Notatki z Folger

The text written by Stanley Fish, which is an excerpt from his book Professional Correctness. Literary Studies and Political Change (Oxford 1995), is an attempt at a presentation and a discussion of the main conditioning factors and the aporia of interpretation. From among the four arguments given by the author, i.e. intention, historicalness, politicalness and interdisciplinarity, only the first one has been established to be an immanent feature of each of interpretations. This results from the conviction that while interpreting literary texts we are always subjected to the pressure of the surrounding premises. It is just the extensive and thorough analysis of these premises, to which the supporters of political, historical and interdisciplinary criticism refer to that makes the author of the sketch possible to show that behind each of the methods there are individual interests and a different vision of the world. To realize these determinants is to enable us to question the very need of universal interpretation. By questioning the theoretical fundamentals of the three mentioned modes of interpretation, the author admits frankly that the work of an interpreter can have both historical, political and just as well interdisciplinary character, though this observation is by all means tantamount to a recognition of the legitimacy of any of the criticized methods

There Is No Textualist Position: Why a Text Can Only Mean What Its Author Intends

Textualists – those who interpret the law or the Constitution by determining what its text meant when the statute or law was ratified – are wrong. The only true meaning of any text is the meaning that its author intends

Advocacy and Teaching

Reprinted by permission of the author, from a New York Times article, March 24, 2007. This article is part of a larger project entitled Save The World On Your Own Time: Or Why Colleges and Universities Should Tear Up Their Mission Statements and Just Aim Low. When a bill before a state legislature bears a woman\u27s name, it is usually because someone has been abducted or raped or murdered. But in Missouri, House Bill 213, or the Emily Brooker Intellectual Diversity Act, is under consideration because someone was given an assignment

Where\u27s the Beef?

A key concern of the papers written for this conference is the relationship between religious beliefs and secular beliefs of the kind that carry with them deep ethical obligations. Are these systems of belief essentially the same or are they different in important respects? The question is typically posed abstractly, and I thought it might be useful to have before us an example of religious belief and the demands that attend it. The example is taken from the beginning of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. Christian, Bunyan’s protagonist, has suddenly become aware that his salvation is imperiled, and he is told that he must flee the wrath to come. But he is does not know in what direction to flee, and when he asks, the answers he receives are confusing and unhelpful

Theory Minimalism

We must begin with a sense of what theory is, and I shall derive mine from a question Herbert Wechsler often put to his students. Ask yourself, he would say, \u27Would I reach the same result if the substantive interests were otherwise? The challenge of the question is to the student who has determined where the right lies in a disputed matter, and who now must demonstrate that, even if every circumstantial particular of the case were varied-if the plaintiff were a woman instead of a man, if the object of hate speech was a descendant of someone who came over on the Mayflower rather than the descendant of a slave, if the publication subject to regulation were The New York Times rather than Hustler, if the organization requesting a permit were the Salvation Army rather than the Aryan Nation-both the result and the reasoning leading to it would be the same. This requirement, in all its severity and stringency, is the theory requirement, the requirement that cases be decided from a perspective-sometimes called the forum of principle, the realm of neutral principles, or the view from nowhere-unattached to any local point of view, comprehensive doctrine, partisan agenda, ideological vision, or preferred state of political arrangements. For some years now, I have argued that there is no such perspective, and that the abstractions usually thought to be its habitation are empty of content. Of course, that is in fact another way of formulating the theory requirement-that it be empty of content. The theory of the kind I am interested in-grand theory, overarching theory, general theory, independent theory-claims to abstract away from the thick texture of particular situations with their built-in investments, sedimented histories, contemporary urgencies, and so on, and move toward a conceptual place purified of such particulars and inhabited by large abstractions- fairness, equality, neutrality, equal opportunity, autonomy, tolerance, diversity, efficiency-hostage to the presuppositions of no point of view or agenda but capable of pronouncing judgment on any point of view or agenda. When faced with opposing courses of action or conflicting accounts of what the law demands, one can ask of the contenders, Which is most responsive to the imperative of fairness? or which most conduces to the achievement of equality? or which will promote the greatest diversity

Commentary

Suppose you are walking in the corridors of a law firm and you hear a person in one of the offices say “You have no consideration.” What do you take the speaker to have said or meant? You might reasonably assume that you have overheard a snatch of a conversation between a lawyer and a client who is being told that he cannot allege breach of contract because in the conversation he reports between himself and the one he would accuse there was an absence of reciprocally offered inducements of the kind “if you do X, I will do Y” or “if you give me X, I will give you Y.” Or, in other words, “You have no consideration.” But suppose further you know that the office from which the words issued is occupied by a lawyer who is married to another lawyer employed by the same firm and occupying an office on the same floor. You might then reasonably suppose that you have overheard a quarrel between two spouses one of whom is saying to the other, “Once again you are acting in a way that pays attention only to your needs and desires and ignores mine entirely.” Or, in other words, “You have no consideration.” There are of course more and mixed possibilities, but you get the point