 In an early formulation of what he has in mind by the hermeneutical ‘long route’ to self-understanding, Ricoeur maintains that the pursuit of self-understanding has to be mediated by hermeneutical considerations of semantic structures of interpretation that are common to research across the human sciences (Ricoeur, “Existence and Hermeneutics,” 11). In this, Ricoeur’s approach is “organized around the central theme of meaning with multiple or multivocal senses…” or, what he calls “symbolic senses” (Ricoeur, “Existence and Hermeneutics,” 11). This involves a novel conception of interpretation itself. Traditionally in hermeneutics, the purpose of interpretation is thought of as making apparent the single, unitary meaning of something. Ricoeur, by contrast, stresses that the aim of interpretation also includes making apparent the plurality of meanings at issue in a speech act or text. He writes, “Interpretation…is the work of thought which consists in deciphering the hidden meaning in the apparent meaning, in unfolding levels of meaning implied in the literal meaning” (Ricoeur, “Existence and Hermeneutics,” 13).