Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore some central aspects of Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics and to suggest how they should be interpreted and assessed. My general strategy will involve pointing up rather than playing down certain inconsistencies and other problems in his position, in part simply because I believe that they are there and that exegesis therefore ought to recognize them, but also in part because reflecting on them seems to me philosophically fruitful. The interpretive and philosophical suggestions which I will be offering are provisional and tentative in spirit.