Hermeneutic Continuance Toward an Ontology of Understanding Under Erosive Conditions

Philosophical hermeneutics has transformed the question of understanding from a methodological problem of textual reconstruction into an ontological account of situated interpretation. Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer each contributed to this transformation by demonstrating that understanding is historically mediated, linguistically structured, temporally situated, and constitutive of human existence. This article develops a further question within that trajectory: under conditions of chronic interpretive pressure, what allows the capacity for understanding to remain capable of revision? The article introduces hermeneutic continuance as the finite capacity of an interpretive subject or field to preserve the possibility of meaningful reconfiguration under continuing erosive conditions. The concept is developed within an ontology of finite continuance, according to which finite beings persist through the preservation of reconfigurative capacity rather than through the preservation of fixed form. Applied to hermeneutics, this framework reconceptualizes hermeneutic memory as sedimented interpretive organization, familiarity as a relation between present encounter and accumulated traces, and hermeneutic friction as the structurally consequential resistance generated when inherited interpretive organization encounters difference that exceeds or destabilizes its absorptive capacity. The article further develops a Threshold of Hermeneutic Sufficiency, represented by the conceptual relation HC = f(C, H, E, R, T), in which current interpretive capacity, hermeneutic memory, erosive pressure, reconfigurative capacity, and temporal regulation jointly determine whether an interpretive field can continue to reorganize itself. The model is explicitly conceptual rather than empirically quantitative. Responsible Suspension is then reconstructed as a temporal regulatory mechanism that can preserve the interval required for recalibration when interpretive pressure approaches a critical threshold. The article argues that Gadamer's fusion of horizons can be productively extended through a concept of reconfigurative encounter. Understanding is thereby conceived as provisional reorganization within a historically sedimented field, while hermeneutic continuance names the preservation of the capacity through which such reorganization remains possible. The resulting framework contributes an ontological vocabulary for examining interpretive exhaustion, premature closure, rigid sedimentation, dialogical failure, and the unequal social distribution of the conditions required for reinterpretation. Keywords: hermeneutic continuance; philosophical hermeneutics; Gadamer; fusion of horizons; hermeneutic memory; sedimentation; familiarity; hermeneutic friction; erosion; reconfiguration; threshold of sufficiency; Responsible Suspension; finite continuance