36. Hermeneutics

In hermeneutics (theory of interpretation), mostly attributed to Hans-Georg Gadamer, one finds the notion of a hermeneutic circle that is spanned by a paradigmatic and perpendicular to it a syntagmatic axis. Paradigm refers to a concept with an existing meaning, and syntagm refers to expressions in which concepts are used (e.g. a sentence). As Frege proposed, the meaning of an expression is a (grammatical) function of the meanings of the words in it. However, the meaning of a word also depends on the expression it is in. The shift of a word from one expression and context to another alters its meaning. That is the hermeneutic circle.

The connection with the notions of reference and sense discussed before (in item 32) is as follows. Associated with a concept is a set of characteristics used for identifying something as belonging to the concept (sense), in a repertoire of partly personal associations (connotations), and the whole of that is the paradigm.

Thus the paradigm is partly personal. We identify and categorize individual things always in the context of specific conditions, such as an expression in a certain setting, and that is the syntagm. There, from all possible features those are selected that fit the context, and from that context novel elements may be added.

Here one can think again of the scripts that were discussed earlier (in item 34). Thus we may, for example, find that intelligence appears to have a novel aspect (social intelligence perhaps) that was not previously recognized. And that may then start to belong to the public extension and sense of the concept.

This process is not unlike the scientific method of testing hypotheses in specific conditions and revising them when needed. It also implements pragmatism, in which from application, in different contexts, one arrives at new ideas.

There is some indication that paradigm and syntagm arise in different areas of the brain; that sentence construction and verbs, which are closely associated, constituting the syntagm, occur in the so-called Broca region, and nouns, which refer to concepts, constituting the paradigm, occur in the Wernicke area, as I learned from Pinker.

There is a connection with literature. It is characteristic of it to operate in this fashion, in an ‘de- and re-conceptualisation of known elements’ in a ‘negation of generally accepted assumptions concerning reality’, as Reckwitz formulated it in his Humanism and the literary imagination (2009). Literature employs individuality to confuse, upset and reconstruct universals by forcing upon them the richness, the finesse, of specific people in specific circumstances. As Roland Barthes said: ‘Science is crude, life is subtle, and it is in the bridging of that gap that the importance of literature lies’.