Hermeneutics, Historicism and Surroundings

I. Dilthey, Weber, and Heidegger

Abstract

About a century after the cultural events that fostered the development of philosophical hermeneutics, I believe it is useful to return to its original historicist influence. This work draws inspiration from the project of a great Dictionary of Hermeneutics (edited by Gaspare Mura and Vinicio Busacchi), aimed at illustrating its historical profiles, systematic aspects and theoretical issues across the board. In the following pages, I would like to draw attention to the way in which some of the great classics of the twentieth-century hermeneutic tradition took a specific position in dealing with the question of historical knowledge. This was done through original reinterpretations of the philosophical problems of time and the past with respect to the legacy of the historicist tradition and, in particular, with respect to its outcomes in German culture between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I will not propose a historical reconstruction, but rather will attempt to explore the theoretical positions, problems and the attempts made at answers through the conceptual and argumentative analysis of some canonical texts. Most space is devoted to Martin Heidegger, as the protagonist of the ontological shift in the theory of understanding that largely determined the subsequent developments of hermeneutics. Given their depth and the particularly rich and complex web of theoretical paths that run through Sein und Zeit, it seemed necessary to select a specific reading itinerary for the work, re-examining the sections that can be linked to the question of history. In order to give adequate prominence to the plurality of philosophical voices and sensibilities involved, I have divided the work into two parts. In the first, I present some theoretical issues of German historicism, in order to highlight the significance of the ontological shift in Heidegger, which is then analysed in detail. The second part examines the interesting and diverse versions of the hermeneutic paradigm in Gadamer and Ricoeur.