On Limits Of And Criteria For Interpretation

This thesis deliberates on limits of and criteria for interpretation via the discussion ofthe dispute between Eco and Rorty. In the contemporary literary and philosophical world,with the upsurge of deconstructionism, the indeterminacy of literary interpretation hasbeen overstressed or even been exaggerated. The possibility of unlimited interpretationhas caused the interpretative confusion and crisis as recognized by Eco and Rorty, whohave debated on questions like the following: Is a text open to any interpretation that aninterpreter may care to give? Or is it open to a limited range of interpretations? How tojudge the interpretation is valid or not? The exploration of these problems is not only dueto the logical development of the interpretation theory, but also out of need for the criticalpractice in the literary and philosophical world.Based on the discussion of the debate between Eco and Rorty, this thesis presents thefollowing points of view:1) In theory, whereas the number of interpretations of a text is infinitely big, thereare some limits to the interpretations, set by certain criteria.And beyond these limits,some interpretations will be judged invalid or regarded as overinterpretations. The set ofpotentially indefinitely big number of interpretations is quite like the set of odd numbers,the members of which are countless, while being still a subset of the set of integralnumbers, or to put it another way, still being limited within the boundary of the set of theintegral numbers.2) The criteria for interpretation, unlike those we set for "pass" in an examination,are not arbitrary, nor are they preexisting. Indeed there is no such criterion that will setone and the only one lower limit to all valid interpretations, below which all otherinterpretations are invalid or overinterpretations. There may in fact be a number of criteria,like those proposed by Eco: the principle of coherence, that of economy, that ofintertextuality and so on, the violation of any of which will lead to overinterpretation, touse Eco's term. In addition, we do not know what particular criteria are violated until ourunderstanding of the interpretation is under way.3) Coherence is the most obvious and the most recognized criterion for interpretation.Here in our systematic account of the principle of coherence, it refers to the internalcoherence of the interpretation, the coherence between that interpretation and otherinterpretations of the same text, and finally the coherence between all the interpretationsof the text and interpretations of other relevant texts by the criterion of intertextuality.And the coherence under consideration, when used by the critic, is sometimes moreobviously related to linguistic factors of the text than to non-linguistic factors in thecultural and historical factors in the context and sometimes it is just the other way round.4) Although, as we have stated, there is an infinitely big range of possibleinterpretations of a text, the number of the interpretations that can be accepted by aparticular speech community as appropriate or "good" is often limited, conditioned byspecific factors like the state of education and the state of economic development of thecommunity.Having clarified some of the most important issues involved in the debate betweenEco and Rorty by keeping our view on Eco's side and having pointed out our own littlecontribution that has been made in the thesis, mostly in the respect of exposing theprinciple of coherence as a criterion for interpretation, we, however, do not hesitate to saythat this thesis is a venture into a most controversial area of modern philosophy, which is likely to invite criticisms; that we are not claiming that we HAVE solved some problem;rather we are saying that we are more sure than doubtful about a certain issue ofinterpretation, and finally that we are in the hope of promoting some interest in thereaders so that they can go on to conduct similar researches on similar issues pertaining tointerpretation.