Interpretation as Consistency

In his article, “Writer, Text, Work, Author”, Alexander Nehamas attempts to offer an alternative conception of interpretation. His version proposes that the aim of interpretation is not to uncover the meaning of a text, but to find consistency.

Nehamas claims that “…interpretation is the activity by means of which we try to construe movements and objects in the world around us as actions and their products”. Texts become actions and interpretation then becomes the business of explaining the relation between those actions in a consistent manner.

To aid in bringing about this consistency Nehamas introduces his notion of the 'author'. Nehamas makes a distinction between 'writer' and 'author': (1) Writers are historical persons who exist outside of their work in truth, that is, writers perform actions that do not pertain to their works, (2) The author figure emerges from the whole oeuvre; authors do not precede the work in truth, (3) The author is a “transcendental” figure that is neither identified with the writer nor composed wholly in a work. As a result of this distinction, all of the actions that are literary works, that can form part of the oeuvre are attributed exclusively to the author figure.

The picture of interpretation Nehamas presents is one of an un-ending process. He calls it a “broadening, extensive process”. The idea is that more and more information is used to shed light on some particular act or set of actions. Thus, as time continues on, we get more and more material with which to further our interpretation. Furthermore, interpretation is about establishing what the work is. “The most we can assume in interpreting a text is that it constitutes a work, not that we know what that work is.”

My problem with his view is that it seems to lose the work. If interpretation is an on-going effort to establish what the work is, we don’t ever appear to arrive at something we can appreciate. Furthermore, we attribute value to works, but if Nehamas’ conception of interpretation is correct, we can never be sure of the features a work possesses and hence cannot assign value to the work in light of those features.

The Trouble With Tolerance

There is an interesting review by Stanley Fish in The Chronicle For Higher Education about a book by Wendy Brown that critiques the liberal value of toleration. You can read all about it here.

Legislating Hate

In On Liberty, Mill argues for a very broad conception of freedom of expression. The only instances when anyone can interfere with the liberty of another is if the expression constitutes "a positive instigation to some mischievous act." An example of this would be yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater or Mill's example of telling an angry mob of poor workers "Corn dealers are starvers of the poor" while they are standing outside a corn dealer's house. Both of these examples seem to result in or at least create a situation where physical harm is caused.

According to Mill, the only justification for interfering with a person's liberty is to prevent harm to others. This is commonly called "the Harm Principle. I am wondering whether this principle would justify some version of hate speech legislation.

Perhaps we could think of a situation where what is said creates the requisite situation described above. For instance, some fairly respected person makes a nationally televised speech blaming a certain population of immigrants for the country's woes, which results in widespread acts of genocide. Should this be punishable by law? Or should it be protected as free speech?