The Appropriation of Meaning: the hermeneutic experiences of dialogue and comprehension

Abstract

The following essay seeks to clarify hermeneutic experience in terms of
“understanding”, conceived of as arriving at an agreement with another on something through language as a universal medium whose purpose is consensus. On this basis “dialogue” is the concretion of understanding that seeks correct interpretation, enclosed within the dialectic of “question” and “answer” that form a circle of understanding, in which the linguistic dimension of understanding is indicative of the accumulative effects of history upon consciousness, and where tradition is defined through the medium of language that is located in a horizon whose function is the interpretation and the fusion of perspectives.