In the footstep of Hermes: the meaning of the hermeneutics and symbolism

Abstract

[EN] The meaning of hermeneutics is not something exclusive to hermeneutics; it is not something the hermeneutical enterprise dominates, masters, or even manages. Rather, hermeneutics must understand itself as an activity at the behest of meaning, which it is incapable to exhaust or contain. The meaning of hermeneutics therefore does not belong to hermeneutics, but, on the contrary, hermeneutics belongs to meaning. Its meaning is that which, in one way or another, always pursues and persecutes human beings, who, as interpreting or symbolic animals, generate a multiplicity of cultural languages, wherein meaning is configured and articulated. Hermeneutics is thus limited to a realization of what humans already do—whether explicitly or implicitly; actively or passively—in their individual and collective lives: a search for meaning.