On Reconciling Monism And Pluralism: Examining Nehamas’s Aesthetic Hermeneutics
Clarification: This essay has been slightly adapted from a paper completed for a Philosophy course
Introduction
The question of interpretation has cast an increasingly long shadow over contemporary aesthetic discourse. It has come to be understood that to speak of interpretation is to make a claim regarding the meaning of a given text, albeit one that does not necessarily entertain any considerations of objectivity. It has become increasingly common to speak of there being “many equally acceptable, even though incompatible, interpretations”, on the basis that any particular interpretation can only be articulated in relation to an interpretative framework specified both historically and culturally. This idea, commonly referred to as critical pluralism, finds itself best expressed in Roland Barthes’s writing on the figurative ‘death of the author’, wherein the notion of authorial intention as constituting the basis for textual interpretation is eschewed, if not dismissed altogether. Rather, the imposition of the author upon a text is considered to exercise interpretative tyranny over it, insofar as texts comprise "a tissue of citations” - reams of cultural and historical phenomena - from which the author is effectively indistinguishable, produced by the textual interplay between these discourses and conventions. For Barthes, it is the reader, rather than the author, that possesses the ability to imbue a text with meaning, constituting the site where this multiplicity of interpretations and citations can be sufficiently collected and unified.
At the same time, this so-called critical pluralism has been challenged on the grounds that the ambiguity of textual meaning, along with the anarchy of interpretation it entertains, prevents any text from being considered “readable”, insofar as this condition presupposes the communication of a single, univocal interpretation. This assertion is typically associated with the concept of critical monism, which in contrast to critical pluralism, asserts that there must exist one objective or definite interpretation of a given text. This position is defended on the basis that by completely forsaking any consideration of “readability”, critical pluralism establishes a paradoxical relationship with the text. Any reading can be demonstrated to constitute a misreading of evidence drawn from the text itself, which begets a cyclical process of positing new (mis)readings in an effort to replace the old, ostensibly deficient ones. This process of constant refutation is thus suggestive of a desire on the part of every interpretation to isolate “an imaginary ‘literal meaning at the origin’” despite the fact that this is supposedly impossible under the conditions of critical pluralism. Monists argue that this paradox is demonstrative of the necessity of determinate meaning, as the constant process of postulation and refutation effectively elides the possibility of textual meaning altogether.
It should be apparent that neither perspective seems sufficiently capable of fully embodying the relationship that exists between textual meaning and interpretation; the deficiencies of each are too great to hold either up as an infallible means of conducting such inquiries. Despite this, there has been little to no effort in attempting to establish dialogue between these two perspectives or, for that matter, reconcile them with each other. To this point, I argue that the critical monism of Alexander Nehamas, far from invalidating either normative approaches to critical monism or critical pluralism, is representative of a possible means of sufficiently overcoming the deficiencies inherent to each perspective. By introducing two regulative principles undergirding his approach to textual interpretation - that of ‘ideal interpretation’ and ‘the postulated author’ - Nehamas is effectively capable of bridging the gap between the anarchic qualities of critical pluralism and the rigidity of critical monism.
Nehamas’s Critical Monism
It is first important to distinguish Nehamas’s critical monism from the normative model of critical monism outlined above. The key difference between Nehamas’s approach and that of other critical monists is that Nehamas does not believe that texts must possess a ‘minimal interpretation’, let alone a determinate meaning, which he considers synonymous with what he calls ‘textual meaning’. The problem with this position, according to Nehamas, is that “textual meaning” cannot be predicated upon the existence of a particular quality inherent to the text, such as ’the rules of language’, as “textual meaning depends on substantive as well as on linguistic considerations” subject to debate. He instead finds common cause with pluralists such as Derrida (and to an extent Barthes), writing “that even the most obvious reading is the result of interpretation and can therefore be questioned, revised, or displaced”.
This, however, does not make Nehamas entirely sympathetic to the pluralist position. He remains opposed to the perspectivism that he believes this position is accorded, arguing against the ‘aspectival’ approach upheld by Peter Jones on the basis that “simply because an activity can be pursued in different ways, it does not follow that different results must be reached; nor that if they are, then they must be equally plausible.” Nehamas holds that “interpretation is… in one sense aspectival, but criticism is not, for this reason, less than ‘objective’”, thus asserting the impossibility of textual interpretations, even if ostensibly incompatible, to be considered equally acceptable. He instead believes that the act of interpretation, along with the revision and disputation it entails, functions as an iterative process concerned with producing an account most capable of embodying all of a text’s features rather than those wholly different from one another. The critical monism that Nehamas advocates, then, should thus be understood as that of a regulative idea, one which effectively litigates between the perspectivism of critical pluralism on one hand and the determinacy of critical monism on the other, in order to attempt to encounter a text in its totality.
The “Ideal Interpretation"
For Nehamas, this totality is embodied in what he refers to as a text’s ‘ideal interpretation’, which he believes constitutes the sole interpretation sufficient in accounting for all of a text’s features. As such, the concept does not appear to be all too dissimilar from the determinacy frequently associated with critical monism. However, Nehamas believes that an ‘ideal interpretation’ constitutes a hypothetical. Any attempt at actually arriving at an interpretation that sufficiently accounts for all of these features is considered unattainable, as “it is unlikely that we can even understand what it is to speak of ‘all the features’ of anything.” The act of positing an ideal interpretation thus appears more akin to that of translation, as Nehamas holds that readings are only considered capable of describing, yet never wholly replicating, features of a given text. As no reading is wholly identical to the text, it thus seems unlikely that there could ever exist an ideal reading of it; there is nothing within it that could prove to constitute a definite anchor a correct or valid approach to formulating an ‘ideal interpretation’.
In an effort to circumvent this apparent impasse and reaffirm the necessity of an ‘ideal interpretation’, Nehamas decides to eschew considerations of a text’s features almost altogether. He instead argues that what is needed in order to approach an ‘ideal interpretation’ is a shift towards questioning; the interpretation capable of answering a greater number of questions regarding a text than another is the one closest to the hypothetical ideal capable of answering all questions. This shift is critical in that it clearly articulates a methodology for discriminating between multiple interpretations and establishes certain conditions upon which these interpretations are to encounter each other. Nehamas, while not wholly dismissing the pluralist argument necessitating the existence of multiple interpretations, is capable of employing this methodology to challenge the corollary that all are ‘equally plausible’ or ‘equally valid’. Here, the answering of questions constitutes a means of establishing a hierarchy amongst all the interpretations of a given text; those that answer the “least” are relegated to the bottom, while those whose scope of examination is ostensibly the “broadest” or the “most comprehensive”, reside near the fore. Incompatibility, then, is of minimal concern, as this hierarchy effectively does away with any and all residual questions regarding the equal plausibility of interpretations.
There remains concern that this hierarchical model does little to actually resolve any of the questions it appears to address. For one, there is the concern that such a hierarchy would itself be rigid, producing what could be considered an “interpretative tyranny” of one over all others, thus negating any claims that this methodology can truly account for multiple interpretations. Nehamas appears to preempt this criticism when he writes that "the direction in which this ideal lies may change as new interpretations reveal features of a text previously unnoticed, rearrange the sign of those already accounted for, or even cause us to change some general critical canons.” Any concerns regarding “interpretative tyranny” are unjustified, as the nature of the ‘ideal interpretation’ is, in his view, incapable of remaining static; they are subject to the same process of questioning, revision and displacement that he (along with many pluralists) accord every interpretation.
This lack of fixity also suggests that the idea of an ‘ideal interpretation’ is a historical construct. Nehamas writes that “to interpret a text is to place context which accounts for as many of its features as possible; but which… to account for, which are more significant than others, is itself a question conditioned by those interpretations of the text which exist.” Any interpretation will thus be conditioned, not only by those which already exist, but by the particular historical, social and cultural conditions responsible for engendering it (and in which reside all pre-existing interpretations). This process is, to a certain extent, a teleological one, as it presumes a logical progression of interpretations; one interpretation will inevitably come to supplant another, irrespective of whether they uphold or dismiss any existing claims being advanced, on contextual, and thereby historical, grounds. As such, any justification of the inadequacy of a particular interpretation is one inseparable from an examination of its historical context.
The functioning of the ‘ideal interpretation’ as a regulative principle and, by extension, a means of negotiating between critical monism and critical pluralism should now be apparent. The ‘ideal interpretation’ should not be understood as obtainable or achievable. It is rather a yardstick that allows for the measuring of different interpretations against each other, with the overarching criterion being the embodiment, however futile, of all of a text’s features; whether an interpretation is valid or invalid is thus wholly dependent on how close it arrives to satisfying this criterion. This framework also affords consideration of the historical context of each interpretation, thus constructing a means by which to trace the progression of shifts in interpretation. These two factors are necessary to conduct a regulated discussion of possibly different interpretations, thus transforming the textual interpretation into a rational project; various interpretations can be adjudicated and examined without having to entirely sacrifice considerations of perspectival multiplicity and subjectivity.
The “Postulated Author”
The second of Nehamas’s two regulative principles is what he refers to as the ‘postulated author’. According to Nehamas, any ‘ideal interpretation’ is necessarily one that is, in some respect, descended, if not wholly inseparable, from authorial intention, maintaining that “to interpret a text is to consider it as its author's production.” This is necessary given that interpretation demands consideration of context, and any such consideration begets construing a text as someone’s production; there must exist an agent capable of synthesizing the numerous symbolic relations found within a text, insofar as this synthesis is held to be an intentional act. As such, Nehamas appears to reiterate the position, upheld by monists such as E.D. Hirsch, that demands authorial intention constitute the sole basis for conducting all textual interpretation.
Nehamas then proceeds to diverge from this perspective on two accounts. The first of these is that the writer of a text cannot, and must not, be conflated with the author of a text. For Nehamas, the writer constitutes a historical person, the efficient cause (the producer) of the text, whereas the author constitutes a postulated agent “whose actions account for the text’s features”; the author is but “a character, a hypothesis which is accepted provisionally, guides interpretation, and is in turn modified in its light.” The author, rather than acting to govern the text, is rendered inseparable from it; it is the text’s formal cause. Here, Nehamas inverts Barthes figuring of the relation between the author and what he refers to as the ‘scriptor’, conceiving of the latter as the entity that pre-exists the text, while the ‘postulated author’ is seen as the entity “born simultaneously with his text”, the one who cannot be conceived as anything but a part of it.
This figuration, however, is subjected to an important methodological constraint that prevents it from flirting with anachronism that such a condition may produce. For Nehamas, the ‘postulated author’ must be historically plausible, positing “that a text does not mean what its writer could not, historically, have meant.” Nehamas supports this by using an example of the historically contingent character of lexical meaning; for him, it is impossible for words with particular lexical meanings to be attributed to an author if and when those meanings emerge after the writer’s passing. Instead, the author embodies “a character the writer could have been, someone who means what the writer could have meant, but never, in any sense, did mean”, historically contingent, yet simultaneously a product of systems (cultural, linguistic, social) that elude capture, if not wholly exceed, any one writer. As such, “a text's meaning is to that extent a thing of the past, though its understanding is itself a thing of the future”, thereby transforming the author into a transcendental figure, one that exists in a “perpetually broadening context” beyond any one text.
In this way, Nehamas effectively rescues the author from the “death” that Barthes and other pluralists have subjected it. For one, the introduction of the ‘postulated author’ acts as a means to separate interpreted meaning from the notion of original meaning, thus liberating “interpretations from the shackles of… original intention.” The writer, now reduced to a historical phenomenon, no longer exercises the same kind of tyranny over textual meaning as accorded by pluralists; they are instead one consideration amongst many, relevant in order to historicize the author they help produce, but incapable of actually doing more than serving as a text’s efficient cause. As such, the “meaning of a text, like the significance of an action, may take forever to become manifest… Each text is inexhaustible: its context is the world.”
Conclusion
The potential of Nehamas’s particular account of critical monism as a vehicle for overcoming the deficiencies of both critical pluralism and critical monism should now be apparent. The two regulative principles, that of ‘ideal interpretation’ and of the ‘postulated author’, that Nehamas expounds should not simply be considered mere methodological interventions within contemporary discourse on the character of aesthetic hermeneutics. Instead, these two principles comprise the formal grounds for treating the act of interpretation as a decidedly historical process, subject to the same considerations regarding revision, disputation and deliberation that govern all forms of comparable inquiry. As such, Nehamas is capable of sufficiently reconciling these two opposing hermeneutic systems while simultaneously formulating a system that transcends both.
Bibliography
1. Nehamas, Alexander. “The Postulated Author: Critical Monism as a Regulative Ideal.” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1981): 133.
2. Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” Image, Music, Text, 4. Washington: Fontana Press, 1977
3. Siegle, Robert. “The Concept of the Author in Barthes, Foucault, and Fowles.” College Literature 10, no. 2 (1983): 128.
4. Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” Image, Music, Text, 6.Washington: Fontana Press, 1977
5. Nehamas, Alexander. “The Postulated Author: Critical Monism as a Regulative Ideal.” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1981): 137.
6. Ibid., p. 139
7. Ibid., p. 140
8. Ibid., p. 142
9. Ibid., p. 141
10. Ibid., p. 144
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12. Nehamas, Alexander. “The Postulated Author: Critical Monism as a Regulative Ideal.” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1981): 144.
13. Ibid., p. 144
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15. Nehamas, Alexander. “The Postulated Author: Critical Monism as a Regulative Ideal.” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1981): 145.
16. Ibid., p. 145
17. Ibid., p. 145
18. Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” Image, Music, Text, 3.Washington: Fontana Press, 1977
19. Nehamas, Alexander. “The Postulated Author: Critical Monism as a Regulative Ideal.” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1981): 145.
20. Nehamas, Alexander. “What an Author Is.” The Journal of Philosophy 83, no. 11 (1986): 689. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2026619.
21. Nehamas, Alexander. “The Postulated Author: Critical Monism as a Regulative Ideal.” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1981): 145.
22. Nehamas, Alexander. “What an Author Is.” The Journal of Philosophy 83, no. 11 (1986): 688. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2026619.
23. Vandevelde, Pol. “The Author’s Intention: The Practice of Translation.” In The Task of the Interpreter: Text, Meaning, and Negotiation, 78. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.11498459.6.
24. Nehamas, Alexander. “The Postulated Author: Critical Monism as a Regulative Ideal.” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1981): 149.