Gustav Shpet's Contribution to Philosophy and Cultural Theory

Excerpts from "Germenevtika i ee problemy" ("Hermeneutics and Its Problems")

223 Excerpts from "Germenevtika i ee problemy" ("Hermeneutics and Its Problems") Gustav Shpet Translated from the Russian by Erika Freiberger-Sheikholeslami and edited by George L. Kline Augustine St. Augustine in his De doctrina christiana (397 A.D.) and De Magistro (389 A.D.) provides us with a kind of textbook of Biblical hermeneutics, organized like a textbook of rhetoric,1 and although, as befits a textbook, there are no analyses or justi fications, but only what might be called results, nevertheless it can be seen from Augustine's divisions and definitions that he saw clearly and thought through a signi ficant number of questions connected with the problems of sign, meaning, sense, understanding, and interpretation. But the same strong interest in the practical role of interpretation which hindered the Alexandrians also prevented Augustine from elucidating the purely scholarly, theoretical meaning of these questions. Augustine begins his exposition in De doctrina christiana with a division which, in my opinion, should be placed at the basis of any classification of the sciences , but which up to now has not been thought through in all of its fundamental significance either by philosophy or, in particular, by logic. Every doctrine, he maintains , refers either to things or to signs; however, we learn about things by means of signs. That which is not used to designate something else is what he calls a "thing" in the strict sense. On the other hand, by signs (words, for example) something is designated; but it is clear that other things too, besides words, can serve as signs, so that one and the same thing can appear now as a thing in the strict sense and now as a sign.2 Thus a sign is a thing which not only conveys its form or appearance to the senses but also brings something into thought besides itself.3 Augustine divides signs into strict or proper signs (propria, which are interpreted proprie, historice) and metaphorical signs (translata, which are interpreted figurate, prophetice [3.12]). Proper signs are used to designate the things for which they were devised; signs are metaphorical or "figurative when the very things which 224 Gustav Shpet we signify by the literal term are applied to some other meaning."4 One cannot deny that there is clarity and even a certain subtlety in this definition. But it requires conclusions which Augustine does not follow out with sufficient firmness. First, such a definition of metaphorical signs makes it clear that in order to understand them it is necessary to know and study the real relations themselves.Augustine does draw this conclusion, stressing that in order to understand Holy Scripture one must have a knowledge of history, geography, physics, astronomy, etc. (2.28-30) and likewise of dialectic (which, although it does not teach us how to discern the truthfulness of meanings, does give us the rules for connecting truths [2.3lff]), logic (scientia definiendi, dividendi atque partiendi, 2.33), and arithmetic (2.38). However , in spite of the fact that even in dialectic and logic Augustine understands relations objectively—in rerum ratione,—in the metaphorical signs he seeks the spiritual meaning (3.6) and the will of God (voluntas Dei, 2.5, 3.1). The fact that the will of God—as one would expect—also appears as the will of the Church as codified in its dogmas (2.8; 3.1, 2, and passim; 2.42)5 is not of fundamental significance. As with Origen, the problem of understanding is thus eliminated without even having been properly formulated. On the one hand, understanding is reached through an acceptance of Church dogmatics;6 on the other hand—and only with respect to the first—the divine inspiration of Scripture requires divine inspiration on the part of the reader as well (cf. 3.37). Secondly, Augustine's definition obliges one to acknowledge the uniqueness of the meaning behind the sign, since the apparent multiplicity of meanings, according to his definition, springs only from the assumption that the meaning of the sign can function, in turn, as a sign.7 However, it does not follow from this that the reverse is also true. A single meaning, like a single content, cannot be expressed by different signs. This multiplicity of modes of expression (figures of speech, tropes, images, etc.) is not infrequently taken for a multiplicity of meanings. The multiplicity of expressions is a question of syntax, poetics, rhetoric...