In this section of our study we turn our attention to two eminent and quite complex strands of philosophy, both of which exerted an enormous grip upon hermeneutics. With the advent of phenomenology and existential- ism we witness a wholly new shift in interpretation from issues about its practice to deeper underlying concerns about the nature of understand- ing itself. Although both Enlightenment and Romantic hermeneuticists discussed how we come to comprehend in the first place, and both pro- vided analyses of the linguistic and historical components to this, neither tradition perhaps went quite as far as these two new ‘schools’ of philos- ophy. Moreover, Heidegger, actually turned his concern almost entirely towards a philosophy of interpretation and understanding whereas issues of exegetical practice all but faded from sight.