Hermeneutics of Texts, Tradition and Culture - RETN40519

• Title: Hermeneutics of Texts, Tradition and Culture
• Guaranteed by: Katedra církevních dějin a systematické teologie (27-CT)
• Faculty: Protestant Theological Faculty
• Actual: from 2025
• Semester: winter
• Points: 2
• E-Credits: 2
• Examination process: winter s.:
• Hours per week, examination: winter s.:2/0, C(+Ex) [HT]
• Capacity: unlimited / unknown (unknown)
• Min. number of students: unlimited
• 4EU+: no
• Virtual mobility / capacity: no
• State of the course: taught
• Language: English
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Note: course can be enrolled in outside the study plan; enabled for web enrollment
• Guarantor: Mgr. Zdenko Širka, Th.D.
• Class: optional

Annotation

The module will deal with the issues of hermeneutics, understanding and interpretation in the areas of interpretation of texts, world, and culture. The module will be oriented inter-disciplinarily between philosophy, literary sciences and theology, and will present holistic understanding of man and world. Units of this module will be oriented historically and thematically: historically from Homer until current philosophical hermeneutics, thematically from epistemological approach to texts to existentially-ontological understanding of man. The course will end with a round table discussion in which students will be invited and encouraged to respond critically to the content of the course and consider how and what to take further and develop in their ongoing studies.

Last update: Širka Zdenko, Mgr., Th.D. (25.09.2025)

Literature

Cosgrove, Charles (ed.), The Meanings We Choose: Hermeneutical Ethics, Indeterminacy and the Conflict of Interpretations, London, T & T Clark, 2004.

Dunning, Stephen, Dialectical Readings: Three Types of Interpretation, University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Truth and Method, New York, Continuum, 2003.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Philosophical Hermeneutics, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1976.

Habel, Norman and Peter Trudinger (eds.), Exploring Ecological Hermeneutics, Atlanta, Society of Biblical Literature, 2008.

Henige, David, Historical Evidence and Argument, Madison, The University of Wisconsin Press, 2005.

Jeanrond, Werner, Theological Hermeneutics, London, S.C.M., 1991.

Mueller-Vollmer, Kurt, The Hermeneutics Reader: Texts of the German Tradition from the Enlightenment to the Present, New York, Continuum, 2000.

Ricoeur, Paul, Essays on Biblical Interpretation, (ed. Lewis S. Mudge), Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1980.

Ricoeur, Paul, Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, (ed. Don Ihde), Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1974.

Thiselton, Anthony C. The Two Horizons: New Testament Hermeneutics and Philosophical Description with special reference to Heidegger, Bultmann, Gadamer, and Wittgenstein, Exeter, Paternoster, 1980.

Tracy, David, On Naming the Present: Reflections on God, Hermeneutics, and Church, Maryknoll, Orbis Books, 1994 / London, SCM, 1994.

Last update: Širka Zdenko, Mgr., Th.D. (25.09.2025)

Syllabus

Unit 1: Beginning of hermeneutics: early history

Unit 2: Dealing with the problem of text, signs, symbols and metaphors

Unit 3: Medieval and modern hermeneutical approaches

Unit 4: Philosophical hermeneutics and hermeneutical phenomenology

Unit 5: Development of hermeneutics in East and West: comparison and differences

Last update: Širka Zdenko, Mgr., Th.D. (25.09.2025)