Heidegger's hermeneutics: towards a new practice of understanding

This chapter examines Heidegger's hermeneutics. Heidegger himself acknowledged retrospectively the importance of his early studies for his understanding of hermeneutics. Given his particular perspective in 1953/54 when he wrote the "Dialogue", Heidegger interprets his early acquaintance with the term hermeneutics with respect to the question of the "relation between language and Being". The "definition" of hermeneutics that Heidegger provided made it clear that he did not intend to use "hermeneutics" in its common modern sense: The expression "hermeneutics" is used here to indicate the unified manner of engaging, approaching, interrogating, and explicating facticity. The primary character of hermeneutics explains why phenomenology and fundamental ontology begin with the hermeneutics of Dasein. One of the first writings that Heidegger published after World War II that determined the understanding of his philosophy was the "Letter on Humanism".