From Hermeneutic Understanding to Text InterpretationA Comparison between the Principles of the Views of Mojtahed Shabestari and Hirsch

The hermeneutic understanding and interpretation of the text is the result of the interaction between the interpreter and the text and is based on the four pillars of author, text, interpreter and context. Understanding and comparing the principles of hermeneutic theories is important since it is the bedrock of critiques of the critics. With a descriptive-analytical method, this article seeks to compare and analyze the principles of the views held by the contemporary Muslim thinker Mojtahed Shabestari and the contemporary western hermeneutist Eric Hirsch. This will lead to answering this main question: What is the result of a comparative study of the principles of hermeneutic understanding in the views of Mojtahed Shabestari and Hirsch? The result of a comparative study in the four mentioned axes shows that the similarities are more than the differences. The most important commonalities are accepting the author’s intention in producing the text, determining the meaning by the author, the interpreter’s interrogating the text, the effect of the interpreter’s presuppositions, interests and expectations in understanding the text and accepting the hermeneutic cycle in understanding the text. The main difference is that Shabestari believes in the multiplicity of meanings and Hirsch believes in the stability of meaning. Also, Shabestari establishes the hermeneutic circle between the pre-understanding and the author’s semantic horizon of the text, but Hirsch between the genre of the text and the elements of the text and the interpreter’s pre-knowledge. By accepting the historicity of the text, Shabestari supports the meaning related to the current state of the text, while Hirsch accepts the historicity in the interpretation and not in the understanding.