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The hermeneutic circle ((ドイツ語:hermeneutischer Zirkel)) describes the process of understanding a text hermeneutically. It refers to the idea that one's understanding of the text as a whole is established by reference to the individual parts and one's understanding of each individual part by reference to the whole. Neither the whole text nor any individual part can be understood without reference to one another, and hence, it is a circle. However, this circular character of interpretation does not make it impossible to interpret a text; rather, it stresses that the meaning of a text must be found within its cultural, historical, and literary context. ==History== With Friedrich Schleiermacher, hermeneutics begins to stress the importance of the interpreter in the process of interpretation. Schleiermacher's hermeneutics focuses on the importance of the interpreter ''understanding'' the text as a necessary stage to interpreting it. Understanding, for Schleiermacher, does not simply come from reading the text, but involves knowledge of the historical context of the text and the psychology of the author.〔Ramberg, Bjørn and Kristin Gjesdal, ("Hermeneutics" ), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2003, 2005.〕 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). So understanding was developed on the basis of "fore-structures" of understanding, that allow external phenomena to be interpreted in a preliminary way. Another instance of Heidegger's use of the hermeneutic circle occurs in his examination of ''The Origin of the Work of Art'' (1935–1936). Here Heidegger argues that both artists and art works can only be understood with reference to each other, and that neither can be understood apart from 'art,' which, as well, cannot be understood apart from the former two. The 'origin' of the work of art is mysterious and elusive, seemingly defying logic: "thus we are compelled to follow the circle. This is neither a makeshift or a defect. To enter upon the path is the strength of thought, to continue on it is the feast of thought, assuming thinking is a craft. Not only is the main step from work to art a circle like the step from art to work, but every separate step that we attempt circles this circle. In order to discover the nature of the art that really prevails in the work, let us go to the actual work and ask the work what and how it is."〔Heidegger, Martin. "The Origin of the Work of Art." ''Poetry, Language, Thought.'' Trans. Albert Hofstadter. NY: Harper Collins, 1971.〕 Heidegger continues, saying that a work of art is not a simple thing (as a doorknob or a shoe is, which do not normally involve aesthetic experience), but it cannot escape its "thingly character," that is, being part of the larger order of things in the world, apart from all aesthetic experience.〔 The synthesis of thingly and artistic is found in the work's allegorical and symbolic character, "but this one element in a work that manifests another, this one element that joins another, is the thingly feature in the art work".〔 At this point, however, Heidegger raises the doubt of "whether the work is at bottom something else and not a thing at all." 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. Neither of these concepts is independent of the other, yet neither can be reduced to the other: Heidegger suggests we have to look beyond both.〔 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. Gadamer viewed understanding as linguistically mediated, through conversations with others in which reality is explored and an agreement is reached that represents a new understanding.〔(), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2005.〕 The centrality of conversation to the hermeneutic circle is developed by Donald Schön (1983), who characterizes design as a hermeneutic circle that is developed by means of "a conversation with the situation." Paul de Man, in his essay "Form and Intent in the American New Criticism," talks about the hermeneutic circle with reference to paradoxical ideas about "textual unity" espoused by and inherited from American criticism. 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." Combining Gadamer and Heidegger into an epistemological critique of interpretation and reading, de Man argues that with New Criticism, American Criticism "pragmatically entered" the hermeneutic circle, "mistaking it for the organic circularity of natural processes." 〔de Man 1983: 29〕 For postmodernists, the hermeneutic circle is especially problematic. Not only do they believe one can only know the world through the words one uses to describe it, but also that "whenever people try to establish a certain reading of a text or expression, they allege other readings as the ground for their reading".〔Adler, E. 1997. "(Seizing the Middle Ground: Constructivism in World Politics )", ''European Journal of International Relations'' 3: 321–322〕 For postmodernists, in other words, "All meaning systems are open-ended systems of signs referring to signs referring to signs. No concept can therefore have an ultimate, unequivocal meaning".〔Waever 1996: 171〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Hermeneutic circle」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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