What's up people...

Approaching a text, Hermeneutics teaches us that there are an endless amount of interpretations we can take away from it.  That in order for us to take the most out of a given text, we must first understand the context of which it was written.  This matter of context plays a huge role in how the author portrays their ideas, as well as how we comprehend these ideas.  Meaning is everything when attempting to interpret a piece of literature.  I found it very interesting that the 9/11 terrorist attack instructions could be read in many different contexts such as in relation to politics, global society, and religion.  This example just goes to show how the interpretation of some words written down on a piece of paper can be the difference between terrorism and awareness.

I was taught in my high school AP English Language course to be skeptical of everything, and that language cannot be interpreted correctly until the underlying manipulations of the author were first uncovered.  Friedrich Schleiermacher’s take on the hermeneutics circle suggests that the reader must constantly be reminded of the context of the piece.  Who wrote this?  Why did the author write it?  What is the author trying to get me to do?  After reading a part of a text, the reader should step back, look at the entirety of the text, and consider questions such as these.  A text always has multiple contexts and, “the reader should move back and forth between the text and its context” (Gilhus 267).  Context is key, and only by understanding the contexts of a piece, can we truly grasp the essential meaning between the words.

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