Motives, Intentions and the Interpretation of Texts Quentin Skinner New Literary History, Vol. 3, No. 2, On Interpretation: I. (Winter, 1972), pp. 393-408. Stable URL http: flinksjstor-org/sici%sici=0028-6087% 28197224% 293%3A24 3%3AMIATIOG3E2.0.CO%3B2-6 [New Literary History is currently published by The Johns Hopkins University Press. Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at bhupulwww.jstororg/about/terms.hunl. JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of « journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial us. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at butpy/www jstor.org/journaljhup html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission, JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to ereating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @jstor.org, hupuwwwjstororg/ Thu Oet 5 21:34:01 2006Motives, Intentions and the Interpretation of Texts Quentin Skinner {1 MAIN question I wish to raise is one which seems to underlie several of the contributions to this isme on interpretation: ‘whether itis possible to lay down any general rules about how to interpret a literary text. To raise this question, however, presupposes that one is clear both about what is meant by the process of “interpreta- tion,” and why it is necessary to undertake this process at all. I shall begin, therefore, with the briefest possible consideration of these two prior questions, as a preliminary to my main discussion, ‘The first question is: What is “interpretation”? ‘The term, as Professor Aiken has complained, is used “with abominable looseness by critics and philosophers of art.” It is properly employed, he insists, only with reference to “the activities of a critic in paraphrasing, describ- ing, explaining, explicating, analysing and the like.”! If this is accepted, however, then the term has in fact been used with a fair degree of clarity and agreement by the contributors to this present symposium. As Hirsch puts it, to interpret a text is to “construe it to mean something.” Or as Bloomfield puts it, “if we interpret a work of art, we are secking its significance.” Two caveats are in order here. We must be careful to avoid the vulgarity—which philosophers of art ‘are much more prone to than practising critics—of supposing that we can ever hope to arrive at “the correct reading” of a text such that any rival readings can then be ruled out.’ We must also be careful not to assume that the business of interpretation need always be entirely a reading process. (Hristic has some valuable cautionary remarks on this point in his essay on the drama.) With these caveats in mind, 1 HED. Aiken, “The Aetthetic Relevance of the Artist's Intentions,” The Journal of Philosophy, 52 (1955), 747. 2 The aim announced in Anthony Savile, “The Place of Intention in the Concept ‘of Art” Proceedings of the Aritotelian Society, 69 (1968-9), tor. (Italie added.) 3 Both Hrisc and Righter offer tome valuable cautionary remarks on this point [y thelr contributions to the present sympesiu.394 [NEW LITERARY HISTORY however, it still seems to be agreed (and with this commitment I have no quarrel) that the busines of interpretation can be defined as the business of “getting at the message” of a text, and of decoding and making explicit its meaning, such that the “best reading,” rendering what Hirsch here calls the “best meaning,” can be attained. ‘The second preliminary question is: Why is this process necessary? ‘Why is it necessary, that is, to think of the business of interpreting the meaning of a text as a special and indispensable technique? It is pos- sible, as the contributions to the present symposium illustrate, to give two different types of answer. One stresses the interaction between the text and the reader, seeing the need for interpretation in phe- nomenological terms, as a response to what Ingar here calls “our desire to talk about what we have read.” The other, more conventional answer stresses that any literary work of any interest will virtually by definition be an object of considerable intrinsic complexity, character- istically employing such devices as irony, allusion and a whole range of symbolic and allegorical effects. ‘There is thus a sense, as Bloomfield puts it, in which the business of interpretation is the understanding of “allegory,” if allegory is in turn defined (in his neologistically wide sense) a8 “the seeing of the significance of a literary work beyond its meaning.” The need for interpretation is then seen, according to this, view, in terms of what Valdés here calls the need “to make the work of literature more accessible to the reader.” According to one much- used metaphor, the point is that we must be prepared to “zo beyond the plain literal sense.” in order to disclose the full meaning of a literary work. Or according to an even more seductive metaphor, the point is that we must probe below the surface of a text in order to attain a full understanding of its meaning. ‘This brings me to the main question I wish to consider. If we grant that the main aim of the interpreter must be to establish the meaning of a text, and if we grant that the meaning may to some extent lie “beyond” or “below” its surface, can we hope to frame any general rules® about how this meaning may be recovered? Or are we eventually compelled to adopt what Hirsch here calls the “resigned opinion” that “our various schools and approaches” are no more than dogmatic theologies, generating a corresponding “multitude of warring sects.” 4. Richard Kuhns, “Crticim and the Problem of Intention,” The Journal of Philosophy, 57 (1960), 7. 5 Idem. (Italics added.) 5 My concern here with ruler is totally separate from the concern with lates ‘whieh Van Valen (in somewhat jaunty style) announces in his contribution to the present symposium. ‘Those concems have no relation to what follows here