Jens Zimmermann is Professor of Humanities and Canada Research Chair for Interpretation, Religion and Culture at Trinity Western University, Canada. As well as speaking on the importance of hermeneutics and religion to lay audiences and graduate students, he has published books on theological hermeneutics in both English and German and has written articles on hermeneutics in academic journals. He is author of Politics and the Religious Imagination (Routledge, 2010) and Humanism and Religion (OUP, 2012).

Hermeneutics is the branch of knowledge that deals with interpretation, a behaviour that is intrinsic to our daily lives. As humans, we decipher the meaning of newspaper articles, books, legal matters, religious texts, political speeches, emails, and even dinner conversations every day . But how is knowledge mediated through these forms? What constitutes the process of interpretation? And how do we draw meaning from the world around us so that we might understand our position in it?

In this Very Short Introduction Jens Zimmermann traces the history of hermeneutic theory, setting out its key elements, and demonstrating how they can be applied to a broad range of disciplines: theology; literature; law; and natural and social sciences. Demonstrating the longstanding and wide-ranging necessity of interpretation, Zimmermann reveals its significance in our current social and political landscape.

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