The question of the relation between hermeneutics and practical philosophy is one which poses a challenge for the contemporary philosophical situation. This way of posing the problem provides one of the two stimuli for my attempt to determine the logos of hermeneutics. The other resides in the fact that in contemporary philosophy, a tendency has persisted for quite some time to define the internal relationship between hermeneutics and practical reason in such a way that one is no longer able to identify [the element of] practical reason therein.