Abstract
Meanings are interpreted, and what an interpretation amounts to depends on what logic we adopt. For analytic logic, ambiguity is a pathology to be avoided at all costs; therefore, a non-pathological carrier of meaning (a text) must have exactly one meaning. If the text was produced at time X, then what meaning it has at any other time must be the same as the meaning it had at X: the meaning of a text can only be its original meaning, and originalism is a necessity. Often, the original meaning is described in terms of the author’s intentions, though that term must not be taken as metaphysically determinate since it is compatible with a wide variety of construals of what counts as an intention. However intentions might be construed, the uncovering of meaning will require the examination of data (about the author and her context) that might allow the interpreter to make a reasonable guess of what the original meaning was.
In dialectical logic, meaning evolves; hence, the interpretation of a text will be a function of the stage reached by the evolution of its meaning. The same text will carry different meanings at different times and in different cultures, sometimes opposite meanings from one time to another.
In oceanic logic, different readers (maybe at different times) will occupy different positions on one and the same spectrum, and their positions will be more reflective of their situations than of any objective feature of the text. The text itself, indeed, will remain a mystery to them, as they weave words around it primarily to signal and voice their limited perspectives on it.
Any occurrence can be interpreted; hence, any occurrence is a text. But, for someone to be participating in meaningful discourse, they cannot be participating in the production of meaning inadvertently, where “inadvertently” is to be read logically, not empirically—as not committed to a specific empirical way of understanding what it is to be inadvertent. Therefore, logically, there is no real distinction between expressing and interpreting a meaning (there cannot be one without the other), if by someone expressing a meaning we understand her to be engaged in meaningful discourse.
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- 1.
By the end of this chapter, it will become clear that there is a stronger relation between expressing and interpreting meanings than might appear now, and hence what exactly expressing a meaning is depends (as does interpreting it) on what theory of the logos we adopt.
- 2.
To illustrate this last point, consider the following: Leibniz thought that Descartes’ ontological argument was missing a step, since before concluding to God’s existence it had to establish that God’s existence is possible (otherwise put, that God’s definition, as the being who has all perfections, is not contradictory). And he believed that he could provide the missing step by arguing that perfections are all positive qualities and no contradiction can arise among positives. But (as Kant was later to point out; see my 1987, pp. 25–26) is “omnipotent,” say, a positive quality? Isn’t “X is omnipotent” equivalent to “There is nothing that X cannot do”? So figuring out whether a negation is present is vital to passing a judgment on Leibniz’s view.
- 3.
If we regard the whole production of an author as a single text, the problem arises that there are often contradictions among the various statements the author makes at various times and in various works. In dialectical logic, which I will be exploring next, these contradictions are to be read as indications of the author’s evolving meaning. In analytic logic, on the other hand (as I discuss in my 2000), there will be a tendency to apply the usual strategy of dividing and conquering: the “single” author will be split up into a family of distinct authors, each expressing his distinctive meaning—a precritical and a critical Kant, an earlier and a later Wittgenstein, etc.
- 4.
Though it is natural to account for a dialectically evolving meaning in terms of the history of how a text is understood (since, as was pointed out before, that is precisely what the natural, immediate, stance amounts to here), we must recall that dialectical development is not a chronological process but a logical one. Therefore, one could map the development within the text itself, without reference to attitudes taken toward it by empirical readers in different epochs; one could tell a (logical) story about how the text itself unfolds its evolving meaning. One might do this, on the surface, without espousing Hegel’s optimistic, providential outlook: one might, for example, proceed as Jacques Derrida does (beginning with 1974 and 1978) and show the text to behave like a suicide bomber—to work out its meaning one step at a time until it blows itself (and its meaning) up—while implying (without ever quite admitting to it) that such a reading be a critical one (of the alleged consistency of the text). But proceeding that way requires adopting an uneasy, and ultimately incoherent combination of dialectical and analytic logic: conceiving of a meaning developmentally while also retaining an external point of view from which to observe that very development. If one is wholly committed to dialectical logic, as I pointed out in Chap. 3, optimism is not an empirical option but a logical necessity, since each phase of development comes with its own values—in this case, with the prevailing value of blowing texts up.
- 5.
The majority opinion of the Court (which was taking up a previous judgment, also favorable to the right to an abortion, by a Texas district court) stated that the “right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the district court determined, in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” In a concurring opinion for a companion case, Justice William O. Douglas stated, less vaguely: “The Ninth Amendment obviously does not create federally enforceable rights.”
- 6.
The Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws as unconstitutional only in 2003, in Lawrence v. Texas (with Scalia and two others dissenting).
- 7.
“[I]n the Christian religion there is no longer any secret—a mystery, certainly, but not in the sense that it is not known” (1984/1988 I, p. 382).
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Bencivenga, E. (2017). Texts. In: Theories of the Logos. Historical-Analytical Studies on Nature, Mind and Action, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63396-1_10
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