On Interpretation of Arts

In Philosophy of Arts class, I have been taught two major schools of thought regarding interpretation of arts – hypothetical intentionalism (interpretation of arts is based on what is written in the text alongside other literature-relevant evidence such as the theme of the authors’ previous works) and modest actual intentionalism (interpretation of arts is based on what the author says they want to convey, but such has to be supported by what is written in the text) (Lin, n.d.). It seems to me that hypothetical intentionalism and modest actual intentionalism rely on textual evidence, alongside other literature-relevant evidence, to interpret a work of art. The extent to which each evidence plays in the interpretation of a work of art varies depending on the school of thought. I just wonder whether such an approach would do justice to the author, as language may not fully convey what the author wants to express. Let me clarify my point.

Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi believed that language does not fully convey the meanings that a person is trying to convey (Zhuangzi, 2013). I quite agree with Zhuangzi. I shall not provide an analysis of Zhuangzi’s view since I am not well-versed in Zhuangzian philosophy and thus may incorrectly portray what Zhuangzi believes in. But I shall provide a brief account of why I think language does not fully convey what the person is trying to express. I think it is arguable that miscommunication happens all the time. Let alone the grammatical/pronunciation-related/translation-related mistakes and typos, it is also incredibly difficult to convey abstract and arbitrary notions such as emotions. When I ask a person how they are feeling, they may tell me that they are sad. But how could I know the degree of sadness they are facing? Even if I ask them to rate it on a scale of 0 – 10, their numerical estimation and my interpretation of their numerical estimation may be different, i.e. there is no standard calibration for this measurement. Furthermore, their conception of sadness may also be different from my conception of sadness – they may think that being left alone is sad whilst I may find joy in loneliness. 

 Let that be the case, how can we reliably infer the meanings the author is trying to convey simply from what they wrote down in the text? I understand that hypothetical and modest actual intentionalism also refer to other literature-related pieces of evidence, but these pieces of evidence have to be supported by the text (which makes the text an important source to be relied on in understanding the message the author is trying to convey). Furthermore, there may be cases where there are no secondary sources of information on which to base our interpretation, aside from the text, especially in the case where the author’s works are published after the author is dead or in the case of censorship (in which the author cannot make public or keep record of what they want to convey and have to convey their ideas through mere literary devices). In these cases, textual evidence is the only means to infer the meanings the author is trying to convey. 

 An easy answer is to say that relying on textual evidence is the best way we can do to understand the author’s intention, that it is our “best hypothesis”. But I am not at ease with this answer. I acknowledge that I have no alternative to relying on textual evidence (if I had, I would have already written a philosophical paper and tried to get it published). I just wonder whether relying on textual evidence can “really” do justice to the author. On another note, it can be argued that if the author does not successfully communicate to the audience what they want to convey through their writing, then they are not a good author. If that is the case, I would like to question the distinction between a piece of literature and a scientific paper, if what the author has to do is to plainly and straightforwardly write down whatever they want to convey to their audience. Looking at the response at another angle, the struggle that the author faces in conveying their ideas across via texts does not defeat my argument that interpretation of art based on textual evidence may not fully reveal what the author wants to convey.

 The problem I posed in this post is a problem that troubles me personally. Whenever I read a poem or a novel, I cannot help but feel sad that how I come to understand an author is merely through their books and other literature-relevant evidence. The thought experiment that I make - about asking a person how they feel - is not a mere thought experiment for fun. Whenever I ask another person how they feel, I feel very sad that a complicated thing as human emotions is interpreted through a very simple medium as speech and written text. But again, I have no other way to understand the author, as what I have written in the email – it’s the best hypothesis that I can have. 

March 2024, Singapore.

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Works Cited:

Szu-Yen Lin (n.d.). Art and Interpretation. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://iep.utm.edu/art-and-interpretation/.

Zhuangzi. (2013). Equalising assessment of things (Chapter 2). In B. Watson (Trans.), The complete works of Zhuangzi (pp. [page range of chapter]). Columbia University Press.