Hermeneutics
"In
terms of the well-known etymology hermeneutics can
be regarded as a name which is not yet fixed in a scientific
manner: a) the art of presenting one's thoughts correctly,
b) the art of communicating someone else's utterance to a
third person, c) the art of understanding
another person's utterance correctly."1a
"Even
within a single text the particular can only be understood
from out of the whole, and a cursory reading to get an
overview of the whole must therefore precede the more precise
explication."1b
"The
divinatory method is the one in which one,
so to speak, transforms oneself into the other person and tries
to understand the individual element directly. The
comparative method first of all posits the person
to be understood as something universal and then finds the
individual aspect by comparison with other things included under
the same universal. The former is the female strength
in knowledge of people, the latter the male. Both refer
back to each other . . ."1c
Criticism
"If
we consider the expression criticism
etymologically, then two things come into consideration, on the
one hand, that criticism is in some sense a court of
judgment, on the other, that it is a comparison."1d
"The
universal presupposition of conversation is the
identity between thought and word. All understanding rests
on this."1e
"
. . . [A]ll operations of
criticism are determined by the emergence of the
suspicion that something is there which should not be.
Where there is no such suspicion no critical procedure can be
begun either."1f
General Hermeneutics
"The
goal of hermeneutics is understanding in the highest sense.
Lower maxim: one has understood everything that one
has really grasped without encountering contradiction.
Higher maxim: one has only understood what one has
reconstructed in all its relationships and in its context. --
To this also belongs understanding the writer better than he
understands himself."1g
Schematism and Language
"
. . . [T]he
relation of a particular image to a general image cannot be a
mistake. For this relationship is the truth."1h