Intention Interpretation

288 Pages·1992·17.136 MB·English

by  Gary Iseminger

Intention and Interpretation
In the series
The Arts and Their Philosophies.
edited by
Joseph Margolis
Intention and
Interpretation
EDITED BY GARY ISEMINGER
Temple University Press
Philadelphia
Temple University Press
Philadelphia 19122
Copyright © 1992 by Temple University
All rights reserved
Published 1992
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this publication
meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for
Information Sciences-Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials
ANSI Z39-48-1984@)
Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Intention and interpretation / edited by
Gary Iseminger.
p. cm.-(The Arts and
their philosophies)
Includes bibliographical references
and index.
ISBN 0-87722-971-6
I. Literature-Philosophy. 2. Intention
(Logic) in literature. 3. Criticism.
1. Iseminger. Gary. II. Series.
PN49·I66 1992
801' .9S-dc2o
For Andrea,
for twenty-five years

Contents
Preface 8. Wittgensteinian Intentions
ix COLIN LYAS
Introduction 132
9. Intention and Interpretation:
Hirsch and Margolis
I. In Defense of the Author
MICHAEL KRAUSZ
E.D. HIRSCH, JR.
152
II
10. Interpreting with Pragmatist
2. The Authority of the Text
Intentions
MONROE C. BEARDSLEY
RICHARD SHUSTERMAN
24
167
3. Robust Relativism
I I. Irony, Metaphor, and the
JOSEPH MARGOLIS
Problem of Intention
41
DANIEL O. NATHAN
4- The Impossibility of
183
Intentionless Meaning
12. Allusions and Intentions
STEVEN KNAPP AND
GORAN HERMEREN
WALTER BENN MICHAELS
203
51
13. Intention and Interpretation:
5. Interpretation, Intention, and Truth
A Last Look
RICHARD SHUSTERMAN
JERROLD LEVINSON
65
221
6. An Intentional Demonstration?
Bibliography
GARY ISEMINGER
76 257
Notes on Contributors
7. Art, Intention, and Conversation
NOEL CARROLL 271
97 Index of Names
273

Preface
WHAT IS THE CONNECTION, if any, between the author's intentions in
(while) writing a work of literature and the truth (acceptability, validity) of
interpretive statements about it? For the twenty years or so immediately fol
lowing World War II, most of those who thought about the matter, reflecting
the practice of the then New Criticism and echoing Wimsatt and Beardsley'S
seminal paper "The Intentional Fallacy" (1946), would have answered, with
out further ado, "None whatsoever!" Having been trained in that way at that
time, I remember being somewhat taken aback when I first encountered the
central text of what Beardsley has called the intentionalist "backlash," Hirsch's
defense in Validity in Interpretation (1967) of "the sensible view that a text means
what its author meant." I remember reading Hirsch's book and finding that
he not only held this retrograde view but had an argument for it. I remember
setting to work analyzing the argument to find out what was wrong with it,
for I supposed that something must be wrong with it. But one of my principles
of interpretation-of arguments at least, I will not say that it applies to works
of literature-is a principle of charity: do the best you can by the text. And as
I set to work on Hirsch's argument in this spirit, it seemed to me that I could
do surprisingly well by it.
The argument as I eventually reconstructed it-perhaps it is not really
Hirsch's argument finally, for such are the risks of charity-seemed neither to
commit obvious blunders nor to depend on obviously false premises. The
more I discussed it with various philosophers and literary theorists in vari
ous forums, the stronger it came to seem to me. At the least, what the re
constructed argument did was to identify very clearly just what needed to
be assumed if an intentionalist position was to be secured in anything like
Hirsch's way, and hence what the premises were, at least one of which must
be challenged by anyone who wishes to avoid the intentionalist conclusion.
And as I thought about what would have to be done to defend those prem
ises, it seemed to me that almost immediately one got into very deep waters,
not only in aesthetics, but in the philosophy of language, in the philosophy
of mind, and even in ontology.
The idea then occurred to me of a larger project for which Hirsch's argu-
ix