Abstract:
This paper defends the historical-critical method from the perspective of the philosophical hermeneutics of E. D. Hirsch Jr., which defends the intentionality of the author as being the determinant of the meaning of a text, which is contrary to post-modernity, being influenced by various post-modern philosophers such as Hans-Georg Gadamer, who focused attention on the legal, philological and theological hermeneutics in the perspective of the reader. The hermeneutics based on the Gadamer concepts of tradition, almost-repetition and fusion of horizons, opens margins for relativism, since, according to the post-modernity hermeneutics, the intentionality of the author is impossible to be found, and thus, the important thing is the relation of text-reader, or in other words, the semantic autonomy of the texts and the pre-conceptions of the interpreter. Hirsch disagrees and questions the presuppositions of the hermeneutic philosophy of Gadamer, demonstrating, based on the phenomenology of Husserl, that it is possible to seek the intentionality of the author through the duplication of the conscience: that of the author him or her-self and that of the reconstitution of the intentionality of the author. Thus, separating the pre-conceptions themselves from the reconstitution of the intentionality of the author, it is possible to seek this intentionality based on the uncovering of the literary genre, in which the interpreter gathers the necessary information for seeking the author’s intentionality. Besides this, he separates, contrary to Gadamer, the concepts of meaning, meant by the author, from the significance, the relevance of the comprehension of the meaning of the text for the interpreter. Finally, from probabilistic arguments, it is possible to identify the interpretative comprehension which comes from or is close to the author’s intentionality expressed in the text, that is, the verbal meaning. Since Hirsch questions the hermeneutical perspective which focuses on the reader and not on the author, the interpretative theory of Hirsch is used to defend diachronic analysis, which is the base of the historical-critical method in detriment of the post-modern biblical hermeneutics, which favor synchronic analysis, focusing on the text itself and its interaction with the reader, as well of the hermeneutics which do not disregard diachronic analysis but still sustain synchronic analysis.
