Tom Rockmore

The recent concern with hermeneutics, which stems above all from Truth and Method, should not be allowed to obscure the fact, to which Gadamer certainly is sensitive, that this topic has a long philosophical lineage, extending back into the tradition at least to Aristotle. In particular, it seems rarely to have been noticed that although their thought is notoriously difficult, the major members of the German idealist tradition provided not only the positions themselves, but a theory of their interpretation. The latter point is important since, if evaluation is to be fair, positions must be measured against standards which are their own and not against extrinsic criteria. Yet for idealism this has rarely been done, in part because little attention has so far been directed to the idealist view of how theory is to be interpreted. Accordingly, my task in this paper will be twofold: to discuss the idealist theory of hermeneutics, and to test that theory in the interpretation of one of the major idealist positions. In consequence, the paper will come full circle, since the idealist theory of hermeneutics will be both expounded and put to the test provided by the hermeneutics of idealism.