Modern Hermeneutics and the Reasons for the Possibility of Understanding the Text better than the Text Writer

Document Type : Research Article

Author

• Muḥammad Kāẓim ‘Ilmī

Ferdowsi University of Mashhad

10.22067/jfiqh.2020.61504.0

Abstract

At first, the article presents as an introduction a very brief history of hermeneutics and tersely states the characteristics of its three main eras, i.e., pre-modern, modern, and contemporary. Then, it questions and examines one of the significant issues brought up in modern hermeneutics, namely, whether it is possible that the reader of the text might understand and interpret the text better than its author does.
The writer regards the answer to the above question as affirmative and attempts to prove his claim in three ways. First: by the intertextual ta‘āṭī (i.e. mutual surrender) of meanings; second, by virtue of Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis; and third, through the existence of some historical evidences. The third way, however, should in fact be viewed simply as “evidence” and “confirmatory”. But in the second way, i.e. through Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis, it can be argued that not only the reader may understand and interpret the text better than its author does, but it can also be proved that the writer of the text can be known even better than he may know himself. However, what the article tries to prove is merely the “possibility” of the realization of such contingency.

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