Chapter 6 - Meier, I

Summary

It is one of the aims of a critical examination like the one we are pursuing here, in lieu of a purely historical presentation or a new hermeneutics, to reveal the historical determinateness of hermeneutic theories. The traditional notions of Enlightenment hermeneutics, to which the philological and theological contemporaries of Weimar Classicism and German Idealism formulated a counterposition, appear in another hermeneutic theory from the mid-century which differs from Chladenius' work on important points despite their common descent from the philosophy of Leibniz and Wolff. This is Versuch einer allgemeinen Auslegungskunst [Toward a General Theory of Interpretation] (1757) by Georg Friedrich Meier, who lived from 1718 to 1777 and was professor of philosophy in Halle. A disciple of Wolff's disciple Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, the author of the Aesthetica, Meier published Anfangsgründe aller schönen Künste und Wissenschaften [Basic Premises of All the Fine Arts and Sciences] in 1748, which earned him the name of co-founder of German aesthetics. Among his works a Metaphysik (1755–59) and a Vernunftlehre [Theory of Reason] (1752) ought also to be mentioned. At the time, all of these works were more highly regarded than the Versuch einer allgemeinen Auslegungskunst; and even histories of hermeneutics, owing undoubtedly to their theological or philosophical bias, have not paid it the attention it deserves. Not until Lutz Geldsetzer arranged for a new printing in 1965 did Meier's Auslegungskunst again become accessible and reenter discussion.