Abstract
Although a largely unoriginal thinker, Ernesti, a rationalist, offered an interpretation of Scripture freed from Church dogma and the instability of common sense. With him, hermeneutics centered on philology rather than on the limited sphere of Biblical investigation and became both freer in its techniques and more scientific in its content. Shpet also traces here developments through Ast.
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Notes
- 1.
See his Initia doctrinae solidioris with an appendix “Initia Rhetorica.” The book was reissued many times. I have used the fifth edition, Ernesti 1776.
- 2.
Ernesti 1792. I have used the fourth edition with notes by Christopher Friedrich Ammon.
- 3.
For an evaluation of Ernesti’s role in the development of philology, see Boeckh 1877: 304. Johann August Ernesti should not be confused with the philologist Johann Heinrich Martin Ernesti.
- 4.
There may indeed be goals that are not just significative but also produce a certain impression – aesthetic, intimidating, encouraging, etc. However, we do not call this πάρεργον a meaning.
- 5.
Ernesti 1792: 31–46.
- 6.
- 7.
Ernesti 1792: 7 (Proleg. §3).
- 8.
Ernesti 1792: 7–10 (§§4–7). In his Dialectic, Ernesti contrasts understanding, as the faculty that connects the same ideas and thoughts with the words of another, even more sharply to interpretation, which teaches what meanings, ideas, and thoughts are connected with words. Ernesti 1785: 263 (Initiorum Philosophiae Pars altera, Cap. II, §25). With such a contrast, it would seem that interpretation should be entirely related to explication. The reasons for this vacillating stance toward interpretation are clear from its essence.
- 9.
[Ernesti 1792: 8 – “scientia praeceptorum de modo interpretandi.”]
- 10.
Ernesti 1792: 14, 15–18 (P. I, S. 1, c. 1, §§1, 3–5).
- 11.
Ernesti 1792: 15, 18–22 (§§2, 6–11).
- 12.
Ernesti 1792: 22–23 (§§12–13).
- 13.
[Ernesti 1792: 23.]
- 14.
Ernesti 1792: 23–25 (§§14–17).
- 15.
Ernesti 1792: 26 – “Non potest Scriptura intelligi theologice … nisi ante intellecta sit grammatice.”
- 16.
Dilthey believes that the basis for Ernesti’s hermeneutics was prepared by the critique of Semler and Mechaelis, the predecessors “of the great Christian Baur,” who had already reduced all of Biblical interpretation to two elements: interpretation based on “linguistic usage” and on “historical circumstances.” He affirmed, “With this, the liberation of exegesis from dogma was complete; the Grammatico-Historical school was founded. The sensitive and careful mind of Ernesti then created the classic text for this new hermeneutics with his Institutio interpretis.” Cf. Dilthey 1996: 245.
- 17.
We will see below that certain ideas of Leibniz’s proved fruitful in his nineteenth-century follower Bolzano.
- 18.
[A reference, of course, to Kant’s celebrated “Copernican revolution.”]
- 19.
Unfortunately, I cannot refer to the still unpublished second part of my investigations to justify my general considerations expressed here. In this sense, I will limit myself merely to a promise. [Presumably, Shpet is referring here to the second part of his large treatise History as a Problem of Logic, which finally first saw the light of day only comparatively recently. See Shpet 2002: 546–1165.]
- 20.
Ast 1808: iii–viii (Vorrede).
- 21.
Ast 1808: 169.
- 22.
See Shpet 1916.
- 23.
See Shpet 1916.
- 24.
Ast 1808: 169.
- 25.
Ast 1808: 171.
- 26.
Ast 1808: 169–170.
- 27.
Cf. Ast 1808: 173, 176, 192ff.
- 28.
Ast 1808: 166.
- 29.
Ast 1808: 167–168.
- 30.
Schleiermacher 1835: 349–350. I quote below from the “Lectures,” i.e., the lectures that Schleiermacher presented to the Prussian Academy of Sciences on 13 August and 22 October 1829 under the above-cited title.
- 31.
This is not the place to discuss how historical science itself came to this conclusion. The question is also taken up in the second part of my investigations.
- 32.
Schleiermacher 1835: 366ff. Schleiermacher analyzes this fundamental principle in some detail, but with respect to practical hermeneutics, which is for us of little importance.
- 33.
Ast 1808: 178–179.
- 34.
Ast 1808: 180.
- 35.
Ast 1808: 184.
- 36.
Ast 1808: 172. Ast contrasts understanding, Verständnis, to explanation, Erklärung. This term is now used primarily in the sense of explicatio, but in Ast it has, apparently, both meanings – both as interpretatio and explicatio.
- 37.
Having in mind the orientation of hermeneutics toward philology, Ast speaks the whole time of classical antiquity.
- 38.
Ast 1808: 177.
- 39.
Ast 1808: 184.
- 40.
[That is, the meaning of individual words and events.]
- 41.
Ast 1808: 191–192, 193, 194, 197–198, 201–203.
- 42.
Ast 1808: 187 – “Therefore, understanding and clarification of a work is a true act of reproducing or recreating of something already formed.” If we compare this formulation with Ast’s assertion that the “historical or antiquarian writer reproduces in oneself what has already been produced,” then, it seems to me, it is unquestionably the source of Boeckh’s formula, which later became so popular and which defines philology as the knowledge of what has been known (die Erkenntnis des Erkannten, also eine Wiedererkenntnis eines gegebenen Erkennens).
- 43.
Ast 1808: 184.
- 44.
Ast 1808: 168. [Shpet omits the ellipsis in this quotation.]
- 45.
Ast 1808: 195.
- 46.
From his own point of view, Schleiermacher also criticizes Ast’s distinction of the three phases in understanding and interpretation. However, he considers the chief source of Ast’s misunderstanding to be Ast’s distinction between understanding and exegesis as a development (Entwicklung) of understanding. Whereas, according to Schleiermacher the entire issue amounts to a distinction between inner speech and audible speech, the development here is nothing other than a reflection of the genesis of understanding, communicating how we come to understanding. It, consequently, introduces nothing into understanding except how to apply the rules of eloquence. (Schleiermacher 1835: 382–383.) On this point, I hold a different opinion. I believe that Ast’s fundamental error lies in the fact that he inadequately distinguished understanding and interpretation, and this in a two-fold sense: as a technique of investigation and as a technique of presentation. The latter is distinguished not only by the application of the rules of eloquence, but also – and this is of the highest importance – of the rules of logic. On this condition, the distinction must be rigorous and must be implemented even through the fundamental foundations of the knowing process itself – epistemologically, on the one hand, and methodologically on the other.
Bibliography
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———. 1792. Institutio Interpretis Novi Testamenti. Leipzig: Weidmann.
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———. 2002. Istorija kak problema logiki. Kriticheskie i metodologicheskie issledovanija. Moscow: Pamjatniki istoricheskoj mysli.
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Shpet, G., Nemeth, T. (2019). Ernesti [and Ast: The Reorientation of Hermeneutics from Theology Toward Philology]. In: Nemeth, T. (eds) Hermeneutics and Its Problems. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 98. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98941-9_4
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