Hermeneutics began as the theory of the interpretation of texts, particularly mythical and sacred texts. Its practitioners struggled with the problem of characterizing how people find meaning in a text that exists over many centuries and is understood differently in different epochs. A mythical or religious text continues to be spoken or read and to serve as a source of deep meaning, in spite of [1](1. changes 2. consistency 3. disappearance) in the underlying culture and even in the language. There are obvious questions to be raised. Is the meaning definable in some absolute sense, independent of the context in which the text was written? Is it definable only in terms of that original context? If so, is it possible or desirable for a reader to transcend his or her own culture and the intervening history in order to [2](1. repeat 2. reinforce 3. recover) the correct interpretation?
If we reject the notion that the meaning is in the text, are we [3] (1. opposed 2. reduced 3. prohibited) to saying only that a particular person at a particular moment had a particular interpretation? If so, have we given up a naive but solid-seeming view of the reality of the meaning of the text in [4](1. favor 2. spite 3. terms) of a relativistic appeal to individual subjective reaction?
Within hermeneutics there has been an ongoing debate between those who place the meaning [5](1. within 2. outside 3. of) the text and those who see meaning as grounded in a process of understanding in which the text, its production, and its interpretation all play a vital part.
For the objectivist school of hermeneutics, the text must have a meaning that exists independently of the act of interpretation. Their goal of a hermeneutic theory is to develop methods by which we rid ourselves of all prejudices and produce an objective analysis of what is really there. The ideal is to completely [6](1. contextualize 2. decorate 3. decontextualize) the text.
The opposing approach, most clearly formulated by Gadamer, takes the act of interpretation as primary, understanding it as an interaction between the ‘horizon’ provided by the text and the horizon that the interpreter brings to it. Gadamer [7](1. denies 2. questions 3. insists) that every reading or hearing of a text constitutes an act of giving meaning to it through interpretation.
Gadamer devotes extensive discussion to the relation of the individual to tradition, clarifying how tradition and interpretation [8](1. complicate 2. interact 3. separate). Any individual, in understanding his or her world, is continually involved in activities of interpretation. That interpretation is based on prejudice (or preunderstanding), which includes assumptions implicit in the language that the person uses. That language in turn is [9](1. learned 2. forgotten 3 . intervened) through activities of interpretation. The individual is changed through the use of language, and the language changes through its use by individuals. This process is of the first importance, since it constitutes the background of the beliefs and assumptions that determine the nature of our being. We are social creatures:
In fact history does not belong to us, but we belong to it. Long before we understand ourselves through the process of self-examination, we understand ourselves in a self-evident way in the family, society, and [10](1. history 2. state 3. psychology) in which we live. The focus of subjectivity is a distorting mirror. The self-awareness of the individual is only a flickering in the closed circuits of historical life. That is why the prejudices of the individual, far [11](1. more 2. less 3. later) than his judgments, constitute the historical reality of his being. Gadamer, Truth and Method (1975), p. 245.
Gadamer sees in this essential historicity of our being the causeof our [12](1. competence 2. tendency 3. inability) to achieve full explicit understanding of ourselves. The nature of our being is determined by our cultural background, and [13](1. after 2. since 3. before) it is formed in our very way of experiencing and living in language, it cannot be made fully explicit in that language:
To acquire an awareness of a situation is, however, always a task of particular difficulty. The very idea of a situation means that we are [14](1. really 2. not 3. naturally) standing outside it and hence are unable to have any objective knowledge of it. We are always within the situation, and to throw light on it is a task that is never entirely completed. This is true also of the hermeneutic situation, i.e., the situation in which we find ourselves with regard to the tradition that we are trying to understand. The illumination of this situation — effective-historical reflection — can never be completely [15] (1. achieved 2. ignored 3. persisted), but this is not due to a lack in the reflection, but lies in the essence of the historical being which is ours. To exist historically means that knowledge of oneself can [16](1. indeed 2. always 3. never) be complete. Gadamer, Truth and Method (1975), pp.268-269.
We can become aware of some of our prejudices, and in that way emancipate ourselves from some of the limits they place on our thinking. But we commit a fallacy in believing we can ever be [17] (1. full 2. free 3. composed) of all prejudice. Instead of striving for a means of getting away from our own preunderstanding, a theory of interpretation should aim at revealing the ways in which that preunderstanding interacts with the text.
Gadamer’s approach accepts the inevitability of the hermeneutic circle. The meaning of an individual text is contextual, depending on the moment of interpretation and the horizon brought to it by the [18](1. text 2. interpreter 3. fallacy). But that horizon is itself the product of a history of interactions in language, interactions which themselves represent texts that had to be understood in the light of preunderstanding. What we understand is based on what we already know, and what we already know comes from being able to [19](1. decontextualize 2. understand 3. forget).
Gadamer’s discourse on language and tradition is based on a rather broad analysis of interpretation and understanding. If we observe the hermeneutic circle only at the coarse-grained level offered by texts and societies, we remain [20](1. geared 2. consistent 3. blind) to its operation at the much finer-grained level of daily life. If we look only at language, we fail to relate it to the interpretation that constitutes nonlinguistic experience as well.
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