Validity in

Interpretation
Reading Guide to the
selection from
E. D. Hirschs book,
reprinted in Ross
 How do we decide what is
the right interpretation of a
text?
Banishing the author
Hirsch says its common sense that a text
means what the author means by it. Its
common sense, but lots of people dont
believe it anymore. Hes referring to writers
like T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, to Heidegger
and Jung, and to the American philosophers
Beardsley and Wimsatt.
Hirsch proposes not to banish the author.

Rather, the author is the authority on what

the text means.
 Banishing the Author
(continued)
You dont need to banish the author in
order to pay close attention to his or her
text (p.333).
In fact, by banishing the author theorists
have introduced the critic; somebody must
be the final authority on what a text
means.
If you want the text to have a determinate
meaning, it will have to be the meaning
that the author intended.
Hirsch refutes objections
Objection 1: changeable meaning (p. 335).
It is thought that meaning changes, either
from time to time, depending on historical
circumstances, or from reader to reader,
depending on individual psychology.
But this is just wrong. The meaning of the
text does not change, for the author; what
may change is the authors reaction to the
text (she may come to disagree with or
dislike it).
 Changeable meaning
(cont.)
Notice that Hirsch has skipped over
the change of meaning to readers.
He will deal with this topic in the
next sections.
 Objection 2: The text, not
the author, determines
meaning
What was called (in the 1960s) The
New Criticism made the text, not the
author, the authority about its meaning.
The reasoning behind this is that
language has (relatively) fixed meanings.
Humpty-Dumpty might have claimed
that a word means what I want it to
mean, but authors cant really do that
to language (see middle p. 338, on
Wimsatt & Beardsley).
 Semantic Autonomy
objection (continued)
The semantic autonomy objection fails
because there is never any clear
consensus on what a text means. So if a
text means what it says (to its readers),
then it does not mean anything in
particular.
Question: how would you measure this
view of Hirsch against the common
phenomenon of misspeaking (saying
something different from what you
mean)?
 The unavailability
objection
How can we know what an author meant?
Especially if its someone from many years
ago. The thoughts of the author arent
available to us.
Hirsch responds: of course we cant know
for certain what the author meant. But we
can very often make a well educated
guess; and that is almost always good
enough. In any case, as with most human
affairs, its the best we can do.
 Sometimes the author
doesnt know what he
means
Can an author say more than he or she
means?
No, says Hirsch.
Case 1: Kant says that not even Plato
knew what he meant, however Kant
thought he knew. This isnt Kant knowing
what Plato meant better than Plato did,
says Hirsch, though it might be Kant
having a better understanding of the topic
in question than Plato had.
 Authorial ignorance
(continued)
Case 2: An author might mean more
than she is consciously aware of.
Hirsch responds: Yes, thats true. But
unconscious intention is still intention.
What you unconsciously mean is still
something that you mean.
Question: Does this response of Hirsch
work for you? Suppose you took Jungs
view of the unconscious. Would the
response still work?
 Hirschs bottom line
It is true that a text can only
communicate meaning by means of
its words. But it does not have its
meaning independently of its
authors intention. And in general,
words dont have a meaning
independent of their use by speakers
of a language. That is, they depend
on intention for their meaning.