Understanding, community and audience. Some points between rhetorics and hermeneutics

Abstract

This paper develops one of the points in which hermeneutics and rhetoric come
into contact. This common point has been revitalized in the last years and has
been unanimous. We refer to the relation that both rhetoric and hermeneutics
establish between understanding and the community it belongs to. The concept
of audience (axial for rhetoric) and the concept of the hermeneutic circle (axis of
contemporary hermeneutic) highlight the same idea: in order to understand an
argument and be able to establish a communicative interaction, one must be
part of the same community of competent speakers. This paper presents this
process in three phases: the first one describes the adversary under both
perspectives develop their notions; then, there is the relevance of the concept of
audience in hermeneutics, and finally, the articulation of the concept of the
hermeneutic circle from an ontological perspective. The conclusions try to
emphasize some questions and open some problems.