It is fashionable these days to utter: "It is old fashioned to assume that one must experience something in order to appreciate it!" Rather, one engages fully with the text only on the basis of one's reading.
In the initial instance of trying to understand this ideology (expressed above) I understand that it is to be accepted that we are swept along in a similar direction of thought and culture and psychology, by means of a force. On the other hand, if this is not so -- ie. if no objective force is working to keep us all on the same page -- then the expressed perspective that one can understand as much as there is to be understood by reading a text (and not by experiencing) is a reference to inner subjective life, with no guarantee of an underlying objectivity to keep what is seen to be in the text stable. Rather, each reader will have her own perspective on the text. That perspective will be based not upon experience (as per the statement above) but will be based upon a kind of inner dreaming, a kind of randomness, that allows meanings to emerge or disappear, without unifying cause.
An alternative half-way position on all of this is that a text both enables us to dream as well as to process things somewhat objectively (on the basis of having certain reference points in common with others). The assumption here is any objectivity has an a priori basis (emerging from the pure structures of the mind) and not an a posteriori basis (emerging from reflection upon experience).
Let us assume, then, that the meanings to be found within a text are a priori. They are there because of the way minds are structured, prior to any kind of experience of the world. A notional objectivity is maintained in that way, but alas, not objectivity that is founded on anything other than theoretical postulates (ie. it is intellectually unfounded, but merely assumed). This a priori postulation is given as the basis for the "objectivity" of any reading. Objectivity must be claimed, if one is to give any authoritative reading. Without authority, words have only an aesthetic quality, but beyond that, no meaning. So, objectivity is certainly necessary in the interpretation of a text.
Objectivity is necessary, then, but what is the pleasure of reading without subjectivity? This too is necessary -- and it is also necessary that each person's subjectivity is not based on experience, which is the basis of the statement's founding principles. In that case, one can assume that any difference between one person's interpretation and another person's intepretation of a text is founded on differences between subjective dream states. Whilst this may be the case , it is also so that one cannot afford to be purely and wholly subjective -- for to interpret a text in terms of pure subjectivity would mean that texts would lose their basis for differentiation. In a realm of pure subjectivity, all texts merge into one, and whatever would make them unique and discrete from each other (their objective difference) disappears. When all texts become wholly unstable, they merge into each other in a general field of dreaming.
I have delineated what it means to engage with a text on the basis that one is not influenced by experience. I have suggested that one must lean very heavily on the idea of brain structure -- as an a priori universal -- so as to maintain a necessary semblance of objectivity, if one is really to claim to be able to understand something independently from experience.
But perhaps, to have achieved a real understanding of a text is nobody's particular claim?
In the initial instance of trying to understand this ideology (expressed above) I understand that it is to be accepted that we are swept along in a similar direction of thought and culture and psychology, by means of a force. On the other hand, if this is not so -- ie. if no objective force is working to keep us all on the same page -- then the expressed perspective that one can understand as much as there is to be understood by reading a text (and not by experiencing) is a reference to inner subjective life, with no guarantee of an underlying objectivity to keep what is seen to be in the text stable. Rather, each reader will have her own perspective on the text. That perspective will be based not upon experience (as per the statement above) but will be based upon a kind of inner dreaming, a kind of randomness, that allows meanings to emerge or disappear, without unifying cause.
An alternative half-way position on all of this is that a text both enables us to dream as well as to process things somewhat objectively (on the basis of having certain reference points in common with others). The assumption here is any objectivity has an a priori basis (emerging from the pure structures of the mind) and not an a posteriori basis (emerging from reflection upon experience).
Let us assume, then, that the meanings to be found within a text are a priori. They are there because of the way minds are structured, prior to any kind of experience of the world. A notional objectivity is maintained in that way, but alas, not objectivity that is founded on anything other than theoretical postulates (ie. it is intellectually unfounded, but merely assumed). This a priori postulation is given as the basis for the "objectivity" of any reading. Objectivity must be claimed, if one is to give any authoritative reading. Without authority, words have only an aesthetic quality, but beyond that, no meaning. So, objectivity is certainly necessary in the interpretation of a text.
Objectivity is necessary, then, but what is the pleasure of reading without subjectivity? This too is necessary -- and it is also necessary that each person's subjectivity is not based on experience, which is the basis of the statement's founding principles. In that case, one can assume that any difference between one person's interpretation and another person's intepretation of a text is founded on differences between subjective dream states. Whilst this may be the case , it is also so that one cannot afford to be purely and wholly subjective -- for to interpret a text in terms of pure subjectivity would mean that texts would lose their basis for differentiation. In a realm of pure subjectivity, all texts merge into one, and whatever would make them unique and discrete from each other (their objective difference) disappears. When all texts become wholly unstable, they merge into each other in a general field of dreaming.
I have delineated what it means to engage with a text on the basis that one is not influenced by experience. I have suggested that one must lean very heavily on the idea of brain structure -- as an a priori universal -- so as to maintain a necessary semblance of objectivity, if one is really to claim to be able to understand something independently from experience.
But perhaps, to have achieved a real understanding of a text is nobody's particular claim?
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