Active Hermeneutics

Interpreters of texts and ideas in the humanities are commonly thought to be as subjective as their methods, while the natural sciences are credited with objectivity. Stanley E. Porter contends that this contrast rests on a mistaken split. He proposes that older and newer accounts of knowing can be combined into a dynamic approach to hermeneutics, one that offers a way to weigh stronger and weaker accounts of understanding.

The book focuses on the boundaries and openings of understanding for people who always stand within a particular situation. It positions itself among several major debates currently running through contemporary thought, and it traces a line from the history of interpretation to the questions that remain open for its future. Its discussion draws on Aristotle, Kant, Heidegger, Gadamer and Bernstein, and it moves past the conventional limits placed on human understanding.

Porter presents the work as a deliberate effort to advance hermeneutics into a new stage. It is written for scholars and academics in general hermeneutics, theology and the philosophy of religion.