The existential foundation for the hero's journey

Hermeneutics and
the hermeneutic loop

by Reg Harris

Copyright © 2005 by Reg Harris. All rights reserved. Updated October 7, 2007. All rights reserved. Apart from properly cited quotes and short excerpts, no part of this article can be copied or used in any form without written permission from the author. For permission to use, please contact me.

Hermeneutics is a complicated philosophy, but―over-simplified―it is “the art of interpretation.” Named after the Greek messenger god, Hermes, hermeneutics developed into a formal discipline during the Renaissance, when scholars began to study ancient texts, including the Bible, with the intent of deriving precise meaning. The discipline evolved over the years and expanded to virtually any area that involves interpretation, including humankind's fundamental experience of being in the world (i.e., Martin Heidegger's existential concept of dasein).

One of the most interesting aspects of hermeneutics is the hermeneutic loop or circle. The hermeneutic loop is the cyclic pattern that develops because we can understand the whole of something only in terms of its parts and the parts only through their relationship to the whole. A change of understanding at either pole, whole or parts, triggers a change in understanding of the other pole, thus forcing us into an interpretive loop.

The hermeneutic loop emerges in our quest to interpret and understand our experience (Grondin, 1994). When we encounter something new or unknown, a question arises in our minds as to its significance or meaning. This question will direct our understanding by filtering the details we see and shaping our interpretation of those details. However, that question is based on preliminary presumptions we already have about the new experience. Those presumptions will “govern and even predetermine to a certain extent what can be discovered. We therefore disclose the answer in the light of what we already know” (Moran, 2000, p. 237). Our questioning sets up a pattern through which we will not only understand the phenomenon but formulate subsequent questions and understandings.

Thus, our understanding of a phenomenon will, to a great extent, be shaped by the preliminary presumptions or understandings we bring to it. However, if we project our preliminary understandings on to an event, and our preliminary understandings determine the understanding we have of the event, then any “new” understandings should only reinforce the preliminary understandings, trapping us in a “viscous circle” of interpretation. This is the hermeneutic loop, and it appears to be a closed circuit, preventing us from moving beyond our current horizons of understanding.

But this need not be the case. Heidegger and others emphasized that the circle is open if we approach it with the right under-standing. For Heidegger this understanding was based on how  our search relates both to our past, the impact our history and biases has on our present, and to our future, as we open ourselves to our potentials(Moran, 2000).

When approach life and literature with this understanding, the hermeneutic “loop” becomes an outward spiraling of growth and adaptation. This spiral takes the shape of the paradoxical dialogue between the parts and the whole that is the primary characteristic of the hermeneutic process: the parts shape the meaning of the whole and whole gives meaning to the parts.

This brings us to the paradox where a change of understanding at either pole, whole or parts, can destabilize meaning and raise new possibilities. For example, a student reading Hamlet for the first time would fail to see much of the play’s subtlety and depth. After reading the play, however, the student might realize that certain parts of the play suggest a better understanding the whole play. With a second reading, the student would draw deeper meaning from those parts, changing his understanding of the whole. This new understanding of the whole would trigger more interpretation of the original parts and disclose potential meanings in other parts, which would stimulate more readings―and so on. Great works of literature will lead the reader into ever-deepening loops of under-standing, as each new interpretation of the whole uncovers deeper significance latent in the parts.

Great works of literature lead the reader into ever-deepening loops of understanding, as each new interpretation of the whole uncovers deeper significance latent in the parts. In the same way, the story of our lives, if we we interpret it openly and without fear, will lead us to both wider and deeper under-standings of ourselves and our world.

This hermeneutic dialogue is also the foundation of the heroic journey pattern. An initial understanding or life (the whole) is challenged and we are called to create new meaning. We engage in the journey where the ineffective elements of that  understanding (the parts) are deconstructed. This leads to a revelation of new understanding, reconstruction, and a return at a higher level of understanding or consciousness (a new whole).

References

Grondin, J.  (1994). Introduction to philosophical hermeneutics. (J. Weinsheimer, Trans.),New Haven, CN: Yale University.

Moran, D.  (2000). Introduction to phenomenology. New York: Routledge.