Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Introduction
continue and ask after the criteria for judgment, that is, what
characterizes a successful interpretation? In accordance with
the above it is an interpretation which adequately clarifies an
otherwise cloudy text, clearing the mist from the meaning, but
how to judge whether the interpretation is correct? Here,
understanding enters the centre of the scene:
what is strange, mystifying, puzzling, contradictory, is no
longer so, is accounted for. The interpretation appeals
throughout to our understanding of the language of
expression, which understanding allows us to see that this
expression is puzzling, that it is in contradiction to that other,
etc., and that these difficulties are cleared up when the
meaning is expressed in a new way. (Taylor 1971 p.5)
This appeal may seem unsatisfactory, what if someone doesnt
agree with our interpretation, doesnt see what we see, how
then to decide? The only option open to us seems to show
through further readings of other expressions why the
expression in question must be read according to our proposal,
yet our interlocutor must then agree to follow us further in
agreement with these other readings, and so on, and so on. We
attempt to ascertain our interpretation of a given text by
appeal to further readings, but ultimately then, there is nothing
we can do but to appeal to our common understanding of the
language involved. This is the hermeneutical circle at play.
Taylor puts it further in terms of part-whole relations:
We want to try to establish a reading of the whole of a text,
and appeal to readings of its partial expressions; and yet
5
One way to think about this is taking the concern with coherence as necessary
but not sufficient. As Little (1991) points out, coherence in itself is too weak: We
want reasons to believe that our interpretation is true, and there might of course
be conflicting coherent interpretations. This prompts further questioning,
assessing what material supports which interpretation, and what conflicts with it.
Geertz (1973) on the other hand makes of aware of a danger awaiting in the
opposite direction: Cultural systems must have a minimal degree of coherence,
else we would not call them systems; and, by observation, they normally have a
great deal more. But there is nothing so coherent as a paranoids delusion or a
swindlers story. (p.10). Here the problem is in the craft of construing a more
intricate system of order than is really the case.
6
See Fllesdal 1979
It is essential to a science of
interpretation that these are subjective but not individualistic. Meanings must be
shared, intersubjective and not private, belonging to a cultural whole, so there is
a practice of indoctrination to them. Taylor contends that man is a selfinterpreting animal, and what he interprets himself in accordance with are these
publicly shared meanings. These meanings are thus constitutive of his selfunderstanding (p.48). Our actions are embedded with a purpose sought and
explains by feelings and desires interpreted as something from within the whole
in which we belong. By interpretivist standards, not only then can we only
9
P. Winch Understanding a Primitive Society, p. 315. Q uoted in Lukes (1967) p.257
References
Little, Daniel. Varieties of Social Explanation (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991)
Clifford Geertz, Thick Description (1971)
Dagfinn Fllesdal, Hermeneutics and the Hypothetico-Deductive Method