Hermeneutic circle

The circle was conceived to improve the Biblical exegesis and it was activated by the personal belief in the truthfulness of God.

Thus Dilthey says: "Meaningfulness fundamentally grows out of a relation of part to whole that is grounded in the nature of living experience.

"[5][6] Martin Heidegger (1927) developed the concept of the hermeneutic circle to envision a whole in terms of a reality that was situated in the detailed experience of everyday existence by an individual (the parts).

The 'origin' of the work of art is mysterious and elusive, seemingly defying logic: "thus we are compelled to follow the circle.

Later he tries to break down the metaphysical opposition between form and matter, and the whole other set of dualisms which include: rational and irrational, logical and illogical/alogical, and subject and object.

[6]: 27 Hans-Georg Gadamer (1975) further developed this concept, leading to what is recognized as a break with previous hermeneutic traditions.

While Heidegger saw the hermeneutic process as cycles of self-reference that situated our understanding in a priori prejudices, Gadamer reconceptualized the hermeneutic circle as an iterative process through which a new understanding of a whole reality is developed by means of exploring the detail of existence.

De Man points out that the "textual unity" New Criticism locates in a given work has only a "semi-circularity" and that the hermeneutic circle is completed in "the act of interpreting the text."

"[10] Furthermore, and more problematic for Shklar, "the hermeneutic circle makes sense only if there is a known and closed whole, which can be understood in terms of its own parts and which has as its core God, who is its anchor and creator.

"[10] A further problem relates to the fact that Gadamer and others assume a fixed role for tradition (individual and disciplinary/academic) in the process of any hermeneutic understanding, while it is more accurate to say that interpreters have multiple and sometimes conflicting cultural attachments, yet this does not prevent intercultural and/or interdisciplinary dialogue.