hermeneutic circle

hermeneutic circle, a model of the process of interpretation, which begins from the problem of relating a work's parts to the work as a whole: since the parts cannot be understood without some preliminary understanding of the whole, and the whole cannot be understood without comprehending its parts, our understanding of a work must involve an anticipation of the whole that informs our view of the parts while simultaneously being modified by them. This problem, variously formulated, has been a recurrent concern of German philosophy since the work of the theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher in the early 19th century. The writings of Hans‐Georg Gadamer in the 1960s tackled a similar hermeneutic circle in which we can understand the present only in the context of the past, and vice versa; his solutions to this puzzle have influenced the emergence of reception theory.