L'ermeneutica di Johann Georg Zur Linden. Senso dell'autore e senso del testo

His main references (Christian Wolff and the pietist Johann Jakob Rambach) make Zur Linden one of the earliest examples of a new intellectual figure that will characterise the nature and aims of the German Enlightenment: the pietist/illuminist or vice versa. Zur Linden conceives of hermeneutics in a deductive framework. The method is always the same for sacred and profane texts. Understanding means reproducing as faithfully as possible the author’s thought and feeling. Interpretation must be based above all on probable reasoning, knowledge of the author’s circumstances and historical context. Zur Linden makes an essential distinction between the author’s sense and the sense of the text, to which he gives priority in interpretation: it is not what the author wants to say that is important, but what the author really said. In this way, he proposes an innovative structuralist version of classical hermeneutic intentionalism.