C H A P T E R T H I R T Y - O N E Exegesis, Hermeneutics, and Interpretation Before you on the desk sits an economics text. It may be the most recent article in a journal or a classic book in the discipline. If you are like most readers, your concern as you read is to make sense of what the text says. | CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE Exegesis Hermeneutics and Interpretation Ross B. Emmett Introduction Before you on the desk sits an economics text. It may be the most recent article in a journal or a classic book in the discipline. If you are like most readers your concern as you read is to make sense of what the text says. This is the central task of textual interpretation to make sense of the meaning of a text. The other two words of our title are closely associated with interpretation although they are used less frequently in economics than in the humanities. Exegesis refers to the critical analysis of a text and hence is an integral part of the interpretive task. Exegesis takes us beyond reading the text to attending to its genre style form word choice model assumptions internal logic and contextual issues. Because the exegetical task forces one to pay close attention to the text an exegesis usually focuses on one particular passage or in the case of contemporary economics texts one model in an author s work. Hermeneutics on the other hand most often refers to the study of the methods or principles of interpretation. It may be thought of as the methodology of interpretation. Because this essay will focus on the methodologies of interpretation in the history of economics it is primarily an essay in hermeneutics. The close relation of methodological studies to philosophy has led to a hermeneutic tradition in philosophy which assumes the primacy of the interpretive stance. Hermeneutic philosophy is founded on the notion that all knowledge not only knowledge of the meaning of a text is a process of interpretation - there are only interpretations and their reinterpretations. While its philosophic roots lie in the nineteenth century especially in the work of Wilhelm Dilthey 1976 524 R. B. Emmett twentieth-century hermeneutic philosophy is dominated by the contrast between the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer 1989 and Jacques Derrida 1976 see also Michelfelder and Palmer 1989 . .
