Technical Writing As Literature

As Technical Communicators, we find ourselves judging our work on a day to day basis. Its clarity, accuracy, and "friendliness" are typical concerns for the conscientious technical communicator. Beyond that, we judge the usability of our writing - just how easy is it to use, and how valuable?

We talk about "Technical Literature, and the question arises as to whether it should actually be regarded as a real form of "literature" - and whether it should be subject to literary criticism, in much the same way as a play or a novel. This may seem bizarre, but stop and consider, for a moment, the utility of such an approach.

We may, for example, find that some writers have a direct, simple, "Hemingway" style of writing - while others write in longer, more involved, sentences and paragraphs that reminds us of Proust. The typical response is that the "Hemingway" style is the "correct" one for technical literature. But is it always? Doesn't it depend on the subject matter, the intended use of the book, as well as the skill of the writer? A well constructed Proustian User's manual intended for advanced users, may satisfy much more than a short, laconic Hemingway approach. This is not to say that unnecessary words, or long, clumsy sentences, are good - but not every long sentence is clumsy, and not every 40 word sentence is filled with unnecessary words. A passage can be dense with words and long sentences, and yet convey meaning in a way that engages the reader, and provides a more satisfying experience than a stripped down, laconic guide.

Writing, above all, must "engage" the reader. To engage readers is not the same thing as simply conveying information. To engage readers is to give them something meaningful, which is to say, to give them something that has value within the context of their lives. When we speak of meaningfulness with regard to technical literature, we refer to the value that something has for the professional concerns of the reader. Just plunking down information is often not enough - it is the minimum measure of meaningfulness, but certainly not the full measure.

Educator and sociologist Dr. Mati Schwrarcz has been training English speakers as technical writers and marcom specialists for over 17 years. Since then his graduates have become leading writers in hi-tech companies throughout the world.

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Literature of the Victorian Era : 4 General Characteristics of Victorian Literature

The literature of the Victorian age entered in a new period after the romantic revival. The literature of this era expressed the fusion of pure romance to gross realism. Though, the Victorian Age produced two great poets Tennyson and Browning, the age is also remarkable for the excellence of its prose.

The discoveries of science have particular effects upon the literature of the age. If you study all the great writers of this period, you will mark four general characteristics:

1. Literature of this age tends to come closer to daily life which reflects its practical problems and interests. It becomes a powerful instrument for human progress.

2. Moral Purpose: The Victorian literature seems to deviate from "art for art's sake" and asserts its moral purpose. Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle, Ruskin - all were the teachers of England with the faith in their moral message to instruct the world.

3. Idealism: It is often considered as an age of doubt and pessimism. The influence of science is felt here. The whole age seems to be caught in the conception of man in relation to the universe with the idea of evolution. Tennyson's some immature works seem holding doubtful and despairing stains but his In Memoriam comes out as a hope after despair.

4. Though, the age is characterized as practical and materialistic, most of the writers exalt a purely ideal life. It is an idealistic age where the great ideals like truth, justice, love, brotherhood are emphasized by poets, essayists and novelists of the age.

If you wish to read the literature of the Victorian age, the names of Tennyson, Browning, Dickens, Thackeray, Macaulay, Arnold, Carlyle and Ruskin will come before your mind's eye. Tennyson, like Chaucer, was a national poet whose reading will please you by his employment of melody in expression.

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What is Carpe Diem in Literature?

Carpe Diem is a Latin phrase meaning "seize the day". This phrase is taken from one of Horace's Odes. Now it has become the term for a common literary motif. More specifically, it is common in lyrical poetry. Let's see what this literary motif all about and where it is employed.

In carpe diem poetry, the speaker puts emphasis on the fact that life is short and the time is fleeting. He insists on his auditor to make the most of the present situation. So, the concept or theme is basically touching or moving.

A beautiful example of this concept is well expressed in Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, 1590-96. There is brevity of physical beauty and the finality of death is expressed in the image of a rose in the line II. Xii. 74-75; "Gather therefore the Rose, whilst yet is prime". Later on, in the 17th century, this sense of carpe diem is seen in Robert Herrick's poem "Gather ye rosebuds, while ye may". Edmund Waller sets the similar tone in "Go, Lovely Rose."

Though the poetry of such kind is very complex but powerfully communicates the poignant desperation and sadness, and the pursuit of pleasure under the limit of unavoidable death. The best example of this carpe diem motif can be seen in Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress (1681). It is also seen in The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, by Edward FitzGerald.

It is really challenging task and sometimes it turns out to be sad to accomplish the task within the limited span of time. And therefore, carpe diem poetry leaves poignant effect on the reader.

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Poetry in British Literature

The description no doubt has supernatural qualities with the "brown skeletons" lagging however the light in the distance disappeared and they noticed it was the beacon light on a sinking ship. There they found what appeared to be a dead man floating face down on top of the water. The man that lay floating in the water "like one that hath been seven days drowned." was the Ancient Mariner. This is the moment in which the Hermit recognizes the Mariners supernatural existence. The Hermit was astonished by the Mariner could have survived and demanded to know "what manner of man art thou?" Although the question posed is more rhetorical than anything else it gives us knowledge of the Hermits stance they must be blessed or cursed by some higher power. The Hermit in a way is the Ancient Mariner's real proof that solidified his story. This is a crucial point in the poem and clears up what happened to the Ancient Mariner when he was at sea.

The old Mariner is indeed immortal and cannot die as punishment for striking the Albatross with his cross-bow. When the Mariner got situated on the boat the presence of the Hermit "forced me to begin my tale; / And then if left me free." The Hermit was the first person that the Ancient Mariner told his story to. Speaking of the Hermit, the Mariner explained "That moment that his face I see, / I know the man that must hear me: / To him my tale I teach." It is reasonable to believe that the Holy Hermit's spiritual presence inspired in some way the Mariner to tell his tale. Had the Hermit not been there, no one knows if the Mariner would have ever found his "strange power of speech".

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Literature in an ESL TEFL TESOL Classroom

Teaching Literature to English Language Learners

Professor Colin MacCabe of the University of Exter School of English says that to truly know a language, you must know something of the literature of a language.

Literature is intellectually stimulating because a book allows a reader to imagine worlds they are not familiar with. This is done through the use of descriptive language. In order to understand, the reader will create their vision of what the writer is saying. In this sense, the reader becomes a performer or an actor in a communicative event.

Using literature versus a communicative textbook changes the learning approach from learning how to say into learning how to mean (grammar vs. creative thinking). Conversation-based programs tend to focus on 'formulas' used in contextual situations so there is little allowance for independent thought and adaptation of language. On the other hand, literature-based programs focus on personal interpretation of the language so students begin to experiment with the language. This experimentation can be especially helpful to the students for use in different subjects such as science.

Per Carter and Long, the 3 main approaches to using Literature in a language classroom are:

1. Cultural model

    * Based on the notion that literature is the expression of: Socio-cultural attitudes. Aspirations of individual societies. Mythic and universal values.
    * Text is regarded as finished product.
    * Associated with teacher-centered approach

2. Language model

    * Literature is taught for the promotion of: Vocabulary Structure Language manipulation
    * Puts students in touch with the subtle and varied creative uses of language.
    * Emphasizes language observation.
    * Student-centered methodology.

3. Personal growth model

    * Concerned more with student's: Maturity as individuals Progress as individuals through reading
    * 'Literature for life' approach
    * Promotes individual evaluation and judgment.
    * Learner-centered approach.

When adding literature into the classroom remember to choose some good books that students can relate to. Visual books are very helpful to help spark interest in children. For older students, you can incorporate questions into the reading process that require thought and expression from the students. In addition, set aside specific times for reading. Don't worry if students don't respond well when you begin because they will start to enjoy it more (and therefore interact more) as they relate to the stories and experiences shared.

Some Literature School Basics by Lorraine Curry of the Easy Homeschooling Companion

1) Select a number of well chosen books.

2) Set a particular time to read each book.

3) Let nothing interfere with your scheduling.

4) Use discussion and research to create interest.

5) Process, by writing or narrating.

Each child should have the opportunity to read aloud each day to encourage pronunciation practice. During this time you can note and correct mispronounced words.

Older Students

*Present questions that require thought. Some questions may not have one perfect answer. Some may not have an answer at all. Nevertheless, thought is stimulated and learning takes place.

*Copy challenging writing in order to practice English skills and increase comprehension.

*Do extensive research in order to understand deeper writing such as poems. *Research authors, times and places.

*Report by presenting orally or compiling results of research in writing. The quantity and quality of written assignments should increase with older students.

*Solidify language-learning with a formal grammar course and a formal writing course

Some good online literature teacher resources:

Total ESL Resources: totalesl.com/resource.php
Total ESL Lesson Plans: totalesl.com/lesson.php
The Children's Literature Web Guide: career.vt.edu/JOBSEARC/interview/TEACHER.htm
Literature.org: literature.org
English Literature on the Web: lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka/EngLit.html
The Literature Network: online-literature.com
Bibliomania: bibliomania.com
Literature Learning Ladders: eduscapes.com/ladders
BBC Arts and Books: bbc.co.uk/arts/books

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What Does Gold Symbolize In Literature?

Gold has accompanied the history of human kind from its very beginnings. The story of gold and its symbolism starts with the first person who ever dug out a gold nugget. In different ages in the evolution of man, gold gathered many legends around it, stimulating the imagination with its beauty.

In contemporary popular tales, gold is present very often. There is always a main character who is supposed to go on a quest for a gold bird, a tree with gold apples, a gold fish, a gold castle. These tales are a collection of beliefs widely spread especially among the people living in rural areas, and enriched with details by each generation. Gold is considered the ultimate value and the journey made for finding it always turns out to be rewarding. In the end the hero either marries a beautiful princess, manages to save someone dear from a danger or receives half of the kingdom. The voyage towards the gold target usually represents the evolution of a person from adolescence to adulthood. Reaching gold signifies gaining knowledge and experience on the world.

In cultures different from ours, like the Egyptian one, gold used to be associated with religion very much. This was the result of their considering the god of the sun Ra their supreme god. Gold is directly associated with the color and the brightness of the sun. In Ancient Egypt it didn't represent a commercial value, being used only by the pharaohs and by the priests in religious rituals. The respect of the Egyptian people for gold is documented in Eloise Jarvis McGraw' s children novel "The Golden Goblet".

Another aspect tightly connected with gold is the gold rush. This phenomenon happened in waves as new mines were discovered throughout the world. The very famous American writer Mark Twain, in his attempt to find gold, came home with several stories behind the gold dream, stuck to him because of his artistic sensibility. He captured in short stories like "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" on a cheerful narrative tone which characterizes his works, episodes of the life of gold miners.

Nowadays no one is searching for lost treasures chests anymore. People have become more realistic and very connected with the economic reality. Nevertheless gold has remained an asset and buying gold represents a guarantee against the fluctuations in the financial world.

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Local Color in Literature

The setting plays major role in prose fiction. The dialect spoken, the customs observed, the dress code prevalent, and the way of living all can be peculiar to a particular region. This sort of setting is called a local color of the area or region. You must have come across such peculiarity of an area while reading a prose or a novel.

Such beautiful local color called "Wessex" (present-day Dorset) is painted by Thomas Hardy in his novels. If you read a wide range of his novels, the Wessex will emerge in front of your mind's eye - so beautiful, so vivid! Rudyard Kipling's India also shares the same local color. R. K. Narayan beautifully portrays the imaginary village of "Malgudi" - set somewhere in South India - in his novels.

The representation of the local shade or color continues emerging in the writings of several writers. After the Civil War, many American writers used the local color of America. For instance, the various parts of America just as the Mississippi region was used by Mark Twain, the south by George Washington Cable, the Midwest by E. W. Howe, the West by Bret Harte, and New England by Mary Wilkins Freeman and the Sarah Orne Jewett.

The writing concerned with the local colour focuses mainly on the particularity of the area. It is basically about the comic or sentimental representation of the surface distinctiveness of a region. It does not represent the deep, complex and the generalized characteristics and problems of the region.

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What is a Bildungsroman in Literature?

You must have come across this word a "bildungsroman" somewhere while reading books or literature. It is a German term which denotes a "novel of education". The term was first coined by Johann Carl Simon Morgenstern. Slowly and gradually, it came on the surface during the German Enlightenment. Now, these days, the authors present the moral, psychological, and social shaping of the personality of a young main character.

There are some of the features you'll learn in this article that will help you understand what the term bildungsroman stands for in literature.

Some Features:

There are certain features which are always present in a bildungsroman:

1. The protagonist or character undergoes a development phase from child to adult.

2. The protagonist or character has a particular reason that urges him or her to embark upon a journey. At an early stage, there has to be a loss or some discontent with the protagonist that compels him or her away from the home.

3. The process of the character's maturation is normally long, gradual and arduous. This development process involves frequent clashes between the protagonist's wants and desires imposed by a rigid social order.

4. The values of the social order become noticeable in the protagonist, who is finally incorporated into the society.

5. The novel normally ends with the protagonist's self-discovery, his assessment of himself and his place in the society. In other words, it's all about the protagonist's self-discovery and how he is rooted into the society.

In short, bildungsroman is a novel about the early years of a person's life, or about a person's psychological or moral growth. The well-known novels of this type are David Copperfield (1849-1850), and in which Charles Dickens depicts David's life from childhood misery to worldly success, and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), in which James Joyce sketches Stephen Dedalus's growht as a man and an artist.

Similarly, American author Paule Marshall in Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959) describes Selina Boyce growing up in Brooklyn, New York as the child of migrants from Barbados. Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses (1992) is a tale of 16-year-old John Grady Cole and two companions who travel from Texas to Mexico where their adventures turn into rites of passage to manhood.

So, you can keep these features in your mind while reading literary work or novel which is called a bildungsroman or a novel of education.

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Poor Literature Can Mislead Readers

Writing has always been an excellent form of communication even since ancient times. The ancient Egyptians were the first culture to develop literature as they wrote their knowledge on mediums such as papyrus, walls, pyramids and obelisks. The majority of ancient Egyptian literature mostly revolved around education and instructions rather than entertainment. Those that have existed for entertainment were stories, myths and biographies of deceased leaders.

Today, literature exists in a collection or set of written, printed, illustrated or blank sheets that are made of paper or other various material that are fastened together. We call this medium a book and each sheet within it is called a page. Literature is not limited to physical forms though. Informative writing can also be found in the Internet where numerous writers create blogs or articles that serve as references for the public on various criteria. Seeing as the Internet is the modern world's information superhighway, it should be noted that many people get their data here. That is why it is important for writers to provide correct and proper information in order to avoid misleading the audience.

Some of the problems that plague writers are improper writing styles, confusing formats and incorrect grammar. For a written articles to be effective, writers should learn how to deliver their write ups in a correct manner. Many amateur writers make the mistake in trying to create informative articles but end up confusing or misleading their audience. Gibberish such as this can mostly be found in personal blogs and websites. There are also a few commercial websites that fail to deliver the proper way on how to sell their products and services to their customers.

Proper writings should be able to focus on the reader, be brief and concise, should be free from grammar and spelling errors and should avoid too much hype on the statements. Unless a person is writing for their private journal or diary, any other literature should be made to effectively communicate to the readers.

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American Revolution Literature

The American Revolution literature resulted in a depressing period in America because of the occurring of deaths. In the speech, "Speech in the Virginia Convention," the author expressed his true feelings to Great Britain and demanded armed resistance by stating, "is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery... I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death" (Henry). This quote illustrates that a form of life may be so valuable that it can be bought or sold, but as for Patrick Henry, he believes that if freedom is not acquired then he would rather die. This quote is connected to the hypothesis because the American Revolution was so tragic that humans were being sold and had no choice but to follow through with the transaction or to be killed because liberty was not going to be obtained. In the book, "Ideological origins of the American Revolution", the author discusses the causes and effects of the American Revolution by stating, "Several deaths resulted, the most dramatic being that of a boy, wrongly identified as a leader of the mob, who was tracked down and shot to death on orders of the commander" (Bailyn). This quote illustrates that a mistaken death occurred because of false identification of the victim and resulted in death because of the commander. This quote is connected to the hypothesis because the victim was murdered on a situation that did not involve the victim, which would lead to sorrowful moments towards the victim's friends or relatives. Not only was American Revolution Literature depressing because of death, but also because of economic crisis.

The American Revolution literature resulted in a depressing period in America because of economic crisis. In the letter, "Letter to the Rev. Samson Occom", the author releases her feelings to a reverend because of the exclusion towards her for the American Revolution benefits by writing, "And the chaos which has reigned so long, is converting into beautiful order, and reveals more and more clearly the glorious dispensation of civil and religious liberty" (Wheatley). This quote illustrates that the problems that occurred in the past began to transform into a positive matter and began to show a better understanding perspective of civil liberty. This quote is connected to the hypothesis because that portion of the letter informs that in the past there was a time where there was chaos in the economy and this did not provide a clear perception of those who were experiencing it which possibly led to oppression. In the book, "Common Sense", the author argued for the American colonists for independence from Great Britain by stating that, "The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country: but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of men and women" (Paine). This quote illustrates that the solider will receive degradation from his country in this crisis position, but because this solider is still surviving, this solider needs to obtain love from other people. This quote is connected to the hypothesis because being deceived and abandoned by the soldier's country because of crisis in the economy, resulted in scornful ways towards the solider and also resulted in scornful literature.

The American Revolution literature resulted in a depressing period in America because of the seizing of people's private possessions. In the lecture, "Lecture to a Missionary", the author talks about how to worship a great spirit in a respectful and humble way by stating that, "Brother, you say you have not come to get our land or our money, but to enlighten our minds" (Jacket). This quote illustrates that a question was asked about the attempt to obtain money and land from the owners of these items, but also was a giving a bystander to increase knowledge in the people who participate. This quote is connected to the hypothesis because taking items that does not belong to a person without permission may not result in an acceptable manner and if the possessions are not returned, this may cause further frustration in the situation already. In the book, "Choosing sides on the frontier in the American Revolution", the author reveals what really happened on the battle frontier of the American Revolution by stating, "When Washington sought to remove squatters from his land, he was warned that they would retaliate and destroy buildings on his other lands" (Dunn). This quote illustrates that Washington was afraid of the fact that if he would remove the people that were trespassing on his property, they would come back for revenge and destroy his possessions on the other property that he owns. This quote is connected to the hypothesis because the worrying of Washington to take action on the trespassers would have left him in a depressing state because of the confiscating and destroying of his private property.

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The Shakespeare Authorship Conspiracy - Part 1 of 4

If you tap 'Shakespeare' into Google's internet search box, you get an estimated 28 million possible hits connected to this world famous English poet and playwright.

With so much information available to us to research this globally recognised icon, it would probably amaze you to know that there is very little actually known about the man from Stratford-upon-Avon beyond the play's and sonnets that he supposedly left behind.

The fact of the matter is that beyond the world recognised Martin Droeshout engraved picture of Shakespeare, there is nothing that conclusively connects the man from Stratford-upon-Avon to the play's and sonnets ascribed to him...in fact, the portrait only complicates the authorship issue more!

What authorship issue you may say? Where oh where have you been hiding?

Let's recap.

For the last few hundred years, a growing number of historians have begun to question the facts that identify the man from Stratford-upon-Avon as being the true author of the works attributed to him, and over the years, a raft of prominent Elizabethan candidates have been suggested at one time or another as the possible true author of one or more of the Shakespeare's plays, such as Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, Edward De Vere, the Earl of Rutland, the Earl of Southampton, the Earl of Essex, Sir Walter Raleigh and of course, Sir Francis Bacon.

The real truth though, is that the authorship question was being raised during the Elizabethan era at the time when the plays were being written and performed!

For example, between 1597 and 1598, two poets, John Marston and Joseph Hall, in an exchange of satires, alluded to the real author of the Shakespeare plays. In his first book of Satires (published in 1597), Joseph Hall criticises a poet he calls 'Labeo' (the name of a famous Roman lawyer), who had written erotic poetry anonymously. In his book Pygmalion's Image (published in 1598) John Marston refers to 'Labeo' as the writer of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis.

In his second book of Satires (published in 1598) Joseph Hall infers that 'Labeo' has used another person's name to hide his authorship and thus be immune to satire. In Certain Satires John Marston identifies 'Labeo' with the motto Mediocra firma, and in context with the Shakespeare poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece - this motto is part of the Bacon family coat of arms, used by Francis Bacon and his brother Anthony Bacon.

As the analogy with 'Labeo' fits Francis Bacon rather than Anthony, then the identification is absolutely clear - Francis Bacon, according to these two men, wrote 'Venus and Adonis' and 'The Rape of Lucrece' under the pseudonym of 'William Shakespeare'.

In Part II, I will explain the evidence that links the Shakespeare plays to Sir Francis Bacon.

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Persian Literature

 The Persian Language

The Old Persian of the Achaemenian Empire, preserved in a number of cuneiform inscriptions, was an Indo-European tongue with close affinities with Sanskrit and Avestan (the language of the Zoroastrian sacred texts).  After the fall of the Achaemenians the ancient tongue developed, in the province of Pars, into Middle Persian or Pahlavi (a name derived from Parthavi - that is, Parthian).  Pahlavi was used throughout the Sassanian period, though little now remains of what must once have been a considerable literature.  About a hundred Pahlavi texts survive, mostly on religion and all in prose.  Pahlavi collections of romances, however, provided much of the material for Ferdowsi's Shahnameh.

After the Arab conquest a knowledge of Arabic became necessary, for it was not only the language of the new rulers and their state, but of the religion they brought with them and - later - of the new learning.  Though Pahlavi continued to be spoken in private life, Arabic was dominant in official circles for a century and a half.  With the weakening of the central power, a modified form of Pahlavi emerged, with its Indo-European grammatical structure intact but simplified, and with a large infusion of Arabic words.  This was the Modem Persian in use today.

Arabic continued to be employed in Iran, though on a decreasing scale, as Latin was used in Europe -that is, as a language of the learned.  As such it was employed by Avicenna, al-Biruni, Rhazes, Al Ghazali and others; indeed, many of the most famous names in Arabic literature are those of men of Persian birth.  But in general the use of Arabic declined; Persian developed rapidly to become the vehicle of a great literature, and before, long spread its influence to neighboring lands.  In India, Persian language and poetry became the vogue with the ruling classes, and at the court of the Moghul emperor Akbar Persian was adopted as the official language; spreading thence and fusing later with Hindi, it gave rise to the Urdu tongue.  To the west of Iran, Persian heavily influenced the language and literature of Turkey; Turkish verse was based on Persian models as regards form and style, and borrowed an extensive vocabulary.

A notable feature of Persian is the small extent to which it has changed over the thousand years or more of its existence as a literary language.  Thus the poems of Rudaki, the first Persian poet of note, who died in the year 940 A.D., are perfectly intelligible to the modem reader.  Persian literature too has a number of noteworthy characteristics, the most striking of which is the exceptional prominence of poetry.  Until quite recently there was practically no drama, and no novels were written; prose works were mostly confined to history, geography, philosophy, religion, ethics and politics, and it was poetry that formed the chief outlet for artistic expression.  Classical Persian literature was produced almost entirely under royal patronage whence the frequency of panegyric verse.  An influence of at least equal strength was religion, and in particular Sufism, which inspired the remarkably high proportion of mystical poetry.


Persian Poetry

Classical Persian poetry is always rhymed.  The principal verse forms are the qasida, masnavi, ghazal and ruba'i.  The qasida or ode is a long poem in monorhyme, usually of a panegyric, didactic or religious nature; the masnavi, written in rhyming couplets, is employed for heroic, romantic, or narrative verse; the ghazal (ode or lyric) is a comparatively short poem, usually amorous or mystical and varying from four to sixteen couplets, all on one rhyme.  A convention of the ghazal is the introduction, in the last couplet, of the poet's pen name (takhallus).  The ruba'i is a quatrain with a particular metre, and a collection of quatrains is called "ruba'iyyat" (the plural of ruba'i).  Finally, a collection of a poet's ghazals and other verse, arranged alphabetically according to the rhymes, is known as a divan.

A word may not be out of place here on the peculiar difficulties of interpreting Persian poetry to the western reader.  To the pitfalls common to all translations from verse must be added, in the case of Persian poetry, such special difficulties as the very free use of Sufi imagery, the frequent literary, Koranic and other references and allusions, and the general employment of monorhyme, a form highly effective in Persian but unsuited to most other languages.  But most important of all is the fact that the poetry of Persia depends to a greater degree than that of most other nations on beauty of language for its effects.  This is why much of the great volume of "qasidas in praise of princes" can still be read with pleasure in the original, though It is largely unsuited to translation.  In short, the greatest charm of Persian poetry lies, as Sir E. Denison Ross remarked, in its language and its music, and consequently the reader of a translation "has perforce to forego the essence of the matter".

In the following brief sketch of the vast field of Persian literature we cannot hope to do more than mention a few of the most eminent authors, and to devote a paragraph or two each to the most famous of all.


Early Literature

Though existing fragments of Persian verse are believed to date from as early as the eighth century A.D., the history of Persian literature proper  begins with the lesser dynasties of the ninth and tenth centuries that emerged with the decline of the Caliphate.  The most important of these were the Samanids, who established at Bokhara the first of many brilliant courts that were to patronize learning and letters.  Here Abu Ali Sina, better known in the west as Avicenna, developed the medicine and philosophy of ancient Greece, and wrote numerous works that were to exercise considerable influence not only in the East but in Europe -where, translated into Latin, they were in use as late as the seventeenth century.  Avicenna wrote mostly in Arabic, but composed an encyclopaedia -- the Danish Nameh-ye Ala'i - in Persian.

The most famous of the court poets were Rudaki and Daqiqi.  Rudaki, generally regarded as the first of the great Persian poets, wrote a very large quantity of verse, of which but little has survived.  His style direct, simple and unadorned - was to appear unpolished to some of the over-elaborate versifiers of later ages, but appeals more to modem tastes.  Daqiqi, a composer of epics, was commissioned to write a work on the ancient kings of Persia, but only completed a thousand couplets before his death.  Some of these were later incorporated in the celebrated Shahnameh.



The Ghaznavid and early Seljuq Periods

It is said that four hundred poets were attached to the court of Sultan Mahmoud; of these, the most notable were Unsuri, the greatest of Mahmoud's panegyrists, followed by Farrukhi, Manouchehri and Asadi.  Of the prose writers, the most celebrated was Biruni, author of the "Chronology of Ancient Nations", who wrote exclusively in Arabic.

The Seljuq era, regarded as the second classical period of Persian literature, is one rich both in prose and poetry.  Famous prose works include Ghazali's influential Revivification of the Religious Sciences in Arabic and its Persian summary entitled Kimiya-ye Sa'adat (The Alchemy of Happiness); Baihaqi's History of the Ghaznavids: the Siasat Nameh, a treatise on the art of government by Nizam ul-Mulk, vizier to Alp Arslan and Malik Shah; the entertaining Qabus Nameh of Kai Ka'us, translated by Professor Levy as "A Mirror for Princes"; the collection of animal fables of Indian origin entitled Kalila va Dimna by Nasr Ullah; the charming Chahar Maqala or Four Discourses of Nizami Aruzi; the Fars Nameh of Ibn al-Balkhi, and the noted treatise on poetics of Rashid-i Vatvat.  Four of the above works - the Chahar Maqala, the History of Baihaqi, the Qabus Nameh and the Siasat Nameh - are considered by the poet Bahar as the four great masterpieces of early Persian prose.

A number of authors of this period wrote both prose and poetry.  One of the most brilliant of these was Nasir-i Khosrow, writer of some fifteen works in prose and 30,000 verses, of which less than half have survived.  His best known prose work is the Safar Nameh, an account of his journey to Egypt.  Most of Nasir-i Khosrow's poems are lengthy odes, mainly on religious and ethical subjects; they are noted for their purity of language and dazzling technical skill.  In the opinion of the scholar Mirza Mohammad Qazvini, the name of Nasir-i Khosrow should be added to those of the six poets - Ferdowsi, Khayyam, Anvari, Rumi, Saadi, and Hafez - whom "practically all" agree to consider the six greatest Persian poets, each in his special field.  Other famous poetry of the period includes the work of the mystics Ansari, Abu Sa'id and Baba Tahir of Hamadan; the odes of Qatran; Gurgani's romantic epic Vis o Ramin, and the Divans of the two Indian-born poets Mas'ud-i Sa'd-i Salman and Runi.  Seven other poets of the period are of outstanding fame and brilliance; these are Khayyam, Sana'i, Mu'izzi, Anvari, Khaqani, Nizami and Attar.

The versatile Khayyam - "the only man known to me", says Bertrand Russell, "who was both a poet and a mathematician" - is still perhaps the best known and most appreciated Persian poet in Europe and America.  There was for long considerable skepticism as to whether he was in fact the author of all or any of the quatrains attributed to him, but the discovery recently of manuscripts more ancient than any of those previously known has removed these doubts.

Khayyam's poetry was largely neglected in Iran until the end of the nineteenth century, mainly no doubt owing to the censure of orthodoxy.  When Fitzgerald's translation made him suddenly popular in the west the Iranians began to reassess his merits as a poet, and as we have seen, some native critics are now ready to accord him a place in the poetic Pantheon.  Since he uses imagery common to the Sufis, Khayyam has often been hailed as a Sufi himself; but while some of his quatrains can be made to bear a mystical interpretation, the general impression of his work is one of hedonism tinged with a gentle melancholy, born of acceptance of the tragic transience of life, the power of destiny and man's ultimate ignorance.  The attitude is that of a materialist rather than a deist; indeed, he has with some justice been compared to Lucretius.

Sana'i, who wrote in a style similar to that of Nasir-i Khosrow, was the author of two great Sufi epics, the prototypes of the later masterpieces of Attar and Rumi, as well as of a huge divan.  Mu'izzi, hailed by 'Abbas Ighbal as "one of the artistic virtuosi of the Persian language", wrote mainly panegyric verse in a highly elaborate style.  Anvari, author of numerous poetical works, mostly panegyric, wrote in a difficult style, sometimes requiring a commentary; he is regarded by some as one of the greatest Persian poets.  The poetry of Khaqani is even more mannered.  The last three poets mentioned - Mu'izzi, Anvari and Khaqani - are all famous in Iran, mainly for their technical brilliance; but, being particularly difficult to translate, they are less appreciated in the west.  This is not the case with the next two poets to be mentioned.

Nizami, born at Ganja in the Caucasus in 1140, was a prolific writer famous especially for his Khamseh or Quintet, a series of five great romances and epics.  These consist of the Makhzan al-Asrar or Treasure House of Secrets, a mystical epic inspired by Sana'i; the popular romances Khosrow o Shirin and Laila o Majnun; the Iskandar Nameh or Story of Alexander, and the Haft Paikar, the life story of Bahrain Gur.  Nizami's style is original and, colorful; his works enjoyed great popularity, and episodes from his romantic poems were favorite subjects for miniature painters.

Farid ud-Din Attar, who was born possibly around 1136, was a great and an original poet who produced numerous religious and didactic works.  He was essentially a mystic, and as such exercised a great influence on Rumi.  The best known of his works, the Mantiq ut-Tair (translated by Fitzgerald as the Bird Parliament) , is a mystical allegory in which the birds all set off in search of the mythical Simorgh, whom they wish to make their king.  The story, which symbolizes the quest of the soul for union with God, ends with their discovery that they have no existence separate from the object of their search.

The Simorgh then addresses them thus:

Pilgrim, Pilgrimage and Road
Was but Myself toward Mvself, and Your
Arrival but Myself at my own Door.....
Come, you lost Atoms, to your Center draw
And be the Eternal Mirror that you saw:
Rays that have wandered into Darkness wide
Return, and back into your Sun subside.




The Thirteenth Century

The Thirteenth century produced two poetic geniuses of the first rank, Sa'adi and Rumi.  It is also particularly notable for histories, of which many were inspired by these singularly troubled times.  Hamdullah Mostofi produced notable works both of history and geography, as well as an epic, the Zafar Nameh or Book of Victory, in 75,000 couplets, and Nasir ud-Din Tusi wrote on philosophy and logic.  Three notable poets of the period are Iraqi, author of the mystical Lama'at or Flashes; Amir Khosrow, known as "The Parrot of India" and author of no less than five divans, and Zakani the satirist.

Foremost in the ranks of historical works are Juvaini's Tarikh-i Jahan Gusha, an account of the Mongol conquests; the history of Juzjani, an important source book for the history of Moslem India; Rashid ud-Din's great Jami' ut-Tawarikh or Universal History, and the History of Vassaf.  The style of the period tended to over-ornateness; Juvaini, according to Arberry, was "the most accomplished exponent of the prized art of verbal arabesque", while Vassaf  "modeled his style on Juvaini at his most intricate and verbose." Of the writings of this school Levy remarks that it was "so filled with metaphor, allusion, and assonance, that the meaning was often lost in a tangle of verbiage".  By contrast, the work of the conscientious Rashid ud-Din, considered by Browne to be the best of all the Persian historians, is a model of clarity.


The Fifteenth Century onwards

The fifteenth century produced a number of notable historians - Nizam ud-Din Shami, author of the Zafar Nameh (a history of Timur); Yazdi, who wrote a work of the same name; Hafiz-i Abru, Khafi, Dowlatshah and Mir Khand, author of the immense Rozat as-Safa or Garden of Purity.  Other prose writers of note , include Davvani, author of the Akhlaq-i Jalali, and Kashefi, who produced an elaborate prose paraphrase of Kalila va Dimna known as Anvar-i Suhaili (The Lights of Canopus).  Fifteenth century poets include the Sufis Maghribi and Qasim-i Anvar, Katibi,  the saintly Ni'mat Allah Vali, and Jami.

Jami, "universally regarded as the last eminent figure in the history of classical Persian literature" (Arberry) was born in 1414.  A man of considerable erudition as well as of poetic genius, Jami produced some forty-five works, of which the best known are the Baharistan, the Divan, and the Haft Aurang or Seven Thrones, a series of four didactic works and three romances (Salaman o Absal, Yusuf o Zulaikha and Laila o Majnun) which he intended to rival the work of Nizami.

After Jami, who died shortly before the rise of the Safavis, Persian poetry is generally considered to have fallen into decline.  There were indeed no poets of the very first rank after the fifteenth century, yet in this long period there was no lack of writers and poets of talent, some of them of great eminence.

Of the poets immediately following Jami, his nephew Hatif was a noted writer of romantic and historical epics; also famous were his pupils Asafi, Fighani (who earned himself the title of "The Little Hafiz"), Ahli and the Sufi poet Hilali.  Later in the sixteenth century came the poets Hayrati, Kasimi, Kashi the panegyrist, Shani, Fasihi and Shafai.

Sa'ib (born 1677), the greatest literary figure of the seventeenth century, is considered by some to be the best Persian poet after Jami.  In early life he spent some time in India as court poet to the Moghul emperor Shah Jahan, and returned to Iran to become poet laureate to Shah Abbas II.  Sa'ib was a vivid and original poet who infused fresh life into the old forms and founded a new school.  Also of note was his contemporary Fayyaz.  A famous prose writer of the eighteenth century was Azar, author of the Atesh Kadeh (a biographical dictionary containing the lives of over 800 poets) as well as of a divan and a romantic epic.  The prolific writer Hazin produced histories and an autobiography, as well as four divans.  Also worthy of note is the poet Nejat.

In the nineteenth century Saba, poet laureate to Fath Ali Shah, composed a divan and an epic called the Shahanshahnameh; as a poet he was excelled by Neshat, also author of a divan.  Qa'ani (died 1853), the best writer of the nineteenth century and perhaps the most outstanding since Jami, was one of Iran's most brilliant and melodious poets.  Well known prose works of the period include Nasir ud-Din Shah's diaries of his three journeys to Europe and the literary biographies of the poet Reza Quli Khan. This period was marked by the increasing influence of European literature, noticeable in the works of the poet Shaybani and others.

The real revival of Persian letters came in the early twentieth century, when the growing desire for reform inspired numerous satires.  One of the most outstanding figures of this period was Iraj Mirza (died 1926), a poet of great talent and champion of the emancipation of women.  Other noted poets were Adib, Bahar, Lahuti, Shahryar, Aref and the poetess Parvin E'tesami.  Poets of more recent decades include Nima, Ra'di, Khanlari, Islami, Gulchin, Shamlu, Akhavan Salis, Mas'ud Farzad and the poetess Foroogh Farrukhzad., Some of these poets have introduced verse forms new to Persian literature.

* The article is from a chapter by the same name in "Presenting Iran", published by Ministry of Culture & Arts, Iran, Tehran, 1965.

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History of Language

It is a known fact that all animals commute with each other through language and body gestures. But it's only the humans who have developed a system of communication amongst themselves.

Since ancient times the language is changing continuously and still we have new words / lexicons in the modern language itself.

There is no strong evidence about the origin of language but according to researches there is a conclusion that languages came into existence from 3000 B.C. Initially the language was adopted by nomads of Eastern Europe and West Asia and during 2000 B.C. Indo-European languages begin to stretch across Europe, Atlantic Coast & Mediterranean regions. Another language which did come into prominence during this era was Semitic language which found its origin in tribal clans of Arabia.

Today the English is the primary language of North and South America, Australia and New Zealand though we have about 5000 languages in operation (1/3 are just from African subcontinent)

Though the languages in its initial stages were not subject to race but subsequently it followed a pattern and now we could map a particular race with particular languages. Like Persian was the language of Persia (now Iran), Arabic became the prime language of the Arabs, Mandarin for the Chinese and Devnagri for Hindus etc.

So there is separate history associated with respective language but here in this article we would discuss the history of one of the prime language - English language.

English language originates from West Germanic Language (which too originally evolved from Anglo Frisian dialects, German Settlers & Roman troops in major parts of England, Germany & Netherland). The German tribes who ultimately give rise to English language interacted with Roman Empire as a result they borrowed some words from the Latin also so sometimes English language is termed as "Borrowed language".

There are 3 classifications of English:

Old English - Native language for England. Derived from Anglo-Saxon.

Middle English - Came into existence around 1066 A.D. Derived from Anglo-Norman.

Modern English - Language came into prominence since 15th Century. Blend of Greek & Latin words.

Though we are amidst of modern English language but still there are several other regional and tribal languages which are on continuous evolution and improvement.

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Aristotle: Politics and Art

The Nature of Justice

Since friendship is an important feature of the good life and virtuous habits can be acquired through moral education and legislation, Aristotle regarded life within a moral community as a vital component of human morality. Even in the Ethics, he had noted that social order is presumed by the general concept of justice. (Nic. Ethics V 2)
Properly considered, justice is concerned with the equitability or fairness in interpersonal relations. Thus, Aristotle offered an account of distributive justice that made allowances for the social rectification of individual wrongs. Moreover, he noted that justice in the exchange of property requires careful definition in order to preserve equity. The broader concept of political justice, however, is to be recognized only within the context of an entire society. Thus, it deserves separate treatment in a different treatise.

Political Life

That treatise is Aristotle's Politics, a comprehensive examination of the origins and structure of the state. Like Plato, Aristotle supposed that the need for a division of labor is the initial occasion of the formation of a society, whose structure will be modelled upon that of the family. (Politics I 2) But Aristotle (preferring the mean) declined to agree with Plato's notion of commonly held property and argued that some property should be held privately.
Aristotle also drew a sharper distinction between morality and politics than Plato had done. Although a good citizen is a good person, on Aristotle's view, the good person can be good even independently of the society. A good citizen, however, can exist only as a part of the social structure itself, so the state is in some sense prior to the citizen.
Depending upon the number of people involved in governing and the focus of their interests, Aristotle distinguished six kinds of social structure in three pairs:
A state with only one ruler is either a monarchy or a tyrrany;
A state with several rulers is either an aristocracy or an oligarchy; and
A state in which all rule is either a polity or a democracy.

In each pair, the first sort of state is one in which the rulers are concerned with the good of the state, while those of the second sort are those in which the rulers serve their own private interests. (Politics III 7)
Although he believed monarchy to be the best possible state in principle, Aristotle recognized that in practice it is liable to degenerate into the worst possible state, a tyrrany. He therefore recommended the formation of polity, or constitutional government, since its degenerate form is the least harmful of the bad kinds of government. As always, Aristotle defended the mean rather than run the risk of either extreme.

Poetics

Another sharp contrast between Plato and Aristotle emerges in the latter's Poetics, and analysis of the effects of dramatic art. Aristotle, unlike his teacher, supposed that the extravagant representation of powerful emotions is beneficial to the individual citizen, providing an opportunity for the cathartic release of unhealthy feelings rather than encouraging their development.
Tragedy in particular arouses our fear and pity, as we recognize the inherent flaw of the tragic hero. Having seen the outcome in dramatic form, we are less likely to commit similar acts of pride, Aristotle argued, so the literary arts have a direct benefit to human society. This provides no grounds for a Platonic notion of censorship of the arts.


Although their relative reputations often varied widely, the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle continued to exert a powerful influence throughout the following centuries. Even now, it is often suggested that Western thinkers are invariably either Platonic or Aristotelean. That is, each of us is inclined either toward the abstract, speculative, intellectual apprehension of reality, as Plato was, or toward the concrete, practical, sensory appreciation of reality, as Aristotle was. The differences between the two approaches may be too fundamental for argumentation or debate, but the coordination or synthesis of the two together is extremely difficult, so choice may be required.
Certainly the philosophy of the Middle Ages, to which we will devote the remainder of this semester, exhibits some form of this division. As Christian thinkers tried to find ways of accomodating their religious doctrines to the tradition of Greek philosophy, some version of Plato and some version of Aristotle were significant factors in their development.

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Hermeneutics

The term hermeneutics covers both the first order art and the second order theory of understanding and interpretation of linguistic and non-linguistic expressions. As a theory of interpretation, the hermeneutic tradition stretches all the way back to ancient Greek philosophy. In the course of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, hermeneutics emerges as a crucial branch of Biblical studies. Later on, it comes to include the study of ancient and classic cultures.
With the emergence of German romanticism and idealism the status of hermeneutics changes. Hermeneutics turns philosophical. It is no longer conceived as a methodological or didactic aid for other disciplines, but turns to the conditions of possibility for symbolic communication as such. The question “How to read?” is replaced by the question, “How do we communicate at all?” Without such a shift, initiated by Friedrich Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Dilthey, and others, it is impossible to envisage the ontological turn in hermeneutics that, in the mid-1920s, was triggered by Martin Heidegger's Sein und Zeit and carried on by his student Hans-Georg Gadamer. Now hermeneutics is not only about symbolic communication. Its area is even more fundamental: that of human life and existence as such. It is in this form, as an interrogation into the deepest conditions for symbolic interaction and culture in general, that hermeneutics has provided the critical horizon for many of the most intriguing discussions of contemporary philosophy, both within an Anglo-American context (Rorty, McDowell, Davidson) and within a more Continental discourse (Habermas, Apel, Ricoeur, and Derrida).

1. The Beginnings of Hermeneutics

The term hermeneutics, a Latinized version of the Greek hermeneutice, has been part of common language from the beginning of the 17^th century. Nevertheless, its history stretches back to ancient philosophy. Addressing the understanding of religious intuitions, Plato used this term in a number of dialogues, contrasting hermeneutic knowledge to that of sophia. Religious knowledge is a knowledge of what has been revealed or said and does not, like sophia, involve knowledge of the truth-value of the utterance. Aristotle carried this use of the term a step further, naming his work on logic and semantics Peri hermeneias, which was later rendered as De interpretatione. 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.
The Stoics, however, never developed a systematic theory of interpretation. Such a theory is only to be found in Philo of Alexandria, whose reflections on the allegorical meaning of the Old Testament anticipate the idea that the literal meaning of a text may conceal a deeper non-literal meaning that may only be uncovered through systematic interpretatory work. About 150 years later, Origenes expounds on this view by claiming that the Scripture has three levels of meaning, corresponding to the triangle of body, soul, and spirit, each of which reflects a progressively more advanced stage of religious understanding.
With Augustine we encounter a thinker whose influence on modern hermeneutics has been profoundly acknowledged by Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer. According to Gadamer, it is Augustine who first introduces the universality-claim of hermeneutics. This claim arises from the connection Augustine establishes between language and interpretation, but also from his claim that interpretation of Scripture involves a deeper, existential level of self-understanding. The work of Thomas Aquinas, to which the young Heidegger paid a great deal of attention, has also had an impact on the development of modern hermeneutics. Heidegger, however, was mainly interested in Aquinas's notion of Being, and not in his engagement with specifically hermeneutic issues such as the proper authorship of certain pseudo-Aristotelian texts. Presupposing the relative unity of an author's work, Aquinas questions the authenticity of these texts by comparing them to the existing Aristotelian corpus, thus anticipating a critical-philological procedure that would later emerge as a crucial aspect of Friedrich Schleiermacher's notion of grammatical interpretation. This, however, is not the only point of contact between medieval philosophy and modern hermeneutics. Another such junction is the way in which medieval interpretations of Sacred texts, emphasizing their allegorical nature rather than their historical roots, are mirrored in Gadamer's attempt to rehabilitate the hermeneutic relevance of the allegory.
In spite of these and similar points of dialogue, it is in the wake of Martin Luther's sola scriptura that we see the dawn of a genuinely modern hermeneutics. Following Luther's emphasis on faith and inwardness, it was possible to question the authority of traditional interpretations of the Bible in order to emphasize the way in which each and every reader faces the challenge of making the truths of the text her own. Our understanding of a text does not consist in a faithful adoption of the predominant or authorized readings of the time. It is up to the individual reader to stake out her own path to the potential meaning and truth of the text. Reading now becomes a problem in a new way.
Coming from a very different tradition, Giambattisto Vico, the author of the Scienza nuova (1725), is another central figure in the development of early modern hermeneutics. Speaking out against the Cartesianism of his time, Vico argues that thinking is always rooted in a given cultural context. This context is historically developed, and, moreover, intrinsically related to ordinary language, evolving from the stage of myth and poetry to the later phases of theoretical abstraction and technical vocabularies. To understand oneself is thus to understand the genealogy of one's own intellectual horizon. This grants a new urgency to the historical sciences. Moreover, it offers a model of truth and objectivity that differs from those entertained by the natural sciences. The historian does not encounter a field of idealized and putatively subject-independent objects, but investigates a world that is, fundamentally, her own. There is no clear distinction between the scientist and the object of her studies. Understanding and self-understanding cannot be kept apart. Self-understanding does not culminate in law-like propositions. Appealing to tact and common sense, it is oriented towards who we are, living, as we do, within a given historical context of practice and understanding.
Another philosopher who came to influence the early stages of modern hermeneutics is Benedict de Spinoza. In the seventh chapter of the Tractatus theologico-politicus (1670), Spinoza proposes that in order to understand the most dense and difficult sections of the Holy Scriptures, one must keep in mind the historical horizon in which these texts were written, as well as the mind by which they were produced. There is an analogy, Spinoza claims, between our understanding of nature and our understanding of the Scriptures. In both cases, our understanding of the parts hinges on our understanding of a larger whole, which, again, can only be understood on the basis of the parts. Seen in a larger perspective, this hermeneutic circle, the movement back and forth between the parts and the whole of the text, is an important hermeneutical theme. What does not lend itself to immediate understanding can be interpreted by means of philological work. The study of history becomes an indispensable tool in the process of unlocking hermetic meaning and language-use.
Preoccupied respectively with subjective piety, with the new science of man, and with the historical aspects of understanding, Luther, Vico, and Spinoza all shaped and gave direction to modern hermeneutics. Yet none of these thinkers developed anything like an explicit philosophical theory of understanding, let alone a method or a set of normatively binding rules by means of which the process of interpretation should proceed. Such a theory was first formulated by Johann Martin Chladenius.
In his Einleitung zur richtigen Auslegung vernünftiger Reden und Schriften (1742), Chladenius distinguishes hermeneutics from logic, but also elaborates a typology of points of view. Attesting to the legacy of Leibniz and Wolf, the so-called School Philosophy, the focus on the different points of view enables Chladenius to explain how variations in our perception of phenomena and problems may cause difficulties in our understanding of other people's texts and statements. At stake is not really a historical methodology in the modern meaning of the term, but a didactic and cognitively oriented procedure of interpretation. In order to understand what, at first, might look strange or obscure—and Chladenius outlines a whole catalogue of different obscurities—one ought to take into account the tacit and pre-reflective assumptions characterizing the point of view from which the problematic text or statement was brought forth. Only thus may we reach a true or objective understanding of the subject matter. Hermeneutics, at this point, goes hand in hand with epistemology. With his coupling of the search for truth and the search for understanding, Chladenius anticipates an important orientation in 20th century hermeneutics.
Georg Friedrich Meier is another hermeneutically minded philosopher within the Leibniz-Wolffian paradigm. Whereas Chladenius had been concerned with speech and writing, Meier's hermeneutics is geared towards signs as such—that is, every type of sign, including non-verbal or natural signs. In Versuch einer Allgemeinen Auslegungskunst (1757), Meier argues that signs do not stand for or refer to a specific non-semiotic meaning or intention, but gain their meaning through their location within a larger, linguistic whole. What determines the meaning of a sign is its relation to other signs. Meier's contribution to hermeneutics is to argue for the interdependence of hermeneutics and language, introducing a semantic holism in which linguistic obscurities are detangled by reference to language itself, not by reference to extra-linguistic elements such as the intention of the author.
Considering the early beginning of the modern hermeneutic tradition, two more names must be mentioned: Friedrich Ast and Friedrich August Wolf.
Ast published his Grundlinien der Grammatik, Hermeneutik und Kritik in 1808. An accomplished classicist and a student of Friedrich Schelling, his aim was to provide a methodology through which the whole of world-historical spirit could be retrieved. Individual utterances are neither to be understood with reference to their author, nor with reference to their place within the semiotic system, but according to their location within world-history. This, Ast thought, was possible through the combination of a synthetic and an analytic approach, the former focusing on the whole, the latter on the particular parts of which this whole consists. Ast thereby extends the scope of the hermeneutic circle. Originally conceived in terms of the relationship between the parts and the whole of the text, the hermeneutic circle now includes the text's relationship to historical tradition and culture at large.
Like Ast, Wolf was trained in Classical studies. Both his Museum der Altertumswissenschaft (1807) and his Vorlesungen über die Enzyklopädie der Altertumswissenschaft (1831) address the epistemic, that is, the philosophical, aspects of classical philology. Classical studies, Wolf claims, aims at a total knowledge of its object, but should also reflect on the relevance of such knowledge as well as the method through which it is reached. However, dealing with ancient texts, hermeneutic knowledge presupposes not only a general study of culture, but also a certain sensitivity to the individuality of its author. By establishing philology as a methodological discipline reflecting both the shared, cultural framework and the dimension of individuality, Wolf came to mark his place as one of the most important precursors of romantic hermeneutics.

2. Romantic Continuations

On the one hand, there is an interest in the human sciences and a willingness to defend the integrity of these sciences as distinct from the natural sciences. On the other hand, there is a deep concern with the problem of making sense of the texts handed over to us from the past. These are the twin pillars on which modern hermeneutics is built. For, strictly speaking, it is only at the point where these two orientations merge and mutually inform one another that we encounter the first attempts at articulating a genuinely philosophical hermeneutics. This happens in the period of German romanticism and idealism. Herder, the Schlegel brothers, and Novalis are all important in this context. So, too, is the philosophical background provided by Kant and Hegel. Yet it is Friedrich Schleiermacher who first manages to pull together the intellectual currents of the time so as to articulate a coherent conception of a universal hermeneutics, a hermeneutics that does not relate to one particular kind of textual material (such as the Bible or ancient texts), but to linguistic meaning in general.
Schleiermacher taught hermeneutics from 1805 onwards at the universities of Halle and Berlin. Although schooled in Kantian philosophy, Schleiermacher was never a full-fledged Kantian. He drew on the resources of Leibniz's monadology, Schelling's philosophy of identity, as well as the teachings of British empiricism. Yet the (Kantian) question of legitimacy remains at the center of his hermeneutics.
According to Schleiermacher, understanding other cultures is not something we can take for granted. Understanding others involves an openness towards the fact that what seems rational, true, or coherent may cover something deeply unfamiliar. This openness is only possible in so far as we systematically scrutinize our own hermeneutic prejudices. Schleiermacher speaks of this as a stricter, as opposed to a laxer hermeneutic practice. Yet a strict hermeneutic practice, Schleiermacher repeatedly emphasizes, cannot, as such, guarantee a just or fully adequate understanding. Nevertheless, it is, he thinks, an indispensable aid. It is something that may help the hermeneutician not to fall prey to the tendency to filter another's speech or writing through one's own cultural, theological, or philosophical frame of mind.
The point applies not only to our understanding of other cultures. For, according to Schleiermacher, all use of language is located somewhere between radical individuality and radical universality. Neither of these exists in an entirely purified form. All language-use is referred to grammar and a common symbolic vocabulary, yet we use these shared resources in more or less individual ways—more individual in the case of, say, poetry, less individual in, say, scientific discourse or conversations about the weather. However, the individuality of language-use does not refer to an inner, inaccessible layer of the mind. It refers to something like the style, the voice, or the particularity of the language as used or applied.
In order to grasp the meaning of another person's speech or texts, one ought to focus on both aspects of her language-use, the shared resources or grammar and syntax as well as individual application. Schleiermacher addresses this as the task of combining grammatical and technical interpretation. There is, however, no rule for this combination. Instead one must compare the text with other texts from the same period, from the same writer even, while continuously keeping in sight the uniqueness of the particular work. Schleiermacher, like Schlegel and other philosophers of the time, speaks of this as the capacity for divination: the ability to move from the particular to the universal without the aid of general rules or doctrines. Only by combining a comparative approach with creative hypothesis-making may a better understanding be obtained.
Understanding better, however, implies no promise of a fully adequate understanding. For although the risk of misunderstanding does not imply a state of total alienation—we do, after all, successufully communicate most of the time—it does mean that understanding is never final. There will always be an indivisible remainder that pushes the interpreter forwards to explore hermeneutic vistas that have so far been left outside the pale of understanding.
It is precisely the idea of a critical turn in hermeneutics combined with the focus on the individuality of language-use that made Schleiermacher such an important figure for the next generation of hermeneuticians, concerned as they were with the methodology of the human sciences, or, as they understood it, with the critique, in the Kantian meaning of the term, of historical reason.

3. Critique of Historical Reason

After Schleiermacher's death in 1834, hermeneutics was carried forward by Alexander von Humboldt, Chajim Steinthal, and Friedrich Carl von Savigny. In this period, however, historians, theologians and jurists were largely concerned with the application of hermeneutics within their special disciplines, and not with the conditions of possibility for understanding and communication as such. Three thinkers nevertheless stand out as exceptions to this tendency. They are Johann Gustav Droysen, Leopold von Ranke, and, most importantly, Wilhelm Dilthey. In different ways, Droysen, von Ranke, and Dilthey represent a return to Vico's old problem, namely how one can philosophically justify and account for the particular kind of objectivity pertaining to the study of man. Yet whereas Vico had been interested in culture and history at large, the task is now more specific: How to justify the humanities within a university system that is based upon the Enlightenment ideals of critical reason and rationality, and no longer on authority, tradition, and theological canon?
The structure of history, Ranke argues, echoes the structure of a text in so far as it consists of a particular kind of co-dependence between parts and whole. Like reading, understanding history means moving along the paths of the hermeneutic circle, from part to whole and back again. Because the historical mind is itself situated in history, there is, however, no end to this circular movement. History cannot, as the Hegelians had been arguing, be conceptualized, once and for all, by speculative philosophy. Understanding history is an ongoing activity. This, however, does not make it superfluous as a science. In our effort to understand history, historical life is brought to consciousness about itself. Doing historical work means actively participating in the cultural tradition that is being investigated; it means being historical in the most emphatic way.
Like Ranke, Droysen is interested in the methodology of the historical sciences. Trying to break free from the idealistic tradition to which Ranke still adhered, Droysen makes the case for a theory of history that, like the methodology of the natural sciences, has less to do with the object of study (history or nature) than with the manner in which the study is carried out. The natural sciences uncover universal natural laws. The historical sciences are sciences of understanding. Unlike the scientist of nature, the historian is separated from the object of study by the ever-renewed and self-renewing tradition. Her object is always mediated. Yet in understanding history the researcher also understands something that is ultimately her own, the outcome of human freedom, goals, and desires. At the end of the day, it applies even for Droysen that history is intelligible and meaningful—that the study of it permits a kind of objectivity that is different from but still comparable to the one at stake in the natural sciences.
With Dilthey, the search for a philosophical legitimation of the human sciences is brought a significant step further. The author of a vast monograph on Schleiermacher and his time, Dilthey responds to the questions raised by Droysen and Ranke by retrieving the resources of romantic hermeneutics. Scientific explanation of nature, Dilthey argues, must be completed with a theory of how the world is given to us through symbolically mediated practices. To provide such a theory is the aim of the humanities, or rather the aim of the philosophy of the humanities, the area to which Dilthey dedicated his entire academic career.
The concepts of Erlebnis (lived experience) and Verstehen (understanding) play a crucial role within Dilthey's endeavors to liberate the methodology of the humanities from that of the natural sciences. In his early writings, Dilthey made little effort to distinguish between these terms. Later on, however, Erlebnis is connected with the process of self-understanding, whereas Verstehen relates to our understanding of others. Dilthey's important point is that, as such, Erlebnis, does not provide self-understanding. Self-understanding is obtained only to the extent that the self relates to itself as it relates to others, i.e., in a mediated way. Yet Erlebnis, synthesizing and active, remains the psychological source of all experience, the experiential potential that is articulated and conceptualized in understanding.
Turning to the level of historical research, the hermeneutically oriented scientist must respond to this situation by combining a more intuitive hypothesis-formation (aiming at the lived experience at stake) and a comparative method that would revise and secure the objectivity of this process. This is Dilthey's critical adaptation of Schleiermacher's romantic hermeneutics: a theory that replaces the romantic vocabulary of divination, congeniality, and comparison with one of an initial inductive hypothesis-formation leading up to a process of critical, empirical investigation and historical comparison aiming at revision or improvement of the initial hypothesis. Dilthey's most important contribution to hermeneutics might be said to rest in the fact that he is the first to ground hermeneutics in a general theory of human life and existence. In this sense, Dilthey's philosophy paves the way for what we have later come to recognize as the turn to ontology.

4. The Ontological Turn

Informed by his reading of Schleiermacher, Droysen, and Dilthey, Martin Heidegger's Sein und Zeit (1927) completely transformed the discipline of hermeneutics. In Heidegger's view, hermeneutics is not a matter of understanding linguistic communication. Nor is it about providing a methodological basis for the human sciences. As far as Heidegger is concerned, hermeneutics is ontology; it is about the most fundamental conditions of man's being in the world. Yet Heidegger's turn to ontology is not completely separated from earlier hermeneutic philosophies. Just as Vico had started out with a critique of the Cartesian notion of certainty, so Heidegger sets out to overthrow what he takes to be the Cartesian trajectory of modern philosophical reason.
For Descartes, Heidegger argues, the task of philosophy is to show how the subject can rationally establish the norms of epistemic certainty whereby a given representation is judged to be true or false. From such a position, he continues, the way is not long to a conception of truth in terms of the methods provided by the natural sciences alone. Such a model, however, tends to forget the most fundamental, pre-scientific aspects of our being in the world. This is the area of Heidegger's hermeneutics. As such, hermeneutics no longer emerges as one of several philosophical possibilities. Rather, hermeneutics—the hermeneutics of facticity, as Heidegger calls it—is what philosophy is all about in the first place.
This reflects back on Heidegger's definition of terms such as understanding, interpretation, and assertion. Understanding, in Heidegger's account, is neither a method of reading nor the outcome of a willed and carefully conducted procedure of critical reflection. It is not something we consciously do or fail to do, but something we are. Understanding is a mode of being, and as such it is characteristic of human being, of Dasein. The pre-reflective way in which Dasein inhabits the world is itself of a hermeneutic nature. Our understanding of the world presupposes a kind of pragmatic know-how that is revealed through the way in which we, without theoretical considerations, orient ourselves in the world. We open the door without objectifying or conceptually determining the nature of the door-handle or the doorframe. The world is familiar to us in a basic, intuitive way. Most originally, Heidegger argues, we do not understand the world by gathering a collection of neutral facts by which we may reach a set of universal propositions, laws, or judgments that, to a greater or lesser extent, corresponds to the world as it is. The world is tacitly intelligible to us.
The fundamental familiarity with the world is brought to reflective consciousness through the work of interpretation. Interpretation, however, does not have to be of a propositional nature. At stake is the explicit foregrounding of a given object, as in the experience of the dysfunctional hammer all of a sudden materializing in all its lack of hammer-usefulness. At this point, we are forced to stop hammering. As if awakened to a new level of alertness, the tacit activity of hammering is replaced by the sudden awareness of what a hammer is for. Interpretation makes things, objects, the fabric of the world, appear as something, as Heidegger puts it. Still, this as is only possible on the background of the world as a totality of practices and intersubjective encounters, of the world that is opened up by Dasein's being understandingly there.
At this point, we have still not reached the level at which we, according to Heidegger, would locate the idea of truth as agreement between judgment and world. Yet a truth it is nonetheless—the truth of world-disclosure. Through the synthesizing activity of understanding, the world is disclosed as a totality of meaning, a space in which Dasein is at home.
Only through assertion is the synthesizing activity of understanding and interpretation brought to language. In disclosing the as-structure of a thing, the hammer as a hammer, interpretation discloses its meaning. Assertion, then, pins this meaning down linguistically. The linguistic identification of a thing is, in other words, not original but is predicated on the world-disclosive synthesis of understanding and interpretation. This also applies with regard to the truth-value of the assertion. The world-disclosive truth of understanding is more fundamental than the truth presented through the propositional structure “s is p,” and prior, also, to the reflectively grounded certainty maintained by the Cartesian philosopher.
This Heideggerian reformulation of the problem of truth gives rise to a new conception of the hermeneutic circle. In Spinoza, Ast, and Schleiermacher, the hermeneutic circle was conceived in terms of the mutual relationship between the text as a whole and its individual parts, or in terms of the relation between text and tradition. With Heidegger, however, the hermeneutic circle refers to something completely different: the interplay between our self-understanding and our understanding the world. The hermeneutic circle is no longer perceived as a helpful philological tool, but entails an existential task with which each of us is confronted.
According to Heidegger, Dasein is distinguished by its self-interpretatory endeavors. Dasein is a being whose being appears as an issue. However, because Dasein is fundamentally embedded in the world, we simply cannot understand ourselves without the detour through the world, and the world cannot be understood without reference to Dasein's way of life. This, however, is a perpetual process. Hence, what is precarious here is not, as in the earlier hermeneutic tradition, the moment when we are able to leave the hermeneutic circle, where our interpretative endeavors culminate in a lucid, clear, and indubitable grasp of the meaning of the text. What matters, Heidegger claims, is the attempt to enter the circle in the right way, with a willingness to realize that the investigation into the ontological conditions of my life ought to work back on the way in which my life is led.
With this turn towards ontology, the problems of philology become secondary. Hermeneutics now deals with the meaning—or lack of meaning—of human life: it is turned into an existential task.

5. Hermeneutic Humanism

After the publication of Being and Time, Heidegger stops engaging with explicit hermeneutic issues (as well as the terminology of understanding, interpretation, and the hermeneutic circle). This aspect of his thinking, however, is taken up by his student, Hans-Georg Gadamer.
Gadamer works within the Heideggerian paradigm to the extent that he fully accepts the ontological turn in hermeneutics. Yet he wants to explore the consequences of such a turn for our understanding of the human sciences. This, Gadamer thinks, can only be done if we leave behind the framework of romantic hermeneutics, both in its Schleiermacherian and in its Diltheyan versions. Going back to Vico and the neo-Aristotelian strands of early modern humanism, Gadamer wants to combine the Heideggerian notion of the world-disclosive synthesis of understanding with the idea of Bildung, of education in culture. This, by and large, is the project of Wahrheit und Methode (1960), a work that Gadamer spent more than 30 years completing.
Human being, Gadamer argues, is a being in language. It is through language that the world is opened up for us. We learn to know the world by learning to master a language. Hence we cannot really understand ourselves unless we understand ourselves as situated in a linguistically mediated, historical culture. Language is our second nature
This has consequences for our understanding of art, culture, and historical texts—i.e., on the subject area of the human sciences. Being a part of our own tradition, historical works do not primarily present themselves to us as neutral and value-free objects of scientific investigation. They are part of the horizon in which we live and through which our world-view gets shaped. We are, in other words, formed by these great works before we get the chance to approach them with an objectivizing gaze.
Gadamer argues that we never know a historical work as it originally appeared to its contemporaries. We have no access to its original context of production or to the intentions of its author. Tradition is always alive. It is not passive and stifling, but productive and in constant development. Trying, as the earlier hermeneuticians did, to locate the (scientific) value of the humanities in their capacity for objective reconstruction is bound to be a wasted effort. The past is handed over to us through the complex and ever-changing fabric of interpretations, which gets richer and more complex as decades and centuries pass. History, as Gadamer puts it, is always effective history. This, however, is not a deficiency. It is, rather, a unique possibility, a possibility that involves the particular kind of truth-claim that Gadamer ascribes to the human sciences: the truth of self-understanding.
At the end of the day, Gadamer claims, it is not really we who address the texts of tradition, but the canonic texts that address us. Having traveled through decades and centuries, the classic works of art, literature, science, and philosophy question us and our way of life. Our prejudices, whatever aspects of our cultural horizon that we take for granted, are brought into the open in the encounter with the past. As a part of the tradition in which we stand, historical texts have an authority that precedes our own. Yet this authority is kept alive only to the extent that it is recognized by the present. We recognize the authority of a text (or a work of art) by engaging with it in textual explication and interpretation, by entering into a dialogical relationship with the past. It is this movement of understanding that Gadamer refers to as the fusion of horizons. As we come, through the work of interpretation, to understand what at first appears alien, we participate in the production of a richer, more encompassing context of meaning—we gain a better and more profound understanding not only of the text but also of ourselves. In the fusion of horizons, the initial appearance of distance and alienness does itself emerge as a function of the limitations of our own initial point of departure.
Obtaining a fusion of horizons requires us to engage with the text in a productive way. This, however, is not something we can learn by coming to master a certain doctrine, method, or theory. It is more like a tacit capacity, which we acquire by following the example of others. The knowledge at stake is like a practical know-how; it resembles the Aristotelian phronesis. It is a knowledge that can neither be deduced theoretically, nor be fully articulated, but that rests on a kind of tact or sensitivity that is only exhibited in the form of exemplary judgments and interpretations.
This co-determination of text and reader is Gadamer's version of the hermeneutic circle. As important as the interplay between the parts and the whole of a text is the way in which our reading contributes to its effective history, adding to the complexity and depth of its meaning. The meaning of the text is not something we can grasp once and for all. It is something that exists in the complex dialogical interplay between past and present. Just as we can never master the texts of the past, so do we fail—necessarily and constitutively—to obtain conclusive self-knowledge. Gaining knowledge of tradition and knowing ourselves are both interminable processes; they are tasks without determinate end-points. This is the philosophical gist of Gadamer's humanistic ontology: that our being, historically conditioned as it is, is always more being (Sein) than conscious being (Bewusstsein).

6. Objectivity and Relativism

The force with which Truth and Method came to shape the conjunctures of contemporary hermeneutics can only be envisaged by taking into account how, over the past 40 years, the discussion of philosophical hermeneutics has, by and large, been a discussion of Gadamer's work.
One example is Emilio Betti. Publishing his Teoria della interpretatione in 1964, Betti approaches hermeneutics from a non-ontological point of view, explicitly connecting himself to the legacy of Schleiermacher and Dilthey. Hermeneutics, for Betti, should confine itself to the epistemological problems of interpretation, and not try to engage with the deepest conditions of human existence. Speech and texts, Betti argues, are objectified representations of human intentions. To interpret their meaning is to breathe life into these symbolically mediated intentions. This is possible because although the interpreter's individuality and the individuality expressed in the text are constitutively different, the interpreter may overcome her own point of view in order to get a grasp on the meaning of the text. At issue is an attempt to re-create the original process of creation: not in order to reach the psychological state or content of the author, but to get at the true and only meaning of the text.
Similar aspirations lie behind the criticism launched by Eric D. Hirsch in the second half of the 1960s. Hirsch's major work, Validity in Interpretation (1967), attempts to refute the central Gadamerian notion of the fusion of horizons. Like Betti, Hirsch takes this idea to invoke a problematic epistemic relativism. Without a concept of validation, he argues, no interpretation would be more plausible than any other. Knowledge and objectivity would be impossible in the domain of hermeneutics. But knowledge and objectivity, Hirsch thinks, is precisely what defines the human sciences, even though these sciences are based upon interpretation rather than explanation.
It is illuminating, in this context, to compare Betti's and Hirsch's objections, to the criticism directed against Truth and Method from another point of view, namely that of the Frankfurt School. Represented by Jürgen Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel, this criticism is also driven by a worry about the potential relativism of an ontologically informed hermeneutics. Nonetheless, according to Habermas and Apel, this problem is by no means sufficiently resolved by Betti and Hirsch.

7. Critique of Ideology

In a number of articles, Habermas draws attention to what he takes to be the political naiveté of Gadamer's hermeneutics. In Habermas's view, Gadamer places too much emphasis on the authority of tradition, leaving no room for critical judgment and reflection. Reason is denied the power of a critical, distanced judgment. What is needed is therefore not just an analysis of the way in which we de facto are conditioned by history but a set of quasi-transcendental principles of validity in terms of which the claims of the tradition may be subjected to evaluation. Hermeneutics, Habermas argues, must be completed by a critical theory of society.
It is important to realize how Habermas's objections differ from those brought forth by Betti and Hirsch. As opposed to Betti and Hirsch, Habermas does not claim that Gadamer's approach to hermeneutics is completely mistaken. He argues, rather, that Gadamer ascribes to hermeneutics an illegitimate kind of universality. Hence, the fundamental problem with Gadamer's hermeneutics would not be solved by calling for a hermeneutic method. The idea of a formal method is indeed convincingly criticized by Gadamer. Instead, what is needed is an effort to work out an adequate standard of validity, or what Habermas refers to as the quasi-transcendental principles of communicative reason. Only thus may hermeneutics, guided by the social sciences, serve the purpose of emancipation and social liberation.
Apel, by and large, shares Habermas worries, but approaches the field of hermeneutics from a slightly different angle. Like Gadamer, Apel was a student of Heidegger. Apel wants to show that Gadamer misunderstood his teacher. Towards the 1960s, Apel claims, the Heideggerian conception of truth undergoes a significant alteration. Although Apel grants that Heidegger still finds world-disclosive understanding a necessary condition for truth, he claims that Heidegger no longer thinks it is a sufficient one. This is the point that Gadamer misses, according to Apel. Gadamer does not see how the later Heidegger holds that the ontological level of understanding must be completed by an appeal to a trans-historical dimension of validity, not unlike the ones that were later to be proposed by Apel and Habermas.
These strands of criticisms—here represented by Betti, Hirsch, Habermas, and Apel—have not been left unanswered. Again and again, Gadamer emphasizes that his aim was never to dispense with every appeal to validity, objectivity, and method in understanding. This is simply a misreading, he claims. Along the paths staked out by Kant's critical turn, he sought, rather, to investigate the conditions of possibility for understanding as such. These conditions are not something that can be removed or bracketed by appealing to a hermeneutic method. Furthermore, it is not the case that our situatedness within history is a limiting condition only: rather, as the space of human experience and reason, it opens up the world to us in the first place.
Whichever line of argument one finds more convincing, it is hard not to agree that both Gadamer and his critics have gained from these encounters. And it is, it seems, the concessions and the criticisms, the specifications and the revisions, that have made it possible for a philosopher such as Paul Ricoeur to propose something like a third way in hermeneutics, an alternative to both a merely epistemic orientation in hermeneutics and to Gadamer's ontological questioning of the distinction between facticity and validity in interpretation.

8. Semiotics and Post-Structuralism

Indebted to psychoanalysis as well as to the tradition of French semiotics, Ricoeur sets out to demonstrate that there is no unbridgeable gap between ontological and critical hermeneutics. Although the differences between the two are genuine, he proposes an alternative that aims at unifying the most convincing aspects of them both. Ricoeur agrees with Habermas and Apel that the hermeneutic act must always be accompanied by critical reflection. Yet he does not find that this requires a leaving behind of the field of tradition and historical texts. Thus Ricoeur emphasizes how the text itself may open up a space of existential and political possibilities. This dynamic, productive power of the text undermines the idea of reality as a fixed, unyielding network of authoritative patterns of interpretations.
Jacques Derrida also approaches the field of hermeneutics from the background of post-structuralist theory. Like Apel, he claims that Gadamer misreads Heidegger. But whereas Apel fears that the lack of a quasi-transcendental criterion of validity may lead to a situation where a world-disclosive tradition is given too much authority vis-à-vis the critically reflecting and judging subject, Derrida's worry is that Gadamer remains within a tradition that, since Plato, has understood truth, logos, and rationality in terms of a metaphysics of presence. The divergence between Derrida and Gadamer—their interpretations of Heidegger as well as their general theories of truth and meaning—were explicitly brought to the fore in a famous meeting between the two philosophers in Paris in 1981.
Here Derrida questioned the idea of a continuously unfolding continuity of understanding. Meaning, he insisted, is not based on the will to dialogue alone. Most fundamentally, it is made possible by absence, by the relations of a word to other words within the ever-evasive network of structures that language ultimately is. Our relation to the speech of others, or to the texts of the past, is not one of mutual respect and interaction. It is a relationship in which we have to fight against misunderstanding and dissemination, one in which the focus on communality in language provides but a harmful illusion. The ethics of hermeneutics, consisting in the recognition of the possible truth of the other's point of view, tends to cover up the way in which the other escapes me, the way in which the I always fails to recognize the thou in its constitutive difference.
Gadamer, on the other hand, argues that Derrida's position—his rejection of every continuum of meaning, of an orientation towards truth, and of a genuine communication—potentially harbors indifference and that the focus on discontinuity and fragmentation resembles the kind of thinking that he criticized, in the first part of Truth and Method, as aesthetic consciousness. Precisely by emphasizing how the subject may reach beyond herself in dialogical encounters with others does the term Bildung, in Gadamer's view, allow for an ethical aspect of hermeneutics, for a hermeneutics that may contribute to a political, rather than an aesthetic humanism.

9. Hermeneutics and Pragmatism

The ethical significance of hermeneutics, particularly its resources for handling relativist challenges, has been an important issue in the reception and exploration of hermeneutic thought in Anglo-American philosophy. However, the main impetus for appropriation and integration of hermeneutics with elements of the analytical tradition has been meta-philosophical. The most influential exponent of this development is Richard Rorty.
Filtering Heidegger's ontological hermeneutics through his distinction between constructive and therapeutic philosophy, Rorty reads Being and Time as an anti-Kantian, anti-representationalist antidote to the foundationalist epistemological project of Western Philosophy. Heidegger's emphasis on the temporality and incompleteness of all understanding, on Dasein's inextricable, dynamic and never fully articulated involvement with the world, makes him, in Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), a hero (along with Dewey and Wittgenstein) of therapeutic, anti-metaphysical pragmatist thinking. In time, however, Rorty comes to see Heidegger as unable to escape the metaphysics of representation; in Heidegger's philosophy of Being, Rorty finds another version of the Ground of All Right Thinking. To Rorty's mind, Heidegger fails to heed his own advice, to overcome metaphysics, we must leave metaphysics alone. Continuing his own turn away from metaphysics, Rorty after Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature increasingly looks to literature, and to the relation between philosophy and literature. As he explores the idea of Philosophy as a kind of writing, Rorty seeks to align philosophical thought and insight with, to put it in his own terms, poetry rather than physics. Developing the ramifications of this contrast, Rorty articulates in a more fundamental way than in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature his opposition to the alignment and assimilation of philosophical knowledge with scientific knowledge. This development of Rorty's thought, which eventually leads him away from Heidegger, is not, however, a turning away from hermeneutic philosophy. On the contrary, it brings to the fore a deep affinity with the hermeneutic humanism of Gadamer.
Gadamer is a lesser, but perhaps more enduring, hero of Rorty's attempt to deconstruct the representationalist paradigm in philosophy from within. As Rorty articulates his conversational, non-representationalist, anti-methodological view of philosophy after epistemology, he turns precisely to Gadamer's account of understanding. Philosophical conversation should not be a search for commensuration, it should be, rather, hermeneutical. In relying on this term, Rorty intends to appropriate Gadamer's description of understanding as a fusion of horizons, as an event in which the subject is altered, rather than a process over which she exerts methodological control.
Rorty's application of Gadamer for his pragmatist, anti-ontological purposes, is, however, quite selective. For instance, while Gadamer finds in Kant an essential source of liberating anti-scientistic insight, Rorty unequivocally casts Kant as the arch villain of representationalism and institutor of the scheme-content distinction. Another measure of the distance between them is the difference between Rorty's avowedly ethnocentric defense of liberal ideals, and Gadamer's notion of the appropriation of tradition as a way of being responsive to reason. Nevertheless, the contact points between Rortyan pragmatism and hermeneutics are real and significant, not least expressed in the commitment to the idea of philosophy as intellectual activity in the humanistic tradition.
This affinity is attested to also by the work of philosophers who draw significantly on both Rorty and Gadamer. Some of Rorty's readers have been influenced by his critical exposition of the assumptions of representationalist metaphysics and his anti-rationalistic emphasis on the contingency of human thought. Yet they find untenable Rorty's attempt to turn the issue of the legitimacy of ethical and epistemic norms into a matter of sociology. For readers in this predicament, Gadamer's elaboration of the historical nature of reason and, indeed, his own exegetical, discursive dialogical practice may provide important resources. The most notable example of such a philosopher is John McDowell.
McDowell's appropriation of Gadamer in Mind and World (1994) undoubtedly owes something to Rorty's use of Gadamerian ideas in his modulation of pragmatism. However, while Rorty uses hermeneutics to label a position that stands opposed to epistemology-based philosophy, past and present, McDowell's appropriation of hermeneutics consists in part of a conciliatory reading of the past, in particular, of Kant. This conciliation rests on a central component in Gadamer's attempt to give a non-relativist view of a fully historicized reason, namely, a Hegel-inspired idea of dialogue. Dialogue is the mode of progress of understanding, and dialogue, according to both McDowell and Gadamer, presupposes a willingness to submit, at least temporarily, to the claims of another. Submission here should not be taken to imply blind acceptance, rather it is a matter of maintaining discursive openness by not insisting on the pre-eminence of ones own ways of putting the subject at issue. Maintaining this openness of vocabulary, this tentativeness of phrase and of re-phrasing, is from a hermeneutic perspective a guiding norm of any genuine dialogue. The reason is that only in such openness are new truths able to emerge, truths that are not simply a yielding of one position to another, but a genuine preservation of the insight contained in either.
This dynamic, practical, educational aspect of dialogue is an essential element of ontological hermeneutics, and McDowell draws explicitly on it. McDowell aims to conceive of persons as biologically embodied temporal creatures immersed in a shared world, yet capable by nature of being responsive to reason and thus of becoming free subjects. Thus he addresses, among other things, a central problematic of much Anglophone philosophy of mind. A critical ingredient in McDowell's project, however, is the idea of second nature. In virtue of their natural capacities, creatures like us are potentially dialogical, that is, responsive to reason. The development of second nature is precisely the realization of this potential. McDowell, drawing on explicitly Aristotelian elements in Gadamer's notion of reason, provides an original perspective on the requirements of naturalism as he works out the nature of this transformation into second nature in hermeneutical terms. McDowell focuses in particular on the dialectical, organic relation between tradition and the subject who comes at the same to understand, to continue, and to renew that tradition. This process can be regarded as an opening up of the space of reason. It is, simultaneously, a realization of the subject's autonomy as a thinker and an affirmation of the authority and openness of tradition. In McDowell's conception, it provides a tool for understanding sensitivity to reason as a realization of a potential inherent in biological nature.
The orientation of McDowell's philosophical project is more closely aligned with Gadamer's dialogical reading of past thinkers than is Rorty's more sweepingly critical style of historical narrative. It is interesting to note, therefore, that both Rorty and McDowell draw extensively on the thought of Donald Davidson, and both emphasize intersections between Davidson's philosophy and Gadamerian hermeneutics. It seems clear that there has been no significant mutual influence between Davidson and Gadamer. As well, the former's explicit philosophical concerns—how to articulate a non-reductive monism, to provide the form of a theory of meaning, to uncover the social conditions of propositional content—are very different from those of Gadamer. Yet innovative philosophers like McDowell and Rorty who are inspired by Davidson, appear to have been, among Anglophone theorists, particularly receptive to hermeneutic thought. Conversely, philosophers with a deep interest in the hermeneutic stream of Continental philosophy have shown an affinity for Davidsonian thinking. It is worthwhile, therefore, to look for convergences.
Three common points of emphasis are immediately salient: on a tight connection between understanding and truth; secondly, on the interpenetration of our grasp of linguistic meaning and of objective reality; and, thirdly, on the social nature of meaning and thought. With regard to the first point, Davidson's approach to the nature of linguistic competence has emphasized the constitutive role of the so-called principle of charity in all interpretation. This principle has it that we understand each other as speakers and agents principally and fundamentally in so far as we take each other as rational agents, as, in McDowell's phrase, responsive to norms of reason. For Davidson this means, among other things, that we take each other's sincere utterances on the whole as true. This is an inevitable outcome of what it is, as Davidson conceives it, to understand the language of another. While Davidson is concerned to give an account of the nature of linguistic competence that lets us specify the form of a semantic theory for a speaker, Gadamer seeks to illuminate how it is that a concrete, temporally immersed and spatially located individual may be open to, and understand, a point of view different from her own. For Gadamer, as we have seen, this implies some kind of change or movement, and here, too, in the fusion of horizons, the individuals grasp of truth as something over and above her own particular perspective, turns out to be the critical lever. For both Davidson and Gadamer, in spite of their different theoretical interests, communication depends on our ability to see the truth conveyed in the articulated point of view of another.
For both, this idea leads naturally into the second and third points above. Regarding a relation to truth as constitutive of dialogical meaning, Gadamer, following Heidegger, refuses to allow any fundamental dichotomy between what a subject represents as true and how the world actually, objectively, is. To be sure, he does not deny the possibility of error or ignorance. However, for Gadamer, our particular orientation toward the world, though necessarily limiting what we are able to grasp, is always also a manner of being open precisely to the world. The notion of objective reality can have no other content for Gadamer than this openness that the very perspectival nature of our understanding provides. That we are open to objective reality shows itself in our ability to rearticulate our view of the world in rational dialogue. Dialogue, however, is exactly an openness to others; for Gadamer, to be epistemically open to the world and to be open to the points of view of others are, in the end, inseparable capacities. Both, for Gadamer, are essentially capacities of language. Here Gadamer explicitly echoes Heidegger's dictum that language is the house of being. We understand language in so far as we are with others in a common and commonly known objective world.
In making this claim, Gadamer is joined by Davidson. Davidson holds that we understand others most basically by relating their words to the world around them, in what he terms Radical Interpretation. Moreover, the contents of our own thoughts, and so of our very recognition of the words of others and the objects and events to which they refer, themselves depend on our sharing with others a pattern of interaction with the world. Davidson refers to this as triangulation.
From different theoretical and philosophical perspectives, then, Gadamer and Davidson both take positions that break dramatically with the subjectivist tradition in modern philosophy, a mode of thinking that, following Descartes, ascribes a deep epistemic and ontological significance to the first-person perspective, the reflecting I. Undoubtedly this is a key reason for their common relevance to philosophers who are struggling to break away from traditional modern approaches to the problems of validity, of knowledge and of mind-world relations.

10. Conclusion

In the hands of Rorty, McDowell and an increasing number of other contemporary thinkers, the resources of philosophical hermeneutics are deployed in an effort to break out of the epistemic, dualistic paradigms of modern philosophy, and to open new philosophical ground no longer haunted by the specters of relativism and scepticism, nor by the dream of foundational justification. Now, it may seem paradoxical that a mode of thought that emphasizes exactly our beholdenness to tradition should be instrumental in what is often presented as a deliberate break with tradition. However, this impression of paradox ought to be fleeting. One of the lessons of philosophical hermeneutics is exactly that intellectual innovation of this sort depends on—indeed, is a manifestation of—the self-renewing power of tradition, of its dynamism, and its interpretability and reinterpretability. The current appropriation of hermeneutics for revisionist philosophical purposes illustrates the hermeneutic notion of effective history. While transcending anything the early interpretation-theorists could ever have imagined, the deployment of Gadamerian thought to break with subjectivism would not have been possible without them. This effective-history, moreover, is dialectical—our reading of the early hermeneuticians, our understanding of the potential inherent in their thought, is shaped essentially by this very effective-history, which both separates us from them and makes them understandable to us. Appreciating hermeneutics as a living tradition is not, in the end, a matter of identifying a theory or a family of theories. It is fundamentally a matter of perceiving a moving horizon, engaging a strand of dialogue that is an on-going re-articulation of the dynamically historical nature of all human thought.

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9. Hermeneutics and Pragmatism.

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