Hermeneutics*Friedrich Ast

All action has its own manner or method which proceeds from its own essence; every activity of life has its own principles, without whose guidance it will lose itself in indeterminate directions. These principles become all the more urgent when we move from our own spiritual [geistig] 1 and physical world into a foreign one, where no familiar spirit [Genius] is guiding our uncertain steps, or is giving direction to our undefined effort. If we are to construct these principles ourselves, we shall apprehend the alien phenomena, understand the world of the unfamiliar spirit and surmise their deeper meaning only gradually and with difficulty.To the mind [Geist] there is nothing foreign as such, since it constitutes the higher, infinite unity, the center of all life, that is unbounded by any periphery.Would it be otherwise possible for us to become capable of comprehending the strangest, hitherto most unfamiliar perceptions, sensations, and ideas, if that which exists and can become were not originally comprised in the spirit, and evolving from it, just as the One infinite light refracts into a thousand colors which issue from one source, all being merely different representations of the One, refracted into the temporal, and all dissolving again into that One? For the notion that things enter the mind from outside, through images, through sense impressions or whatever other non-elucidating explanations have been devised, is a self-annulling and long-abandoned conception. Being cannot transform itself into knowledge, or the corporeal into spirit, without being akin to or fundamentally one with it.All life is spirit and without the spirit there is no life, no being, not even a sensory world; for the physical objects that appear to the mechanically perceiving intelligence as inert, lifeless and material, are to the more deeply inquiring person only apparently dead beings [Geister], extinguished in the product, petrified in their physical existence; he is familiar with their power and knows that being, which was originally life, can also never cease to be alive, and that it will express its life-force the moment a congenial power should stimulate the fluctuations of its life-forces [Lebensgeister].In general, all understanding and comprehension of not only a foreign world but also of an "other" is altogether impossible without the original unity and equality of everything spiritual [Geistige] and without the original unity of all objects within the spirit. For how can the One affect the other, the latter absorb the influence of the former, if they are not related to each other and the one is able to approximate the other, to fashion itself in its likeness or, conversely, the other to shape itself in a similar way? Thus we would understand neither antiquity in general nor a work of art or text, if our spirit were not, in itself and fundamentally, one with the spirit of antiquity, so that it is able to comprehend this spirit which is alien to it only temporally and relatively. For it is only the temporal and external (upbringing, education [Bildung], circumstances) that postulate a difference of the spirit. If we disregard the temporal and external as accidental differences in relation to the pure spirit, then all spirits are alike. And this, precisely, is the objective of philological education: the cleansing of the spirit from the temporal, accidental, and subjective, and the imparting of that originality and universality which is essential for the higher and purer human beings, for humanitarianism, that he may comprehend the True, the Good, and the Beautiful in all its form and representations, however alien, transforming it into his own nature [Wesen], thus becoming again One with the original, purely human spirit from which he departed owing to the limitations of his time, his education and his circumstances.This is not a mere idea, as it might appear to those who contrast the actual as reality and only truth with the ideal, without considering that there is only One true and original life, which is neither ideal nor real, because both emerge from it as only temporal opposites, and that it is the idea which approximates this original life most closely and is therefore the abundance of all reality itself; but higher history (not mere fact-compiling history) manifests this convincingly. In the same way, namely, in which humanity is basically One, it had also been once temporally one in the most magnificent profusion and purity of its life- forces: in the Oriental world, which was mythical and religious only because it did not yet know the temporal polarity of the real and ideal form [Bildung].For Paganism and Christianity are in the Indian world, for example, still One: God is at once the fullness or totality (Pantheismos) and the unity (Theismos) of all life. Only after the disintegration of Orientalism did the individual elements of its nature reveal themselves temporally (as periods of human development): here is the beginning of the actual so-called history, the temporally and successively evolving life of mankind. The two poles of history are the Greek and Christian worlds, both of which emerged, however, from one center, Orientalism, and are striving by virtue of their original unity for reunion in our own world. The triumph of our development will then be the consciously created harmony of the poetic (the plastic or Greek) and the religious (the musical or Christian) life of mankind [Menschenbildung]. Thus everything emerged from One Spirit and everything is striving to return again to the One Spirit. Without the knowledge of this original unity which fled from itself (separating itself temporally) and is seeking itself again, we are not only incapable of understanding antiquity but also of knowing anything at all of history and of human development.All interpretation and explication of a foreign work, composed in a foreign form (language), presupposes understanding not only of a particular part, but also of the totality of this foreign world, which, in turn, presupposes the understanding of the original unity of the spirit. For through this unity, we are enabled not only to form an idea of the totality of the foreign world, but also to comprehend each individual phenomenon truthfully and correctly, i.e., in the spirit of the whole. Hermeneutics or exegesis ( also called enarratio auctorum by Quintillian, De Institutione Oratoria Libri Duodecim I. 9, 1.) presupposes hence the understanding of antiquity in all its external and internal elements, and bases upon it the explication of the written works of antiquity. For only one who has understood completely both its content and form (language and representation) can explain a work, develop its meaning and describe its internal as well as external connection to other works or to antiquity as a whole.The understanding of the works of antiquity is based upon their content and form. For everything has a certain content or subject matter and a corresponding form that expresses and reveals it. The content is that which has been shaped, and the form, the expression of its shaping.As infinitely as antiquity in itself is formed in its entire artistic and scientific, public, and particular life, so infinitely varied is also the content of its work. Hence the understanding of the works of antiquity in terms of their content presupposes knowledge, in the widest sense of the word, of the ancient arts and sciences and archeology.Form in the written works of antiquity is the language, it being the expression of the spirit. The understanding of the works of antiquity consequently presupposes also knowledge of the old languages. Content (subject-matter) and form are originally one: for everything that is formed is originally a self forming, the form being the external expression of this self-forming, and what is originally One, a life forming itself, separates, after the self-forming has become the formed into the inner (content or subject matter) and the outer (form). The original unity of all being we call spirit. Hence the spirit is the vantage point at which all creation begins, to which everything that is created [Gebildet] must be retraced, if it is to be comprehended not in its mere appearance, but rather in its essence and truthfulness. Just as the subject matter and form emanated from the spirit, so they must both be retraced to it; only then will we recognize what they were originally and in themselves, and how they were formed.We will comprehend the whole of antiquity's life through the forms in which it represents itself only after we have inquired into the original oneness of the whole, the spirit, as the focal point from which emanated all phenomena of the internal and external life. Without this higher unity, the whole would disintegrate into a dark and lifeless mass of atomistic fragments, of which none would have a connection with the other, and thus none would have sense or meaning. The idea that antiquity, viewed as a special epoch in mankind's development [Menschenbildung], represents poetry or the external, free and beautifully formed life of humanity, may then best describe the spirit of antiquity in general. If we are thus able to trace back everything, even by recognizing the inner connection with the spirit of the whole, then we will truly comprehend every single work of antiquity not only in its appearance, but also in its spirit (its higher relationship and tendency).But the spirit of antiquity assumes in every individual again a specific form, though not in its essence for it is One spirit that is present in all but in direction and form. The understanding of the text of antiquity requires therefore not only the comprehension of the ancient spirit as such, but also especially the recognition of the author's unique spirit, in order to examine not merely how the spirit expressed itself in an author's work in this content and in this form in order to reveal itself in its shaping, but also to see how an author's particular spirit is itself again only a revelation of the higher, universal spirit of the ancient world.Accordingly, the understanding of the ancient authors is threefold: (1) historical, in reference to the content of their works, which is either artistic, scientific, or antiquarian in the broadest sense of the word; (2) grammatical, in regard to their form or language and their delivery; (3) spiritual [geistig] in reference to the spirit of the individual author and of antiquity as a whole.The third or spiritual understanding is the true and higher one, in which the historical and grammatical merge into one life. Historical understanding recognizes what the spirit formed, the grammatical how it formed it, and the spiritual understanding traces the what and the how, the subject matter and the form, back to their original, harmonious life in the spirit. For even the public life of antiquity, which the historical writer, for example, perceived and represented as a given, was initially a product of the universal spirit of antiquity. And the historical or antiquarian writer reproduces in himself what is already produced, by comprehending it with his spirit, according to his view and tendency. In other words, in the historical and antiquarian texts of antiquity, the content is a freely reconstructed reproduction, while in the artistic and scientific works, it is a spontaneous and voluntary creation [Gebildetes], produced autonomously by the spirit of the poet or thinker.The basic principle of all understanding and knowledge is to find in the particular the spirit of the whole, and to comprehend the particular through the whole; the former is the analytical, the latter, the synthetic method of cognition. However, both are posited only with and through each other. Just as the whole cannot be thought of apart from the particular as its member, so the particular cannot be viewed apart from the whole as the sphere in which it lives. Thus neither precedes the other because both condition each other reciprocally, and constitute a harmonious life. Similarly, the spirit of collective antiquity also cannot truly be comprehended unless we grasp it in its particular manifestations in the works of the authors of antiquity.If we are able then to recognize the spirit of antiquity only through its manifestations in the works of its authors, and yet these themselves presuppose in turn the cognition of the universal spirit, how is it possible to understand the particular when it presupposes knowledge of the whole, while we can understand always only successively and are unable to comprehend the whole simultaneously? The circle, namely that I understand a, b, c, etc. only through A, but this A itself again only through a, b, c, etc., cannot be broken if both A and a, b, c, etc. are seen as opposites that mutually condition and presuppose each other, and if A does not just emerge from a, b, c, etc., and is not generated by them, but does, rather, precede and permeate them all in the same manner, so that a, b, c are nothing but the individual representations of the one A. In A are contained then a, b, c in their original manner. These parts themselves are the individual developments of the one A; each contains A already in a particular mode, and I will not need first to go through the infinite succession of particulars in order to find their unity.Only in this manner is it possible that I will comprehend the particular through the whole and, conversely, the whole through the particular; for both are simultaneously given in all their particularity. Together with a is also posited A, for the former is only a manifestation of the latter, i.e., the whole is posited simultaneously with the particular. And the further I progress in the comprehension of the particular, passing through the line a, b, c, etc., the more evident and alive the spirit becomes to me, the more does the idea of the whole unfold which already arose in me with the first link in the series. For the spirit is nowhere a composite of individual parts, but an original, simple, undivided essence. It is as simple, whole, and undivided in every particular as it is undivided in itself, i.e., every individual part is only a unique, manifested form of the One spirit; the particular does not produce then the spirit or idea, creating it through synthesis, but rather it stimulates and arouses the idea.Consequently, all authors of antiquity, but especially those whose works are the free product of the spirit, represent that One spirit, but each according to his own way, by his era, his individuality, his education, and the external circumstances of life. The idea and spirit of all antiquity is mediated to us through every particular poet and author of antiquity. But we understand the author fully only when we comprehend the spirit of all antiquity, which manifests itself in the author in union with his own individual spirit.The cognition of the latter includes insight into the particular spirit of the age in which the author lived, into the individual spirit of the author himself, as well as knowledge of the education and of the external circumstances which influenced his development.Pindar, for example, is with regard to subject matter, form, and spirit, a truly ancient poet. Hence his poetry reveals to us in these three respects the spirit of all antiquity. The athletic contests which he celebrates, the pictorial, native, and pure form of his representation, the spirit of his hymns, burning with patriotism, pride of contest, and heroic virtue, evoke in us the glorified image of a truly classical world in which man not only cultivated within himself noble sentiments and praiseworthy aspirations, but moreover delighted in great deeds for the fatherland and its gods. For the prize in the contests was not only an honorary decoration of the winner and of his fatherland, but also a glorification of the god in whose honor the games were celebrated. This is the general connection that Pindar's poems have to the spirit of antiquity as a whole. In and of themselves, however, they reveal his spirit in a unique way, for not only does the spirit of antiquity speak in them, but also the spirit of the author. This gives rise to the questions: In which age did Pindar live? What was his particular spirit [Genius]? How did he develop [bilden] and in what circumstances did he live? It is necessary to answer all these questions as completely as possible if we want to sketch a true and live picture of the spirit and character of Pindar's poetry. This is what understanding a poet of antiquity means.The development of understanding and its exposition is called explication. Explication, of course, presupposes understanding, and is based on it. For only what has been truly grasped and comprehended, i.e., understood, can be communicated and made clear to others.Understanding contains two elements: comprehension of the particular and summation of the particular into the totality of One perception, feeling, or idea, i.e., the dissecting of its elements or characteristics and the joining of the dissected parts into the unity of the perception of the concept. Hence explication is also based upon the development of the particular or individual and the summary of the particular into a unity. Understanding and explication are accordingly cognition and comprehension.The above mentioned circle applies here also, namely, in that the particular can be understood only through the whole, and conversely, the whole, only through the particular, and in that the perception or concept precedes cognition of the particular, even though perception and concept seem to develop only through these. Here too, as above, this circle can be resolved only by acknowledging the original unity of the particular and the general as the true life of both. Then the spirit of the whole is contained in every single element, and the further the development of the particular progresses, the clearer and livelier the idea of the whole becomes. Here too, the spirit does not generate itself through the connection of the particular, but lives already and originally in the particular, wherefore the particular is indeed the manifestation of the spirit in its totality.In the explication of a work or of a particular part, the idea of the whole is not generated by the combination of all its individual parts, but is rather evoked in the person who is capable of comprehending the idea in the first place with the comprehension of the first particular, and becomes ever clearer and livelier, the further the explication of the particular progresses. The first comprehension of the idea of the whole through the particular is conjecture, i.e., as yet still indefinite and undeveloped foreknowledge of the spirit, which turns into vivid and clear cognition through growing comprehension of the particular. Upon exploration of the sphere of the particular, the idea, which was still conjecture at the point of first comprehension, emerges now as a clear and conscious unity of the manifold presented in the individual. Understanding and explication are complete.Thus the understanding and explication of a work is a true reproduction or recreation [Nachbilden] of that which is already formed. For every creation begins with a mythical, still concealed starting point, from which, as factors of that creation, develop the elements of life. They are the actually forming, mutually limiting forces which become united into One whole through the process of reciprocal interpenetration. The idea, still undeveloped at the beginning, yet giving to the life-factors their direction, is represented completely and objectively in the created product. The aim of all creation is consequently the manifestation of the spirit, the harmonious forming of the external (the elements that separated from the original unity) and the inner (spiritual [geistig]) life. The beginning of creation is unity; the creation itself is multiplicity (the contrast of the elements); the completion of the creation or the created [Gebildete] is the permeation of the unity and multiplicity, i.e., totality.Consequently, not only the whole of a work, but also its specific parts and even its single passages, can be understood and explained only in the following manner: that as one comprehends the first particular, one is comprehending also the spirit and idea of the whole. Next, one explains the single parts and elements to gain an insight into the individual nature of the whole. Upon the cognition of all the particulars, the next step is to summarize everything into a unity which, with the cognition of all the elements, is now a clear, conscious, and in all its particulars, a live one.The explication of a Horation ode, for example, will proceed from the originating point of the poet's production. In it, the idea of the whole is already intimated, as surely as the starting point of the poetic creation itself originated in the inspired idea of the whole. Having been given its first direction at the starting point, the idea of the whole evolves through all elements throughout the poem; and the explication must comprehend these single moments, each in its individual life, until the circle of the developing elements is complete, until the whole, made up of parts, flows back into the idea in which the production originated; until the manifold life, having evolved into many individual parts, becomes one again with the original unity, which the first represented moment of the production only intimated, and the unity, at first only indefinite, emerges as a vivid, living harmony.Every individual passage emanates also from one perception or idea. The representation and development of this idea is the multiplicity of its life; its completion is the harmony of the unity from which this multiple life unfolds, and with the multiplicity, the real life. Every passage which is complete in itself can serve as proof and example.The particular presupposes the idea of the whole, the spirit, which shapes itself throughout the whole scheme of particulars into vivid life, returning finally into itself again. With this returning of the spirit into its original being [Wesen], the circle of explication is closed. Every particular, then, intimates the spirit, because it emanated from it and is permeated by it. Consequently, every particularity contains also its own life, because it reveals the spirit in a unique way. In itself, in its merely external, empirical life, the unique is the letter; taken in its inner being, in its significance and relationship to the spirit of the whole, which represents itself in a unique mode, it is the meaning; the consummate comprehension of the letter and the meaning in their harmonious unity is the spirit. The letter is the body or cloak of the spirit, through which the invisible spirit enters into the outer, visible life. Meaning is the harbinger and interpreter of the spirit; the spirit itself is true life.For every passage that needs explication, one must first ask what the letter is stating; secondly, how it is stating it, what meaning the statement has, what significance it occupies in the text; thirdly, what the idea of the whole or of the spirit is, as that unity from which the letter emanated and into which it seeks to return. Without the meaning, the letter is dead and unintelligible. To be sure, the meaning without the spirit is in itself intelligible, but it has an individual or atomistic meaning which has no basis and no purpose without the spirit. For only through the spirit do we come to perceive the why, the where-from, and whereto of every object.The letter, meaning, and spirit are therefore the three elements of explication. The hermeneutics of the letter is the explication of the word and subject matter of the particular; the hermeneutics of meaning [Sinn] is the explication of its significance [Bedeutung] in connection with the given passage; and the hermeneutics of the spirit is the explication of its higher relation to the idea of the whole in which the particular dissolves into the unity of the whole.The explication of the word and subject matter presupposes knowledge of language and archeology, in other words, grammatical and historical knowledge of antiquity. With regard to language, the various stages of its development must be determined as well as its different forms and dialects, for every writer writes in the language of his age and in the dialect of his people.Homer's language differs from the language of later epic and lyric poets, dramatists, etc., not only with respect to its genius but also with respect to its outer and formal development. Every particular passage and every word in it must be specifically understood if a meaning is to emerge. Wherever the meaning of words that are unknown or employed in an unusual or metaphorical way is not immediately clear, these words must be investigated with regard to their etymology, analogy, and various usage during different periods by different authors, in order to establish the meaning which corresponds to the meaning of the passage and the spirit (i.e., to the genius and the tendency) of the whole. The explication of the subject matter presupposes knowledge of antiquity as such, and especially of that subject which the author in question treated. In fact, we must investigate the level of development occupied at that time by the art, science, etc., chosen by a given author for the object of his representation, how antiquity in general, and particularly the author in question, viewed these disciplines, so that we do not confer upon an earlier author the achievements of a later development and knowledge, or conversely, attribute to him ideas and views that were older and as yet undeveloped.The explication of the meaning is based on the insight into the spirit [Genius] and tendency of antiquity as such and of the particular author who is the subject of the explication. For without having surmised or recognized the spirit of antiquity, it is impossible truly to comprehend the meaning of even a single passage. If the modern sentimental or logical mind [Geist] does not rise to pure perception of the life and spirit of antiquity, it will easily run the risk of understanding and interpreting falsely, not only the Greek or Roman work as a whole, but also its individual passages.The meaning of a work and of a particular passage is deduced from the spirit and tendency of the author. Only the interpreter who has comprehended these and familiarized himself with these is in the position to understand every passage in the spirit of its author and to reveal its correct meaning. A passage by Plato, for example, will often have a different meaning from one almost similar in meaning and words by Aristotle. For what is in the former, concrete perception and free life, is in the latter frequently only logical concept and national reflection. But if we look at a single work on its own, then the meaning of every particular passage and every word is determined by its relationship to the other most closely related words and passages and to the work as a whole.Consequently, not only one and the same word, but also individual, similar passages, carry in a different context, different meanings. But, in order to grasp the meaning of the whole on which the understanding of the part depends, one must have explored the spirit, the intention, the time and conditions of the public and private life in which the work in question was written. The history of literature, of the individual education, of the life of the author, is therefore necessary for the understanding of every particular work.It is necessary, furthermore, to distinguish between the simple and the allegorical meaning. In passages that are doubtful, that meaning is generally the most correct which corresponds most closely to the spirit of antiquity and especially to the spirit, the tendency, and character of the author.Explication of the spirit of a text or of an individual passage means the exposition of the idea which the author had in mind or was unconsciously guided by. For the idea is the higher, living unity from which all life evolves, and to which it returns again spiritually transfigured. The elements of the idea are the multiplicity, the perceptual, developed life, and the unity as the form of multiplicity or of life, i.e., perception and concept. The harmonious interpenetration of the two produces the idea. Now in many authors, the idea as such does not emerge, but only its elements, either the perception or the concept: perception in the case of empirical, historical writers; the mere concept in the logical philosophical ones. Only in the case of the truly artistic or philosophical authors is everything developed from the idea and is everything striving back to it, so that not only the whole of a text, but also the individual passages, have their life in the idea.

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