Abstract

This paper reconstructs Gustav Špet’s early phenomenology of meaning as a hermeneutic theory of structure. In contrast to Husserl’s model of intentional constitution, Špet argues that sense is not founded in acts of consciousness but in the linguistic relation that mediates speaker and world. Meaning emerges neither from expression nor from the object expressed, but from their reciprocal interpretation—a process he describes as the hermeneutic circle of sense. Read through structural ontology, Špet’s account reveals a phenomenology of mediation without foundation, where understanding is itself a mode of world-formation. The paper develops this claim through analyses of intentionality, signification, and interpretive circulation, articulating meaning as transduction rather than reflection.