The Hermeneutics of Droysen and Tolkappiyar

The Hermeneutics of Droysen and Tolkappiyar



One of the Western philosophy whose thoughts are useful to understand  Tolkappiyam is Droysen (1808-1884), who subsequent to Humboldt and still belonging to the same orientation towards hermeneutics, stands as the most important figure. He articulated concerns similar to Humboldt and was equally preoccupied with the tasks of historians and those in the humanistic disciplines.

Understanding is conceived as the most perfect knowledge that is attainable for us humans. Historical understanding where the text study is not replicable has to be necessarily interpretive, and hence hermeneutical.

In view of the finitude of human life, the past will always remain inaccessible to us. The historian cannot be objective in the sense of the  physical sciences, for he cannot recreate the past as it actually happened. However this does not mean that the historical investigation is devoid of a method. The method of historical research is understanding by means of investigations.  When he inquires into the actual  procedure, we can identify two types: speculative,  and the historical. All these are paths to knowledge and their essence is to find out, explain and understand. It is the past within the present that poses various kinds of problems that is the subject matter of investigations by the historians.

 But why are investigations into historical  truth necessary? 

Droysen offers a particularly good example to illustrate and illuminate  the need for investigations and hence for certain kind of practices.

In conversational interactions we can gain comprehensive understanding, by taking into account the words used, tones and accents employed, and the accompanying paralinguistic features. The excitement and mood that accompanies stating something and which we note through the above features allow us to comprehend a person's 'innermost being '. But in the reports or written documents the rich linguistic and paralinguistic features are lost through a process of flattering. A report may not correctly report the conversation. All sorts of impurities and imperfections the original did not have, now accrues to the report.

The historical documents are records of this type and investigations will be necessary to regain the original situation with criticism doing  away with the imperfections they have suffered. "That which lies before us as historical material is the expression and imprint of the acts of  volition and we must try to understand them  in these manifestation" (e.g. Mueller Vollmer, p. 127).

But  this is not the whole of historical understanding, the task is more demanding and hence something more than understanding speech in conversations.

A full  account of historical understanding is possible only through four different but interrelated types of interpretations, as follows:


(a) The pragmatic interpretation takes up critically the records and documents i.e., the remnants of the historical activities and tries to organize them critically so that a sketch of the factual context is possible. It examines  the causal mature of the course of events in order to reconstruct it.

(b) The factual sketch of the remnants provides an understanding of the original  event, allows questions pertaining to the conditions - the local, religious, economies, the technical and so forth. The historical documents leave traces of the effects of these conditions and they must also be articulated. These conditions make the situation possible and therefore their effects will be present in the documents.

(c)  When through noting the documents, facts and the conditions under which the situations that produced those documents emerged, we are in a position to understand 'the acts of will' or the psychological or motivational dynamics that elicited the event.  "This method concerns itself with the person who willed the act, the forcefulness of  that person's will, his intellect, and the extent to which all these things had an effect on the event" (Ibid. p.130). In this the social leaders who do not just guide and determine  the masses but also represent them, have to be understood in terms of their perceptions, opinions, inclination, behaviours, purpose and so forth. Such an understanding that reaches the psychological make-up of the individuals constitute the psychological interpretation.

(d) The above three types of interpretations do not constitute the complete understanding of an historical event. Though Droysen does not use the term 'unconscious'  but rather 'moral forces', it is clear that by introducing the fourth type of interpretation i.e. 'interpretation of ideas' he means something like archetypical production and regulation of  historical events. They burst forth suddenly and with tremendous energy  and become the individual's interests and preoccupation. Man derives his expression, his unity and strength from these which are alive in the feelings and conscience of every person.


When we compare Porulatikaram of  Tolkappiyar, we can see that the linguistic turn to existential investigations that Tolkappiyar gives to Hermeneutics or originated from non approach to historical understanding somewhat similar to Droysen. Here we shall content  ourselves, pointing out a particularly intriguing similarity that exists between the two.

A historical epoch gets its unity in the IDEA that takes hold of them, and by being actively in their thinking and feeling determines their volitions. And these are essentially moral forces.

This same view or almost similar view emerges in the concept of Deity dominating a Tinai considered as psychological ecology. A deity takes over a Tinai, determines the interest structure of the person who gets into it, and thereby determines his overall behaviours including the verbal.

When a man is taken hold of e.g. by Murukan, the Deity of Kurinci,  Tinai, his volitional activities are dominated by the need for sexual gratifications. What is also interesting to note is that these Deities are understood as moral forces too. For the  behaviour devoid of such archetypical regulations such as morbid carvings and abnormal sexuality, are said to be unethical and hence not to be approved. (K.L. Mutharayan, 1990).

The kind of hermeneutics that underlies Porulatikaram, the book on Meaning in the most general sense but particularly similar to what are called utterance meanings as opposed to sentence meanings by the modern speech-act theorists (e.g. Searle, 1983), can be called symbolic Hermeneutics.

For unlike the Western thinkers, Tolkappiyar  seized upon the metaphorical or figurative (ullurai uvamam) expressions both verbal and non-verbal and through that gained a depth in the psychological understanding of human behaviour particularly the verbal. 

The various categories for classifying behaviour such as  akattinai, purattinai and so forth emerged from such interpretive activities which incidentally must have involved semiotics - getting at the meaning of the symbolic is unavoidable.


Dr Loganathan Krishnan @ Ullaganar