The purpose of this essay is to show that philosophical hermeneutics is particularly suited for
facing problems of understanding among different cultural worlds. These issues are relevant
even for legal interpretation that, now more than ever, is not up against culturally homogeneous
societies and against legal systems shaped by a single source or by a steady hierarchy
of sources. Therefore, philosophical hermeneutics’ approaches to intercultural dialogue can
be useful to the present practice of legal interpretation, not by building new interpretative
methods, but by clarifying contexts which give significance to legal practice. The paths trodden
by legal philosophical hermeneutics are devoted to the understanding of texts which
have a paradigmatic feature for jurists’ work and to the identification of legal practice’s ends
and values. These paths are complementary, not alternative. The historic consciousness and
the practice reason are both essential for the discovery of legal meaning, within which legal
interpretation articulates.
