Prejudice and the Process of interpretation

Gadamer writes ( Truth and Method (Continuum Impacts) ): “A person who is trying to understand a text is always projecting. He projects a meaning for the text as a whole as soon as some initial meaning emerges in the text . . . . Working out this fore-projection [prejudice], which is constantly revised in terms of what emerges as he penetrates into the meaning, is understanding what is there . . . . The process that Heidegger describes [in terms of the hermeneutical circle] is that every revision of the fore-projection is capable of projecting before itself a new projection of meaning; rival projects can emerge side by side until it becomes clearer what the unity of meaning is; interpretation begins with fore-conceptions that are replaced by more suitable ones. This constant process of new projection constitutes the movement of understanding and interpretation.”