The Philosophy of Interpretation

This is a collection of freshly invited papers by a number of well–known philosophers and theorists attracted to the puzzles of interpretation in the sciences, history, literature, and the arts. Interpretation is usually viewed as a specialized discipline in one or another domain–sacred texts, law and political constitutions, poetry and painting and music. But notably since the French Revolution and the rise of post–Kantian philosophy, culminating in Hegel, interpretation has come into its own as a distinctive problematic bearing on the theory of reality and the conditions for the objective characterization of different parts of the world. It is now noticeably difficult to separate the specialized interpretive work of one or another discipline from larger reflections on interpretation′s role in our account of knowledge and reality themselves. The papers here collected have isolated and pursued the most salient puzzles of what now forms the theory of interpretation.

1. Introduction: The Philosophy of Interpretation: Joseph Margolis and Tom Rockmore. 2.Interpretation and Justification: David Novitz. 3.Conventions and Rules in Literature: Stein Haugom Olsen. 4.Relativism and the Interpretation of Texts: Jorg J. E. Gracia. 5.On Changing the Subject: Paul Thom. 6.Interpretation and Intention: The Debate between Hypothetical and Actual Intentionalism: Noël Carroll. 7.Objects of Interpretation: Peter Lamarque. 8.Interpretation and its ′Metaphysical′ Entanglements: Michael Krausz. 9.Representation as the Representation of Experience: F. R. Ankersmit. 10.Historical Knowledge as Perspectival and Rational: Remarks on the Annales School′s Idea of History: Cecilia Tohaneanu. 11.Interpretation as Historical, Constructivism, and History: Tom Rockmore. 12.Relativism and Interpretive Objectivity: Joseph Margolis