Hermeneutics

Field of research that focuses on theorizing and conceptualizing the circular and dialogic character of interpretation in understanding, for instance, different texts and narratives
Hanna-Riikka Roine 2026-05-27

Explication

The basic claim of all modern hermeneutics is that human understanding is interpretative by nature. Hermeneutics has a long and diverse history which encompasses various approaches and schools of thought (see e.g., Schmidt for an overview). However, in its modern form, hermeneutics has moved from the 19th century focus on interpretation as the methodological basis of the humanities to the “ontological turn,” to what it means to be in the world, in the early 20th century through Martin Heidegger’s and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s work. 

In his book Being and Time (Sein und Zeit), Heidegger introduced the idea of understanding as the human mode of being in the world. Following this, interpretation in the context of literature and narratives has come to refer to the sense-making process that structures our engagement with the world (see Meretoja 6). It is important to note that hermeneutics does not provide any one definition of interpretation in this context; rather, it is the pursuit of theorizing interpretation (Felski 33), meaning that it is an emphasis on the process, rather than the result. The concept of a hermeneutic circle, adapted from the practices of biblical interpretation, originally referred to a circle between specific sections of the text and the whole (and vice versa) in the process of interpretation. The modern hermeneutic thought, however, is committed to a much larger understanding of a circular exchange in its totality, when it focuses, for instance, on the encounter between a text and its reader. 

This distinction rests, firstly, on a unified whole that includes the world and our being in it, as philosopher and sociologist Bruno Latour aptly puts it: “Hermeneutics is not a privilege of humans but, so to speak, a property of the world itself” (245). Secondly, the whole includes the way interpretation is inseparably mediated through, for instance, sociocultural circumstances, history, and signs. Gadamer’s term of historicity explains this: we always encounter and interpret the present moment within the horizon of experience, which, as a historical matrix that is always in flux, makes every act of understanding singular. Critical hermeneutics, rooted in the works of Paul Ricoeur and Jürgen Habermas, draws out the motion of such interpretation: it is the back and forth between one’s own and the other’s context through the mediation of the text, thus combining interpretation of meaning with a reflexive analysis of the involved power relations (Thompson 4; Kögler 81). Mihail Bakhtin’s approach to imagination and language as dialogical takes this to the level of literary composition, as a novel, for instance, is not seen to consist of words but of a combination of discourses and of the responses to those discourses (Bakhtin 279; see also Patterson 131). 

For narrative analysis, interpretation is a key element, even to the most descriptive of the analyses (see Culler 279). The more strictly defined field of narrative hermeneutics has been put forward by theorists, such as Jens Brockmeier and Hanna Meretoja, following Paul Ricœur’s influential claim that narrative is central to the human experience of time. Brockmeier and Meretoja define narrative hermeneutics as exploring “how and to what degree acts of meaning are realized by narrative practices and how individuals, through these practices, bind themselves to into their cultural worlds while binding the cultural world into their minds” (7). 

In narrative hermeneutics, narrative is conceptualized in terms of a meaning-making subject striving to understand their experiences. In other words, narrative is not only an object of interpretation (as, for instance, a textual artifact would be), but also a mode of interpretation (Meretoja 44). Furthermore, when we engage in narrative interpretation, we interpret experiences from a certain perspective, relate them to one another in time and context, and forge meaningful connections between them (Meretoja 48). As rapid advances are made in the field of machine learning, narrative hermeneutics must consider what the merging of our writing and reading with technologies, such as generative AI and LLMs, might do to narrative both as an object and a mode of interpretation (cf. Bajohr 332). However, hermeneutics has rarely been concerned explicitly with technology as a meaning-making context – unless writing, one of the main foci of hermeneutics, is considered a sort of technology (see Romele, Severo & Furia). 

Finally, from the hermeneutic perspective, interpretations are not just views or cognitive representations, but they have real, material, world-constituting implications. With new interpretations, we create new possibilities of action. In digital game studies, this has been discussed in terms of real-time hermeneutics (e.g., Arjoranta; Majkowski), which focuses on the ways in which a game provides direct feedback on a player’s interpretation: the player must manage to make an interpretation that allows progress in the game. This approach could, of course, be applied to the analysis of other forms of digital narratives and texts, such as cybertext and ergodic literature.

See Also

• Cybertext - Print or digital texts that require active participation from the reader not just to interpret the meaning of the text but also to navigate through it, for example by choosing alternative paths or entering data that alters the output
• Ergodic Literature - Texts that require significant effort from the reader to traverse, often involving non-linear navigation and interaction that contribute to the narrative's meaning

Works Referenced

Arjoranta, Jonne. “How are Games Interpreted? Hermeneutics for Game Studies.” Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Game Research, vol. 22, no. 3, 2022. https://gamestudies.org/2203/articles/arjoranta_how_are_games_interpreted  

Bajohr, Hannes. “On Artificial and Post-artificial Texts: Machine Learning and the Reader’s Expectations of Literary and Non-Literary Writing.” Poetics Today, vol. 45, no. 2, 2024, pp. 331–361. 

Bakhtin, Mihail. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Translated by Michael Holquist. University of Texas Press, 1981. 

Brockmeier, Jens, and Hanna Meretoja. “Understanding Narrative Hermeneutics.” Storyworlds, vol. 6 no. 2, 2014, pp. 1–27. 

Culler, Jonathan. “Interpretation: Data or Goals?” Poetics Today, vol. 9, no. 2, 1988, pp. 275–290. 

Felski, Rita. The Limits of Critique. University of Chicago Press, 2015. 

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. 2nd edition, translated by Joel Weinheimer and Donald G. Marshall. Continuum, 2004 (1960). 

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time, translated by Joan Stambaugh. State University of New York Press, 1996 (1927). 

Kögler, Hans-Herbert. “Critical Hermeneutics.” The Cambridge Habermas Lexicon, edited by Amy Allen and Eduardo Medieta, Cambridge University Press, 2019, pp. 81–82. 

Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford University Press, 2005. 

Majkowski, Tomasz Z. “Feeling Good about Myself: Real-Time Hermeneutics and Its Consequences.” TransMissions, vol. 2, no. 2, 2017, pp. 1–16. 

Meretoja, Hanna. The Ethics of Storytelling: Narrative Hermeneutics, History and the Possible. Oxford University Press, 2018. 

Patterson, David. “Mikhail Bakhtin and the Dialogical Dimensions of the Novel.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 44, no. 2, 1985, pp. 131–139. 

Ricœur, Paul. Time and Narrative, vols. I–III, translated by Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer. University of Chicago Press, 1984, 1985, 1988. 

Romele, Alberto, Marta Severo, and Paolo Furia. “Digital hermeneutics: from interpreting with machines to interpretational machines.” AI & Society, vol. 35, 2020, pp. 73–86. 

Schmidt, Lawrence K. Understanding Hermeneutics. Acumen Publishing, 2006. 

Thompson, John B. Critical Hermeneutics. A Study in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur and Jürgen Habermas. Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Further Reading

Aarseth, Espen, and Sebastian Möring. “The Game Itself? Towards a Hermeneutics of Computer Games.” FDG ’20: The International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, Bugibba, Malta. 

Gerbaudo, Paolo. “From Data Analytics to Data Hermeneutics. Online Political Discussions, Digital Methods and the Continuing Relevance of Interpretive Approaches.” Digital Culture & Society, vol. 2, no. 2, 2016. 

Karhulahti, Veli-Matti. “Hermeneutics and Ludocriticism.” Journal of Game Criticism, vol. 2, no. 1, 2015. https://gamescriticism.org/2023/07/24/hermeneutics-and-ludocriticism/  

Meretoja, Hanna, and Mark Freeman (eds.) The Use and Abuse of Stories: New Directions in Narrative Hermeneutics. Oxford University Press, 2023. 

Mohr, John W., Robin Wagner-Pacifici, and Ronald L. Breiger. “Toward a computational hermeneutics.” Big Data & Society, vol. 2, no. 2, 2015. 

Romele, Alberto. Digital Hermeneutics. Routledge, 2019.

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