enlightenment and romanticism
In moving on to assess the hermeneutic contribution of the dawning mod- ern era, we are entering the realm of German philosophical hermeneu- tics. In spite of making a strong claim throughout our discussion thus far for the significance of earlier Ancient and Judeo-Christian interpreta- tive practices, this is not in any sense meant to diminish the value of the German contribution. As Warnke, Mueller-Vollmer and Palmer have all so well told, this is undoubtedly a mighty tradition. My point is that this later tradition builds upon earlier humanist strands of thought. Ironically, a further point is that those humanist scholars with their distinguished accounts of Ancient Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian hermeneutics, for instance, Copeland, Eden and so on, can in turn underplay the sig- nificance of the later German contribution.