Reflections on the hermeneutics of creative acts

Douglas Burnham

pp. 13-22

in: Julia Jansen (ed), Critical communities and aesthetic practices, Berlin, Springer, 2012

Abstract

I will commence with Tony O'Connor's defence and elaboration of the hermeneutic notion of the object of interpretation as being partly constituted by the activity of interpretation. At stake is the ontology of such an object qua object: the being of an object within history is to have an effective history (expressing the point in Hans-Georg Gadamer's terminology). I will then turn to the "mirror-image' of this claim, which is to ask its implications not for the side of the object facing the interpreter, but for the side facing the producer: the object as a thing that has been created by the artist, the writer, or indeed the historical agent in general. I would like to suggest, albeit briefly, that the German Idealist or Romantic concept of genius – which is often seen as an impoverished concept by hermeneutic thinkers – can be of use in understanding this "side' of the hermeneutic ontology of the object of interpretation.

Cited authors

Gadamer Hans-Georg