What is hermeneutics? I have read the definition a million times but then authors use phrases like theoretical hermeneutics or hermeneutic exegesis, cyclical hermeneutics.

Question

I honestly cannot wrap my head around what they mean.

In: Other

Answer 1

Hermeneutics is a study of *interpretation*, encompassing things like the Bible, legal texts, philosophy, and so on.

The *interpretation process* itself becomes a focus of study — its own subject, its own “research method”: accepting that human understanding can be inherently incomplete and even ‘circular’ in its self-formation rather than foundational.

In some ways, hermeneutics has become linked *not* to clarifying interpretive analysis, but to [obscurantism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscurantism) that clouds up any meaning behind a waterfall of words.

An often-mentioned scholarly [hoax article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair) was designed from the ground up to be garbage. It was still accepted and published, with the title: “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”