Revised version (2017) of an essay published in N. Keane and C. Lawn (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Hermeneutics (Oxford, Blackwell, 2016), 299-305.
What is the hermeneutical circle? Jean Grondin
The hermeneutical circle is one of the most fundamental and contentious doctrines of hermeneutical theory. In its most basic form in contemporary hermeneutics, it is the idea that we always understand or interpret out of some presuppositions. In a slightly different reading, which goes back to ancient rhetoric and hermeneutics, the circle is that of the whole and its parts: we can only understand the parts of a text, or any body of meaning, out of a general idea of its whole, yet we can only gain this understanding of the whole by understanding its parts. In both versions, the basic idea is the same, namely that there is no such thing as an understanding without presuppositions. Heidegger would speak here of the essential “anticipatory structure” (Vorstruktur) of understanding, Gadamer of “prejudices”, which could be productive or misleading, an ideology critique of some ideology or knowledge-guiding interests, while others would speak of the hermeneutical background or framework of understanding, which would be determined by culture, history, language and education. How one deals with these presuppositions is a matter of dispute. A traditional, more methodically inclined hermeneutics would view them with suspicion and strive to eliminate them in the name of objectivity. The point of classical, methodical hermeneutics was indeed to avoid the hermeneutical circle of an interpretation that would be tainted by its presuppositions, premises or erroneous assumptions about the whole or the intent of a work. Hermeneutical thinkers like Heidegger, Bultmann, Ricœur and Gadamer view the hermeneutical circle more favorably since it constitutes for them an inescapable and