Hermeneutics is a theory and methodology of interpretation that emerged from German theology and literature referring to the process through which people interpret classic written texts (see Packer, 1985). Namedafter Hermes, who was messenger of the Greek gods, interpreting their messagesfor mortals. A hermeneutic interpretation requires one to understand and sympathize with the point-of-view of another. An influential person in philosophical hermeneutics was Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) with his theory of interpreting human action. In his book Hermeneutics and the human sciences: essays on language, action and interpretation (1981), he combined hermeneutics with phenomenology. Phenomenology is a branch of philosophy based on intuitive experience of phenomena, and on the premise that reality consists of objects and events as consciously perceived by conscious beings. An intellectual movement based on this combination, starting around 1905, can be found in the writings of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and later in those of Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961). What they all stressed was the necessity of studying the structures of consciousness as experienced by the first-person point-of-view.
See Consciousness, Discourse analysis, Ethnography, Ontology, Pedagogy, Qualitative research, Solipsism
Packer,M. J. (1985). Hermeneutic inquiry in the study of human conduct. AmericanPsychologist, 40, 1081-1093.