Should the intent and personal opinions of a philosopher be considered when interpreting his work?
Very often, one hears about a philosopher's work being "misused" by a person or a political movement, or one is told what a thinker really meant when he said something. One sees this a lot with Nietzsche, especially, people always seem to invoke his political views or tell others "what he really meant" when he said that God is dead, and I feel compelled to ask, does it really matter what he meant to say or how he felt about something?
I say no, it doesn't matter what the philosopher intended to say or how he felt about something, what matters is what meaning is derived from his work by the consumer. In literary studies there is this idea called the Death of Author, which essentially says that the intent of the author, and the context in which he wrote isn't relevant to interpreting his work, that whoever wrote a text isn't an author as much as he is a scribe, who came into existence with the text, does not exist outside of writing the text, and ceases to exist with the completion of the text and it's subsequent dissemination — who and what he is doesn't matter, he was nothing more than a vehicle for the transcription of the text, which should be interpreted in isolation, as if we don't know who wrote it or anything about him.
I've always been fond of this, because it releases us from the idea that the only correct meaning that a text has is the intended meaning of the author, and all other meanings derived are incorrect. The easiest example of the literary utility of the Death of the Author is in the interpretation of the book Fahrenheit 451; when I read the book, I interpreted it as a clear parable against censorship, and that seems to be the most common reading. However, the author, Ray Bradbury, would get angry and walk out of interviews when that interpretation was brought up, he said that the book was about the dangers of television. Does that mean that everyone who interpreted it as I did was wrong? No, it means that we derived a different meaning from the text than Ray Bradbury did, and either interpretation is equally right and equally wrong, the meaning that one person derives from a text is no more or less than the meaning another derives from a text, if that other was the vehicle for the dissemination of that text.
Back to philosophy, do you think that the intent of the philosopher matters? Is the meaning that one derives from a work of philosophy invalid if it differs from the meaning that the man who wrote that work derived from it?
I say no, it doesn't matter what the philosopher intended to say or how he felt about something, what matters is what meaning is derived from his work by the consumer. In literary studies there is this idea called the Death of Author, which essentially says that the intent of the author, and the context in which he wrote isn't relevant to interpreting his work, that whoever wrote a text isn't an author as much as he is a scribe, who came into existence with the text, does not exist outside of writing the text, and ceases to exist with the completion of the text and it's subsequent dissemination — who and what he is doesn't matter, he was nothing more than a vehicle for the transcription of the text, which should be interpreted in isolation, as if we don't know who wrote it or anything about him.
I've always been fond of this, because it releases us from the idea that the only correct meaning that a text has is the intended meaning of the author, and all other meanings derived are incorrect. The easiest example of the literary utility of the Death of the Author is in the interpretation of the book Fahrenheit 451; when I read the book, I interpreted it as a clear parable against censorship, and that seems to be the most common reading. However, the author, Ray Bradbury, would get angry and walk out of interviews when that interpretation was brought up, he said that the book was about the dangers of television. Does that mean that everyone who interpreted it as I did was wrong? No, it means that we derived a different meaning from the text than Ray Bradbury did, and either interpretation is equally right and equally wrong, the meaning that one person derives from a text is no more or less than the meaning another derives from a text, if that other was the vehicle for the dissemination of that text.
Back to philosophy, do you think that the intent of the philosopher matters? Is the meaning that one derives from a work of philosophy invalid if it differs from the meaning that the man who wrote that work derived from it?
Comments (40)
Depends on whether you can give an argument about why the author is mistaken about the meaning of what he wrote.
I don't think that it's a matter of the author being mistaken or not, the meaning that he derives from a text is certainly right for him, and the meaning that I derive from a text is certainly right for me. My problem is considering his interpretation, the meaning that he derives from the text, as the authoritatively correct interpretation, as the "real" meaning, to the the exclusion of all other intepretations and meanings derived.
You seem to be putting this in binary terms, someone is authoritatively right and someone is authoritatively wrong. Whereas I'm saying that nobody is authoritatively right or wrong, his interpretation might be right to and for him, but that doesn't mean that my interpretation, or your interpretation is not just as right to and for me.
No, but some interpretations are better than others. For example, someone, on a FB philosophy group, claimed that Nietzsche believed in God, but was critical of the churches. There are some interpretations that are mis-interpretations.
That's not an interpretation of his work, that's a statement about the man himself. It seems to me that you're having difficulty separating a person them-self, from a person's work — frankly, that's baffling to me, you refer to yourself as a "retired" philosophy professor in your bio but you seem unfamiliar with some very basic concepts. Curious.
I'm not talking about the man, I'm separating the man from the work when talking about the work. For instance, I've heard people say things like "this is what Nietzsche really meant when he said that 'God is Dead'" and what I'm saying is that it doesn't really matter what he intended to say, what he meant when he wrote 'God is Dead,' what matters is how you and I interpret 'God is Dead.' The meaning that he derived from those words is just that, the meaning that he derived, it is not the authoritative meaning, or of any more value than the meaning derived by others.
Here's an example that drove me crazy. Verse 48 of the Tao Te Ching (Stephen Mitchell) says
[i]In pursuit of knowledge,
every day something is added.
In the practice of the Tao,
every day something is dropped.
Less and less do you need to force things,
until finally you arrive at non-action.
When nothing is done,
nothing is left undone.[/i]
I was looking at a daily inspirational calendar. The quote for the day was [i]In pursuit of knowledge,
every day something is added.[/i] That partial quote made exactly the opposite point than Lao Tzu did.
So, yes, people's work can be misused, misunderstood.
On the other hand, the rule I've always understood is that the art speaks for itself. I guess the truth is somewhere in between.
No, it was offered by the student as an interpretation of Nietzsche's "Death of God" speech in The Gay Science.
Do you not agree that there can be MIS-interpretations of a thinker's work? If not, why not? If so, what makes an interpretation mistaken?
Well, the way that you worded it, made it seem like a statement about Nietzsche the man. However, even though Nietzsche the man was anti-religious and an atheist, that doesn't preclude a reading of Nietzschean philosophy that isn't incompatible with a belief in God or Gods. His intent was to speak against religion, but I've always interpreted his work as more anti-Christian than anti-religion, that's not wrong or right, it's just what it says to me.
I don't think that there as such a thing as a misinterpretation of a philosophy, a work of literature, a song, a painting etc. For there to be misinterpretations, interpretations that are wrong, there has to be an authoritatively correct interpretation, and usually that is considered synonymous with the interpretation that the author has of his work. This is wrong, it arbitrarily makes the author's feelings about a work the "right" feelings to have, when his feelings are no more right or wrong than anyone else reading the text. It's fallacious to ascribe an objective meaning to works of this nature anyway, but it's even more fallacious to say that not only is there an objective meaning, it's whatever the author says it is.
On Heidegger, it doesn't whether he was or wasn't a National Socialist, it doesn't matter if he ate live children for breakfast. What matters is the work, which should be viewed in isolation from him and everything that he did or was. The work is a separate entity that is only connected to him on the basis that the words were put on the page by a pen in his hand. Everything about him, from who and what he was, to what he intended to say, is in my view wholly irrelevant to the words on the page, which say whatever you or I or anyone else perceive and interpret them to be saying.
We shouldn't be slaves to the meanings ascribed to things by others, we should decide and create our own meanings for things, based on what we feel and perceive.
Your point seems to rest on the idea that the intention of the author is the authoritative meaning, and to that I ask — why? Why is what Lao Tzu intended to say any more correct than what I perceive it to say? It seems incredibly arbitrary to say that the author's feelings about the work are the only correct feelings to have about the work?
Too much authority is given to authors, there is this idea that they own the words and truly know what they mean, but that isn't true. They don't own the words, theirs just happens to be the hand that puts the words to paper. What they think the words mean, means no more than what you or I or anyone else think that they do.
The meaning of a text is what is in it, which is what is available for all to interpert. That does not mean that the author can't clarity what he meant, it means that any such clarification is extraneous to the text, that it is one interpretation among other interpretations.
Sure some interpretations can be better, more useful, more insightfull or more educated but they are all in response to the same text.
I read Lao Tzu, John LeCarre, Stephen Jay Gould, Joseph Conrad, Alan Furst ..... because I want to know their ideas, their stories. It matters because I know and trust them. It matters because, generally, if I get something from what they have written, it's likely I will get something from something else they've written. It's them I want to know.
Are my words mine? They are me.
When he taught me poker, my father taught me the cards play themselves. Similarly, as I said elsewhere in this thread, the art speaks for itself. It is true that artists of any kind can be enormously inarticulate about their work. Saying the artists interpretation is not definitive is fine. That's not the same thing as saying that all interpretations are equal or that a work of art doesn't mean anything definitive. My son gave me a really nice pepper mill for Christmas, but I already have a good pepper mill, so I decided to use it as a hammer. If I fall asleep on the floor, that doesn't mean the floor is a bed.
If your point were only that the author's intent is not definitive, ok. But you mean much more than that. I've said this on another thread about another idea recently - this is the kind of discussion that gives philosophy a bad name. It is a jumble of words tied in knots around themselves spiraling into nothing. Which isn't to say it isn't welcome here. I have nothing against giving philosophy a bad name.
Those are the things that are important to you, and that's fine. That's not the issue, the issue is why is the interpretation of the author more authoritative than my interpretation, or anyone else's? If the intent of the author is right to you, then that is right for you, but why should it be considered authoritative for anyone else?
There is a difference between "the way that I've interpreted this text is such that the intent of the author is important to me, and right for me" and "this is what the author meant to say, so if you interpret it differently then you're wrong." I don't think that there is a wrong or a right in this context, every interpretation is equally right for the person making that interpretation and everyone who agrees with him, and equally wrong for everyone who doesn't, just like food can be equally and simultaneously delicious and disgusting, depending on whose tasting it — if I cook you dinner and say that it tastes Italian, and you take a bite and say that it tastes Chinese, are you wrong because I cooked it and my interpretation of how it tastes is authoritative, or are we both equally right and wrong, it tastes Italian to me and Chinese to you, I'm right for me and you're right for you.
I'm getting the sense, from your comments, that you're not very familiar with what I'm talking about, and that you've never studied philosophy or literary theory at a high level at a university or on your own time. I say that because your reasoning is very much of the fallacious "folksy appeals to common sense" type, as if you've no versing in any sort of higher material. If that's so, there's nothing wrong with that, but the discussion will not be fruitful because I'm necessarily going to be talking past you.
To oversimplify, art is the artist communicating something. She's trying to tell me something whether or not she can articulate it. You and I can disagree on exactly what she is trying to say, but if we cannot at least get somewhere in the same ballpark, then language has failed as a medium of communication. That could be the artist's fault, yours, mine, or the language's.
Quoting Bacchus
Obviously, you and I disagree on this. On the other hand, I have no problem with the idea that different people get different things out of a specific piece of art than other people.
Quoting Bacchus
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha....wait, let me catch my breath....Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha... no, please.....Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ....oh, dear God, help....ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.....
@T Clark
Sure, we're all trying to say something, but it doesn't matter what the author is trying to say, what matters is what you or I or anyone else perceive him to have said. If someone comes up to you and punches you while intending to show you how much he respects you — it doesn't matter that he intended to show respect, it matters what you interpreted his gesture to mean. If you interpret the punch in the face as a gesture of hatred for you, when he intended to show you how much he respected you, would you say that you "misinterpreted" his gesture on the basis of his intentions, or would you hold that your interpretation was valid for you based not on what he intended to say — which is irrelevant — but what he said?
Why only art? Isn't it sort of arbitrary to "this is subjective, but not this"?
This is sort of a non-response, but I came to my conclusion on the basis of your seeming lack of understanding of simple things like Barthes' Death of the Author.
I'm not trying to limit the applicability of what I was saying to just what we call art. So what then? Communication? Language?
Quoting Bacchus
Aw shucks. Me, my paw, and my Uncle Herman was sitting up on the porch drinking Royal Crown Colas mixed with moonshine. Uncle Herman showed us pitchers of his new Blue Tick Hounds so we spent the rest of the afternoon talking about Herman's new ticks.
I'd say that near-everything is subjective, certainly including language. Think of a word, any word, it's a collection of sounds that we use symbolic to refer to something in some way. The letters h o r s e aren't inherently representative of what Linnaeus called Equus ferrus caballus, we ascribe that meaning to those letters and sounds on a completely subjective basis.
There have been many long threads about subjectivity vs. objectivity on this forum. I think that's different than the interpretation of texts. Or am I misunderstanding what you're saying?
Quoting Bacchus
Sure, the sounds of words are more or less arbitrary, but that's at a completely different level of analysis than saying that the meaning of a text is arbitrary.
You frame that question tendentiously. it should be "Is the meaning that one derives from a work of philosophy invalid if it differs from the meaning that the man who wrote it intended?"
Surely you are not going to deny that people can intend to say certain things? Of course they can also more or less fail to say what they want to say clearly, which may lead to misinterpretations. None of this is to say that misinterpretations have no value; there may be cases of important works that find their inceptions in creative misreadings of other texts.
This takes me back a ways. I remember this idea from college days back in the late 1960s.
It is possible to put too much emphasis on the author, his or her particulars, his or her motivation, his or her intention, and so on. The author's biography may not explain anything about the author's work. Or it may explain a great deal.
Divorcing the author from the text, on the other hand, strikes me as... what, stupid? Ill advised? Out of touch with reality? An act of "consumer" hubris to suppose that the reader can know more about the author's book than the author? It is one thing to read a book and say to one's self, "I don't care when, where, what, why, or how about the author--this was a great book" or "This book is just trash". Quite often we don't know anything about the author (usually because we didn't look for any information) and quite often it doesn't matter. It's a different thing to pick up a given book and say, "Hell, I don't need to know anything about the author. He was just the typist. Whatever he thought he was saying, he was deluded anyway, so... screw it. I'll just decide what this means, and it will be right as rain.
So, let me bring the average elevation of this discussion down to earth. The typical pulp porn title (like the "In Hand" series of cheap paperbacks from the 1950s) actually works in the manner that Barthes proposes. The text has no significant relationship to the author. Indeed, there may not even be an "author". The text may have been written by a series of temporary typists who were following formulas such as Use words "Levis", "zipper", "cock", "bulging basket", "throbbing", "hot" ... 3 times per page, and so forth.
The series of gay novels by Phil Andros, on the other hand, were not written by temporary typists. They were written in the 1970s-1980s by Samuel Steward, a gay professor of English in Chicago, aficionado of extremely rough S&M sex (he the slave), and a famous tattoo artist and tattoo innovator who became the "official" tattoo artist of the Hells Angels in Oakland--their choice, not his.
Had one graduated from one-handed reading matter or text (you can guess what the other hand was doing) to Phil Andros, it would have added depth and perspective to know something about the author. Same thing with John Rechy who wrote of gay hustlers in Los Angeles.
Back to the mountain top:
We don't know anything about the authors of Gilgamesh or Genesis, and that's the way it's going to stay, for better or worse. Some people are pretty sure Shakespeare was not the author of the plays ascribed to William Shakespeare, and maybe it just doesn't matter who the author was. There was a definite author, however, and the author of Shakespeare's plays had intentions that shaped his work, especially the historical plays. Was Richard III a villain, or not? Shakespeare had reasons for the role he was given in his namesake play. There was authorial intent and understanding the text requires some background.
This poem can be enjoyed without knowing who the author was, or what his concerns were. It isn't necessary to know what literary references are contained in the lines (like, "I opened to my beloved, but my beloved had with drawen himself") but it helps IF one understand the author's intent, and his method.
If philosophy is not quite the same as pornographic texts or 16th and 17th century poets, it isn't entirely different. Antecedents and relationships need to be considered, especially if you think of philosophy as a long conversation. Who is the author talking to? Himself? Probably not.
Sure, but what the author fails to say is not part of what the author did say, and therefore it is not part of the work. The author's intent is exactly the same as the meaning of the work.
My favorite scene from one of my favorite movies.
That's one of those things about the written text, while speech acts are generally directed at certain people, written texts are there for all to read.
A written text, letter or whatever is available for anyone to read, assuming they can get to read it. Whatever it means it is contained in the work, it is the same as the writer's intention.
Sure an author can read his work, but that work, unless he changes it, is what it is. Speech acts are different than written works. No joke.
I can't understand you here; you seem to be contradicting yourself. Did you mean to say "the author's intent is NOT exactly the same as the meaning of the work"?
Okay, but what if the author intends to say something in a work, but fails to say it in any coherently determinable way? For example, he may think he has said something that is, or could be clear to others, and it is clear to him what he means by what he has said it because he knows his own thoughts, but it is undecipherable to others. I guess you could just say then that that part of the author's intent simply didn't make it into the work?
On the face of it this is the most obvious question.
How can you possibly consider a person's philosophy without. His philosophy IS his intent and personal opinion. How could it be otherwise?
The question is whether intentional-less meaning is possible as pointed out in by Steven Knapp; Walter Benn Michaels in their famous essay on literary theory, Against Theory.
They argue against any critical theory suggesting a proper method of interpretation tied to authorial intent versus what is in the text. They argue that all meaning is intentional, and that there is no such thing as intentional-less meaning, echoing John Searle.
I can't accept that argument because it rules out any interpretations of texts that do not perfectly accord with the author's intent (and that is something which cannot be known or at least fully known); I mean it entails that such interpretations are literally meaningless. doesn't it?
I would say the interpretation of a text that accords with authorial intent is one possible meaning; one might even argue it is the "correct" meaning; but that there are many other possibilities (misreadings).
Why could it not be said that interpretations which involve different meanings than the author's intended ones are intended by the interpreter? Of course in another sense there is no meaning without intentionality (in the sense of aboutness). Different readers may think a text is about different things, and the different thoughts obviously may not all accord with what the author wanted the text to be about.
So who's right?
Is the author's interpretation of his work superior to the readers', or as I am suggesting, nether of these view points are adequate to explain and do justice to the text as such.
"Pious Lord Jesus
Give them rest
Pious Lord Jesus
Give them everlasting rest.?"
Is that the authorial intent, the correct translation?
or is it
"Jesus make it stop!"
The point is that there is no foundational, epistemological method to interpret this or any other text which holds generally for all texts. What is intended is the meaning you get out of the text, and all you can do is to persuade someone else that you got it right.
I'm confused, Cavacava, because earlier you said this:
Quoting Cavacava
My own view is that the author's interpretation should be closer to what she or he intended the work to mean, but that does not mean that readings which may be even more creative than the author's ideas cannot be proposed.
Sorry, I am not clearer but I think what the author intends/means is fully expressed in the authors work, but if you ask the author to explicate the meaning of the text then the author's reading is on par with anyone else's reading/interpretation in terms of its its correctness/incorrectness (in my opinion).
Interpretation becomes a question of taste (because there is no correct general method of interpretation), but perhaps this does not mean that interpretations are relative. We share similar conceptual schemes, and historical backgrounds which we cannot escape, and which guide how we express our intended meanings.
Thanks, Cavacava, I see now that you are distinguishing between the author's intentions as they operated in the creation of the work, and the author's subsequent interpretation of the work. That some intentions that are in play in the creation of any work may be unconscious makes sense to me.