ASIAN HERMENEUTICS
NEW HORIZONS
Keywords:
hermeneutic, Human beingsAbstract
Human beings are hermeneutic beings. Inasmuch as they are rational, they entail the capacity to understand and respond to whatever happens and whatever they encounter within the ever-expanding horizons of their lives. Understood literally as the capacity to interpret, being hermeneutic is a basic function of being human: basically, every human being involves in interpreting anything and everything that happens in and around him or her. In fact, it is the human way of understanding, appraisal, and appropriation.
References
Hans-Georg Gadamer opines: “Every age has to understand a transmitted text in its own way, for the text is part of the tradition in which the age takes an objective interest and in which it seeks to understand itself.” Truth and Method, London: Sheed & Ward, 1975, 263.
David Tracy, “Hermeneutics and Tradition,” The Hermeneutics Reader, Kurt Mueller-Vollmer ed., New York: Continuum, 1989, 52.
Anthony Thiselton, New Horizons in Hermeneutics, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992, 6-7.
