Interpretation and Meaning in Philosophy and Religion [1 ed.] 9789004325241, 9789004254992

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Interpretation and Meaning in Philosophy and Religion

Philosophy of History and Culture Edited by Michael Krausz (Bryn Mawr College) Advisory Board Annette Baier† (University of Pittsburgh) Purushottama Bilimoria (Deakin University, Australia) Cora Diamond (University of Virginia) William Dray† (University of Ottawa) Nancy Fraser (New School for Social Research) Clifford Geertz† (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) Peter Hacker (St. John’s College, Oxford) Rom Harré (Linacre College, Oxford) Bernard Harrison (University of Sussex) Martha Nussbaum (University of Chicago) Leon Pompa (University of Birmingham) Joseph Raz (Balliol College, Oxford) Amélie Rorty (Harvard University)

VOLUME 35

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/phc

Interpretation and Meaning in Philosophy and Religion Edited by

Dirk-Martin Grube

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Grube, Dirk-Martin, editor. Title: Interpretation and meaning in philosophy and religion / edited by Dirk-Martin Grube. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2016. | Series: Philosophy of history and culture, ISSN 0922-6001 ; VOLUME 35 Identifiers: LCCN 2016019496 (print) | LCCN 2016020781 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004254992 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9789004325241 (E-Book) Subjects: LCSH: Philosophy and religion. Classification: LCC BL51 .I6548 2016 (print) | LCC BL51 (ebook) | DDC 210.1--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016019496

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 0922-6001 isbn 978-90-04-25499-2 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-32524-1 (e-book) Copyright 2016 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents List of Contributors vii Introduction 1 Dirk-Martin Grube

Part 1 Foundational Reflections on Interpretation 1 On Why Interpretation is a Problem for Philosophy of Art 19 Peter Lamarque 2 The Ideals and Aim of Interpretation 34 Michael Krausz

Part 2 Developing the Philosophical Discussion on Interpretation Further 3 Overcoming Dualism: Textual Meaning Discovered and Invented 51 Thomas Leddy 4 In Language, Beyond Words: Literary Interpretation and the Verbal Imagination 74 Garry L. Hagberg 5 Interpretation, Literature and Meaning Scepticism 96 John Gibson

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Contents

Part 3 Applying the Philosophical Discussion on Interpretation to Religion 6 Characteristic Features of the Interpretation of Religious Texts: Applying Lamarque’s and Krausz’s Theorizing on Interpretation to Religion 115 Dirk-Martin Grube 7 Lamarque’s Theory of Interpretation and the Practice of Interpreting Biblical Texts: The Case for Semi-generic Interpretation 144 Christiane Karrer-Grube 8 Some Reflections on Michael Krausz’s Account of Meaning and Interpretation 174 Pradeep P. Gokhale Index 187

List of Contributors John Gibson is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Louisville. His research focuses on topics in aesthetics and the philosophy of literature, and he is especially concerned with connections between these areas and central issues in the philosophy of language and the philosophy of the self. Much of his recent research explores the uniqueness of the forms of meaning artworks bear. He is the author of Fiction and the Weave of Life (Oxford, 2007), editor of The Philosophy of Poetry (Oxford, 2015), and, coeditor of The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Literature (Routledge, 2015), Narrative Emotion and Insight (psup, 2011), A Sense of the World (Routledge, 2007), and The Literary Wittgenstein (Routledge, 2004). He is currently finishing a manuscript titled Poetry, Metaphor, and Nonsense: An Essay on Meaning. Pradeep P. Gokhale is Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Research Professor in Central University of Tibetan ­Studies, Sarnath (Varanasi, India). The books authored by him include ­Inference and Fallacies Discussed in Ancient Indian Logic (Indian Books Centre, 1992), Vādanyāya of Dharmakirti: The Logic of Debate (Indian Books Centre, 1993), Lokāyata/Cārvāka: A Philosophical Inquiry (Oxford University Press, 2015). He has co-edited Studies in Indian Moral Philosophy: Problems, Concepts and Perspectives (Indian Philosophical Quarterly publication, 2002) and edited The Philosophy of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar (ipq and Sugava Publication, 2008). Major areas in which his research articles are published are Classical Indian Philosophy: Epistemology and Logic, Moral, and Social Philosophy. Dirk-Martin Grube is the “Religious Diversity and the Epistemology of Theology/Religion” chair at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (The Netherlands). He has degrees both in philosophy (m.a. and PhD, Temple University, Philadelphia) and theology ­(Habilitation, Kiel, Germany). He has published and edited several books on the philosophy of Joseph Margolis, Contingency, ethics, Paul Tillich, and ­Christology. His ­approximately fifty articles focus on the intersection between philosophy and religion and include areas such as epistemology, (New) Atheism, the apology of religion, and pragmatism (William James). Currently, he works on a theory of religious diversity which is based upon the suggestion to substitute (bivalent) truth with (pluralizable) justification (a special issue of The International Journal of Philosophy and Theology is in preparation).

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Garry L. Hagberg is the James H. Ottaway Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics at Bard College, and has also held a Chair in the School of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia. Author of numerous papers at the intersection of aesthetics and the philosophy of language, his books include Meaning and Interpretation: Wittgenstein, Henry James, and Literary Knowledge, and Art as Language: Wittgenstein, Meaning, and Aesthetic Theory; his Describing Ourselves: Wittgenstein and Autobiographical Consciousness appeared with Oxford University Press in 2008 (paper 2011). An edited collection, Art and Ethical Criticism, appeared in 2008 with Blackwell (paper 2011, Wiley-Blackwell), and he is co-editor of A Companion to the Philosophy of Literature (Wiley-Blackwell 2010) and Editor of the journal Philosophy and Literature. Christiane Karrer-Grube is assistant professor of Biblical Theology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Mennonite Seminary) and part-time minister. Her research focuses on the interpretation of Old Testament texts, especially post-exilic literature, and on the hermeneutic of Biblical texts, including feminist hermeneutics. She is the author of Ringen um die Verfassung Judas: Eine Studie zu den theologischpolitischen Vorstellungen im Esra-Nehemia-Buch (De Gruyter, 2001), co-editor of Körperkonzepte im Ersten Testament: Aspekte einer Feministischen Anthropologie (Kohlhammer, 2003) and author of several articles, e.g. ‘Scrutinizing the Conceptual Unity of Ezra and Nehemiah’ in Unity and Disunity in EzraNehemiah: Redaction, Rhetoric, and Reader (eds. M.J. Boda, P.L. Redditt, Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2008). Michael Krausz is Milton C. Nahm Professor of Philosophy at Bryn Mawr College. He is the author of Rightness and Reasons: Interpretation in Cultural Practices (Cornell University Press, 1993), Varieties of Relativism (with Rom Harré, Basil Blackwell, 1995), Limits of Rightness (Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), Interpretation and Transformation (Rodopi, 2007), Dialogues on Relativism, Absolutism, and Beyond (Rowman and Littlefield, 2011), and Oneness and the Displacement of Self (Rodopi, 2013). Krausz is contributing editor or co-editor of eleven volumes on relativism, rationality, interpretation, cultural identity, creativity, and related themes. He is currently writing a philosophical autobiography entitled, Roots in the Air. A festschrift on Krausz’s philosophical work entitled Interpretation and Its Objects: Studies in the Philosophy of Michael Krausz was edited by Andreea Deciu Ritivoi (Rodopi, 2003).

List Of Contributors

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Peter Lamarque is Professor of Philosophy at the University of York, uk. He was Ferens Professor of Philosophy and Head of the Philosophy Department at the University of Hull, 1995–2000, and taught at the University of Stirling from 1972 to 1995. Among his research interests are aesthetics, philosophy of literature, narrative, and the ontology of art. His books include Truth, Fiction, and Literature (with Stein Haugom Olsen, Clarendon Press, 1994), Fictional Points of View (Cornell University Press, 1996), The Philosophy of Literature (Blackwell, 2009), Work and Object: Explorations in the Metaphysics of Art (Oxford University Press, 2010), and The Opacity of Narrative (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2014). He was editor of the British Journal of Aesthetics from 1995–2008. Thomas Leddy (Professor of Philosophy at San José State University, PhD from Boston University, 1981) has published several articles, mainly on aesthetics and philosophy of art, in such journals as The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, The British Journal of Aesthetics, Contemporary Aesthetics, and The Journal of Aesthetic Education. Broadview Press published his The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: The Aesthetics of Everyday Life in 2012. His article on John Dewey’s aesthetics appears in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.). He has three articles in The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, 2nd edition, Michael Kelly (ed.), Oxford University Press, 2014. His main research interest is in aesthetics including not only the philosophy of arts, but also the aesthetics of nature and of everyday life.

Introduction Dirk-Martin Grube

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

This volume has its origins in a conference on interpretation and meaning in philosophy and religion held in Utrecht, The Netherlands, in June 2012. The ­purpose of this conference was to bring the philosophical discussion on interpretation into a fruitful dialogue with the practice of interpreting religious texts. To that end, two philosophical key papers were delivered by P ­ eter ­Lamarque and Michael Krausz. In those papers, key issues in the current discussion on interpretation were taken up. Several people engaged with the practice of interpreting religious texts1 responded to those key issues. The conference was very successful since it enabled a thorough interaction between philosophical theories and religious practices of interpretation to emerge. Those engaged with the practice of interpreting religious texts took up the issues raised by the philosophical key papers in a serious fashion. That is, they pondered in a self-critical fashion on how their practices of interpreting religious texts fare in light of those issues. The guiding intention behind this volume is to maintain this kind of serious engagement between philosophical theories and religious practices of interpretation. However, for the purposes of this volume, further philosophical reflections on both Lamarque’s and Krausz’s contributions were necessary since their positions are not uncontested. This volume has thus three parts: Part 1, a foundational philosophical reflection on currently relevant problems in the theory of interpretation; Part 2, a philosophical in-depth critique of both foundational reflections; Part 3, an application of this reflection to interpretive practices in religion. The goal of this volume is thus to foster the current philosophical reflection on interpretation and apply it to religion. By “current philosophical reflection on interpretation,” I mean a particular philosophical round of discussion on the issue. More specifically, I mean the English-speaking discussion among philosophers like Michael Krausz, Peter 1 By “people engaged with the practice of interpreting religious texts” I mean people who reflect on interpretation from a religious inside perspective rather than an outside perspective. Examples of the former are interpretations (of a particular segment) of the Tenach/Old Testament from a Jewish or Christian point of view, examples of the latter include interpretations of the same segment from an archeological point of view.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004325241_002

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Lamarque, Joseph Margolis, Thomas Leddy, Garry Hagberg, John Gibson, and others which has been going on for more than a decade. In my view, this round of discussion has a number of advantages over alternative philosophical rounds of discussion on interpretation. One such advantage is the clarity which distinguishes Anglo-American philosophy in general. Another advantage is that it takes up basic issues in the theory of interpretation. Examples of those basic issues are the question of monism as opposed to p­ luralism (the question whether one or many interpretations of the same object are legitimate); the question whether ‘works’ or ‘texts’ are to be distinguished from mere objects (see below, the summary of Lamarque’s article); ­realism versus anti-realism as it relates to interpretation (the question whether works or even objects are constituted by the very act of interpreting them); and related problems. Being concerned with basic issues makes this round of philosophical discussion a valuable discussion partner for religious practices of interpretation. In particular, in the current situation, when much is in flux concerning religious practices of interpretation (see below), a reflection on basic issues in the theory of interpretation is very helpful. In sum, I think that this particular round of discussion is a proper discussion-partner for religious practices of interpretation.

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Applying this round of philosophical discussion to religious practices of interpretation is highly necessary: In the last few decades, much discussion swirls around questions of interpretation in religion. Standpoints which were taken for granted for a long time have been questioned and those engaged in this practice search for new standpoints. An important example is the search for ‘authorial intention’: Taken for granted as the very normative ideal in religion for a long time, it has come under fire in the last decades. In its wake, monism has given way to pluralism: If it cannot be taken for granted any longer that the (original) intention of the author is what we are after, why still insist that there is only one legitimate interpretation? Why not acknowledge the possibility that there is more than one, i.e. a plurality of equally legitimate interpretations? Under the sway of postmodernist theorizing, some people engaged in the practice of interpreting religious texts pursue pluralism in such a radical fashion that it becomes indistinguishable from relativism or interpretive anarchy.

Introduction

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Given this situation, it is important to analyze how much (of what kind) of pluralism is compatible with the logic prevailing in religious practices of interpretation. A question to be raised in this context is e.g. whether the action-­ relevance implied in religious practices of interpretation limits pluralistic options (see my contribution in Chapter 6, this volume). The philosophical reflection on monism as opposed to pluralism can help to sort things out. This is one example of how the philosophical round of discussion at stake here can help in analyzing and, if possible, solving, problems of interpretation emerging in religion. Yet, applying theory to practice is never a one-way-street but always a twoway-street: Theory does not remain unaffected from its application to practice. At least, according to the concept called ‘reflective equilibrium,’ the application of theory to practice has consequences for the conceptualization of the former as well: Theory takes up the impulses its application to practice provides and ‘digests’ them in a self-reflective fashion. In so far as the relation between philosophical reflection on interpretation and religious application of it can be reconstructed as an instance of applying theory to practice, religious applications do not leave the philosophical theorizing unaffected. But the suggestion that religious interpretive practices may affect philosophical theories of interpretation may sound objectionable to some. Even if conceived only in an indirect sense, via the feedback loop from theory to practice and back to theory, philosophers may reject this suggestion. After all, religious practices of interpretation are framed within the context of religious dogmas, such as that of direct verbal inspiration according to which certain texts are directly ‘dictated’ by whatever religious authority prevails in that particular religion (say, the Holy Spirit in Christianity). Since religious interpretive practices are informed by this and similarly dubious dogmas, we should reject them off-hand rather than let them influence our theorizing, those philosophers may suggest. Yet, we must watch out not to fall prey to anti-religious prejudices at this point: By far not all religious interpretive practices are committed to dogmas of this sort. There exists a rich tradition of reflection on religious practices of interpretation which is not only not committed to dogmas of this sort but is intellectually highly respectable and informative to philosophical reflection. Examples of this tradition are Friedrich Schleiermacher or Rudolf Bultmann. Whether or not we agree with their input into the discussion on interpretation, we cannot ignore it on the grounds that it is based upon religious practices of interpretation. More generally speaking, philosophical theorizing on interpretation should not ignore religious practices of interpretation in my view. The reason is that

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those practices are one of the most important human domains in which interpretation plays a crucial role. I will explain that claim. Interpretive practices have an important function in almost all major world religions: The interpretation of e.g. sacred texts constitutes the believer’s identity to a significant extent. They shape her world view, e.g. her view of empirical reality vis-a-vis the intended ideal (e.g. the eschaton or Nirvana) and her conduct. More specifically, her reasons for action flow from this tension between empirical reality and intended ideal. The fact that interpretation plays such an important role in the formation of religious identity plus the sheer size of religiosity among the world’s population show at a stroke the importance of religious practices of interpretation. If philosophy would neglect those practices, it would cut off itself from one of the most important human domains in which interpretation plays an essential role. This is why I suggest that philosophical theorizing on interpretation should not ignore religious interpretive practices. Yet, in what way precisely can those practices inform philosophical theorizing in a legitimate way? One answer to that question is that they may point to potential shortcomings of this theorizing. An example is Peter Lamarque’s viewpoint that ‘meaning-determining interpretation’ provides a definite starting point for interpretation. This viewpoint is challenged in Part 3 by an analysis of the practice of interpreting biblical texts (see Christiane Karrer-Grube’s contribution, in Chapter 7, this volume). More generally speaking, the contributions on religious practices of interpretation in Part 3 of this volume may point to a possible one-sidednesses of the philosophical round of discussion at stake here. Examples are the question of whether this round tends to neglect ontological concerns or is incapable of accommodating highly action-relevant practices of interpretation as prevailing in religion. In sum, allowing those religious practices of interpretation to ramify back onto this round of philosophical discussion may point to the possibility that this discussion has some ‘blind spots.’ Pointing to it possibly having ‘blind spots’ is obviously not meant to discard this philosophical round of discussion but to amend it. In particular, it is meant to alert us to the possibility that its origin in the theory of arts2 could be the cause of those ‘blind spots.’ More precisely speaking, what may be legitimate in the theorizing on the interpretation of artistic objects may turn out to

2 This round of philosophical discussion on interpretation is applied to and tested with the help of the interpretive practices as they prevail in the arts. The examples used usually stem from literature, visual art and music.

Introduction

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be a ‘blind spot’ when transferring this theorizing to other domains of inquiry, such as the religious one.3 My point is thus to raise our consciousness to the specifics of the domain of inquiry in question when we transfer this round of discussion to the religious domain. It is conceivable that the objects at stake in religion, say, sacred texts, have a different function in human life than artistic objects have, and that this may have repercussions for reconstructing the practice of interpretation in religion.

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As indicated above, Part 1 of this volume deals with foundational philosophical views on interpretation. They ‘set the tone’ for the following discussion. ­Lamarque’s and Krausz’s contributions were not only chosen because they deal with those foundational issues in an exemplary fashion but also because they differ at crucial junctures. I will summarize their basic argumentation beginning with Lamarque’s contribution. In On Why Interpretation Is a Problem for Philosophy of Art, Lamarque insists that interpretation is contingent upon the characterization of the object of interpretation. It has to be determined what kind of object is at stake if interpretation is to proceed successfully. According to Lamarque, different from natural objects, works of art (cultural objects in general) are, to some extent, constituted by how they are thought to be; i.e., what they are is partially a function of how they are thought to be. Human attitudes, desires, and emotions play an important role in their constitution. Thus, works of art are to be distinguished from objects: patches of paint, pieces of marble, sound sequences, and ink dots are all objects, ‘mere real things’ in Arthur Danto’s terminology. Yet, only paintings, statues, operas, and poems are truly works of art that require interpretation—at least, according to Lamarque’s use of the term. Thus, works are constituted by how they are taken 3 This is not to suggest that this philosophical round of discussion has not been applied to religious practices of interpretation previously. For examples, see Michael Krausz’s “Ideals and Aim of Interpretation” (Chapter 2, this volume) and Vibha Chaturvedi’s “Reflections on the Interpretation of Religious Texts,” in Interpretation and Its Objects. Studies in the Philosophy of Michael Krausz, ed. Andreea Deciu Ritivoi, 303–12 (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2003). But this is not the standard case. The exemplary cases in this round of the Anglo-American philosophical discussion on interpretation are typically chosen from the arts.

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to be by relevant interpretive communities, and thus, they are essentially embedded in cultural practices. However, proposing that works are embedded in cultural practices does not commit one to anti-realism, as Lamarque demonstrates with the help of the example of Paolo Veronese’s Feast in the House of Levi: Originally intended as a depiction of the Last Supper, officers of the Inquisition found the treatment too profane. But rather than modifying the painting itself, Veronese decided to change its title. Although it depicts a different scene after this change, the representational content remains identical. Even after the change of title, it continues to depict drunkards, dwarfs, etc. Anti-realist accounts that cannot accommodate this identity are highly counter-intuitive. Yet, Lamarque’s main point is not to defend realism, but to relativize overly sharp distinctions between realism and anti-realism in the theory of interpretation. He suggests that the anti-realist intuition that interpretation imputes properties to works has something going for it. In a sense, works are also created by interpretation. The key to relativizing the sharp distinction between realism and anti-­ realism lies in acknowledging the intentional and relational character of works. Given this character, the line between what is ‘discovered in’ and what is ‘imputed to’ is blurred. Works take on “different shapes under different assignments of salience and different interpretative perspectives”—a position that brings Lamarque close to Michael Krausz’s emphasis upon multiplism (see below). Krausz’s contribution The Ideals and Aim of Interpretation focuses first upon the distinction between singularism and multiplism: Singularists hold that only one interpretation is legitimate, multiplists that a variety of interpretations are legitimate. Multiplism acknowledges, “opposed interpretations need not logically exclude one another.” It relies on criteria such as reasonableness, appropriateness, and aptness rather than truth proper. Krausz discriminates the distinction between “singularism” and “multiplism” from that between monism and pluralism on the grounds that multiplism differs from pluralism in that it does not allow an unlimited number of interpretations to be legitimate (for further elucidation of this distinction, see the contributions by Hagberg and Grube in Chapter 4 and 6, this volume). In this context, Krausz makes a distinction between “determinative” and “ampliative” reasons. Determinative reasons are invoked to persuade an interlocutor of the admissibility of one interpretation over another. Ampliative reasons seek to justify why an interpretation is embraced, but does not try to bring the interlocutor over to one’s side. “Good reasons for preferences need not be sufficiently strong to unseat alternative interpretations as inadmissible.”

Introduction

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Krausz proposes that both singularism and multiplism presuppose the countability of the object(s) being interpreted. If the issue of countability, i.e. numerical identity, is not settled beforehand, conflicts between divergent interpretations cannot even arise, since, in that case, we cannot even be sure that they are competing interpretations of the same object. Thus, if the identity of the object being interpreted is not settled, the question whether there is one or many interpretations does not make sense. Krausz brings this point to bear upon religious concepts that deny countability, such as pantheistic concepts of the divine as undifferentiable (for example, the Atman in Advaita Vedanta). Finally, Krausz raises the issue of the aim of interpretation. Providing examples of edificatory experiences of creative artists, such as the ‘oceanic sensation of oneness,’ he scrutinizes the extent to which edification is an aim of interpretation. He suggests that it is a background motivation for elucidation but that edification and elucidation are ‘analytically distinct’ from each other. Different from Leddy, Krausz also distinguishes between interpretation and edification, the latter being a way to use interpretations. Thus, edification is not an aim of interpretation but its motivation.

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Part 2 contains in-depth reflections on the issues raised by Lamarque and Krausz and related issues. In his contribution Overcoming Dualism: Textual Meaning Discovered and Invented, Thomas Leddy is out to soften dichotomies in the discourse on interpretation. He attempts to overcome the dichotomies between interpretive discovery and invention, between text and work, and between interpretation and edification. Leddy argues that the dichotomy between interpretive discovery and invention or terminological equivalents are inadequate since informed by the imposition/fact dichotomy. Rather, good interpretive practices—Leddy calls them  ‘creative interpretations’—construct an integrated whole under the parameters of a certain perspective that makes certain themes and passages salient. Taking up Lamarque’s distinction between texts and literary works (see above, for Lamarque’s analogous distinction between objects and works), Leddy criticizes the “myth of the text.” He proposes that the notion of a text independent of the book does not make much sense, “abstract entities called ‘texts’ are not real.” “‘Text’ is just another name for ‘work.’” Leddy’s driving intention is to be faithful to (broadly) Gadamerian insights. The suggestion to get rid of texts is supposed to preserve the insight that ­objects

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are determined by their interpretation. This comes close to ­Gadamer’s ­concept of ‘Wirkungsgeschichte’ according to which the history of the r­ eception of texts determines what kind of object they are. I take it that this is the insight Leddy wishes to preserve. From this insight, he draws the conclusion that what ­Lamarque considers to be two, or even three different things, viz. texts and works (and books), are actually two or three different names for the same thing. Krausz has criticized Leddy’s notion of ‘creative interpretation’ and has suggested that we distinguish between interpretation and an edificatory use of it (see above). Leddy rejects this criticism, emphasizing that interpretation can cover the meaning of Krausz’s notion of edification—at least, if understood as a situation in which “the very act of interpretation is simultaneously taken as a transformative vehicle to heighten, for example, one’s religious or aesthetic sensibilities.” Leddy acknowledges the possibility of heightening one’s sensibilities but insists that this can be accomplished without introducing the notion of edification. At least, if this notion is understood as “first, one gets the meaning and only then does one go on to use it,” it is superfluous. Getting the meaning is intrinsically related to being edified.4 In assessing Leddy’s and Krausz’s contradictory views, it may be useful to raise the question whether each employs ‘edification’ differently: Leddy ­suggests that it would be odd to say that, in reading a religious text, a religious devotee is more interested in self-cultivation or oneness than in understanding the text. Is self-cultivation not supposed to be achieved through understanding the text? In response to Leddy’s challenge, one may wish to point out that this is indeed the case for the three Abrahamic religions with their rather ‘intellectualist’ approach to reading texts. Yet there are other approaches to reading texts, for example, ‘far-Eastern’ ones. I think of ways of reading, in which texts are considered to be vehicles for ‘self-cultivation,’ or, better, self-transformation. According to those ways of reading, the cognitive dimension of the text is subordinate to its potential to elicit proper non-cognitive responses. Examples are Eastern religious practices of meditating on a text, where the text’s main function consists in heightening the consciousness of its reader. In those cases, the text’s cognitive function is subordinate to non-cognitive functions of this sort. Thus, the question must be raised whether Krausz has such an approach to ‘understanding a text’ in mind. If so, this approach differs from Leddy’s. However, if both presuppose different notions of what ‘understanding a text’ means, their differences on edification may be reconcilable. 4 In this context, Leddy’s reconstructs Rorty’s use of ‘edification’ in terms of Gadamer’s ‘fusion of horizons’ (see Leddy’s “Overcoming Dualism,” (Chapter 3, this volume)).

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In his contribution, In Language, Beyond Words: Literary Interpretation and the Verbal Imagination, Garry Hagberg discusses Lamarque’s and Krausz’s views. Hagberg agrees with both of them and restricts himself to amending their views on some counts. His main intention is to work out the type of view he, Lamarque, and Krausz share in the terms provided by the philosophy of language as pursued in the twentieth century. In line with the stance of the later Wittgenstein, he emphasizes the context-dependency of meaning and defends this view against logical atomism. To that end, Hagberg emphasizes that meaning cannot be reduced to the sum total of reading individual sentences. He brings this point to bear upon the logical atomism that was prominent in the early days of the philosophy of language: Bertrand Russell and like-minded philosophers thought that any respectable account of meaning must proceed from the simplest carrier of meaning, viz. the word, and progress upward from there. The ideal of reference prevailing then was that of a one-to-one-relationship between language and world: (Simple) objects are referred to by one and only one word and states of affairs are depicted by one and only one proposition. More complex meanings, for example, the meaning of texts, are nothing but the sum total of the individual meanings. Hagberg shows that this atomistic ideal of meaning hopelessly miscasts everything we know about literary meaning and understanding. Although most serious current philosophers would reject such an atomistic account, Hagberg raises the question whether the inheritance of twentiethcentury philosophy of language works through implicitly and leaves us with too narrow a concept of meaning. Hagberg suggests to get completely rid of the idea that meaning-determination starts from simple units and then progresses to more complex ones. Instead, he suggests that we follow Wittgenstein’s leads and emphasize “imaginative cross-unit, or unit-transcending, contemplation from the start.” Construed in this way, meaning is central to literary theory—as Hagberg suggests in amending Lamarque’s views. Hagberg adds to Krausz’s insistence on evaluative criteria such as reasonableness, appropriateness, and aptness that, given an emphasis upon contextdependency, those criteria have to be considered as context-dependent also. Thus, what are considered to be reasonable criteria for the Marxist to judge an interpretation of van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters are not necessarily reasonable criteria for the Freudian. Even if the same terms are used, say, ‘reasonableness,’ they may mean something different. Thus, there are no context-neutral resources available to determine progress or interpretive success. Following Wittgensteinian leads, Hagberg proposes that understanding each other’s interpretations presupposes understanding each other’s languages. Interpretations of a work depend upon what has come before in the

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language-game we are playing, “what we have seen and said before and what we have seen as a result of what has been said.” In his contribution, Interpretation, Literature and Meaning Scepticism, John Gibson raises the question of what it might mean to be a “meaning skeptic” with respect to literature; i.e., the possibility that we can never rest assured that we possess the meaning of a literary work. He does not defend this kind of scepticism, but uses it as a means to gain deeper insights into the nature of literary works and the interpretive activities with the help of which their meanings are made available. Such an approach provides a new angle to classical concerns about the theorizing on interpretation, such as the question whether meanings are ‘constructed’ or ‘invented,’ and whether we are obliged to countenance a kind of “fictionalism.” Gibson uses the example of an Ideal Milton Scholar who has dedicated her life to understanding Paradise Lost and studied all theories in philosophy and literature on the meaning of this work. Meaning scepticism implies the ­intelligibility of raising the possibility that she is mistaken despite all her efforts. If this possibility is granted, it shows at a stroke that interpretation does not succeed in yielding the meaning of a literary work. Entertaining the ­possibility that even idealized interpretation can be mistaken in its meaning ascription presupposes that meaning depends on something other than interpretation alone. Meaning scepticism presupposes some kind of realist conception of meaning. Gibson considers “artifact meaning” as a search for meaning that looks beyond a literary work to the context of its production. He distinguishes it from a kind of meaning that is internal to a work, which generates an “imaginative space”; it conjures up a world or an environment of thought and feeling. Thus, he calls this “imaginative meaning.” This kind of meaning is a form of value ascription, which is concerned with significance and import. External issues, such as authorial intention or other information on the context of work do not matter in this case. Scepticism with regard to this kind of meaning is a form of self-doubt: its point is not so much that the meaning of a literary work could be wholly different from what we take it to be, but that our capabilities for ascribing meaning to it are insufficient, dull, incapable of capturing its complexity, or something of that sort. Issues of constructivism or related anti-realist concerns are idle in the face of this self-doubt. As Gibson says, “the question now is not so much whether an interpreter sees a work for what it is so much as whether she sees enough of what it is.” Gibson defines “fictionalism” as a stance we take toward basic claims in a given field of discourse as one of “make-belief” rather than belief. Defined in

Introduction

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this sense, there are epistemic and moral fictionalists, and even fictionalists in the philosophy of mathematics and religion. Fictionalism is required in all those areas of discourse that are indispensable to our cultural practices, but in which we have lost the grounds for committing ourselves to them. For example, we may find that numbers do not exist, but may continue to use them. Gibson finishes with an (admittedly provocative) endorsement of fictionalism in literary interpretation.

iv

In Part 3, issues raised by the philosophical reflections on interpretation in Parts 1 and 2 are taken up by people engaged with-or knowledgeable aboutreligious practices of interpretation. They ponder on what consequences the philosophical reflections have for those practices. Before summarizing the contributions to Part 3, I would like to emphasize two points again: First, the issue at stake is what consequences those philosophical reflections have for the religious inside-perspective rather than the outside-perspective. That is, the point is to analyze religiously committed practices of interpretation in light of those philosophical reflections. Second, I would like to point again to the concept of ‘reflective equilibrium’ as specified above: The application of theory to practice can ramify back onto theorizing. Thus, the application of philosophical theories to religious practices of interpretation can legitimately affect those theories. As will become clear in this part, their application does affect the theories proposed in the round of philosophical discussion at stake here: Their application to religion raises, at least, the possibility that this round possesses certain one-sidednesses and ‘blind spots.’ The first contribution, Characteristic Features of Interpreting Religious Texts: Applying Lamarque’s and Krausz’s Theorizing on Interpretation to Religion (Dirk-Martin Grube) is my own input to this part. In it, I take up three issues that are relevant in the round of philosophical discussion on interpretation at stake here and apply them to the practice of interpreting religious texts. The first is Lamarque’s suggestion that interpretation is dependent upon the ontology of the object being interpreted. I amend this suggestion by arguing that, in religion, it is often not only ontology per se but ontology plus epistemology that determines interpretation. The reason is that many religions hold a particular ontology, according to which God, or the transcendent, is of such a nature that he/it is cognitively inaccessible to a significant extent. This epistemic inaccessibility or unfathomability determines how interpretations of

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r­ eligious texts are to be reconstructed. For example, they can be reconstructed as not possessing the function to portray the transcendent reality ‘as is’ but, rather, to fend off the misconception that the transcendent could be ‘had,’ could be captured adequately in human language. Moreover, I delve into the way in which belief in certain kinds of religious objects creates a tension between empirical reality and intended ideal. According to those beliefs, there is a difference between the status quo and the religious ideal, whatever it consists in (nirvana, God’s kingdom, Paradise, the New Jerusalem, etc.). In light of this ideal, the status quo is interpreted as being deficient. Thus, it is evaluated in a negative fashion. Since evaluations provide reasons for action, interpretations of religious texts provide reasons for action. They are action-relevant. This action-relevance distinguishes religious interpretive practices from alternative ones, such as the interpretive practices prevailing in the arts: Whereas interpretations in the arts are more ‘handlungsentlastet,’ interpretations in religion are more strongly action relevant. The second issue I target is Krausz’s distinction between singularism and multiplism. I suggest that multiplism or pluralism—although being the most plausible stance in theorizing on interpretation—is more difficult to acknowledge in religion than in the arts. The reason is the strong action-relevance interpretations in religion have: this relevance is difficult to preserve under pluralist parameters. Moreover, the issues with which interpretations of religious texts deal are often existentially highly relevant or pertain to fundamental moral issues, such as questions of justice. This is the reason deviant interpretations in religion are more difficult to tolerate than deviant interpretations concerning, for example, questions of taste. Thus, the fact that interpretations in religion are actionrelevant plus existentially relevant make pluralism more difficult to accept in religion than in other fields of inquiry. The third issue I take up from the current philosophical discourse on interpretation is the issue of ‘works.’ As indicated above, Lamarque emphasizes that works are intentional objects, and Krausz emphasizes that intentional objects are “endowed with meaning or significance within a field of cultural codes, norms, or the like” (see below, this volume). I extend the question into the area of religion by asking in what sense religious objects, e.g. religious texts, are endowed with meaning. The answer is that they are endowed with special normative significance within their respective religious interpretive communities; for example, they are considered to be ‘sacred.’ Thus, they have the potential to influence the identity-formation and moral views of believers to a significant extent. As a consequence, interpreters of

Introduction

13

those ‘sacred’ texts hold a great amount of power in their hands. After all, their interpretations can influence the believers’ lives and conduct in a significant way. This amount of power exceeds the amount interpreters of secular texts hold in their hands. Therefore, it should be used with particular care and implies particular responsibilities on the side of those interpreters. Finally, I make clear that my intention is not to resuscitate singularism or monism but to warn against too radical forms of interpretive pluralism. The background for this warning is that, among interpreters of religious texts, there has emerged a tendency to embrace a form of pluralism, which is indistinguishable from interpretive anarchy. I warn against this tendency because it jeopardizes the crucial feature of interpretations in religion, viz. their actionrelevance. Thus, my point is that we should introduce pluralism into the practice of interpreting religious texts in a very considerate fashion. In her contribution Lamarque’s Theory of Interpretation and the Practice of Interpreting Biblical Texts: The Case for Semi-Generic Interpretations, Christiane Karrer-Grube applies Lamarque’s argumentation to the practice of interpreting religious texts. In particular, she scrutinizes how Lamarque’s distinction between generic interpretation and meaning-determining interpretation works when applied to the practice of interpreting texts from the Hebrew Bible. According to Lamarque, meaning-determining interpretation provides a firm starting point for the process of interpretation, which is provided by the author’s intention. The author determines the generic categories to which a work belongs, for example, its language and genre. Those categories guide the understanding to a good extent and restrain the range of legitimate meanings. Generic interpretation is necessary when the genre is not fixed (as, for example, when we receive a message in a bottle flushed ashore and we know nothing about its context). According to Lamarque, meaning-determining interpretation is the standard case; generic interpretation is the exception. Taking up Lamarque’s remarks on the notion of ‘biblical passage,’ KarrerGrube asks to what extent this notion is a generic category. The answer is that it is such a category, but in a sense that deviates from how Lamarque defines this term: rather than being determined by the author, this generic category is, to a good extent, determined by the recipient. For example, if recipients read particular passages of the Hebrew Bible from a Jewish religious point of view, their interpretations will differ from those of Christian recipients. For example, a ‘Messianic passage’ (for example, Isaiah 11:1–5) might be read by a Christian as pointing to Jesus Christ, but by a Jew as pointing to a Messiah who will rescue the Jewish people. Also, categorizing a passage as a ‘biblical passage’ can add meanings rather than restrict the range of possible meanings. An example is the Song of Songs, which was originally a collection of secular love songs,

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which took on religious meaning only after it had been included in the biblical canon. Obviously, we should attempt to collect as much information on the process of text production as possible by, for example, archeological evidence, evidence from surrounding cultures, and information from the texts themselves (say, about its genre or the author). Yet, in the case of biblical texts, this yields often inconclusive results, as Karrer-Grube demonstrates using the story of the sacrifice of Jephta’s daughter (Judges 11:29–40) as an exemplar. The translation of some terms of this story has been contested, among them, terms that make a difference with regard to the interpretation of the whole story. The problem is that the text is written in an ancient language, Hebrew, which is not spoken any more. So, the correctness of translations cannot be checked independently (say, by inquiring with native speakers). Furthermore, the authorship of this story has been contested. Thus, the question what this story’s climax, its point is, is contested as well. Drawing conclusions from her analyses, Karrer-Grube suggests the category, ‘semi-generic interpretation.’ This category differs from Lamarque’s ‘meaningdetermining interpretation’ in that it does not provide a definite starting point for interpretation. Nor is it equivalent to Lamarque’s ‘generic interpretation,’ since biblical texts are more than ‘bare sets of sentences without context.’ Mostly, we can get some information on the context of production of a biblical text from historical research, the analysis of its language and its genre. Thus, Karrer-Grube suggests that we rely on semi-generic interpretations as a middle ground between Lamarque’s two categories. According to her, semi-generic interpretations are the standard case when interpreting texts from the Hebrew Scriptures. In his contribution, Some Reflections on Michael Krausz’s Account of Meaning and Interpretation, Pradeep Gokhale takes up Michael Krausz’s account. He critiques Krausz’s views on interpretation from the point of view of Far-Eastern practices of interpreting religious texts. In particular, Gokhale targets the distinction between singularism and multiplism and analyzes on what side of this distinction the Vedantic school of the Indian religions fall. He argues that this school falls on the side of singularism. The different schools of Vedānta regard their particular interpretation of the Upaniṣads as the only correct one and competing interpretations to be mistaken. They think that the text, which has normative relevance within their religious community, has a single and consistent meaning. Even complex texts as the Bhagavad Gītā are supposed to have one single meaning. Gokhale explains that, in order to achieve consistency, the concept of samanvaya (‘reconciliation of (apparent) inconsistencies’) is used.

Introduction

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Next, Gokhale makes a case for the possibility of a multiplism within singularism, using the example of interpretations of the Bhagavad Gītā as either a path of devotion, or of action, or of knowledge (although he acknowledges that most religious interpreters would try to synthesize all three paths). Another example is the distinction in Mahāyāna Buddhism between the message of the Buddha being literally meaningful and being derivatively meaningful: the former is intended for intellectually and spiritually advanced people, the latter is the ‘lower message of the Buddha.’ I would like to point out that Gokhale must presuppose here that both messages truly differ in content. Only if they do, the issue of multiplism versus singularism can arise. Yet, if both messages would not differ in content but would rather contain the same content, only mediated in a different fashion because being directed at different target groups, the issue of multiplism does not arise. At least, according to my understanding of the term, the issue of multiplism can arise solely in cases in which interpretations differ in substance, not when they only differ in the way they are communicated. Finally, Gokhale targets Jainism. An important aspect of Jaina philosophy, in particular of its doctrine of syādvāda, is to accommodate multiple interpretations within a holistic framework. For example, Jaina philosophers allow the statement “The soul is permanent” as well as “The soul is impermanent.” Yet, they distinguish between different respects in which both seemingly contradictory statements can be true: With respect to its essential features, i.e. consciousness, the soul is permanent. Yet, with respect to its changing features, such as transmigration, the soul is impermanent. In conclusion, Gokhale uses the Jaina allegory of seven blind persons, each asked to describe an elephant. Each of them touches a different part of the elephant and, consequently, describes it in different terms. The point of this well-known allegory is that each of them expresses a partial truth but thinks erroneously to possess the whole truth. Gokhale suggests that Jainists would apply the point of this allegory to Krausz’s example of various (formalist, Marxist, feminist) interpretations answering simultaneously to van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters: those interpretations reveal partial truths but claim erroneously to possess the whole truth. The whole truth, however, should reconcile those different interpretations. Gokhale suggests that this would be a case of multiplism within a framework of singularism. Those illuminating examples from a non-Abrahamic religion reveal the sense in which many interpretations of religious texts are ultimately committed to singularist presuppositions, and that the way in which they are is of a nuanced nature: singularism can serve, for example, as a catalyst to perceiving

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seeming contradictions as reconcilable within a higher synthesis. A question worth pursing is how Gokhale’s suggestion of a ‘multiplism within the framework of singularism’ fares in light of Krausz’s reference to a regulative sense in which singularism can be distinguished from multiplism on regulative grounds and those grounds imply conducting inquiry as if only one or as if only more than one interpretation exists.5 5 See Krausz’s “The Ideals and Aim of Interpretation,” (Chapter 2, this volume).

Part 1 Foundational Reflections on Interpretation

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chapter 1

On Why Interpretation is a Problem for Philosophy of Art Peter Lamarque

University of York

First of all, interpretation is a problem for philosophy of art, fairly obviously, because it is both indispensable in discussions of art yet is a contested concept. It is indispensable because works of art are, for reasons we shall see, essentially objects of interpretation; that is, they are the kind of entities that as part of their very nature invite and reward interpretation. The concept is contested because there appear to be at least two fundamentally different species of interpretation both of which have a special claim on art yet seem to be incompatible. Secondly, there is a problem about circularity. Modes of interpretation are determined by, and relative to, the kinds of objects being interpreted. We know how to proceed with interpretation and what constraints apply only when we know what kind of object we are dealing with. Yet what kind of object works of art are is itself contested not because there is no settled definition of art but because there is no agreed ontology of art. Decisions about ontology determine the appropriateness of styles of interpretation, yet intuitions about interpretation often drive theories of ontology. This paper attempts a balancing act: trying to match up a conception of interpretation with a conception of the ontology of art without giving undue priority to one over the other. The principal focus is on what might be called the metaphysics of interpretation. My concern is with the kinds of objects towards which interpretation is appropriately directed and the kinds of properties that interpretation identifies. It might be thought at the outset that the enquiry is flawed precisely because there is no single enterprise called interpretation and both the objects and properties involved are heterogeneous. In fact the varied nature of the objects of interpretation and correspondingly the varied forms that interpretation can take will be one of my central themes. Nevertheless, focusing on cultural artefacts in general and works of art in particular, I think there is a legitimate question to be raised which I am inclined to put in a Kantian formulation, namely: how is interpretation possible? To get an idea of what is at stake in that question and in the metaphysical enquiry that underlies it, let me start with a subsidiary question: What is the relation between the properties of an object and an interpretation of that © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004325241_003

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object? Here we first encounter our incompatible species of interpretation. It might seem natural to suppose that any genuine properties of an object are antecedent to any competent interpretation, indeed that the role of the latter is to disclose or bring to light the former. Interpretation, on this view, recovers such properties as are in an object but are not immediately apparent.1 Such a conception is motivated by a realist intuition: things are as they are independently of how they are thought to be. Interpretation aims at truth. A more radical supposition, however, is that at least some of an object’s properties, in some cases, are constituted by interpretation—they come into being only through interpretation. On this view, interpretation is constructive, helping literally to create objects of interpretation.2 The motivating intuition here is anti-realist or constructivist. Must there be a conflict between these two intuitions? A simple solution might be just to settle for two species of interpretation, the truth-seeking kind that reveals hidden properties and is essentially a mode of exploration and discovery (call it revelatory interpretation) and the constructive kind that enlarges and offers new perspectives but strictly neither describes an antecedent reality nor aims at truth (call it creative interpretation).3 To the extent that these are distinct and recognizable species, they conform to different demands we make on interpretation. Sometimes we expect interpretation to tell us what an object is really like, to show us something we have missed about the object; at other times that enquiry can seem altogether too pedestrian for we expect an interpretation to be fresh, original, and imaginative, showing us not hidden facts but new possibilities. Interpretation in musical or dramatic performance provides obvious instances of the latter. 1 A clear defence of such a view is found in Robert Stecker, Artworks: Definition, Meaning, Value (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997; and “The Constructivist’s Dilemma,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 55:1 (Winter), 43–52; it is also defended in different chapters in Jerrold Levinson, The Pleasures of Aesthetics: Philosophical Essays (Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 1996). 2 The view is presented in Joseph Margolis, “Reinterpreting Interpretation,” in Contemporary Philosophy of Art: Readings in Analytic Aesthetics, edited by John W Bender & H Gene Blocker (Englewood Cliffs, nj: Prentice Hall, 1993), 454–70; and in What, After All, Is a Work of Art? (University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 1999); Michael Krausz defends a similar view in Rightness and Reasons: Interpretation in Cultural Practices (Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 1993). 3 Some such distinction is acknowledged in Jerrold Levinson: “Two Notions of Interpretation,” in Interpretation and Its Boundaries, edited by Arto Haapala & Ossi Naukkarinen (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1999), 2–21; in Eddy Zemach, Real Beauty (University Park, pa: Penn State University Press, 1997), 117; and in Peter Jones, Philosophy and the Novel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975).

On Why Interpretation is a Problem for Philosophy of Art

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Unfortunately distinguishing these two species of interpretation in itself does little to illuminate the problem originally posed, which is a problem about an object’s properties and where, as it were, those properties reside. While it might be true that some interpretation is revelatory and some creative, it is clear, for one thing, that not any creative interpretation is as good as any other. What constrains acceptable interpretations of any kind is surely nothing other than the properties of the object itself. And an object must have some properties in itself—some identity conditions—in order to be identifiable as an object of attention. We demand of creative interpretation not perhaps that it be true of the work but at least that it be true to it. Yet how are we to draw the distinction between what is revelatory and what is creative if we do not already know what properties truly belong to an object? It looks as if the realist intuition cannot simply be abandoned in favour of the anti-realist one, even in the most promising cases. But if the two species of interpretation are applicable to one and the same object then merely drawing that distinction will not tell us any more about how properties relate to interpretations. It is arguable that the distinction between the two kinds of interpretation, with their corresponding intuitions, already presupposes a distinction between different kinds of objects and even different kinds of properties. I will sketch out a view about those objects and properties, one that I hope can reconcile tensions if not contradictions in our common suppositions about interpretation. I will defend—or at least adopt as a working constraint—the realist i­ntuition about objects, that they are identifiable and possess intrinsic properties independently of interpretation (even if subject to interpretation). But I also will defend a moderate version of creative interpretation allowing that some properties of some kinds of objects are the product of, and are not antecedent to, interpretation. A few more preliminaries about interpretation. The first, as I indicated earlier, is that different kinds of objects invite different kinds of interpretation. We should not assume in advance that every object of interpretation is subject to the same methods of interpretation: a poem, a dream, a distant energy surge in the universe, eccentric behaviour at a party, a cryptic remark, evidence at a murder scene, a Rorschach blot, a quatrocentro painting, a Biblical passage, and a judgment of the Supreme Court, might all invite interpretation but the constraints on how an interpreter might proceed cannot be assumed to be the same in the different cases. Secondly, more controversially, interpretation cannot proceed, certainly cannot be successful, without prior determination of the kind of thing being interpreted. Interpretation in that sense need not go all the way down but in most cases can only begin after a preliminary categorisation. Completely unfamiliar or unclassifiable objects are usually uninterpretable.

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Thirdly, it is important to retain some kind of distinction between interpretation and description. Interpretation arises only where an object’s significance is unclear or not obvious, where there is a need to ‘make sense’ of something.4 You don’t need to interpret my comment ‘It’s a nice sunny day’ unless you think it is something other than a passing pleasantry about the weather. Let us now return to objects and their properties, beginning with, as it were, ‘ordinary’ objects: plants, animals, planets, mountains. It is common to divide properties of such objects into two broad classes: intrinsic and relational (or extrinsic). The terms are not clearly defined but the idea of the two classes is reasonably straightforward. Intrinsic properties are those that belong to the object per se, apart from the relations that it stands in with other objects. They are not context-sensitive; being ‘in’ the object they persist from context to context. Some intrinsic properties are essential, without which the object would not be the object that it is, some are non-essential or contingent. Often the difference between essential and non-essential intrinsic properties is explicable in terms of determinable and determinate properties. Extended objects, like the ones mentioned, have spatial properties—size, shape, volume, and so forth—essentially but particular sizes, shapes or volumes only contingently. Properties of objects bearing on their microstructure and the nature of their constituent elements are also intrinsic and might themselves be essential or non-essential. Relational or extrinsic properties, in contrast, can take different forms. They include simple relations with other objects: next to, bigger than, owned by, parent of. They also include intentional properties, deriving from the attitudes, desires, thoughts and fears they invoke in human beings: desirable, frightening, inspiring, dangerous. A subclass of intentional properties are aesthetic properties, which can be possessed by natural objects as well as artistic artefacts. Aesthetic properties also admit of a relational analysis, relating lower-level perceptual properties of objects and the responses of informed and appropriately-placed perceivers.5 In the case of ordinary or ‘natural’ objects only a small, highly restricted, class of relational or extrinsic properties 4 The point is rightly emphasized in Annette Barnes, On Interpretation (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), 26. 5 As John Bender puts it (about works of art, although the view is generalisable): “a work’s having an aesthetic property, F, such as grace, power, or starkness, is for it to have some set of (other) features and relations which makes the work evoke in some relevant class of perceivers or critics certain responses and judgments, including the judgment that it is appropriate to call the work F”: John W. Bender, “Realism, Supervenience, and Irresolvable Aesthetic Disputes,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 54 (1996), 371.

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are ­essential—for example, the necessity of origins—and almost certainly no intentional or aesthetic properties. Normally relations that objects stand in to other objects, including the responses they invoke in people, are merely ­contingent. The objects could retain their identity even if those relations do not hold. The contrast with cultural objects (and works of art in particular) is striking and illuminating. With natural objects there seems little room for interpretation other than the strictly exploratory or scientific. The intrinsic properties of objects might be hard to discern and might at some level be theory-laden to a high degree but the thought that the properties themselves, as opposed to the characterisation of those properties, might be radically variable relative to human interpretive schemes or actually be constituted by interpretation, as claimed for cultural objects, has little intuitive appeal—except to the most extreme anti-realist. Works of art seem altogether more intimately related to interpretation. As cultural objects they have intentional and relational properties as part of their very core of being. At a fundamental level how they are is partially a function of how they are thought to be; without human attitudes, beliefs, desires, emotions or meanings, and in general states of mind that need to be represented, expressed, symbolized, or made sense of, there would be no works of art. Here then are a peculiar species of object wholly dependent on the practices from which they arise, the cultures which give them significance and the individuals for whom they are of interest and value.6 In this sense, they are intrinsically intentional and relational. On the face of it, then, the distinction between intrinsic and relational properties, paradigmatically attributable to natural objects, cannot apply in any straightforward way to cultural objects. I want to build on this distinction between natural objects and cultural ­objects, along with their characteristic properties, both sharpening the distinction and in other respects drawing the two sides together. To avoid further confusion over the use of the word ‘object’ in both contexts, I will talk of ‘objects’ on the one hand and ‘works’ on the other, with the focus on works of art, very broadly conceived, as paradigm instances of cultural objects. For every work there is necessarily a corresponding object, in a sense to be defined; the object constitutes the work but is not identical with it. Thus the statue—a work—is constituted by a piece of marble—an object—but is not identical with that piece of marble. They have different identity conditions. The piece of marble could exist without the statue existing and quite radical changes in the marble, through deterioration and restoration, do not necessarily result in changes in 6 For more details, see Chapter 3 “Work and Object,” in Peter Lamarque, Work and Object: ­Explorations in the Metaphysics of Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

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the statue (it remains the same statue). There could even be essential properties of the statue, including being a statue or being a representation of Marcus Aurelius, which are not essential properties of the marble. That very same piece of marble might not have been a representation at all. So how should we distinguish object and work? I invest the term ‘object’ with very permissive ontological significance. In the art context, patches of paint, pieces of canvas, colour and line configurations, or pieces of marble are objects; so too are strings of sentences or texts; abstract entities also count as objects, including in the case of music sound-sequence types, of the kind characterised by Jerrold Levinson.7 I accept that sound-sequence types per se—as distinct from what Levinson calls initiated types—are eternal, so on my view some objects, in this extended sense, are both abstract and eternal. Some objects are naturally occurring, wood, marble; some are human creations, plastic, colour mixes. By ‘object,’ I have in mind something like Arthur Danto’s ‘mere real thing,’ although without the extra baggage that comes with his theory.8 I share with Danto the intuition that the existence of an object, in this sense, or a ‘mere real thing,’ is never sufficient for the existence of a work. Works are underdetermined by their physical or structural properties, or, put more strongly, there are possible worlds where, for any given work in this world, a structurally isomorphic object (or type) exists that is not a work at all or not that work. What about works themselves? Here I am thinking of paintings, etchings; musical works; sculptures; as well as literary, philosophical, or historical works. These are human creations; they depend on human intentions and cultural conditions. They are intentional objects not only because they owe their origins to intentional acts but also because their identity conditions, as I have said, are partly determined by how they are taken or thought to be by relevant cultural communities. They are essentially relational in the sense that they are essentially embedded in cultural practices. This has strong implications, not always noticed, for their survival conditions. They cease to exist when there is no longer the possibility of their eliciting the appropriate kinds of responses among suitably qualified respondents. When they cease to be identified as works, and cease to be understood, appreciated, and valued as works, they cease to exist as works. This has the surprising consequence that a work might no longer survive even though the object that constitutes the work has survived.9 In principle, a painted canvas that once constituted a work of visual 7 See Jerrold Levinson, “What a Musical Work Is,” Journal of Philosophy 77(1980), 5–28. 8 See Arthur C. Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1981). 9 This point is defended in Chapter 3 “Work and Object,” in Peter Lamarque, Work and Object.

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art (a painting) could exist even though the work, the painting itself, do longer exists because it has lost its cultural embedding. Similarly a written text could survive even though the literary work it once constituted has been lost. Let us return to interpretation. I have said that works are underdetermined by their physical properties. Two indiscernible physical objects could constitute radically different kinds of works or perhaps no works at all. So merely confronting a physical object—say, a painted canvas, or a piece of marble—is not enough to ground an interpretation. Too many interpretations are compatible with the mere physical facts to make any meaningful interpretation possible. Only when we know that it is a work, indeed a work of a certain kind, do we know how to start the interpretive process. This inclines me to suppose that it is works not objects that are the bedrock of interpretation at least in standard cases. We mustn’t be blinded here by the ease with which—given familiar cultural conditions—we are able to identify works as works. That should not lead us to suppose that the work simply is the object that we see. To recognize a work as a work—a coloured canvas as a painting, a text as a poem (i.e. intentional objects conforming to cultural practices)—presupposes a fairly complex cultural background. The only—rather special—sense in which interpretations apply directly to objects is the sense in which artists project an interpretation onto an object—perhaps a ‘found object’—in order to render it into a work. It is in this sense, and only in this sense, that Arthur Danto sees works as functions of interpretations on objects.10 But Danto’s theory does not imply that the interpretations of appreciators are directed at objects rather than works. We have to know both that something is a work and broadly what kind of work it is to begin interpretation. What about the tension we noticed earlier between the identity conditions of a work being sufficiently robust to provide a stable object of interpretation and the possibility that some properties of works are constituted by, not antecedent to, interpretations? This of course is an instance of the familiar hermeneutic circle. But in distinguishing objects and works we now have better resources for approaching the whole question of what properties belong to a work and what properties are imputed to it through interpretation. Because works are culturally embedded, dependent on and identifiable through cultural practices, they already have intentional and relational properties as part of their very nature (if it didn’t sound so paradoxical we might insist, as hinted earlier, that such properties are intrinsic to works). Works are, as it were, inseparable from their cultural wrappings, so features of these ‘wrappings’ can 10

Arthur C. Danto, The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 39.

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be thought to ‘belong to’ the works themselves. Thus properties deriving from how works are taken or thought to be can be part of the identifying conditions of works. It is perhaps here that revelatory and creative interpretations come closest together, where the former discloses properties present in a work and the latter generates such properties. But I don’t want to give the impression of too sharp a line that clusters on the one side objects, intrinsic properties, revelatory interpretation and realist intuitions about truth, and on the other side works, intentional properties, creative interpretation and anti-realist intuitions. The position is more complicated and interesting than that. For one thing there is still room for realist intuitions in talking about works even if they need to be refocused. I have suggested that the identifying conditions of works rest essentially on how they are thought to be so the realist divide between what something is and what it is thought to be does not immediately apply. But once a work has been accepted as such within a relevant cultural practice a kind of realism about its properties is possible. Consider an example like Paolo Veronese’s Feast in the House of Levi (1573, Venice, Accademia). No doubt if we were to remain at the base level of physical marks—mere brush strokes and colour configurations—while we could expect agreement on the intrinsic properties of the object, no inference could be drawn, at this level, about the representational nature of the work or even whether it is a work in that culture-laden sense. That’s the underdetermination point. But once categorised as a representation—this being a starting point for, not a product of, interpretation—then questions arise about what is being represented. Veronese intended the work to depict the Last Supper but officers of the Inquisition found the treatment too profane and ordered the artist to repaint sections of it. Rather than following their orders Veronese simply changed the title to Feast in the House of Levi. It might seem then that a lingering uncertainty remains about the subject matter and exactly which figures from the Gospel are depicted. It might not be too far-fetched to stipulate that after the change of title there are now two distinct works embodied in the single canvas. But nevertheless there are undisputed truths about the representation. The Inquisitors complained that the painting depicted “buffoons, drunkards, German soldiers, dwarfs, and similar scurrilities”. Except for the evaluative bit at the end, everyone, Veronese included, could agree about this representational content, even if there is an uneasiness about what scene exactly is depicted. Pursuing this realist line, just because certain properties of works are not obvious to any but the suitably informed does not imply that they are matters of dispute or subject to mere hypothesis rather than truth or that they

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are not, in the relevant sense, objectively present as characterising features of the work. An example might be the complex iconography in Western medieval painting. The depiction of saints or allusions to Biblical events or other kinds of symbolism are matters of objective fact, given well-established cultural conventions, even if accessible to us only through interpretation. This, of course, is revelatory, not creative, interpretation. It seems plain that we can retain realist intuitions even when talking of works. However, the anti-realist intuition that interpretation imputes properties, thereby helping to construct works, is of fundamental importance in thinking about works, even if it has little or no role in thinking about objects per se. Creative interpretation is rooted in artistic practice. First, for example, it is through a species of creative interpretation that an artist endows otherwise inert matter—paint, marble, words, sounds—with intentional properties and thus transforms objects into works. This is the basis for Danto’s notion of the transformative power of interpretation, which I alluded to earlier: “Indiscernible objects become quite different and distinct works of art by dint of distinct and different interpretations, so I shall think of interpretations as functions which transform material objects into works of art.”11 But we can go further, for creative interpretation is not restricted to artists themselves. Critics too can have a transformative role in the appreciation of art; like artists, they too must employ the imagination in their response to art. Creative interpretation must supplement the revelatory kind. It is in the nature of the practice of art that appreciators engage imaginatively with works, projecting fruitful ways they might be seen or heard or read or performed. This is creative interpretation for it is constrained not by simple facts about what is ‘contained in’ but by imaginativeness and possibility. The best creative interpretations are those that take the established aspects of works, those elements intrinsic to the works, and find new saliences for them,12 or new ways of thinking about the work’s themes, motifs, or symbolic or figurative aspects. Does this activity genuinely add to the work or just play games with it? One reason for thinking it does expand the very conception of the work is that works, as intentional objects, bear with them the critical tradition that develops round them. This is partly a consequence of the practice of art, which invites critical engagement, but is also partly connected to the intentional nature of art, whereby, as we have seen, what they are is partially a function of what 11 Danto, The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art, 39. 12 The idea of interpretation as the assignment of saliences is developed by Michael Krausz in Rightness and Reason: Interpretation in Cultural Practices (Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 1993).

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they are thought to be. Of course not any creative interpretation establishes a critical tradition. Only the best, most exciting, imaginative, or illuminating do so. But these imputations enlarge a work, they show ways in which indeterminacies can be filled out, they change the way a work is conceived and if they become canonical there is no going back; the work grows into this new conception. What begins as a mere possibility develops into a realisation and this becomes another route from ‘imputed to’ to ‘in’ or ‘part of.’ Let me reflect finally and briefly on two examples, which illustrate again the distinction between work and object and the role of discovery and creation in interpretation. The first, the face/vase ambiguous drawing, is discussed by Michael Krausz himself.13 Something analogous to the object / work distinction might be seen in the drawing (Figure  1.1). The object aspect of the configuration consists in the simple physical marks on the page. These can be described and characterised in physical or geometrical terms (they can be measured and reproduced) but characterised merely as marks they remain neutral as to interpretation. I suggested earlier than being open to any interpretation they can in a sense yield no interpretation. However, taken, as they almost inevitably are when we look at them, as a depiction of a certain kind we see the lines as constituting a ‘work’ (in a rather generous sense). If we know the conventions of works of this kind—ambiguous drawings—we will have little difficulty supplying the two standard interpretations, a vase in the middle or two faces at the sides looking at each other. Given the highly conventional nature of the example, it seems clear that this is a case of revelatory rather than creative interpretation. A creative interpretation would have to go beyond the conventional (and we might say intended) reading and reveal new possibilities. Perhaps by turning the picture sideways we might find a new aspect: say, a mountain range reflected in a lake. Should that seem plausible or striking it might come to attach to the work and become, as it were, part of a new aspect, fit for further attention, catching on rather as a successful metaphor solidifies into a familiar idiom. The work itself would have grown in complexity and interest.

Figure 1.1 Rubin’s vase or the figure-ground vase 13 Krausz, Rightness and Reason, 67ff.

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But in all cases we should note what is happening. Otherwise inert marks are given salience by being thought of in certain ways. The right hand zigzag line is thought of—and perceived—now as a forehead, nose and mouth, now as the edge of a vase. Are these properties in the lines or assigned to the lines? That was our original problem about the location of properties. But it seems the question is not well formulated for we need to ask first whether we are referring to the lines as properties of the mere object (the configuration) or as properties of the work (the ambiguous drawing). If we take the lines as mere physical marks then the face / vase aspects are indeed not ‘in’ the object per se; but if we take the lines as belonging to a work, then the intentional or meaning properties (depicting facial features, depicting the edge of a vase) are in the work. But because the work itself is an intentional object, the distinction between being discovered in and being imposed on is an artificial divide. Intentional objects are not natural objects waiting to be discovered and investigated but already are products of something like cultural imposition. As for the added interpretation—reflected mountain range—for the time being this looks as if it were an optional aspect but it might well settle down into an aspect demanding our attention. My second example is a literary one. I will not ponder it in detail but will show how very similar points can be made: both about object and work, about saliences, and about the role of interpretation in discovery or creation. Here is a well-known short lyric by William Blake, followed by a commentary: “The Sick Rose” (from Songs of Experience, 1794) O Rose, thou art sick. The invisible worm That flies in the night In the howling storm, Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy; And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy. Here is a critic’s commentary: It is immediately apparent that the rose which sickens is a mortal rose. The human rose is attacked by a worm which possesses a dark secret called love, and it is an evil power which destroys the life of the rose. The flower is attacked in its bed of crimson joy, and this last imageric phrase

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can only stand for the sexuality of the mortal rose. The argument of the ‘Sick Rose’ differentiates between love and sexuality. Love here is destructive, it is a nightforce, one of the links in the chain which binds delight in the ‘Earth’s Answer.’ But sexuality, the experience in the bed of crimson joy, is the very centre of the life of the rose. When it is attacked the flower sickens and dies. What then is the love that destroys it? Blake uses the word deliberately, and if we think of it as a counter in a commonly played game of communication we shall more clearly see his intention. He uses a personal expression to convey the experience of sexuality because it is something which he has discovered, as it were, for himself. But if he has discovered it, it is in spite of love as it is commonly called. Blake is concerned in this short poem with an incredible area of experience. In it sexuality is revealed as the basis of life, the social concept of love, as something destructive to life. Love in its social definition is a negative creed of secretive joyless forbidding; love in Blake’s experience is a vital matter of joy, open and sensuous.14 If we think of the ‘object’ here as the word and sentence sequences—i.e. the text—recognizably in the English language, then we might readily identity certain properties, in this case meanings, that are ‘intrinsic’ to it. ‘Night’ means night, ‘storm’ means storm, and so on. We take the words at their face value at the ‘object’ level. But the lines also comprise a poem, a ‘work’ of a distinctive kind, a cultural artefact that bears with it numerous conventional expectations and practice-bound modes of appreciation. To identify the word-sequence as a poem is to invite a certain style of reading that is radically unlike the reading responses invited by other kinds of texts, such as parking tickets, office memos, postcards from the seaside, or works of philosophy, history or social science. There is nothing in the word-sequence itself that demands it be read as a poem although the layout on the page, the metre and rhyme, the teasingly cryptic content, all suggest, defeasibly, this is indeed the invited mode. However, a similar, even type-identical, sequence could be assigned an entirely different function. Of course in this case there are more than sufficient clues as to the required response: the context, the author, the publication details, and so forth. To read the lines as a poem, thus as a work of literature or art, is necessarily to instigate those modes of interpretation conventionally associated with literary works. That is precisely what the critic in the quoted commentary does.

14

Wolf Mankovitz, “The Songs of Experience,” Politics and Letters (1947); rpt in Margaret Bottrall, ed., William Blake: ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience.’ A Casebook (London: Macmillan, 1970), 127–8.

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From the start the passage seeks metaphoric and symbolic meaning. The rose is not merely a garden rose but a ‘mortal rose,’ a ‘human rose.’ The bed of crimson joy is associated with sexuality and a distinction drawn between love and sexuality. A broad theme is attributed to the poem: “sexuality is revealed as the basis of life, the social concept of love, as something destructive to life”. Where do these symbolic and thematic meanings come from? They are not derivable in any simple way from the semantics of the words concerned; in that sense they are not obviously ‘in’ the text. Yet these symbolic meanings have been broadly accepted within the critical community (they have become an established, even if not universally agreed, reading of the poem). The question of how literary interpretations can be justified is a large and contested topic, well beyond the scope of this essay. But some brief ­observations relevant to our enquiry are in order. First, the matter of authorial ­intention. Our critical passage shifts somewhat uneasily between talk of the ‘argument’ in the poem to comments about Blake, the poet, and his ‘intention.’ But what exactly is the status of this claim: “He [i.e. Blake] uses a personal expression to convey the experience of sexuality because it is something which he has discovered, as it were, for himself”? Is it a biographical remark based on research into Blake’s life and beliefs? Or is it, as seems more likely, a view being attributed to the speaker in the poem, whether identified with the ­actual poet or not? References to ‘Blake’ seem not to lose anything if we substitute ‘the poetic speaker.’ If anywhere, it is in the poem itself that the personal ­experience is being discovered (or explored or worked out). Far more telling as to how to read that troubled phrase ‘dark secret love,’ the love that destroys the rose, is the reference, in this passage, not to Blake himself but to another of his ­poems, ‘Earth’s Answer.’ Intertextuality, resonance with other works, including ­allusion, is far more central to literary interpretation than direct appeals to (independently established) authorial intention. The trouble with intention in the strict psychological sense of an agent’s state of mind that serves to explain an action is that we are just as likely to discern an author’s intentions by examining the lines in the poem as we are to discern the meaning of the lines by examining the author’s intentions. A second point concerns salience. The critic finds that “bed of crimson joy … can only stand for the sexuality of the mortal rose”. Why ‘can only’? Where does the certainty reside? The argument seems to be that the symbolism and the connotations are not arbitrary but in some sense inevitable, given the poetic context. ‘Bed’ is not just a flower bed in which the rose grows but is a metaphoric bed of the kind that humans sleep in (after all the word ‘bed’ has both meanings); ‘crimson’ depicts not just any colour but is rich in familiar connotation, red being associated (conventionally – notably in poetic convention) with sex or lust or sin; ‘joy’ in this context (‘bed,’ ‘crimson’) is not just any pleasure but,

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arguably, the pleasure of sex. The connotations of these words become salient in the interpretation. Is the salience discovered or imputed? Rather than insisting on realist intuitions—is it true or false in some absolute or factual sense that these connotations (properties) are active in this context?—we should ask what follows from thinking of the words in this way. Does it fit with other elements in the work? Does it lead to a coherent and rewarding response? This is the creative or constructive aspect of interpretation that is deeply rooted in the tradition of poetic appreciation. Blake’s lyric has been subject to numerous readings, in different degrees ‘creative.’ Is there a significant connection with Matthew Prior’s short lyric ‘A True Maid’ (1721): “No, no; for my virginity, / When I lose that, says Rose, I’ll die: / Behind the elms, last night, cried Dick, / Rose, were you not extremely sick?” Might the phrase ‘the invisible worm’ refer to religion? Why does the poem say that the worm ‘flies’? Could there be a connection with Milton’s Paradise Lost, where Satan flies through Chaos to tempt Adam and Eve? Our concern is not with accepting or rejecting such interpretations but noting how naturally they arise in the context of poetic appreciation. Interpretations of other kinds of texts have their own peculiarities but reading poetry invites responses of this kind. I spoke earlier of how works of art can become enlarged through the critical tradition that grows up round them. This has happened with Blake’s ‘The Sick Rose’ a poem that has had as much attention as any lyric in the poetic canon. These multiple interpretations, offering new ways of reflecting on the content, have expanded the boundaries of the work. This is only possible given the kind of work it is. The practice of poetry invites thought, pleasure, imaginative leaps, new possibilities, new connections. It is integral to a poetic work—and to its success—that it sustain and develop responses of this kind. To the extent that this observation generalises across the arts—as I believe it does—it lends further support to Michael Krausz’s notion of interpretation inducing edification: “When living in or through a work one may be moved, enriched, or enlivened”.15 In conclusion, then, I have tried to take some tentative steps towards reconciling what seemed to be two incompatible perspectives on interpretation, one grounded in realist intuitions about properties inherent in objects, disclosed by interpretation, one grounded in constructivist intuitions postulating properties that arise out of interpretation. The key to the reconciliation lies in the peculiar nature of ‘works’ which possess intentional and relational properties as part of their very identity. For such works the line between what is ‘in’ and what is ‘imputed to’ is blurred. The very practice of engaging with such works 15

Krausz, “The Ideals and Aim of Interpretation,” (Chapter 2, this volume).

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essentially involves seeing them as ‘pliable’ entities,16 which assume different shapes under different assignments of salience and different interpretive perspectives. (Incidentally this brings with it a commitment to what Krausz calls “multiplism”.) Philosophers of art cannot make substantial progress in examining interpretation until they have a clearer understanding of the ontology of art, the kinds of objects works of art are. To insist on too close an analogy with simpler more tractable kinds of objects, such as those investigated by science, will only distort an enquiry into the appropriate modes of interpretation.17 16

17

The term comes from Torsten Pettersson, “The Literary Work as a Pliable Entity: Combining Realism and Pluralism,” in Michael Krausz, ed. Is There a Single Right Interpretation? (University Park, pa: Penn State University Press, 2002). An ancestor of this paper began life at a conference on Aesthetics from an Analytical Point of View at the University of Manchester, uk, in 2003. I reworked some of the material subsequently in my book Work and Object: Explorations in the Metaphysics of Art (2010) and there is a fairly substantial overlap here with passages in that book, but there is new material as well. The purpose of the paper in the present context has been to identify some fundamental issues about interpretation but also to outline some of my own thinking about the topic.

chapter 2

The Ideals and Aim of Interpretation Michael Krausz

Bryn Mawr College

In this paper I shall inventory topics connected with two ideals of interpretation that fall generally under what I take to be the aim of interpretation, namely elucidation. So understood, elucidation deals with uncovering the meaning or meanings of its objects of interpretation.1 I shall also briefly discuss whether edification should count as an aim of interpretation. My purpose is to offer a sketch of this philosophical terrain rather than extended arguments in defense of fixed conclusions. i

Two Ideals of Interpretation: Singularism versus Multiplism

Under the general aim of elucidation, I have distinguished between two contesting ideals of interpretation: singularism and multiplism.2 Singularists hold that for any object of interpretation—say, a work of art, music, or literature—only one single admissible interpretation exists. Multiplists hold that, for some objects of interpretation, more than one admissible interpretation exists. While singularists think of opposition between contending interpretations in exclusive terms, multiplists hold that opposition between contending interpretations need not be understood in exclusive terms. A multiplist allows that there may be opposition between some contending interpretations, but that that would be an opposition without exclusivity. In other words, multiplists allow that incongruent interpretations may be jointly defended. To paraphrase Joseph Margolis’s view, incongruent interpretations appear to be contradictory on a bi-valent logic, but they are not contradictory on a multivalent logic.3 For example, Vincent Van Gogh’s painting, The Potato 1 This view is compatible with the thought that the very concept of interpretation is essentially contested, in the sense developed by W.B. Gallie, “Essentially Contested Concepts,” in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series 56 (1955–1956), 167–98. 2 See, for example, Michael Krausz, Rightness and Reasons: Interpretation in Cultural Practices (Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 1993), 122–44. 3 Joseph Margolis, “Robust Relativism,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 35 (1976): 37–46. Reprinted in Philosophy Looks at the Arts, ed. Margolis (Philadelphia, pa: Temple

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004325241_004

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Eaters, answers simultaneously to formalist, Marxist, Christian, feminist, and psychoanalytic interpretations, among others. These respective interpretations oppose each other but they do not exclude one another. The difference between singularists and multiplists is reflected in their relative tolerances for opposed but not exclusive interpretations. Singularists think of opposition in bivalent terms, such that opposed interpretations contradict one another. In contrast, multiplists hold that opposition need not be understood in such bivalent terms. Opposed interpretations need not logically exclude one another other. Allowing that more than one opposed interpretation may be admissible, they deploy such multivalent values as reasonableness, appropriateness, or aptness. Multiplists allow that incongruent interpretations may be jointly defended. Notice that singularism and multiplism are asymmetrical in the sense that singularism mandates a single admissible interpretation for all objects of interpretation. In contrast, multiplism affirms that multiplist conditions may obtain in some but not all cases. Multiplism allows that some singularist conditions may obtain. Further, the interpretive tolerance afforded by multiplism is no invitation to anarchy. For while more than one interpretation may be admissible, still more are inadmissible. The multiplist is just as concerned as the singularist to jettison inadmissible interpretations. In addition, multiplism affirms that any progress toward convergence toward a narrow range of admissible interpretations need not mandate a single admissible interpretation. I have distinguished singularism from multiplism in an existential sense. They may also be construed in a regulative sense. The existential singularist holds that for any object of interpretation, a single admissible interpretation exists, while the existential multiplist holds that for some objects of interpretation, more than one admissible interpretation exists. In contrast, the regulative singularist holds that for any object of interpretation, inquiry should be conducted as if only one admissible interpretation exists, while the regulative multiplist holds that for some objects of interpretation, inquiry should be conducted as if more than one admissible interpretation exists. In short, regulative construals of these ideals do not entail existential construals. Accordingly, existential multiplists might find it useful to conduct inquire as if only one interpretation exists, for it might motivate them to narrow the range of admissible interpretations, even if not to a limit of one interpretation. Put otherwise, trying for a “singularly perfect” reading, for example, is not ­ niversity Press, 1978), 213–20; and Margolis, Interpretation Radical but Not Unruly: The New U Puzzle of the Arts and History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), ix.

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inconsistent with the belief that no such reading actually exists. Or reaching for a singularly perfect musical performance is not inconsistent with the belief that no such performance exists. Singularism and multiplism are mutually contradictory if both were taken in their existential sense. Yet the conjunction of an existential ideal with a regulative ideal does not result in contradiction. The regulative suggestion that one should behave as if each and every object of interpretation answers to a single admissible interpretation, or the regulative suggestion that one should behave as if some objects of interpretation answer to more than one admissible interpretation, contradicts neither existential multiplism nor existential singularism. The distinction between singularism and multiplism is not identical with the often drawn distinction between critical monism and critical pluralism.4 While singularism is identical with critical monism, critical pluralism is not identical with multiplism. In contrast to multiplism, critical pluralism characteristically takes no particular view about reasons for preferences amongst multiply admissible interpretations. Rather, multiplism holds that admissible interpretations may not be equally preferable and that good reasons may be offered for preferred interpretations. At the same time, such reasons do not result in a singularist condition. Consider a musical case: Good reasons might be offered for preferring Arturo Toscanini’s interpretation of Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 over that of Wilhelm Furtwängler (or vice versa) without disallowing either interpretation as inadmissible. Good reasons for preferences need not be sufficiently strong to unseat alternative interpretations as inadmissible. Having good reasons for preferences does not mandate singularism. We can sharpen this point by invoking a distinction between determinative and ampliative reasons. A determinative reason is one that is characteristically invoked to persuade an interlocutor of the admissibility of one interpretation over another. In contrast, an ampliative reason seeks to amplify upon, or to fill in, or to provide a rationale why someone embraces the interpretation that she does. It does not seek to bring an interlocutor over to one’s side. Rather, it provides an understanding as to why she embraces the view that she does. Vibha Chaturvedi provides a way to see that preferences with good reasons do not amount to singularism when she asks: 4 See, for example, Alexander Nehamas, “The Postulated Author: Critical Monism as a Regulative Ideal,” Critical Inquiry 8 (Autumn 1981), 133–49; and David Novitz, “Against Critical Pluralism,” in Krausz, Is There a Single Right Interpretation? (University Park: The Penn State University Press, 2002), 101–21.

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Can one say that there are good reasons for preferring one interpretation to others as implied by multiplism? Let me take the case of different interpretations of the same sacred text. You might say that if an interpretation can competently explain or account for the whole text or most of the text, that interpretation is preferable to others that fail to do so. But to expect that the preferred interpretation must account for the essential or more significant parts of the text is reasonable, even if it fails to do so with respect to large sections of the not so essential parts. There can be difference of opinion about what constitutes essential or most crucial parts…we can give reasons for favoring one over others. But these reasons in most cases may reflect the purpose or the preference of the person giving the reasons.5 As Chaturvedi says, an interpretation may be justified with good reasons to prefer one interpretation over another because it accounts for “the essential or more significant parts” of the text. Moreover, there may be a “difference of opinion about what constitutes essential or most important parts.” But further, what is “essential” or “significant” is characteristically contestable. Different people with different purposes may identify different features as more or less salient or significant—giving rise to different patterns of significance. Two interpreters may have good reasons for assigning salience in different ways. It is at this point that one would have to judge whether preference would be based on reasons relevant to the elucidation of a work. ii

Interpretive Strategies

When initially confronted with a case in which an object of interpretation seems to answer to two or more admissible interpretations, to install a singularist condition, the singularist might attempt to dismantle the case by pluralizing or bifurcating the object of interpretation. That is, an initially offered object of interpretation may be reframed in such a way that there would result two or more objects of interpretation. And for each of those reframed objects of interpretation, there would result one and only one interpretation of it. Two sets of singularist cases would result. Consider such a pluralizing maneuver that a singularist might deploy when confronted with a multiplist construal of the Van Gogh painting, for 5 Vibha Chaturvedi, “Interpretation of Religious Texts: Some Reflections,” in Interpretation and Its Objects, ed. Andreea Deciu Ritivoi (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003), 303–9.

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e­ xample. What the formalist takes as the object of interpretation will differ, it might be urged, from what the Marxist takes as its object of interpretation—­ notwithstanding the fact that such objects of interpretation may be embodied in the same physical canvas. The multiplist may counter that sometimes invoking such a pluralizing maneuver is misplaced, urging, indeed, that upon confronting two sets of apparently singularist cases, one ought to deploy the contrary strategy of aggregating their objects of interpretation into one such object. The formalist and Marxist interpretations would then be addressing a single common object of interpretation. A many-to-one relation between interpretation and their object of interpretation would be installed The strategies of pluralizing or aggregating objects of interpretation find their analogues in corresponding strategies of pluralizing or aggregating interpretations themselves. That is, confronting a multiplist condition, a singularist may seek to aggregate two or more interpretations to install a singularist condition. For example, a formalist and Marxist interpretation of The Potato Eaters, taken separately, may initially be taken to exemplify a multiplist condition. But the singularist might bring these together as one formalist-Marxist interpretation, claiming thereby that the object of interpretation answers to that one hyphenated interpretation. The strategies of aggregating and pluralizing objects of interpretation or aggregating and pluralizing interpretations themselves are mandated by no general rules for correct application. Rather, their appropriate deployment is a matter of piecemeal deliberation within the context of pertinent practices. iii

End of Inquiry

One might hold that, as interpretive ideals, both singularism and multiplism assume something like an end of inquiry, where all relevant arguments and information are in and are available. Yet, one might object that inquiry has no end; no such thing as an end of inquiry exists. Consequently, the very idea of an ideal cannot apply; therefore, neither singularism nor multiplism can apply. Nonetheless, we might still deploy a serviceable notion of an ideal of interpretation if we understand it as depending upon an agreement by qualified practitioners that all pertinent information is effectively in, where they can reasonably judge whether all pertinent information is in. Here the notion of “ideal” would be understood as a limiting concept. Pertinent ideals should be understood within pragmatic, provisional, and unfolding interpretive conditions. Of course, there may be significant disagreement about what a qualified

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practitioner is, about what information is pertinent, and about what judgments are reasonable. iv Countability Notice that both the singularist and multiplist conditions require that an object of interpretation must be countable. Absent the numerical identity of the object of interpretation, neither singularism nor multiplism could apply. Contending interpretations must address the numerically identical object of interpretation. Numerical identity of an object of interpretation must be secured before the possibility of conflict between contending interpretations can arise. What does this condition rule out? At minimum, it rules out some soteriological or religious conceptions of the divine that do not satisfy the requirement of numerical identity. They cannot qualify as objects of interpretation to which either singularism or multiplism might otherwise apply. Specifically, pantheistic conceptions of the divine as ineffable, undifferentiable, unbounded, indeterminate, and therefore uncountable, are not numerically i­ dentifiable and re-identifiable. For example, that to which the Advaita (non-duality) ­Hindu points as the divine is purportedly the Atman, the One, the Supreme Self. It is beyond numerality; it is not re-identifiable.6 Here is a story about how I came to recognize that re-identification of an object of interpretation is necessary for either singularism or multiplism to apply: On my first (of many) trip to India in 1992, I had the opportunity to interview numerous Hindu and Buddhist scholars and sages. One such sage embraced the Advaita orientation of Hinduism. I asked him whether—when inquiring about ultimate reality—he thought the Hindu and the Buddhist are talking about the same thing. His reply was quick and to the point: “Yes, the Hindu and the Buddhist are talking about the same thing. But the Buddhist is wrong.” A fortnight later, during a private audience with the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, I asked, “Is it true that the Hindu and the Buddhist are talking about the same thing?” The Dalai Lama unhesitatingly answered: “No, we are not talking about the same thing.” Of course, each of these thinkers might have construed my question in different ways to start with. Yet, those exchanges revealed to me that if two persons are not talking about the same re-identifiable thing, they would be talking past each other. In order to disagree, they must first be talking about the same 6 See Krausz, Oneness and the Displacement of Self: Dialogues on Self Realization (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2013).

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thing. Indeed, here were two persons effectively disagreeing about whether they were disagreeing with each other. Here is yet another possibility. Perhaps both respondents were wrong. Perhaps they should have said that they cannot say whether they are talking about the same thing. So they should have said that they cannot say whether they are disagreeing. The lesson I learned was that, if otherwise competing interpretations do not address a common numerically re-identifiable object of interpretation, they cannot conflict with one another. Let us further consider the revealing case of Advaita Hinduism. Advaita Hindus affirm that Atman answers to no numerical identity conditions. One who seeks self-realization must transcend all subject-object dualities. Vibha Chaturvedi reports that, according to Swami Vivekananda, the chief disciple of the Hindu saint Ramakrishna, “the ultimate aim of life is the realization of the Brahman where all consciousness of diversity and multiplism is negated.”7 Vivekananda seeks to transcend all dualisms. Where such realization actually obtains there can be no distinction between one or another would-be object of interpretation. The mantric refrain, “Thou Art That” is offered as assertive and transformative. Krishna Roy notes its dual roles when she reports: If we take the word ‘tvam’ (thou) in the sense of an empirical individual limited to its body and the word ‘tad’ (That) as the reality beyond the world, there cannot be…identity between ‘tvam’ and ‘tad.’… it is only the pure consciousness of the individual soul that is identified with that in the universal soul.8 Yet Roy adds, “The Indian philosopher does not stop short at the discovery of truth merely; he strives to realize it in his own outer and inner experience… [which] opens up the possibility of moksa or liberation.”9 So, the recitation of the refrain involves not only asserting that the individual conventional self is an embodiment of the Supreme Self, but it also functions as a transformative vehicle, leading one to experience oneself as tvam, as an embodiment of tad. The dual aim of the recitation is to grasp the assertoric content of the refrain— to the limited extent that it can be grasped in any language at all—and to bring 7 Chaturvedi, “Reflections on the Interpretations of Religious Texts,” 308. See also Swami ­Vivekananda Vedanta Philosophy: Eight Lectures on Karma Yoga (Hollister, mo: YogeBooks, 2010). 8 Krishna Roy, Hermeneutics: East and West. Jadavpur Studies in Philosophy, 2nd Series ­(Calcutta: Allied Publishers Ltd., 1993), 76–7. 9 Ibid., 131.

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the interpreter to a higher level of consciousness. Repetition of the refrain is understood to liberate one from the afflictions suffered by the conventional human self who, when unrealized, is subjected to the dualities of subject and object. More fully, the conventional individual self is an embodiment of the ineffable Supreme Self, the absolute Self, the Atman. The absolute Self is the One: the infinite, the indivisible, the immutable, the eternal, the free, the pure. Thus, self-realization is a process whereby an individual self comes to be aware that it is the cosmic Self, a process in which the individual self comes to experience itself as the Supreme Self. Moreover, an individual’s true Self is permanent and immortal. In the end, in an enlightened state, where, for the seeker, the duality between subject and object is transcended, elucidation itself is transcended. Accordingly, the Atman can be no object of interpretation. It can answer to neither singularism nor multiplism. v

Object and Work

So far, I have been using the phrase, “object of interpretation” to mean an intentional object. In the phrase, “intentional object,” we should not take “object” as signifying a reified entity, an object as such. Intentional objects are endowed with meaning or significance within a field of cultural codes, norms, or the like. They are objects upon which meaning has been conferred, presented as having the meaning they do. Intentional objects are nodes of culturally endowed complexes. Peter Lamarque understands works as intentional objects. He says that works: are human creations; they depend on human intentions and cultural conditions. They are intentional objects not only because they owe their origins to intentional acts but also because their identity conditions are partly determined by how they are taken or thought to be by relevant cultural communities…They cease to exist when there is no longer the possibility of their eliciting the appropriate kind of responses (being identified, being understood, being appreciated, being valued) among suitably qualified respondent.10

10

Peter Lamarque, “Object, Work and Interpretation,” in Interpretation and Culture: Themes in the Philosophy of Michael Krausz, ed. Michael McKenna, special ed. of Philosophy in the Contemporary World, 12, no. 1 (Spring–Summer 2005), 5–6; emphasis added.

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To accommodate non-intentional as well as intentional objects—rather than embrace a two-tiered structure between interpretation and object of ­interpretation—should we not embrace a three-tiered structure, one that ­includes interpretation, intentional objects and associated objects as such? Lamarque thinks so. He formulates his tripartite framework this way. He says: My tripartite scheme, for artworks, is between object, work, and interpretation. Interpretations apply strictly to works, not to objects per se…so I believe there could be multiple interpretations of works. But I don’t think there are interpretations of objects, as such, except in a rather ­special sense…Works are necessarily associated with some object or ­other… but they are not identical with the objects that constitute them. The statue is not identical with the piece of marble, because they have different identity conditions.11 In contrast, Richard Shusterman denies any ontological standing to objects as such with which works are (for Lamarque) “necessarily associated.” For Shusterman, there is no difference in kind between works (intentional objects) and their associated objects, for: any distinction between describing and interpreting (as between understanding and interpreting) can only be relative and formal. It must be a pragmatic, shifting, heuristic distinction, not an unchanging one which would provide a firm and incorrigible core of determinate truth for simple and final description. In other words, it is not that we all agree how to describe the facts and differ only in what interpretation we elaborate from them. It is rather that the descriptive facts are simply whatever we strongly agree upon, while interpretations are simply what commands less consensus and displays (and tolerates) wider divergence.12 For Shusterman, would-be objects as such turn out to be intentional objects. Yet, if all would-be objects as such do turn out to be intentional objects, how is it that, as Lamarque says, objects as such “have different identity conditions?” It does seem that the numerical identity of works must be secured on grounds independent of interpretation. Works cannot be fully constituted by interpretation alone. 11 12

Ibid., 5. Richard Shusterman, “Interpretation, Intention and Truth,” in Intention and Interpretation, ed. Gary Iseminger (Philadelphia, pa: Temple University Press, 1992), 71–2.

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In response, one might try to allay such a worry by allowing that intentional objects are products of interpretive practice. While that which is interpreted may be constituted within webs of interpretations, rather than appeal to would-be objects as such, there are historical constraints on the range of admissible interpretations at any particular historical moment. While in principle there may be an indefinitely large number of interpretive moments that would admit an indefinitely large number of admissible interpretations, only a handful of interpretations are available for serious consideration by qualified practitioners at a given historical moment. Being a function of the consensual agreement of pertinent practitioners, the range of admissible interpretations would be socially determined. What makes an interpretation admissible at a given historical moment would depend upon the consensus of the pertinent community of researchers. As José Ferrater-Mora says: what in the last resort makes a proposition [or interpretation] acceptable or not acceptable is the consensus, or agreement, that it is, indeed, acceptable or not. This consensus functions within the rules laid down, implicitly or explicitly, by the community of researchers by virtue of habits engendered by a multitude of common experiences.13 Yet, one might still counter that the consensus reached by a community of inquirers may nevertheless be wrong. In reply, Ferrater-Mora and Shusterman might point out that the very idea of “wrong” would have no content independent of consensus. It appears that both sides of this quarrel might beg the question about what constitutes wrongness (or rightness) in the first place. vi Edification I turn now to the question whether edification is the unique aim of interpretation. To begin, I offer representative quotes about edificatory moments by philosopher Arthur Danto, composer Alexander Goehr, and artist Robert Henri. Danto describes “high moments of artistic work” thus: When artist and work are not separated by a gap of any sort, but fuse in such a way that the work seems to bring itself into existence. At such  points—and any creative person lives for these—… [materials] 13

José Ferrater-Mora,“On Practice,” American Philosophical Quarterly 13 (January 1976), 51–2.

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are…agents of selflessness, which is the state at which…so much of Oriental philosophy…aims.14 Composer Alexander Goehr comments that at special moments in his work: the music writes itself…There is no longer a composer who pushes the material about, but only its servant, carrying out what the notes themselves imply. This is the exact experience I seek and which justifies all else…at this moment, I find myself overcome by an oceanic sensation of oneness with all around me.15 When speaking about an “ontological experience” of Oneness behind every true work of art, Artist Robert Henri says: The object, which is back of every true work of art, is the attainment of a state of being, a state of high functioning, a more than ordinary moment of existence… its result is but a by-product of this state, a trace, the footprint of the state…This state of spiritual exaltation is fundamental to creative activity, while skills and measurements are secondary. It is the manifestation of an ontological experience.16 In converging ways, these writers point to a kind of experience that motivates their work. These are special edificatory experiences of creators. At the same time, appreciative recipients of pertinent works may undergo corresponding edificatory experiences, as suggested by John Dewey, who speaks of a consummatory experience as an experience: We have an experience …when the material experienced runs its course to fulfillment. Then and only then is it integrated within and demarcated in the general stream of experience from other experiences…[It] is so rounded out that its close is a consummation and not a cessation. Such an experience is…an experience.17 14 15 16 17

Arthur Danto, Mysticism and Morality: Oriental Thought and Moral Philosophy (New York: Basic Books, 1972), 110–1; emphasis added. Alexander Goehr, Independent (1 June 1991), quoted in Anthony Storr, Music and the Mind (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992), 97; emphasis added. Robert Henri (1865–1929), quoted in Chang Chung-yuan, Creativity and Taoism: A Study of Chinese Philosophy, Art, and Poetry (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1970), 203–4. John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Capricorn Books, 1934), 35; emphasis added.

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When living in or through a work one may be moved, enriched, or enlivened. Sometimes such edificatory moments are understood to contribute to one’s self-cultivation, one’s self-fulfillment, or one’s self-realization, thus perhaps facilitating and developing one’s very sensibilities for appreciation, for example. One might suggest that edification has less to do with identifying the meaning (or meanings) of a work—thus less to do with interpretation—than with such self-cultivation, self-fulfillment, or self-realization. Edification may provide an important background motivation for elucidation and—as a matter of lived experience—edification and elucidation are intertwined. Nevertheless, the pursuit of edification is analytically distinct from elucidation. In his revealing discussion, Thomas Leddy resists such an analytic distinction. He says, “In interpreting a literary work we are interpreting ourselves and our worlds.”18 He says further: differing interpretations may have to do more with general attitudes or even with competing philosophies of life…to truly understand the nature of interpretation, we need to deepen our understanding of the relationship between readers who have…broadly different points-of-view…19 What then does Leddy build into his phrase, “the nature of interpretation?” He offers an instructive example of a Buddhist member in his book club. He reports that that member takes: a Buddhist point-of-view in reading and evaluating any literary work. For example, when we read The Schopenhauer Cure by Irvin Yalom, he read the passage in which the character Pam spends some time in an ashram in India as central to understanding the text as a whole, even though this only took up a few pages and seemed relatively unimportant to others.20 The Buddhist reader of Yalom’s book assigns salience to certain of its passages in light of his worldview or life-philosophy. So, we must ask: Does such a reader assign salience, not so much to uncover the meaning or meanings of the work, but to further his own edificatory aim? What role might world-views or life 18

Thomas Leddy, “Creative Interpretation of Literary Texts,” in The Idea of Creativity, ed. ­ ichael Krausz, Denis Dutton, and Karen Bardsley (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), M 293–312, at 310. 19 Ibid., 300–1; emphasis added. 20 Ibid.

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philosophies such as Buddhism (or Hinduism, for that matter) play in the interpretation of Yalom’s book? Leddy says: My thought is that creative interpretation is not only possible but also better than interpretation that is not creative. I am speaking of the kind of interpretation that creates as it interprets, and thus that constitutes an understanding of the text in a novel and valuable way. There is a strong distinction between an interpretation that is merely ‘correct’ and one that brings the text alive through connecting it with lived experience while still remaining consistent with the text. The second sort is better in general, although the first might serve some purposes. Interpretations are only going to be live if they achieve a higher level of creativity, one that is both discovery and invention. Interpretations of literary texts are more or less creative in this sense.21 I endorse the spirit of Leddy’s answer insofar as he seeks to connect interpretive activity with the “lived experience” of interpreters. Yet when Leddy distinguishes between two sorts of interpretation (creative versus non-creative, one more “live” than another)—might he not better have distinguished between interpretation and edification, thus allowing us to speak more directly about applications or uses of interpretation? When Leddy speaks about creative interpretations as being “better” than non-creative ones, we must ask, better for whom, and for what purposes? If that question is allowed, then we are no longer asking an elucidatory question about the meaning or meanings of a work. We are, rather, asking about an application or use of interpretation by a possible recipient. That, it would seem, is a different matter from interpretation as such. To be sure, this suggestion amounts to a narrower understanding of interpretation than the one that Leddy favors. Yet it allows one to treat edificatory concerns on their own terms—to consider whether, for example, Buddhist, Hindu, or another worldview or life philosophy is more or less conducive to one’s self-cultivation, self-fulfillment, or self-realization—without subsuming them under the very concept of interpretation. Accordingly, I endorse Ken-ichi Sasaki’s observation that “interpretation has the unique aim of ‘elucidation.’ To interpret a text or a phenomenon is not as such an act of ‘edification.’ Even if the edificatory concern may intervene, it 21

Ibid., 294.

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can be as a use of the elucidatory result.”22 While edification is not an aim of interpretation as such, it may still motivate one to undertake the business of interpreting at all. Finally, while edification can apply to interpretive activity in this way, it is not distinctive of such an activity. It may motivate other sorts of activities as well. In saying this, by way of summary, I am mindful of the fact that, as I indicated at the outset, the concept of interpretation is essentially contested.23 As such, what conclusion we should draw about a narrower or wider interpretation of interpretation itself may depend upon whether we are singularist or multiplist about it.24 22

23 24

Ken-Ichi Sasaki, “Limits of Interpretation,” in Interpretation and Its Objects: Studies in the Philosophy of Michael Krausz, ed. Andreea Deciu Ritivoi (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003), ­69–78, at 76–7; emphasis added. See note 1. I wish to thank Dirk-Martin Grube, who organized the conference on “Interpretation and Meaning in Philosophy and Religion,” at the University of Utrecht in 2012, to which he invited me as a co-keynote speaker along with Peter Lamarque. On this and other occasions, I have benefitted from fruitful discussions with Grube, Lamarque, and Thomas Leddy.

Part 2 Developing the Philosophical Discussion on Interpretation Further

⸪

chapter 3

Overcoming Dualism: Textual Meaning Discovered and Invented Thomas Leddy

San Jose State University

i

Introduction: Applying a Minimal Deconstructive Methodology to Theory of Interpretation – Overcoming Dichotomies

In theory of interpretation competing positions are usually presented as dichotomies (i.e. there are two mutually exclusive sides). I would like to get away from that way of thinking. This is not to say that I do not tend to favor certain sides in certain debates, for example pluralism and constructivism over monism and revelation theory. I will, in the course of this chapter, argue vigorously for these positions, but also more broadly and fundamentally I will be trying to soften boundaries, open up other possibilities, and observe dynamic relations between the two sides. The strategy I will follow will, therefore, be broadly deconstructionist. Don’t worry – I will not be quoting from Derrida. Nor will I try to explain any deconstructionist theories or texts.1 By ‘broadly deconstructionist’ I mean simply that I will systematically question dichotomies. The most important of these will be between interpretive discovery and invention (as mentioned in my title), between text and work (with special reference to Lamarque), and between interpretation and edification (with special reference to Krausz). This is not to say that I favor eliminating distinctions, but rather that I am suspicious of the way they are usually used, especially when they are taken to the level of dichotomy. In a previous article I questioned the rigid distinction between surface and deep interpretation as offered by Arthur Danto.2 This chapter is a similar effort. One distinction is between the idea that the meaning of literary work is discovered (sometimes called ‘the retrieval view’) and the view that it is invented (often called ‘the imposition view’). Here, I am also inclined to try to find a 1 See Christopher Norris on deconstruction in “A Discussion of Architecture (with Christopher Norris),” in Aesthetics: A Reader in Philosophy of the Arts, 3rd ed., ed. David Goldblatt and Lee B. Brown (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2011), 138–44, 138. 2 “Against Surface Interpretation,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57 no. 4 (1999), 459–63.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004325241_005

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middle path. One version of a middle path would be to say that some literary meaning is discovered and some is invented. Or one could say that both discovering meaning and inventing meaning are legitimate activities. Both of these strategies, however, accept the dichotomy. So what I would suggest is a deconstruction of the distinction itself. That is, when one engages in literary interpretation one discovers through invention – and one invents through discovery. The idea that a literary meaning is just retrieved, as though we could prove that it is an exact collection of words different from the original but constituting the meaning of the original, and that it somehow exists Platonic-like to be discovered, is naïve and unprovable. The idea that literary interpretations are imposed on the text as though they had no relation to it, as though they are irrelevant overlays, is also naïve and unprovable. So, although I have argued previously that creativity is essential to good literary interpretation, I refuse to see creativity as a matter of imposing something external onto the text.3 That is to say, I am unwilling to accept the imposition/fact dichotomy. Rather, creative interpretation is a matter of constructing an integrated whole under a certain perspective, one that makes certain themes and passages salient. I am a pluralist in that I believe that there can be equally good interpretations of a literary text. However, unlike some pluralists, I believe that these interpretations are of the same work, and are therefore in competition. It is the nature of the beast that each interpreter believes that his or her interpretation is better, or at least more plausible, than the others. So, as a pluralist, I hold that Marxist, feminist, Buddhist, and others types of interpretation can all be valuable, some more than others depending on the situation (for example, depending on the time and place in which the interpretation is presented). I agree with Krausz that good reasons can be given for favoring one interpretation over another, although I find his term ‘multiplism’ to be awkward and prefer the more traditional ‘pluralism’ to refer to this position. Unlike Krausz, I do not think that many pluralists hold that every interpretation is equal. I would call that position ‘radical relativism.’ My position is also historicist but in a sense quite different from that commonly given by authors like Anthony Saville.4 I believe that true historicism is a recognition that literary works evolve over time, that they grow new possibilities and can be legitimately read in new and interesting ways. A true historicism does not set up the meaning of a work as 3 Thomas Leddy, “Creative Interpretation of Literary Texts,” in The Idea of Creativity ed. ­Michael Krausz, Denis Dutton, and Karen Bardsley (Boston: Brill, 2009), 293–311. 4 Anthony Savile, The Test of Time: An Essay in Philosophical Aesthetics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982).

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something eternal and unchanging. We, as readers and interpreters, are part of history, and our readings of works are part of the history of those works. The work gains new possibilities for actualization in the experience of the reader depending on ever-changing contexts of reading and understanding. There are new possibilities for new understandings. Of course one can, as a project, legitimately ask how a typical reader of the time of first publication would have understood a particular work: but I do not accept that this project necessarily captures ‘the true meaning of the work.’ Works are intended to be living entities (or if not intended, at least best seen as living entities), and they can only be interpreted as such when brought alive again through new ways of seeing that relate them to new contexts. Ronald Dworkin, as Lamarque observes, held that interpretation was not a matter of conversation but of construction. As he put it, “creative interpretation, on the constructive view, is a matter of interaction between purpose and object.”5 Although I like the emphasis on creativity and construction in Dworkin’s thinking, I cannot see how this is opposed to conversational interest or to interest in the origin of the work of art. Dworkin thinks that the purpose in question is of the interpreter, not the author, whereas I would say that both are equally important. As I see it, the main difference between interpreting literary works and interpreting what is said by others in conversation is that literary works do not literally reply to one’s questions and comments. ­Interestingly, though, better readers read with questions in mind. When insightful understanding comes, it is often as if the work was responding to one’s questions. A good conversation and a good literary work are, in this sense, quite similar. Even more puzzling in Dworkin’s analysis is the idea, quoted by Lamarque, that “imposing a purpose” is a matter of making of the work “the best possible example of the form or genre.” One wonders why this should be the goal, or even a goal. Why should we care about whether this is the best possible example of a genre? More problematic, however, is the idea of imposition as grounding the notion of creative interpretation. It implies a kind of aggressiveness. Impositions are generally seen as burdens, obligations, or duties … as negative to the thing imposed upon. Interpretation is not best seen as imposition. If one interprets a literary text from a Freudian perspective, and one is doing a good job, one is not simply imposing Freudian theory onto the work, but rather finding places where such a theory helps in our understanding of it. One does this to make the best possible sense out of the work. One also does it in order to 5 Ronald Dworkin, Law’s Empire (Harvard University Press, 1986), 52.

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make the best possible sense of the world by way of the work. The work/world dichotomy is another one worth deconstructing. As Nelson Goodman would say, “works are ways the world is.”6 ii

Lamarque on Creative Interpretation, Pluralism and Constructivism

Lamarque wants to downgrade the importance of ‘meaning’ in literary interpretation.7 This is largely because he associates it with explication of individual passages and not with the development of themes. Nonetheless, he recognizes that ‘meaning’ is sometimes used in this broader way, and he allows that interpretation can include development of general themes. Miriam-Webster’s definition of ‘interpret’ is “to give the meaning of something.” So Lamarque’s desire to disconnect interpretation from meaning does go against common usage, although that in itself is not an argument against it. So, what are Lamarque’s arguments for linguistic change? First, he says that we do not really talk about the meaning of a work as a whole, or that it is odd to talk about such a meaning. Yet we do sometimes talk about the meanings of works as wholes, and it is not crazy to say that an interpretive text attempts to give the meaning of a particular work. When I google “What is the meaning of Hamlet?” I get 22,000 results. A typical sentence begins, “The meaning of Hamlet so perplexed critics over the last four hundred years that…”8 Moreover, it is hard to deny that when we give an interpretation of something we are giving our understanding of that thing. Lamarque wants to emphasize appreciation over meaning, and stresses that what literary critics do when they treat a literary work as a work of art is appreciate it, not give its meaning. Yet this sounds odd. It is true that sometimes we say that our interpretation of a poem is an appreciation of the poem. It is also true that works of literary criticism often include evaluations of individual parts of the work and of the work as a whole. However, we normally distinguish between interpretation and evaluation including the positive evaluative experience called appreciation. The interpretation of something is not the same as its appreciation. 6 Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978). 7 Peter Lamarque, ‘Appreciation’ in “Chapter Four: Practice,” in The Philosophy of Literature (Blackwell, 2009). If I refer to Lamarque I am referring to this chapter unless otherwise noted. 8 Kenneth Chan, “Quintessence of Dust: The Mystical Meaning of Hamlet,” (2004) http:// kenneth-chan.com/qod/index.html (access date 6/27/13).

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One could, however, see Lamarque as doing something very uncharacteristic of an analytic philosopher here: as deconstructing the very distinction between interpretation and appreciation. There is something to be said for this since it is difficult to distinguish between these two aspects of our experience of a literary work. How do we know when interpretation leaves off and appreciation begins? Is there a real distinction between meaning and value? Following this path would accord well with deconstructing the distinction between meaning and significance, something I would favor, but Lamarque would not. Lamarque says that, of formal analysis, explication, elaboration of subject and thematic interpretation, only explication is concerned directly with meaning in the semantic or pragmatic sense. I prefer to use ‘meaning’ in a broader sense that can refer to all of these elements. The question here is whether the difference between Lamarque and me is just a matter of preference. Although Lamarque speaks of looser senses of ‘meaning’ associated with “point, purpose, or achievement of an activity,” he doesn’t use such senses since he is worried that doing so would be misleading. Literary comments on Moll Flanders could be seen as involving work meaning and understanding but we are not forced to see it in this way. Rather, on his view, we do not understand the book’s meaning but its interest or value, or why it is worth reflecting on further. The comments made by critics, he thinks, enhance appreciation, not understanding. I do not understand why this is an “either/or” situation. Lamarque has, perhaps, bought into this the distinction originally promoted by E.D. Hirsch (in his opposition to Gadamer) between meaning and significance.9 I think that although such a distinction can be made, its importance is open to question. For the most part, the search for meaning is a search for significance, and vice versa. The distinction only makes sense when you abstract meaning from all context…and yet such abstraction is distorting. Lamarque, like Hirsch, says that sometimes literary critics are more interested in importance than in meaning. He also says that some creative interpreters may be simply interested in adding interest to a work. I wonder what that might mean. Sure, some interpreters might simply want to add interest, but creative interpretation is not about adding anything: it is about using various keys to open the work up. This, by the way, is why monism as an ideal is not a bad thing. Interpreters pretty much have to be monists on one level, even those who are actually pluralists. Monism, I would argue, is a regulative ideal based ultimately on a fiction. As I have said, creative interpretation seeks to both

9 E.D. Hirsch, Jr., “Meaning and Significance Reinterpreted,” Critical Inquiry, 11, no. 2 (1984), 202–25.

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invent and to discover—to invent through discovery and to discover through invention, and this allows monism to be folded into pluralism when monism is taken as a useful fiction and an unrealizable ideal. Phenomenologically, how can we distinguish meaning from significance? Significance is not the same as importance. The dictionary gives two meanings for ‘significance’: something that is conveyed as a meaning often obscurely or indirectly, and the quality of being important. So one meaning of significance is indirectly conveyed meaning. Moreover, these two meanings are closely related since we only try to reveal the indirect because it is important. The reason Lamarque pulls in the direction of distinguishing radically between meaning and significance is that he thinks literary critics are mainly engaged in pointing out thematic rather than semantic features. Thematic features are, as he puts it, not “properties inherent in the language of the text.” He thinks that these properties only emerge through “imaginative reconstruction.” This would seem to imply that he holds that creative interpretation plays a strong role in the interpretive enterprise, and that is a good thing. However, it is misleading even to ask whether the thematic features are in the text or imputed to it. (I am also not happy with the word ‘impute’ which is similar to ‘impose’ in its negative implications.) Nor do I like the idea of semantic meanings (or “text”) as independent of work. In the end, I cannot agree that the choice is between enhancing appreciation and exploring meaning. The end product of this debate should be deconstruction of the meaning/value dichotomy itself. It might be tempting to see creative interpretation on the model of theatrical production, where a creative interpretation is to a text what a production is to a script. So, one might say that a Shakespearean production in wwii costumes imposes something on the text in order to add interest or the feeling of significance. Yet a theatrical interpretation is a different kind of interpretation than a literary one. A literary interpretation really is about trying to understand the work (not about, say, adding interest). It is also, I have suggested, about understanding the world through the work. The latter could be a goal of theatrical production as interpretation too. Yet, a theatrical production is a work of art in its own right, whereas a literary interpretation is something else again. For example, it is non-fiction. I have suggested that Lamarque expresses a relatively positive attitude to creative interpretation. To give another example, he writes that “‘Creative’ interpretation, to which constructivism is committed, is constrained not by narrow predicative truth but by imaginativeness and possibility.” He goes on to tell us that the best creative interpretations take aspects of a work identified at the descriptive level and find what Krausz has called “new saliences.” These are “new ways of thinking about the work’s themes, motifs, or symbolic

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or ­figurative aspects.”10 This is one of the rare occasions I have seen of a philosopher in the analytic tradition saying something positive about creative interpretation. However, I am suspicious of the notion of ‘descriptive level.’ It is true that some statements about literary works are uncontroversial, and that the collection of such statements might be referred to as ‘the descriptive level.’ Yet each use of such a statement will have a different meaning or force depending on its overall context, i.e. depending on where it is placed within a particular work of interpretation. Even at the so-called descriptive level, choices are made in accord with one’s overall hypothesis or interpretive theory about the work. On my view, literary interpretations are organic wholes, and therefore there is no purely descriptive level. Each of the parts (including apparently pure description) participates in the larger whole.11 Note that, contrary to Lamarque’s implication, actual quotation from the text is not purely descriptive: it is something else – it is evidence. But what about explications and elucidations? Are they purely descriptive? Not usually. Explications and elucidations usually form parts of an overall project, for example a book or article about the work in question. Of course, there are explications and elucidations that are not connected with such larger projects, for example the footnotes that explain the meanings of certain terms or the historical context. It may be argued, however, that even here, heavily annotated editions of literary works contain a collection of points made by editors that, when taken together, are sometimes not all that different from a literary interpretation. Lamarque talks as though there was a clear temporal sequence. First one does the explication and then the interpretation. But the process is more circular than this, more like a feedback loop. Our nascent interpretation guides what we need to explicate, and our explications inform our interpretation. Again, they form an organic whole, and the process is one of organic development. Nonetheless, I agree that good interpretation needs to handle textual evidence well. Interpretive debate often involves, and should involve, appeals to the text. Lamarque also fails to see that understandings or readings of literary works are themselves organic wholes and that such experiences contain, as essential parts, various materials not found in the text by everyone who looks. Someone who knows a lot about the author or about the genre will see things that others 10 11

Peter Lamarque, Work and Object: Explorations in the Metaphysics of Art (Oxford University Press, 2010), 31. See my “Moore and Shusterman on Organic Wholes,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 49 no. 1 (1991), 63–73.

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will not. I want here to deconstruct the notion of the inner vs. the outer in textual interpretation. For what someone might find internal to the text someone else might legitimately find external: an author’s intention might seem to be right there before one person’s eyes, whereas another will say that this is something outside the text, for example in the mind of the author. There is no strict inner/outer distinction. Moreover, we interpret the world, and life (as in our own lives), through literary works, and indirectly through literary interpretation. This is why interpretation (and theory of interpretation) is important. Interpretation of life through the work is organically one with interpretation of the work. It is so, just as explication of parts of the work is organically one with the broader global interpretation of the work. So issues of interpretation cannot ultimately be separated from issues of literary truth. This is another reason why we cannot really speak of imposition from the outside when we are talking about really good efforts at literary interpretation. Of course, a bad interpretation might be bad precisely because it is a mere imposition, or uses the work merely as an illustration of some ideological point. Although most contemporary analytic philosophers give imagination a minimal role in the theory interpretation, Lamarque does not. However, I have issues with the way he has given imagination credit. For example, he has suggested a solution to debates over interpretation by way of distinguishing between two kinds of criticism: criticism as retrieval and criticism as creative. I have pointed out some problems with this dichotomy. To be fair, Lamarque himself sometimes questions dichotomies. For example, in “Objects of Interpretation” he criticizes Jerrold Levinson, saying “I do not think that he establishes an unbridgeable line between ‘inherent in’ and ‘imputed in”12 and says further, in answer to the question of whether saliencies are ‘in’ a work or are ‘imputed to’ it, that the answer is both.13 He also says that there is an inevitable blurring between what is ‘in’ a work and what is imputed to it.14 He even speaks of this as “the insight of imputationalism.”15 However, when he comes to talk about parallels between literary interpretation and theory of metaphor, he allows an imaginative dimension to metaphor only at the cost of its losing truth value or a fundamental connection with truth. As he puts it, “Rather than thinking of metaphor as a kind of assertion, or vehicle of truth… it is more illuminating to think of it as an act of a certain kind, embedded in 12 Work and Object, op. cit., 178. 13 Ibid., 183. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid.

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a practice”16 – an act of exhortation and encouragement of imaginative comparison unrelated to the realm of fact. In the tradition of logical positivism, metaphors are seen as getting us to do something not to believe something. So, the dichotomies between truth and metaphor, reason and imagination, are maintained. iii

Lamarque and the Myth of the Text

I will continue this line of thought by critiquing Lamarque’s idea that there is such a thing as “the text” i.e. as a different object from the literary work. This is what I call ‘the myth of the text.’ The myth of the text, I believe, has kept us from seeing literary works as dynamic things that thrive only on creative reading and interpretation in which the distinctions between meaning and significance and between invention and discovery are dissolved. Lamarque distinguishes between physical book, text, work, and interpretation. The distinction between a work and an interpretation of that work is hard to debate, although it is arguable that an interpretation is one way a work is. But what about the other distinctions? Some of these entities (not only texts, but sometimes works) are considered to be abstract objects. I favor a sparer ontology (I reject all abstract objects), although taste in metaphysics is not really the issue here. Here’s the basic ontology as I see it. I take a physical book to be part of a class that includes all copies of that book, including electronic copies. These are tied together simply by the appropriate historical connection to the first copy, usually the final authorized manuscript of the author. Appropriate historical connection would be one in which the maker of the copy intended it to be a copy of the original manuscript (not a photocopy but a copy of its literary content) or of a reliable copy of that manuscript, and this has been checked for accuracy. Each individual fair copy of the book may be called ‘the book’ with the understanding that the book does not cease to exist as long as one copy remains. Translations of the book may also be considered copies of that book as long as it is recognized that copies in the original language are more authentic. Abridgments and collections of fragments of lost originals can also be spoken of as ‘the book’ or as parts of the book, with the background understanding that they are incomplete. Groups of closely related but not identical texts, all probably tied to one original text or to the set of the most plausible contenders for the original, can be called ‘variations of the book.’ 16

Ibid., 186.

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I do not accept the notion of a text independent of the book. Lamarque refers to the text as “an ordered set of sentence-types individuated at least partly by semantic and syntactic properties.”17 I do not deny that one can posit or talk about such an entity: but doing so is unnecessary for the purpose of literary interpretation. Although, in an earlier writing, I accepted the distinction between text and work I now think that texts are ontologically mythical.18 I have never seen such things, and I am not even sure what they would look like. Nor is it clear how they could exist as un-seen or un-experienced. I propose that the abstract entities called ‘texts’ are not real. ‘Text’ is just another name for ‘work.’ (Works are not abstract either.) Lamarque probably believes in texts because he thinks that two things can be identical as texts and not as works. He says that “two texts are identical if they have the same semantic and syntactic properties, are in the same language, and consist of the same word-types and sentence-types ordered in the same way.”19 I would only say that two books (or stories, proverbs, etc.) are copies of the same book if they have the same words and punctuation in the same sequence and are causally related in the appropriate way to the authorized manuscript (or first known copy) of that book. Let us avoid the confusion that Lamarque’s language engenders. Semantic and syntactic properties are not eternal and unchanging but are a function of historical circumstances. So, for example, Don Quixote couldn’t possibly have the same meaning properties as something with the same word sequence created outside of its historical context. My opponents in this would likely appeal to Borges’ fictional work by Menard. But I no longer believe that talking about such examples is helpful.20 There might be two books or, much more likely, two very short poems, that are in the same language and have the same words in the same sequence but have different meanings. This is the main motive for believing that there are two distinct things: works and texts. For example, two very short poems may be written by two different persons at two different times without one having knowledge of the other: it is just by accident that they are the same sequence of words in the same lines. But these two poems are not the same. They are not the same text: or rather, it is pointless and absurd to refer to them as ‘the same text.’ (Of course one could insist that ‘same text’ simply means ‘same words

17 18 19 20

Ibid., 165. “Creative Interpretation of Literary Texts,” op. cit. Ibid., 165. Ironically, neither does Lamarque sometimes: consider pg. 156 in “Objects of Inter­pretation.”

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in the same sequence’ and then they would be the same text, but only in this sense.) Nor do they have the same semantic properties. The problematic nature of the notion of a text as independent from the literary work can be found in the idea expressed by Lamarque that there is too much meaning in the text.21 He says that asking what is in the text is not the same as asking what is in the work. He thinks the text has lexicographical, syntactic, and other properties, as well as its own content. I think that works have all these properties, and that there is therefore no need for texts. The problematic nature of Lamarque’s position can be seen in his being driven to hold that a poem from 1744 that has “his plastic arm” in it actually refers, when it is taken as belonging to a text, to plastic as a manufactured substance in our sense of the word today. As he puts it: “The meaning of ‘plastic’ as a synthetic substance is no doubt included in the semantic meaning of the text taken as a mere string of sentences.” I deny that there is “semantic meaning of the text taken as a mere string of sentences.” In fact, there is no text at all. The ‘mere string of sentences’ is a nothing more than an abstraction that distorts our perception of literary works. Lamarque’s notion of “faithful to meanings at the textual level” (157), therefore, makes no sense. No one believes ‘plastic’ in the context of a 1744 work refers to the stuff sandwich wrappers are made of today. Lamarque admits that this understanding of the term would be excluded from a competent interpretation of the work, but then why bother with the notion of ‘text’ at all? Because I do not believe in texts I no longer accept Margolis’s idea (which Lamarque does accept) that literary works are embodied in texts. Whereas I was previously attracted to this position, I now think that it lends support to dualism, or at least to an overly dichotomous way of looking at the world. Whereas Margolis believes that “the individuation and identity of artworks are hardly the same as the individuation and identity of the natural or linguistic entities upon which they depend,”22 I hold that the artworks and the natural or linguistic entities upon which they supposedly depend are the same and so their individuation and identity are the same. Artworks generally, and literary works specifically, do not depend on other things, whether physical objects or linguistic entities. They are those things. Those things have a diverse range of properties including both physical and intentional ones. Therefore, there are not three things: physical book, text, and literary work, but just one thing called by three different names: ‘book,’ ‘text’ and ‘work.’ I can hold up a copy of a book and legitimately refer to it as the book, the text 21 22

Ibid., 153. Quoted in Lamarque, 166.

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or the work. (I might chose different terms depending on the situation, for example when focusing on the object as a source of evidence for a claim, I may refer to it as ‘the text’ rather than ‘the book.’ One can have distinctions without being forced into dichotomies.) One motive for holding that there are texts distinct from books and works would be the thought that the same text could embody two different works, as in the same text embodying Cervantes’ and Menard’s Quixote. We forget that Menard’s work does not exist and probably could not. There is no reason why metaphysics should be based on artificial examples that are also nearly impossible. Of course, as mentioned above, there could be two very short poems, for example poems in the haiku form, that are identical, although written by different authors in different times. Yet even when they are made using the very same sequence of words they are not the same text, do not belong to the same class of physical things, nor are they the same work. It is just a mildly amusing fact that these two poems exist (assuming they do). Similarly, two all-red paintings (Arthur Danto’s famous example) may look very similar, but are different works. This difference plays out by way of understanding their different titles, historical contexts, and in almost all cases, looks. It follows that a novel, a copy of which is in my hand, is a physical object, a text (but not in Lamarque’s sense) and a work. It has both physical properties and cultural or intentional properties. I do not deny that, as Lamarque puts it, “literary works are cultural objects, dependent on a practice governed by social conventions,”23 as long as we recognize that “dependent on a practice” simply means that some of their properties are relational. Lamarque thinks that if the social practice ceased to exist the work would cease to exist. I think that it simply would lose those relational properties. However, it would still have them as potentials. If we could reconstruct the social conventions that were lost then we could re-actualize the potential. The social practices of Athenian ritual at the time of the Parthenon’s creation no longer exist, but it is possible to recreate them to some extent and to enter into that space imaginatively. My ontological economy does not extend to potentials. A similar point can be made about Barthes, who is discussed by Lamarque as having a position like his on the matter of texts.24 Although I agree with Barthes that a work is concrete and that it occupies book-space in libraries, computers, etc., I see no need to posit a second thing, called the Text, which is, as he puts it, a “methodological field.” Works are open to many ­methodological 23 24

Ibid., 165. Roland Barthes, “From Work to Text,” in Image-Music-Text, tr. Stephen Heath (London: Fontana/Collins, 1977).

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procedures, but this need not prompt us to increase entity-types. When we interpret a work we interpret a concrete object, not something abstract. If I appeal to a passage as evidence I point to a line on a physical page of a text, not to something abstract. On my view, if all copies of a novel/text/work are destroyed, and all subsidiary copies (translations, fragments, etc.) were destroyed, then the novel/text/work would be destroyed. However, if all authentic original copies are destroyed and some of these other things remain (e.g. translations or fragments) then the work is only partially destroyed. Most people outside of philosophy actually see things this way. I think Krausz is correct when he says that the non-radical imputationalist proposal (i.e. the one taken by him, and me) “does not urge that the text first does not have a given property and then gets it. Rather, it urges that, upon appropriate imputation, a more determinate object-of-interpretation arises.”25 The way I would put it is that the indeterminate work becomes actualized in its various interpretations. Lamarque has trouble with Krausz’s use of the term ‘text’ here since he believes that both Krausz and he agree that a text is “no more than a set of sentences.”26 I reject the view that there is such a thing as the text as a set of sentences. Once we get rid of “texts” then there is no barrier to the imputationalist (I prefer ‘common sense’) view that the same object (the work) is determined by interpretations (i.e. by actualizations of an evolving potential). As I would put it, the various actualizations are distinct objects – but they are also actualizations of the same object, the work. It is Lamarque’s acceptance of dichotomies here that leads him to deny the commonsense position. One motive for Lamarque’s and Margolis’s position is to distinguish between a physical object and a culturally emergent one, for example between a piece of marble and the sculpture embodied in that object. It is true that some pieces of marble, for example ones not viewed yet by humans, have no intentional properties. However, as soon as marble pieces are broken from their original locations for human making purposes, they gain such properties. Similarly, as soon as they are seen by sculptors as material for a good sculpture, they gain properties having to do with sculpture. When the sculpture is created it takes on more properties again. Sculptures are simply pieces of marble with both physical and complex intentional properties. Lamarque is right that the notion he supports is “well entrenched in aesthetics.” It is practically a dogma. However, it is a myth. There is something strange about even saying that a work is

25 26

Michael Krausz, “Rightness and Reasons: A Reply to Stecker,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 55, no. 4 (1997) 417. “Objects,” 176.

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either identical or not identical with a physical object. If you say it is identical with the physical object (say the book as a physical thing) then you are implying that there are two apparently different things that really are identical (as in Venus is the same as the morning star.) It is safer simply to say that what you perhaps took to be a mere doorstop is also a book. We may not notice that it is a book at first and think that it is just a physical thing without intentional properties. But this is a mistake. Also contrary to Lamarque, I do not believe that a literary interpretation has an intentional object which is distinct from the literary work itself. When I set out to interpret a literary work, the intentional object of my interpretation is exactly the book I am now holding in my hand (or reading on my computer) and of which there are many other copies. Different interpretations are interpretations of this book. Lamarque sets out to solve problems raised by the imputationalism of Margolis and Krausz by introducing a threefold distinction, what he calls “three elements in the interpretative process”:27 the physical object, the work as cultural object, and the object-of-interpretation (which is his odd way of referring to the object, for example a book or essay, called ‘the interpretation’). However, there might be three elements in the process of literary interpretation without there being a threefold metaphysical distinction of this sort. Lamarque mentions that the first element “involves the physical properties of the thing being interpreted.” There is no problem here. For example, a book consists of physical marks, certain inks, weighs so much and so forth. One can observe these features in the process of interpreting a literary work. Things get more problematic at the second level, however. As I have noted, Lamarque thinks of texts as sets of sentences, whereas I do not countenance texts as abstract entities, and have no idea what it would mean for a text to consist of sets of sentences. The idea of ‘set’ does not indicate a specific sequence and, at the least, texts must consist of specific sequences of sentences (sometimes including sentence fragments and other phenomena, for example graphic illustrations). It is not a physical truth (i.e. a truth of physics) that a short story has, say, four hundred sentences, but it is something factual and easy to determine simply by counting. It is a property nonetheless, and one very like a physical property. Now Krausz argues that, in imputational interpretation, the interpreter selects features of the materials and fashions from them an “object-of-­ interpretation.” Although I am in general sympathy with Krausz, I find this an unfortunate way of putting things. The object of the interpreter’s interpretation is the text or work. He or she constructs an interpretation by putting ­together, 27

Work and Object, op. cit., 171.

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r­ evising, and ultimately publishing an ordered series of sentences (and graphic elements, etc.). This interpretation (i.e. the product of interpretation) is based on a reading of the text and various preliminary understandings of it. Necessarily, some aspects of the text are foregrounded and some are not. Some may even be quoted. Selection gives each interpretation its unique character. Another interpretation will foreground other aspects of the text. I do not see any need for the creative interpreter (what Krausz calls the imputationalist) to construct an object-of-interpretation other than the text or work itself, nor do I think that many creative interpreters see themselves as doing this. Lamarque observes that a strong version of constructivism holds that different texts result, for example a Marxist one and a Freudian one. A more moderate version, which he associates with Krausz, is that there is one text but interpreted in different ways. Lamarque looks at constructivism in this way: for a constructivist, “a work can mean one thing at one time another at another time.”28 On the face of it, this seems impossible. It certainly goes against our intuitions. However, we could put it in a somewhat different way. Say we have two interpretative essays on Hamlet written at different times, 1940 and 2012. The 1940 essay seems cogent and powerful in 1940. However in 2012 it no longer has those qualities, although the 2012 essay does have them. One way to approach this would be to say that people were wrong to think that the 1940 essay was cogent and powerful. Alternatively (and preferably, in my view), one could say that they were right to find it so at the time, but that circumstances have changed since then. In what sense were they right then but less so now? Normally we say that rightness is a matter of correct correspondence to the facts. However, the issue isn’t factual: it isn’t that the 1940 essay got some of the facts wrong. Nonetheless, it did involve truth in some way. To follow the Heideggerian view of truth, it allowed truth to emerge.29 So perhaps it makes sense to say that the literary work itself evolves over time – that its very being is affected by the context in which it is read. This is the constructivist position, except now it doesn’t seem so crazy. It all depends on how one understands objects of this sort to exist. Lamarque often presents choices in terms of either/or: either the audiences for Hamlet changed, or the work itself has changed. He seems to think that the later view is too radical. However, audience changes may cause the work itself to change insofar as the work is not just a collection of words but something 28 Lamarque, The Philosophy of Literature, 158. 29 In “Creative Interpretation” I argued for a triune view of truth in which truth has a correspondence, pragmatist and Heideggerian aspect. I continue to support that view.

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that is realized or actualized in the minds of readers and in the mental and physical objects they produce called ‘interpretations.’ Of course we could hold to the fiction (and maybe we often do) that the meaning of the work does not change over time. As I have suggested, it may even be a necessary or a useful fiction. But you cannot prove that the meaning of the work remains the same over time. This is not a logically or empirically decidable matter. So all you can do is assume it. Robert Stecker, in his critique of constructivism, thinks that “The problem is to understand how making a claim about an object, even an object-of-interpretation, can give it a property claimed for it.”30 This is an odd way of putting the problem. I agree that an interpreter cannot give the objectof-interpretation a property it did not have before, if by that is simply meant adding a property. (In general, thinking of things as substances plus a collection of properties is an abstraction that ignores organic relations, and that itself gives rise to many myths.) Each reader constructs his interpretation of the text read, and each time such a construction is made it is different – yet one that seems cogent and powerful in 1940 no longer does in 2012. Change has occurred, but it is not the simplistic change of adding (or subtracting) a property. So I would agree with Lamarque’s suggestion that “there is indeed something unusual about the kinds of ‘objects’ that literary works are and it is not always clear either what ‘properties’ these objects have or that literary critics are essentially in the business of identifying ‘properties,’”31 especially when leaving the descriptive mode. I am also sympathetic to his idea that the creative interpretation allowed by constructivism “is constrained not by narrow predicative truth but by imaginativeness and possibility.”32 iv

Krausz’s Three Questions

When I was originally asked to contribute to this volume I was asked not only to respond to Lamarque’s text, but also to a very short text of a few lines by Krausz called “Three Questions.” Later, Krausz submitted a paper for discussion and I will comment on that in the context of discussing the three questions. (I should also observe that the three questions are worked out more fully in his contribution to this volume.) As I have said earlier, I am very sympathetic to Krausz’s overall position, and am probably closer to him than to Lamarque. 30 31 32

I addressed Stecker’s view in “Creative Interpretation.” Lamarque, “On Why Interpretation is a Problem for Philosophy of Art,” (Chapter 1, this volume). Work and Object, 31.

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However, Krausz, like Lamarque, relies on a dichotomy, this time between interpretation and edification. It is this dichotomy that I will mainly wish to address here. iv.1 “Question #1: If a case is neither singularist nor multiplist, is it uninterpretable? Put otherwise, is the range of interpretable objects the same range to which singularism or multiplism might apply?”33 Krausz’s main concern here is with interpretation of religious concepts such as that of ‘Atman,’ which he believes can be neither interpreted in a singularist nor in a multiplist way. I am not sure that interpretation is even a concept appropriate to such a metaphysical postulate. More interesting to me is the idea of interpretation of religious texts and the relationship between this and interpretation of literary texts (an issue that has been addressed by hermeneutics). There are Hindu texts that centrally mention ‘Atman,’ and so to understand the text we have to understand the concept. Interpretations tell stories. The range of interpretable objects is the range of objects about which we can tell stories about the meaning of the text under consideration. We can tell stories about meaning about anything. Even people who have claimed to have achieved enlightenment tell stories about their lives. Whether one is a singularist or a multiplist should have no impact on whether a story can be told. A singularist is even allowed to tell more than one story as long as he or she asserts that none of his or her stories is the correct story. Going outside of religion, an interesting question is whether the terms ‘singularism’ and ‘multiplism’ are relevant to interpretation of non-art objects of everyday life, even things that have no intended meaning.34 Beautiful shadows on a wall, for example, are not the result of any intention. Nor can they be interpreted in some other non-intentionalist singularist way. But neither does it make sense to speak of them as having multiple valid interpretations except in the sense that one can tell many different stories about them, or portray them in many different artistic styles. We can refer to these stories and portrayals as ‘interpretations’ if we wish: for example, one could see figures in the shadows, and so forth – but it stretches the meaning of the word. So, the answer to the first question is a cautious ‘no.’ Such things can be interpreted. (Surely one can 33 34

The quoted three questions are all taken from the original communication to contributors to this volume. I discuss the aesthetics of everyday life in my book The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: The Aesthetics of Everyday Life (Peterborough, on: Broadview, 2012). Unfortunately, I say nothing there about theory of interpretation.

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interpret a hat someone is wearing, i.e. in terms of what it is saying about that person or about her culture.) iv.2 “Question #2: Should we count edification as the culminating aim of interpretation? Or, more modestly, should we count edification as a possible motivation for interpretation, but not strictly an aim of interpretation? In other words, does an edificatory view of the aim of interpretation allow too much?” In short, is edification the aim, an aim, or not really an aim at all? The first question when dealing with this is whether we are talking about edification in the broad sense of increased wisdom generally, or whether we are just talking about edification with respect to, say, the intentions of the author or creator. The first question is the interesting one. Gadamer for example seems to hold an edification view, i.e. that good interpretations edify. I am inclined to agree. It seems to me that when we interpret we try to get beneath the work itself to understanding the world. So we are precisely not here talking about edification with respect to simply learning about the author’s intention. The key here would be to look to the great interpreters, for example of literary works. Are they great because they teach us something about life or the world, or our time, by way of their interpretations of great literary works? Often they are. So if this counts as edification then edification is at least one aim of interpretation, perhaps the most important. Another use of the word ‘edification’ will immediately arise in the minds of most contemporary philosophers. Richard Rorty in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature famously drew from Gadamer the idea that edification is a matter of finding new, better, more fruitful ways of speaking, and that edification can be connected to hermeneutics as a matter of making connections between our culture and some exotic or historical one that may be incommensurable with it, or a non-hermeneutic activity of reinterpreting the familiar in non-familiar terms. Therapeutic philosophers, unlike foundationalists, will provide us with edification. This secular approach to edification is one with which I have some sympathy. If this is what is meant by edification, then it is one aim of interpretation, and perhaps the most valuable one. The oed gives two meanings of edification: (a) the building up of…the soul, in faith and holiness; the imparting of moral and spiritual stability and strength by suitable instruction and exhortation, and (b) mental and moral improvement, enlightenment, or instruction. I find it hard to think of interpretation in general, or at its best, as a form of instruction. Nor do I believe in soul, faith or holiness, at least not in the way that a follower of a traditional religion

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does. However, I can make sense of these ideas in a reinterpreted secular way, for example, in terms of building up a moral stability within the self. The second oed meaning, therefore, poses no problem for the secularist as long as secular meanings are given to all of the terms in the definition, for example ‘enlightenment.’ Krausz later clarified that edification, for him, is not a cognitive term but means a situation in which “the very act of interpretation is simultaneously taken as a transformative vehicle to heighten, for example, one’s religious or aesthetic sensibility.”35 The second option, heightening of aesthetic sensibility, would be understandable to the secular mind. However, it does not fit well with previous definitions of ‘edification’ offered by Krausz or by the dictionaries. It seems that one can have a heightened aesthetic sensibility without being edified, or edified without a heightened aesthetic sensibility. In his article for this volume Krausz explicitly addresses my previously expressed views on creative interpretation under the heading of edification. In this essay he identifies edification with a mystical sense of oneness with the world. (This is yet a different meaning than the ones previously given.) Although he agrees with certain aspects of my account of creative interpretation he argues that I undercut the distinction between edification and interpretation, saying the following: Yet when Leddy distinguishes between two sorts of interpretation (creative versus non-creative, one more “live” than another)—might he not better have distinguished between interpretation and edification, thus allowing us to speak more directly about applications or uses of interpretation? When Leddy speaks about creative interpretations as being “better” than non-creative ones, we must ask, better for whom, and for what purposes? If that question is allowed, then we are no longer asking an elucidatory question about the meaning or meanings of a work. We are, rather, asking about an application or use of interpretation by a possible recipient. That, it would seem, is a different matter from interpretation as such. Krausz is right to question the idea of ‘better.’ I spoke too crudely when I theorized about that which is better in a general way. Non-creative interpretations, for example ones that deliberately seek to do no more than retrieve the 35

Krausz, “The Ideals and Aim of Interpretation,” (Chapter 2, this volume).

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­author’s intentions, may actually be better for some persons and for some purposes. For example, there may be certain individuals who get the most out of literary works when they feel they can see into the mind of the author and see the work exactly as the author did. I still think that, generally speaking, creative interpretations, as long as they are based on strong textual evidence, bring the text alive, and are better in that sense, at least for most people. I share with Gadamer the notion that the fusion of horizons is the ideal here.36 As Gadamer puts it, we are historically situated and can only see things under certain prejudices and within our own horizon, and yet at the same time, that situation is changeable, and an encounter with another (for example an author through a literary text) can occasion a fusion of horizons in which, although we do not go over into the horizon of the other, we can gain a new perspective that gives credit to the other as well as to ourselves: this is a matter of dialectics. But do we need to maintain, as Krausz holds, a strict distinction between application of interpretation (for example in achieving a sense of oneness, the meaning implied by his most recent use of the term ‘edification’) and interpretation itself? I continue to believe that interpretation is best seen as a moment or aspect of the experience of the literary work as a whole. I suspect that, for a secularist, a deep interpretation that is also deeply meaningful may well be edifying in Krausz’s most recent sense (unless that sense excludes secular interpretations of ‘oneness’). Here, interpretation spills over into edification since aspects of the experience just cannot be distinguished in any strict or definitive way. In the above quote Krausz seems to identify interpretation with elucidation of meaning, and I think we can be helped by Lamarque here, who does not reduce interpretation to mere explication or elucidation but sees it as closely tied to appreciation, thus denying the distinction Krausz wishes to maintain between the interpretation and what we do with the interpretation. So I am not convinced that there is a need to isolate interpretation from edification in the sense of “one gets the meaning and only then does one go on to use it.” Perhaps, for example, one only gets the meaning when one is edified by it. This is partly what was meant by the idea of the ‘hermeneutical circle.’37 36 37

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (Bloomsbury Academic, 2004). Lamarque does not mention Gadamer either in The Philosophy of Literature or in Work and Object. Lamarque, by the way, although never mentioning Gadamer, recognizes the hermeneu­ tical circle in The Philosophy of Literature, op. cit., 144. His recognition presupposes the distinction between text and work that I have questioned. He argues that some terms are ambiguous at the textual level, and that this ambiguity is only resolvable at the level of interpretation. He argues that the explication is subordinate to the interpretation, and the ambiguity of the term only matters in relation to the appreciation of the work as a whole.

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Krausz asks, “Does [a reader who reads from a Buddhist perspective] assign salience, not so much to uncover the meaning or meanings of the work, but to further his own edificatory aim? What role might world-views or life philosophies such as Buddhism… play in the interpretation of [a particular] book?” He wants to consider whether a Buddhist worldview, for example, “is more or less conducive to one’s self-cultivation, self-fulfillment, or self-realization—­ without subsuming [it] under the very concept of interpretation.” The idea is that the goal of the reader might be self-cultivation, or perhaps an experience of oneness, rather than understanding of meaning. I don’t know: maybe in some cases this is true. For example, in reading a religious text a devotee might be said to be more interested in self-cultivation or an experience of oneness than in understanding its meaning. But that seems odd: isn’t one interested in self-cultivation through understanding that text? Isn’t that the standard way religious people approach religious texts? And if there is a secular type of edification, for example in the fusion of horizons, where some sort of edification (in the sense of self-cultivation or a sense of oneness) may occur, then isn’t this also a matter of ‘through understanding’? So I am just not sure why Krausz wants to maintain (and depend on) this distinction. Although I do not fully understand religious edification, a secular version of this might well be an aim of literary (or even philosophical) interpretation as such, if interpretation as such, at its best, ends in fusion of horizons. iv.3 “Question #3: How widely should we construe artifactuality? Does it apply to the soteriological spaces of Advaita Hindus or Tibetan Buddhists, for example? Can we count a life lived in accord with one or another philosophy of life as an interpretable work? If so, what would count as its artefacts?” In short, can a religious life be interpreted? As I said above, if you can tell a story about what something means then you can interpret it. So a life lived according to a philosophy of life might well be seen as such. Certainly a biography of a person which portrays him or her as living a life according to a philosophy of life would be an interpretation. By the way, it would also be itself interpretable. On whether artifactuality is necessary for interpretation, I would say it is not. The key question here concerns what Krausz is trying to say. Does he think that theory of literary interpretation fails to understand religious experience? Or does he want to suggest that the concept of interpretation is too mired in cognitive issues to apply to ways in which religious practice seeks experiences of self-transcendence? In the end, however, I applaud the idea of pushing the question of interpretation beyond narrow visions of what is true to the text to

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questions of appreciation, as Lamarque does, and to questions of grand lifeimprovement and experience of oneness with the world, as Krausz does. v Conclusion In this chapter I have argued for a position on literary interpretation that is pluralist, constructivist, imputationalist (although I do not like that term) and, for the most part, commonsensical. (For example, if I could explain the position to my students without technical terminology, I believe they would be more likely to accept it than any of the alternatives. If this is true, and I ­recognize I have not shown that it is, the position is at least commonsensical for my social-historical situation. However the speculative material evoked in my discussion of Lamarque on appreciation and Krausz on edification goes beyond commonsense.) I followed a minimal deconstructionist methodology in which I sought to undercut certain rigid dichotomies that militate against the abovementioned position. These include discovery vs. invention, text vs. work, elucidation vs. interpretation, recovery vs. creation, and, in the case of Krausz, edification vs. interpretation. I have also suggested that all of these dichotomies may be based on a more fundamental residual commitment to mind/body dualism. Although I have been sympathetic to the position of Joseph Margolis in the past, I have even questioned the idea of a dichotomy between the culturally emergent object (for example the literary work) and the physical body in which it is embodied. This too implies a kind of dualism. There is, on my view, no physical object different from the sculpture and with different identiy conditions. My main strategy has been to introduce the notion of continuity in the creative process, for example between the creation of the text and creation of its various actualizations in reading experience and in interpretive texts. The central notion I have drawn on is the idea that interpretation is an actualization of a potential. Literary works may be actualized in many different but equally valid ways, the value of the interpretation depending on the context of its creation and reception. I have advocated a form of historicism, but one that follows Gadamer as seeing history itself as historical, and not the sort found in Saville that sees history as something frozen, eternal, and unchanging. My deconstructive strategy has even gone so far as to open up for questioning one of my own distinctions: for I have argued that, although pluralism is basically true, monism is probably the most effective position to take, practically speaking, because it provides a basis for debate and an i­deal towards which one can reach. There is no ultimate correct interpretation—but

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believing there is is an immensely useful, perhaps necessary, fiction. Thus, the pluralism/monism dichotomy itself, at least when taken naively, stands in the way of full understanding of literary interpretation. I have not discussed other sorts of interpretation, for example interpretation of philosophical and religious texts, or interpretations of scientific phenomena. Whether what I say holds for these as well is another question.

chapter 4

In Language, Beyond Words: Literary Interpretation and the Verbal Imagination Garry L. Hagberg

Bard College

When Henry James famously said, “the province of art is all life,” he was on his way to later saying, “It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance…and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.”1 Peter Lamarque, looking into the practice (I would say the set of interconnected practices) that constitutes literary experience, has helpfully said that the special kind of attention that literary works invite itself calls for close attention. And I will suggest later that the fuller understanding of this kind of attention takes us a good way toward understanding what it was that Henry James had in mind in the above comments. But that will come at the end; en route to it, we will ask what does Lamarque say about such attention, and why does he regard it as centrally important? And how might the question of meaning be understood within his larger inquiry? I should say at the outset: It is fundamental to the view of literary experience that I here want to articulate that, as Lamarque makes clear (I am changing the terms slightly), reading a literary text will never be reducible to the sum total of reading each individual sentence that makes up the work individually. One can see this by consulting what we would say, if asked this admittedly rather odd question: Suppose I have read each sentence in Henry James’s tale “The Private Life,” one sentence every three months for many decades, and I understood all the words in each sentence, i.e. there were no words I had to look up in a dictionary or translate. My question is: have I read the work? We might answer (1): No. Or we might answer (2): Well, not exactly the work – although you have read all the sentences, over a very long stretch of time, that make up the work. Or (3) we might postpone an answer until we ask our own three-part question: Have you made connections between those isolated sentences? Do you see them as parts of a whole? Do you have a sense of the whole work? (In asking, we would expect a negative reply to all three.) Answer (1), in its bluntness, implicitly claims that the work is the kind of thing that cannot have 1 In Henry James, The Figure in the Carpet and Other Stories, ed. Frank Kermode (London: ­Penguin, 1986), 10–11. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004325241_006

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been attended to properly or appropriately in this temporally f­ ragmented and sentence-isolated way. Answer (2) states that, while you have read the b­ asic objects (in this case words in sentences as the largest frame of attention) that serve to make up the work, you have not yet attended to the work, which is not reducible to them. And answer (3) provides a prescriptive view of what one ought to have done in reading the work that, under these strange conditions, one could not have done. The answers, taken together (there is a small lesson in this that will re-emerge below), intimate a connection between the nature of the special attention Lamarque is rightly going after, and the nature of the object being read, the kind of thing it is. He thus says, in my view entirely plausibly, “What makes literary works distinctive is closely connected to what makes the reading practice distinctive when the works are read as literature.”2 Analogous cases can cast light: what is at work here as it manifests itself in the other arts? If a person, with a magnifying glass, studied each brushstroke of a Rembrandt self-portrait, looking at each through a small slit in a canvas cover placed over the whole painting, would that person have seen the portrait? If a person had heard sounded each note separately of a Bach cello suite would she have heard the work? The point is not that we would (only) say No; we would be extremely puzzled as to what the person asking the question thinks the object before her is. The extreme case would be that of the interestingly lunatic claim that, having heard all the pitches from the lowest to the highest on the piano, one has thus in effect heard all piano music. The objects in question are of a kind that makes all such questions utterly alien to our established set of artwork-attentive practices. And what of reductive or small-element attention, as it manifests itself elsewhere? Here one can be very brief: why do we have phrases such as “you can’t see the forest for the trees,” or “you are standing too close to the billboard” (where the point is to apply to the case at hand the fact that one cannot read the message stated in gigantic letters that are larger than a person with one’s eyes inches from the surface focused on only one part of one of the letters)? Lamarque is right: The kind of the object in question calls for the appropriate kind of attention. One might thus think that any such reductive or element-additive approach to aesthetic perception would be immediately recognizable as transparently misguided from the start. But there is a model derived from the philosophy of language that can prove all too influential here, either as it explicitly influences our thinking on the surface or as it shapes our intuitive expectations of how an explanation will proceed in the conceptual subterrain. That model 2 Peter Lamarque, The Philosophy of Literature (Malden: Blackwell, 2009), Chapter 4: Practice, 132.

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just is linguistic atomism, where the methodological presupposition is that any respectable account of meaning will begin from the smallest unit of meaning (the word) and progress upward from there. For such a view, if there is any question of meaning, it will be answered at the lowest level of analysis. This view was shared by many in the earlier phase of twentieth-century philosophy of language, but to my mind Russell stated it best in The Philosophy of Logical Atomism.3 He wrote: A proposition is just a symbol. It is a complex symbol in the sense that it has parts which are also symbols: a symbol may be defined as complex when it has parts that are symbols.4 The proposition, the sentence, has parts, each of which has its own content as its own symbol; the meaning of the proposition is then seen as the meaningsum of those individual parts. But is a word a symbol? He writes: Perhaps I ought to say a word or two about what I am understanding by symbolism, because I think some people think you only mean mathematical symbols when you talk about symbolism. I am using it in a sense to include all language of every sort and kind, so that every word is a ­symbol, and every sentence, and so forth. When I speak of a symbol I ­simply mean something that “means” something else.5 The most simple symbol, the most simple carrier of meaning-content, is for Russell thus the word, and the sentence is a complex symbol that carries those linguistic atoms in one container. The meaning of a proper name is the person to which it refers on this view, and the meaning of a sentence is the complex fact (or in Wittgenstein’s phrase, influencing Russell at this stage, the state of affairs)6 that the sentence depicts or portrays. The sentence, he says, is the symbol for the fact. With this brief background, matters now become more interesting given the issue at hand (that is, what it is to have read and understood, and properly ­attended to, a work of literature, or by extension, art). Russell states, 3 Bertrand Russell, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (Orig. Pub. 1918; London: Fontana, 1972, repub. London: Routledge, 2010). 4 The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, 10. 5 The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, 12. 6 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D.F. Pears & B.F. McGuinness, Introduction by Bertrand Russell (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961).

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We may lay down the following provisional definitions; That the components of a proposition are the symbols we must understand in order to understand the proposition; That the components of the fact which makes a proposition true or false, as the case may be, are the meanings of the symbols which we must understand in order to understand the proposition.7 On this model of meaning, it is the components that we must understand first (“in order to understand the proposition”), and the components have the meaning they do by referring to, or standing for in a one-to-one relationship to, the facts in the world that are depicted by the sentence. And so: “In a logically perfect language, there will be one word and no more for every simple object.” Each isolated object in the world, what Russell calls each particular, and each corresponding symbol or word of it, “stands entirely alone and is completely self-subsistent.” Meaning is atomistic, each unit bounded within its own symbol, its own word. And the complete grasp of meaning is thus atomistic as well; complete understanding is always contained at the level of the unit, never transcending it to a higher or more holistic mode of perception. (Whatever one might see or comprehend at that trans-word level, it would not be meaning.) Russell thus continues, “each particular that there is in the world does not in any way logically depend upon any other particular. Each one might happen to be the whole universe; it is a merely empirical fact that this is not the case.” And he finishes this line of thought with, When you are acquainted with that particular, you have a full, adequate, and complete understanding of the name, and no further information is required. No further information as to the facts that are true of that particular would enable you to have a fuller understanding of the meaning of the name.8 What then of our answers (1), (2), and (3) above as helpfully prompted by Lamarque’s claim? From this Russellian point of view, from this conception of unit-contained meaning, answer (1) would be met with its antithesis, saying instead of a blunt No, “Well, yes…you’ve read all the words so you’ve read all there is.” Answer (2) would be met with the response, “the phrase ‘not exactly the work,’ if you mean by this something beyond the words, does not make sense.” And answer (3) would generate the corresponding three-part response, 7 The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, 23. 8 The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, 30.

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(a) “Whatever ‘connections between the sentences’ to which you refer cannot add to the already-contained meaning, so whatever they are, they are not relevant to the meaning of the work”; (b) “as to ‘parts of a whole’ as you discuss the matter, the words, as Russell said, form parts of the complex sentence, but that is the highest unit of meaning, so we can stop any further inquiry there”; and (c) “when you ask about ‘a sense of the whole work,’ this employs the concept of sense at a generic level beyond its home, which remains at the level of the word and the sentence.” But the truth of the matter here is: These reversed answers are driven by an oversimplified picture of word-meaning; they accord perfectly with an atomistic conception of referential perfection and internal meaning-containment; and they hopelessly miscast everything we know about literary meaning and understanding. So now we might ask a revised version of our initial question: what if we read the entire Henry James tale at one sitting, but read it (however difficult it may be to imagine this – and this difficulty is itself instructive) in a way that focused entirely and exclusively on each sentence unto itself, with a sharper focus still on each word as contained within that exclusive sentential frame. With the Russellian view, because no further information would enable us to have any fuller understanding, we would have to say that we have read the story. Yet we know this is not only wrong, but here again wildly so. We would have read the words, and read the sentences, but not the story. The nature of our attention here is, as I believe Lamarque would say, simply all wrong. But what does he suggest about the nature of meaning and how questions concerning it in literary contexts should be understood? It is here, I believe, that Lamarque may hold some views, explicitly or otherwise, in common with the Russellian picture, and these views undergird Lamarque’s claim about the limited role of meaning in interpretation. Lamarque writes, It is sometimes supposed that the search for meaning is the fundamental task of literary criticism and issues about where that meaning is located and how best to recover it are fundamental to any theorizing about ­literature. That is why the intention issue has been given such high priority. Under closer scrutiny, though, it becomes apparent that the picture is not quite so clear-cut, the pursuit of meaning not quite so central, or unequivocal, both for criticism and theory, as it might at first seem. Questions about meaning are inextricably tied to wider aspects of the critical enterprise.9 9 Lamarque, Literature, 136.

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And he adds the centrally important observation that, Normally we ask what something means not as an end in itself but with some further end in view: to guide action or facilitate response or simply to clear up misunderstanding.10 Now, one would not be wrong to follow Lamarque in these observations, but given the brief excursus on the atomistic picture just above, I would put the point he is making differently. One could say with Lamarque that the question of meaning is not as central to the philosophy of literature as it has seemed. But one might also say—and this is the far more important point that he does not quite say—that questions of meaning are in truth not the narrow and constricted questions we might take them to be given the background thinking that we have inherited from much (not all, to which I’ll return below) of the philosophy of language of the twentieth century. That is, our broad range of critical-interpretive engagements includes much more than a restricted model of word-meaning could capture, but perhaps not a great deal more than that captured by a properly expansive and encompassing vision of word-meaning of the kind that has escaped the grip of atomism. Thus when Lamarque says that asking what something means is rarely an end in itself, he is right—but as a friendly amendment I want to suggest that he is perhaps more right than he knows (or than at least he says here), in that there is something important and in play that reaches beyond meaning as narrowly defined at the level of the word. Actual meaning is, I think, central; a word-enclosed misconception of meaning is not. Understanding how meaning actually functions can cast a good deal of light on interpretive activity. The point one wants to make here is that questions of meaning as they emerge variously within contexts of verbal exchange are often themselves models, in miniature, of how we might approach a literary text with the kind of imaginative attention Lamarque is emphasizing. Lamarque is thus absolutely right when he says, those who stress the pursuit of meaning in criticism, placing emphasis on semantic or pragmatic meaning, give the impression that literary works are puzzles to be solved more than experiences to be undergone.11

10 Ibid. 11 Lamarque, Literature, 136.

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But this is right only when referring to those who approach the entire issue with an explicit or implicit conception of bounded word-meaning already in place—it is that picture that is too narrow to accommodate our range of critical engagement. Language unto itself can of course generate simple and wordcontained puzzles of meaning, e.g. for those new to the language (“Wait, what is the meaning of that word ‘aardvark’?”), but far more expansively, and far more interestingly, we can have questions concerning what someone means by their words, what allegiances they are espousing, what implications they are putting in play, what they meant to intimate, what they meant to exclude from an assertion, what serious undercurrent flowed under a facetious remark, what hurtful truth is being sensitively veiled beneath a remark as an act of kindness to the hearer or over-hearer, what is being concealed as an act of callousness or disregard or manipulation, what slight intimation of self-doubt was contained within a seemingly bold assertion, what is said now but known by the speaker to be understandable by the hearer only later, what remark suddenly locked into place a previously undetected pattern of remarks over a long period of time, what words as said a certain way intimate an un-avowed affection, what silences in the place of expected words convey as much as the absent words, what pauses between words convey an otherwise unexpressed uncertainty— and a thousand other things. It is not, I think, that Lamarque would disagree with any of this—but then one could say as well: the question of meaning in interpretation, rightly understood, is every bit as central as some have thought. What is not central, again, is an emaciated conception of linguistic content. But be that as it may, what precisely is it that is not visible to our imagined atomistic or temporally-extended reader? What is it that, we know, such a reader would not have seen in the work (indeed, again, they would not really have seen the work)? If we subtract the minimal or atomistically-restricted meanings of the words from the meaning of the work, what is the remainder? The answer takes us directly into imaginative perception, and with an enriched conception of linguistic meaning we can begin to articulate the special mode of attention Lamarque is rightly pursuing. The initial prescriptive three-part third answer above asked (1) if we have made connections between the sentences of the work, (2) if we see the ­sentences as parts of a larger whole, and (3) if we have achieved a sense of the whole work. Suppose we now ask the question: do dictionaries give us connections between sentences? Well, first, we might answer that they do not give us sentences, so of course they do not. But then one might also say instead: well, a thesaurus gives us connections between words, and such connections are at least implicit at the level of word-definition, so perhaps, in a kind of secondary sense, connections between words are given in the dictionary, even if not

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directly stated. And so, in a kind of third sense, because those words are used to compose sentences, connections between the sentences also are at least intimated or in a way latently present. But it will be clear to just about any reader that this all sounds far too suspiciously apologetic, far too speculative, and just far too thin. What we want is an account of the connections between sentences that make up the content of the work beyond individual word meaning, and these responses are far from convincing. The reason is that this line of thinking proceeds from, and thus preserves, the atomistic conception, and does not replace it with a far richer view from the outset; it tries, implausibly, to add content to what it presumes to be foundational to any inquiry into meaning. One wants to say what has been jokingly said as a response to a person asking directions: “You can’t get there from here.” Lamarque I believe sees this when, in providing a list of some of our most central expectations when attending to a literary work, he says, “the following, at least, are relevant to attending to literature as art, not all of which give focus to ‘meaning’ in any narrowly linguistic sense.”12 (Those features include some of what answer (3) prescribes: awareness of the design of the whole; the expectation of coherence and inner connectedness; a sense of the work’s developing organizing principles or themes that provide unity beyond what the subject immediately at hand in any given passage discusses; and so forth.) But the heart of the matter for the question of the role of meaning in interpretation is precisely what he touches on when he uses the phrase, “‘meaning’ in any narrowly linguistic sense.” Now, if the use of a word is without exception determinative of its meaning, and indeed the resource to which we actually turn in answering any question of meaning beyond the most simple and rudimentary dictionary definition, one wants to ask: is there any such thing as a narrowly linguistic sense? One might say: Of course – the lexicographer has a job. But then as quickly as we see a series of listed meanings of a word in the Oxford English Dictionary, we see a list of uses selected from the evolving history of the use of that word. So one might better say: the good lexicographer has two jobs – extracting succinct definitions from usages, and then assembling and presenting selected informative usages in actual contexts. They say, and they show. The evolution of this method is no accident, and the contexts of usage as provided as part of a definition are anything but “filler.” This lexicographical work is a culturally embedded practice that can tell us a lot, and, rightly seen, can give us the right direction in rethinking word-meaning. This, I must say, is not the place for a full excursus into the philosophy of language as it intertwines with aesthetic issues, but to make a few observations .

12 Lamarque, Literature, 136.

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briefly: it was Wittgenstein who, reflecting on the views of Russell and Frege, saw most deeply and precisely why it is that “one can’t get there from here,” i.e. how, given an atomistic starting presupposition, one would never arrive at a clear view of meaning and, equally important for present considerations, a clear view of questions about meaning. Nor would one ever break free of expectations yielding prismatic distortions about how an answer to any consideration of meaning might proceed, or of theoretical demands set down in advance that then shape all subsequent investigation and our sense of what is and is not relevant to that investigation. It was for these reasons that Wittgenstein, changing the entire angle of vision or the way of seeing the matter – or indeed, changing the nature of the attention we give the matter (to which I will return below to try to augment Lamarque’s discussion of the special kind of attention we give to literature), began his Philosophical Investigations13 with a passage from Augustine: When grown-ups named some object and at the same time turned towards it, I perceived this, and I grasped that the thing was signified by the sound they uttered, since they meant to point it out. This, however, I gathered from their gestures, the natural language of all peoples, the language that by means of facial expression and the play of eyes, of the movements of the limbs and the tone of voice, indicates the affections of the soul when it desires, or clings to, or rejects, or recoils from, something. In this way, little by little, I learnt to understand what things the words, which I heard uttered in their respective places in various sentences, signified. And once I got my tongue around these signs, I used them to express my wishes. Of this passage, Wittgenstein wrote: These words, it seems to me, give us a particular picture of the essence of human language. It is this: the words in language name objects—­ sentences are combinations of such names.—In this picture of language we find the roots of the following idea: Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands.

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Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, revised 4th edition, P.M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), Sec. 1.

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This picture persists, on the surface or – more frequently and more ­interestingly – below, into the present day, and it generates the correspondingly reasonable (given that starting point) belief within aesthetic contexts that (a) given the complexity of the content of literary art, (b) given the complex and special nature of the attention we give it, and (c) given the expectations we have about the experience it will deliver, a focus on the problem of meaning could not take us beyond or above the word, when what we want is a clear view of the nature of the work. Wittgenstein shortly mentions “how much the general concept of the meaning of a word surrounds the working of language with a haze which makes clear vision impossible,” and he turns to examples such as: seeing and acting on the instruction to get five red apples; knowing—but without being able to say succinctly—what a game is; seeing what it is for a child to learn a word and seeing how pointing is an act within language (i.e. as something that occurs within the usage of words and not merely in the first learning of the meaning of a word); seeing the problem inherent in trying to learn indexicals such as “I,” “here,” and “now,” and words such as “there” and “that” ostensively. And he introduces the notion of the “language-game,” which includes both simple and limited interactions in which children learn their native language, but then also (and more importantly for present concerns), he writes, “I shall also call the whole, consisting of language and the activities into which it is woven, a ‘language-game.’”14 I have discussed the concept of the language-game as it holds significance for aesthetic understanding elsewhere,15 but in any case it is a concept that suggests, from the outset, that the understanding of words will not, or at least need not, proceed from the smallest unit of analysis. Rather, we see the word always already (to use a fashionable phrase) enmeshed within a network of relations, where the significance of what is said is not (contrary to the preceding picture) a sum of pre-individuated units. Questions of implication, of ranges or of the reach of significance, of possible directions for interpretation, of ­casting new light on a passage by a new juxtaposition, of reasons for closing an interpretive direction, of possible-but-avoided misinterpretations, and (here again) a thousand other things are all answered within such complex, layered, and indeterminately-bounded networks or language-games, and not prior to them. So it turns out that it is the very kind of attention we give to such questions of meaning, within contexts of usage, that in fact provides a model (and like Wittgenstein’s brief examples in commenting on Augustine, 14 15

Philosophical Investigations, Sec. 7. Garry L. Hagberg, Meaning and Interpretation: Wittgenstein, Henry James, and Literary Knowledge (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994).

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it does so in lucid microcosm) of the kind of attention we give literary works in the process of interpreting them. But one still might well think (showing the residual influence of the atomistic picture) that the use of a word in its most simple and straightforward form would be to use a simple proper name with invariant referent. This—despite the complexities that I am claiming are irreducible in any proper understanding of language—would be to use a word with a simple, unitary, and internally-bounded meaning. To break free of this model of simple word-use upon which the later complexities might rest or out of which they might grow (so this use of a simple name would be still taken to be the essence of linguistic usage), Wittgenstein, in one of the most important passages for helpfully redirecting our conception of meaning in his entire corpus, writes (the passage warrants quotation in full): Consider this example: if one says “Moses did not exist,” this may mean various things. It may mean: the Israelites did not have a single leader when they came out of Egypt – or: their leader was not called Moses— or: there wasn’t anyone who accomplished all that the Bible relates of ­Moses—or:…According to Russell, we may say: the name “Moses” can be defined by means of various descriptions. For example, as “the man who led the Israelites through the wilderness,” “the man who as a child was taken out of the Nile by Pharoah’s daughter,” and so on. And ­according as we accept one definition or another, the sentence “Moses did ­exist” acquires a different sense, and so does every other sentence about ­Moses.— And if we are told “N did not exist,” we do ask: “What do you mean” Do you want to say …or…and so on? But if I make a statement about Moses, am I always ready to substitute some one of these descriptions for “Moses”? I shall perhaps say: By “Moses” I mean the man who did what the Bible relates of Moses, or at any rate much of it. But how much? Have I decided how much must turn out to be false for me to give up my proposition as false? So is my use of the name “Moses” fixed and determined for all possible cases?—Isn’t it like this, that I have, so to speak, a whole series of props in readiness, and am ready to lean on one if another should be taken from under me, and vice versa?—Consider yet another case. If I say “N” is dead, then something like the following may hold for the meaning of the name “N”: I believe that a human being has lived whom (1) I have seen in such-and-such places, who (2) looked like this (pictures), (3) has done such-and-such things, and (4) bore the name “N” in civic life.—But if some point were now to turn out to be false—even if what turned out to be false is only something which strikes me as insignificant? But where are the b­ oundaries of

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what is insignificant?—If I had given an explanation of the name in such a case, I’d now be ready to alter it. And this can be expressed as follows: I use the name “N” without a fixed meaning. (But that impairs its use as little as the use of a table is impaired by the fact that it stands on four legs instead of three and so sometimes wobbles.) Should it be said that I’m using a word whose meaning I don’t know, and so am talking nonsense?—Say what you please, so long as it does not prevent you from seeing how things are. (And when you see that, there will be some things that you won’t say.) (The fluctuation of scientific definitions: what today counts as an ­observed concomitant of phenomenon A will tomorrow be used to ­define “A.”)16 This is one name as it appears in one (biblical) story; it interacts, with very many other actual, and still more possible, other words and sentences within, and then beyond, the limits of this tale. And where those limits are drawn is itself sensitive to contextual variation—the boundaries are fixed (and as Wittgenstein here shows, often with still unfixed edges) by the nature of the inquiry at hand. No one description of Moses in the above functions as the definitive description around which all other descriptions revolve or upon which they depend, and as Wittgenstein observes, the sense of each changes with the change in associated description. It is important to see that this does not for a moment suggest, or implicitly endorse, a sacrifice of standards or clarity – it only removes a false image of neatness, leaving in its place a vision of how we actually use language and a hint of the complexity of how it actually works within contexts of usage, within our language-games. Real clarity concerning what we mean is achieved within, and never prior to, the emergence of contextually-seated nuances that function at the level of relations across or between words, across or between sentences, and indeed across or between paragraphs, passages, and still larger sections of verbal ­exchange. So we see here the makings of an answer to our question above concerning what accounts for the remainder of our reading of a literary work beyond the isolated readings of the words. The answer is that there never was an isolated or word-based reading of the words that make up the work to begin with (I mentioned there the difficulty of imagining this, and that difficulty arises from these considerations.) The perception of word-meaning, or sentencemeaning, or paragraph-meaning, or passage meaning, or section meaning, all 16

Philosophical Investigations, Sec. 79.

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require a kind of imaginative cross-unit, or unit-transcending, contemplation, from the start. Where Russell had a dream, Wittgenstein is awake to the realities of language. But what of the conceptual clarity that Russell’s dream promised (and that he refers to himself as having earlier imagined)? Wittgenstein writes, We see that what we call “proposition,” “language,” has not the formal unity that I imagined, but is a family of structures more or less akin to one another. —But what becomes of logic now? Its rigour seems to be giving way here.—But in that case doesn’t logic altogether disappear?—For how can logic lose its rigour? Of course not by our bargaining any of its rigour out of it.—The preconception of crystalline purity can only be removed by turning our whole inquiry around. (One might say: the inquiry must be turned around, but on the pivot of our real need.)17 Sensitivity to what a person,18 or in literature, a character or a narrator, is saying requires the kind of attentiveness to detail to which these considerations point, and this I believe is compatible with what Lamarque is suggesting – it is just that in order to fully capture the form of attention he is rightly pursuing, language has to be understood much more fully for what it actually is, rather than holding even to a minimal or residual degree to the preconceptions about language bequeathed to us in the legacy of atomism and much of subsequent twentieth-century linguistic philosophy more broadly. Or said another way: the special attention Lamarque is after is in fact found precisely in an area he has moved to the periphery, i.e. our relations to our words – where those complex relations determine the meaning of what we say (and thus the meaning of what literary characters say). To understand those relations, and to understand the networks of relations between the words, sentences, and every larger grouping of our linguistic interaction, is to grasp meaning. And it is precisely this process—for reasons Wittgenstein pointed out, a process that is instructively difficult to encapsulate in brief scope—that serves as the best model we have for the attentive reading of a literary work. What does “Moses” mean? 17

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Philosophical Investigations, Sec. 108. Lamarque’s insightful remarks on what he identifies as the radical indeterminacy of Ophelia (Lamarque, Literature, 147) accord well with this point. I offer a fuller discussion of this issue in particular in “A Person’s Words: Literary ­Characters and Autobiographical Understanding,” in The Philosophy and Autobiography, ed. Christopher Cowley (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, forthcoming).

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What does “Moses did not exist” mean? What does “Call me Ishmael” mean? What does “Time for you and time for me/And time yet for a hundred indecisions,/And for a hundred visions and revisions,”? The way we go about answering these questions is to see connections, to see relations, to see implications, to see allusions, to see moves of significance within a language-game that are at once within a word and beyond a word, within a sentence and beyond a sentence. It is the process we undergo, at much greater length, in reading—in working out an interpretation of—a literary work. So I’ll say again, but now with more behind us, that Lamarque says much to broadly support what I am suggesting here19—the difference lies in the two views of language, one that moves questions of meaning to the periphery for him, and one that moves questions of meaning to the center for me. In the list of features of the literary attention he provides, he also includes a mention of metaphor, itself a genre of linguistic usage that requires the connection of one set of associated ideas or possible descriptions (as in “Moses”) with another interconnected set heretofore separate from that first set.20 And he includes the feature of a literary work’s sense of inviting a reader’s reflection; this is exactly right,21 and what I want to say about it is that such reflection is either 19

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In discussing the role of explication in interpretation, Lamarque says, “meaning in this context does not take any essentially different form from that found in other kinds of texts. All linguistic texts invite explication of meaning and the procedures for recovering meaning will by and large be similar across the board,” (Literature, 143). This suggests the agreement I mention here; so another way to put the difference is in the extent to which the procedures for recovering meaning warrant close and full investigation, and, once that’s done, the extent to which this casts light on interpretative engagement with a work. He says briefly, “Sentential models of meaning, from ‘conversational meaning’ to ‘utterance meaning’ fit naturally in this context, even if there might be reasons for preferring some models over others” (Lamarque, Literature, 144). Thus to put the agreement here in still another way: what I am doing here is asking what, indeed, we mean by sentential models, and asking in more detail why we might very much and for good reason prefer some models over others. I offer a discussion of the importance of metaphor for aesthetic understanding in “Metaphor,” in The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, 3rd ed., ed. B. Gaut and D. Lopes (Routledge, 2013). But what Lamarque does not do is to expand on this special variety of invited reflection; I of course am suggesting that this reflection has much to do with reflection on the meanings conveyed in the language use of the characters whose lives we are contemplating. Lamarque’s view on this point is very different: he writes, “For the time being we should note that while certain kinds of imaginative supplementation are often an important part of literary appreciation they are not centrally concerned with meaning, in anything like the way meaning relates to explication” (Literature, 146). He says here that “While elucidation

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closely parallel to, or indeed an instance of, the kind of word-born imaginative or connection-making reflection I am suggesting is actually at the heart of linguistic understanding—at the heart of verbal meaning, rightly understood. Lamarque also observes that literary works that overtly present and play on their apparent disorder, e.g. Tristram Shandy, should be read as structured wholes. This too is exactly right—but the elucidated significance of this claim will be determined by the connected implications and associations put into play by it, which (given the background in play of this discussion) is to say that we read for connections, for inter-linkages, for thematic intertwining, for inflection of one passage by another, for cross-sectional waves of implication rolling in from other sections of the same work in order to discern that larger coherence. This is precisely what happens inside the contextually fluctuating limits of an expanded language-game—with the question of meaning at the conceptual center. The focus on meaning that I am recommending offers a way of understanding an important difference to which Lamarque is sensitive. One can see on a moment’s reflection that interpretations that are different, but not incompatible, differ by residing in, or coming from, different vicinities (to employ Wittgenstein’s analogy between language and the streets and areas of a city) of the language-game that has evolved, or that is presently evolving, around the work in question. And similarly, different and incompatible interpretations are so precisely because the ranges of implications extending from one interpretive field yield sentences that are in contradiction with those extending from the implicature-field22 of the other interpretation. (This is not at all to say that they are equally plausible; criteria of acceptability will emerge in the contextualized way that Michael Krausz has discussed, to which I will return below.) This is all, briefly stated, a matter of meaning. But then again: Lamarque notes the difference—for me, a vitally important one—between (mere) interpretive statements on the one hand and interpretations on the other. Interpretations, he rightly says, involve “a far more extensive

22

aids our understanding of character and event it is not an exploration of verbal meaning as such.” The question I am raising here is: what does “verbal meaning as such” refer to, and what presuppositions lie beneath it? He continues: “To the extent that interpretation is involved it is more like the interpretation of action than of sentences.” What the Wittgensteinian-Austinian tradition understood was precisely that the interpretation of sentences is often far more like the interpretation of actions than was realized, or could be accommodated, in the Russellian tradition. I refer here of course to the work of Paul Grice; see Studies in the Way of Words (­Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1989). See esp. “Utterer’s Meaning, Sentence-Meaning, and Word-Meaning,” 117–37, and “Some Models for Implicature,” 138–43.

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process,” and “an interpretation that consists merely of a single interpretive statement without accompanying support is worthless.”23 Such an interpretive sentence, if it carries any conviction at all—if it inaugurates a new way of seeing that is revelatory, if it captures a focal-point of meaning around which much or all of the rest of the work revolves—will be understood against a background of many other sentences, both stated and possible; it is a background above (atomistic) words but in language. It is true that one could attempt to say here that, no, what is really at work here is a matter of perception, and that ways of seeing or reading or listening are somehow outside the bounds of language per se, but that would only be to falsify and grossly reduce the intricate intertwined relations between seeing and saying, and it would conceal rather than reveal the power that (actual, used) words exert in contexts of i­nterpretive reflection. In contrast, seeing the whole matter of interpretation along the linguistic-meaning lines I am recommending would open (rather than block with presuppositions about meaning-containment) the way to an Austinian24 awareness of how our actual critical language, in all its richness, works. Lamarque helpfully reminds us that we do not interpret everything, that what invites interpretation will be something other than obvious. But it is equally important to see that what is obvious is not given on the level of the word or sentence where that word or sentence is presumed to have fixed or trans-contextual meaning (so that we would have a large catalogue of definitively non-interpretable phrases); his own example shows this. “Good morning” does not invite interpretation in usual cases, and this is right, “unless,” he says, “you think it is something other than a greeting.”25 My point is just this: the process of interpretation is activated at precisely the moment when a question arises within a particular context about how these words are being used and what they are being used to imply as an explicit or implicit move in that game. This accords perfectly with Lamarque’s observation that “the distinction between what is ‘in’ a work and what is ‘imposed on it’ is not as clear-cut as it might seem”26. But the explanation of this distinction not being clear-cut is itself linguistic. What is contained within the implicature of a remark,27 what 23 Lamarque, Literature, 150. 24 See J.L. Austin, Philosophical Papers, 2nd ed., ed. J.O. Urmson and G.J. Warnock (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970). See esp. “The Meaning of a Word,” 55–75, and “­Performative Utterances,” 233–52. 25 Lamarque, Literature, 152. 26 Ibid. 27 I examine some cases of imagined verbal interactions that are on exactly this point; see “The Approach of a Lyricist,” Common Knowledge 20 (2), 2014: 214–22.

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is contained within what Wittgenstein called the field of a word, what constitutes the range of possible moves within an indefinitely-bounded languagegame, is, like the life of which it is a part, always in flux, always in motion.28 So now we might say: my difference with Lamarque is one of emphasis, and of a different way of seeing what is in a sense basic or foundational to linguistic meaning; this is a difference that rests, as we have seen, atop of a good deal of agreement. After all, he writes: The problem [drawing the line between interpretive content that is in the work and interpretive content that is imposed upon it] is a general one for interpretation, for when we reach for unifying thematic concepts… we are not drawing on semantic entailments of sentential content but on looser kinds of ‘implication.’ The aim is not to explicate literal meanings but to find what is significant or interesting or rewarding to thought and reflection in the work as a whole.29 For reasons concerning the Wittgensteinian problems with the Russellian picture as discussed above, I am not confident in a generic distinction between tight sentential content as a categorical kind that makes implication seem in contrast loose, nor do I feel secure in suggesting that entailments within language as used are fixed with determinate boundaries prior to their employment within the life of a game. Implication is the real focus here. It opens the space for interpretation, and it does so within language, with the question of meaning at its core. It is – and on this we entirely agree – here that we find ranges of significance, multi-faceted and variously articulated interests, the rewards we gain for thinking (verbally) our way into, and reflecting (broadly speaking, linguistically) upon, an engrossing work of literature or art. The form of attention Lamarque is pursuing is not, it is true, to be found in a reductive or atomistic conception of words – but it is centrally involved with the matter of meaning. But then interpretation is not, of course merely a matter of saying just anything; not all interpretive words are born equal. And interpretation has, after all, an aim. How do we go about describing the markers of progress; where and what are the guiding lights? Michael Krausz, in carefully setting out the logic 28

This sense of our language being always in motion connects directly to our deeper r­ easons for re-reading; I examine this connection in “Wittgenstein Re-Reading,” Wittgenstein Reading, ed. Sascha Bru, Wolfgang Huemer, Daniel Steuer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), 243–62. 29 Lamarque, Literature, 156.

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of the polemically opposed positions of the singularist and the multiplist in interpretation, has observed that the multiplist may “deploy such multivalent values as reasonableness, appropriateness, or aptness” within the larger process of making a given interpretive line of thinking convincing or considering its plausibility (p. 1). These could, of course, be employed by the singularist as well, but with the essential difference that the singularist will use them in working toward the goal of the one true interpretation. Krausz’s point, however, is that a multifarious range of guiding lights can show the way in critical practice. And I would want to add to this (an addition I think Krausz would accept) that these concepts themselves can and will differ in their uses and articulations across variegated contexts of interpretive practice. So there will not be a single measure of interpretive progress, certainly for the multiplist but also for the singularist (although they of course disagree over the number of interpretive destinations one can reach). That is to say, reasonableness itself does not reduce to one thing—it is not an internally-contained word with a hermetic fixity of meaning that allows it to function in one way as a single criterion in all cases. Thus of Van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters, the formalist, the Marxist, the Christian, the feminist, and the Freudian will develop ways to articulate layers or aspects of meaning as they proceed in investigating the work, and what it is reasonable to suggest in each case may well be dependent upon what has been said, implied, intimated, or made possible (i.e. what has been put into play within the interpretive language-game) previously. To transplant the sentence, “There is a psychodynamic conflict underway between the represented id and the implied superego; this we see present in the tension within the canvas between stark light and atmospheric darkness,” into a context in which the previous sentence was, “The private ownership of the means of production yields impoverishment not abstractly, but for real persons with real, individuated facial expressions of the kind you see here” would generate a non sequitur. Or perhaps, like the interpreted “Good morning” above, it would convey more, in this case being a rejection of Marxist interpretation and an insistence on Freudian interpretation in its place, where this insistence is carried within the falsely apparent form of a non sequitur. That would make it reasonable (if a bit aggressively so) within its context. But the point in any case is that the sentence does not carry its reasonableness within itself, yet that reasonableness is here again in language. And the same will be true of Krausz’s other concepts as listed: appropriateness, aptness. (E.g. a witness to the insistent Freudian might say that the remark was apt, if somewhat inappropriate.) Here Krausz says, for good reason, that “multiplists allow that incongruent interpretations may be jointly defended” (see above, Chapter 2, this volume). And so I would suggest an addition to this as well, specifically that the defense of those

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incongruent interpretations may itself involve the use of incongruent criteria, or that, even if the same terms (reasonableness, etc.) are used across differing interpretations, those terms will be inflected differently and will have content shaped by their individual contexts. Krausz, also to his credit, does not claim anything like this, but if one were to say that they are the same words, so they have the same meaning, and they thus function as cross-contextual measures of interpretive progress or success, one just wants to say (and Krausz, given the ground he has covered, is in a position to say): Look closer. (It is, essentially, what Wittgenstein said to Russell, and what those working in the tradition of Austin say to those working with the presupposition that if we can arrive at a definitive theory of direct reference we will have arrived at a clarification of the essence of language.) In drawing the distinction between determinative and ampliative reasons (the former to persuade a person into accepting our, or one, interpretation as correct, the latter to fill in the content that makes the view we hold understandable to another, even if we continue to differ), Krausz is implicitly focusing our attention on what I take to be central: we understand each other’s interpretations often precisely to the extent that we understand, in a more nuanced or contextually-inflected way, the language we are using to describe the work in question. Why we say what we do about a work is often explained by what has come before in the language-game, what we have seen and said before, what we have seen as a result of what has been said, and what we have in place as what Richard Wollheim called our cognitive stock30 that interacts with what we perceive. These are—and Krausz’s discussion shows this—almost never simple matters, and the complexity is something that we understand through the gaining of a more exacting comprehension of the u ­ nbounded background from which the remarks and interpretive sentences we are hearing emerge and against which they have their force. The patterns of significance of which Krausz writes that may emerge differently from different people or groups of people are discerned within the language that, step by step, articulates meaning. Krausz thus writes: The strategies of aggregating and pluralizing objects of interpretation or aggregating and pluralizing interpretations themselves are mandated by no general rules for correct application. Rather, their appropriate 30

See Richard Wollheim, Painting as an Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 1987). See esp. “Chapter iii: The Spectator in the Picture: Friedrich, Manet, Hals,” 101–86; consider in light of the present point in particular the discussion at 91–5.

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d­ eployment is a matter of piecemeal deliberation within the context of pertinent practices (see Chapter 2, this volume). Precisely—and this not only is the case, but indeed must be the case, because both the general rules and the criteria measuring their correct application would have to be expressed in a fixed-content language that would have its sense prior to the aesthetic context within which that language has its life. And while we may have interpretive ideals, such “pertinent ideals should be ­understood within pragmatic, provisional, and unfolding interpretive conditions” (see Chapter 2, this volume). So indeed, we may well have the interpretive ideal of clarity (and I cannot think of a case where we would not desire this), but, like the criterion of reasonableness above, clarity will itself be a property discernible within the fabric of our evolving interpretive language, not a property we bring to any such language by first—prior to that evolving ­context—specifying hermetic word-content or the invariant criteria that content allegedly carries. I think Krausz sees this point itself very clearly within the context of his discussion of interpretation, and it is why his general statements (as with the one just above) invariably refer back to the relevant particularities available in—and only in—context. Regarding the nature of the object of interpretation, Krausz and Lamarque in a broad sense agree: it is an intentional object. Krausz writes, Intentional objects are endowed with meaning or significance within a field of cultural codes, norms, or the like. They are objects upon which meaning has been conferred, presented as having the meaning they do. Intentional objects are nodes of culturally endowed complexes (see Chapter 2, this volume). What I want to add to these reflections is that the phrase “intentional object” in the preceding could be replaced by “words, sentences, and the language we use” without loss of truth. Endowed with meaning (in multiform ways far more intricate and complex than any simplified additive picture where mental meaning is added to, or linked to, physical sound), bearers of significance, functioning within a field (recall Wittgenstein’s use of this term above) of norms and the like (I would define this as ranges of implications)—these phrases neatly describe the words we use and how we use them, and to say that words are “nodes of culturally endowed complexes” captures the matter in question perfectly. (If one needed a single word to serve as a polemical opposite to “atomism,” the word “complexes” would serve well.) So one can thus see here a double point: the language that makes up literature functions according

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to these descriptions—that language is constituted of linguistic intentional objects; and then the non-linguistic31 artworks that function as intentional objects, as meaning-bearers, function in a way that is deeply analogous to language.32 The question of meaning, and the intricate and irreducibly complex human practices of discerning that meaning, are foundational to each and unite them. Lamarque (quoted by Krausz) insightfully writes of works of art that they are human creations; they depend on human intentions and cultural conditions. They are intentional objects not only because they owe their origins to intentional acts but also because their identity conditions are partly determined by how they are taken or thought to be by relevant cultural communities…They cease to exist when there is no longer the possibility of their eliciting the appropriate kind of response (being identified, being understood, being appreciated, being valued) among suitably qualified respondents (see Chapter 2, this volume). Here again, replace “works of art” with “language as we use it” and we again have no loss of truth: human creations, dependent upon intentions and cultural conditions, with identity conditions dependent both upon intention and more largely on how they are taken by relevant culturally-informed communities (of discourse), dependent for their existence upon the possibility of eliciting the appropriate response among suitably qualified respondents—this also describes the life of our language. And: our words, in the ways Wittgenstein, Austin, and those in their tradition have investigated, are complexly identified, we are understood through them,33 we can and do appreciate them (to say the least—lives are changed by them) as coming from others, and we can value them profoundly. Thus there is a real sense in which even we, or who we are as persons, are made by them.34 31 32

33 34

I suggest a way of seeing the verbal-to-musical connection in “Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, Linguistic Meaning, and Music,” Paragraph 34.3 (2011), 388–405. I offer an examination of various versions or articulations of this analogy in Art as ­Language: Wittgenstein, Meaning, and Aesthetic Theory (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995). This includes self-understanding; I pursue this matter in much greater detail in “­Apocalypse Within,” in The Philosophy of War Films, ed. David LaRocca (forthcoming). This is of course hardly a matter that explains itself; I suggest various ways of approaching this issue in Describing Ourselves: Wittgenstein and Autobiographical Consciousness (­Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2008), and in “Self-Defining Reading: Literature and the

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It thus becomes possible to now glimpse some of the meaning of Henry James’s remarks at the opening of this discussion: in saying, with Jamesian compression, that the province of art is all life, he was calling our attention to how so very much of the lives we lead are in words, in language, and how that language, in all its complexity as it reaches above and beyond any reductive template of atomistic word-meaning, either makes art (in the literary arts) or is deeply analogous to the arts in the creation and discernment of meaning (in the visual and musical arts). He may have said too much in saying that art makes life, makes interest, makes importance—but it is an overstatement that has its origin in a profound recognition of the power of language (recall his phrase “the force and beauty of its process”) and its central position in life and in art. For him—for the person who said relations stop nowhere, for the person whose ideal was to be the person on whom nothing is lost—the very idea of a word-by-word reading would seem oddly drained and humanly uncomprehending: such isolated words would be perhaps useful as stimuli for robots. In contrast, (a) to see meaning-determinative connections above the false unit of the word, (b) to move about in the implicature-field of the name “Moses,” (c) to find coherence across the sentences in the tale, (d) to see the interactive and relationally-constituted Austinian work of our words within it, (e) to exactingly see what constitutes in context an invitation to interpret, (f) to remain sensitive to the emergent criteria within contexts that place constraints on interpretation and that give purpose and direction to interpretation, (g) to see the importance of ampliative reasons, (h) to attend with fine acuity to the nuances of what we say, why we say it, and the sensibility of the person saying it—these are the activities of living in language and employing the verbal imagination that constitutes the special attention we give it. The question of meaning, rightly understood, lies at the heart of it all.

­Constitution of Personhood,” in The Blackwell Companion to the Philosophy of Literature, ed. Garry L. Hagberg and Walter Jost (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 120–58.

chapter 5

Interpretation, Literature and Meaning Scepticism John Gibson

University of Louisville

i Introduction I here propose to ask an unusual question and then to trace a few of the consequences of answering it one way or another. The question, put crudely at first mention, is what might it mean to be a meaning sceptic in respect to literature? How, that is, can we make sense of a generalized doubt concerning our access to the meanings of a literary work? Scepticism, in this particular sense, has as its object not the conviction that a literary work bears a meaning but the idea that we can ever be assured that we have come into possession of it. I should be clear that I will not be defending scepticism in respect to literary meaning so much as exploring the conditions under which it is even minimally intelligible. What kind of thing must a literary work be if it can mean something perhaps radically other than what competent and good-faith interpreters think it means? And what might this tell us about the basic kinds of meanings literary works bear and the nature of the interpretative activities that struggle to make them available?1 I will identify two basic ways of being such a sceptic. The first animates the sceptical doubt by considering our access to meaning-relevant information that is external to a literary work; the other, our access to the meanings apparently wholly internal to a work. In the first case, scepticism gets afoot by considering the limits of our knowledge of the context of literary production and thus of our ability to see how this context endows a work with critically significant forms of aboutness. In the second case, the sceptical doubt is brought to life by considering the limits of, as it were, self-knowledge and thus the grounds of our assurance that we are ever such to be able to make full interpretive sense of 1 For the sense of scepticism and kindred issues I employ here, I am especially indebted to John Koethe, Scepticism, Knowledge, and Forms of Reasoning (Ithaca, n.y.: Cornell U ­ niversity Press, 2005); Robert Kirke, Relativism and Reality: A Contemporary Introduction (London: Routledge, 1999); Timothy Williamson, Knowledge and Its Limits (Oxford: Oxford ­University Press, 2000); Barry Stroud, The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism (Oxford: Oxford ­University Press, 1984); and Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, M ­ orality and Tragedy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004325241_007

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a literary work. I hope to show that this discussion should be of interest even to those who have little patience for sceptical arguments. It provides a novel way of thinking about many of the concerns that have always been central to debates on interpretation: concerns, especially, about when it is, and is not, interesting to say that the meaning of a literary work is autonomous, or that it is ‘constructed’ rather than ‘discovered’, ‘imputed’ to rather than ‘uncovered’ in a literary work.2 And it will ultimately leave us with provocative question: if we cannot dismiss the kinds of epistemic and metaphysical concern that sustain sceptical doubts about literary meaning, are we then obliged to countenance a form of fictionalism about critical discourse itself?3 ii

Sceptics and Scholars

It might be the case that only philosophers call the phenomenon I am interested in ‘scepticism’, but literature endlessly explores it and has been doing since time immemorial. In fact, while what philosophy will eventually call scepticism was first articulated in 4th century Athens, it was brought to life not in the Agora but the City Dionysia, that is, on the stage and in an essentially dramatic context. It was Sophocles and not Socrates who first hit upon the possibility of the kind of generalized doubt we now call scepticism. And he did this, of course, in Oedipus The King. Part of the horror Oedipus’s tragedy is intended to provoke in us extends well beyond the idea that we cannot escape fate and that its plans for us are less than flattering. The great philosophical achievement of the drama is that it makes conceivable that the truth of each of our existences might be other than we think it is. And it shows us this in respect to the things we would seem to have the best chance of knowing: our loved ones, our friends, as well as the basic ‘truths’ of our lives, our histories, and our selves. Of all the things in the world, these are the items with which we take ourselves to have achieved the greatest degree of epistemic intimacy, those bits of the world we feel4 to be most perfectly revealed to us because of their 2 For concise definitions of these and like terms central to the debate on interpretation, see the Introduction to Michael Krausz, (ed), Is There a Single Right Interpretation? (University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002). 3 I trust this makes it clear that I am using the term ‘interpretation’ in a non-technical and everyday sense. It designates, in the case of literature, the activity of rendering explicit the meanings of a work whereas ‘meanings’ are taken to designate features of its aboutness: its subject matter, point, theme, thesis (if such it possesses), and so on. Below I define two types of interpretations I think are especially central. 4 I say “feel” because the notion of epistemic intimacy here designates an impression and not a theory. It is the sense—often for good, if always defeasible, reasons—that our cognitive

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sheer ­presence in our lives. What Oedipus discovers, recall, is that his wife is in fact his mother, his children his brothers and sisters, and that he is the very murderer for whom he is searching. The question this provokes is, naturally, if he can’t know any of that, then what can he know? And it is the same question for thoughtful members of audience. For if Sophocles has rendered intelligible that can one be radically and horribly mistaken about those items in the world with which we seem to enjoy such epistemic intimacy, it suddenly becomes intelligible to wonder the very same thing about our existence and our epistemic situation. It might just be a wonder, as scepticism itself perhaps just is. But the wonder is immensely productive, in both drama and philosophy. In this way Sophocles, like every good writer after him, dismantles that wall that runs between fiction and life and allows the point of his story to become a point about life in general. If Sophocles succeeded in rendering this possibility intelligible, if he succeeded in making imaginable that we might be radically mistaken about the basic truths of our existence—that our children and spouses are just that—then he at least succeeded in showing us one way in which we can imagine being in principle wrong about just about anything. Descartes’s cogito ergo sum is, from a literary and humanistic perspective, among the most despairing solutions philosophy has ever produced: who cares that I can know that I exist; I want to know that others exist, and are more or less as I take them to be, especially those I love. Even if it is hugely improbable that those I love are otherwise than I think they are, the mere possibility that they are can burden my connection to them with a sense of distance and separateness. A poet will call this a feeling of estangement; a philosopher will describe it as the realization that certainty is something we will always fall a step short of achieving. To get my sceptical question in regard to literary meaning on its feet, let me offer one more idea. Think of a strange creature called the ideal Milton scholar. That is, think of an academic who has dedicated her life to understanding, say, Paradise Lost, and grant that such a scholar’s perpetual laboring over the poem will produce the greatest degree of epistemic intimacy an actual human can have with an actual work of art.5 In addition to tremendous a­ rchival ­access to certain items in the world is privileged, usually owing to their familiarity and central place in our lives. It is the sense of nearly perfect cognitive familiarity we have in respect to, in standard cases, certain other people, though if my argument is sound, we have it in respect to certain artworks, too. 5 I trust this makes it clear that I have no interest in the knowledge a supercomputer, Laplace’s Demon, or an entity possessed of God’s-eye view of the cosmos might achieve of a work. Scepticism provides a theory of the limits of human knowledge; and while stipulating creatures who have infallible access to material and information actual humans might not tell us

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r­ esearch, requisite mastery of the history of Christianity and the Anglican lens through which Milton viewed it, our imagined scholar has mastered virtually every theory philosophy and literary studies have produced for conquering the meaning of a work, having read Paradise Lose as a formalist, a structuralist, an historicist, a Marxist, even as a feminist and a postcolonialist (perhaps Milton’s Satan can be read as the first great colonizer, even if only marginally successful). In short, imagine someone who has done virtually all one can be expected to do to make a literary work’s meaning available to understanding; that she has fulfilled whatever practical conditions we set forth as required for justifying a claim to know a literary work and its meaning. Now just think of meaning scepticism in respect to literature as the idea that, despite all of her labor, it is intelligible to say that the ideal scholar might be wrong about Paradise Lost’s meaning: that she is in error about its very aboutness. Since we are considering an idealized scholar, the intelligibility of a doubt as to whether her best interpretation is correct is effectively tantamount to a generalized sceptical doubt. Its form would be of the standard sceptical sort: as far as we know, interpretations never succeed in yielding the meaning of a literary work, since it is always conceivable that interpretations produced in even ideal circumstances err. Is this sound? iii

Intentions and Archives

Surely it is minimally intelligible that our ideal Milton scholar might get Paradise Lost wrong, that her best interpretation of it misconstrues it in critically signifiant ways. It is easy enough, after all, simply to suppose that this could be the case. And this doubt is intelligible without even considering an actual interpretative claim, which is telling. But it is also troubling that we find it so. A literary work, unlike a black hole or an event far off in the past, would seem in principle capable of being made more or less perfectly available to us. What could remain hidden from the ideal scholar if she understands the language of the text and the culture from which the work emanated? Presumably the ideal scholar can tell us that the point of Book 1 is to document Satan’s fall; of Book 9, ours. The critic can say, of every stanza, what it is ‘about’ in the sense that she can accurately paraphrase its semantic and apparent thematic content. ­Indeed, each book of Paradise Lost begins with a statement of its argument,

much about what knowledge requires, it clearly tells us little about the epistemic limits the sceptic wishes to explore.

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and thus the critic has tremendous guidance. So what are these secrets that could remain hidden even from the ideal scholar? First things first, if a sceptical doubt is coherent here, it is clear that we must be able to conceive of at least certain kinds of meaning literary works bear as strongly independent of interpretation. There must be, that is, interpretationindependent literary meaning. Literary scepticism, in this respect, appears to depend on a traditional realist conception of at least certain forms of literary meaning: that meaning is, if not wholly mind-independent, then independent of the mind of any particular reader or interpreter (with one possible exception, to be mentioned in a moment). If the traditional philosophical idea that reality might be radically other, or at least just other, than we take it to be, assumes that there is a way reality is apart from our construals of it, meaning scepticism, of the sort I am after, would appear to require much the same. This allows us to dismiss as irrelevant a position that was au courant in the 1980s and 1990s but has fortunately largely been retired. It is a view to be found, in one way or another, in Richard Rorty, Stanley Fish, Roland Barth, and Jacques Derrida. It is the idea of a ‘bare text.’ Here is Rorty’s expression of the idea: The coherence of [a]…text is… no more than the fact that somebody has found something interesting to say about a group of marks or noises— some way of describing those marks or noises which relates them to some other things we are interested in talking about…This coherence is neither internal nor external to anything: it is just a function of has been said so far about those marks.6 Now there is clearly a kind of sceptical view here, but it is not of the sort relevant to the issues I am exploring. The ‘doubt’ it expresses is in fact the opposite of ours: the ‘bare text’ view of literature asks us to imagine the literary works we know and love to be in a sense constituted by interpretations of them; but it does so by denying the very notion that there is any independence of literary meaning from interpretation in the first place. As conceived apart from a community of interpreters, we should not imagine a literary work to be inscribed with any coherence at all but rather as a mere arrangement of symbols awaiting one to come and beat sense and a structure out of them. I suspect we have as much of a chance of encountering a genuine bare text as we do of encountering the fabled man without qualities, but I do not wish to belabor 6 As quoted in Peter Lamarque, Work and Object: Explorations in the Metaphysics of Art (­Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 157. I am here indebted to Lamarque’s discussion of this view.

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the point. What is important to see is that the idea of a bare text—and all kindred ways of doubting that meaning really inheres in texts—is irrelevant to the project of this study. If one imagines a text to be genuinely bare prior to an interpretation, there is no intelligible way of articulating potential discordance between what a text means and what we say it means, and thus there is nothing to ground the kind of sceptical doubt I am exploring. Consider a stanza from Louis Zukofsky’s Catullus (1958–1960). It may at first appear akin to a bare Rortian text, but on reflection something interesting will appear, something that will lead us in the direction of at least one conception of literary meaning that will explain how literary work can keep secrets from their interpreters. 70 Newly say dickered my love air my own would marry me all whom but me, none see say Jupiter if she petted. Dickered: said my love air could be o could dickered a man too in wind o wet rapid a scribble reported in water7 If some part of us thinks this poem approximates as bare text, it would be the crude part of us that thinks we have nothing deserving of the term meaning when we have language that does not culminate in a proposition, description, or a point of some sort. And note that we of course can begin to find kinds of meaning here, if not quite those kinds. First, a quick trip to the library—or, better yet, to Google—will tell me something important about Catullus, namely, that the poem has a quite straightforward project, is endowed with a distinct purpose, and so in very concrete terms admits of a kind of artistic aboutness, which places us firmly in the realm of meaning. Catullus is an attempt at transliteration, rather than translation, of the original Latin. Zukofsky rendered in English the sound, but not the sense, of Catullus’ lyric. And with this in mind I can begin to speak about the nature of the poem and its point: of what it is about. I might claim, for example, that part of the poem’s point is to show us that the production of sound and not the production of sense is sufficient for poetry; that a poem may offer aural rather than cognitive delight and still bear significant aesthetic fruit (though the last line of the stanza does seem concerned with ‘cognition,’ albeit delivered through intense figuration). Poetry, of 7 Louis Zukofsky, Selected Poems. ed. Charles Bernstein (New York: Library of America, 2006), 51.

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course, has always struck those in the know as a deeply musical art. The point is, by looking at facts that underwrite the creation of this poem, we gain access to facts that allow us to ascribe to a poem a kind of determinacy: a project, a point, a purpose. They explain how the poem is, despite its chaotic language, attempting to say something (about, for example, the nature of poetry). If this is so, the poem is in possession of communicative content and hence clearly satisfies the conditions for bearing meaning: for being a meaningful object. This brief example helps bring to mind something important, namely, all those things that are external to a literary work but which seem necessary for understanding it. The most obvious example of such external material are creative intentions that may not be manifest in a work yet which are at times essential for understanding it. It is common, in the philosophy of language, to argue that intentions can often be crucial for understanding what one is doing with one’s words, and the idea is that the same is often true when trying to understand what authors do with their works. Take the following example of a conversation of sorts. I am in a relationship and I meet my partner to discuss the possibility of moving in together. We are at the point, I say, that we either make it serious or call it off. I meet her for a coffee and I find myself utterly perplexed as to why she spends five minutes telling me about her fear of heights, at the end of which she simply gets up and leaves. Is she implying that she feels me be a precipice over which she can only fall? That her love for me is so intoxicating she feels dizzy but unbalanced and perhaps little a nauseous? Or was she just telling me about her fear of heights? I will naturally wish to know why she told me the story if I am to understand its point, what it is about, indeed if I am to understand what her story is attempting to communicate to me. But as with friends and their stories, so with authors and their stories. We often need to understand what authors intend to say with their works to understand their literary creations.8 I refine this idea in a moment, hopefully in a way that will assuage the worries of all those theorists and philosophers who dislike talk of authors and their intentions. For the moment, however, let’s follow the idea. The idea of an authorial intention9 as partly determinative of kinds of ­literary meaning—I will define the kinds in the next section—clearly gives us 8 The most exhaustive discussion of the role of intention in the creation and interpretation of art is Paisley Livingston, Art and Intention: A Philosophical Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005). 9 I ignore the difference between actual and hypothetical intentionalism. Since my concern is ultimately with identifying meaning-relevant material external to a literary work, and since both forms of intentionalism do precisely this, the distinction is not interesting in

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one way to color in the picture that a work might be endowed with kinds of meaning independent of whatever meaning an interpreter, even ideal, ascribes to it. For in principle we can always be wrong in our intention ascriptions, ­authors can deceive when professing to reveal themselves, and so on. None of this is news. But it is important to see that the image of an intention is potent here only because it holds in place so perfectly the image of that thing which is external to a literary work but which can seem essential for settling questions about its meaning. And the thing can change. It is not just an intention that matters here, and so it is a mistake to think that that scepticism rides on the coherence of intentionalist theories of interpretation. What matters is all of the historical, cultural, and contextual information that is not part of the express content of work—that is in fact external to it—and that is essential for understanding it. To ask why Shakespeare found the image of the Jew or African (Shylock, Othello, or Aaron the Moor) so dramatically potent, or why Milton’s Paradise Lost is so vehement in its attacks on philosophical thought, is not only to wonder about the private intentions of their authors but about whatever could put us in contact with the facts of the matter that help us u ­ nderstand why these literary works are as they are. If we were to look outside philosophy and to literary studies, it would not be the image of an intention but of an archive that would gain traction here, and it works just as well, perhaps even better, for our purposes. Think of an archive, just for the sake of argument, as something in which we put all of the contextual information—biographical, historical, cultural—that is of ­potential relevance for settling questions of why and how an author creates the kind of literary work she does. Now think of the idea of the unknown (to us) authorial intention or of the undiscovered archive (or document therein), and an altogether common form of sceptical doubt can be brought to life. For any interpretation we might offer of a literary work, we offer it without any certainty that time will reveal an intention, a document, an historical fact, that shows the point or project of a work to be other than we take it to be. As I will concede in the next section, it is easy to make a rather big deal of all this, but it does suffice to explain precisely what kind of secrets a literary work can keep from even an ideal scholar. And though this sceptical doubt, like many sceptical doubts, has the air of scholasticism, it does have at least one important this ­context. For an excellent survey of interpretative intentionalism in analytic philosophy, see Sherri Irvin, “Authors, Intentions, and Literary Meaning,” Philosophy Compass 1.2 (2006), ­114–28. For a discussion more in line with the concerns of contemporary literary theory, see Carla Benedetti, The Empty Cage: Inquiry Into the Mysterious Disappearance of the Author (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005).

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consequence. If it cannot be dismissed, then philosophical honesty demands that we say that, as far as we know, the meanings we take ourselves to discover in a work might actually be our projections. Constructivism and like theories are not so much positions we endorse as we find that we simply cannot shake; that, like it or not, we might always be doing what the constructivist says we do when interpreting a work of it.10 We simply do not know (hence the scepticism) whether the practice of literary interpretation should be construed in fundamentally realist or anti-realism terms. Now one could here try to reject the relevance of authorial intentions or archival information in settling questions of literary meaning. I will simply assert that this is a bad idea and that in any case my project is not one of condemnation but of understanding the conditions under which meaning scepticism in respect to literature is intelligible. But I note that to dismiss the idea that anything external to a literary work could be decisive when trying to understand the point, nature, or project of a literary work has not been popular since the New Criticism was in vogue. iv

Artifact Meaning and Imaginative Meaning

Let me make a very general distinction. We have (at least) two broad ways of hearing, and thus attempting to answer, the vague ‘what does this mean’ question we might ask of a literary work. When one asks this question, the smart response is always, ‘what do you mean’ by ‘what does this mean?’ and a way, though just one way, of answering this will lead us to the picture just canvassed: to items external to a literary work. It can lead to, that is, a conceptions of an author’s creative intentions or to a consideration of the sorts of thing one might find in a archive. Or, if inflected differently, ‘what does this mean?’ can be heard as calling on us to specify the cultural and literary conditions that can offer a crucial point of entry into a work. Answers to questions of this sort bring into relief the point of a work by placing it among like works 10

I am assuming that constructivism is a form of anti-realism: it claims that interpreters i­ mpute, in an important sense, meanings to literary works and thus that those meanings are not independent from the interpretations which articulate them. For an attempt to show that constructivism and intentionalism are compatible, see Peter Alward, “Butter Knives and Screwdrivers: An Intentionalist Defense of Radical Constructivism,” The ­Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 72.3 (2014), 247–60. For a discussion of the implications of interpretive constructivism for accounts of the ethical value of art, see Katherine Thomson-Jones, “Art, Ethics, and Critical Pluralism,” Metaphilosophy 43.3 (2012), 275–93.

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and considering the artistic projects they share. The clarity this can offer is of the sort that is gained when we are told, say, than an apparently impenetrable poem is a high modernist exercise in imagism or impersonalism. Such explanations guide criticism to the ‘aboutness’ of a literary work by bringing to view the general artistic movements, political concerns, philosophical ideas—what Arthur Danto calls an atmosphere of theory—that were in force such that this piece of writing could come to be the precise kind of literature it is and appear to speak about the precise set of concerns it does. I will call meaning of this broadly external sort ‘artifact meaning’, though I  confess that I am unhappy with the designation. It is external in the altogether obvious sense that to come to possess it requires looking away from a literary work’s linguistic interior and to material quite literally beyond it (think of an archive). To see a poem, novel or play as an artifact is to consider it from the vantage point of a created object, the product of purposeful activity that can only be understood in terms of a culture whose practices and institutions make it possible to create such works. Artifact meaning is the form of literary aboutness we search for when we attend to a literary work as a product of human activity that was created for reasons we wish brought to light. Here are some familiar questions that can one can reasonably, if defeasibly, interpret as requests to clarify artifact meaning: 1. 2. 3.

What is the point of Benjy Compson in The Sound and the Fury? Is John Ashbery’s “Daffy Duck in Hollywood” an attempt to explore the chaos of subjective experience in modernity or the chaos of culture in America? What does Jonathan Franzen mean by ‘freedom’ in that terrible book, Freedom?

We are at times justified in hearing questions of literary meaning as invitations to specify artifact meaning, and I take the proceeding arguments to have provided reasons for accepting this. What invites scepticism here is, of course, that artifact meaning is an externalist brand of literary meaning: it is meaning that can be identified only by looking beyond a work and to information ­concerning the context of its production. What I want to discuss now is what happens if we limit ourselves to a work’s interior and to a form of literary meaning which is evidently internal to it. The question then will be whether scepticism makes sense on a broadly internalist model of literary meaning. If not, the ­anti-sceptic can find no recourse in an ‘autonomist’ view of literary meaning that limits all meaning-relevant material to what can found entirely inside the literary work of art.

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To bring my point to view, let me first say what I am not arguing for. I am not arguing for a distinction analogous to the speaker meaning versus expression meaning distinction. Clearly artifact meaning has much in common with speaker meaning, with the attempt to specify what one is trying to do with the words one utters, which cannot always be read off the semantic surface, the mere dictionary meaning, of those words. But the notion of expression meaning offers the utterly wrong picture for the form of meaning I will introduce. It is not a matter of what words signify, of the ‘natural’ meaning of a sentence considered in isolation from questions of what its speaker means by it, and so on. This is important to see, lest we think that unthinkably stupid thought that has tempted some: that literary meaning—the meaning of a work—is just the semantic meaning of the lines which constitute a work. Meaning of this sort is surely crucial to any interpretive practice, but it is just the first rung of a ladder we must ascend if we wish to arrive at the richness of critical discourse and the forms of internal meaning it can at times concern. I offer a particular way of making sense of the general sort of meaning I have in mind. What is important for my argument is that meaning of this general sort exists, and one can grant me this even if one is not sold on the precise account of it I will give, which I shall call an account of ‘imaginative meaning.’ I mean nothing especially technical by ‘imagination.’ In the broadest sense, the imagination is a power of a transcendence, invoked when a philosopher needs to explain how we make available to the mind that which is in excess of the material that is directly present to it. When I speak of imaginative meaning, I am not claiming that it is meaning we encounter only if we literally envision something in the mind’s inner cinema, and in fact I intend nothing especially psychological by the phrase. What I do mean to imply by ‘imaginative meaning’ is that within a literary work we can find forms of meaning that are in excess of anything the language of the work says, and hence that when interpretation has these forms of meaning as its object, an act of transcendence is required. Let me explain. The following presents one way of thinking about what this meaning is and how it is located in a work. When we look in a work we just find, as Hamlet would say, “words, words, words.” But when placed in the context of literature, these words become productive in a very unique way. They function not, or not just, to generate ‘semantic content’ or to express ‘concepts.’ Words, when placed in the context of a literary work, hold in place the texture of a world: they are generative of, standardly, a fictional space we must explore if we are to be put in touch with what a work wishes us to see. A fictional space can be seen as a form of imaginative space, though lyric poetry, often decidedly non-­fictional, will in its own way generate an imaginative space. And it is in this space that

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a kind of meaning is produced, what I wish to call imaginative meaning.11 ­Virtually every theory of fiction acknowledges the ‘world-­generating’ capacity of literary language and links it to an essentially i­maginative activity. In the case of works of fiction, this imaginative activity is usually explained in terms of make-believe and similar forms of pretense; in the case of poetry, we find all the theories which ask us to see lyrics as engaged in a more or less painterly production of images—this is sometimes called the ‘ekphrastic’ dimension of poetic language—that gives us, in addition to mere language, objects of appreciation. The point is, in the context of literature, language does not simply express a proposition or embed a description. It is charged with an essentially creational power, conjuring up a world (think of the realist novel), or an environment of thought and feeling (think of the short lyric): a sense of a place we must explore, a picture of human circumstance we are asked to see, and so on. These are things we can encounter only if we read the language of a work as specifying a kind of imaginative stance to take toward it.12 My point is that this imaginative stance opens us up to a distinct realm of meaning in a literary work. Meaning of this imaginative sort is a matter of significance and not signification. When a critic says that The Waste Land is about the impoverishment of experience in modernity and the collapse of culture and history, she surely is not describing anything the ‘language’ that runs through Elliot’s work means, for it says no such thing at all. As critical expressions of meaning, they are intelligible only as an attempt to specify the value, the import, of the images which litter the work: of decay, of meaningless cries, of ritualized behavior without an apparent point, of conversations which never appear to culminate in mutual understanding, and so on. The critic is articulating, if you will, the meaningfulness of the work’s vision and not the meaning of its language. Or consider if we say of Book ix of Paradise Lost that Eve’s fall implies that we are capable of evil even if we possess no moral knowledge; it suffices merely to ignore commandments that issue from the source of law itself. Milton says nothing to this effect, and the critic is clearly not paraphrasing the meaning of any of the poem’s various lines. The critic is rather identifying the import of the story of the fall as told there: one cannot possess moral knowledge prior to eating from the Tree of Knowledge itself, and thus Eve—and presumably we, too—can be held a­ ccountable for our actions even if when committing them we possess 11 12

I develop this in John Gibson, “Interpreting Words, Interpreting Worlds,” Journal of ­ esthetics and Art Criticism 64.4 (2006), 439–50. A I develop this in John Gibson, Fiction and the Weave of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

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no knowledge of right and wrong in an properly ethical sense. But to speak in a such a way requires seeing human circumstance in Eve’s story: it is how we make this story meaningful to us, and it reveals that the work can speak in excess of what its language actually says. Literary meaning of this variety is strongly irreducible to the language of a work, though obvious points of connection must exist. At its core, interpretation carried out in this imaginative register is a matter of making sense of the vision a work of art embodies. To arrive at the form of meaning this makes available, we clearly must see more than the mere word provides: a picture of life as burdened with certain demands, challenges, and temptations, all of which must be made sense of. What I am calling imaginative meaning is a ­generic way of gesturing towards the grand forms of non-semantic meanings religious, poetic, and narrative literature has always sought to deliver. Neither of my examples is especially sophisticated, but each suffices to remind ourselves of something we surely already knew: our imaginative involvement with a literary work allows us to find in its interior a much broader range of meaning, significance, and aboutness than its mere language offers. I will simply declare that when engaged in the imaginative specification of literary meaning, so-conceived, authorial intentions and the like play no ­privileged role, apart, say, from the role of expert witness. Here is a pithy story that will illustrate this in a fairly familiar way. Imagine you are sitting around a table with friends one of whom is trying to explain how his grandfather, dead now for years, looked. After struggling for a few seconds, he proclaims, “here it is: he looked just like the coast of Scotland.” Imagine too that everyone marvels at the metaphor and begins to imagine a ruggedly beautiful individual whose visage is atmospheric, brooding, dark, strong, ancient, and so on. Your friend, however, appears to have a very different sense of Scotland and is dumfounded. He insists that he meant to say, “my grandfather was really unattractive.” Evidently his image of Scotland is very different from yours. Metaphors always offer elegant examples of imaginative meaning. What everyone did in this case was consider the grandfather’s face in light of an image of the coast of Scotland, allowing their imaginative sense of the latter to frame and color an otherwise utterly indeterminate image of this man—the metaphor endows our once null sense of what his grandfather looked like with sudden and remarkable ­determinacy. The disagreement is one of whether or not the coast of Scotland is an image of beauty, of the aesthetic properties one discerns when one imagines it (or of those properties one takes to be conventionally associated with it: we would all know that “he looked like the coast of New Jersey” would have been an insult, even if we have never been to New Jersey or if in truth its coast is not so bad). There is no contradiction here, just a different sense of how we

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should place the image of Scotland in the space of beauty: of what we see, in a clearly imaginative sense, when we consider what the metaphor asks us to see. Notice that we can, if we wish, ask the the question of what the metaphor means as a call to specify artifact meaning, that is, in this case, a call to specify what the speaker meant to convey through this metaphor. But also notice that it can be construed in independence of this, since it is perfectly intelligible to respond to your friend by saying, “I see what you wanted to say with that metaphor, but it was inapt, since it conveys something other than you wish it to.” At any rate, I trust it is not unreasonable to think that in principle imaginative meaning can be independent of artifact meaning. I also hope this example gives clarity to the crucial point about imaginative meaning: it is a form of value ascription, essentially concerned with articulating the significance and import of what we see in a story, lyric, or metaphor. I do not wish to deny that there are ways of asking what a literary work means in which artifact and imaginative meaning become too intermeshed to be, in practice, separable; and the distinction I have here developed raises all sorts of interpretive issues I haven’t the time to explore. But it does permit me to stage the crucial question: is scepticism about imaginative meaning intelligible? What we lose when we pass from questions of artifact meaning to imaginative meaning is the picture of something external to the interpreter and the ­literary work—an authorial intention, an item in an archive—that could defeat our claims to critical knowledge, to knowing what a literary work means. In a sense, the specification of imaginative meaning requires just two things: a text and a culturally literate mind. There is, it may seem, nothing foreign to each potential ignorance of which implies that we cannot know whether a given interpretation imputes meaning to a literary work or fully discovers it in. And for this reason, it may seem that there is nothing to motivate a worry about whether the realist or the anti-realist offers the correct account of the metaphysical nature of interpretive activity. Simply put, what sense could scepticism possibly have when considering a form of meaning that appears to be so manifestly internal to a work? The answer, one will have guessed, is that a distinct form scepticism now becomes imaginable. Interpretations carried out in this imaginative register effectively collapse the distinction between how we see a work and how we see the world; it makes the activities through which we assign significance, value, and import to a literary works continuous with how we do so in respect to life itself. What allows an excellent critic to articulate such sophisticated patterns of aboutness, import, and significance in respect to a work is not only her mastery of literary culture but of culture itself. Yet culture is surely something we can, and in ways unbeknownst to ourselves, succeed or fail to possess, if always

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as a matter of degree. I suspect that any interpreter possessed of modesty and self-knowledge will know the feeling. It is the worry, the sense that is at times so hard to shake, that our understanding of cultural life may ultimately fail to be sophisticated enough to enable us to capture fully the significance of culturally complicated objects. It is to wonder whether there is a vantage-point from which our attempts to articulate the meaning of a work are vulgar, dull, unimaginative, superficial. When this form of doubt surfaces, it is explicitly experienced as a failure of epistemic intimacy; our self-doubt creates the sense of a gap that earlier the picture of a hidden item in an archive did. My sense of interpretive insecurity is reflective of a general worldly and cultural anxiety, of my faith that I can make proper sense of life, in literature or in the great world itself. The form of sceptical doubt that is intelligible here is in effect a self-doubt. The possibility it raises it not quite that of a literary work whose meaning is wholly different from we take it to be it is. It is that we must be different from what we in fact are if we are to be able to grasp the meaning of a literary work. If I want to understand a literary work, I have to make myself an ideal reader, I must improve my capacity to make meaningful, to articulate the significance of, life, both in literature and out. Scepticism here would grow in that dark space in which it becomes imaginable—and it surely is—that there is still something we do not know, a sensitivity we must cultivate, a concern we must come to feel, a dimension of experience we must learn to see, etc., if our interpretations are ever to be adequate to what they aspire to explain. The flawed interpretations we can offer up in this case are defective not quite because they are false but because they are impoverished. Like one who says ‘shit happens’ in the face of a remarkable event, we simply fail to capture the complexity of the material before us. Metaphysical issues in the theory of interpretation are not very interesting here. The sceptical wonder here is not whether our interpretations ascribe meanings to works that are wholly other than the meanings they truly bear, and so the concerns which sustain constructivism and like forms of interpretive anti-realism are perhaps idle when concerning this kind of selfdoubt. The question now is not quite whether an interpreter sees a work for what it is so much as whether she sees enough of what it is. It is tempting to say that our Ideal Milton Scholar could not possibly be possessed of such self-doubt and such poverty of explanatory resources, since she by definition has mastered all the culture required for making sense of Paradise Lost. This is perhaps so, but of course no actual interpreter can know herself to be an ideal interpreter. We all have cultural deficits, secret shames in respect to our sensibilities, forms of moral blindness and aesthetic unsophistication in respect to this or that region of the human world. We call them

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blindspots, and I take it to be too obvious to warrant an argument that we can be spectacularly bad at identifying them in ourselves. This is one way of understanding why Hume’s Ideal Critic is just that, an ideal, and not a post in which any actual critic may find employment. So we can recast the sceptical doubt accordingly: as far as we know, interpretations never succeed in yielding the meaning of a literary work, since it is always conceivable that the interpreters who produce them are less than ideal. At the beginning of this essay I said that I wish to explore an odd sceptical question, and I trust this discussion of interpretive self-doubt has delivered on the promised oddness. But that is not to say that it fails to register an insight. It is odd, but it strikes me as ultimately presenting a doubt we actually suffer, surely at moments, when we confront great expanses of the culture we find in literary works. Just consider the first time you read Rilke, Plath, or Pound. v Conclusion I end with a provocation. If scepticism feels a bit passé, at least if viewed against the concerns of contemporary analytic philosophy, fictionalism is quite in vogue, so much so that we now have epistemic fictionalists, moral fictionalists, even fictionalists in the philosophy of mathematics.13 A fictionalist argues that the stance we must take towards the basic claims—typically ontological—that animate a field of discourse is one of make-believe rather than belief. A fictionalist stance is required when we have come see that a region of discourse is indispensable to our cultural practices but that we have lost grounds for believing in the commitments evidently demanded by that discourse. Crudely put, fictionalism is attractive when we can neither abandon a way of talking nor tolerate the implication that by engaging in it we actually believe what we are saying. We may find that the abstract objects of mathematics do not exist, but we will not stop using propositions which imply otherwise (‘3 is prime’). Now it is always hard to explain just why one should care about odd sceptical doubts. What, exactly, do they show us? In conclusion, I suggest that they should be seen as showing us the following. Let critical fictionalism be the claim that the appropriate attitude towards the language of literary interpretation ought to be make-believe, and think of meaning scepticism of the sort canvassed here as implying that, as far as we know (hence the scepticism), critical fictionalism identifies the correct attitude we should take towards the 13

For a survey of fictionalism in philosophy, see R.M. Sainsbury, Fiction and Fictionalism (London: Routledge, 2010).

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claims of criticism. Claims of the basic ‘x means y’ sort, when said in respect to literature, are not to be construed literally at all. They are ultimately figurative, though we behave as though they were straightforward descriptions of properties of works themselves. Critical fictionalism, then, is a galling way of putting the upshot of an idea that has been around for many years now: that the language of criticism is irreducibly metaphoric. Critical fictionalism is perhaps a horrible idea, but, as with all sceptical doubts and the positions they generate, the trick is to find philosophical grounds on which simply to dismiss it.14

14

Earlier versions of this paper were read at Temple University and Bryn Mawr College. I am especially grateful to Michael Krausz and Joe Margolis for their comments and criticism. One cannot imagine a better audiences for work on this topic. I am also grateful to DirkMartin Grube for his patience and excellent suggestions.

Part 3 Applying the Philosophical Discussion on Interpretation to Religion

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chapter 6

Characteristic Features of the Interpretation of Religious Texts: Applying Lamarque’s and Krausz’s Theorizing on Interpretation to Religion Dirk-Martin Grube

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

In this chapter, I will take up three issues of the philosophical discussion on interpretation as pursued by Peter Lamarque, Michael Krausz, and others and apply them to religion. More precisely speaking, I will apply them to the ­practice of interpreting religious texts. I will reconstruct this practice in light of the philosophical discussion and ask whether this practice has ­ramifications for the philosophical discussion on the issue. In the first section, I will focus on Peter Lamarque’s emphasis that interpretation is dependent upon the objects being interpreted. Next, I will elucidate Michael Krausz’s discussion on singularism versus multiplism, i.e., the question whether there is only one legitimate interpretation of a text or whether there may be more than one. In the following section, I will examine the question what constitutes ‘objects of interpretation’ as has been taken up by Krausz, Lamarque, and others. In the final section, I will further develop the issue of singularism versus multiplism and its application to religion from my own point of view. By ‘(practice of) interpreting religious texts’ I mean their interpretation from a religiously committed perspective. Thus, the following considerations do not pertain to purely secular interpretations of religious texts, such as their interpretation from, for example, an archeological point of view. Rather, I focus on interpretations of scriptures, such as the Bible, the Qur’an, and the Vedas from a committed, ‘theological’ perspective—whereas I understand ‘theology’ as not only pertaining to the Christian faith, but to others, such as the Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist faiths as well. This being the case, let me be frank about my personal theological background: My knowledge of religion stems predominantly from my familiarity with the Christian tradition, to a lesser extent from familiarity with the Jewish tradition, and to a much lesser extent from familiarity with the Islamic tradition. Thus, most of my examples are drawn from the Christian or Jewish religions. Yet, given the general character of my analyses, the relevance of those examples is not limited to those traditions. I think that they are relevant for © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004325241_008

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many religious traditions; where I think not, I will indicate that explicitly. For example, the intuition that ‘life-as-it-is’ is deficient when compared to its ideal cuts through all religions. Although the way in which life-as-it-is is considered to be deficient probably differs from one religion to another, they all presuppose this deficiency-experience as such. Thus, while the examples I use stem from a particular religious tradition, I claim that their relevance goes beyond any one tradition: They convey something constitutive of religion in general. i

Interpretation as Dependent upon Ontology

A thread which runs through much of Lamarque’s work is the emphasis that interpretation is dependent upon the objects being interpreted: “How we interpret is always determined by what we interpret. The form of interpretation is governed by the object of interpretation.”1 Thus, ‘How’ and ‘what,’ form and content, are closely interwoven with each other in interpretation, and theorizing on it must respect this interwoven character. Consequently, the constraints that apply to interpretation cannot be determined in abstraction from the objects at stake: We should not assume in advance that every object of interpretation is subject to the same methods of interpretation: a poem, a dream,…a Biblical passage…might all invite interpretation but the constraints on how an interpreter might proceed cannot be assumed to be the same in the different cases.2 I will call this the a posteriori character of interpretation: Its ‘constraints’ or rules for success cannot be determined by abstracting from the specifics of the objects being interpreted, thus, not on an a priori basis but only on an a posteriori one. Given its a posteriori character, interpretation is dependent upon the ontology of the objects being interpreted: “Decisions about ontology determine the appropriateness of styles of interpretation.”3 1 Peter Lamarque, “Objects of Interpretation,” Metaphilosophy 31, no. 1/2 (January 2000), 97. See also Lamarque, “On Why Interpretation is a Problem for Philosophy of Art,” (Chapter 1, this volume): “Modes of interpretation are determined by, and relative to the kinds of objects being interpreted. We know how to proceed with interpretation and what constraints apply only when we know what kind of object we are dealing with.” 2 Lamarque, “On Why Interpretation is a Problem for Philosophy of Art,” 97. 3 Ibid. Lamarque emphasizes here that (intuitions about) ontology and interpretation are related to each other in a circle insofar as both depend upon each other conceptually.

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I agree wholeheartedly and will analyze below what insisting on this a posteriori character implies when applied to religious objects of interpretation. Yet, here I would like to add a cautionary remark: ontology determines interpretation only to a certain degree. There are standards of interpretation that are not affected by the differences of the objects being interpreted. An example is the rule that interpreting a text implies the readiness to have one’s ‘prejudices’ (in Gadamer’s sense) of what this text implies be corrected by a critical re-reading rather than trying to project them into the text. Put differently, the differences between the practice of interpretation in religion from interpretative practices in other fields are caused by the differences of the objects being interpreted. As will become clear below, interpreting religious objects differs from interpreting artistic objects. Yet, the practice of interpretation as such is the same for both religion and the arts. That being the case, it is subject to the same standards that govern the practice of interpretation in general and allow to distinguish between good and bad interpretations. The reason that I emphasize this point so strongly has to do with the purpose of this article, viz. to apply the theorizing on interpretation to religion. In religion, insistence on the object-dependency of interpretation can be abused as a license to undermine the standards that distinguish good from bad interpretations. An argument to that effect could proceed e.g. along the following lines: “The object of interpretation, viz. God, is so different from all other objects, that the standards which define good interpretations do not apply in this case.” I disagree, though. Although I think that interpreting this particular object entails particular consequences for reconstructing the practice of interpretation, I do not wish this argument to be abused as providing a blank check for all kinds of absurd religious interpretative practices. The general standards defining good interpretations must not be undermined by emphasizing the consequences of ‘God’ being the object of interpretation. I take it that Lamarque would not disagree with this point. The reason that he does not mention it explicitly is that he has a different discursive application in mind. His point is to criticize the a priorist, while my point is to safeguard this critique from being abused for, say, fundamentalist religious purposes. I.1 Ontology Plus Epistemology Determine Interpretation in Religion If, as Lamarque suggests, the ontological features of the objects being interpreted determine the “appropriateness of styles of interpretation,” the question rises what the features are which determine the styles of interpretation in religion. When thinking of religion, what comes to mind first are obviously transcendent postulates, such as the postulate of the existence of a deity or ­deities.

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More precisely speaking, it is not so much the pure existence of the deity but the relation of the deity to the world that matters for believers and their practice of interpreting religious texts. The deity is relevant insofar as it has certain intentions regarding the world and (certain groups of) humanity, and the power to realize those intentions to a certain extent.4 For the purposes of interpreting religious texts, the interaction of the deity and its intentions with the world/humanity are of primary relevance. In many religions, intentionality is conceptually tied to personality. That is, it is assumed that the deity who has certain intentions with the world/humanity possesses some kind of personality or, at least some basic character traits. Yet, the matter is more complex since character traits can be ascribed to the ‘highest reality’ even if it is denied any form of personality—at least, if Keith Ward’s reconstruction of Buddhism is correct.5 Furthermore, intentionality can be disassociated from personality, as more traditional interpretations of Buddhism6 and some versions of pan(en)theism within the Abrahamic religions7 suggest. Yet, this is not the proper place to ponder upon the complex link between ascribing intentionality and personality to the highest reality. Let it thus suffice for our purposes, i.e., for the purposes of reconstructing the link between the nature of the religious object at stake and the styles of interpretation being appropriate to it, to suggest that intentionality is the crucial issue, whether it is construed in personal or impersonal terms. In what follows, I will thus focus on divine intentionality behind/underneath/within the processes driving this

4 That the deity has some power to realize its intentions characterizes most theistic religions. A possible counterexample is Deism which postulates the existence of some kind of deity but denies its involvement in the world process (the deity functions as a master-clock winder of the world process but has no further function in it nor in its history). Deism is an exception and it can be questioned whether it is a (theistic) religion at all. In any case, I will ignore exceptions of this sort in the following. 5 See Keith Ward, Concepts of God: Images of the Divine in Five Religious Traditions (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 1998), 63, which suggests that, at least in Buddhaghosa and Asvaghosa, “the highest reality [is construed] in a form of being which is more analogous to awareness, knowledge and bliss than to matter, randomness and unconsciousness.” Original, Ward, Concepts of God: Images of the Divine in Five Religious Traditions (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1987). 6 Which assume that the goal of humanity is to reach nirvana, i.e., the extinction of the individual self with its circle of births and rebirths, without, however, assuming any equivalents to a personal God. 7 In Christianity, a candidate for pan(en)theism is Whitehead; in Judaism, Spinoza.

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world and thus exerting influence on (certain individuals and groups within) humanity. It is safe to suggest that, in almost all religions, divine intentionality goes beyond the status quo. That is, religions presuppose that the ‘world as it is’ is deficient in one way or the other. According to most if not all religions, there is a ‘deeper’ reality behind the surface of this world and this deeper reality is related to the divine intentionality. Grasping this deeper reality and living in accordance with it is the purpose of humanity or certain groups within it. For the purposes of gathering crucial features of religious objects that determine the styles of interpretation in religion, let it suffice to suggest that there is a difference between the status quo and the desired religious ideal. Whatever this ideal consists of, for example, nirvana, the reign of God’s kingdom, the new Jerusalem, Paradise, it is distinct from reality as it is here and now. As will become clear below, this difference accounts for a crucial feature of religious interpretive practices, viz. their action-relevance. However, in most religions, this divine intentionality is not straightforwardly accessible. This unfathomability of the divine is because of its ontology. More precisely speaking, it is on the account of religious ontology ramifying into religious epistemology. Amending Lamarque’s suggestion that the ontological features of the objects being interpreted determine the “appropriateness of styles of interpretation,” we can add that it is not only ontology but ontology plus epistemology that determines those styles in religious interpretive practices. I will explain this claim in the remainder of this section. Most religions presuppose an ontology according to which the transcendent postulate is of such a kind that it is largely inaccessible. At least, the ­transcendent is not accessible via standard cognitive means, i.e., it is not ­accessible in the same fashion as other objects are accessible, because if it were, it would become merely one object among others. Yet, most religions presuppose that the deity is not one object among others, but the creator/ bearer/source of all objects—a point that sometimes expressed in the contention that God c­ annot be ‘objectified’ since God is the subject that is beyond the subject/object-­dichotomy lying at the bottom of all cognition.8 This far-reaching inaccessibility of the transcendent is the reason religions often postulate special and exceptional cognitive means for the purposes of 8 An example of this position is Advaita Hinduism according to Michael Krausz (see “The ­Ideals and Aim of Interpretation,” (Chapter 2, this volume)). An example from the Christian tradition is Paul Tillich, “Participation and Knowledge: Problems of an Ontology of Cognition,” Philosophical Writings/Philosophische Schriften, ed. Gunther Wenz (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 1989), 381–9.

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‘cognizing’ that which, by its very nature, is beyond cognition. These means can vary from setting the mind in a certain state (for example, by meditation or fastening), to being susceptible to revelatory experiences (for example, by reading particularly qualified texts), or involvement in certain kinds of practices (for example, solidarity with the marginalized). Thus, the specifics of the ontology prevalent in (many) religion(s) require special epistemological mechanisms to break through the far-reaching inaccessibility of the transcendent. This close relation between ontology and epistemology in religion has ramifications for the reconstruction of the practice of interpretation in the religious realm. For example, it makes a difference for interpretation if we consider the deity: to be totaliter aliter, in principle unapproachable and the only way to ‘assert’ something meaningfully on it to be a dialectical one, according to which any positive assertion is immediately negated, so that the misconception that God could be ‘captured’ in language is avoided (as is the case with “Dialectial Theology”);9 or in one way or another to be approachable by ‘untutored’ human cognition (say, via analogical means as is the case with the analogy of being (analogia entis), which is the doctrine prevalent in many Catholic teachings). Similarly, it makes a difference whether we consider religious texts: as having cognitive and transformative functions, consisting, for example, in moksha or liberation (as is the case with the mantric refrain ‘Thou Art That’10); or as having predominantly a cognitive function (as is presumably the case in much of the Abrahamic religions11). 9 10 11

Dialectical Theology is a Protestant Christian movement, which emerged in the early 1920s (see Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans). See the example of, Krishna Roy, Hermeneutics: East and West, Jadavpur Studies in Philosophy, 2nd Series (Calcutta: Allied Publishers Ltd., 1993). More precisely speaking, the distinction between cognitive and transformative does not capture the intended contrast fully since Jews, Christians, and Muslims would also insist that their religious insights are not only cognitively but also transformatively effective. The difference between Abrahamic and Eastern religions has more to do with the mechanisms used: whereas most followers of the Abrahamic religions would insist that transformation is achieved predominantly via a cognitive route (although there are significant exceptions, such as Jewish and Christian mysticism and Sufism), many followers

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Many more examples of this sort could be offered. Yet, my point is probably clear by now: how we conceive the deity to be (in)approachable makes a significant difference regarding the interpretation of assertions on it. For example, if we consider God, or more moderately, certain aspects of God, to be straightforwardly revealed by, for example, certain passages from the Bible or the Qur’an, we will interpret religious statements pertaining to those passages differently than if we assume that the only appropriate way to ‘refer’ to God is by immediately negating any positive assertion of God. In the former case, we will interpret the content of those statements to mean more or less literally what it says. Yet, we will not do so in the latter case. In this case, we will not so much pay attention to the literal content of the statements as we will focus on the dialectics of affirmation and negation in order to emphasize that our (untutored) linguistic and cognitive capacities cannot mirror God adequately. In sum, I would like to add to Lamarque’s thesis that ontology determines interpretation that, in religion, it is not only ontology but ontology plus epistemology which determines interpretation. That is, when reconstructing the peculiarities of the religious realm that determine the practice of interpretation prevalent in it, we have to take into account not only the ontological characteristics of the ‘objects’ being interpreted but also the question of how they ramify into the epistemological domain. I.2 The Action-relevance of Interpretations in Religion The above considerations have elucidated that the transcendent realm is ­related to the human realm in religion. Yet, what is at stake in this relation for the human realm? I will answer this question first, before demonstrating in what sense the answer is relevant for reconstructing the practice of interpretation in religion. In most cases, nothing less is at stake than human well-being, i.e., the flourishing of individual believers, certain groups of believers (say, those who ­belong to a particular religious denomination), or even of humanity as a whole. Thus, religious ‘knowledge’ has commonly a salvific or healing aspect to it. Thus, it is not only relevant in abstracto, but serves to save (certain groups of) believers or even humanity as a whole—or, at least, helps to improve their conditions in this life and, as some believe, in an afterlife (for example, ‘heaven’). The insight that religious knowledge is salvific or healing helps to highlight a presumption religions make, but which is not always made explicit: obviously, healing knowledge is relevant only if there is a need for healing in the of Eastern religions insist on non-cognitive means, such as setting the mind in a certain state by repeating certain mantras.

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first place. Religions usually presuppose this need. They presuppose that there is something wrong with life-as-it-is, which needs healing or salvation. As indicated above, religions describe the status quo usually as being deficient in one way or other. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, the aspect that life-as-it-is is deficient is conceptualized as ‘the Fall’: The ‘fallen status’ of humanity expresses itself, for example, in the difficulties of human birth-giving,12 of human survival,13 and in human mortality.14 This is a mythical expression of the intuition that ­human life is alienated from the way it is supposed to be. In the Judaeo-Christian ­tradition, this difference is mostly expressed in temporal categories, viz. as a difference between the living conditions before and after the Fall. Yet, there are other ways to express this difference, for example, spatial ones (life on earth is deficient in light of the heavenly Paradise, prominent in later, Medieval Christianity and some Islamic traditions), teleological or essentialist ones (life-asit-is is deficient in light of its telos or essence). Yet, in whatever way this difference is expressed, the intuition that there is ‘something wrong’ with life-as-it-is is characteristic of many religions. They presuppose in one way or the other that human life is alienated from the way it is supposed to be. Thus, religions provide insight into some ‘deep’ aspect of human life. Whatever this aspect is, say, the deep alienation of human ‘live as it is’ from the sort of life it was supposed to be (for example, ‘before the Fall’), into the cycle of births and rebirths and possibilities to escape from it, or whatever—it is never a trivial aspect of human life, but one that plays a crucial role for human existence. In the following, I will express this insight by saying that religion touches upon an existential dimension of human life. Related to this existential dimension is the eminently practical nature of religious knowledge: it does not primarily serve theoretical interests but, rather, practical ones in the broad sense of the word. Religious interpretations of reality and the knowledge emerging from them do not have as their primary purpose to deepen e.g. our anthropological knowledge as such, but to deepen it with an eye on the human situation in this world and its relation (or lack thereof) to its transcendent source. For example, when the Apostle Paul discusses the sense in which he is deeply alienated from his ‘true self,’15 he is not primarily interested in p ­ roviding 12 13 14 15

See Genesis 3:16. Ibid., 3:17. Ibid., 3:18. “I cannot understand my own behavior. I fail to carry out the things I want to do, and I find myself doing the very things I hate” (Romans 7:15, The Jerusalem Bible, Reader’s Ed.).

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psychological insights into human nature (its alienation) as such. Rather, he brings up this issue in the context of a discussion of the function of the Jewish Law. In Judaism, the Law has the function of regulating the relationship between God and humanity. Paul wrestles with the problem of what f­ unction— if any—the Law plays after Christ, whom he believes to be the Messiah, has come. His observations serve to solve this problem and are not meant to contribute to our knowledge of human psychology in general.16 In sum, religious insights are of an existential nature, are embedded in a practical context, and have a built-in tendency to compare the status quo with an ideal set of circumstances. This ideal set can consist of a temporal category, as is the case with the Judaeo-Christian concept of the eschaton (end of time),17 in a geographical category (for example, ‘Paradise’), essentialist or teleological concepts. But whatever this ideal consists of, my point is that the tension between this ideal and the status quo characterizes religion. This characteristic explains a feature of religions that will be crucial for the following ­argumentation, viz. their action-relevance. The intuition that life-as-it-is is d­ eficient when compared to the ideal set of circumstances provides (at least, ­prima facie) reasons for action. Put (admittedly) somewhat schematically but, hopefully, clearly: That religions regard the status quo to be deficient when compared to the ideal they presuppose implies that they evaluate ‘reality-as-it-is’ in negative terms, e.g., as ‘fallen,’ alienated, or ‘unenlightened.’ Thus, religious ­interpretations of reality imply by their very nature evaluations. Evaluations provide reasons for action.18 This holds for positive as well as negative evaluations: as positive evaluations imply the (prima facie) 16

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Let me add that this very chapter, Romans 7, is heavily disputed, since the choice of the interpretation can determine the Christian conceptualization of its relationship with Judaism to a significant extent. Does Paul mean to say that the Jewish Law was wrong all along or is it only wrong after Christ has come—or is Christ even the telos (cf. Romans 10:4) in the sense of ‘the fulfillment’ of the Law? The interpretation of this passage can thus have serious moral and political consequences. Let it be noted in passing that temporal conceptions of the ideal are not only common in the Judaeo-Christian and probably other religious traditions, but also in secular ideologies; for example, certain variants of Marxism, in which the ideal of the classless society serves as the frame of reference in light of which the capitalist status quo appears to be deficient. The link between providing evaluations and providing reasons for action can presumably be reconstructed in different ways. In my view, Richard Mervyn Hare’s classical prescriptivist account of moral language still has something going for it. At least, the idea that

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obligation to act in such a way as to bring about the set of circumstances recommended, negative evaluations imply the (prima facie) obligation to act in such a way as to avoid the set of circumstances criticized. Thus, religions imply evaluations and evaluations entail reasons for action: The negative evaluations of the status quo implied in religious interpretations of reality are action-relevant insofar as they entail the (prima facie) obligation to change it in the direction of the envisaged ideal. I.3 Interpretation in Religion and in the Arts Most contributions to the discourse on interpretation, which is relevant in the round of discussion here, is inspired by the arts. The theorizing on it receives important input by the practice of the interpretation of works of art, such as paintings, literature, and music. This being the case, it is important to ask how the practice of interpreting religious objects compares to the practice of interpreting artistic objects. I would like to emphasize from the outset that both practices have resemblances. This is certainly true if we compare interpretation in religion and the arts with other interpretive practices, such as interpretation in the natural and social sciences, for example, with interpreting quantitative or qualitative findings, or with certain interpretive practices common in the humanities, such as history, for example, with ‘inference to the best explanation interpretations.’ Compared with those practices, the interpretation of religious texts as specified above, viz. from a religiously committed rather than a detached point of view, has more resemblances with the interpretation of artistic objects than with interpretations in other fields. Yet, having said that, I would like to emphasize that there are significant differences, too. I will focus on those differences in the following. The point of this focus is not to draw overly sharp distinctions between interpretations in religion and in the arts. The point is that, given that the discourse on interpretation that is relevant here draws mostly on the practice of interpretation in the arts, we should be aware of the differences when we apply this discussion to religion. The differences between interpretation in religion and in the arts are caused by the above mentioned ontological and epistemological peculiarities of the religious objects of interpretation. One of the most important consequences of those peculiarities is the strong link between interpreting reality in religious making an evaluation is action-relevant insofar as it implies, in principle, to act in accordance with it is still worth considering. See Richard Mervin Hare, The Language of Morals (London, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1970).

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terms and (providing reasons for) action. Thus, interpretation in religion possesses stronger action-guiding force than in the arts. My point is not that interpretation in the arts is not at all action-relevant. I am prepared to admit that whether Van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters is interpreted in a Marxist, feminist, existentialist, or some other fashion may make a difference regarding action and regarding the provision of reasons for action. Yet, my point is a comparative one: the link between interpretation and action is stronger and presumably of a different kind in religion than in the arts.19 The reason is that interpretations have a different purpose in the arts than in religion. In the arts, they are used to stimulate human fantasy, experiment with different ways of being human, test out human boundaries, portray human emotions, to simply entertain, etc. The crucial feature of those purposes is that they are (to a good extent) ‘handlungsentlastet,’i.e. freed from the burden of practical action.20 Interpretations in religion differ from those in the arts in that they are more strongly and more straightforwardly action-relevant. In some sense, interpretations in religion have functional resemblances with the interpretation of a user-manual. This is admittedly a provocative comparison and I will qualify it below. Yet, it is helpful for the purposes of contrasting interpretation in religion with interpretation in the arts. In religion, the function of interpretation consists in giving guidance in life. To that end, religious interpretations provide a particular outlook on the world, on the human condition (for example, on its alienation from its telos); and they draw moral consequences from this view, in particular, with an eye on the difference of life-as-it-is in comparison to ‘life-asit-is supposed to be’ (according to the religious ideal). I would like to point out, though, that I do not mean to imply any value judgment with the distinction between handlungsentlastet and action-­relevant interpretations. That is, I do not mean to imply that handlungsentslastete ­interpretations are deficient, unimportant, or something of that sort.21 Rather, 19

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This judgment holds under normal circumstances. Obviously, there are always exceptional circumstances conceivable, in which the interpretation of artistic works is h ­ ighly ­action-relevant. For example, think of the lunatic who feels threatened by a certain ­painting and thus tries to destroy it at all costs. Also, constructions of religion are conceivable that have little or no action relevance, Deism being one of them (see note 4). Yet, these are exceptions or borderline cases, which I will neglect in the following. I take this term over from Jürgen Habermas (see, for example, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen (­Cambridge, uk: Polity, 1990), 115ff). This is a point many English translations of the term ‘Handlungsentlastung,’ such as ‘immunity from practical action’ (ee the discussion on http://www.proz.com/kudoz/

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I think that stimulating phantasy and related activities that are characteristic for interpretation in the arts are characteristic trademarks of the human and probably distinguish it from the non-human. Thus, insisting on interpretation in the arts being handlungsentlastet and interpretation in religion being action-relevant is not to pass judgments but to point to the different functions both kinds of interpretive activities have in human life. ii

Krausz’s Distinction between Multiplism and Singularism

A thread running through Krausz’s work is his emphasis upon multiplism over singularism.22 He asserts Singularists hold that for any object of interpretation…only one single admissible interpretation exists. Multiplists hold that, for some objects of interpretation, more than one admissible interpretation exists....­multiplists allow that incongruent interpretations may be jointly defended.23 It is important to note that, in Krausz’s view, singularism and multiplism behave asymmetrically. He says: singularism mandates a single admissible interpretation for all objects of interpretation. In contrast, multiplism affirms that multiplist conditions may obtain in some but not all cases. Multiplism allows that some singularist condition obtain.24 Krausz distinguishes his multiplism from anarchy. Although for the multiplist, “more than one interpretation may be admissible, still more are inadmissible.”25 germn_to_english/business_commerce_general/4901051-handlungsentlastung.html), fail to capture. ‘Handlungsentlastung’ carries, at least, in the German discourse on the issue (which predates Habermas) liberating consequences with it: it implies a freedom from the pressure to put all human activities straightforwardly into the service of this or that practical purpose. 22 See, for example, Michael Krausz, Rightness and Reasons: Interpretations in Cultural P­ ractices (Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 1993); and Krausz, “Interpretation and its Objects,” in Is There a Single Right Interpretation? ed. M. Krausz (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2002), 122–44. 23 Krausz, “The Ideals and Aim of Interpretation,” (Chapter 2, this volume). 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid.

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This is also the reason why the distinction between singularism and multiplism should not be confused with that between (critical) monism and (critical) pluralism, according to Krausz: Although monism is identical with singularism, multiplism is not identical with pluralism insofar as it presupposes that “good reasons may be offered for preferred interpretations.”26 Why Different Interpretations are Difficult to Tolerate in Actionrelevant Practices Such as Religion The distinction between singuralism and multiplism—or any terminological equivalent—is, in my view, one of the most important issues when applying the philosophical reflection on interpretation to religion. I will thus take it up and develop it further below. Yet, in this section, I will analyze how religious interpretive practices as I have reconstructed above fare in light of this distinction. Thus, the question to be raised is, on which side of the divide do those practices fall? The first answer is that religious interpretations fall on the side of multiplism or, at least, can be reconstructed as being compatible with multiplism. The reason is that, as shown above, multiplism allows, “that for some objects of interpretation, more than one admissible interpretation exists” but does not require this to be the case for all objects. Thus, it is not inconsistent with this definition to hold a multiplist position in principle but to insist that religion does not belong to those objects that allow for more than one admissible ­interpretation. It can be considered to be an exception to the rule and, since multiplism does not disallow exceptions of this sort, it can still be compatible with an overall multiplism. Yet, this answer reveals more on the asymmetry of the distinction between singuralism and mulitiplism than on the religious interpretive practices: while singularism holds that all interpretations fulfill one requirement, multiplism is construed more liberally. Presumably, multiplism’s extension is significantly larger than that of singuralism, so that many interpretative practices fall into that category. An answer that reveals more about the specifics of the practice of interpretation in religion is that it cannot allow for “more than one admissible interpretation” easily. Even if we are critical of singularism in general (as I am—a point that I will address below), we will be hesitant to abandon it easily when reconstructing religious interpretive practices, because independently from what we personally favor, interpretation in religion follows a specific kind of logic II.1

26

Ibid., 2.

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that makes it difficult to allow for more than one admissible interpretation easily. One aspect of this logic is that religious texts have ontological implications. As Vibha Chaturvedi has pointed out, this is the reason why a plurality of legitimate interpretations is more difficult to allow in religion than in works of art or literature:27 Ontological commitments and pluralism are difficult to reconcile. If we commit ourselves to a particular ontology, say, on the nature of physical objects, we will be less inclined to tolerate alternative interpretations implying alternative ontologies than as if we interpret less ontology-laden objects, such as artistic ones. I would like to add the above mentioned point about the strong action relevance of interpretation in religion: this action-relevance limits the possibility of tolerating deviant interpretations. The reason is plain: if religious interpretation I1 entails a course of action A1 and interpretation I2 a course of action A2, circumstances are conceivable in which I1 and I2 cannot both be tolerated. For example, if both A1 and A2 deviate strongly or even oppose each other, they cannot be tolerated simultaneously. Nor can I1 and I2, on which they depend, be tolerated simultaneously easily.28 For example, if I1 consists in an interpretation of the New Testament, or a particular passage in it, as entailing a concept of justice according to which Christians have to opt for the poor and I2 in an interpretation according to which this is not the case, it is obviously difficult to tolerate both interpretations simultaneously since they lead to deviant and probably even opposed courses of action. Their Existential Relevance as Another Reason Why Different Interpretations are Difficult to Tolerate in Religion The reason that there are limits to tolerating deviant interpretations in religion is not only that they are strongly action-relevant, but also that they pertain to issues that are of central importance to human well-being, i.e., to existentially highly relevant features of human life. Moreover, many religions entail moral consequences, which potentially affect a large number of people. Both of those points can be elucidated by way of a comparison with issues of taste: If person A states that strawberry ice-cream is to be favored and p ­ erson

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See Chaturvedi, Reflections, “Interpretation of Religious Texts: Some Reflections,” in I­nterpretation and Its Objects, ed. Andreea Deciu Ritivoi (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003), 303–9, at 304 (see also the different contributions to the section, “Interpretation Without Ontology?” in the same volume, 93–168). Here, I presuppose a 1:1 relation between one particular interpretation and one particular course of action. I will delve into the more complex case that two interpretations entail the same course of action in the last section.

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B that lemon ice-cream is to be favored, each statement may entail different courses of action. For example, A may go out and buy strawberry ice-cream, while B buys lemon ice-cream. Yet, although the courses of action taken differ, both A’s and B’s actions can be tolerated simultaneously (at least, under normal circumstances) as can the different judgments or interpretations on which they are based. These are questions of taste, which neither pertain to existentially relevant aspects of human well-being nor effect large numbers of people but primarily only the person who makes that judgment. Yet, issues are different regarding religion: since it deals with issues of high existential relevance and often entails moral consequences, which affect large numbers of people, different courses of action being entailed by different interpretations cannot be tolerated as easily as differences pertaining to questions of taste. Let me illustrate this point with the help of an example of a conflict that is currently relevant within the Christian religion: a number of Christian groups, predominantly in South and Latin America, but also in some Asian and European contexts, read the New Testament as a call to side with economically, culturally, and politically marginalized people. Since they opt for liberating them from oppressive circumstances, their movement is ­sometimes referred to as Liberation Theology. Referring, for example, to Jesus’s solidarity with the outcasts and marginalized, Liberation Theologians suggest to side with the marginalized and draw economic and political consequences in accordance with this view (such as a critique of capitalist forms of exploitation, globalism, first-world/third-world trade relations, etc.). Other Christian groups disagree. They read the Bible differently, say, as ­implying only individual but no socio-political implications, or as implying no direct political implications but only high-level, general moral precepts.29 Currently, a movement is growing within Christianity which interprets the Bible in an entirely different, almost opposite fashion: prosperity gospel m ­ ovements which spread rapidly in Africa and Asia understand the basic message of the gospel to be related to personal flourishing, last but not least in financial terms, not to global aspects, let alone as a critique of the global economic order. Obviously, those different interpretations cannot be tolerated as easily as differences concerning questions of taste. On the question of which sort of 29

A common way to do so is to suggest that the Bible contains only relatively high-level normative judgments, say, an ethics of love in general terms. Yet, this high-level ethics cannot be straightforwardly translated into a critique of the existing trade relations or other applied socio-political judgments. In some Christian strands, such as traditional Lutheranism, the suggestion is made that translating this general ethics into concrete socio-political judgments is a question of ‘reason,’ not of interpreting the Bible.

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ice-cream to prefer, we can express different opinions and walk away still being friends. Yet, the situation is different when it comes to issues of global justice: from the question whether we should change the current trade relations, we cannot walk away that easily and still be friends. The reason is that the latter question pertains to issues of high relevance for the human race, in this case issues of global justice. It potentially affects large numbers of people, viz. all those who are affected by the way the current trade relations are set up—the vast majority of the human population. In sum, deviances in the interpretation of religious texts, such as the Jewish Scriptures, the New Testament, the Qur’an, and the Vedic texts30 cannot be tolerated easily because those interpretations are strongly action-relevant— more so, for example, than interpretations in the arts. In addition, they pertain to morally or existentially highly relevant issues, such as issues of justice or human well-being, and affect potentially large segments of the human ­population—more so than for example, questions of taste as above mentioned. Since different courses of action that pertain to highly important moral issues or existentially relevant features of the human self and affect large numbers of people cannot be tolerated easily, the different interpretations from which they emerge cannot be tolerated easily either. iii

The Sacred Character of Religious Texts and the Special Obligations Their Interpreters Have

Thus far, I have focused on the question how the practice of the interpretation of religious texts is to be reconstructed, given the peculiarities of religion. But I have not yet said anything about the religious texts themselves or the people who interpret them. Given the above peculiarities, however, it is important to ask what status those texts have and whether this entails certain consequences for their interpretation: Do interpreters of religious texts have special obligations? In this section, I will answer those questions by first delving into the theoretical discussion on texts or ‘objects of interpretation.’ Krausz emphasizes that the common term ‘objects of interpretation’ means ‘intentional object,’ not ‘object as such.’31 Characteristic of intentional objects

30 31

See the examples in Pradeep P. Gokhale, “Some Reflections on Michael Krausz’s Account of Meaning and Interpretation,” (Chapter 8, this volume). Krausz, “The Ideals and Aim of Interpretation.”

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is that they are “endowed with meaning or significance within a field of cultural codes, norms, or the like.”32 Lamarque emphasizes that works are intentional objects since they are: human creations; they depend on human intentions and cultural conditions. They are intentional objects not only because they owe their origins to intentional objects but also because their identity conditions are partly determined by how they are taken or thought to be by relevant cultural communities.33 Thus characterized, according to Lamarque, works are to be distinguished from objects: “Works are necessarily associated with some object or other…but they are not identical with the objects that constitute them. The statue is not identical with the piece of marble.”34 This is the reason Lamarque suggests that interpretation in the strict sense applies only to works and not to objects.35 In the discussion on the issue, the focus has been on Lamarque’s last thesis. For example, Richard Shusterman pursues the issue with an eye on the question whether a distinction between describing and interpreting is feasible in a robust fashion.36 In this round of discussion, issues such as the theory-laden character of all our attempts to describe reality are targeted, thus, the issue of realism versus anti-realism (in interpretation). Yet, for the purposes of applying this philosophical discussion on interpretation to religion, we need to pursue Lamarque’s concept of ‘works,’ i.e., of objects implying intentionality that constitutes their significance, in a different direction. We need to inquire in what sense precisely those objects carry intentionality with them. Using Krausz’s terminology, we need to inquire how p­ recisely the relevant religious ‘cultural codes and norms’ endow significance to religious texts and whether those people who are predominantly responsible for endowing them with meaning have special obligations. I will answer those questions in the following. 32 Ibid. 33 Peter Lamarque, “Object, Work, and Interpretation,” in Interpretation and Culture: Themes in the Philosophy of Michael Krausz, ed. Michael McKenna. Special Issue, Philosophy in the Contemporary World 12, no. 1 (Spring–Summer 2005): 1–7, at 5–6, emphasis added. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 Shusterman denies that such a distinction is possible in a more than ‘pragmatic, shifting, heuristic’ fashion; see “Interpretation, Intention and Truth,” in Intention and Interpretation, ed. Gary Iseminger (Philadelphia, pa: Temple University Press, 1992), 71–2.

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How Religious Texts are Endowed with Meaning: The Example of Jesus the Christ Religious texts are endowed with special dignity within the relevant religious ‘cultural codes and norms,’ i.e., within religious interpretive communities. The reason is that those communities regard them to reveal aspects of the transcendent, say, of God, which would otherwise be undisclosed or, at least, as we have seen above, difficult to fathom. For example, they may reveal God’s relationship with (groups within) humanity, often coupled with ‘deep’ insights into the latter, say, into human alienation from its destination. Examples taken from the Jewish Scriptures are the Decalogue, which reveals God’s will or the ongoing ‘story’ Jahwe has with his people. An example taken from the New Testament is Jesus who is, in his resurrection, revealed as the Christ (for Christians), i.e., the Messiah who is the ‘down-payment’ of the long expected end time, during which God’s kingdom will reign. For the Jewish and Christian interpretive communities, texts that ­contain knowledge on those matters enjoy a particular significance: they are ­considered to be ‘sacred’ texts. The same holds for the Qur’an, the Vedas, and other texts; they  are considered to be normatively of particular relevance—‘sacred’—­ within their respective interpretive communities. Yet, their sacred character does not reside in the texts themselves. This is plain from the simple consideration that they can be legitimately interpreted in a variety of ­different ways. For example, the Jewish Scriptures can be interpreted from a non-­Jewish ­viewpoint, such as a purely historical one. For example, they can be read as comparing what they convey about the development of monotheism in ­Israel to what they convey about the development of monotheism in Egypt. Thus, their special significance does not reside in the texts themselves but is a­ ttributed to them from the context in which they are read. Interpretive ­communities—Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist…—endow them with meaning. With the help of an example taken from the Christian ‘field of cultural codes,’ I will show how those texts are endowed with meaning precisely: within this field, the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth is also considered to be the Christ, i.e., the long-expected Messiah who brings about the end-time and thus God’s reign. Given Jesus’s particular status, texts that convey information on his deeds, life, and self-consciousness have naturally special significance. For example, whether he did cleanse the Temple,37 whether his sayings that are critical of the Sabbath38 or have a pacifist ring to them39 truly stem from the III.1

37 38 39

See Mark 11:15–19; John 2:13–22. See Matthew 12:8; Mark 2:27. See Matthew 5:38–41, 26:52.

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historical Jesus or are added later by the first Christian communities, whether he had such a unique relationship with God that he called him ‘Father,’ and related issues are highly relevant issues. For Christians, the answers to those questions are not only of historical interest but also normatively relevant. ­Given the Christian belief that Jesus is the Christ, the way he acted, preached, behaved, and conceived his relationship with God has particular significance for Christians. For example, the answer to the question whether Jesus was a pacifist has different consequences for Christians than the answer to the question whether Mahatma Gandhi was a pacifist. No matter how much Christians admire Gandhi and conceive him to be a role model, they admit that Jesus has a different function within their belief system since Jesus is the Christ.40 Thus, texts which convey something on the way Jesus acted and thought have ­naturally special significance for Christians. This is just one example of the mechanisms that endow religious texts with  special meaning within their interpretive communities. Others could be added from other religions. But my point is probably clear by now: Religious texts have a special dignity within their respective religious communities; they possess special high normative relevance (within their interpretive communities). III.2 The Special Obligations Interpreters of Religious Texts Have Given the peculiar status religious texts have, the question must be raised whether this has consequences for their interpretation: Do their interpreters have special obligations when interpreting those normatively highly relevant

40

I summarize here the majority tradition within Christianity, which regards the acts and life of the historical Jesus of Nazareth to be the normative foundation for Christianity. Yet, there exists a minority tradition, which insists that this is not as relevant as often thought. This tradition affirms that what the first Christian communities held about ­Jesus provides the foundation for Christian theorizing. The most famous representative of this tradition is probably Rudolf Bultmann (see “Das Verhältnis der urchristlichen Christusbotschaft zum historischen Jesus,”in Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der ­Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C., ­Winter 1960)). I support this position on the grounds that Christianity emerges out of Judaism by way of a paradigm shift, according to which Jesus is reconstructed as the Christ and this reconstruction is the true normative foundation of Christianity (see Dirk-Martin Grube, Ostern als Paradigmenwechsel. Eine wissenschaftstheoretische Untersuchung zur Entstehung des Christentums und deren Konsequenzen für die Christologie (Neukirchen, Germany: Neukirchener Verlag, 2012), 94–6). Yet, I do not pursue this issue further since here it serves only as an example.

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texts—obligations which differ from the obligations interpreters of other texts have? By ‘interpreters of religious texts,’ I mean experts whose interpretations have the potential to influence others’ interpretations to a significant extent, for example, (Jewish or Christian) Biblical Scholars. Surprisingly, the question whether interpreters have special obligations when interpreting religious texts is not that often raised. Nevertheless, it is important given that the religious texts in question have strong normative implications and potentially far-reaching effects on the identity formation of believers and their moral viewpoints, say, on questions of justice. This being the case, the question must be raised whether interpreters of those texts have different obligations from interpreters of purely secular texts, such as, for example, an interpreter of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. This question is particularly relevant because it is related to issues of power. The reason is obvious: the experts interpreting religious texts that have strong normative implications hold an enormous amount of power in their hands. This  amount of power exceeds, under normal circumstances, the amount of power that interpreters of secular texts have. For example, the interpreter of the  New Testament who interprets those sayings of Jesus that have a ­pacifist ring to them as being authentic, i.e., as stemming from the historical ­Jesus h ­ imself, has the power to influence the identity-formation and conduct of many ­Christians to a greater extent than an interpreter of particular scenes from Hamlet ­influences the identity formation and conduct of Shakespeare’s fans. Obviously, issues of power are related to moral concerns. I conceptualize those issues under the parameters of the correlation ‘the more power, the more responsibilities.’41 Given this correlation, interpreters of religious texts with great amounts of power in their hands also have great responsibilities when practicing their trade. What are those responsibilities? First, these interpreters need to be acutely aware of the power they hold in their hands. Thus, they should not use it lightheartedly or to their personal advantage. Above all, they should be particularly conscious about avoiding the all-present temptation in current academia to come up with ‘exciting,’ eye-catching new interpretations in order to boost their academic fame.

41

I do not suggest that this correlation follows in any logical sense from the aforementioned considerations. Rather, I suggest it on separate, viz. moral grounds. My point is that this correlation holds given certain moral presuppositions.

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Second, they should do whatever is within their power to avoid ‘wrong’ i­ nterpretations.42 This consequence follows straightforwardly from the strong normative relevance of religious texts (under the parameters of the above correlation): since they have the potential to determine the identity-formation of religious believers strongly, interpretative ‘mistakes’ have particularly grave consequences. Let me explain what I mean with the help of the following example: An ­interpreter of the New Testament suggests that those of Jesus’s sayings that have a pacifist ring to them are authentic. Within the Christian interpretive community, this interpretation has the potential to influence the identityformation of many believers, viz. of all those Christians who identify Jesus as the Christ.43 For example, it may provide reasons for Christians to embrace a pacifism as well. Yet, imagine that this interpreter finds out later that a mistake has been made.44 Perhaps evidence is discovered that shows that those sayings are not authentic, or are authentic, but do not favor a pacifist morality, or favor such a morality only under the provision of highly specific conditions (for example, that the end-time is imminent) but not under different conditions. Clearly, this mistake weighs heavily: This interpreter has misled Christians by giving them the wrong reasons to act. The point that wrong interpretations in religion may have particularly grave consequences holds for religious texts from all religious traditions ­because these religious texts, whether Jewish Scriptures, the Qur’an, the ­Vedas, are all highly normatively relevant within their respective interpretative communities. 42

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The issue of an interpretation being ‘wrong’ is a vexed one under the parameters of theorizing such as multiplism. I cannot delve into them in detail, in particular not into the complex question how criteria for determining an interpretation being wrong can be fixed. Let it thus suffice here to say that the possibility of an interpretation being wrong is not excluded by most current multiplists. This is a crucial difference between multiplists á la Krausz and (most French) postmodernists or Rorty and his followers. Obviously, whether it actually does depends on a number of contingent factors, such as the way how the findings are circulated in academia or the public at large, which, in turn, depends on how the interpreter presents and defends them and other such factors. That is why I do not claim actuality but only potentiality for the influence the interpreter has on believers’ identity formation. I think particularly of the methodological shift from the so-called Second Quest for the historical Jesus to the Third Quest, which has taken place in the last decades. The result of this methodological shift is that different passages of the Gospels are considered to be authentic from those that were considered to be authentic under the methodological parameters of the Second Quest.

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My point is not to suggest that the potentially grave consequences of making mistakes when interpreting religious texts should lead us to conclude that making such interpretations should be abandoned. It would be virtually impossible to abandon the practice of interpreting religious texts anyway. Given their relevance for the pursuit of a religious life, there will always be a high demand for interpretations of those texts. The wiser conclusion would be to admonish interpreters of religious texts to take particular precautions when practicing their trade. They should proceed with utmost meticulousness and should admit the conjectural nature of their interpretations and the uncertainties implicit in them. It may be retorted that there is nothing new in this cautionary advice, since all interpreters are obliged to proceed meticulously and admit the conjectural nature of their findings. For example, the interpretation of archeological findings as evidence for the surprising interpretation that the Romans led a second grand-scale campaign against the Germanic tribes45 is a conjecture and any responsible archeologist will admit that it is. Although I grant this point, I still think that there is a special obligation on the shoulders of interpreters of religious texts. Given that the interpretation of those texts has much further-reaching consequences than that of archeological findings, the interpreter of religious texts must be much more cautious than the archeologist. There is also a practical reason why I emphasize this point that strongly: believers often turn to the expert-interpreters of their holy texts in the hope that they can provide ‘authoritative’ interpretations, which can provide guidance to their lives.46 Nonetheless, interpreters should be prepared to admit that they are unable to provide the authoritative interpretation (if this is the case). Although being capable of providing definite answers is surely ­tempting, interpreters should reject it if they practice their trade in a responsible fashion. Instead, they should be candid about the conjectural nature of their 45

46

In 2008, archeologists discovered evidence of a battle field at the Harzhorn (near Brunswick, Germany). This is surprising insofar as this location differs from that of the earlier Varus Battle (for which there exists independent evidence). Thus, some are led to the conclusion that there must have taken place a second grand scale battle about which nothing else was known thus far. I have witnessed that myself within the Christian context and hear similar stories from colleagues working in the context of Islamic studies: students turn to them in the hope of receiving support for guiding their lives by providing authoritative interpretations of their holy scriptures.

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i­nterpretations and lay bare the methodological, weltanschauliche and other presuppositions upon which their interpretation rests. iv

Reconsidering the Issue of Monism versus Pluralism

In this final section, I will take up again the issue whether there is only one legitimate interpretation in religion or many. I will qualify my earlier remarks and make suggestions for how to deal with this issue in a constructive fashion. Let me begin by commenting on the nomenclature used: although I follow Krausz to a good extent, I will not use his distinction between ‘singularism’ and ‘multiplism,’ since its asymmetrical construction would make spelling out the point I wish to emphasize rather complicated. Rather, I adhere to the classical distinction between ‘monism’ and ‘pluralism,’ and use it in a straightforward fashion: monism implies that there is only one legitimate interpretation, while pluralism allows for a multitude of equally legitimate ones. In my nomenclature, ‘pluralism’ does not necessarily imply interpretive anarchism. Rather, it can be construed anarchistically but does not have to be construed in such a fashion. That is, it can be construed in such a way as to acknowledge a variety of different interpretations as equally legitimate but as rejecting the view that all interpretations are legitimate by the same token (in effect, what Krausz claims for multiplism). There is another distinction concerning pluralism I would like to emphasize by way of introducing the term, viz. between genuine and non-genuine forms of pluralism. A genuine pluralism acknowledges the existence of a multitude of equally legitimate interpretations all the way down whereas a non-genuine one acknowledges it in the first instance but presupposes mechanisms that allow privileging one particular interpretation over competing ones. Non-genuine forms of pluralism are rather common in religion. Often, a multitude of legitimate interpretations is acknowledged, but then a certain (class of) interpreters is considered to be privileged. Thus, out of those equally legitimate interpretations, those to be favored are the ones chosen by the privileged interpreter(s). In the Christian tradition, for example, the working of the (Holy) Spirit has often been introduced as the justification for privileging certain interpreters and their interpretations. However, I presuppose a genuine form of pluralism in the following when I  speak of ‘pluralism.’ That is, the pluralist I have in mind holds that there ­exists an  irreducible multitude of equally legitimate interpretations of a religious text.

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In order not to be misunderstood, let me clarify that, personally, I favor a measure of pluralism: I have defended it in the philosophy of science and endorse Thomas Kuhn’s view that the interpretation of research results can ­legitimately differ even in the natural sciences.47 If acknowledged in the natural sciences, it is clear at a stroke that interpretive pluralism has to be acknowledged in the humanities as well. Moreover, there are particularly good practical and theoretical reasons to acknowledge pluralism in the interpretation of religious texts. The theoretical reasons have to do with the above mentioned ontologico-epistemological features of the transcendent: given that it is less straightforwardly accessible than, say, Donald Davidson’s notorious ‘middle-sized objects,’ interpretations of it differ naturally more drastically than interpretations of those objects. The practical reasons revolve around the fact that most religious texts were originally written in ancient languages, the translations of which are contested. That is, the reference of the terms used in those texts is not only vague on, say, Quinean grounds, but also because their translation is simply uncertain and there are no independent ways to check their appropriateness.48 My argument should thus not be misunderstood as supporting the suggestion to re-introduce monism into the practice of interpreting religious texts (as is sometimes suggested in the wake of attempts to rehabilitate authorial intention). Rather, my point is to raise the consciousness for the fact that we have to be very careful and considerate when acknowledging pluralism in our reconstructions of religious interpretive practices. It is a warning against acknowledging pluralism in too uncritical a fashion in our reconstructions of religious practices. If we neglect this warning, we jeopardize an essential features of those practices, viz. their action-relevance (the reason being that preserving this relevance is difficult to reconcile with tolerating pluralism in interpretation). There are two reasons why I think that this warning is appropriate. The first is that interpreting religious objects differs from interpreting objects of art. Since most of the philosophical contributions to this volume are devoted to reconstructing the practice of interpreting objects of art, I wish to emphasize explicitly that interpreting religious objects is different from interpreting 47

48

Since they are constituted (to some extent), i.e., their attributes are ‘imputed’ to them by the paradigm within which they are conceptualized (see Grube, Ostern als Paradigmenwechsel, 170–2). For the full argument on this issue, see Christiane Karrer-Grube’s contribution in Chapter 7, this volume.

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o­ bjects of art on this count: Whereas pluralism can (presumably) be tolerated more easily in the arts, it is more difficult to tolerate in religious interpretive practices. The second reason is that there is currently a tendency in the reflection on religious practices of interpretation to embrace pluralism without sufficient care and consideration. I will delve into this point below. Does Tolerating Different Interpretations Not Undermine Action-relevance? The above reasoning can be challenged on the grounds that allowing pluralism does not necessarily undermine action-relevance: It is conceivable that there are several legitimate interpretations of a text all of which have the same ­action-guiding force. Say, there exist two interpretations, I1 and I2, of Jesus’s sayings, I1 favoring a pacifist course of action under the provision of certain conditions, whereas I2 favors the same course of action unconditionally. Provided that those conditions obtain, I1 and I2 possess the same action-guiding force. Thus, tolerating them simultaneously cannot be excluded on the grounds that they undermine the action-relevance of this saying, as I argued above. Although this is a valid counterargument, the question must be raised how much mileage can be gotten out of it. After all, the scope for tolerating ­divergences is rather limited if the same action guiding-force is to be preserved. In the above provided example, the difference between I1 and I2 consists only in the fashion in which they favor pacifism, viz. on the provisions provided for it. Yet, if I2 would deviate more strongly from I1 or even contradict it, say, imply to act in a non-pacifist fashion, it could not be simultaneously tolerated with I1. Thus, although some measure of pluralism can be tolerated while preserving action-relevance, this measure is very limited: Interpretations which diverge more strongly from each other or even lead to contradictory courses of action cannot be tolerated simultaneously. In sum, although action-relevance does not presuppose monism in the strict sense, preserving this relevance ­implies that toleration for divergent interpretations is very limited. IV.1

The Warning against Accepting Pluralism Too Easily and Margolis’s Critique of Bivalence Another possible counterargument against my warning not to accept pluralism too easily is that it is incompatible with the critique of the logical ­principle of bivalence I have proposed elsewhere: Following Margolis’s rejection of ­bivalence, i.e., of the principle that statements are (decidably) either true or false, I have endorsed this rejection in the context of the theory of action and IV.2

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the theory of religious pluralism.49 Yet, this rejection implies, at least, in J­ oseph Margolis’s hands, toleration of incongruent interpretations.50 Tolerating incongruent interpretations implies acknowledging a radical version of ­pluralism. Surely, it jeopardizes the action-relevance of interpretations for the reasons provided above: allowing for both the incongruent interpretations that Jesus’s sayings favor pacifism and that they do not sacrifices the actionguiding force of those sayings. Thus, is my support of Margolis’s critique of ­bivalence not incompatible with the above warning against tolerating ­pluralism in too uncritical a fashion? Although I endorse Margolis’s rejection of bivalence, I do not necessarily support his suggestion to accept incongruent judgments. I think this is not a necessary but only a possible consequence of this rejection. If at all,51 it is applicable only in handlungsentlastete practices of interpretation, for example, in the arts. Yet, it is inapplicable in highly action-relevant practices, such as that of interpreting religious texts. I regard Margolis’s critique of bivalence to be capable of being interpreted in two different fashions: The first one is the rather radical suggestion that, since bivalence is to be abandoned, incongruent interpretations can be tolerated. The second fashion, however, is less radical and consists in giving up insistence on bivalence in favor of a many-valued logic which includes values such as ‘undecidable.’ This suggestion implies only to abstain from distributing the bivalent pair of truth values in some cases, but not to tolerate incongruences. When endorsing Margolis’s critique of bivalence, I have this second interpretation in mind. That is, when I suggest that giving up bivalence can lead us out of potential impasses in the theory of action and provides an interesting platform for developing a pluralist theory of religion, I think of relaxing the principle of bivalence by retreating to a third truth value, such as undecidability. However, this endorsement does not necessarily imply endorsing the suggestion to tolerate incongruent interpretations. Neither does this second understanding undermine the action-relevance of interpretations or 49

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See Dirk-Martin Grube, “Margolis’s Critique of Bivalence and its Consequences for the Theory of Action and a Pluralist Theory of Religion,” in Pragmatism, Metaphysics and ­Culture: Reflections on the Philosophy of Joseph Margolis eds. D.-M. Grube and Rob ­Sinclair (Nordic Studies in Pragmatism, 2, 236–259). See Joseph Margolis, The Truth about Relativism (Oxford, uk/Cambridge, ma: Blackwell, 1991), 8. See, for example, Kalle Puolakka’s critique in Relativism and Intentionalism in Interpretation: Davidson, Hermeneutics, and Pragmatism (Lanham, md: Rowman and Littlefield, 2011), 11–38.

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­judgments.52 Thus, it is not incompatible with my warning against accepting pluralism because it jeopardizes the action-relevance of interpretations. IV.3 A Critique of Current Postmodernist Religious Interpretations Finally, I would like to address a point that is primarily relevant within the intra-religious discourse: the warning against accepting pluralism too uncritically is motivated by the fact that there is a tendency among some religious interpreters to do just that, viz. to accept pluralism in too uncritical a fashion. In the  last decades, it has become fashionable to introduce French post-­structuralism or deconstructivism, Richard Rorty’s neo-pragmatism, or other radical hermeneutical theories into the religious reflection on interpretation, for example, in Christian hermeneutical circles. Interpreters doing so favor radically pluralistic approaches, such as (a radically construed) Reader-­ Response hermeneutics.53 It is understandable that religious hermeneuts are enthusiast about pluralizing the practice of interpretation as an antidote to the long-standing dominance of monism in religious hermeneutics. In particular, the emphasis upon authorial intention54 for the last decades probably feels like a straight-jacket and throwing it off as an act of liberation. Yet, as liberating as the acceptance of pluralism may appear to be, it implies certain dangers: if not tamed appropriately, it becomes indistinguishable from anarchism. Anarchism is not only questionable on philosophical grounds but jeopardizes the central feature of the practice of interpreting religious texts, viz. their action-relevance. Put

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In my view, it enables us to act rationally, i.e., more rationally than under the parameters of bivalence—at least, in certain situations (see Grube, “Margolis’s Critique of Bivalence and its Consequences for the Theory of Action and a Pluralist Theory of Religion”). See, for example, Geert van Oyen, “Changing Hermeneutics in Reading and Understanding the Bible: The Case of the Gospel of Mark,” in Hermeneutics, Scriptural Politics, and Human Rights: Between Text and Context, ed. Bastiaan de Gaay Fortman, Kurt Martens, and Mohamed Abdel Rahim M. Salih (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009/2010), 99–124. This is still a relative moderate example of a Reader-Response kind of approach. Yet, it is characteristic for theological hermeneutical approaches of this kind insofar as it argues enthusiastically against traditional monism and overlooks the problems that emerge when introducing pluralism into the practice of interpreting religious texts. Let it be noted in passing that monism is not necessarily conceptually tied to authorial intention. For example, it is possible to be a monist and reject authorial intention on structuralist grounds (provided that the structures of the text are understood as allowing only for one legitimate interpretation which does not necessarily reflect the intention of its author).

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­emphatically: the more radically the practice of interpreting religious texts is pluralized, the more its action-relevance is in jeopardy. But if the action-relevance of this practice is jeopardized or even lost, the ‘rules of the game’ have been changed. The suggestion to reconstruct the practice of interpreting religious texts without their action-relevance amounts to reconstructing this practice according to rules which belong to handlungsentlastete sorts of ‘games,’ such as artistic ones. Yet, if reconstructed in a handlungsentlastete fashion, the question must be raised whether the function of the practice of interpretation in religion is preserved. Do interpreters who suggest to reconstruct it in a handlungsentlastete fashion sacrifice its prime function, viz. to give guidance to the believer’s life? I admit that understanding the function of the practice of interpretation in religion in analogy to handlungsentlastete practices may be helpful in some sense. Some of the functions identified above as being characteristic for the arts are applicable in religion as well. Among them are, for example, trying to envision alternative ways of living a human life, enriching human fantasy (at this point, allowing incongruences may even be helpful), questioning deepseated prejudices (Christians will think of the parable of the good Samaritan55), etc. Those functions are certainly not illegitimate within the practice of interpreting religious texts. Yet, my point is that the function of interpretation within this practice cannot be reduced to handlungsentlastete activities of this sort. If we would reduce it in this way, we would miss out on a crucial function of interpretation in religion, viz. its normative dimension. Within a religious perspective, the function of interpreting religious texts does not only consist in enriching human fantasy or similar activities but serves some concrete normative purpose. It consists in sketching a way to leading a fulfilling or happy life (whatever this happiness may consist in and wherever it may be achieved). If we wish to reconstruct the practice of interpretation in religion in a responsible fashion, we cannot afford to neglect this normative dimension. IV.4 The Context-dependency of Our Reflections on Interpretation I wish to conclude with some remarks on the context-dependency of our ­reflections on interpretation in religion. Many of us who reflect on interpretation and its application to religion live in more or less secular contexts, for example, Western ones, in which religion is not a ‘life issue’ any more. In those contexts, religion does not play a vital role in the way societies shape their moral and political contours and has thus been relegated to the society’s margins. 55

Luke 10:29–37.

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In my view, this explains why some commentators living under these circumstances are inclined to reconstruct the practice of interpretation in religion in a fashion similar to that used in the arts or related handlungsentlastete practices. Although it is certainly not a sufficient explanation, it explains to some extent why they are inclined to accept pluralism in a rather uncritical fashion. Yet, for people living in less secularized societies, religion often has a different function. For them, it is still a ‘life issue.’ Take the above provided example of South-American liberation theologians. Say, they insist that the message of the Gospel consists in promoting solidarity with the oppressed, which implies to change the oppressive political circumstances in their country—that this is the message of the Gospel. For them, interpreting the message of the Gospel is highly action-relevant and they will probably consider acknowledging pluralism at the cost of trading in action-relevance to be idle luxury. My point with this example is neither to suggest that the liberation theologian is right and scholars living in secularized circumstances are wrong nor the opposite. Yet, I wish to point out to what extent our theorizing on interpretation and its application to religion is dependent upon the presuppositions we make (often tacitly): it depends on what concept we presuppose religion to have in society and human life. This concept influences to a significant extent our reconstructions of the practice of interpretation in religion, in particular, of its action-relevance and, consequently, the amount of pluralism we are willing to acknowledge. The context-dependency of our reflections is a point we should keep in mind when pondering on how to apply the theorizing on interpretation to religion.56

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I wish to thank Michael Krausz and Peter Lamarque for the stimulating discussions on the issues raised in this chapter.

chapter 7

Lamarque’s Theory of Interpretation and the Practice of Interpreting Biblical Texts: The Case for Semi-generic Interpretation Christiane Karrer-Grube

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Interpreting texts is a major part of my daily work. I am assistant professor for Biblical Theology, specialised in Old Testament studies, and minister in a Lutheran congregation, both in the Netherlands. In this article, I correlate the practice of interpreting biblical texts and the theological reflection on it with some aspects of the theory of interpretation as discussed in philosophy. Guiding questions are: how does the theory contribute to a better understanding of the interpretation process? Which theoretical resources do we need to understand the specific challenges of interpreting biblical texts? Furthermore, I shall focus on the problem of the multiplicity of meaning within biblical texts not only from a scholarly but also from a religious perspective. i

Introduction: Lamarque’s Distinction between MeaningDetermining and Generic Interpretation

Peter Lamarque distinguishes in his article “Objects of Interpretations”1 ­between two sorts of interpretation: generic interpretation and meaning-­ determining interpretation. He considers the last one to be the standard case of interpretation. I find this distinction a very helpful instrument to analyze the process of interpretation. This is why I would like to raise the question of how the particular practice of interpreting biblical texts fares in light of this distinction: Is meaning-determining interpretation the standard case in this practice, too? If not, what problems arise concerning the interpretation of biblical texts, in particular, of texts from the Hebrew Bible? First, I give a short survey of Lamarque’s description of the two sorts of interpretation. Lamarque defines ‘to interpret’ as “to make sense of it.”2 Interpretation is only necessary “when meaning is 1 Peter Lamarque, “Objects of Interpretation,” Metaphilosophy, Vol. 31 (2000), 96–124. 2 Ibid., 96. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004325241_009

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unclear.”3 An interpretation process can only succeed if we identify the “kind of thing” which is the object of interpretation.4 The properties of this object determine the just method of interpretation. Meaning-determining interpretation: This sort of interpretation requires that  we can distinguish between the work and mere texts or mere things. A ‘work’ is—according to Lamarque—an intentional product of an author.5 The author also determines the generic categories to which a work belongs, for example language and genre. Every generic category provides a set of properties, which belong to a work of this category. A possible reader is supposed to ­recognize the category and its properties. In this way she learns about important aspects of the meaning of the text. Lamarque emphasizes the importance  of context6 and practice:7 generic differences relate to differences in practices. Modes of interpretation and objects of interpretation are, in standard cases, deeply interlinked, such that the practices that make the objects possible […] also define the conventions of interpretation that apply to them. This interlinking means that the interpretative processes within a practice do not merely identify properties within objects but go some way toward constituting those properties.8 The practice is governed by social conventions concerning the production and reception of texts. Therefore, successful interpretation requires continuation of a practice.9 Meaning-determining interpretation has a clear ‘starting point of interpretation’: the object of interpretation is a work,10 that is to say that the meaning of this object is clear to a certain point. A work is essentially linked to its ­origins. This meaning is determined by the intentions of the author and the conventions of the (literary) context. Only after this point can legitimate

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Ibid., 96, 97. “Interpretation begins only at the level where genuine alternative hypotheses about meaning present themselves” (ibid., 99). Ibid., 97, 101, 102. A work is “produced intentionally, conforming to broadly defined conventions in a ­human practice, which will reward a search for further meaning” (ibid., 101). Ibid., 102–3. Ibid., 104–5. Ibid., 104–5. See also ibid., 111. Ibid., 101.

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i­nterpretation begin. The task to explore the intentions of the author and the usage of generic categories of a work is not interpretation but description.11 Lamarque contrasts his view on interpretation to theories which take the level of mere text (or even mere signs) as a starting point for interpretation.12 ­Lamarque ­defines ‘text’ as “an ordered set of sentence-types individuated at least partly by semantic and syntactic properties.”13 This text possesses a huge range of possible meanings. But according to Lamarque the text is no legitimate object of interpretation. The range of legitimate meanings is restrained by the intention of the author and the generic categories which she used.14 Thus, the meaning of a text is partly fixed in the process of text production. The ‘work’ defines the starting point and method of interpretation. Interpretation must not go “all the way down.”15 That is, it does not have to go back behind the work and start to interpret text elements and possible meanings which were not part of the intentional work of the author. Lamarque considers also texts where meaning-determining interpretation is not possible. This is the case when we are confronted with a text whose ­generic categories we do not know and whose author is also unknown. Lamarque names a paper in a bottle adrift on the ocean as an example. If we want to understand the meaning of this text, interpretation has to start much earlier than with meaning-determining interpretation.16 We must try to reconstruct the context and generic categories. Therefore, Lamarque speaks about generic interpretation.17 He is sceptical about the possibility of achieving a substantial interpretation of this text in which generic categorisation is not taken for granted. Normally, generic categorisation is taken for granted – […] – and the search for meaning is guided by that starting point. Where we do not have this knowledge, our options for meaning–determination are severely restricted. But consider how rare it is to be confronted with a bare set of sentences apparently without context or purpose.18

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Ibid., 97. He discusses for example Rorty and Danto (ibid., 99–101). Ibid., 105. Ibid., 110. Ibid., 99. Ibid., 102. Ibid., 103. Ibid., 103.

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Biblical texts are not the primary object of Lamarque’s analysis, because he is oriented to objects of art. But he lists them several times as objects of interpretation, and speaks of a ‘biblical passage’ as a sort of ‘work’ belonging to a recognizable generic category. Then, interpretation must not begin further back, but can only proceed once this starting point of interpretation is understood.19 According to this perspective, the identification of a text as a ‘biblical passage’ should provide the interpreter with a set of properties, which determine the starting point and the method of their interpretation. This would of course be of great importance for the understanding of the interpretation process of a biblical text. Therefore, I shall first critically scrutinize the assumption that ‘biblical passage’ indicates the proper starting point for the process of interpretation (ii). Second, I shall analyze the interpretation process of a biblical text more closely and draw out the implications for a theory of interpretation (iii). The question, how to deal with the multiplicity of meaning in a biblical text, is crucial for understanding the interpretation process. I shall describe some considerations concerning this problem from a double perspective: from the perspective of scholarly interpretation (iv) and from the perspective of members of a religious community, who search for spiritual truth when they read biblical texts (v). ii

‘Biblical Passage’ – A Reception-generated Category

If we speak about the interpretation process of a biblical text it seems to be selfevident what the object of interpretation is. Also Lamarque denotes ‘biblical passage’ as one of the human objects of interpretation. But actually, the case is more complicated. The term ‘biblical’ indicates a sort of category which is similar to what Lamarque calls generic categories. It is a category that p ­ rovides us with a set of properties which deeply influence the interpretation process. A text, which is identified as ‘biblical passage,’ is supposed: – to be part of a book, which is called ‘the Bible.’ This book is actually a ­collection of books. – to have a specific sort of authority in a great number of religious communities, because the collection called ‘the Bible’ is recognized as sacred text, ‘Holy Scripture’ in Christianity and Judaism. – to contain spiritual truth and to encourage religious experiences by its content. 19

Ibid., 102.

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Yet, the category ‘biblical’ is not really a generic category as Lamarque defines it. The whole set of properties is dependent upon the reception of the text, whereas generic categories are bound to production of the text. The last ones are defined by the author and related to the cultural practice of the time of production. A category like ‘biblical’ does not exist in Lamarque’s theory, which is understandable because he focuses on works of art. But it is crucial to realize that in the case of biblical texts, the term ‘biblical’ indicates a set of properties which are dependent upon the reception of the text and which govern the meaning of the text in an essential way. In order to show how the category ‘biblical’ refers to the reception of the text, I give a very short overview about the formation of what we call ‘the Bible.’ II.1 How to Become a ‘Biblical Passage’ – The Process of Canonization The collection of books, which is called ‘the Bible,’ is due to a long and complex historical process of rereading, interpreting and selecting texts, which is called the process of canonization. During this process a selected group of texts are awarded the status of ‘canon,’ that is to say they are part of a corpus of texts which have normative authority for a religious community. This is clearly a process of reception, not a process of production of texts. If we know anything about the intention of an author of a biblical text, it is that he did not have the intention of writing a ‘biblical passage.’ When most of the texts of what is now called the Hebrew Bible were written, there simply did not exist a thing like ‘the Bible.’ The process of canonization was finished only later and took a long time. When the texts of what is now called the New Testament (and very late texts of the Hebrew Bible) were written, there existed already a corpus of texts, which had a canonical status, called the Torah and—later on—the Prophets. Additional texts were in discussion, some of them achieved the status of canon later on (the part of the Hebrew Bible that is called Scripture), while others did not.20 In the view of the authors of the first Christian texts this was a sort of ‘Bible.’ But they did not suppose their own texts—gospels and letters—to be part of this ‘Bible.’ The canonization of Christian texts—now known as the New Testament—lasted until about 400 ad. The canonization process did not result in one unequivocal selection of texts. Different selections were made, dependent on traditions and interests of different religious communities. There is no such thing as the Bible. Many Bibles with varying contents exist. Different religious groups have different biblical canons. They include a different number of books, in different orders. 20

The Hebrew biblical canon was fixed in about 100 ad. But Greek versions with other text content remained.

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Sometimes books are divided or combined, sometimes additional material is incorporated into canonical books. It is most relevant to distinguish between the Hebrew Bible—also called ‘Tanakh,’ the sacred text of Judaism—and the Christian Bibles. The twentyfour books of the Hebrew Bible are also part of Christian Bibles, called the ‘Old Testament.’ In Christian Bibles there is a second part, called ‘the New Testament.’ This part contains the message about Jesus Christ and is therefore crucial for the Christian interpretation of their whole Bible. If someone speaks about a ‘biblical passage,’ it is necessary to know which Bible he means. This depends on which religious community he belongs.21 This is highly influencial to the meaning she gives to her ‘biblical passage.’ Even a literal identical text can get a different meaning if by ‘biblical passage’ is meant the Hebrew Bible or a Christian version. Think for example of the so-called ‘messianic passages.’ Isaiah 11:1–5 as a biblical passage from the Hebrew Bible promises the Messiah coming to rescue the Jewish people. Isaiah 11:1–5 as biblical passage from a Christian Bible predicts the arrival of Jesus Christ.22 II.2 The Relevance of the Category ‘Biblical’ for the Interpretation Process Reception plays a twofold role for the relevance of the category ‘biblical’ in the interpretation process. On the one hand the category is created by a process of reception, that is, the canonisation process as described above. This reception process was decisive in whether a text was accepted as ‘biblical.’ On the other hand it depends upon the reader and her context whether she accepts this specific text as part of ‘her’ Bible, the collection of texts to which she grants the religious authority of a sacred text.23 When a text is accepted as ‘biblical,’ it governs—like Lamarque’s generic ­category—the expectations of readers24 and their interpretation in an influential and significant manner. Everyone, who is familiar with the Christian or Jewish culture has an idea of what a ‘biblical passage’ is and associates certain properties to a text of this category (see above). This category indicates the relationship of the text to the practice25 of a religious community and has to 21

22 23 24 25

Of course one can speak of a ‘biblical passage’ being secular. But also then, one has to decide which Bible is meant. Every biblical canon is related to a specific religious community. Today, most Christians are aware of the Jewish interpretation and respect it, but nevertheless this text is read in Christmas services every year. For herself or—if she is not a member of a Christian or Jewish community—for other people. Lamarque, “Objects of Interpretation,” 104. For the importance of practice, see Lamarque, “Objects of Interpretation,” 105–6.

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be taken seriously. Whether a text is accepted as ‘biblical’ in a community is decisive for its function and meaning in this community’s religious practice. For example, it can be used for reciting or for preaching, can be interpreted as a work of religious art, can be an ethical and spiritual authority or it can be a guideline for interpreting religious experience. Therefore this category cannot be ignored if one explores the meaning of a biblical text. Yet, unlike the generic category described by Lamarque this category has not the function to restrict the multiplicity of meaning. Often the meaning of a text becomes richer and new meanings are ‘found’ in a text because it is recognized as ‘biblical passage.’ A famous example is Song of Songs. It is obvious—even for a non-professional reader—that this biblical book is a collection of love songs. If one would read these texts without any idea that they are biblical texts, no one would interpret them as religious texts. Also in antiquity people were aware of this problem. There was a long discussion whether Song of Songs should become part of the biblical canon. Finally it did and because these songs were recognized as biblical texts they were expected to have religious meaning. During a long interpretation history these songs received a lot of religious meanings: love between God and Israel, Jewish people, the Church, the individual soul… There are many more examples in the practice of religious communities: people search in a biblical quote for personal meaning, therefore meaning ‘extends’ over life situations of peoples who live in different centuries and divergent cultures. Text reception is related to a religious practice and this practice often differs from the practice at the time of the text production. This is especially true for texts from the Hebrew Bible. The category ‘biblical’ is of high relevance for the meaning of a text which is recognized as a ‘biblical passage.’ Yet it does not provide us with knowledge about the process of text production. Even more, the meaning of a text as ‘biblical passage’ often differs significantly from its meaning at the time of text production. If one quotes a verse from Hebrew Bible in a Christian liturgy, it surely gets meaning that was not intended by the author of the text. Therefore, if one follows Lamarque and considers the process of text production to be most relevant for the meaning of the object that has to be interpreted, the category ‘biblical passage’ is not a proper starting point for interpretation.26 We have to go further back and search for answers to the questions: What do we know about the author’s intention and the intended 26

If one would take ‘biblical passage’ as a starting point, this would in a religious ­context lead to a fundamentalist understanding of biblical texts. For example, in a radical ­understanding of ‘inspiration’ every word is ‘true’ and so to speak ‘dictated’ by God. Also,

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generic ­categories? What kind of interpretation has to be applied here? What is the proper starting point of interpretation and which method is suitable for successful interpretation? I shall scrutinize those problems in the following chapter. iii

The Process of Interpreting Biblical Texts in Light of Lamarque’s Theoretical Framework

In order to get answers to the above mentioned questions, I shall reflect on the practice of biblical scholars who search for the historical meaning of biblical texts. I shall describe examples from the interpretation process, which give insight into the typical challenges and problems of this process. Lamarque’s theoretical framework will help to structure the reflection and to deepen the understanding of this process. According to Lamarque’s view I shall focus on the possibility of getting information about the generic categories of a biblical text, about its historical context and about the intention of the author. All this information is necessary to determine which sort of interpretation process is the case here. Is it possible to speak about ‘meaning-determining interpretation’ or must we speak about ‘generic interpretation’? Are we able to identify the ‘work of an author,’ who defined the generic categories and fundamental meaning of a text? It will become clear that reconstructing the processes of interpretation of biblical passages is a complex, at times highly contested endeavor. Standard categorizations fall short to capture this complexity or, at least, have to be amended in order to do justice to those complex processes. How to Get Information on Text Production: External versus Internal Evidence A lot of biblical scholars try to explore the circumstances of the production of biblical texts in order to define the meaning of the text as much as possible. They do research on the original (physical) form of the text,27 on authorship III.1

27

biblical scholars discuss interpretation methods which neglect consciously the historical reference of the text. Even the physical text has to be reconstructed in some cases. Different manuscripts hand down different versions of texts. No manuscripts remained from the time of text production. For the Hebrew Bible the oldest complete Hebrew manuscripts date from the middle ages. Older fragments of texts were found in the caves of Qumran. Furthermore there are relevant manuscripts of the early Greek translation, the Septuagint and of the Aramaic

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and editorial processes, on the genre of the text, on historical, social and cultural backgrounds. In order to be able to evaluate the status of this information within the interpretation process, it is crucial to analyse the sources for scholarly research. From the field of research it can be shown that a lot of information has to be reconstructed from the text. This is necessary but also problematic because reconstruction of generic categories and author intention implicates a certain amount of circularity in argumentation. Therefore it is also important to get as much information from outside the text as possible. It is mandatory to scrutinize on what grounds arguments about text production are built. Reconstruction of information from the text plays an important role in all areas of research about production of biblical texts. But this is above all true for specific knowledge about authorship. There is no information about biblical authors available from outside the texts. And the texts themselves do not name the author or provide us with direct information about the author.28 Even more, in a lot of cases a text from the Hebrew Bible seems not to be written by just one author. There are hints within many texts that more than one author is involved in the production of that text. Texts were probably reworked several times in a sort of editorial process. Researchers can nevertheless get some information from outside the text: from archaeological research in Palestinian/Israelite regions, from inscriptions in Israel and surrounding regions and cultures, and from texts from surrounding cultures. This provides us with important information about historical background, ancient concepts and worldviews in the cultural region, knowledge about the language system and the genres in ancient texts of this cultural region. Comparison of biblical texts with texts from surrounding cultures is ­possible, because worldview, languages and text genres are akin. But nevertheless we have to be aware of the fact that the witnesses are from other cultures. Often there is a big difference in time and place between the texts which are compared. The information we can get from outside the biblical texts are very

28

translations, the Targumim. Sometimes we are able to reconstruct an original version. But in other cases this remains controversial and depends on interpretation. Sometimes it seems that there was not one original version but different versions from the beginning. In the case of texts from the Hebrew Bible we have furthermore to consider that the original version was a text with only consonants. The Hebrew text with vowels – which we take mostly as starting point – is due to a Jewish tradition of reading the text and dates from the middle ages. This Jewish tradition has very old roots and is highly reliable, but still it is an interpretation of the text. The only exceptions are the letters of Paul in the New Testament.

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useful, but often too general and too scant to gain precise knowledge about the circumstances of text production. Above that, the meaning of archaeological material and antique texts from the Nearby East is also liable to interpretation and therefore does not grant ‘clear meaning.’ The Story of Jephthah’s Daughter: Exemplifying the Process of the Interpretation of Biblical Texts Below, I shall analyze the research process for information about text production more closely by choosing an example from scholarly practice: the exegesis of Judges 11:29–40, the story about Jephthah’s daughter. I’ll describe several steps of research in order to show the specific implications and problems of searching for generic categories, historical context and author’s intention. My aim is to reflect on the specific character of this interpretation process and to draw conclusions which are relevant for the theoretical reflection on interpretation. I’ll pay special attention to the process of reconstructing information from the text. What does this process imply for the relation between interpretation and meaning? My aim is not to give a complete survey of scholarly research on this text, nor to elaborate my own interpretation.29 III.2

III.2.a The Text The biblical story about Jephthah’s daughter is famous and very controversial since a human sacrifice is described. From antiquity until modernity it has been interpreted countless times by theologians and biblical scholars as well as by musicians, novelists, painters…30 The story includes in the Bible only 12 verses and is actually a scene within a much longer story about Jephthah

29 30

This would take much more space than I have in this article, and would distract from the theme of interpretation theory. For an introduction into the history of interpretation in theology and in the arts see: Cees Houtman, Klaas Spronk, Jefta‘s dochter: Tragiek van een vrouwenleven in theologie en kunst (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 1999); Ulrich Hübner, “Hermeneutische Möglichkeiten: Zur ­frühen Rezeptionsgeschichte der Jefta-Tradition,” in Die Hebräische Bibel und ihre zweifache Nachgeschichte. Festschrift R. Rendtorff, ed. Erhard Blum e.a. (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchner Verlag, 1990), 489–501; A. Penna, “The Vow of Jephtah in the Interpretation of St. Jerome,” in Studia Patristica, iv, ed. F.L. Cross (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1961), 162–170; Wilbur O. Sypherd, Jephthah and his Daughter: A Study in Comparative Literature (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1948); Christiane Karrer-Grube, “Grenz-­Überschreitung: Zum Körperkonzept in der Erzählung über Jephtas Tochter,” in Körperkonzepte im Ersten Testament: Aspekte einer Feministischen Anthropologie, ‘ed. Hedwig Jahnow Forschungsprojekt’ (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2003), 94–121.

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(Judges 10:17–12:7). But it occupies an important place in all interpretations because of the ongoing discussion about its meaning. I summarize the first part of the Jephthah-story: Jephthah is called ‘judge,’ which means here a charismatic leader who is chosen to rescue Israel from the attacks of her enemies. The Jephthah story tells us some details over his personal life. He was the illegal son of a leader of the city Gilead (the son of a prostitute). His half brothers chased him away. He became a sort of warlord and gathered a group of outlaws around him. In a time of crisis, the leaders of Gilead called him back to become their leader and to fight against the attacks of their enemies, the Ammonites. Jephthah emphasized his precondition: he wanted to become leader of the people for lifetime. He received the promise and took on leadership. First he tried to stop the attacks of the Ammonites with negotiations, but this failed. The Ammonites were convinced to have the right to attack Israel for historical reasons. Then the following story is told (Judges 11:29–40): [29] Then the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah, and he passed through Gilead and Manas’seh, and passed on to Mizpah of Gilead, and from Mizpah of Gilead he passed on to the Ammonites. [30] And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD, and said, “If thou wilt give the Ammonites into my hand, [31] then whoever comes forth from the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the LORD’s, and I will offer him up for a burnt offering.” [32] So Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them; and the LORD gave them into his hand. [33] And he smote them from Aro’er to the neighborhood of Minnith, twenty cities, and as far as Abel-keramim, with a very great slaughter. So the Ammonites were subdued before the people of Israel. [34] Then Jephthah came to his home at Mizpah; and behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances; she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter. [35] And when he saw her, he rent his clothes, and said, “Alas, my daughter! you have brought me very low, and you have become the cause of great trouble to me; for I have opened my mouth to the LORD, and I cannot take back my vow.” [36] And she said to him, “My father, if you have opened your mouth to the LORD, do to me according to what has gone forth from your mouth, now that the LORD has avenged you on your enemies, on the Ammonites.”

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[37] And she said to her father, “Let this thing be done for me; let me alone two months, that I may go and wander on the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my companions.” [38] And he said, “Go.” And he sent her away for two months; and she departed, she and her companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains. [39] And at the end of two months, she returned to her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had made. She had never known a man. And it became a custom in Israel [40] that the daughters of Israel went year by year to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in the year. After that, another victory of Jephthah and Gilead in a conflict is told and the whole story ends with a note on Jephthah’s death. In the following I focus on the story about Jephthah’s daughter. Scholars did a lot of research in order to determine the original meaning of this text. They tried to identify generic categories and to understand the intention of the author and the editors of the text. I give an insight in essential problems which arise during this interpretation process. I analyze the specific conditions of this interpretation process and reflect on the implications for interpretation theory. III.2.b Language We know the original language of the text, Hebrew, and are able to understand the text. But Ancient Hebrew is no living language. That means: there are a lot of words whose meaning is uncertain (sometimes they appear only once or twice in the Bible) and there is no native speaker who can be asked about the correct meaning. We have no direct access to the reality to which the words and sentences refer. One example from the Jephthah text: The meaning of the Hebrew verb tnh which is translated ‘to lament’ in Judges 11:40 is very uncertain.31 The verb is used four times in the Hebrew Bible. Two times the meaning is totally unclear (Hosea 8:9 and Psalm 8:2). It is further used in Judges 5:11 where there is no doubt over the positive meaning because of the context: “To the sound of musicians at the watering places, there they repeat (tnh) the triumphs of the LORD, the triumphs of his peasantry in Israel.” This is a quote from a song over a great victory of Israel. Tnh has probably the connotation of joyful ­remembering. Now 31

See also the discussion in David Marcus, Jephthah and His Vow (Lubbock/Texas: Texas Tech Press, 1986), 33–7.

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what is the meaning of tnh in Judges 11:40? The connotation ‘to remember’ fits in the context of the described custom. But is it indeed ‘to lament’ of perhaps a joyful remembering as in Judges 5:11? We have no possibility to decide this on the level of language. The decision to translate tnh with ‘to lament’ presupposes a certain interpretation of the story: The focus of attention is within this interpretation the personal fate of the daughter, her relationship with her father and her people and her death as sacrifice. This interpretation is strongly supported by the verses 37–38, which place the daughter to the fore: we read that the daughter and her girlfriends go alone to the mountains for two months and mourn. After this we imagine of course that the ‘daughters of Israel’ will further mourn over the daughter when they come together. This interpretation also includes a judgement over the concurring values in the story: on one hand: ‘the burnt offering of a human being has to be rejected,’ on the other hand: ‘a vow to God has to be fulfilled.’ If the value ‘the burnt ­offering of a human being has to be rejected’ gains priority, the consequence of the vow of Jephthah is shocking. The fate of the daughter has to be lamented. This perspective colours the view of all elements of the story: should Jephthah not have disobeyed the vow? Why did he make such a vow? Is he an ambitious and cruel man? Why did God not intervene? But another point of view is possible: if the value ‘a vow to God has to be fulfilled’ has priority, the braveness of the daughter who helps her desperate father to fulfil the vow has to be admired. Her voluntary offer provides Israel, her people, with a victory over her enemy and life in peace. Should the daughters of Israel not rejoice when remembering the courage, belief and selflessness of Jephthah’s daughter? Imagine for a moment that the verses 37–38 would not be in the text.32 Verse 39 would follow verse 36 and would tell only that the vow is carried out. The second point of view would then be much more probable than the first one. What is the meaning of Judges 11:40 and tnh? It is inconceivable that the custom of remembering was imagined as neutral. But we do not have the possibility of determining the precise meaning of this verse, because we have to reconstruct the meaning of tnh from the text. Therefore, the meaning depends on our interpretation of the story. As we have seen above, a lot of aspects of the story are related to the decision on how to translate tnh. The knowledge of Ancient Hebrew provides us with important possibilities to clear the meaning of the text to a certain level. We are able to understand and translate the text. Yet, at the same time we have to realize that, even on the 32

See for this possibility iii b 5.

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level of basic translation, reconstructions come into play: The meaning of uncertain words has to be reconstructed from the text. Thus, even an activity as basic as translation depends in certain cases upon (textual) interpretation. In sum, the search for meaning in the process of translation cannot be strictly separated from interpreting the text. Therefore, we cannot avoid a certain circularity: the translation of tnh as ‘to lament’ or ‘to rejoice’ depends on the interpretation of the story and vice versa. III.2.c Historical Background If we were to have some historical information from outside the text about the custom described in Judges 11:40, this would help us to leave the circularity of reconstruction and to clarify the meaning of the verse. Unfortunately we have no information at all. The custom is not mentioned in the Bible once more, and there are no witnesses of this custom outside the Bible. What do we further know about the historical background of the text? Is there information from outside the text which helps to restrain possible meaning? The text refers to a time before Israel became a kingdom. We cannot precisely date the origin of a kingdom of Israel/Judah, but this would probably have been in the first half of the 10th century b.c. It is not probable that Hebrew literature is dating back to the time before an established kingdom. It is important to realize that there was no people of Israel and surely no state of Israel in that time. The main power in the region was in the hands of Canaanite cities. Outside the cities lived people – shepherds, farmers – who were the ancestors of the people of Israel. We have very little archaeological evidence for the life of ‘Israelites’ from that period.33 Probably, some oral tradition remained from that period. But, most scholars agree that the text of Judges was written much later in the exilic or postexilic period, when an independent kingdom of Israel and Judah no longer existed (after 587 b.c., see below, the discussion on the author).34 33 34

For an overview see Victor H. Matthews, Judges and Ruth, ncb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 15–7. In biblical scriptures we read of a united kingdom of Israel under king David (founder of the dynasty) and king Solomon. After Solomon the kingdom was divided into a northern kingdom of Israel and a southern kingdom of Judah. This is the first date that we can fix with some historical probability. The reign of the first king of northern Israel started between 931 and 926 b.c. Northern Israel existed until 722 b.c. when it was conquered by the Assyrians. Judah remained a kingdom until it was conquered by the Babylonians in 597 b.c. and became a province of the Babylonian Empire. When Judeans joined a rebellion the Babylonians came back, resulting in the destruction of Jerusalem and Judah in 587 b.c. In 597 and in 587 influential groups of the people were deported. In the

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Therefore, we have no historical evidence that would help to determine the meaning of the story. What we learn is that the reference to ‘Israel’ in Judges 11:33,39 is fictional and is the product of a later time. The text was probably written several centuries after the narrated ‘time of the judges.’ The meaning of the text has to be related to the exilic or postexilic period. Relevant themes of the text can also be found in other biblical texts. By comparing these texts we can get more information about these themes and their specific usage in Judges 11. The burnt offering of a human being, especially a child, is mentioned several times in the Bible. It is mostly judged as forbidden and as a religious atrocity. The offering of the first-born child is required in some laws but only to say immediately that the child has to be ransomed by an animal offering.35 There is no positive judgment of a human offering in the Hebrew Bible at all.36 There is sufficient evidence to suggest that the author and contemporary readers were aware of the proscription of a human offering. Vows in situations of need belong to the common religious practice in biblical times.37 It is an indispensable duty to fulfil a vow. But there are also warnings against rash vows. See for example Ecclesiastes 5:3–7:38 When you vow a vow to God, do not delay paying it; for he has no ­pleasure in fools. Pay what you vow. It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay. Let not your mouth lead you into sin, and do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake; why should God be angry at your voice, and destroy the work of your hands? For when dreams increase, empty words grow many: but do you fear God.

35 36

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Bible this is called ‘exile.’ The ‘exilic period’ starts in 597/587. Later on, when the Persians conquered Babylon, groups of these ‘exiles’ were offered the opportunity to go back to Jerusalem and Judah (after 539 b.c.). They formed once again an influential proportion of the people living there. The wall and the temple of Jerusalem were rebuilt and Judah achieved the status of subprovince (ca 450 b.c.). This period in Jerusalem and Judah is called the ‘postexilic period.’ The only exception is Exodus 22:28,29. See for example Otto Kaiser, “Den Erstgeborenen deiner Söhne sollst du mir geben: ­Erwägungen zum Kinderopfer im Alten Testament,” in Denkender Glaube, Festschrift für Carl Heinz Ratschow, ed. Otto Kaiser, (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1976), 24–48. See Otto Kaiser, “ndr” in Theological Dictionnary of the Old Testament, Vol ix, (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1998), 242–55; T. Cartledge, Vows in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East, jsot Supp. Series 147 (Sheffield: jsot Press, 1992). See also Proverbs 20:25 and Jesus Sirach 18:22+23, Malachi 1:14.

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Problematic consequences of a rash vow were an issue in divergent biblical contexts. Most of these texts date from the late postexilic (Hellenistic) period. We may conclude they refer to problematic experiences with vows in this time. This might also play a role in the background of our text. III.2.d Genre In the case of Judges 11:29–40 the genre of the text is clear: it is a story, more specific, an aetiological legend. That is to say, a (mostly fictive) story is told to explain the origin of a cultural or natural phenomenon, a proper name and the like. This genre is well known: there are a lot of examples in the Bible and in other ancient texts. If there was such a custom of remembering Jephthah’s daughter as is mentioned in Judges 11:40, our story would be the aetiological legend, which belongs to this custom. This would show us something about the intention of the text: to give the explanation of an existing custom. But this is not the only possible view. It is striking that a custom like this—four days, every year!—is not further mentioned at all. Thus, perhaps this custom never existed. This would mean that the genre is used in another way. Then, the aetiology would be fictional and we would have to ask for the function of this ‘aetiological’ ending for the interpretation of the story. This function could be to answer the question of the continuation of life after death which is an important issue in the story. It is emphasized that the daughter was the only child of Jephthah and that she will die as a virgin (­ Judges 11:34,37–39). This means that—in the traditional view—neither Jephthah, nor his daughter will have an afterlife, because having a child was the manner in which one was imagined to ‘live’ after death.39 Jephthah is not lamenting about the death of his daughter, but about the consequences of his vow for himself (11:35). And it is striking that the daughter does not mention her death at all when she goes to the mountains with her girlfriends. She is mourning her virginity. The verse about the custom of the ‘daughters of Israel’ shows that there is another, even more personal, manner of ‘living’ after death: she will live in the heart (memory) of people who commemorate her. The genre of a text is an important generic category, which restrains and influences the possible meaning of the text. Fortunately we know the genre of Judges 11:29–40—an aetiological legend. Thus, we don’t need to reconstruct it from the text. But a genre is related to the world in which it is used. To understand its implications for meaning it is necessary to know the context of its

39

The hope for personal resurrection does not occur in the Hebrew Bible—with the exception of very few late texts.

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usage. Is it used in a common sense or, for example, in an ironic way? Because we do not know enough about the historical context, the usage of the genre remains uncertain in Judges 11:29–40. This yields further uncertainty about meaning. Is it an aetiological legend with the aim to explain an existing custom? The fate of the daughter would then be in the centre of the story as an explanation of a women’s ritual, perhaps symbolizing a transition in women’s lives.40 Or the aetiological ending of the story is fictional, and puts the theme of remembering as a chance for an afterlife into the foreground. This meaning presupposes that the story is written long after the narrated time (see below on author and editorial process), because only then a ‘custom’ can be invented. The genre ‘aetiological legend’ draws the attention to verse 40 and therefore to the daughter and her fate. An additional tension in the meaning of the text occurs: what is the relationship between the story about Jephthah’s vow, its problematic fulfilment and a legend about a women’s custom? III.2.e Author and Editorial Process We have no direct information about the author and the time of writing. Scholars did a lot of research to reconstruct the conditions of the production of the book of Judges.41 To summarize the discussion: Most important is the theory that Judges is part of what is called ‘Deuteronomistic history.’42 This theory says that the biblical books Deuteronomy Joshua, Judges, 1+2 Samuel and 1+2 Kings were originally one historical work in five parts. An author has arranged this history of Israel. He had some earlier texts and oral traditions at hand which he involved in his work, but he himself wrote a lot of texts in a recognizable style and was responsible for the whole composition. Most scholars assume that this first Deuteronomistic History was later reworked several times: additional text material was filled in and editorial texts were formulated. There is a lot 40

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Mieke Bal, “Between Altar and Wondering Rock: Toward a Feminist Philology,” in AntiCovenant: Counter-Reading Women’s Live in the Hebrew Bible, ed. Mieke Bal, (Sheffield: The Almond Press,1989), 211–31, 217. Soggin tried to reconstruct a myth-based rite from Judges 11:40 which – he assumed – had been ‘historicized’ by the story of Jephthah’s daughter (J. Alberto Soggin, Judges: A Commentary, otl (London: scm Press, 1981), 216–8). See for example Wolfgang Richter, “Die Überlieferung um Jephtah, Ri 10,17–12,7,” in Biblica 47 (1966), 485–556; Uwe Becker, Richterzeit und Königtum: Redaktionsgeschichtliche Studien zum Richterbuch, bzaw 192 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1990); see also the overview in David Marcus, Jephthah and His Vow (Lubbock/Texas: Texas Tech Press, 1986). See Steven L. McKenzie, “Deuteronomistic History,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 160–8, for a discussion of the origins and history of scholarly opinion on the Deuteronomistic History.

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of discussion about the details of this process and the time of the production and reworking the text. The earliest possible period for the edition of the first Deuteronomistic History would be around 622 b.c. The reform of king Josiah is based on the law in the book Deuteronomy. A work which starts with this law and tells the history of Israel under the perspective of its norms and values would fit in this period.43 But most scholars date the origin of the Deuteronomistic History in the exilic or postexilic period. They reckon that at least editorial work was done until deep into the postexilic period. If we follow this theory44 than Judges 11:29–40 is part of this huge historical work. It was composed when there was no longer a king or independent state in Israel and Judah. The story refers to a time which is long ago but resembles in some way the circumstances at the time of the composition: leadership and community have to be organised without kingdom and state. Does this theory tell us something about the intention of the author? If we understand the story in its wider context Jephthah becomes the main character. Judges 11:29–40 is part of the Jephthah cycle wherein his fate from birth until the end of his career is told. He is one of the charismatic leaders, whose stories shape the biggest part of Judges. His fate will dominate the meaning of the story: his vow and its consequences, the dramatic tension between his duty to fulfil the vow and the brute offering of his only child. If we follow the theory of Deuteronomistic History, we can perhaps trace more of the intention of the author. Deuteronomy, the collection of laws, which determine the normative values of the whole work, contains two commandments which directly correspond to our story: When you make a vow to the LORD your God, you shall not be slack to pay it; for the LORD your God will surely require it of you, and it would be sin in you. But if you refrain from vowing, it shall be no sin in you.

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Of course this work would have ended with the description of Josiah and his reform. The last chapters of 2 Kings recount the history until the destruction of Jerusalem, which would have been added later, together with other editorial texts. The theory has recently been challenged by Reinhard G. Kratz, Die Komposition der erzählenden Bücher des Alten Testaments: Grundwissen der Bibelkritik (Göttingen: ­Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000); see also Thomas Römer, The so-called Deuteronomistic history: a sociological, historical and literary introduction (London etc.: T&T Clark, 2005); Gary N. Knoppers, “Is There a Future for the Deuteronomistic History?,” in Thomas Römer, The Future of the Deuteronomistic History (Leuven: Peeters, 2000).

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You shall be careful to perform what has passed your lips, for you have voluntarily vowed to the LORD your God what you have promised with your mouth. (Deuteronomy 23:21–23) When you come into the land which the LORD your God gives you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you any one who burns his son or his daughter as an offering. (Deuteronomy 18:9,10a) The story about Jephthah’s vow and the burnt offering of his daughter is a good example of what can happen if one is not careful when making a vow to God: is one able and willing “to perform what has passed his lips”?45 If we follow this line it gets clear that the conflict of two norms – ‘a vow has to be fulfilled’ and ‘a burnt offering of a child is strictly forbidden’ – belongs to the intention of the author. To perform what Jephthah has promised would lead him into sin.46 It is a sort of tragedy: once he has ‘opened his mouth to God,’ he has only the choice between two evils. But it is he who causes this ‘tragedy.’ Perhaps the intention of the author is not only to warn of a rash vow but also to discuss leadership. This would totally fit in the thematic line of Deuteronomic History. Good and bad leadership is one of the main themes in the whole work. The leadership of Jephthah is described as ambiguous. On one hand he is the charismatic leader chosen by God to rescue his people from their enemies. On the other hand he is described as an ambitious man who is mainly concerned with his own career (see his discussion with the leaders of Gilead). Does he use the vow to ensure his own success?47 This last question is related to another question: why did Jephthah make this dangerous vow? This is not clear at all. Here we have to remark once more indeterminacy and tension in the text. When ‘the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah’ (11:29), this was a well known signal in biblical times that Jephtah was the chosen leader and had to fight the enemies of ‘Israel.’ In the terms of biblical language and thinking, it was no doubt possible that he would gain

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See Thomas C. Römer, “Why Would the Deuteromomist Tell about the Sacrifice of Jephthah’s Daughter?,” in Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 77 (1998), 27–38; H.-D. Neef, “Jephta und seine Tochter (Jdc. xi 29–40),” in Vetus Testamentum 49 (1999), 207–17. The burnt offering of a human being is considered to be a sort of idolatry, which is the most serious sin in the biblical world. See Judges 9 for another harsh critic of Abimelech, son of a judge, who had the personal ambition to become king over Israel.

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­victory. Why thus this vow? Is the intention to show his weak belief and impious behaviour? There is also a possible explanation on the level of literary history. Closer analysis shows that within the text three parts can be distinguished:48 (1) the spirit comes on Jephthah, he fights against the Ammonites and God gives him the victory (11:29,32,33). (2) Jephthah vows a burnt offering if God gives him victory over his enemies, the offer seems to be his daughter and although he is desperate he will have to execute the vow (11:30,31,34,35,36,39*,40?). (3) The daughter asks two months respite to go to the mountains to mourn her virginity with her girlfriends before she returns (11:37,38,39). A possible explanation is that this text was not written by one author, but is formed by editorial work. There are good arguments that the report over the victory (1), was the first layer of the text. This was part of the Deuteronomistic History. Then the vow and its fulfilment were added (2; perhaps including verse 40).49 The verses over the respite in the mountains were probably added even later (3).50 One of the arguments that Part 1 (11:29,32,33) was the first layer of the story is the fact that the verses repeat a pattern which is also found elsewhere in Judges: in a situation of danger and need a leader is chosen and receives the Spirit of God, he fights the enemy with the help of God, he gains victory and Israel may live in peace again (for example see Judges 3:7–11). If one realizes that the pattern of a kind of ‘holy war’ is disturbed by the insertion of the story about Jephthah’s vow, further possible meaning arises. Perhaps this is not only a story about Jephthah, his tragic fate and the danger of a rash vow. It is also a story questioning the ideology of holy war by asking: What is the cost of victory? Who has to pay this price? What is the role of human beings? Are they only instruments in the hand of God or have they a fate and will of their own? 48

49 50

I cannot give the arguments for distinguishing these parts nor for a double edition process here in detail. They are based on the analysis of disturbance of structural and semantic coherence and also on observations of the larger context. See my analysis in Christiane Karrer-Grube, “Grenz-Überschreitung: Zum Körperkonzept in der Erzählung über ­Jephtas Tochter,” in Körperkonzepte im Ersten Testament: Aspekte einer Feministischen Anthropologie, ed. Hedwig-Jahnow-Forschungsprojekt (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2003), 94–121, 104–6. See Uwe Becker, Richterzeit und Königtum: Redaktionsgeschichtliche Studien zum Richterbuch, bzaw 192 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1990), 220–1. See Christiane Karrer-Grube, “Grenz-Überschreitung: Zum Körperkonzept in der Erzählung über Jephtas Tochter,” in Körperkonzepte im Ersten Testament: Aspekte einer Feministischen Anthropologie, ed. Hedwig-Jahnow-Forschungsprojekt (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2003), 94–121, 106 and Wolfgang Richter, “Die Überlieferung um Jephtah, Ri 10,17–12,7,” in Biblica 47 (1966), 485–556, 512.

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Is this war part of a cycle of violence which also includes the fate of one’s own life and family? When Part 3 (11:37,38,39) was inserted, the meaning of the story shifted once more. The offer got a face, became an active person who assumed control over her fate. It is this part which makes it possible that the daughter also can be seen as a main character of the story. Additional themes are introduced: virginity, a community of young women, mourning in a separated space, the mountains. Also the meaning of the days of remembering is influenced (see above, iii b 2). If one follows this line and identifies with the daughter, the burnt offering is the centre of the story: heroic virgin, saviour of her people, or offer of a cruel ritual? Both insertions question the collective point of view on what is told and put the personal fate in the foreground:51 the chosen leader, instrument of God’s will to save his people, becomes a man, doubting, ambitious, desperate, father. The promised offer becomes a young woman, daughter, brave, unselfish, with decisive force and theological insight. The research for possible authorial intention and editorial insertions and reworking supports certain meanings and provides new possibilities of meaning. It is yet necessary to be aware of the fact that all theories about author and editors are reconstructed from the text. We have no external evidence. Thus ‘authorial intention’ is in biblical texts based upon reconstructions of the text and hence upon the interpretation of the text. This stands in contrast to Lamarque’s emphasis upon the ‘meaning-determining interpretation’ process according to which the author establishes the meaning of a text. In Lamarque’s theory, this meaning has to be understood and accepted before interpretation can start and restrains the possible meaning of the text (see above). Yet, in the case of biblical texts we have no access to authorial intention apart from interpretation. The theory about the author and editors of Judges 11:29–40 which I outlined above has good papers, but it is only one possible theory. There are scholars who interpret the text otherwise and get other theories about text production.52 Of course, then the possible meaning of the text also changes.

51 See Christiane Karrer-Grube, “Grenz-Überschreitung: Zum Körperkonzept in der ­Erzählung über Jephtas Tochter,” in Körperkonzepte im Ersten Testament: Aspekte einer Feministischen Anthropologie, ed. Hedwig-Jahnow-Forschungsprojekt (Stuttgart: ­Kohlhammer, 2003), 94–121, 110–4. 52 For example Wolfgang Richter, “Die Überlieferung um Jephtah, Ri 10,17–12,7,” in Biblica 47 (1966), 485–556. Soggin accepts Richter’s theory (J. Alberto Soggin, Judges: A Commentary, otl (London: scm Press, 1981) 5–6, 213–9.

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Since we have to reconstruct everything about the author and have hardly any external evidence, we cannot date the text exactly. If the first layer is written in the exilic period, this would be in the midst of the 6th century b.c., but we are not sure. When was it reworked? During the Hellenistic period which starts at the end of the 4th century b.c., or earlier, during the Persian period (539–333 b.c.)? My point is that the range of time, which we are discussing, is more than three centuries. This increases the uncertainty about the meaning of the text. Even if we hold that the theory about author and editors, which I outlined above, is correct, there arises another problem about ‘authorial intention’: Were the meanings, which I described, really intentions of the author or the editor? In some cases probably: for example, the intention to show the danger of a rash vow. In other cases, however, the reconstructed meaning could also result from a kind of ‘coincidence’: when the editor inserted the story of the vow and its fulfilment, he may have wanted to save an oral tradition about Jephthah and demonstrate the danger of the vow, but was not aware what this insertion does with the ideology of ‘holy war.’ We often cannot decide whether a certain meaning is designed intentionally by the author of the text, or whether it is the reader who constructed it from the structure of the text. Searching for the process of text production and the intention of the author/editor enriches our understanding of the text. But it does not restrain the multiplicity of meaning in a text of the Hebrew Bible. III.3 Conclusion: The Case for Semi-generic Interpretation The story about Jephthah and his daughter is a good example for the characteristics and problems which belong to the process of interpretation of a biblical text. A lot of our knowledge about the circumstances of text production has to be reconstructed from the text. This is especially true for the questions about authorship and editorial revision. Scholars observe characteristics and tensions in the structure of the text and interpret them as indications of authorship or historical development. Therefore we cannot describe with certainty the ‘work of an author’ which would be the object for further interpretation. As I have shown by the example of Judges 11:29–40 interpretation starts much earlier at a more basic level. Hypotheses about generic categories and about the work of an author or of an editor are found by a process of reconstruction. This process of reconstruction is supported by information from external sources and knowledge from wider text context. But a process of reconstruction always relies to a certain amount on interpretation. Therefore a sharp distinction between description of explanation and interpretation cannot be upheld in this process. When biblical scholars try to

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explain a biblical text and describe generic categories their ideal is to clarify the meaning of the text. Yet, their process of explanation is a process of reconstruction and therefore contains interpretation. Usually different scholars have very different explanations or descriptions of the same text. Thus, a lot of explanations could better be called a sort of ‘learned interpretation.’ Due to the role of reconstruction in all efforts to describe the generic categories and the intention of the author of a biblical text, one cannot avoid circularity in argumentation. The ongoing scholarly discussions on most biblical texts with often divergent theses is a persuading witness for the effect of circularity. Given the complexity of the interpretation process of a biblical text, I reflect back on Lamarque’s distinction between meaning-determining and generic interpretation.53 From what I described above, it is clear that in the case of biblical texts ‘meaning-determining interpretation,’ as Lamarque defines it, is not possible. We have no access to a firm “starting point” for interpretation provided by an author who determines the generic categorisation of his work. Because the work is reconstructed from the text, we cannot fix ‘clear meaning’ by virtue of this work. On the contrary, discussion about a possible ‘work’ mostly broadens the possible meaning of the text. Such a reconstructed work cannot be the object of interpretation which Lamarque postulates for a meaning-determining interpretation. We “need to interpret at a more basic level as a preliminary to determining meaning”54 as Lamarque states for his alternative concept, the generic interpretation. Is the interpretation of a biblical text then generic interpretation? Lamarque describes generic interpretation in a radical manner. He uses the example of a ‘message in a bottle’ and speaks about a text which is a “bare set of sentences apparently without context or purpose.”55 The interpretation process of a biblical text, as I described it above, has traces of generic interpretation. Generic categories have to be reconstructed to a certain extent. It is, however, no pure generic interpretation. We can get some information about the context of production of a text and its purpose from external evidence, from historical research, language analysis, genre analysis and so on. The complex interpretation process of a biblical text does not really fit into Lamarque’s alternative of either meaning-determining or generic interpretation. I call this sort of interpretation ‘semi-generic interpretation.’ With the help of this term I wish to indicate that the interpretation process has traces of generic interpretation in Lamarque’s sense, but includes also the search for external 53 54 55

See I. Peter Lamarque, “Objects of Interpretation,” Metaphilosophy, Vol. 31 (2000), 96–124, 103. Ibid., 103.

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information about the context of text production. We don’t need to go ‘all the way down,’ but we often must go ‘a long way down.’ The practice of biblical scholarship diverges in a significant way from Lamarque’s perspective on interpretation. Lamarque considers cases of generic interpretation as rare exceptions, which can be neglected for interpretation theory. But in the case of biblical texts, the semi-generic interpretation is the standard case and cannot be neglected. An adequate interpretation theory should provide resources which enable the interpreter to understand the process of semi-generic interpretation and its characteristics. iv

Semi-generic Interpretation and the Multiplicity of Meaning

In my view, the proper starting point for semi-generic interpretation is the text.56 This is the only object that we have and that we can deal with. This text bears a field of meaning, which can be very divergent and sometimes even contradictory. The aim of the interpretation process should be to explore and to structure the field of meaning. Since the text is the starting point of interpretation, analyzing the syntactic and semantic structure of the text is of prime importance so that interpretation can proceed. Signals of coherence and incoherence in the text have to be observed. The value systems that are supported by the text, the narrative structure and related features of the text have to be analyzed. One further step of interpretation is the effort to reconstruct generic categories, historical context, authorial intention and editorial reworking of the text. The reconstruction process can be supported by the search for external evidence from the time of text production. This interpretation effort enables us to decipher aspects of meaning that otherwise would be lost. It allows us to explore the relationship of the text to the original practice and to explore the historical embedding of experiences. The historical background of a text, the reality to which it referred originally, comes into view.57 56 57

I mentioned above that even on the level of the ‘text,’ processes of reconstruction and interpretation occur. There is an ongoing discussion among Biblical scholars on the methods for biblical interpretation. Often literary analyses and historical analyses are seen as opponents. An innovatory commentary series, Internationaler Exegetischer Kommentar zum Alten Testament (iekat), started in 2013: every text of the Old Testament is analysed from literary and historical perspective. The results are combined in a synthesis (editors Walter Dietrich, David M. Carr, Adele Berlin, Ed Noort, Helmut Utzschneider e.a., Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2013ff).

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Besides the interpretation of a biblical text in the context of its formation there are countless interpretations of the text in the context of its reception, in religious communities of different cultures and centuries, and in numerous works of art. I have shown that the reception-oriented category ‘biblical’ (see above, ii) governs the expectations and interpretations of the readers of a biblical text. Surely, members of Jewish or Christian communities relate a biblical text to their personal experiences and interests. People ‘discover’ meaning in the text, which was probably not the intention of the author of editor. There are thus two sorts of interpretation of a biblical text. These interpretations differ with regard to the practice in which the text is embedded: the practice in the time of its formation or the practices in the times of its reception. But it is not possible to make a sharp distinction between both sorts of interpretation as Lamarque presupposes in his analysis of meaning-determining interpretation. He distinguishes between clear ‘meaning’ which is fixed by the work of the author, and ‘interpretation’ as a secondary step which determines only the meaning which is left open by the author. This distinction between ‘meaning’ and ‘interpretation’ cannot be upheld in a semi-generic interpretation. We have to deal with different variants of interpretation, but they are both interpretation. Both uncover meaning of the text. If one looks closely at a specific interpretation process of a biblical text, one shall find numerous interdependencies between both sorts of interpretation. Often the same text-signals are interpreted in a historical context as well as in reception contexts. It is needless to say that historical reconstruction is not independent from the (religious) perception of the one who reconstructs. Under these conditions we have to face a great multiplicity of meaning ­being ascribed to a biblical text. What is the status of the different sorts of interpretation? Do they all belong to the field of the meaning of the text, or must some ­interpretations be excluded? How can we deal in a constructive manner with the multiplicity of meaning in a biblical text? In order to discuss this question, I will take up the story of Jephthah’s daughter once more and describe one striking example for meaning in the text which is clearly related to its reception. There is one point in this text, which provokes many different interpretations and which I have not yet mentioned: what is the role of God in this story? It is clear that in the first layer (11:29,32,33) of the text God is seen as the one who rescues Israel from her enemies by putting his spirit upon Jephthah and giving him the victory. Furthermore God is not mentioned except as being the addressee of the vow. We don’t know what the idea of the two editors was about the role of God. But for obvious reasons, for readers of all centuries this was the main question when they tried to get the meaning of the story. It is

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‘a biblical passage’ and therefore the reader is searching for spiritual meaning and has to find an answer to the question of the role of God. There is an almost endless number of different interpretations of the role of God. I give some examples.58 When the spirit came upon Jephthah, why did he make the vow? Was it because of the influence of the spirit? Then the vow was the will of God. If so, was it to prove the loyalty of Jephthah? Or was it Satan who inspired him to make the vow, meanwhile Jephthah thought that his vow was a pious act? Or was it the will of Jephthah as a human being? Was it then a sign of his doubt over God’s help? Or was it a sign of his piety? Or was it a sign of trust in his own activity, which stands in contrast to the trust in God’s spirit? Furthermore, questions arise concerning the sacrifice: Who chooses the sacrifice? Did God himself choose the daughter? May he, who gives life, also demand the offering of human life? Few interpreters dare to think over this possibility. Their best argument is that nowhere else in the Bible is a burnt offering of a child mentioned in a positive way. But why then didn’t God prevent the offering of the daughter? And, what was it, if it was not Gods will? Coincidence? How can an offering depend on coincidence? What if an impure animal had been the first to come out of the door of Jephthah’s house? Perhaps, what happened was a punishment for Jephthah for his rash vow? There is an interpretation which damns Jephthah for making this vow, but praises the wisdom of his daughter because she is willing to fulfil the vow which cannot be undone. But why can the vow not be undone? Perhaps this shows the limitations of human insight? God ‘Almighty,’ however, should know of other solutions. There is one more indeterminacy which facilitates such a solution: why do the daughter and her friends mourn her virginity and not her death? There are interpretations, which assert that the daughter was not really offered, but had to serve God for the rest of her life as a virgin.59 According to historical reconstruction, it is not probable that these divergent interpretations of the role of God were the intention of the author or of the editors of the text. There are even interpretations which show clearly that they are connected to the point of view of the interpreter. For example, an early Christian interpretation understands the daughter of Jephthah as a precursor of Jesus. Both gave their life to rescue their people. Of course this 58 59

All examples which I mention in the following paragraphs are taken from an existing interpretation of the story of Jephthah (see the literature in footnote 30). The most famous interpretation of this type is Händel’s oratorium ‘Jephthah.’ (See R ­ üdiger Bartelmus, “Jephtha – Anmerkungen eines Exegeten zu G.F. Händels musikalisch-­ theologischer Deutung einer e̒ ntlegenen̕ alttestamentlichen Tradition,” Theologische Zeitschrift 51 (1995), 106–27).

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­ nderstanding presupposes a reading of the story in the context of the whole u Christian Bible. Other interpretations discuss the story and its relationship to Genesis 22, the story of God who first commands the burnt offering of Abraham’s son and later revokes this commandment. Why does God not act in this way in Judges? Or do we have to conclude that he did so without it being e­ xplicitly mentioned? This reading presupposes at least the whole Torah as context. These interpretations clearly don’t match with the intention of an ­author/editor of an assumed Deuteronomistic History. I assume that meaning which arises from interpretations as I described above, cannot be excluded from the field of meanings of the text. Because Judges 11:29–40 belongs to the category ‘biblical passage,’ people expect to find spiritual inspiration for their personal life and identity in the text. They search for critical insights into their own life and behaviour, and for guidelines for shaping their worldview and ethical behaviour. Therefore, the role of God in this highly provocative biblical text necessarily remains under discussion and has to be part of different interpretations. It cannot be excluded from legitimate meanings of the text. And, of course, the reader will try to understand the meaning of this text in the context of her belief system. The kind of Bible, which belongs to her community, will be the context of her reading. This is a necessary precondition so that a believer is able to ‘discover’ (spiritual) meaning in the text. The great multiplicity of meaning in biblical texts is a fact, which cannot be denied. If someone tries to establish an unequivocal meaning of a biblical text, this always comes down to a matter of power: someone has the power to declare her interpretation to be the only ‘right’ one and forces others to accept this. Yet, from an academic point of view, a successful interpretation has to face the multiplicity of meaning in a biblical text and to find ways to deal with it in a constructive fashion. If we look at such a broad field of meaning of a biblical text, the question arises: is the ascription of meaning to such a text arbitrary? In my opinion it is not. It is part of the task of a responsible interpretation (a) to restrain meaning where it is necessary and (b) to structure the field of meaning. By (a): The most important guideline for determining possible meaning of a biblical text is the analysis of the structure of the text because this is the starting point for interpretation. Meaning that is based on this syntactic and semantic structure can provide what Lamarque calls a “set of common (meaning-based) properties”:60 the properties of a text that enable us to identify different interpretations as interpretations of this text. When interpretation 60

Peter Lamarque, “Objects of Interpretation,” Metaphilosophy, Vol. 31 (2000), 112 (according to Lamarque this would be the ‘work’).

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creates meaning that is contrary to structure-based meaning, interpretation leaves the field of meaning of the text.61 In my view structure-based meaning is essential for the interpretation process to restrict the possible meaning of a biblical text in a reasonable way. But it is neither exhaustive nor totally objective. Surely when it comes to semantic analysis, the line between ‘objective’ analysis and scholarly interpretation is not sharp. Further, the meaning of a text is more than its structure reveals. By (b): Historical research—both, research for external historical and cultural background as well as the reconstruction of categories of text ­production— can enrich our understanding of the meaning of the text. ­Although this is part of the interpretation process, it can provide us with some knowledge about what kind of meaning could probably belong to the meaning intended during text production. This allows us to differentiate between historically more or less probable meanings. The field of possible meanings is further expanded by reception-­generated meanings. This field, however, is not an arbitrary or chaotic gathering of ­meanings. It can be structured by several means: how is the meaning in question related to the syntactic and semantic structure of the text? Is this meaning probably generated by text production? How is this meaning related to the category ‘biblical’? To what extent is it based upon reception? Further crucial elements that enable us to structure the field of meanings are indeterminacies in the text. Divergent meanings are often stimulated by these indeterminacies. The text Judges 11:29–40 is characterized by a large number of indeterminacies: It is not mentioned why Jephthah made the vow. It is not clear who is the main character, nor which value—fulfilling the vow or no human burnt offering—has priority. The role of God is not explicated. And so on. Readers are invited to fill these indeterminacies in and create meaning. Also the reconstruction of authorial intention and editorial work is related to the interpretation of indeterminacies. Thus, analysing the indeterminacies of a text—‘gaps,’ metaphorical structure and so on—helps to structure the field of meaning.62 Divergent and sometimes contradictory meanings are connected to specific indeterminacies in the text (a ‘gap’ or a metaphorical image 61

62

Imagine that one writes a story wherein Jephthah’s daughter refuses to be sacrificed and escapes with her friends. This would be an identifiable interpretation of the biblical story (because of enough ‘common properties’), but it would not belong to the meaning of the biblical text. This analysis of indeterminacies in the text is based on the theory of reception-aesthetic see Rainer Warning (ed.), Rezeptionsästhetik: Theorie und Praxis (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag 1975).

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for ­example). Often divergent meanings form a kind of ‘discussion’ around an issue, which is present in the text but not in a determined way. v

Multiplicity of Meaning and Religious Truth

Given the multiplicity of meaning, another question arises: can we speak of ‘truth’ in a biblical text when meaning remains divergent? It is not my competence to discuss the question of truth and multiplicity of meaning on philosophical grounds. But this is also a crucial question in the field of religious practice. Thus, I conclude my article with some remarks from the perspective of religious practice. The question is essential to all appreciators who acknowledge the Bible as ‘Holy Scripture’ or at least as a kind of religious authority. The focus of their reading lies on the application of a biblical passage to their own life, spiritual and practical.63 Thus, they have to ask for the truth of a biblical passage. ­Otherwise they could not concede that great authority to this text. This problem has two sides. On the one hand, speaking of ‘truth’ stands in tension to a multiplicity of meaning. Truth of a text is normally associated with monism. Non-professional readers are often seeking for ‘the truth’ of a biblical text and are disappointed when they are confronted with the impossibility to fix that truth. This is completely legitimate. How can one apply a text to one’s own life when the meaning of the text remains unclear? On the other hand, a believer wants a biblical text to say something about her life. That is to say: there is a strong emphasis on the application of a text to different readers. It is needless to say that the meaning of a biblical text under this condition is necessarily different to each reader because the life situation of each reader is different. Biblical texts are expected to provide existential meaning for 20 centuries to people of different cultures in countries all over the world, to different social groups, to various religious communities… My thesis is that this is possible because biblical texts have that rich field of meaning. The multiplicity of meaning of most biblical texts is a precondition for functioning as ‘holy’ text with existential authority in most divergent situations. Most believers are aware of this: they speak about ‘this word means to me…’ and they know that it could mean something else to another believer. They undergo this in every simple group conversation on biblical themes. They even 63

See on the relevance of the interpretation of holy texts for religious believers Dirk-Martin Grube (Chapter 6, this volume).

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experience that the meaning of a biblical text changes in their own life, dependent on the situations in which they are living. There is a dilemma: the multiplicity of meaning of biblical texts facilitates their application to divergent life situations and enables them to provide existential meaning for many different people. But multiplicity of meaning stands in tension to the claim of authority, which is inherent to biblical texts as ‘Holy Scripture.’ In my opinion we have to distinguish between ‘meaning’ of a text and ‘authority’ of a text. A specific interpretation of a biblical text can be accepted as a legitimate meaning of the text, without necessarily having authority for me. Whether this meaning has authority for me or not, I must decide on different grounds: theological conviction, religious experience, life-situation. Only if that specific meaning matches with my situation will it become a ‘true’ meaning for me. This truth is no objective content with absolute validity, but a religious experience affected by a biblical word’s specific meaning, which in turn gives insight into my personal situation and transforms me. Distinguishing between meaning and authority of a biblical text is rooted in the theological tradition of the Reformation. Luther distinguished between a biblical word and the Word of God. A biblical word can become the Word of God for me if I experience this word interpreting me. In this religious view of the interpretation of a biblical text, the subject and object of interpretation are changed. The object of interpretation is no longer the text but one’s life. Being interpreted by a word means the religious experience of being so deeply affected by a word that the presence of a transcendent dimension of reality is experienced. Within a religious view this word has such a great authority that it can no longer be ‘object’ to my interpretation. It is surely true, but the truth of this word is bound to my personal existence.

chapter 8

Some Reflections on Michael Krausz’s Account of Meaning and Interpretation Pradeep P. Gokhale

Central University of Tibetan Studies (Sarnath, Varanasi)

In his paper “The Ideals and Aim of Interpretation” Michael Krausz has discussed some important issues concerning interpretation. He does not commit to any position, because his main aim is to offer a sketch of a philosophical terrain. His sketch, however, gives rise to some issues. I would like to highlight some of them. Here my focus is on the first part of his paper, which deals with singularism and multiplism. The introductory paragraph of Krausz’s paper is annotated by a footnote stating that in his view the very concept of interpretation is essentially contested. Moreover, he reiterates this in his concluding summary. If one begins and concludes the inquiry with the statement that the concept under consideration is essentially contested, what is the end result of the whole inquiry? Is it just maintenance of its essentially contested nature? Is it not disappointing to say that the concept of interpretation (or any concept for that matter) is essentially contested? How does a concept become essentially contested, if at all it ­becomes so? If it becomes so because we cannot identify the essence of the term/concept under consideration, then how should we go about it? Here I want to suggest that the notions of essence and meaning are ­conceptually connected to each other. To say, for instance, that interpretation has no essence of its own is comparable to saying that the word ‘interpretation’ has no clear and distinct meaning. Non-essentiality of interpretation would lead us to say that there is no interpretation with its fixed essence, but there are only ­interpretations of ‘interpretation.’ This is as good as saying that there is no single, fixed meaning of the word ‘interpretation’ but instead that there are different senses or ways in which the word is used; or that the word ‘interpretation’ does not stand for a single, clear concept, but for a fusion or admixture of many concepts. However, such a position does not solve or dissolve the issue of i­nterpretation. Rather our job now will be to separate those concepts and the issues related to them and then to try to solve or dissolve the issues one by one.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004325241_010

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Ambiguities of the Terms ‘Interpretation’ and ‘Meaning’

The term interpretation has some clear ambiguities. For example interpretation, in a sense, can have any sensible phenomenon as its object, whereas, in another sense, it can have only symbolic artifacts such as linguistic expressions, or art expressions as their objects. Consider the two situations: (1) I call a sensible object before me ‘a tree.’ Let us call it a perceptual situation. (2) I tell my friend about my experience of the thing as, “I saw a tree there,” and my friend understands my statement as about the one regarding a natural sensible object called a tree. Let us call it a communicative situation. We can say that in the perceptual situation, I interpret the object before me as a ‘tree,’ which means I assimilate it either with similar things called trees that I have seen before, or with the image of a tree that I have formed in my mind. In the communicative situation, we can say, my friend interprets my use of the expression ‘tree’ as that about a natural sensible object called a tree. In perceptual situations, the expression ‘tree’ becomes a part of the ‘meaning’ of the natural object ‘tree.’ By calling it a tree I am attaching some significance to the object before me, and the expression ‘tree’ becomes a part of that significance. In the communicative situation it is the other way around—the tree as a natural object becomes the meaning of the expression ‘tree.’ The other person interprets my use of the expression ‘tree’ as referring to the object ‘tree.’ One will have to separate the two situations and clarify as to which sense of interpretation one has in mind. In a way the distinction between the two situations corresponds to the one between nature and culture. The thing before me which I interpret as a tree is a natural object, whereas the linguistic expression that I utter and my friend interprets is a cultural object. But more importantly, it is the way the interpreter looks at the object that makes the difference. In the first case I am looking at the object as a part of nature. In the second case, my friend is looking at my utterance as a cultural act (as a human communicative act). It is possible for my friend to look at my utterance as a natural happening and ‘interpret’ it as a part of a psychosomatic causal process. In that case, it would have been like my interpretation of a perceptual object. Similarly it was possible for me to interpret the thing (the tree) before me as a word written by God in the

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book called Nature which He has opened before me. In that case my interpretation of the thing ‘tree’ would have been like interpretation of a symbol used in communication. The term ‘meaning’ has similar ambiguities. One such ambiguity was brought out by Paul Grice in his article “Meaning,” in which he distinguished between meaning-natural and meaning-non-natural.1 The distinction corresponds, in a sense, to the one between sign and symbol. In the case of meaning-natural the interpreter looks at the ‘meaningful object’ to signify its ‘meaning’ irrespective of convention or author’s intention. In the case of meaning-non-natural, the interpreter is looking at the meaningful object as a symbol of its meaning subject to conventions attached to the symbol and to the author’s intention. Now I want to point out that the issue of singularism and multiplism can arise with respect to both the meanings of the term ‘interpretation’ and both the meanings of the term ‘meaning,’ though in different ways. Let us first consider the case of meaning-natural. Persons interpret a log of wood according to their cultural backgrounds and practical needs – as a table, seat, bed, or as fuel. Here multiplicity of interpretations can be accepted. But sometimes giving a single definite meaning becomes important. When a physician observing spots on the body of a patient says, “These spots mean measles,” he is interpreting in a singularist context. The interpretation in this case is a scientific explanation and that is why it is required to be definite. Furthermore, in the case of meaning non-natural, a singularist as well as a multiplist context is available. A building worker points his finger towards a heap of bricks and says to his assistant, “Bricks.” The assistant, in a mischievous mood, sits on the bricks. The worker then clarifies that he is asking for the bricks to be brought, not for them to be sat upon. This would be a singularist context. On the other hand, different connoisseurs may interpret an abstract painting differently, and the painter may welcome such diverse interpretations. (Of course he may not accept all of them, and even those he accepts he may not accept with equal degree.) This would be a multiplist context. So whether only a single interpretation is accepted or many are accepted depends on many factors. A brief sketch of these factors can be given as follows. i.1 What Do We Mean by Interpretation? Is interpretation a pragmatic attitude or a scientific explanation? Is it understanding the author’s intention, or is it developing an appreciative but free and playful relation with the author’s creation?

1 C.f. Grice, “Meaning” in H.P. Grice (1989) Studies in the Way of Words, Harvard University Press, Ch. 14.

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Interpretation as a pragmatic attitude means interpretation determined by what the interpreter wants to do with the object. A person who wants to sit on a log of wood may interpret it as a seat, one who wants to sleep on it may call it a bed, and one who is in need of fuel may call it fuel. In this way the interpretation will vary according to the interpreter’s objective. This can lead to multiplism. If interpretation is taken to mean ‘scientific explanation,’ then there is a stronger claim for objectivity leading to singularism with exceptions made in the case of an area like Quantum mechanics. If interpretation is concerned with the author’s intended meaning alone, then again there is a claim for objectivity. If, on the other hand, interpretation is supposed to include unintended meanings or the meanings derived freely irrespective of the author’s background, then the interpretation is likely to be multiplist. A certain position is possible (or positions are possible) between the two extremes. An interpretation may not be claimed to be identical with the author’s intention but either ‘consistent with the author’s intention’ or ‘inspired by the author’s intention.’ In this case there is room for both singularism and multiplism. i.2 What is it an Interpretation of? Is it an interpretation of a serious religious or philosophical or scientific text? Or is it an interpretation of an expressionist or realist piece of art, or of an abstract art-object? A follower of a religion will not generally like the idea that the sacred text of his religion does not have a precise meaning. However, this cannot be made a rule. Sometimes, multiplicity of meanings could be treated as a mark of ­richness of the text. A scientific text will not be honored as such if we are given to understand that the text is not clear or precise in its meaning. (On issues such as Quantum Mechanics, we come across the situations of u ­ ncertainty about the interpretation of subatomic phenomena, but the scientific c­ haracter of the text requires that this uncertainty itself should be stated in precise terms. There should be no uncertainty in interpreting the scientific explanation of the velocity and position of subatomic particles.) The status of philosophy is between art and science (or even between religion and science). A philosophical text will be considered in a singularist way to the extent to which it is more like science (following rules of logic rigorously) and less like art or religion. Interpretation of realist or expressionist art is likely to be more singularist than that of abstract art. i.3 What is the Author’s Approach to the Object? Is the author’s approach rigid or liberal? Here, the question of the author’s intent is relevant. Generally speaking, legislators in law-making, scientists in presenting their research, or often philosophers in their presentation, want to

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be as precise as possible. They mean what they say. Naturally, the interpretation, as the author expects, has to be singular. At least it gives greater scope to singularist interpretations than to multiplist ones. Even in art, particularly realistic or expressionistic art, the artist tries to be true to his/her experience and feelings, which demands a singularist interpretation. In abstract art, often the author may not have a specific meaning to convey, or he/she does not care even if the connoisseurs interpret and appreciate his/her art in diverse ways. In such cases, multiplism is quite relevant. Here a question may arise as to whether an interpreter or a connoisseur should be true, or at least attempt to be true, to the author’s intentions. One might talk of the unintended meaning/s of a work. This point could be controversial. An intention-based semantics would uphold that there is no unintended meaning. A commentator may claim that a particular expression used by the author must have meant so and so, though the author did not intend to mean so. Can the author accept this claim and say consistently that he/she did not intend to mean this, but he/she did mean that? In borderline cases the author might say, “Yes. I think this was at the back of my mind. It was not clear at that time. But it was implicitly there. You can interpret it in that way.” But this may not happen always. The author might say instead, “You may interpret the expression any way you like. But this is not what I meant.” The point is, the author may disagree with the interpretation when it involves unintended factors. Of course there could always be some unintended tendencies in the author’s mind—either unconsciously or subconsciously—which go into making of his/ her work. The question is whether those factors can constitute the meaning of the work, and if they do, in what sense they do that. I want to suggest that such unintended factors can constitute meaning-natural rather than meaning-nonnatural. They are related to the utterance by way of a psychological causal process, not through intention and convention. Meaning-natural interpretation is in many ways a different sort of interpretation from that of meaning-nonnatural. The former is more like a causal explanation than an interpretation, whereas the latter is an interpretation proper. i.4 Who Interprets? Is the interpreter a biased, involved reader/spectator or an unbiased, detached one? Take the case of a religious work accepted as a sacred text by different strands of a religion. Commentators belonging to different strands may interpret the text quite differently. Now a reader belonging to a particular strand may naturally accept a particular sectarian interpretation as authentic and

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others as inauthentic. He/she is likely to be singularist in his/her approach. Opposed to this a detached or neutral reader who is almost equidistant from all the sects may appreciate diverse sectarian interpretations and give his/her judgment of them independently. His/her approach is likely to be multiplist. The last question is about the reader’s relationship with the text. It can be substantiated with reference to the example of Upaniṣads. Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja and Madhva, the founders of different schools of Vedānta have interpreted Upaniṣads, a source book of Vedānta, differently. A follower of any of these schools accepted a particular interpretation of the Upaniṣads as the only correct interpretation, and understood the interpretations of other schools as false interpretations. This would be a singularist stand. Opposed to this, an unbiased/neutral student of Vedānta could be equidistant from different schools, or might favour one interpretation over others without excluding any. This would be a multiplist stand. ii

Verbal Testimony and Interpretation

The concept of Śabda-prāmāṇya (verbal testimony) is a dominating concept in Indian philosophy. It has generally supported a singularist approach to interpretation and discouraged multiplism. Almost every school of Indian philosophy has its source book—a scripture or an aphorismic text—which it regards as the authority and is interpreted by the scholars adhering to the school in such a way that the doctrines of the school are brought out by the source book unwaveringly. It so happens that some source books are the common source books of many schools. For example Vedas are regarded as the common authority for all orthodox schools; the Upaniṣads, the Gītā and the Brahmasūtras are the common source books of all the Vedānta schools. Mahāyānasūtras are the common authority of both the Mahāyāna schools viz. Yogācāra and Mādhyamika. Naturally in such cases, a multiplicity of interpretations is inevitable. But each school believes that their source book has a single, unequivocal and consistent interpretation and an authentic message. The Vedānta tradition introduces the ideas of ekavākyatā (“being a single statement”) and samanvaya (“reconciliation of inconsistencies”). It is believed that the whole text, whether the Upaniṣads or the Gītā or Brahmasūtra, makes a single and consistent statement and its consistency can only be brought out by reconciling the (apparent) inconsistencies. But authority is not the only attitude towards the source books found in Indian philosophy. For example, heterodox schools reject the authority of the

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Vedas, which in turn also affects their interpretative approach to the Vedas. Orthodox schools generally regard the Vedas as God’s creation or impersonal (apauruṣeya). Opposed to this, heterodox schools regard the Vedas as human creation and hence susceptible to imperfection and error. A modern student too will interpret these texts without the burden of authority. This gives rise to possibilities which may even go beyond singularism and multiplism. One may think, for example, that (i) The text does not have one author but many authors. The alleged single text is not one, but many. (ii) Even though the text is one, it has no consistent meaning. It does not make one statement, but many statements. (iii) The text contains some meaningless utterances. The Cārvāka approach to the Vedas is a typical example of this kind. iii

The Context of Intention-based Semantics

I have suggested above that the definitions of ‘meaning’ and ‘interpretation’ differ according to their context. One significant context is the role of authorial intention. When we talk of meaning-natural, we are talking irrespective of intention, when we talk of meaning non-natural, we are acknowledging the role of intention. Formalization of the concept of meaning will also change accordingly. For example, if ‘to mean’ is a verb referring to a relation, then in its minimalistic form, independent of the role of intention, it will be a two-term relation, which could be formalized as, Mxy which can be read as, “x means y.” Here, x is a variable ranging over the objects of interpretation; y is another variable ranging over the contents of these objects. To recognize the difference between the two variables we can designate them by the letters o and c respectively. Hence meaning as the two term relation can be formalized as, Moc which can be read as, “Object o means content c”

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But intention-based semantics implies that an object does not mean anything by itself but it is the author/speaker/utterer2 who means something by or through the object. Hence, meaning as a relation will now be a three-term relation. This can be expressed as, The speaker s means the content c by the object o which may be symbolically represented as, Msco The speaker’s intention is an important issue in Indian theories of meaning. Here, at one end, we have Pūrvamīmāṁsā which regards Vedas as author-less such that the Vedic texts have their intrinsic meaning and authenticity not derived from any so-called authoritative speaker. At the other end, there are the Buddhist philosophers like Dharmakīrti who hold that meaning is always something intended by someone—it is the vivakṣā (intention) of the speaker. In between these two ends are systems such as Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika, which accept both types of meanings—intended meaning (tātparya); and referential meaning, the latter having two types: word-meaning (padārtha) and sentencemeaning (vākyārtha). Personally I would go with the Buddhists, for whom intended meaning is ­basic and word-meaning and sentence-meaning are derivatives of the intended meaning. Interpreting and attaching meaning are human affairs where words and sentences assume meanings because users of language intend them. The so-called unintended meaning, as I have suggested before, will form part of meaning-natural. So it seems that the question of singularism and multiplism with regard to interpretation should be raised with respect to the speaker’s intention. Speakers may create multiplist conditions if, for example, they want to confuse the audience or involve it in an artistic performance containing multiple meanings, or if the speakers are unclear about their own intended meaning. Otherwise, speakers will generally expect a singular interpretation of what they try to convey. In spite of singularist expectations of the speaker, multiple interpretations are possible because of the inbuilt ambiguities and the vagueness of the medium through which she or he tries to convey the singular meaning. But this in itself need not imply multiplism in general.

2 This ‘author’ could be alive or dead, actual or conceptual. The state of the ‘author’ will affect the complexity of analysing the situation. Grice in the article mentioned above (Footnote 1) has taken into account this complexity.

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A Need to Make the Dichotomy Sharper?

The way Krausz defines singularism and multiplism, however, is confusing. The dichotomy between them is more open towards multiplism than towards ­singularism. His definition of multiplism implies that a multiplist can accept multiple interpretations for some objects and singular interpretations for ­others. This means that a multiplist can be a singularist with respect to some objects of interpretation. He constructs singularism as a general stand-point by universalizing singularist conditions. But he constructs multiplism as a general stand-point, however, not by universalizing multiplist conditions, but simply by allowing them in some cases.3 Here he could have distinguished ­between universal multiplism and partial multiplism. Another policy would be to ­define singularism and multiplism only with respect to specific objects. Krausz brings out this level of object-specific forms of singularism and m ­ ultiplism by using the terms “singularist conditions” and “multiplist conditions.” If we think in object-specific terms, as suggested above, then one can say (as I have suggested earlier) that one can take a multiplist stand with regard to certain types of object, and a singularist stand with regard to others. For example, singularism holds better with regard to scientific expressions and philosophical expressions (which are governed by logic), as precision is important in them. But in the field of art, sometimes singularism, sometimes multiplism could be maintained and sometimes the matter could be controversial. v

The Case of Indian Poetics

Indian poeticians developed a theory of meaning by classifying the latter into literal (vācyārtha), implied (lakṣyārtha) and suggested (vyaṅgyārtha) ­meaning. It was generally held that the beauty of a poetic piece lies in its suggestivity (vyañjanā or dhvani) and that the suggested meaning is grasped through imagination and not through simple reasoning. This gives scope for multiplism at 3 Krausz, while commenting on earlier version of this paper, wrote to me that the reason behind not making the stronger claim that any and all cases are multiplist is that it is a position that virtually no one that he knows of actually embraces. I may submit here that extreme forms of anti-essentialism can be interpreted as leading to multiplism in its universal form. Examples from an Indian perspective include śūnyatā doctrine of Nāgārjuna and the Jaina doctrine of syādvāda. Syādvāda in particular implies that every expression can be interpreted differently from different standpoints, and every indicative sentence can be both asserted and negated subject to different interpretations. Why I still call it multiplism within singularism is that Jainism treats the totality of these standpoints as the holistic vision, which is not just another standpoint.

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the level of suggested meaning. But even at that level, poeticians generally took a singularist stand. Even the suggested meaning was not supposed to be judged freely and subjectively, but it had its objective character because it was supposed to be the author’s intended meaning. The above theory of poetic meaning may not be applicable to certain forms of modern art in which an artist may look at his/her art not as an expression having definite content, but as a playful act where diverse interpretations and responses from the audience are welcome as a part of the artistic discourse. Hence, multiplism becomes a genuine possibility in the field of art, but it cannot be generalized for all the art forms. vi

Multiplism within the Framework of Singularism in the Context of Religious Discourse

Religious literature and religious art have some essential features of art and the possibility of multiplism arises due to it. But, the role of religious art is generally instrumental to ritualistic or soteriological goals, and hence its interpretation tends to be singularist. I want to suggest here that within the framework of singularism religious expressions give scope to multiplism in a peculiar way. A religious text may claim that as a whole it has a definite message for all the people (either ‘for all beings,’ ‘for the whole of humanity’ or ‘for all the followers of the particular religion’). But the message it gives may be interpreted for and applied to different types of persons differently. Depending upon the intellectual and spiritual capacity of the follower, the same message may be read differently. We have seen [in Section 3] how ‘to mean’ can be understood as a two-term relation or a three-term relation. But in the context of religious expression it can be a four-term relation, because the audience will enter the scene as an indirect determiner of meaning. This four-term relation can be formally represented as, Mscoa which can be read as, “The speaker s means content c by the object o to the audience a” An example may reveal how an audience can have a role in determining meaning. In Pali Buddhist literature, occasionally the Buddha preaches meditation on śūnyatā where the term means either impermanence or non-substantiality. In Mahāyāna sutras the Buddha preaches śūnyatā which means essenceless-ness. Now with the assumption that both the Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna

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t­ eachings were given by the same historical Gotama the Buddha, we can make the following two statements: (1) The Buddha meant ‘impermanence’ by the word śūnyatā to his Hīnayānist followers. (2) The Buddha meant ‘essence-less-ness’ by the word śūnyatā to his Mahāyānist followers. Mahāyāna Buddhists divided the Buddha’s message into two kinds: nītārtha (literally meaningful) and neyārtha (derivatively meaningful). The former was the conclusive message, which was literally true, but could be grasped only by intelligent and spiritually advanced persons. The latter was not literally true, but it could be taken to be literally true by unintelligent persons who were not so advanced spiritually. It was the lower message of the Buddha, but was still important because it was useful for the spiritual development of the unintelligent followers. This can be regarded as a case of multiplism within singularism. On similar lines the two-truth (satya-dvaya) doctrine of Nāgārjuna, or the levels of reality (sattā-traya) accepted by the non-dualist Vedāntins, can be regarded as cases of multiplism within a singularist framework. Nāgārjuna said that the Buddha’s teaching is based on two truths: conventional truth (lokasaṁvṛti-satya) and ultimate truth (paramārthataḥ satya). Here the two truths are not to be understood as two independent and competing truths. The ultimate truth is to be accepted as the overarching principle within which the conventional truth is to be adjusted. Similarly, in the Vedānta school the reality of Ātman-Brahman unity is the overarching principle in relation to which the reality of the empirical world and the dream world are adjusted. But, in either of the two systems, the ultimate truth/reality does not nullify the lower truths/realities completely. Thus, multiplist conditions become inevitable. Similarly the same Gītā can be a text advocating the path of devotion (Bhaktiyoga) for a devotee, the path of action (Karmayoga) for a practical minded person, and the path of knowledge (Jñānayoga) for an intellectual. But an interpreter of the Gītā would generally attribute a single message to the Gītā in which these different readings of the text are synthesized. This too is a case of multiplism within the framework of singularism. vii

The Case of Jainism

Accepting the possibility of multiple interpretations, or rather accommodating multiple interpretations in a holistic framework, is an important programme of the Jaina philosophy. The Jaina doctrine of syādvāda is a part of this

Some Reflections on Michael Krausz’s Account of Meaning

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programme.4 On the question, for example, whether the soul is permanent, the Jaina philosophers allow both the statements, “The soul is permanent” and “The soul is impermanent.” But while allowing them, they add the prefix syāt (in Sanskrit; suya in Prakrit). The term syāt has been interpreted as ‘somehow,’ ‘in a way’ or ‘in a sense.’ By adding it as a prefix, the Jaina philosophers contend that ‘In a sense the soul is permanent’ and ‘In a sense the soul is impermanent,’ and further explained that if the term ‘soul’ (jīva) refers to its essential feature, viz. consciousness, then it is permanent, but if it refers to its changing features such as transmigration, then it is impermanent. Ultimately, for Jainas, we have to understand that the soul has both these features. Hence seemingly opposite interpretations are accommodated in a holistic framework. Jainas while explaining the doctrine of syādvāda often give the allegory of an elephant and seven blind persons. Seven blind persons are asked to describe an elephant by touching it. Each one touches a different limb of the elephant and describes the elephant as having the shape of the respective limb. Here all the descriptions express partial truths, (naya, pramāṇāṁśa), but are presented by the respective describers as if their descriptions expressed the whole truth. The allegory of the elephant is applicable to Krausz’s example of Vincent Van Gogh’s painting, ‘The Potato Eaters,’ which answers simultaneously to formalist, Marxist, Christian, Feminist and psychoanalytic interpretations among others.5 Here Jainas would urge us to think that each interpretation focuses on a specific aspect of the painting and expresses a view-point which is partially true, but claims to be the whole truth. The whole truth should take into account these interpretations as partial truths, and reconcile between them. This would again be a case of multiplism (or pluralism)6 within the framework of singularism. 4 I have discussed the doctrine of syāt in my paper “The Logical Structure of Syādvāda,” Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research, Vol. viii, No. 3, May-August 1991. I have tried to show there that the doctrine can be explained satisfactorily without crossing the limits of bivalence. 5 See Krausz, “The Ideals and Aim of Interpretation,” (Chapter 2, this volume). 6 Krausz has distinguished between critical pluralism and multiplism. Accordingly, multiplism allows for favoring certain interpretations over others, whereas pluralism does not permit such discrimination. I am suggesting that in Jainism we find both these tendencies. In the doctrine of Syāt Jainas treat all the seven modal expressions as on a par. Similarly in their theory of seven nayas (stand-points), they treat all stand-points as on a par. Hence the doctrines of seven-fold syādvāda and seven nayas is closer to pluralism than to multiplism. But Jainas have another theory of nayas, propagated by Kundakunda, according to which there are two standpoints (which influence interpretation): Decisive and Conventional (Niścayanaya and Vyavahāra-naya) out of which the decisive standpoint is regarded to be more reasonable. This idea is favourable to multiplism. This is the reason why I have referred to both multiplism and pluralism here.

Index Abrahamic religions 8, 120 Action-relevance 12, 119, 121, 123, 128, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143 Aesthetic properties 22, 23, 108 Aetiological legend 159, 160 Aims (of interpretation) 20, 44 Ampliative (reasons) 6, 36, 92, 95 Anti-realism 2, 6, 104, 110, 131 Appropriateness of styles of interpretation  19, 116, 117, 119 Artifact meaning 10, 104, 105, 106, 109 Austin, J.L. 89, 92, 94 Authorial intention 2, 10, 31, 101, 103, 108, 109, 138, 141, 164, 167, 171, 174 Blake, William 29, 30, 31, 32 Canonization 148 Catullus 101 Chang, Chung-yuan 44 Chaturvedi, Vibha 5, 36, 37, 40, 128 Circularity 19, 152, 157, 166 Communicative situation 175 Countability 7, 39 Creative Interpretation 8, 20, 21, 26, 27, 28, 45, 46, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 60, 65, 66, 69, 70 Cultural objects 23, 62 Danto, Arthur 5, 24, 25, 27, 43, 44, 51, 62, 105, 146 Deconstruction 51, 52, 56 Determinative (reasons) 6, 36, 81, 92, 95, 102 Deuteronomistic History 160, 161, 170 Dewey, John 44 Dharmakīrti 181 Dialectics 70, 121 Discovery (vs. invention) 72 Dworkin, Ronald 53 Edification 7, 8, 32, 34, 43, 45, 46, 47, 51, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72 Ekphrastic 107 Elucidation 6, 7, 34, 37, 41, 45, 46, 57, 70, 72, 87

Essential properties (of objects) 24 Experience (consummatory) 29, 30, 31, 40, 41, 44, 45, 46, 53, 54, 55, 70, 71, 72, 74, 83, 105, 107, 110, 116, 150, 173, 175, 178 Face/vase 28 Ferrater-Mora, José 43 Fictionalism 10, 11, 97, 111, 112 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 8, 55, 68, 70, 72, 117 Gallie, W.B. 34 Generic interpretation/categories 13, 144, 146, 151, 166, 167, 168 Gibson, John 2, 10, 11, 96, 98, 100, 102, 104, 106, 107, 108, 110, 112 Gītā 14, 15, 179, 184 Goehr, Alexander 43, 44 Gokhale, Pradeep 14, 15, 16, 130, 174, 176, 178, 180, 182, 184 Gotama (the Buddha) 184 Grice, H.P. 88, 176, 181 Grube, Dirk-Martin 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 112, 115, 116, 118, 120, 122, 124, 126, 128, 130, 132, 133, 134, 136, 138, 140, 141, 142, 172 Hagberg, Garry 2, 6, 9, 74, 76, 78, 80, 82, 83, 84, 86, 88, 90, 92, 94, 95 Handlungsentlastet 12, 125, 126 Hebrew Bible 13, 144, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 155, 158, 159, 160, 165 Henri, Robert 43, 44 Hinduism (Advaita) 39, 40, 46, 119 Historical reconstruction 168, 169 Imagination 9, 27, 58, 59, 74, 95, 106 Imaginative meaning/reconstruction 10, 104, 106, 107, 108, 109 Impersonalism 105 Imputationalism 58, 64 Intentional object/properties 22, 26, 27, 29, 41, 62, 63, 64, 93, 130 Intentionalism 102, 103, 104, 140 Intention-based semantics 178, 180, 181

188 Interpretive practices 1, 3, 4, 7, 12, 119, 124, 127, 138, 139 Intrinsic properties (of objects) 21, 22, 23, 26 Jainism 15, 182, 184, 185 Jephtah 153, 160, 162, 163, 164 Judges 14, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 170, 171 Karrer-Grube, Christiane 4, 13, 14, 138, 144, 146, 148, 150, 152, 153, 154, 156, 158, 160, 162, 163, 164, 166, 168, 170, 172 Krausz, Michael 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 20, 27, 28, 32, 33, 34, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 51, 52, 56, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 72, 88, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 97, 112, 115, 119, 126, 127, 130, 131, 135, 137, 143, 174, 175, 177, 179, 181, 182, 183, 185 Lamarque, Peter 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 41, 42, 47, 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 70, 72, 74, 75, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 93, 94, 100, 115, 116, 117, 119, 121, 131, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 153, 155, 157, 159, 161, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 173 Leddy, Thomas 2, 7, 8, 45, 46, 47, 51, 52, 54, 56, 58, 60, 62, 64, 66, 68, 69, 70, 72 Logical atomism 9 Logical Atomism 76, 77 Mahāyāna 15, 179, 183, 184 Margolis, Joseph 2, 20, 34, 35, 61, 63, 72, 112, 139, 140, 141 Meaning scepticism 10, 96, 97, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 107, 109, 111 Meaning-determining interpretation 4, 13, 145, 146, 166 Meaning-natural 176, 178, 180, 181 Meaning-non-natural 176 Meaning-relevant 96, 102, 105 Monism 2, 3, 6, 13, 36, 55, 56, 72, 73, 127, 137, 138, 139, 141, 172

Index Multiplicity of meaning 144, 147, 150, 165, 168, 170, 172, 173, 177, 182 Multiplism 6, 7, 12, 14, 15, 16, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 52, 67, 115, 126, 127, 135, 137, 174, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185 Nāgārjuna 182, 184 Nehamas, Alexander 36 Normative relevance 14, 133, 135 Novitz, David 36 Oedipus 97, 98 Ontology 11, 19, 33, 59, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121, 128 Perceptual situation 175 Philosophical reflection 1, 3, 127 Pluralism 2, 3, 6, 12, 13, 36, 51, 52, 56, 72, 73, 127, 128, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 143, 185 Practice of interpretation 5, 117, 120, 124, 141, 142, 143 Production 10, 14, 56, 91, 96, 101, 105, 107, 145, 146, 148, 150, 151, 152, 153, 160, 161, 164, 165, 167, 171 Properties of objects 12 Prosperity gospel 129 Pūrvamīmāṁsā 181 Quantum mechanics 177 Realism (about interpretation) 2 Reception 8, 72, 145, 148, 149, 150, 168, 171 Recovery (vs. creation) 72 Reflective equilibrium 3, 11 Relativism 96, 140 Revelatory interpretation 20, 26 Robust Relativism (Margolis) 34 Rorty, Richard 8, 68, 100, 135, 141, 146 Roy, Krishna 40, 120 Russell, Betrand 9, 76, 77, 78, 82, 84, 86, 92 Samanvaya 14, 179 Sasaki, Ken-ichi 46, 47 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, D.E. 3

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Index Semi-generic interpretation 14, 144, 165, 166, 167 Shusterman, Richard 42, 43, 57, 131 Singularism 6, 7, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 41, 67, 115, 126, 127, 137, 174, 176, 177, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185 Sophocles 97, 98 Speaker meaning (vs. expression meaning) 106 Stecker, Robert 20, 63, 66 Storr, Anthony 44 Subject-object dualities 30 Syādvāda 15, 182, 184, 185

Telos 122, 123, 125 Text vs. work 72 Translation 14, 101, 138, 151, 157 Upaniṣads 14, 179 Vedanta 7, 40 Veronese, Paolo 6, 26 Vivekananda, Swami 40 Ward, Keith 118 Wirkungsgeschichte 8 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 9, 76, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 88, 90, 92, 93, 94, 96