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Presupposed by this definition is the Heideggerian-Bultmannian insight that understanding, including understanding of all the forms of life-praxis, is an "existential" human existence, i.e., one of the structures constitutive of the "existentiality" of human existence as such; and that interpretation in the strict and proper sense. of critical interpretation is the development, on the secondary level of critical reflection, of the understanding which, on the primary level, is an "existential," and, therefore, is constitutive of human existence as such. Life-praxis comprehends all that human beings think, say, and do, whether secular or religious. Culture, on the other hand, designates the semiotic structures or "systems" (Geertz), i.e., systems of concepts and symbols, that mediate life-praxis in all of its forms, secular as well as religious. Hermeneutics, then, as the art or the theory of critically interpreting life-praxis can also be understood as – -- or as necessarily including – -- the art or the theory of critically interpreting culture in all of its forms, including religion.

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Following are several relevant passages from Bultmann's essay, "The Problem of Hermeneutics," which fill out this basic understanding. "... any understanding or interpretation is always oriented to \[or by\] a certain way of asking questions or to a certain objective. This means that it is never without presuppositions; more exactly, it is always guided by a preunderstanding of the subject matter about which it questions the text. Only on the basis of such a preunderstanding is a way of asking questions and an interpretation at all possible" (72 f.).

", , ,... in each case the process of understanding will be different, depending on how the objective of interpretation is determined. It is evidently not enough to say 'depending on the kind of text,' that is, on the subject matter that is directly expressed in the text or the interest by which it itself is guided.... Of course, in the first instance, questioning of the text is \[or should be\] oriented to the subject matter that is talked about in the text and mediated by it" (73).

"A way of asking questions ... grows out of an interest that is grounded in the life of the questioner; and the presupposition of all understanding interpretation is that this interest is also alive in some way in the text to be interpreted and establishes communication between the text and the interpreter.... \[T\]he presupposition of understanding is the life relation of the interpreter to the subject matter that is \-\- directly or indirectly \-\- expressed in the text" (73 f.).

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"... interpretation always presupposes a life relation to the different subject matters that – -- directly or indirectly – -- come to expression in texts"(75).

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"Knowledge acquired in a methodical way is 'objective,' which can only mean 'appropriate to the object once it comes within a certain way of asking questions'... The way of asking questions as such does not grow out of individual preference but out of history itself, in which every phenomenon \[_sc_. fact of the past\], in keeping with its complex nature, offers different aspects, that is, acquires \-\- or, better, claims \-\- significance in different directions. And it is in this same history that every interpreter, in keeping with the motives present in the variety of historical life, acquires the way of asking questions within which the phenomenon \[_sc_. fact of the past\] begins to speak" (85).

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"It is indeed true that one can no more have a preunderstanding of God's act as a real event than one can have of other events as events.... But in order to understand these events as historical events and not merely as arbitrary happenings, I have to have a preunderstanding of the historical possibilities within which they acquire their significance and therewith their characters as historical events.... Likewise, understanding reports of events as the act of God presupposes a preunderstanding of what in general can be called God's act – as distinct, say, from the acts of human beings or from natural events.... Unless our existence were moved (consciously or unconsciously) by the question about God in the sense of Augustine's 'Thou hast made us for thyself, and our heart is restless until it rests in thee,' ; we would not be able to recognize God as God in any revelation. There is an existential knowledge of God present and alive in human existence in the question about 'happiness' or 'salvation' or about the meaning of the world and of history, insofar as this is the question about the authenticity of our own existence. If the right to describe this question as the question about God is first acquired by faith in God's revelation, still the phenomenon as such is a relation to the subject matter of revelation" (86 f.).

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What is hermeneutics? Hermeneutics is the art of disciplined understanding of "expressions of life that are enduringly fixed" (Bultmann).

15 June 1990

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