I first encountered hermeneutics in graduate school as the method and tradition employed by rabbinical scholars of the Talmud which had been passed down to mean the serious and scholarly study and interpretation of texts. And in that frenzied post-modern period of Semiotics in the 80s, I read scholars who did the hermeneutics of Western novels, soap operas, rock music, political TV ads, and other aspects of popular culture. I hadn't thought about it in terms of genealogy. Loved the advice about being gentle with the dead in your judgments.
I also like what @SteveStockdale said in the comments on my last post:
"The present is no more exempt from the sneer of the future than the past has been." Cassius J. Keyser, Columbia University Professor of Mathematics. (b. 1862 d. 1947)
What people knew and when they knew it is important context; we must be careful not to let out biases about what we have learned in the years since their time cause us to underestimate them or judge them unfairly.
I first encountered hermeneutics in graduate school as the method and tradition employed by rabbinical scholars of the Talmud which had been passed down to mean the serious and scholarly study and interpretation of texts. And in that frenzied post-modern period of Semiotics in the 80s, I read scholars who did the hermeneutics of Western novels, soap operas, rock music, political TV ads, and other aspects of popular culture. I hadn't thought about it in terms of genealogy. Loved the advice about being gentle with the dead in your judgments.
Wonderful advice! Thank you for this
I also like what @SteveStockdale said in the comments on my last post:
"The present is no more exempt from the sneer of the future than the past has been." Cassius J. Keyser, Columbia University Professor of Mathematics. (b. 1862 d. 1947)
What people knew and when they knew it is important context; we must be careful not to let out biases about what we have learned in the years since their time cause us to underestimate them or judge them unfairly.