Week 5 | Notion

Title: Reader Oriented Approaches

Subject: Textual meaning and Historicity

Date: 29,03,24

<aside> 💡 Key Points:

Write it after the class

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<aside> ✏️ Notes:

Main lecture notes

The 60th verse of Surah Al-Anfal (Chapter 8) from The Noble Quran in the English language is as follows:

"Prepare against them what you ˹believers˺ can of ˹military˺ power and cavalry to deter Allah’s enemies and your enemies as well as other enemies unknown to you but known to Allah. Whatever you spend in the cause of Allah will be paid to you in full and you will not be wronged."

Human conciesness
Magical*
The most valid reading of a text is the best reading
He wants to avoid absolute subjectivity
It is Impossible to reject the author from the text
Every text must have authorial intentions
Forgetfullness of author
Meaning and significance
This distinction is to often ignored
Author meaning and readers meaning
Sharable meaning
Authorial ignorance
Kant’s statement of Plato..
Language has ambiguities
Language is the instrument of meaning but sometimes language makes the meaning ambigious
Contextual meaning- contextualizing the meaning
Temporal distance?
Truth and Method
Aim of validation - relative probabilities
Ultimate validity is not possible
Interpretation is the construction of the textual meaning.
Textual meaning is not a naked phsical object.
Semi mystical claims
Paradise lost reference..
Example;
Contextualizing the text is important.
Adem and Eve eating the forbidden fruit of knowledge

Write it during the class

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<aside> 📎 Summary:

A brief summary and conclusion about the notes/lecture

Meaning:
- According to Hirsch, meaning refers to the content of understanding. It represents what is comprehended or grasped by the reader.
- Essentially, meaning resides within the text itself, encapsulating the author’s intended message. It remains relatively fixed and immutable.
- When we engage with a text, we aim to uncover its inherent meaning—the core ideas, symbols, and messages embedded by the author during the act of writing.
Significance:
- Significance, on the other hand, involves the relation of the text’s content (meaning) to something else. It extends beyond the text itself.
- Significance is dynamic and context-dependent. It emerges as readers connect the fixed meaning of the text to their own experiences, cultural background, and present circumstances.
- While meaning remains stable, significance varies based on the reader’s perspective, historical context, and interpretive lens.

Write it after the class

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E.D. Hirsch Jr.

Objective Interpretation: In his work “Objective Interpretation”, E.D. Hirsch Jr. discusses the concept of objective interpretation in the context of literary criticism1. He argues that interpretation and criticism are not the same, and understanding (and therefore interpretation) is both logically and psychologically prior to what is generally called criticism1 2.
Validity in Interpretation: In “Validity in Interpretation”, Hirsch Jr. defines the grounds on which textual interpretation can claim to establish objective knowledge. He defends this claim against skeptical attitudes such as historicism and psychologism, and shows that many confusions can be avoided if the distinctions between meaning and significance, interpretation, and criticism are correctly understood3 4 5.

Hans-Georg Gadamer

The Elevation of the Historicality of Understanding to the Status of Hermeneutical Principle: This work by Gadamer discusses the concept of the historicity of understanding and its elevation to a hermeneutic principle6 7. He emphasizes the importance of historical context in understanding and interpreting texts, arguing that people have a ‘historically effected consciousness’ and are embedded in the particular history and culture that shaped them6.
Truth and Method: “Truth and Method” is considered Gadamer’s major work. In this book, he deploys the concept of “philosophical hermeneutics” as it is worked out in Martin Heidegger’s “Being and Time”. Gadamer argues that “truth” and “method” were at odds with one another. He was critical of modern approaches to humanities that modeled themselves on the natural sciences (and thus on rigorous scientific methods). He also took issue with the traditional German approach to the humanities, which believed that correctly interpreting a text meant recovering the original intention of the author who wrote it8.