Analecta Hermeneutica
Analecta Hermeneutica is the annual refereed journal of the International Institute for Hermeneutics (IIH). It provides an intellectual forum for interdisciplinary, inter-religious, and international hermeneutic research. The journal publishes research in the form of articles, reviews, and other scholarly contributions in all hermeneutically related fields, with a particular focus on philosophy, theology, and comparative literature. We invite scholars from various linguistic communities to contribute innovative and critical articles to the hermeneutic conversation.
Greetings from the Editors
As the journal of the International Institute of Hermeneutics (IIH), it is the mission of Analecta Hermeneutica to provide a space for the most current and sophisticated thinking about all matters concerned with human being together initiated by the claims of philosophical hermeneutics. We inherit twelve years of exemplary work from Sean McGrath who edited Analecta Hermeneutica since co-founding the journal in 2009. We are grateful to have, in Professor McGrath’s excellent work, such a promising trajectory for the journal’s future and a rich archive of issues curated by his studious hand. For a hermeneutics yet to come, the question is and will remain not if we are hermeneutical at heart but rather how accomplished will our hermeneutics be in the 21st century and beyond? This pressing question, one attendant to every other question addressing us, arises from the very structure of our being-in-the-world; indeed, as Gadamer reminds us:
“. . . interpretation does not occur as an activity in the course of life, but is the form of human life.” We much look forward the challenges and pleasures of editing future issues where it be necessary both to critique and edify various forms of life that stands as the impetus to practice hermeneutic philosophy.
Current Issue
You Must Change Your Life!:
Hermeneutics as Living Demand
Guest Editor: Catherine Homan
"The theme of this volume of Analecta Hermeneutica follows the task set forth by Rilke’s “On the Archaic Torso of Apollo” by taking seriously the possibility of art as life changing. Presenting us with both what is familiar and what is alien, the work of art shows what is as well as what could be. Gadamer’s analysis of art moves us a step further by insisting that it is not only art, but hermeneutics as such, that issues such a task. Fundamental to hermeneutics is the idea that experiences of artworks, texts, and traditions inform and shape our being in the world, and that such experiences have aesthetic, ethical, and pedagogical impacts."
Call for Papers
Hermeneutics and Melville: Volume XVI (2024)
Guest Editor: Christopher Hanlon, Arizona State University
“Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics. But there is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man’s and every being’s face. Physiognomy, like every other human science, is but a passing fable. If then, Sir William Jones, who read in thirty languages, could not read the simplest peasant’s face in its profounder and more subtle meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope to read the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale’s brow? I but put that brow before you. Read it if you can.” —Moby-Dick, 1851