Conflict of Interpretation

The Conflict of
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SAKSHAM SHUKLA | LECTURER, JGLS | IOSJP SPRING
PA U L A R M S T R O N G
Interpretations and the WEEK 2
Limits of Pluralism
Summary of the text
• The article delves into the debate about the limits of interpretation in literary theory.
• It discusses the disagreement between those who argue that interpretation is limitless and those
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who argue that textual meaning is singular and ultimately discoverable.
• The article explores the implications of these positions and the need for a theory of limited
pluralism to explain the paradox of legitimate disagreements about literary works’ meanings
while being able to identify some readings as wrong, not simply different. (Strong and week
disagreements)
• Hermeneutic circle: the understanding of interpretation and the formation of hypotheses in
literary analysis by highlighting the circular nature of interpretation and the role of belief in
understanding. Armstrong argues that the hermeneutic circle holds that we can only comprehend
the details of a work by projecting a sense of the whole, and we can only achieve a view of the
whole by working through its parts.
Legal Hermeneutics
• Legal hermeneutics is rooted in philosophical hermeneutics and takes as its subject
matter the nature of legal meaning. Legal hermeneutics asks the following sorts of
questions:
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• How do we come to decide what a given law means? Who makes that decision? What are the
criteria for making that decision? What should be the criteria? Are the criteria that we use for
deciding what a given law means good criteria? Are they necessary criteria? Are they sufficient?
• In whose service do our interpretive criteria operate? How were these criteria chosen and by
whom? Within what sociopolitical, sociocultural, and sociohistorical contexts were these criteria
generated? Are the criteria we have used in the past to ascertain the meaning of a given law the
criteria we should still use today? Why or why not?
• What personal or political goals do the meanings of laws serve? How can we come up with better
meanings of laws? On what basis can one meaning of a given law be justifiably prioritized over
another?
Legal Hermeneutics
• Legal interpretivism is conceptually positioned between the two main subfields of
philosophy of law: legal positivism and natural law theory.
• Legal positivism is the view that there is no necessary connection between law and
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morality and that law owes neither its legitimacy nor its authority to moral
considerations The validity of law, for the legal positivist, is determined not by its
moral content but by certain social facts (Hart 1958).
• Natural law theory is grounded in the work of two main thinkers: John Finnis and
Lon Fuller. For Finnis, an unjust law has no authority (Finnis 1969; 1980; 1991),
and for Fuller, an immoral law is no law at all (Fuller 1958). Natural law theory,
generally speaking, is the view that there is a necessary connection between law
and morality and that an immoral law is not a law.
Legal Hermeneutics
• The third theory by Dworkin is that the law is essentially interpretive in nature and
gains authority and legitimacy from legal principles. Dworkin understands these
principles to be neither bare rules nor moral tenets but a set of guidelines to
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interpretation that are generated from legal practice.
• Some describe legal interpretivism as a hybrid between legal positivism and
natural law theory for the reason that Dworkin’s principles seem to qualify both as
rules and to have a kind of normative quality that is similar to moral tenets.
• He insists that legal meaning is tempered by the legal tradition within which it
operates. For the legal interpretivist, the line between legal positivism and natural
law theory is not clearly drawn. Instead, rules and normative guidelines together
shape and form both what the law is and what it means.
Legal Hermeneutics
• While, for the legal positivist, the answer to both the question of what
the law is and the question of what the law means can be found in rules
(Hart 1958), for the natural law theorist, the answer to both questions
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can be found in morality (Fuller 1958).
• Similarly, for the legal interpretivist, the answer to both questions is
found in legal principles. In other words, for the legal interpretivist, law
gains its legitimacy and authority from principles emanating from legal
practice.
Legal Hermeneutics
• However, for a legal hermeneutist,
• There is no foundation to the law for the legal hermeneutist, and there
can be none. Instead, there can only be better or worse interpretations,
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measured comparatively and by the quality of the interpretive practices
used to generate the various interpretations.
• For the legal hermeneutist, objective interpretation simply is not and
cannot be the project. Instead, the search for legal meaning is a critical
project. The search for legal meaning involves critical engagement with
previous and current interpretations and includes critical analysis of the
conditions for the possibility of both.
Legal Hermeneutics
• Legal hermeneutics calls the interpreter of legal texts first and foremost
to the fact that every act of understanding a law is an act of
interpretation.
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• The central question of legal hermeneutics in constitutional theory is:
What sorts of interpretive methods should we use to come up with an
interpretation of the constitution that approaches objectivity despite the
fact that, owing to certain realities about how the interpretive process
works, it is impossible for us to ascertain the intent of the Framers?
Legal Hermeneutics
• Even if we could ascertain the intent of the Framers, which all legal hermeneutists think
is impossible, why would we want to do so, given the nature of what a constitution is—a
living, breathing text designed to govern real people in real life contexts—and the fact
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that legal hermeneutical principles based in philosophical hermeneutics dictate that the
particular time and place, that is, the context, of a given application of a given law
significantly influences, and should influence, the content of the interpretation?
• This is an example of the hermeneutic circle at work in legal interpretation. That is,
from the vantage point of legal hermeneutics: What the constitution means in a
particular instance is importantly influenced by the context in which the interpretation is
taking place, the application, and the context in which the interpretation is taking place,
the application, is importantly influenced by what the constitution means in that same
context.
Legal Hermeneutics
• Contemporary legal hermeneutics looks at -
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• Originalism is the view, generally, that the meaning of the Constitution is
to be found by determining the original intent of the Framers, understood
to be most prudently found in the text of the Constitution itself. (Scalia)
• Non-originalism is the view, generally, that the Constitution is a living,
breathing document meant more as a set of guidelines for future
lawmakers than as a strict rulebook demanding literal compliance.
(Breyer)
Legal Hermeneutics
• Most legal hermeneutics are non-originalists, but what separates the legal
hermeneutist from the average non-originalist is a high degree of respect for the text
of the Constitution as an interpretive starting point, together with a call to heightened
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self-reflexivity regarding the degree to which one’s own pre-judgments, and the pre-
judgments of previous interpreters, may be affecting the interpretive process. (pre-
suppositions).
• Legal hermeneutics is an approach to legal texts that understands that the legal text is
always historically embedded and contextually informed so that it is impossible to
understand the law simply as a product of reason and argument.
• Instead, meaning in the law takes place according to practical, material, and context-
dependent factors such as power, social relations, and other contingent considerations
The Conflict of Interpretations and the Limits of Pluralism
• Radical relativists in literary theory, such as those influenced by Nietzsche's philosophy,

argue that any work allows an innumerable number of readings, and that no
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interpretation can definitively claim correctness. They assert that all interpretations are
necessarily misinterpretations, and no criteria exist within a text or outside it for judging
any reading the "right" one.
• Monists, on the other hand, support the claim that textual meaning is singular and
ultimately discoverable. They argue that interpretation should lead to a definitive
understanding of the text, and they often appeal to the author's intention, norms within
the work itself, or common sense to support their position
The main differences
are:
Interpretive Pluralism
Criteria for correctness

Conflicts of belief
Conflicts of Presupposition
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Difference:
• Radical relativists view the relationship between the author and the reader as one where the
reader's interpretation is not constrained by the author's intentions or the text itself.
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Instead, the reader's interpretation is a product of their own subjective experience and
interpretive framework.
• Monists view the relationship between the author and the reader as one where the reader's
interpretation is constrained by the author's intentions or the text itself. The monist
position suggests that the author's intentions or the text itself provide a framework for
understanding the work, and the reader's interpretation should align with this framework
to be considered valid.
Role of Beliefs
• The first premise of hermeneutics is that interpretation is circular. The classic formulation of the
hermeneutic circle holds that we can only comprehend the details of the work by projecting a sense of
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the whole and we can only achieve the whole by working through the parts.
• All interpretation requires an act of faith, beliefs that compose parts into a whole, hypothesis that we
check, modify and refine by moving back and forth between aspects of any state of affairs and our
sense of overall configuration.
• Every interpretive approach has its own anticipatory understanding of literature, one that reflects its
most basic presuppositions. These presuppositions are both enabling and limiting, as they give us a
vantage point from which to construe the work but they also close off the potential modes of access.
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Three important implications of Hermeneutic Circle for
relations between theory and practice
• Because interpretation always requires guesswork, no rules can guarantee a
successful hypothesis in advance.
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• A theory of interpretation is not a machine for cranking out readings.
Practitioners of any method must start anew and try out guesses every time they
take up a work.
• There is no theory of interpretation that can guarantee pervasive, effective
readings. Any method, no matter how promising, can lead to more or less
convincing interpretation.
Presuppositions
• Interpretation is never without presuppositions.

• When we seek to understand a work without presuppositions/preconceptions,
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we do not escape them. We reproduce them in our interpretation but without
recognizing them for what they are – our own assumptions.
• A Freudian, for example, who believes that human beings are sexual animals
and that literary works are disguised expressions of repressed libidinal desires,
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will arrange textual details in configurations that differ from those of a
Marxist critic, who believes that human beings are social, historical creatures
and that art reflects class interests.
• To embrace a type of interpretation is to make a leap of faith by accepting one
set of presuppositions and rejecting others.
Paul Ricoeur divides hermeneutic field into two
• Archaeological Interpretation – meaning is never on the surface; rather, the

surface is a disguise, a mask that must be demystified to uncover the meaning
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behind it. The rule for reading is suspicion.
• Teleological Interpretation - the rule is trust. Meaning is to be found not behind
the text but beyond- in the goals, possibilities, and values that literary works
and other cultural objects testify to or try to point toward. The appropriate
interpretive attitude is, therefore, not suspicion but openness to revelations.
Interpretations conflict with each other when they embody opposite
presuppositions
• In order to resolve this, identify:
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• Weak disagreements reflect the heterogeneity of interpretive schools, different ways of taking
advantage of the possibilities made available by the same assumptions, or a better as opposed to a
worse application of the same procedures. (2 Marxists)
• Strong disagreements, on the other hand, may begin with differences about how to construe a
particular text, but they ultimately go back to divergences between the basic presuppositions
underlying the opposing methods. (Marxism and Structuralism)
• The inability to reconcile opposing interpretations is a basic fact of professional and pedagogical life.
Need For Tests of Validity
• Armstrong says - ‘Literary criticism is inherently pluralistic but that it is nonetheless "a rational
enterprise," with standards and restrictions built into its proceedings, not a field of anarchistic free
play where anything goes.’
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• Means: literary interpretation allows for a diversity of approaches and perspectives; it is not a
chaotic or unrestricted activity. Instead, it is characterized by a commitment to rationality, with
established standards and limitations that guide and constrain the interpretive process.
• This means that, despite the existence of multiple valid interpretations, there are still criteria and
principles that govern the legitimacy and acceptability of these interpretations. Therefore, literary
criticism is not a free-for-all, but rather a disciplined and principled endeavor, where interpretations
are subject to rational evaluation and scrutiny.
Tests of Validity
• Three Tests - suggests that we commonly invoke tests for validity that act as constraints on interpretation and mark

a boundary between permissible and illegitimate readings.
• Inclusiveness - According to the test of inclusiveness, a hypothesis becomes more secure as it demonstrates its
ability to account for parts without encountering anomaly and to undergo refinements and extensions without
being abandoned.
• Intersubjectivity - Since interpretation is essentially an act of belief, our reading becomes more credible if others
assent to it or at least regard it as reasonable. Conversely, the disagreement of others may signal that our
interpretation is invalid because unsharable. A reading must be coherent, that is, it must make sense as a whole.
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• Efficacy - evaluation of a hypothesis or a presupposition on pragmatic grounds to see whether it has the power
to lead to new discoveries and continued comprehension.
TESTS OF VALIDITY
• These tests act as constraints on the interpretation and mark a boundary between permissible
and illegitimate readings, regulating claims to legitimacy even when unresolvable conflicts
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divide interpretations
• In choosing a hermeneutic standpoint, we decide how we will conduct ourselves, with
what kinds of objects and aims, in what sort of critical universe.
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• Literary criticism is a "rational enterprise," however, not only because tests for validity
act as constraints on its proceedings but also because our critical commitments can be
analyzed and debated.
• If every method discloses some things at the cost of disguising others, then the merits
and risks of its hermeneutic "wager" can be examined and discussed.
• Stanley Fish may be right that "one man's reason is another man's irrelevance.”

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The Conflict of

• Contemporary legal hermeneutics looks at -

• Radical relativists in literary theory, such as those influenced by Nietzsche's philosophy,

Criteria for correctness

SAKSHAM SHUKLA | LECTURER, JGLS | IOSJP SPRING

• Interpretation is never without presuppositions.

• Archaeological Interpretation – meaning is never on the surface; rather, the

• In order to resolve this, identify:

SAKSHAM SHUKLA | LECTURER, JGLS | IOSJP SPRING

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