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Quote :Hermeneutics: The Handwritten Manuscripts
Hermeneutics and rhetoric are intimately related in that every act of understanding is the reverse side of an act of speaking, and one must grasp the thinking that underlies a given statement.
Both the speaker and the interpreter walk the same yellow brick road; they simply travel in reverse directions. A speaker, assuming he’s honest, indicates what he’s thinking by what he says. The listener (or reader) takes what’s been said with a mind to figure out what the speaker was thinking in the first place.
What’s important to note here is that understanding, as Schleiermacher understands it, is about getting a grasp of the thought process underlying a statement. The meaning of the statement points to the mental life of the speaker. It’s up-close and personal. Psychological. Romantic. For real, that’s some heavy mental.
But why bother with mental life? As Schleiermacher liked to think, the interior thinking of an author could clue us into how and why a statement popped into the world, and how it’s supposed to make us think new thoughts based on the thoughts the author was thinking.
And to get deep with this, let’s note that some statements have got real lasting power: the power to be remembered and even to sway human action. Every nation, political movement, cultural advancement, and economic policy began with someone thinking something and communicating those thoughts to others who started some of their own thinking and, in special cases, acted on those lines of thought.
Understanding the thinking behind social constructs and events might not be a bad idea if you’re of the mind to encourage some of those ideas or hinder others. Getting a sense of patterns of thought is a great way to use hermeneutics when you’re analyzing a book or a poem, and it can also help you to better understand the world around you.