History of hermeneutics
Hermeneutics is the theory and methodology of interpretation. The tradition of Western hermeneutics starts in the writings of Aristotle and continues to the modern era.
In De Interpretatione, Aristotle offers a theory which lays the groundwork for many later theories of interpretation and semiotics:
Equally important to later developments are some ancient texts on poetry, rhetoric, and sophistry:
However, these texts deal with the presentation and refutation of arguments, speeches, and poems rather than with the understanding of texts per se. As Ramberg and Gjesdal note, "Only with the Stoics, and their reflections on the interpretation of myth, do we encounter something like a methodological awareness of the problems of textual understanding."
Some ancient Greek philosophers, particularly Plato, vilified poets and poetry as harmful nonsense. In The Republic, Plato denied poets entry into his "ideal state" until they could prove their value. In Ion, Plato famously portrayed poets as possessed:
The meaning of the poem thus becomes open to ridicule. Whatever hints of truth it may have, the truth is covered up by madness. However, another line of thinking arose with Theagenes of Rhegium, who suggested that, instead of taking poetry literally, it ought to be taken as allegories of nature. Stoic philosophers further developed this idea, reading into poetry both allegories of nature and allegories of ethical behavior.
As writing, so also is speech not the same for all races of men.
But the mental affections themselves, of which these words are primarily signs (semeia), are the same for the whole of mankind, as are also the objects (pragmata) of which those affections are representations or likenesses, images, copies (homoiomata). [De Interpretatione, 1.16a4]
Aristotle differed with his predecessor, Plato, about the worth of poetry. Both saw art as an act of mimesis, but where Plato saw a pale, essentially false, imitation of reality, Aristotle saw the possibility of truth in imitation. As critic David Richter points out, "For Aristotle, artists must disregard incidental facts to search for deeper universal truths." Thus, instead of being essentially false, poetry may be universally true.
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