Philosophical hermeneutics has become one of the most vital trends in contemporary philosophy. Even beyond the schools which explicitly acknowledge their debt to it, there is a field of interest in hermeneutics in which various scholars and schools are to be found. All, however, agree in recognizing that the problem of interpretation became of central importance and, at the same time, of manifold complexity, during and following the "linguistic turn" in the history of philosophy, i.e. when philosophy realized that language—this shifting, ambiguous, polymorphic and ineffable embodiment of meaning—was its proper element.