Content provided in partnership with

Meaning, intention, and application: Speech act theory in the hermeneutics of Francis Watson and Kevin J. Vanhoozer

Trinity Journal, Fall 2002 by Blue, Scott A

<< Page 1 Continued from page 14. Previous | Next

'Georgia Warnke points out that while Hirsch does argue against the anti-- intentionalism of New Criticism, he agrees with their attack of an overlypsychological conception of the author's intent: "In equating textual meaning with an author's intention, Hirsch does not follow Schleiermacher in identifying that meaning with the mental acts and experiences that occurred in the author's mind at the time the text was written. He rather appeals to the phenomenological concept of 'intentionality' to formulate a notion of 'verbal meaning' that is the self-identical object of various mental acts. Verbal meaning, in other words, is the meaning the author intends through certain mental acts, not those acts themselves" (Gadamer: Hermeneutics, Tradition, and Reason [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987], 43-44).

More Articles of Interest: First Theology: God, Scripture & Hermeneutics; hermeneutic of E. D. Hirsch, Jr. and its impact on expository preaching:...; Is There a Meaning in This Text?: The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of...; Word and Supplement: Speech Acts, Biblical Texts, and the Sufficiency of...; benefits of an author-oriented approach to Hermeneutics, The

2E. D. Hirsch Jr., Validity in Interpretation (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1967), 1.

3Ibid., 3. 4Ibid., 5.

51bid., 27. 'Ibid., 8.

'Ibid. (author's emphasis). Hirsch concedes as "self-evidently true" the notion that one cannot know for certain the author's intended meaning. The aim of interpretation is "to reach a consensus on the basis of what is known, that correct understanding has probably been achieved. The issue is not whether certainty is accessible to the interpreter, but whether the author's intended meaning is accessible to him. Is correct understanding possible?" (Validity in Interpretation, 17) (author's emphasis).

Ibid., 8. 9Ibid., 142.

lo. L. Austin, How to Do Things With Words (2d ed.; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), 3.

"Ibid., 94. '2Ibid., 95.

"Ibid., 99-100 (author's emphasis). 14Ibid., 101.

15Francis Watson, Text, Church and World: Biblical Hermeneutics in Biblical Perspective (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 11.

16Ibid., 16-17.

17Watson defines biblical theology as "an interdisciplinary approach to biblical interpretation which seeks to dismantle the barriers that at present separate biblical scholarship from Christian theology. Biblical theology is a theological, hermeneutical and exegetical discipline, and its hermeneutical and exegetical dimensions are placed at the disposal of its overriding theological concern" (Francis Watson, Text and Truth: Redefining Biblical Theology [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997], vii).

Ibid., 98. 191bid. 20Ibid.

21 Ibid., 103.

1bid., 112 (author's emphasis). 231bid.

24Ibid., 112-13. To disregard authorial intention, Watson claims, has serious consequences. Doing so "would be to refuse to strive for intelligibility and to allow the text to fall into a relative or complete opacity and thus to lose the communicative function without which it is nothing" (Text and Truth, 113).

2Ibid., 115. 26Ibid.

27Ibid., 116 (authors emphasis).

2.lbid., 119. 2Ibid., 121. 30bid., 122.

31Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998),456.

s*Ibid.

3sIbid., 202.

'Vanhoozer claims, "Thanks to speech act philosophy, the author has begun to recover his or her voice" (Is There a Meaning in This Text? 214).

Meaning, intention, and application: Speech act theory in the hermeneutics of Francis Watson and Kevin J. Vanhoozer

Trinity Journal, Fall 2002 by Blue, Scott A

Find Research Guides for:

Find Featured Titles for: Health

Most Popular Articles in Reference

Most Popular Publications in Reference