Critical Study of Hermeneutical Foundations of Eric Hirsch with Regard to Tabatabaei’s Ideas.

Although hermeneutics, as a branch of knowledge, is a modern one, throughout the history of human thought, specially the religious, it has a long history of sporadic presence, without being named so. But as a knowledge, despite its short age, it has created various approaches within, some of which, facing the text, have resulted in tremendous developments in the realm of understanding and interpretation. One of these developments in the present time is the philosophical hermeneutics that has challenged the traditional approaches toward the text. Eric Hirsch is one the theoricians belonging to the contemporary critical era who has revived the traditional approach to hermeneutics with a new reading. Based on a descriptive-analytical and critical method, the present thesis surveys Hirsch,s viewpoint on understanding and interpretation. Having analyzed his hermeneutical foundations, it evalutes them with regard to Tabatabaei’s ideas, a contemporary philosopher and interpreter, in order to reveal Hirsch,s strengths and commonalities with the Muslim thinkers, especially Allamah, as well as the weaknesses of his hermenutical thought. Accordings to the findings of this research, Hirsch, apart from his foundational critisisms to the principles of philosophical hermeneutics, enjoys a strong system of thought and hermenutical foundations, serving his critical way of thinking. Some of the foundations of his theories have common grounds with those of Muslim scholars, especially Allamah Tabatabaei, Overlapping in some points. Hirsch puts the foundation of his theories on the validation of interpretation. He attempts to found some of Dilthey,s hermenutical principles according to Husserl,s epistemology, Saussure,s linguistics and Frege,s logic. Hence, putting a distinction between meaning and significance, and prepared the way for distinguishing the interactions between the reader and the text are various and distinguishable and considers confusing them as the main mistake of philosophical hermeneutics. While Allameh Tabatabaei’s project focused on understanding and interpreting of the holy text, and sought to discovering the God’s purposes. Therefore he strived to clarify the principles and methods for the Qur’an understanding, in order to be able in the light of it, receiving the purpose of the speaker; thus, he applied The principles and criteria for this purpose, and prepared the way for distinguishing the correct and incorrect interpretation (arbitrary interpretation), and its possible of verification. The present thesis seeks to analyze this issue, to investigate Hirsh’s ideas with a critical- analytical approach, and to shed a light on its dark points, with regard to Allamah Ideas.