Emilio Betti’s contribution in the context of the so-called crisis of the hermeneutic koine

Abstract

The article offers a rereading of the thought of Emilio Betti, with a view to identifying the elements most pertinent to contemporary hermeneutics. Hence it begins with an historiographical overview, presenting the various interpretations that have appeared over the last twenty years. Then, turning to Betti’s own writings, attention is drawn to the clusters of reference of the concept of “representative form”, and light is shed on his idea of method as “a way through which”, pointing toward an interpretative procedure that is faithful to what it seeks to understand. In the end, the peculiar conception of “objectivity” around which Bettian hermeneutics revolves is what seems especially to urge further discussion of interpretation-toward a serious consideration both of the determinations of what is interpreted and of their constitutive connection, which seems unable to be exhausted in the transcendental hermeneutic.