The role of the author in hermeneutic interpretation

One distinction that we need to keep in mind is more or less like that between possibility and necessity. I do not think that Gadamer would deny that it is possible to read/interpret a text with the explicit purpose of trying to recover/understand its author’s intentions. There is such a thing as literary, intellectual biography and obviously individual intentions and other facts about an individual’s (historical, social, psychological) situation are relevant there. However, what Gadamer would deny is that that is the point (the ultimate, true point) of the text, the real challenge that it presents to us. One way of understanding that is by linking it to what I guess is indeed a fact, viz., that dissociated from its individual context a text may present us with several alternative interpretations. Or to put it differently, that different interpreters (or one and the same interpreter at different stages of the interpretation process) may come up with different interpretations, none of which can claim to be the one, true (correct) interpretation. And notice that this seems to hold even in the face of a factually correct (re)construction of the meaning intended by the author.

This introduces a second distinction: that between the particular and the general. Of course, it is the human situation (history, biological and psychological constitution, etc.) that provides the framework within which we are able to interpret and understand. However, does that really constitute an argument against Gadamer? The aspects of the human situation that we need to take into account are general, not particular. I presume Gadamer would have no problems with that, while still maintaining that hermeneutic interpretation concerns the text and the text only. To regard something (patterns of ink on paper, scratches in a piece of marble, activated pixels on a screen) as a text means to regard it as a product of human activity, which immediately brings the human situation into play. It is only when we argue that particular aspects of that situation (individuated along the lines of persons, historical periods, social strata, etc) need to be taken into account in order for interpretation to be possible at all (cf., the first distinction) that we would have a point against Gadamer, it seems.

Then there is the distinction between literary and non-literary texts, which might be relevant for this issue. Take scientific works. It seems that here intentions of the author tend to be less relevant for a proper understanding. In the case of a scientific work it seems that it is quite natural to make a distinction between the content, i.e., the meaning of the text itself, and the author’s intentions, historical circumstances, etc. Of course, the latter are relevant for understanding, e.g., the historical development of a discipline, or the intellectual development of an individual scientist. But ordinarily we consider the fact that Newton was a devoted alchemist as irrelevant for our understanding of, e.g., his first law of motion. Quite often authors explain their intentions in a preface or introduction. But suppose that the introduction would be missing: would we then be unable to get the message from the text? It seems not. To make the point in a different way: could it not be that the introduction of a text actually contained a mistake, not about the author’s intentions, but about what follows from the main text? My guess is that it is possible (albeit perhaps unlikely), but that would mean that the meaning of the text is at least distinct (if not independent) from the author’s intentions.

Of course, we could admit this, but only for a particular kind of texts, viz., scientific ones. With regard to literary texts, the interesting question is whether the same holds (should hold?) if we regard them as sources of knowledge, such as ethical know-how, psychological insights, etc. If (and in so far as) literature is to be regarded as a source of knowledge, it should be able to teach us something over and beyond the concerns of the individual author.

Finally, yet another distinction that I think we need to keep in mind when assessing Gadamer’s views, viz., that between interpretation of texts and interpretation in general, including spoken conversation. One might argue, correctly I think, that in actual, ‘live’ conversations the point is getting intentions across. That is why non-verbal clues and triggers are crucial in such situations. I guess Gadamer is actually well aware of this fact: it is not without reason that he describes writing as ‘self alienation’. We all share the experience of reading something we have written a while ago and not recognising it ‘as our own’. We know we have written it, but we are not able to identify with the meaning of the text. Here intention and meaning have drifted apart. That never happens, it seems, in ordinary conversation. (Except in rare cases, e.g., of extreme fatigue, where we can actually ‘hear ourselves speaking’.) If this distinction holds (more or less), it does seem to indicate that Gadamer’s hermeneutic interpretation is concerned with a different type of object.

Martin Stokhof
from: Interpretation
date: fall 2001

On language as the medium of hermeneutic experience

Gadamer, in Truth and Method: “Interpretation […] is the act of understanding itself, which is realized—not just for the one for whom one is interpreting but also for the interpreter himself—in the explicitness of verbal interpretation.” This is the claim that language is the medium of hermeneutic experience. (And all experience, of whatever kind, is also hermeneutic.) Gadamer insists that the absence of explicit linguistic formulations does not constitute a counterexample: all non-linguistic demonstrations in fact rely on language. 

The general claim, that all understanding is linguistic, i.e., has language as its medium, definitely sounds counterintuitive, since we do intuitively feel that there are things that we understand but that we can not ‘put into words’. 

One thing to bear in mind, tough, is the intimate relation between understanding and interpretation: all understanding is interpretation, and all interpretation results in understanding. To the extent that this sound wrong, it might reflect a hidden assumption about the existence of something like ‘ultimate’, ‘final’, ‘true and complete’ understanding, a kind of understanding that transcends the kind of understanding that interpretation results in. That, Gadamer claims, is an illusion. 

That means that from a Gadamerian point of view our problem in fact reduces to the question: ‘Is all interpretation verbal (linguistic)?’ Again, we need to take that in a broad sense, i.e., without any presupposition of actual verbalisations. (In an analogous fashion, Gadamer argues that we need not worry about linguistic diversity.)

The claim then seems to come down to this: anything that is proposed as an interpretation is in principle subject to questioning, argumentation, justification. This must be so, for interpretation itself is the result of such questioning, etcetera. Asking questions, providing answers, disputing and justifying them, all this is done in language (or in a medium that presupposes language), and inasmuch as there is something that fails to be subject to these language-based procedures it can not part of the interpretation itself (and hence can not constitute (part of) understanding). 

It’s not that Gadamer would deny the existence of non-verbalisable phenomena, the claim is that as such they are not part of interpretation and hence not part of our understanding of something.  (Note that this comes remarkably close to Wittgenstein’s analysis of the ‘tip-of-the-tongue’ phenomenon in Philosophical Investigations, II.xi.)

To what is extent is this a feasible position? It seems it all centers around the question whether we can actually point to the existence of a kind of understanding that meets two requirements: it is essentially non-linguistic; it is somehow connected to the kind of understanding that is linguistic.

The second requirement is the really problematic one, I think. But it also seems justified. For without it, the dispute would in fact be merely verbal: Is there something that is not linguistic understanding? Of course there is. Can we call it ‘understanding’? Well, yes, but what would be gained by that? It is only when we can point to relationships between the two phenomena, that we really confront Gadamer’s position.

So the question is: Can we do that? What would be good examples?

Martin Stokhof
from: Radical Interpretation Discussion Board
date: fall 2004