Hermeneutics and the Controversy of the Relationship Between the Author and the Text

Abstract

The study aimed to discuss hermeneutics and the dilemma of the text and the author. Therefore, the study work was limited to two points: First: the history of hermeneutics in its course through its three classical eras, and the philosophical hermeneutics of romance, by exposing the term through its root and semantics, and the most prominent figures of hermeneutics. Secondly: It was exposed to the dilemma of the text and the controversy of the relationship between its association with the author or not.

In its results, the study concluded that the text at the stage of classical and romantic hermeneutics was associated with the author; the hermeneutics of Schleiermacher and Delthey went to the fact that understanding is based on language and access to the author's intention through a state of identification with the author and living the experience of creativity that he lived when writing the text. While the study concluded that the philosophical hermeneutics represented by Heidegger and Gadamer had severed the link of the text with the author. It follows from this view that the process of understanding takes place through the union of the horizon of the text with the horizon of the interpreter, with the dropping of presuppositions on the text. This vision concluded that the text will be a flow of meanings, and that the process of crossing the text from one historical stage to another leads to extracting meanings from the text that may not have been expected even by the author himself. Thus, hermeneutics transformed from the author's intentionality and one meaning to the relativity and multiplicity of meaning.

Keywords: Hermeneutics, The Text, Author's Intention, Horizon of The Text, Horizon of The Interpreter.