Hermeneutics and the Rhetorical Tradition: Chapters in the Ancient Legacy and Its Humanist Reception by Kathy Eden
Abstract
RHETORICA 230 unify. As in the past, he continues to argue for the multiple moments of composition theory. George Pullman Georgia State University Kathy Eden, Hermeneutics and the Rhetorical Tradition: Chapters in the Ancient Legacy and Its Humanist Reception (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 119 pp. Those interested in the evolution of particular discursive practices that helped shape antiquity, especially the theoretical relationship between reading and interpretation, will benefit from this study in locating classical antecedents that ally rhetoric and hermeneutics. Unlike most studies of hermeneutics that spring from the Germanic tradition of Schleirmacher and Dilthey or the recent perspectives of Gadamer or Riceour, this study prizes the rhetorical precedent of an ancient mode of reading, known as interpretatio scripti, as crucial to the development of the field study of hermeneutics. By tapping into this rhetorical tradition largely overlooked in philological studies, Eden historically discerns and synthesizes a convincing case for the recognition and study of interpretatio scripti as a meaning making agent common to both the rhetorical and hermeneutical enterprises that have gained renewed prominence in humanistic inquiry today. In what may be the most valuable portion of the book, the first chapters construct the significance of interpretatio scripti as a model of reading that Roman rhetoricians inherited—from the Hellenistic rhetorical tradition—as "a loosely organized set of rules for interpreting the written materials pertinent to legal cases" (p. 7). As a point of origin, Eden moves decisively to Cicero, particularly De inventione and De oratore, in contextualizing how transforming character of interpretatio scripti often complicates treatments of proof and style in his rhetorical manuals, and plays a deciding role in appropriating legal arguments between the intention (voluntas) and the letter (scriptum) of an author or text under scrutiny. Interpretation, to Cicero, is understood in terms of controversy; thus interpretation theory (and by later implication Reviews 231 hermeneutics) finds a habitual home in rhetorical theory. Eden notes that while Cicero was not the first one to do this, his work has enjoyed the widest reception and can be seen as a generative point from which to track the influence of interpretatio scripti in her book's subsequent chapters. Such a discursive heredity becomes convincing as Eden links the interpretive principles of interpretatio scripti to the classical arts of poetry and grammar as seen through Plato, Aristotle and Plutarch. The prerequisite study of grammar, in classic times, is seen to develop similar concerns as its rhetorical counterpart in the coordinating and complementary notions of decorum and oeconomia which prove crucial in "underlying the hermeneutical concept of contextualization, historical and textual, respectively" (p. 41). Eden extends her coverage of the influence of interpretatio scripti through the Christian appropriation of classical culture, in Basil, Paul and most notably in Augustine. Amidst this backdrop of Patristic hermeneutics, Eden achieves a fine sense of dialogue between the concepts of Cicero, Quintillian and Augustine, and accommodates both a spiritual and historical order that extends into the rehabilitating humanism of Erasmus. Though less substantial than the first part of the book, the final few chapters bring the selected work of Philip Melanchthon and Flacius's Clavis scripturae sacrae into the interpretive landscape as a whole. In the end, this book serves a vital role in establishing the credibility of classical scholarship in legitimizing what Ricoeur would call the hermeneutics of tradition. As a centerpiece in the debate between the role of equity and spirit in the ancient act of reading, interpretatio scripti emerges as a meaningful landmark in charting the never-ending task of interpretation, and suggests an expansion in the intellectual history of both hermeneutics and rhetoric. As an instalment in the Yale Studies in Hermeneutics, this book works an effective balance between written economy and great scholarly depth. Such a stylistic blend should provide ample access points for both experts and novices interested in theories of interpretation, antiquity and rhetoric. RICHARD A. MILLER Bowling Green State University ...
- Journal
- Rhetorica
- Published
- 1998-03-01
- DOI
- 10.1353/rht.1998.0032
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