Week 8: Hermeneutics and structuralism Flashcards
(19 cards)
Interpretation
Determining the meaning of something.
Hermeneutic circle
A process of interpretation where we move between smaller and larger meanings to conclude the meaning of both.
Why is the ‘hermeneutic circle’ called a circle?
The back-and-forth movement (between whole and part) forms a kind of loop/circle. Is there an end? Classical hermeneutics would say yes, once you understand the original meaning of the author. But we never know for sure.
Holism/holistic
Meaning of a whole (a text) can’t be determined by its parts, but only by its entirety.
Meaning is even more holistic than taste.
The parts don’t even really have meanings if they aren’t part of a whole.
Take the word “can”: don’t know on its own, has different meanings (can/can of tuna), has meaning in a sentence.
Wilhelm Dilthey
He believed that the methods of the humanities are very different from the natural sciences.
He says that the humanities study the expressions (plays, journals, books) of experiences.
The humanities set us free, allow us to escape from the world we live in to become fully developed.
Erlebnis
Dilthey:
Experience
Verstehen
Dilthey:
A special kind of understanding. It means that we can put ourselves in the place of the person who made the expression and really experience what they experienced.
For example, studying a poem and experiencing the state of mind of the author (= reenactment, Collingwood).
Difference humanities and natural science
Natural science = knowledge of general laws.
Humanities =Verstehen of individual experience (can only happen in the humanities; natural scientists cannot know how a wale felt while eating a fish).
Difference between scholars of humanities vs. natural science:
In the natural sciences, you only need to be smart. In the humanities, you must be smart but also need emotional intelligence and life experience.
Structuralism
Movement in humanities that emphasises the search for structure, but what is structure? Different kinds of structures.
A sonnet, for example, has 14 lines.
De Saussure
Inventor of structuralism, a linguist: he studied the structure of language. In explaining phonemes, you have to explain the boundaries and place of other phonemes.
Believes that a word is defined by a sound and a concept.
Classical hermeneutics
You have come to the perfect interpretation when you know exactly what the author meant. Problem: you can never really know whether this is the case.
Signifier
Something that signifies, such as the sound of a spoken word or the letters on the paper
Signified
Gets signified by the signifier, the concept or meaning.
Augustine
To teach someone a word, you show them the object and say the word aloud. He is wrong! You can’t learn a concept by looking at a thing. He believes that a child already thinks about bread before learning the word/concepts
Wittgenstein
Thought requires language: “the limits of my language mean the limit of my world.”
How to learn concepts (De Saussure)
By learning about the relation between all the concepts in our language. You only learn what bread means when you learn that bread is a food type. You can tell the difference then between cookies and bread.
Vladimir Propp
Analysed Russian fairy tales, not interested in the detailed of the stories, but the structure that you can find in every story (like a grammarian: object, subject).
Fairy tales
Have a determined structure: roles:
1. Hero ! = struggles against villain
2. Princess !
3. Villain !
4. Donor = guides hero to where he needs to go.
5. Dispatcher
6. Helper
7. False hero
Functions (31):
1. Receipts of a magical agent
2. Guidance
3. Interdiction = hero warned not to do something
4. Violation = interdiction is violated
