ἑρμηνευτική

Hermēneutikḗ (technē) in Greek means the art of interpretation, from hermēneuein (to interpret, to translate). The connection to Hermes — messenger of the gods, conductor of souls, patron of thieves and travelers — is ancient and probably etymological, though some scholars dispute it. Aristotle wrote Peri Hermēneias (On Interpretation) around 350 BCE, analyzing how language relates to thought and reality. The text is about propositions and truth values, not about reading strategies.

Modern hermeneutics began with Friedrich Schleiermacher in the early nineteenth century. Schleiermacher argued that understanding a text requires reconstructing the author's original intention — you must understand the author better than the author understood himself. This was hermeneutics as psychological reconstruction. Wilhelm Dilthey extended the method to all human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften), arguing that the humanities require interpretation (Verstehen) rather than causal explanation (Erklären).

Hans-Georg Gadamer's Truth and Method (1960) transformed hermeneutics again. Gadamer argued that the interpreter's own historical situation — their prejudices, in a neutral sense of the word — are not obstacles to understanding but conditions of it. You cannot step outside your own perspective. Understanding is a 'fusion of horizons' between the text's world and the reader's world. Objectivity, in Schleiermacher's sense, is impossible. This made hermeneutics both more modest and more radical.

The word has spread beyond philosophy. Legal hermeneutics — how to interpret constitutions and statutes — is a major field. Biblical hermeneutics has existed since the Church Fathers. Medical hermeneutics asks how physicians interpret symptoms and patient narratives. Wherever there is a text (or something that can be read as a text), there is hermeneutics. The messenger god's art turned out to be needed everywhere.