched upon in this book freshened up my rose-tinted memories of those uni lectures I sat through way back when, but I still learned a lot - the chapters on hermeneutics applied to law and science were certainly novel. The book’s most engaging moments are when it deals with hermeneutics applied to theology, as it’s clearly the field the author is most passionate about.

If you’re considering joining the nerdy club of hermeneutics enthusiasts, this book is a very good place to start.

PS If you read Spanish, you can check out my mediaevalist heartthrob's books here.

[Clif · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is pronounced her-men-YOU-ticks and it is simply the art of interpretation. This little gem of a book covers the subject of interpretation generally then moves through the application of interpretation to the law, to theology and to science.

You might think there is nothing to say about interpretation. If so, please get this book. All that we know from the mundane to the esoteric comes from our interpretation. I think the best reviews here on Goodreads are hermeneutic. If someone merely gives a synopsis of the story a book tells, that isn't hermeneutic!

Take a novel for example. Do you approach the text from your own experience of life or do you try to find out what the author meant when he/she wrote the text? Deconstructionists say there is no way to know what the author intended, we cannot even turn to the author to tell us. You would be amazed at the many views of interpretation voiced within this tiny book.

Can you separate a work from the time in which it was written, regardless of the subject? You can't. Is there only one meaning to a given subject? No. Can anyone stand apart from life and interpret anything objectively? It's impossible, even in science. Scientists draw deeply on their own subjective views when they create a hypothesis. Imagination can bring insight that allows a scientist to break out of an accepted paradigm. Einstein did it more than once. Great minds do not think alike except in being wide open and that is what allows genius to find new vistas for all to appreciate.

What about art? We all accept the fact that there is good art and bad art, but what is the standard and who is to say what that standard is? See chapter 4, "Hermeneutics and the Humanities".

The law? Examine the basis of the heated argument in Washington DC about judges making the law instead of interpreting it. Is it possible to know with certainty what the Constitution meant to those who created it and how it should be applied to us today? Gun advocates will speak with certainty on the Second Amendment. Is their interpretation legitimate and beyond question?

Jens Zimmermann writes so clearly, the pages fly by. There are views expressed on almost every page, coming from those who have specialized in hermeneutics over the past two centuries. In an appendix current views are summarized. Though you'll find yourself questioning your own ideas about interpretation, you will never be scratching your head to understand what the author is relating.

My father was a biblical scholar, a graduate of Union Seminary in NYC who in the 1930's taught Biblical Studies at Smith College. The bookshelves at home held a set of "The Interpreter's Bible" though I never cracked a volume open. It's a great regret of mine that Dad died when I was only a youth of 21 with the normal lack of understanding of the world and not a clue about Dad's field of expertise. I had no interest in religion and we never discussed it because he was not one to press his views on me. Going through this book caused a surge of this regret - if I could only have a day with Dad now, what a conversation we could have...how much he could tell me of what was important to him; of his interpretation of faith and the meaning of life.

Once again I have found a terrific value for money in the "A Very Short Introduction" series. I took three of them with me to Peru. Two easily fit into my pants pocket when I spent a day on the beach of the Pacific Ocean. Reading has never been more convenient in hard copy form. There are roughly 300 titles listed in the front of this book. I want them all!

[Joseph Sverker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes one wonder why there are thick introductory books, especially after reading something like this. Zimmerman has a few points he wants to come across. We inhabit the world we want to interpret. Truth as an event is not a complete surrender to relativism or subjectivism. Language is essential for the creation of meaning and for understanding the world. He seems to argue that it even shapes how we relate to the world and not simply describe our understanding of the world.

Zimmerman then takes us through a short history of hermeneutics, something of the philosophy of hermeneutics and then how hermeneutics has been applied and understood within humanities, theology, law, science. The common thread here is that whenever we want knowledge we need to engage with the thing we want to understand. As such a type of revelation is needed (Polanyi in science) and imagination on part of the interpreter. Zimmerman comes back to the question of subjectivity, and correctly notes that subjectivity is necessary and it might be uncomfortable, but objectivity is a myth anyway.

I will use this book in a course in systematic theology and interpretation. For this I would say that the section on philosophy and humanities are almost better than the chapter on theology. The chapter on theology includes, which is a good thing "objectively" speaking, islam and judaism and questions that concern all "religions of the book" such as revelation and inspiration. This, naturally, hinders Zimmerman from entering into more details on Christian systematic theology. I would however be very interested in that since he writes very concise and clearly throughout.

In other words, this is a brilliant book that should be compulsory reading for all students entering into higher studies.

[Kaleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read about hermeneutics, the study of interpretation. Hermeneutics obviously applies to interpreting books or works of art; but actually we interpret everything around us, so studying interpretation is important to understand how we understand/live as people. Much of hermeneutics is about rejecting the Enlightenment view that we are disconnected islands of rationality, with a sharp line separating the self and the outside world. Instead, we are an "engaged self"; long before we make conscious decisions, our community/traditions influenced the concepts we have, the language we use, and what we think is important. Everything we think and experience is mediated through images, concepts and words; there is no unmediated "naked truth", so it would behoove us to understand what those principles of interpretation are.

The chapters on theological/biblical hermeneutics were especially strong, which makes sense given Zimmermann is a Christian scholar. For example, the fundamentalist assumptions that every word should be taken as literal historical/scientific truth, is (ironically) a relic of a modernist/Enlightenment view. Because the fundamentalist refuses to engage in hermeneutics, they see their particular view is influenced by a very modern way of interpretation. A more sophisticated view of Biblical hermeneutics is viewing the Incarnation/Jesus as the pinnacle of Christianity; everything in the Bible can be understood by reference to that moment. This often leads to non-literal readings, like typology (Old Testament events/persons pointed to a future reality, like Adam's type pointing to Jesus) or canonical criticism (looking at the communal intent that guided canon formation, why this particular book made it into the Bible). There's more, but this was the high point of the book, IMO.

So why not 5 stars? The chapter on legal hermeneutics was bad. Quite bad in fact. Thank goodness I took jurisprudence with Leiter, because otherwise, I would have been gravely misled. First, it is NOT true that "For legal positivism, no such universal reality exists. Thus, natural law is either rejected altogether or reduced in metaphysical content to such things as the universal human desire to survive and the consequent need for legal restraints that ensure such survival". Hart's theory of law believes a law is valid if it meets the requirement of the rule of recognition. That makes no comment on what the law SHOULD be, it just says what IS, which positivists view as distinct. Example: the rule of recognition in the United States is that laws passed by Congress are laws, so Jim Crow laws are laws, according to a positivist. That doesn't mean those laws are JUST and (unlike what Zimmermann implies) a legal positivist could 100% believe that there are laws of nature that make those laws immoral; however that has no bearing on whether those laws are laws. Separately, Zimmermann says that "textualism is also known as originalism", which is not true.
Great book, by all means. Just didn't like the law chapter.

Quotes

“Hermeneutic thinkers hold that we arrive at truth because we already participate in something greater that conveys truth to us, such as the language and cultural tradition we inhabit. It is therefore misleading to pretend such influence does not exist or to repress it for the sake of supposed objectivity. Such repression blinds us to our guiding influences and thus prevents us from understanding why we believe what we believe. Thus, ironically, obsession with objectivity can entrap us in subjectivism.”

“Indeed, it seems indisputable that the well-being of society depends on cohesive social visions and also on our ability to imagine things differently. The inability to do so usually leads to simplistic entrenchment in received truths and to a fearful defence of what has always been. In short, lack of imagination often results in fundamentalism."

“The story is told about a fisherman who kept throwing large fish back into the river and kept only the puny ones. Asked by an exasperated onlooker what he was doing, the angler replied: ‘I only have a 10 inch frying pan’. For Heidegger, modern epistemology is like this frying pan which is incapable of holding the larger truths of human life that are often captured in literature, poetry, theology, and art.”

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a short (roughly 130 pages + appendix) introduction to the practical implications of hermeneutics. Author Jens Zimmermann, philosopher and theologian, holds the Canada Research Chair in Interpretation, Religion and Culture at Trinity Western University (Langley, British Columbia).

Zimmermann emphasizes throughout the book that hermeneutics (applying methods of interpretation) occurs whenever one is grasping at meaning. Understanding "requires art rather than rule", and "not just facts" are required, "but their integration into a meaningful whole".

Lest you think interpretation is merely the application of clear rules, Zimmermann gives this amusing example: "trying to understand why the girl you brought to the party dances with everyone but you involves a unique personal interpretive effort that goes beyond mere logical analysis and general interpretive principles". :)

I'm going to cherry-pick a few excerpts from each of the major topic areas:

1) Hermeneutics in philosophy:

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Descartes’s foundationalism bequeathed a serious problem to philosophy. Descartes purchased the certainty of rational truths at the price of splitting the mind from the world
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For this hermeneutic effort, the scientific posture of examining an object from a distance is completely useless, because such a stance catapults the interpreter out of the very life relations he needs to probe. Instead, the interpreter has to be completely engaged and try to make transparent the very structures of being he himself inhabits.
. . .
The crucial point is that such pre-understanding, as conveyed through language and tradition, is not a prison or anything negative from which we have to disengage. On the contrary, it is what makes our meaningful engagement of the world possible in the first place.
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For philosophical hermeneutics, every text that we encounter is essentially an answer to a previously asked question. For that matter, every idea or concept that has developed over time is a response to a question. What is justice? How do we define freedom? What is the nature of the cosmos? Scientific texts, histories, plays, novels, legal dispositions, and philosophical discourses are answers to questions that in turn pose new questions that require new responses. How a question is asked in part determines the answer, and latecomers to a conversation can often see more clearly the limitations of an earlier answer and provide a better one. Of course, given the richness of life and the natural limits of human reason, answers are rarely final.
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2) Hermeneutics in the humanities

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interpretation of texts ( as we have seen ) follows the movement Gadamer called the ‘fusion of horizons’. The reader confronts the world projected by the text. The social and moral world suggested by Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina, for example, suggests a certain vision of life. While this vision is culturally determined by the author’s own time and concerns, it nonetheless engages us on perennial human issues, such as social responsibility, faithfulness in marriage, and the nature of religion. A reader’s understanding of himself in his world is confronted by the text’s world. When asking ‘what is my view of marriage?’ or concluding ‘I never thought about religion in this way’, the reader’s own horizon is expanded, his self-understanding challenged and changed. According to hermeneutic philosophy, the hermeneutic circle of understanding is thus not a movement between two subjects, the author and the reader, but rather between my understanding myself in my own world on the one hand, and the world projected by the text with its possibilities for life, on the other.
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we integrate something unfamiliar into our familiar way of seeing things. In doing so, our own former perspective is altered by being enlarged and deepened. Hermeneutic philosophers consistently emphasize the power of the human imagination to envision and inhabit a meaningful world through language. At the heart of imagination lies metaphor, our ability to see similarity in difference and thus to enlarge our perspective and see things otherwise.
. . .
it seems indisputable that the well being of society depends on cohesive social visions and also on our ability to imagine things differently. The inability to do so usually leads to simplistic entrenchment in received truths and to a fearful defence of what has always been. In short, lack of imagination often results in fundamentalism.
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3) Hermeneutics in theology:

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Divine inspiration, however, seems contrary to hermeneutics. Does not inspiration ensure the absolute clarity of God’s revelation by avoiding any human mediation?
. . .
If divine inspiration is indeed dictation, the original human recipient merely channels God’s truth without any understanding. Such divine dictation, however, also affects how later readers approach the text. Belief in inspiration without mediation through human understanding encourages fundamentalism. If a sacred text itself is deemed perfect and unalterable, believers are prone to disregard the historical context of prophecies, or pay no attention to literary genres. The result is that only a strictly literalist reading counts as the straightforward and faithful access to revelation. Most importantly, if interpretation inescapably filters a text through the reader’s own cultural horizon, fundamentalists’ disregard for their own historical context will virtually ensure that they read their own predilections into the text.
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Scholars of religion have drawn attention to another hermeneutic consequence of the Quran’s theological status. An eternal text implicitly ‘negates the very idea of it having a historical context’. How can one reconcile the notion of an uncreated text with the fundamental hermeneutic insight that all truth is mediated historically? How do principles of historical textual criticism widely accepted by modern scholarship apply to the Quran?
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Like its sister religions, Christianity features various views of inspiration, ranging from a general sense of divine illumination that includes human mediation to a narrow doctrine of dictation. This narrow doctrine is called ‘verbal inspiration’, the claim that God showed the human author exactly what words to use. The concept of verbal inspiration emerged relatively late in Christian history after the Protestant Reformation. Verbal inspiration became necessary to establish a stand alone, self-interpreting Bible, by which an individual reader could attain certain truth divorced from tradition and ecclesial authority.
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The task of hermeneutics, however, is not to gloss over the tension between the past and present horizon, but to become fully aware of it.
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4) Hermeneutics in law:

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Such formulations reinforce the popular opinion that the law is unambiguously given and simply needs to be enforced. Many lawyers and laypeople share the conviction that the work of legal experts and judges is simply the mechanical application of existing legal propositions to specific cases. The fact that much legal work boils down to devising contracts or adjudicating violations of civic law also strengthens the idea that legal interpretation is the disinterested application of rules. The more unbiased and impersonal this application, the more impartial and just the judgment. Justice, after all, has been traditionally depicted as a blindfolded goddess, Iustitia, who, after weighing the evidence in the scales with complete impartiality, wields punitive power, symbolized by the sword.
. . .
With the Christianization of the Roman legal tradition, the nature of law changed. Reason was now only a partial and highly unreliable guide to law. Instead, God’s moral law as revealed in the Bible became the ground of civic law in Christendom. Note that in the right picture, the goddess now holds a book instead of the scales
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In short, a legal judgment involves more than the mere application of rules. Legal ruling is an act of interpretation in which a judge establishes the meaning of legal texts by ‘translating’ them from their particular historical context into the present. But this is not simply rule based. Rather, this translation is exactly the kind of creative performance Gadamer had called participation in an ‘event of tradition’. In making his ruling, a judge intuitively draws on many assumptions that do their work quietly in the background, such as the language, legal concepts, and moral expectations of his tradition. In poring over legal texts, the judge’s interpretation is directed entirely by the goal to understand what a particular legal statute means for the present case. Thus, legal practice is a prime example of Gadamer’s claim that reading texts with any degree of understanding always includes application. It is only in the light of the present case that the judge knows what a legal statute really means. Interpreting a legal text and studying a poem in English class thus follow the same basic hermeneutic movement. The stakes, of course, are different.
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5) Hermeneutics in science:

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Scientists know; everyone else merely believes. This view of science, while no longer shared by most scientists, originated in the 18th and 19th centuries, and remains stubbornly lodged in our collective popular consciousness.
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We have to dispel the illusion that scientists drop any theory about physics, astronomy, biology, or any other scientific subject that is not fully verifiable. The fact is that no paradigm manages to offer a total explanation of the world, and the scientist has to live with anomalies, that is, with experiences that do not fit the theory and threaten to undermine it. Their personal faith in the stability of a paradigm allows scientists to shelve anomalies in the hope of resolving them later through an expansion of the theory, and this indeed sometimes happens. At other times, however, persistent anomalies can lead to overthrowing an entire theory and opening a new way of understanding the world.
. . .
Scientific discovery depends heavily on the personal intuition of a scientist whose deep familiarity with a prior theory and the relevant facts, together with the hitherto stubbornly unexplained anomalies, allows him to intuit a better way of integrating all these particulars into a new coherent framework. This intuitive vision, while based on experience, cannot be reduced to logic, but constitutes an intellectual leap from one existing interpretive framework to another.
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Let us not forget that one of the main inspirations of the astronomer Galileo, aside from his dislike of Aristotle’s hold on the minds of theologians, was his belief that the Bible and nature were two books by the same author, God, and thus could not ultimately contradict each other. Thus, if science showed the earth to orbit the sun, there must be a better theological reading of the Genesis account than the traditional geocentric one championed by the current ecclesial establishment.
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striving for coherence through the integration of particulars into a meaningful whole, science proceeds hermeneutically. Every supposedly neutral observation is theory-laden; that is, facts are selected and recognized according to a certain interpretive framework. A theory is like a lens through which the scientist sees something as something of value for science, just as the trained artist or historian recognizes techniques or compositions as valuable. In turn, every new scientific theory is a visionary act of the imagination that is inspired by observation of facts and grounded in received scientific practices. Scientific knowledge thus moves in a hermeneutic circle, moving between parts and whole, clarifying and often transforming one another.
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6) And on the future of hermeneutics:

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Secular and religious fundamentalists still defend the modernist illusion of timeless, certain knowledge. Their shrill voices and defensive, sometimes even violent, stances toward others are driven by the fear of relativism. In contrast, by insisting on the interpretive nature of all human knowledge without falling into relativism, hermeneutics encourages the interpretive humility essential to any dialogue. Acknowledging the profound mediation of even our deepest beliefs through history, tradition, and language should induce us to admit that we could be wrong and are thus open to correction. The awareness that our own interpretive framework can benefit from another’s encourages conversation in order to learn. By contrast, the belief that truth is something self-evident only an obstinate fool would reject fosters a basic stance of confrontation. Insofar as hermeneutic philosophy encourages conversation among those of different faiths and cultures, hermeneutics will remain an essential part of our future.
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4.5 stars

[Melissa Barbosa · Rating 5 out of 5]

The topic is not an easy one, but the author manages to explain it well in just a few pages. It really got me interested in hermeneutics.

[Ivy-Mabel Fling · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent short introduction to the meaning of hermeneutics and its important role in the interpretation of literary, theological and legal texts. Fascinating to read.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even though it explains very well the different facets of how people understand and interpret the world around them,through texts,literature and art,it felt at some points very academic and I had to take big breaks to give my brain a breather.

I wouldn’t re-read the book,but I appreciate what it taught me.

Favourite quotes:

“...understanding is something that goes beyond what we nowadays call knowledge: the mere passing or receiving of information.Understanding is knowledge in the deeper sense of grasping not just facts but their integration into a meaningful whole...the kind of practical operation that provides knowledge in the sense of deep familiarity with something.”

“In contrast to our modern inclination to discount philosophy,religion, and poetry as sources of real knowledge, the ancient world considered them to be important carriers of moral ideals...Aristotle famously argued that poetry was more elevated than history because poems went beyond mere facts to imagine the purpose of human development and deduce universal moral truths.”

“(Hermeneutics)...is also the name for the philosophical discipline concerned with analysing the conditions for understanding.”

“A theory seeks to isolate methods of interpretation in order to com up with regulative principles that allow us to control the production of meaning...No doubt,every field of knowledge,whether in the human or natural sciences,represents a certain mode of knowing,and thus follows a particular methodology that corresponds to its particular object of study. The philosophical discipline of hermeneutics,however, is not a method aiming at a specific practical goal or particular reading.Rather,hermeneutic philosophers are interested in understanding as such:how and under what conditions does understanding happen?”

“...we see the world through the eyes our cultural traditions provide for us.Without these conceptual lenses that allow us meaningful access to reality,we would be blind.Hermeneutic thinkers hold that we arrive at truth because we already participate in something greater that conveys truth to us,such as the language and cultural tradition we inhabit.It is therefore misleading to pretend such influence does not exist or to repress it for the sake of supposed objectivity.Such repression blinds us to our guiding influences and thus prevents us from understanding why we believe what we believe...We don’t make truth happen;rather truth is something that happens to us.Truth is an event.”

“We don’t ‘do’ hermeneutics;we ‘are’ self-interpreting animals,beings whose very nature is to negotiate a complex world of meaningful relations into which we are thrown at birth.We are born into families,cities and nations,languages,institutions,ideas,and social values that shape our understanding of the world.Even more profoundly,the meaning of our lives is determined by birth and death,by our fears,,moods, and desires. Within this matrix of meaningful relations,we are constantly interpreting and being interpreted,told who we are but also coming to understand ourselves and trying to realise the future possibilities for our lives.”

“Hermeneutics describes the common human endeavour to interpret past traditions in light of pressing contemporary questions in order to make future oriented decisions for completing the project that is our life.”

“The past is not ‘out there’ presenting us with objects to examine.Rather,history is like a stream in which we move and participate in every act of understanding. The very reason that we can understand anything at all from the past is because we already stand in the stream of time that connects past and present...Gadamer suggested we should not talk about our consciousness ‘of’ history but about our ‘historically affected consciousness’,that is,about the way our very awareness of the world comes about because of history and its formative effect on how we perceive things.”

“...authority and tradition are linked in the recognition that our knowledge about the world depends on others who have mastered and passed on skills accumulated by tradition.”

“...integrating the alien and the familiar forms tha basic structure of human experience.Experience is not merely the encounter with something unforeseen but always includes our being changed by this encounter.We learn when we confront something unfamiliar and integrate it into what we already know.”

“At the heart of imagination lies metaphor,our ability to see similarity in difference and thus to enlarge our perspective and see things otherwise.”

“...it seems indisputable that the well-being of society depends on cohesive social visions and also on our ability to imagine things differently. The inability to do so usually leads to simplistic entrenchment in received truths and to a fearful defence of what has always been.In short,lack of imagination often results in fundamentalism.”

[Sam van der Leek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hermeneutiek is een term die bij mij vorig jaar geen belletje zou laten rinkelen. Echter als gloednieuwe theologie student kan ik er niet omheen, ik begrijp en interpreteer de wereld op een bepaalde manier, door een bepaalde bril, in een bepaalde tijd, van uit een bepaalde socio-culturele achtergrond. Dit fijne boekje heeft me geholpen om beter inzicht te krijgen in die bril, en ook hoe deze visie op de realiteit, is ontwikkeld door de jaren heen.

Als theoloog is een van de kerntaken van je beroep om de Bijbel te interpreteren. Dit is waar hermeneutiek binnen komt, hoe kan ik een tekst van 2000 jaar geleden, die geschreven is voor bepaalde mensen, in een bepaalde tijd en plaats, vertalen naar onze context? Als ik geloof dat de Bijbel Gods Woord is, en nog steeds spreekt vandaag de dag, en nog steeds relevant is voor de postmoderne mens, dan heb ik hermeneutiek nodig om de Bijbel te begrijpen en toepasbaar te maken voor onze tijd.

Het boekje was erg beknopt, en geeft toch in een magere 142 pagina’s een zeer heldere inleiding op de hermeneutiek. Ik vond het ook erg duidelijk hoe Zimmerman de verschillende hermeneutische filosofen tegen elkaar af zette. Het boek heeft me veel nieuwe inzichten gegeven over hoe de mens kan begrijpen, en hoe die kijkt naar de wereld om zich heen.

Het boekje heeft me aangemoedigd om in de toekomst, zeker nog een boek op te pakken van een van de vele filosofen die benoemd zijn in het boekje. (Denk aan Heidegger, Ricoeur, Gadamer of Schleiermacher)

Een drietal quotes om mijn review mee af te sluiten:
‘Past and present experiences of life are connected through the stream of history in which we all stand’ blz 32 Dilthey

‘History is not a barrier but the very thing connecting us to the cultural traditions that are giving us the initial lenses through which we see the worlds’ Blz 38 Heidegger

Hermeneutics describes the common human endeavour to interpret past traditions in light of pressing contemporary questions in order to make future oriented decisions for completing the project that is our life.’ blz 38 Heidegger

[Anjan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prior to reading this book, I ignorantly equated Hermeneutics to relativism. It isn't. Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation, not the belief that morals and beliefs are relative. If you like, you can thump your chest and preach "A is A" and not lose your zeal after reading this book. You may even learn something you can use.

It was a pleasure to read the well organized thoughts of someone who writes so well. I will be revisiting this book because it will teach me how to write.

Zimmerman writes well about philosophy, literature, law, and religion. Classic texts in this field are summarized with little jargon and no assumption of prior knowledge. I will suggest this book to friends who plan on reading John Austin, Kuhn, or Dworkin.

Zimmermann connected the dots between authors I've read but haven't juxtaposed with each other. Best summary of Dworkin on legal interpretation I've read. There are a lot of term paper outlines available in this one text, Zimmermann's done most of the hard work of connecting the dots.

Having never pondered religious interpretation (hazards of growing up with a bias that equated analytics with rationalism) I was introduced to new methods of interpretation. This book is dense, I will be reviewing this section

Having never pondered literary interpretation, I learned quite a bit. Going forward, I think it will be easier to understand the context and assumptions of a "critical theory" academic who writes for those that already understand the basics I'm just starting to grok.

The book ends with an appendix of counter arguments and further readings. Even these tidy paragraphs are illuminating and add to the work.

[Khashayar Baghizadeh · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Imagine an alien scientist, who finds a broken toaster and tries to fix it. Even if the alien analyses all the nuts and bolts of the toaster, knowledge of these details alone will not help her understand their function within the combined whole of a bread toasting machine designed to enhance a human breakfast."

"The universal claim of hermeneutics is rather that interpretation is a human condition. Hermeneutics describes the common human endeavor to interpret past traditions in light of pressing contemporary questions in order to make future oriented decisions for completing the project that is our life."

"And just as the correspondence between the map and the actual landscape depends on our judgement, itself based on personal skill and experience, so any exact science requires a trained eye and personal judgement for correlating instrumental readings or mathematical computations with the reality of actual experience."

I also learned what the hermeneutic circle is: The hermeneutic circle means that some greater context always influences how we understand a particular part.

Besides the hermeneutics part that was clearly the main focus of the book, this book had four invaluable lessons for me. Namely:

1. Latin. The Latin root of the word "tradition" which is "tradere" literally means "to hand over". The Latin etymology of this single word is enough to make me fall in love with Latin and take my Latin studies more seriously.

2. It made me realize how deficient is my understanding of the great figures of the philosophy of science. So I will instantly pick up a book on the subject to read in my spare time.

3. Chapter five which was on the subject of hermeneutics and theology showed me no matter how short a book is, life is shorter and I should not be obsessed with reading a book to its totality and so I skipped it courageously (although I admit it and tag it as "partially read").

4. Even a three star book could teach me in great ways unimaginable.

[Stephen Scholtz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zimmermann’s very short introduction to hermeneutics is excellent. It’s readable and engaging, yet comprehensive enough to give a sense of the complexity of the subject.

He outlines a definition of hermeneutics in the early chapters, emphasizing the philosophical nature of such a study. He then survey’s the history of philosophical hermeneutics by looking at Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamar and Ricoeur. Zimmerman then applies this conception of philosophical hermeneutics to the fields of the humanities, theology, law and science, showing it’s relevance to all fields.

I thoroughly enjoyed this Oxford Very Short Introduction and would highly recommend it!

[Wan Feng An · Rating 3 out of 5]

"We don’t make truth happen; rather truth is something that happens to us. Truth is an event."

This book wasn't very long but I got a bit bored reading through it. I did resonate with the basic tenets of hermeneutics — that interpretation is a basic condition of existence and to live is to interpret things through the lens of culture and lived experience, which in turn is shaped by the world around us. I didn't really understand how they claimed to resolve the subjectivity vs objectivity divide, and would like to read more on that. Decent read and introduction to hermeneutics which I definitely am a beginner to.

[Павел Качнов · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book because I thought it was about hermetics. By the time I realized my mistake, I was already hooked. What seemed at first like an abstract term from theology or philosophy turned out to describe a structure I’ve been living inside all along.

The main shift came from seeing understanding not as decoding meaning, but as a dialogue between horizons, between text and reader, past and present, self and world. The old school model of “one correct interpretation” suddenly looked childish; I finally grasped why I always felt uneasy when teachers demanded to know what the author “really meant.” Gadamer validated that instinct: meaning isn’t recovered - it happens in encounter.

Another insight was recognizing how deeply Heidegger’s groundwork and Gadamer’s architecture fit together. Heidegger showed that interpretation is our mode of being; Gadamer showed how it unfolds in language, history, and art. From that point, everything I do - from reading a book to diagnosing a patient felt like a miniature hermeneutic circle: forming hypotheses, letting evidence push back, refining understanding.

What struck me most was how this perspective softens intellectual arrogance. It replaces “knowing better” with curiosity and dialogue. Whether I’m reading Babylonian history, watching a film, or talking with a colleague, I now sense that understanding is co-created, never owned.

It’s a dense little book, but it quietly changed how I see thinking itself, and, in a fitting way, even this review became a fusion of horizons: the book’s ideas meeting my own experience and returning as something new.

[Shad Aijalon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good summary of a broad branch of philosophy. Most of its value is in the "Further Reading Section."

[امیرمحمد حیدری · Rating 3 out of 5]

کتابی که با عنوان «هرمنوتیک: درآمدی بسیار کوتاه» ترجمه و چاپ شده و چون از مترجم و نویسنده‌اش مطمئن نبودم، به نسخه‌ی اصلی کتاب اکتفا کردم. عالی بود. درآمدی واقعا کوتاه و واقعا مفید و آموزنده‌.

[Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here’s a reason why it might take a while for AGI to become a thing, better than us: computers have only been around in their digital-processing form for less than a century, yet we humans have had many mercurial millennia to figure things out like truth, knowledge and reality, and we’re still not really on-line about what is what. In this Introduction, it is not even clear if the philosophical study of interpretation is a singular or plural noun! So what hermeneutics is (or are) could be a pile of books that humanity has accumulated attempt to answer many of the questions we have, and any further attempt to find an answer only results in another pile of books forming. The author Zimmermann hints at a way out with digital humanities, an artificial intelligence that can sort through these tomes in microseconds and determine what is what, but then we might miss out on the Ricouerian second naïveté that would have never been one of my googled hits. How about that?

[Blair Hodges · Rating 4 out of 5]

Concise, thorough, readable introduction. VSI nails it again.

[Evan Micheals · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this seeking a research method for my Master’s Research Subject on the suggestion of my research supervisor that what I was wanting to research (Local Indigenous Mythology) did not fit into the traditional quantitative/qualitative paradigms. I came away from reading it thinking ‘this is what I have been thinking for years, but I did not have a name for it’.

“One is engaged in hermeneutics whenever one tries to grasp the meaning of something” (p 22),
and “the goal if hermeneutics is understanding, and that although understanding may be guided by analytical principles, it cannot be reduced to them” (p 22). This is the basis of my work as a psychotherapist. I want to gain understanding of another. This seems to be at the basis of a lot of the existential philosophy I have been reading, an understanding of the human condition. I am always clear to acknowledge my own bias, which Zimmermann state is important, “Interpretation, in other words, is intrinsically guided by my present concerns, by the desire to hear an announcement that pertains to my own situation” (p 25).

“In contract to our modern inclination to discount philosophy, religion, and poetry as sources of real knowledge, the ancient world considered them to be important carriers of moral ideals” (p 26). I re-read Karen Armstrong’s A Brief History of Myth and her work supported a lot of Hermeneutic ideals and she could have written, “Generally, however, the ancients believed that rhetoric’s true purpose was the attainment and teaching of deep truths about the human condition” (p 26).

I quickly began to see the Hermeneutics was part of what I have been intellectually seeking. “The word ‘hermeneutic’, however has a second meaning. It is also the name for the philosophical discipline concerned with analysing the conditions for understanding” (p 27). I have been observing what I consider scientivism for sometime, that somehow scientific knowledge is the Alpha and the Omega. “Objective knowledge is defined as the result of this disinterested observation. Hermeneutic thinkers, however, believed that we have falsely elevated this scientific ideal of knowledge, allowing it to become the measure of all human knowledge. They contest the idea that knowledge is obtained through disinterested observation. Rather, hermeneutic thinkers say that we only conduct experiments and want to know about the world because we are already deeply involved in it at the level of everyday practical activity” (p 32).

We are all bias and find it easy to find knowledge to support our a priori held views. “It is therefore misleading to pretend such influence does not exist or to repress it for the sake of supposed objectivity. Such repression blinds us to our guiding influences and thus prevents us from understanding why we believe what we believe. Thus, ironically, obsession with objectivtivity can entrap us subjectivism. Instead, hermeneutic thinkers insist we need to redefine objective truth as something we take part in rather then something we merely observe from a distance. We don’t make truth happen: rather truth is something that happens to us. Truth is an event.” (p 33).

Little of what we know is factual, therefore we have to interpret and “hermeneutics basically means interpretation, and interpretation is what we do until we really figure something out and arrive at objective, final, indisputable knowledge” (p 35). “The Natural Sciences explain nature, but only the human sciences can understand culture. He argued that the sciences approach the world the way we approach a complex machine, trying to explain its parts and how they work. The empirical science’ preoccupation with natural forces and laws may be adequate to explain the workings of nature, but the natural sciences are incapable of capturing how the inner world of human spirit, that is how wills, emotions, and ambitions shape the material world to produce culture. We perceive the human world of culture not primarily in terms of mechanisms but relational terms” (p 47).

“The point is that we don’t do history, as if the past was like an object we can handle. For Dllthey, we are history, insofar as our self-understanding requires the constant recovery and appropriation of our past cultural heritage, the mediation of past and present” (p 49). This is why we have culture and history wars, because we are in the constant process if interpreting and re-interpreting our culture and history. This is what makes mythology dynamic. What does it mean? To borrow from Wittgenstein ‘To understand is to know what to do’. One for the foremost Mathematician Philosophers, was at his base a Hermenuetists.

This is a comment I have been making about undervalueing art for years, without knowing I was making a hermeneutic claim. “Philosophical hermeneutics thus rehabilitates the power of art to convey real knowledge about ourselves. Art helps us understand ourselves better and thus make more intelligent decisions about life. Art helps us to identify and understand previously invisible forces that shape our lives and thus to deal with them” (p 68). “Literary texts reveal two important aspects of how imagination works. The first is that language is not primarily conceptual but metaphorical. Word pictures or metaphors are not mere frills, but essential to perceiving a human world. We describe nature around us through language that relates everything to human concerns” (p 79).

I could be wrong but, “by insisting on the interpretive nature of all human knowledge without falling into relativism, heremneutics encourages the interpretive humility essential to any dialogue. Acknowledging the profound mediation of even our deepest beliefs through history, tradition and language should induce us to admit that we could be wrong and are thus open to correction” (p 136).

“A psychoanalyst takes an observing stance during communication with her patient in order to detect destructive beliefs stemming from deeply repressed traumatic experiences in the patients past. In the same way, the social sciences provide a ‘depth hermeneutic’ for filtering out ideologicallly distorted communications (such as propaganda) and destructive cultural attitudes contained in traditions” (p 138). This seems to support that Psychotherapy is fundamentally a Hermenuetic activity of helping people filter out distorted communication from the id and the super ego, in the development of a healthy ego.

Zimmermann’s work has inspired me to learn about this branch of philosophy and hopefully provided me with a research paradigm that I can get my teeth into and pass the final two subjects of my Master’s Degree. I have not enjoyed being back at University and found it a credentialing exercise, and mostly a waste of time where I have learned little. Starting me on the path to understanding hermenuetics may make it all worth while (and has the potential to return me to University once I am done with this).

[Louise Sullivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Straight forward reference about hermeneutics.

[Andrew Earnshaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was my first proper introduction to the world of Hermeneutics. Before coming to this book, I had an extremely high level, conceptual understanding of Hermeneutics and its role within philosophy.

The structure of this book is a pretty standard one. There is a summary of the major thinkers within Hermeneutics with chapters on Heidegger (with a good and fair discussion of his political opinions), Derrida, Gadamer, Rorty, Vattimo. After which, there is an application of Hermeneutics to education, artificial intelligence and religion.

It's uncertain to me as to whether this book is genuinely brilliant or a practical but underwhelming introduction.

Why the caution? Well, Jens Zimmerman is a capable writer and an expert philosopher, and sometimes I feel his literary flair and personal opinions get in the way of clarity. He doesn't always explain what his subjects were thinking in the simplest of terms. Instead, he prefers to spend three or four paragraphs talking around the issue. This increased complexity prevents me from being very confident about precisely what each of these thinkers thought.

However, that said, Hermeneutics, the philosophy of interpretation, is, by its very nature, resistant to simple, categorical explanation. This encouragement is where the magic of the book lies. The author does an excellent job, from the earliest pages, of encouraging the reader to think in a Hermeneutical way. Especially in the conclusions when Hermeneutics is applied to topics close to the author's heart, the reader can think with this book, and begin asking questions about questions, to start interpreting all the way down.

Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to get a flavour of Hermeneutics, but, it is only a start.

[Ftm.k92 · Rating 5 out of 5]

روزی که به دنیا اومدیم چیزی از شیرینی و تلخی نمیدونستیم.
همه چیز از اونجایی شروع شد که حرف زدن یاد گرفتیم،جنس کلمات رو شناختیم و زبان باز کردیم.
هرمنوتیک به ما یادآور میشه که این ماهیچه بی استخوان،این وسیله رفع نیاز و دنیا کلمه ای که آموختیم،ابزار فکر و درک کردن ماست.
______________
این جهان با ذهن ما فاصله ها دارد،مگر....
______________
بزرگ شدیم و درس خوندیم، تاریخ ،هنر و الهیات... همیشه سوال بود که این کتابهای سنگین و سخت تاریخی به چه درد میخوره؟
هرمنوتیک به ما ثابت می‌کنه که تاریخ حافظ فرهنگ و سنت ماست، تا با اختیار و انتخاب درست مسیرها رو بسازیم،زیرا ما درحال حرکت در تاریخ هستیم.
هنر و ادبیات بسته به احساسات است.یک اثر هنری در مخاطب چه روحیه ای را زنده می‌کند؟ آیا زمانی که یک رمان را در دست داریم،خلاقیت نویسنده راهی را روشن خواهد کرد؟ هرمنوتیک فلسفی میگوید هنر با رساندن منظور و انتقال دانش،شرایط برای رسیدن به آگاهی و درک درست جهان را میسازد.
در ادیان مختلف یهودیت،مسیحیت و اسلام کتابهای مقدس با روش های مختلف مورد بررسی هستند. آیا سنت در تفسیرها نقشی دارد؟ آیا اصلا لزومی به تفسیر کردن هست یا خوانش متن کافی ست؟ مارتین لوتر،ابن رشد،کاتولیک ها،اسلام گرایان رادیکال،اصلاح طلبان اسلامی،مواردی هست که در هرمنوتیک پاسخ گو ماست.
برای معرفی در پست اینستاگرامی،این نامه دیجیتال که خود نیز بحثی در هرمنوتیک دارد،فضا کم است و حرف بسیار.
علم هرمنوتیک،این دانش غریب افتاده،راهی برای خودشناسی،انتخاب اصلح و در نهایت رضایت حاصل میکند.
کتاب رو به رو "هرمنوتیک" ،نوشته ی ینس زیمرمن و ترجمه ی ابراهیم فتوت توسط نشر کتاب کوله پشتی در اواخر سال ۱۳۹۸ به چاپ رسید.
با بیانی ساده و ترجمه ای روان لذت خوانش کتاب غیردرسی و غیرداستانی چشانید تا نگاه را تغییر دهد، روند روزگار روزمره را دقیق تر شمریم ، در لحظه زندگی کنیم و درکی از جایگاهمان در هستی بیابیم.

[Tom Calvard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hermeneutics seems like a difficult topic, and I'm no expert, but it also seemed like this author did a good job making it accessible while also making the introduction as thorough as possible in the 'very short' space available.

There was a helpful general introduction, a series of chapters in the body covering philosophy, religion, law, and science, with a conclusion also anticipating future applications to digital media and forms of fundamentalism. The author works hard to highlight additional developments in an appendix, along with thoughtful suggestions for further reading.

Hermeneutics can be dry and academic in some of its terms and debates, but its underlying aims I find fascinating - trying to establish how we seek to interpret, understand, and explain ourselves and the world, through people, events, texts and different domains of knowledge.

If anything, it's a little too ambitious and all-encompassing, perhaps. There don't seem to be many straightforward or definitive conclusions. It is in the nature of hermeneutics for it all to be ongoing and open-ended. Yet understanding and knowing are such universal and fundamental human (and animal) activities that it's hard not to get engaged and ponder how it all works or fails to work!

[An Te · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good and rather thorough introduction to the compelling subject matter of hermeneutics, otherwise known as the science of interpretation. A wide range of applications of hermeneutics are discussed. The appendixes with the hotly contested debates between tradition, critical reflection and meaning are worth the 4 stars, in and of themselves. Recommended read for those wishing to take the plunge into how we interpret tradition, using our critical faculties, in spite of our immersion in a particular tradition.

(P.S. I might add, plain positivistic objectivity is not possible; we are creatures and thus context-bound. It's a social truth.)

[Stephan Naro · Rating 1 out of 5]

Smoke and mirrors. Strawmen. Mountains out of molehills.

Some interesting observations here and there, which I would like to see within a more critical framework, but this was by-and-large rather disappointing and at times utterly atrocious.

Let me address only his talk of the satisfaction that science gives a scientist. Because I find fresh milk to be a rather satisfying drink, and rotten milk dissatisfying, drinking fresh milk is, according to Zimmermann, like religion to me. I am supposedly "committed" to drinking fresh milk, ie I have "faith" in it. This is just perversely fraudulent "argumentation" on his part.

[01089798 _ Pages · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sebagai orang yang masih awam banget di bidang filsafat, aku masih agak kesulitan untuk menangkap beberapa point penting dalam buku ini. Tapi, beruntungnya si penulis terlihat berusaha untuk menjelaskan apa yang dia maksud melalui contoh-contoh yang mudah untuk dipahami. Buku ini dari segi ilmu pengetahuan sangat worth it untuk dibaca karena memberikan aku gambaran baru untuk memaknai sesuatu hal dengan lebih bijak. Aku jadi termotivasi untuk terus terbuka dalam memperluas dan memperdalam ilmu pengetahuanku karena ternyata penting banget agar bisa mendapatkan pemahaman yang lebih baik akan dunia. Mantep deh!

[Andi Jafar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Important Topic in an Accessible Language

This relatively short book, in my view, is a very important one. It tries to engage in one of the most important yet "neglected" topics in our time. And, I think it does it successfully. As a non-native speaker of english, I found this book was very accessible.

[Kostiantyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is understanding? Why the world around us can be understood and interpreted whether scientifically or through literature, art and religion? What is knowledge and can it be objective? This is a perfect intro into a branch of philosophy that stands behind processes of understanding and interpretation (in a broad sense).

[Donelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good if you're familiar with philosophy or brand new to it.

I thought the book laid out a good introduction to hermeneutics and helped give me a fresh perspective, because hermeneutics is a good balance between the rationalist line of thinking and the cultural relativism of reconstructionism, and now I see the value of all three ideologies.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Impressions: I was initially drawn to this book because I had not heard of the term hermeneutics. In a world with so many conflicting ideas and people who believe certain things passionately, hermeneutic philosophy serves as respite.

Theology, law, art, and science are not so black and white, matter of fact. They all require ongoing interpretation.