[SK's comments]
[from a bad scan; many things fixed manually, with varying degrees of confidence]
[Greek words dashed out by the still-unilingual SK.]
[266]
Intention
My meaning is what I intend to convey, to communicate, to some other person Now intentions are, of course, intentions of minds, and these intentions presuppose values. Meanings and values are inseparable.
Wilbur M Urban, The Intelligible World
(New York, 1929), p 190
Messrs
Monroe C. Beardsley
and
W. K. Wimsatt,
Jr.
Gentlemen,
You, Sirs, in the Dictionary of World Literature, discussing "Intention," do not deny that an author
may or may not succeed in his purpose,
but do say that
his success or failure,
in this respect,
are
indemonstrable.
You proceed to attack the criticism of a work of art in terms of the relation between intention and result;
in the course of this attack you say that
to pretend "that the author's aim can be detected internally in the work even where it is not realized is merely a self contradictory proposition",
and
you conclude the paragraph
as follows
"A work may indeed fall short of
what the critic thinks should have been intended,
or
what the author was in the habit of doing,
or
what one might expect him to do,
but
there can be no evidence,
internal or external,
that the author had conceived something which he did not execute."
In our subsequent correspondence
you say that
even if a criticism
could be made in terms of
the relation of purpose to result,
this would be irrelevant,
because
the critic's main task is
"to evaluate the work itself",
and
you make it very clear that
this "evaluation"
has much more to do with
"what the work ought to be"
than with
"what the author intended it
[267]
to be."
In the same connection you cite the case of a school teacher who proposes to correct a pupil's composition;
the pupil maintains that
what he wrote
is
what he "meant to say";
the teacher then says,
"Well,
if you meant to say so and so,
all I can say is that
you should not have meant it"
You add that
there are
"good intentions and poor intentions,"
and that intention per se is no criterion of the worth of the poem
I not only dissent from all but the last of these propositions, but also feel that
you have not done justice to the principle of criticism that you attack;
and, finally, that
you confuse "criticism"
with "evaluation,"
overlooking that
"values" are present
only in the end
to which the work is ordered,
while
"criticism" is supposed to be disinterested.
My "intention" is to defend the method of criticism in terms of the ratio intention result , which I should also state as that of concept product or forma figura or art in the artist artifact .
If,
in the following paragraphs,
I cite some of the older writers,
it is not so much
as authorities
by whom the problem is to be settled for us,
as it is
to make it clear
in what
established sense
the word "intention" has been used, and to give to the corresponding method of criticism at least its proper historical place.
Have WB failed in not giving Intentionalism its
place
?
Blood-letting too has a
histor
y.
In the Western world, criticism that takes account of intention begins, I think, with Plato.
He says
"If we are to be connoisseurs of poems
we must know in each case in what respect they do not miss their mark
For
if one does not know the essence of the work, what it intends, and of what it is an image, he will hardly be able to decade whether its intention (--------) has or has not found its mark
One who does not know
what would be correct
in it (but only knows
what pleases
him), will be unable to judge whether the poem is good or bad"
(Laws 668c, with parenthesis from [illegible character] )
Here
"intention" evidently covers
"the whole meaning of the work",
both its truth,
beauty,
or perfection,
and
its efficacy or utility.
The work is to be true to its model
(the choice of a model does not arise at this point),
and also
adapted to its practical purpose—
like St Augustine's writing stylus,
et pulcher et aptus.
"both beautiful and fitting"
(Google, 5 Oct 2026)
These two judgments by the critic
(1)
as an artist,
and
(2)
as a consumer,
can be
logıcally distinguished,
but
they are of
qualities that coincide
in the work itself.
They will be
made as a single judgment
in terms of "good" or "bad"
by
the critic who is
not merely an artist
or merely a consumer,
but
has been
educated as he ought,
and is
a whole man
Well,
it may yet turn out better
either
to
pick one,
or
to
shuttle
between them.
Here
educat
ion
is:
education out of a position issuing
merely
from the one or from the other view.
What could the point of that be?
Perhaps the point is:
for the two sensibilities to (be made to)
coincide
on the
logical
model of the work's own
qualities,
the same way that Langer's 'form' corresponds 'logically' but not literally to her 'feeling'.
The next problem is already hinted at by the given solution: when we "logically distinguish" these "qualities", we are making a "distinction" that neither
an artist
nor
a consumer
necessarily makes. The only properly "logical" correspondence here is that between one (or the other) side of our quality-distinction and the corresponding side of our recipient-distinction.
This is precisely where, as Wittgenstein puts it, 'the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant'. There are two binary "distinctions", and there is a principle for relating them "logically", but there is not necessarily any 'object'; no beetle is necessarily housed in either the
work
-box
or the
judgment
-box,
and no relation between the contents of the two boxes either determines or is determined by whatever we might say.
The 'language-game' takes flight anyway. What of this? It seems that everyone concerned must have been
a whole man
the whole time, "educated" or not. The ascription of
a single judgment
where two or more might have been found is a fine enough illustration of this. It remains only to efface the 'explanation' of a strongly "artistic" or "consumeristic" judgment as somehow less-than-whole.
I think it must be emphasized, nonetheless, that the mere fact of our effortless conceptual regression to such "wholes", whether or not it ultimately amounts to nothing but linguistic 'nonsense', has to be reckoned with, somehow; it cannot just be explained away, even if that's all the treatment it deserves. Anything that can be brought before the mind can, as such, be concatenated with anything else to form a new "whole", or split off and cast out. We can't get ahold of this function of the mind by way of argumentation or calculation. We can't even take our talk of its contents ('on the model of "object and name") as evidence of any real object. Something like a 'phenomenological reduction' seems like the best we can do; and "logic", perhaps unhappily, seems like the very most dangerous thing to invoke.
The
distinction of meaning from use
may, indeed, be considered
"sophistic';
at any rate Plato demanded that works of art should provide for soul and body
[268]
at one and the same time;
and
we may observe in passing that Sanskrit, a language that has no lack of precise terms,
uses one word,
artha, to denote both "meaning" and "use";
compare our word "force," which can be used to denote at the same time "meaning" and "cogency"
Well,
here
is some
linguistic philosophy,
if such a thing ever was!
I presume that the
meaning
-
use
distinction is downstream of particular purposes, and that not all such purposes are quite the same. Ironically enough, then, we need to know exactly what and who AC is referring to here, before we can say very much in response. Here I suspect I'm lacking in some important context.
We can at least say what AC's own 'purpose' here is: to defend Intentionalist criticism; or at least to give it a "history". If we thus find him out-wholing the wholists, this at least can be read against the backdrop of the prime directive: what is it, exactly, that meaning-use wholism has to offer the Intentionalist?
One guess:
this underwrites Spingarn's "modified position":
"the work itself is the intention,' [...] the author's aim can be detected internally in the work even where it is not realized.
(Shipley, ed., 328)
Against this, WB say:
"there can be no evidence, internal or external, that the author had conceived something which he did not execute."
(Ibid)
Who are the real holists here? Everybody and nobody.
'. . . wherever your argument posits two or more things, I say there is really only one thing there, and that it is neither or both, none or all, . . .'
You, Sirs, say in our correspondence that you are "concerned only with poetic, dramatic, and literary works"
Whatever I say is intended to apply to such works,
but also to works of art of any kind,
since
I hold with Plato that
"the productions of all arts are kinds of poetry
('makıng'),
and
their craftsmen are all poets"
(Symposium 205c),
and that the orator is just like all other
craftsmen,
since
none of them works at random,
but
with a view to some end
(Gorgias 503e)
Well sure, if you want to say that
some end
"can be detected internally" from the sheer made-ness of the artifact, that's not strictly true, but it's among the less harmful pragmatic fudges that might be permitted. Here we are safe in assuming that, yes, "the author had conceived something"; namely, that which "he did execute": a 'made object'. It's all right there in front of us, no?
I think it may turn out to be fully undecidable whether or not this "evidence" is truly "internal". In allowing the fudge, we are saying, in effect: the more general the characteristic to be "detected", the more "internal" the available "evidence" will be. e.g. Anyone can see that the thing has been 'made', hence also, 'anyone can see' that the "end" just was: to make something. Or: this is an object that somebody made; the best explanation for why is that they had
a view to
this "end". (But this explanation is able to become 'the best' only by seeking to explain something general. In the explanation game, this is 'playing not to lose'.)
I say it's not strictly true that the evidence of made-ness is internal because even here, with the scenario reduced to its ecological minimum, we are not learning about made-ness for the first time from the work presently in front of us. The holist's outflanking maneuver is available here too. I think it may actually be available in just the case WB seek to preclude it:
"the paradox is only verbal and superficial that what is internal is also public"
(TIF, 373)
But "public possession" (i.e. of language) and "public knowledge" are bigger than any one person. That is most of what it means for something to be "public": not only that no one 'private' entity can 'own' the thing, but also, therefore, that the thing simply cannot be owned privately: a matter of possibility, not only of propriety. The appeal to, e.g., the "whole history" of words (Shipley, ed. 327) sounds nice, but it quickly is shown up as incoherent as soon as it is pursued. Only the whole 'system' exemplifies the "public" quality ontologically, so to speak; whereas nothing that we do with language, or with artworks, exeplifies this at all: it is all fragmentary. Even Wittgenstein's famous "whole culture" remark comes out of this a bit the worse for wear: perhaps he is saying that this is the understanding necessary to make sense out of aesthetic judgment; that is, from a God's eye view. But this cuts the other way, too: the object of our inquiry here, i.e., the judgments of those occupying a culture, just are not made from that standpoint. How could they be? Whom among us "possesses" their "whole culture"? As always, explaining something in general does not always reduce simply to an agglomeration of recoverable explanations of specifics. Just think of the fact that this remark contains, seemingly as a mere throwaway example, the question of whether men and women make art, or only men do. That issue certainly is encompassed by contemporary Western culture; it even has assumed great salience. But must it figure in every judgment? I think the very point of such remarks is for fragmentary elements such as this one to give way. The point was never to be able to force only certain cherrypicked issues, on the grounds that they, obviously, are part of the whole culture.
The public-internal imperative, of course, is not a whole-culture proposition, not even as a throwaway example. It seems more aspirational, i.e. prescriptive, in advance of having actually become a norm either in theory or in fact. There must be criticism; and this is how criticism must proceed. That is a peculiar vision of a world which didn't yet exist. Unpacking the argument is less interesting than seeking its motivation; and now, at least, we've learned that this concern with 'motivation' need not proceed intentionalistically: short of that, we really just would like to know 'what is at stake' here.
The two sides of the "detection" question take, respectively, an empiricist and a rationalist tack. The topic and the tactic are at least interesting and amenable to great elaboration: this is 'fecund' philosophical territory. Still, the issue doesn't seem quite important enough to be the BIG motivator.
I cannot admit that
different principles of criticism
are applicable to different kinds of art, but only that
different kinds of knowledge
are required if the common critical method is to be applied to works of art of different kinds
Meanwhile, our various "craftsmen" and all of their various
kinds of knowledge
are similarly reduced to one
principle
,
so as to make criticism in one principle happen.
The most general case possible of the judgment of a work of art in terms of the ratio of intention to result arises in connection with the judgment of the world itself.
When God is said to have considered his finished work and found it "good," the judgment was surely made in these terms: what he had willed, that he had done
Oy.
Accepting the premise, why should humans judge as God does, or think that they can?
Becker says:
"If you took a blind and dumb organism and gave it a self-consciousness and a name, if you made it stand out of nature and know consciously that it was unique, then you would have narcissism."
(DoD, 2-3)
For an art-theory audience, this can be elaborated:
If you took an out-of-nature organism, took it from merely judging works to being itself the work of a creator-poet, then you would have transfigured the question about intention into the question of the "basic sense of self-worth", and you can expect the answer to be:
'. . .
maximal worth for me, maximal
Intentionalism for everyone else
. . .'
So, the Argument From
God
isn't entirely gratuitous: perhaps it is just another way of revealing of Becker's "pseudopod" phenomenon, whereby cars and houses (and yes, other people) become "brittle" extensions of the primary narcissism. We would like that all of that was somehow 'intended', that it was meant to be, that it has been done for us but not by us, as if to prove our importance and "worth" by showing that we've got the whole universe working around the clock to provide for us; failing that, we'll round up some less "worthy" people and compel them to serve us, and we'll count our very ability to bring this off as, by proxy, just another indication of our place in the universe.
The ratio in this case is that of the [------ ------] to the [------ ----------], invisible pattern to material imitation.
invisible pattern material imitation
In just the same way
the human maker
"sees within what
he has to do without",
and
if he finds his product satisfactory
(Skr alam-krta, "ornamental" in the primary sense of "complemented"),
it can be only because it seems to have fulfilled his intention.
You, Sirs,
in your article
and
our correspondence
have agreed that
"
in most cases the author understands his own work better than anyone else,
and in this sense
the more
the critic's understanding approximates the author's,
the better
his criticism will be,
"
and thus essentially
with my own assertion
that
the critic should "so place himself at the original author's standpoint as to see and judge with his eyes"
If,
on the other hand,
the critic goes about to "evaluate"
a work that
actually fufills
its author's intention
and
promise,
in terms of
what he thinks
it "should have been,"
it is
not the work
but the intention
that he is criticizing.
I shall agree with you that, in general, the critic has a right and even a duty to evaluate in this sense;
it is,
indeed,
from just this point of view
that Plato sets up
his censorship
(Republic 379, 401, 607 etc.)
I think I am failing to catch something here. It would be surprising if WB ever allowed that the critic could
ha
ve
a right and even a duty
to deal with
not the work
but the intention
.
Maybe the
point of view
is supposed to be:
to say what the work (could and)
should have been
,
be that a matter of intention, form, effect, or whatever else.
As for
censorship
,
wasn't Plato concerned with broad social effects? This foists 'content' into its now-familiar role as 'evidence' for whatever verdict the
evaluat
or
wants to give; as the 'cause' of whatever social 'effect'. If the canons of evidence turn out to be very different here than for the New Critics, that may turn out to be much less important than the constancy of critical form.
In more recent censorship regimes, the reason to point up the person behind the work is more to make an example of someone, and to do so visibly, so as to preemptively discourage others from either having or
fulfill
ing
similar intentions. Presumably the Greeks were quite familiar with this as well. Here the "criticism" itself is more truly 'phatic', the content and the canons of evidence more highly fungible. And again, does this mark the change or the constant? It might even be a challenge to Sontag's origin story.
But this is his right and duty,
not as
a critic
of art,
but as
a critic
[269]
of morals;
for the present we are considering only the work of art as such, and must not confuse art with prudence.
In criticizing the work of art as such, the critic must not go behind it, to wish it had never been undertaken;
his business as an art critic is to decide whether or not the artist
has made a good job of
the work he undertook to do.
In any case,
such a moral judgment is valid
only if
the intention
is really open to
moral objection,
the critic being presumed to judge by higher standards than the artist.
Well, then this would not
approximate the author's
own
understanding
as closely as it otherwise might.
There is a whole subfamily of intentionalist propsitions of this sort. Sometime after college I heard a Boomerish name composer say something like this: he 'would no longer accept' many things as easily as when he was younger. He meant: now, everything really has got be right; whereas back then, it was more important to keep moving.
According to myriad footnotes, Husserl's pencil drafts are chock full of marginal notes from later readings: 'insufficient', etc. This is the writer being stricter with himself in revision.
One problem, then, for any claim of
higher standards
for the critic is that the artist is hardly incapable of this tout court. We might say, stating the obvious, that they are incapable of it specifically during and immediately after the creation of the work. But myriad accounts, scholarly and anecdotal alike, speak to a more actionable reason: if one's own censor is not relaxed, it will strangle the work before anything ever gets made.
This combination of possession of the highest self-standards along with the ability, one way or another, to suspend them during the exploratory phase, is itself most of what makes an artist (a contemporary one, anyway). There's nothing worse than when someone else judges your work starting from the twin conceits that they understand your intent precisely, and that their standards of success are simply higher than yours. No level of erudition and no instrumental ends can justify this kind of thing. The only thing that can justify it is social sanction borne of some broader necessity.
There is, finally, a conversation to be had here about that kind of Experimental art whose effects purportedly cannot be anticipated at all without simply being realized.
How impertinent a moral criticism can be when we are considering the work of an artist who is admittedly a nobleman
([----- -------] in Plato's and Aristotle's sense)
will be apparent if we consider a criticism of the world that is often expressed in the question,
Why did not a good God make
a world without evil?
In this case
the critic has completely misunderstood the artist's problem,
and
ignored the material in which he works,
not realizing that
a world without alternatives
would not have been a world at all,
just as a poem made all of sound or wholly of silence would not be a 'poem'.
🫤 🫤 🫤
An equally impertinent criticism of Dante has been made in the following terms:
"It is only as the artist has clung fast to his greatness in sensual portrayal,
without influence from the content of his work,
that he is able to give the content whatever secondary value it possesses.
The real significance of the Commedia today is that
it is a work of art
. . .
its meaning shifting steadily with time
more and more away from
the smallness,
the narrowness of special pressures of its dogmatic significance
. . .
Does the work of Dante instruct or maim today?
He must be split
and
the artist rescued from the dogmatic first."
[...] in making such a criticism [this critic] is not judging the artist's work at all (his intention being to separate content from form), but only setting himself down as the artist's moral inferior
At this point it may be helpful to refer to some specific examples of authors' own statements of their "intentions".
Avencebrol says, [...]
"Nostra intentio fuit speculari de materia universali et forma universali"
Agaın (111 1) he asks,
'Quae est intentio de qua debemus agere in hoc tractatu?"
and answers,
"Nostra intentio est invenire materiam et formam in substantiis simplicibus"
Claude gives:
"Our intention was to inquire into universal matter and universal form."
"What is the intention (aim) with which we ought to deal in this treatise?"
"Our intention is to discover matter and form in simple substances."
Claude adds:
"Simple substances" refers to incorporeal or spiritual substances (intellect, soul), as opposed to composite bodily ones. Avencebrol's (Ibn Gabirol's) distinctive claim is that even these have matter and form."
(6 Oct 2026)
On the other hand, the disciple (here, in effect, the writer's "patron," critic, and reader) says:
"Jam promisisti quod in hoc secundo tractatu loquereris de materia corporali . . . Ergo comple hoc et apertissıme explana" (11 1).
"You have already promised that in this second treatise you would speak about corporeal matter . . . So fulfill this (promise) and explain it as clearly as possible."
Here
the master's "promise"
is surely
adequate "external evidence"
of his inten-
[270]
tion,
and
it is obvious that
the master himself might either consider that he had actually fulfilled his promise in the extant work,
or
otherwise might have said,
"I am afraid I come a little short of what I undertook"
Or,
in answer to some question put by the pupil,
he might either say,
"I have nothing to add,
you must think it out for yourself,"
or
"perhaps I did not make myself quite clear on that point".
In the latter case an amended statement would not, as you suggest, imply that "the author has
thought of something better to say,"
but that
he has found
a better way of expressing what he had originally intended.
On his part, the disciple might have justly complaned if the master had actually failed to "fulfill his promise and very clearly set forth" the proposed matter
In much the same way, when Witelo, introducing his Liber de Intelligentiis, says
"Summa in hoc capitulo nostrae intentionis est,
rerum naturalıum difficaliora breviter colligere,"
etc,
"The substance of our aim in this chapter is to collect, in brief form, the more difficult questions concerning natural things."
criticism will naturally be concerned, not with
the propriety of the subject matter,
but with
the degree of the author's success
in presenting it
As a matter of fact, Avencebrol goes on to say that the reader's proper business is "to remember what has been well said, and to correct what has been said less well, and so arrive at the truth".
Presuming Claude's translations are close enough, I'm not sure what any of this is supposed to prove.
Perhaps WB do not specifically address the issue of
the master's "promise"
until the closing of TIF, a couple of years hence, with the "oracle" remark. Anyway, if all are agreed that Avencebrol's "promise" is "external" (in spite of that "paradox" which is "only verbal and superficial"), then its
adequa
cy
is not the immediate ground of dispute. But this is fully internal evidence, not external. It is a sort of special case, in the present context, though it is hardly so 'special' overall: the writer simply declares an intent, in writing, so to speak; and don't say it's not a "public" declaration.
I'm not sure what to say about this other than to point out WB's narrow concern with poetry. I would think, therefore, that the above disquisition on medieval philosophy is a non sequitur. I presume the contemporary discourse generated by TIF to have sufficiently respected the limits of its direct transfer to the other arts.
What AC has spoken into existence here is an anticipation, however naive, of such conclusions as, e.g., Walton reaches about the fiction-nonfiction distinction; namely, that it is not much of a distinction, or at least not in the ways commonly assumed. It is difficult to argue that so-called "criticism" of the Scholastics should abide by entirely different rules than that of "the poets". The differences which we can most easily observe and point to are not of the sort that are in dispute here: standardly, poetry is not concerned to
arrive at the truth
,
at least not in quite the same sense as is a treatise; and the whole question of
better
and 'worse'
ways of expressing
is entirely supervenient upon the "truth" question.
Walton's whole theory seems to me to approach the anti-ideal of a philosophical theory which is eminently well armored against counterargument only at the expense of describing nothing that exists. Though a Wittgensteinian heritage can be claimed for it, it is more of a pernicious reversal of Wittgenstein's philosophy of mind, whereby the 'object' is clung to ferociously while pretty much everything else 'drops out'. The blurring of the fiction-nonfiction distinction is, to me at least, one of the more convincing turns. The cases where the author simply writes the user manual into the text, internally as it were, are only weak rejoinders to this larger theory. But these cases do have to be considered, as does the conceit (though I am skeptical of it) that, in some cases, 'the work itself is the intention'.
What we're left with, I think, is the uncomfortable (for everybody) realization that the more nonplussing and vehement turns in TIF are, unequivocally, products of presumed differences between poetry, on the one hand, and on the other, everything else that might be "criticized" (that is, "criticized" in the broadest sense that remains appropriate to the present dispute). The rage to "public" accountability for critical verdicts makes no sense unless the alternative is understood to be a severe danger of some sort. WB's case studies clearly show the danger simply by instancing the range of available interpretations. The matter really is no more complicated than that: a treatise which so much as permitted that range would be well on its way, de facto, to being
a bad
job
.
The disquisitor would have made his own bed this way; whereas the poet who is badly misparsed has done nothing wrong.
It seems that the distinction among genres is never so stark as here, in considering reception, and considering it specifically in respect of what can go wrong. But then, we are in the domain of 'interpretation'; we have bought this clarity only at a price. It's house rules, and so there's no winning argument for differentiation and against blurring when everything is negotiable. Who is to say that a statement of "aim", even, is to be taken quite so literally?
At minimum, this forces the conclusion that Walton's utter irreverence of 'speech act theory' is taken a bit too far: precisely to the extent that this permits some real, bad consequences; and precisely for the poet, who is, as absurd as it sounds to say so, significantly more vulnerable to libel than the disquisitor, who risks more in being properly understood than in being misunderstood. The two stand in somewhat of a didactic binary. But then, Walton's theory, and WB's, and even AC's, even Croce's and Collingwood's if we're feeling chipper, all of these theories come from times of consolidation; from a place of insecurity, being faced with the profound 'security' of the Wagners and Brahmses of the world, contrasted with the critics' and metacritics' own trembling fear of killer criticism issuing from outside, from the other who is good as God when it comes to the peculiar dynamics of "criticism" writ large. The Other's Otherness a two-sided valence: as critic, it can be oblivious and wrong; or, it can stumbled into noticing something that should have been obvious but was not, owing to the 'fish that doesn't know about water' phenomenon.
The appearance of clairvoyance can conceal just how much The Other also doesn't know. The difference between fiction and nonfiction, or between libel on a philosopher and libel on a poet, seem like good examples.
Whenever, in fact, an author
provides us
with a preface, argument, or preamble, we are
given a criterion
by which to judge his performance
'. . . say what you're going to do; do it; say what you did . . .'
But it's not really
his performance
that is judged here; indeed, what is judged is "the truth" of what is said. If the writer says they will 'do' one thing, and actually 'does' another, that is certainly one kind of problem; but the important problem here is the content of the intent:
'I will show . . .',
'I argue that . . .'
The important failure in those cases is the failure to prove a certain point.
On the other hand, he may tell us post factum what was the intention of the work
When Dante says of the
Commedia
that
"the purpose of the whole work is to remove those who are living in this life from the state of wretchedness and to lead them to the state of blessedness,"
or
when Asvaghoşa at the end of his
Saundarananda
tells us in so many words that the poem was
"composed, not for the sake of giving pleasure, but for the sake of giving peace,"
such an advertisement is perfectly good "external evidence" of the author's meaning
(unless
we assume him to have been a fool or liar),
and
a fair warning
that
we are not to expect what Plato calls the "flattering form of rhetoric," but its true form, the sole end of which is "to lay hold upon the truth" (Gorgias 517a, Phaedrus 260E, etc.)
Again talks past WB in circular fashion. It seems that
author's meaning
per se simply is not a concern for them.
Maybe the general 'dissolving' of "author's meaning" proceeds from the Private Language Argument:
'There's no such thing as author's meaning, there is only the public meaning, and this is precisely what WB propose to confine the critic to'.
But the broadest version of this argument need not be entered into here at all, not yet, since the above (true to form) lays bear the problem for Coom's own position: to say whether the work does in fact
giv
e
pleasure
, or
peace
,
or both, and/or something else besides, no knowledge of intention is sufficient.
This is where many a critic has chimed in:
'. . . it gives me indigestion . . .'
Then some holier-than-thou has to speak or write an essay about how this is just an opinion, and that criticism isn't about giving opinions.
But then, what makes a fact about fulfillment of the intent to "give"?
Part of the answer, I suspect, is that WB's "public" meaning is more like Wittgenstein's private meaning than perhaps they would like to think. When they say, "what is internal is also public", this is merely a canon of evidence: when one gives evidence to support an argument, this evidence comes from 'inside' of the public object, as if to say: that way, anyone can verify it for themselves. So much for the evidence. But the thesis itself always has the quality of an inference from some evidence, to some discrete proposition(s); and this is precisely where rules give way and spades are turned.
(Going another direction with this . . . the PLA seems to become quite vicious once we actually apply it to social questions in this way. It seems best to appeal to it only when the time comes to do exactly what all concerned here propose to do, which is to try to say, in a broadly defensible and intellectually responsible manner, just what some utterance does in fact mean. If we don't need to say this, or don't need to say it quite so 'responsibly', quite so urgently, etc., then there seems far more lost than gained by forbidding even the private conceit that one's own "meanings" belong to oneself, that they do express something 'private'.) Here is a broad case for the pessimistic truism: 'less said, the better'. i.e. 'Better' if we need not 'say' just what some utterance means. This, after all, is not agreement-in-practice and cannot be taken as an indicator of it.)
Perhaps our authors in their wisdom foresaw the rise of such critics as
Laurence Housman
("Poetry is not the thing said,
but a way of saying it")
or
Gerard Manley Hopkins
("Poetry is speech
framed for the contemplation of the mind
by way of hearing or speech,
framed to be heard for its own sake and interest
even over and above the interest of meaning")
or
Geoffrey Keynes
(who regrets that
Blake had ideas to express
in his otherwise charming compositions)
or
Evgenii Lampert
[271]
(who advocates an "art for art's sake" in the interest of religion!) 2
2 [Cf. F S C Northrop,
The Meeting of East and West
(New York, 1946),
pp 305, 310]
Our authors, however, warn us to expect not figures of speech but figures of thought;
we are not to look for bons mots, but for mots justes.
Ašvaghosa's colophon is addressed to "other-minded hearers".
It is quite likely that a modern critic will be "other minded" than Dante or Asvaghosa,
but
if such a critic proceeds to discuss the merits of the works
merely in terms of
his own or current prejudices
and
tastes,
whether moral or aesthetic,
this is
not, strictly speaking,
a literary criticism.
'. . . I don't know what it is, but it's not art . . .'
Is the point here that WB's "public knowledge", etc., being itself
current
amounts in the end to a mere
prejudice
or
taste
?
The encyclopedia article addresses this specifically.
Beyond that, there can be no reading WB as saying anything else but that "prejudices and tastes" ("idiosyncratic associations") ought not enter into it. All seem to agree on this much.
You, Sirs, regard it as very difficult or even impossible to distinguish an author's intention from what he actually says.
If, indeed, a work is faultless, then form and content will be such a unity that
they can be separated
only logically
and not really
Criticism, however,
never presupposes
that a work is faultless, and I say that
we can never find fault
unless we can distinguish
what the author meant to say
from
what he actually said.
If this is not just more talking past the point, then I have again failed to catch the "author's meaning".
No one has
presuppose
d
perfection.
Presupposing
fault
in its place is no different or better.
He seems to be saying:
there can be no "fault"
in simply making something,
nor in what a work simply is.
If so, he'll find plenty of allies among Modernists, who have certainly used this defense against hostile critics.
. . . 'my child could have painted this'. . . .
Now, is it that your child himself is an incompetent artist tout court, just like the target, with resemblance (of whatever kind) serving as the basis for comparison?
Is it that children do not know what they do, informally as well as formally, such that one yet to attain his majority can't be expected even to have an "intention", let alone to "fulfill" one?
Is it that everyone agrees that childrens' art is bad, except when it's your child; and that this shows how we should also agree that Modernist paintings are bad, no matter the artist's reputation?
I suppose it must be part of any coherent use of "fault" that it is comparative, and that a coherent user should be able to say exactly what the point of comparison is. Fulfillment-of-intent certainly qualifies minimally under this logic.
Now,
in the same vein,
is "fault" necessarily part of
evaluation
?
Is this a silly question?
Quickly searching TIF, the closest-to-hand passage on this is:
"The evaluation of the work of art remains public; the work is measured against something outside the author." (372)
"Measure" could be value-neutral, just like "evaluation".
The question of
"whether the work of art 'ought ever to have been undertaken at all'
We can certainly do that
in a minor way
if we detect a slip of the pen,
just as, also,
in the case of a misprint
we can distinguish what the author meant to say from what he is made to say.
Introduces matters of degree.
Does this lead anywhere worth going? Does it lead somewhere that supports critical intentionalism? Only if these really are the
minor
cases, which they are not.
It is indeed the
way
that is minor here. i.e. These are not the interesting or important cases. But as cases, they are the "major" ones, in the sense of being clearcut and unequivocal.
As it turns out, the easier it becomes to
distinguish
what is meant from what is said, the less interesting and important becomes the example.
Similarly, it is precisely the difficulty of supporting the distinction with evidence that, so to speak, 'attracts interpreters like leeches'.
Or
suppose an Englishman writing in French:
the intelligent French reader may see very well what the author meant to say,
however awkwardly he says it,
and
if he cannot,
he can very well be called undiscriminatıng or uncritical
Well, if the meaning is so
very well
see
n,
then there is just one meaning, not two, and the one "seen" just is l'un seul.
🥳 🥳 🥳
However, it is not only with such minor faults that we are concerned, but rather with the detection of
real internal conflict or inconsistency
as between
the matter
and
the form
of the work
I assert that
the critic cannot know if a thing has been
well said
if he does not know
what was to be said.
Talking past, again, now with equivocation on
well said
,
which can mean a few different things besides fidelity between intent and result. Stipulating that this just is what it means doesn't resolve anything.
And again, the breaking of the speech act into two pieces seems worth resisting on both Cognitivist and Wittgensteinian grounds. WB's 'public art of evaluation' is a prescription to avoid just this, at least, though it seems likely that the resulting evaluation does too good a job of it, i.e., to the extent that it ends up failing really to reflect what almost anyone who is a reader rather than an evaluator actually ends up reading.
You,
in correspondence,
"
deny that it is ever possible to prove from external evidence that the author intended the work to mean
something that it doesn't actually mean
.
"
What then do we mean by "proof"?
Outside of the field of pure mathematics,
are there any absolute proofs?
Do we not know that the "laws of science" on which we rely so implicitly are only
statements of statistical probability?
This works in science but fails here. Why should that be?
It's because the prospective pragmatics of publicly ascribing thoughts and actions to fellow citizens are not the prospective pragmatics of scientific results. Hence the two cases are (or ought to be) handled differently.
In roughly Talebian terms: the downsides of public ascription are uniquely severe, hence this asymmetry of severity must (or should) be permitted to mediate the pragmatics.
Science really is the easier case so long as no guilt or innocence is riding on it. Not to say that science and scientists should not have to answer for their deeds; but if and when they do, we have departed the realm of mere
statistical probability
for the less forgiving realm of social pragmatics.
We do not
know
that the sun will rise tomorrow,
but have sufficient reason
to expect that it will;
our life is governed by assurances,
never by proofs.
Well, again . . . of course
proofs
are to be preferred for anything the least bit important.
I can think of two ways that we end up settling for mere
assurances
:
(1) if "proof" simply is not forthcoming yet the matter imposes itself anyway; or
(2) if the matter doesn't impose itself at all but rather is taken up electively, in which case (1) ensues.
In case of (2) regressing to (1) we should certainly want to know why the 'election' has been made!
It is, then, quibbling to assert that there can be no external proof of an author's intention
It is quite true that in
our university disciplines
of the history of art, the appreciation of art, and comparative literature,
aesthetic preoccupations
(matters of taste)
stand in the way of
an objective criticism
;
where we are taught to regard aesthetic surfaces as ends in themselves
[272]
we are not being taught to understand their reasons.
"Experts understand
the logic of the composition;
the untrained,
on the other hand,
what pleasure it affords."
Thus
the critic's indirection is a consequence of
the imperfection of
the disciplines in which
it is assumed that
art is
an affair of feelings and personalities,
where
the tradıtional criticism
had assumed that
"art is an intellectual vırtue"
and that
what we now regard as
figures of speech
or as "ornaments"
are really,
or were originally,
figures of thought.
Odd developments here: we have the pro-intentionalist impugning
the disciplines in which
feelings and personalities
take center stage, yet insisting that intention must be considered.
The problem with "feelings" must not be that it counts only as "external evidence". There must be some other problem. But what is it?
It cannot be in the distinction between "feelings" and
figures of thought
if for no other reason than that everything that is said here about determining intention applies just as logically and practically to "feeling" as to "thought". In that light, this is just another "moment when his theory repudiates itself".
I say,
then,
that
the critic
can
know
what was in the author's mind,
if he wants to, and within the limits of what is ordinarıly meant by certainty, or "right opinion"
Granting even this much, it could be, still, that we cannot responsibly ask our
certainty
to do the peculiar kind of work that it is here being asked to do. I have already given some possible reasons why this may be so.
But
this implies work,
and not
a mere sensibility
"Wer den Dichter will verstehen,
muss in Dichters Lande gehen"
Claude:
“Whoever wants to understand the poet must go into the poet’s land.”
This is a famous couplet from Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan ... , where he is arguing that to appreciate Eastern poetry, such as Hafez, one must meet it on its own cultural ground. ...
(13 Oct 2026)
What "land" is that?
Not necessarily, though often advantageously, a physical territory, but still another world of character and another spiritual environment.
To begın with, the critic must both know the author's subject and delight in it—sine desiderio mens non intellıgıt—yes, and believe in it—crede ut intelligas
“Without desire, the mind does not understand.”
“Believe so that you may understand.”
The second phrase is a famous Augustinian formula, ... and it is often paired with its counterpart intellige ut credas, “understand so that you may believe.” Behind it lies Isaiah 7:9 in the Old Latin version ... Anselm later gave the idea its classic form as fides quaerens intellectum, “faith seeking understanding.” The first phrase, as far as I know, is not a standard quotation that I can attribute with confidence. ...
(13 Oct 2026)
It seems that
mere sensibility
does
command inclusion as a
necessary
condition,
just not as a sufficient one.
It is laughable if one who is ignorant of and indifferent to, if not scornful of, metaphysics, and unfamilar with its figures of thought, proceeds to criticize "Dante as literature" or calls the Brähmanas "inane" or "unintelligible."
Is it not inconceivable that a "good" translation of Plato could be made by any nominalist, or by anyone not so vitally interested in his doctrine as sometimes to be able even to "read between the lines" of what is actually said?
Is it not just this that Dante demands when he says,
O voi, che avete gl'intelletti sani,
Mirate la dottrina, che s'asconde
Sotto il velame deglı versi strani?
I assert, from personal experience, that
one can so identify oneself
with a subject and point of view that
one can foresee what will be said next,
and even make deductions which one afterwards meets with as explicit
[273]
statements in some other part of the book or in a work belonging to the same school of thought.
If, in fact, one cannot do this, textual emendation would be possible only on grammatical or metrical grounds.
I fully agree that interpretation in terms of what an author "must have thought" can be very dangerous.
But when?
Only if
the critic has identified,
not himself with the author,
but the author with himself,
and
is really telling us
not
what the author must have meant
but
what he would have liked the author to mean,
i. e.,
what in his opinion the author "ought to have meant."
All agree on this. Of all things.
So, the compromise is: interpretation in terms of what an author probably but not certainly thought.
That is far more sophisticated and more viable than my comments so far are bound to suggest. It's a case of 'keeping two things before the mind at once'. Difficult, perhaps, but hardly radical.
That said, it's a slippery slope that runs between
identify
ing
oneself with
a point of view
and
telling us
what
the author "ought to have meant"
.
This suggests an Intentionalism of 'good intentions', i.e. on the critic's part. But it would be better (for everyone) if such 'critics' instead thought and wrote as peer-contributors to whatever discourse it is they have so thoroughly "identified" themselves with. Here again I don't see how AC can avoid making some concessions to genre: many poems are responses to other (earlier) poems, as are treatises responses to treatises; but a treatise need not be 'poetic' in order to make an effective 'response'.
To thoroughgoingly deny this, one should have to explain why criticism per se is preeminently a response to artworks; why there more are wine critics than beer critics; why food critics visit restaurants rather than supermarkets.
This last is a matter about which a literary critic, as such, can hold no views, because he is setting about to criticize
an existing work,
and not
its antecedent causes
If the critic does presume to tell us what an author ought to have meant, this is a condemnation of the author's intentions, which existed before the work was made accessible to anyone.
We can, and have a right to, criticize intentions, but we can not criticize an actual performance ante factum
Finally, in our correspondence
you, Sirs, say that
your terms
"evaluaton" and "worth,"
"should" and "ought"
refer
"not to moral oughts
but to aesthetic oughts."
Here, I think, we have a very good example of the case in which a writer's intention is one thing, and the meaning conveyed by what he actually says is another
For consider your own example of the schoolteacher:
it is only as a moral instructor that she can tell a pupil that,
"You should not have meant what you meant to say."
As a literary critic she could only have said,
"You have not clearly expressed what you wanted to say"
As to that,
she can form a sound judgment in terms of intention and result,
for
if she is a good teacher
she not only
knows the pupil well,
but
will be able to understand him when he explains to her just what it was that he meant to say.
On the other hand,
if she tells him
what he "ought not to mean"
("naughty, naughty!"),
that amounts to a criticism of
what the Japanese call
"dangerous thoughts,"
and
belongs to the same prudentual field that would be involved
if
she had told him
what he "ought not to do";
for
thinking is a form of action,
and
not a making
until
the thought is
clothed in a material vehıcle,
for example
of sound
if the thought is expressed in a poem,
or
of pigment in a paintng.
Now I fully agree with you that
"intention per se" is no criterion of the worth of a poem
(even if "worth" is to be taken amorally),
in the same way that
a good intention is no guarantee of actual good conduct;
in both cases
there must
[274]
be
not only a will,
but also
the power to realize the purpose
On the other hand,
an evil intention need not result in a poor work of art;
if it miscarries,
it can be ridiculed or ignored,
if it succeeds,
the artist
(whether a pornographer or a skillful murderer)
is liable to punishment
A dictator's strategy or oratory is not necessarily bad as such merely because we disapprove of his aims;
it may, in fact,
be much better than ours,
however excellent our own intentions,
and
if it is worse,
we cannot call him a bad man on that account,
but only a bad soldier or poor speaker
All making or doing
has reasons or ends,
but in either case there may,
for a great variety of reasons,
be a failure to hit the mark.
It would be absurd to pretend that we do not know
what the archer intends,
or to say that we must not call him a poor shooter if he misses.
The "sin"
(properly defined as
"any departure
from the order
to the end"
) may be either artistic or moral.
In the present discussion,
I think,
our common intention was
to consider only artistic virtue or error
It is precisely from this point of view that I cannot understand
your terms
"what the work of art ought to be,"
or "should be"
as an "ought"
to be distunguished from the gerundive—faciendum—implied in the author's intention to produce a work that shall be
as good as possible of its kind
He cannot have in view to produce a work that is simply "beautiful" or "good,"
because
all making by art is occasional
and can be directed only to particular and not to universal ends.8
8 The artist's intention is (artifex intendit) to give his work the best possible arrangement,
not indefinitely,
but with respect to a given end—
if the agent were not
determinate to some given effect,
it would not
do one thing
rather than another
(Sum Theol 1 91 3 and 11 1 1 2).
To say that the artist
does not know what it is
he wants to do
until he has finally succeeded
in doing what he wants to do
(W F Tomlın in
Purpose,
XI, 1939, р 46)
is
an
ahetuvada
that would
stultify all rational effort
and that could only be justified by a purely mechanical theory of inspiration or automatism that excludes the possibilty of intelligent co-operation on the artist's part.
So far from this,
it is,
as Aristotle says,
the end
(-----)
that in all makıng determines the procedure
(Physics,
11 2.194ab, 11 9 222)
[Cf.
Leonardo's views
in
A. Blunt,
Artistic Theory in Italy
(Oxford, 1940), pp 36-37]
Well,
who is
really
the
mechanical
one here?
I would say that he who not only puts his faith in
rational effort
but actually demands only this from his artists, must have a pretty good claim.
This further distinguishes WB's position as a Liberal position: appeal to an impersonal public order is one way of dealing with uncertainty of outcome; and of course, the Intentionalist must agree that his is not really a method for eliminating uncertainty of outcome, but only for taking account of this uncertainty along one such available avenue.
The only possible literary criticism of an already existing and extant work is one in terms of the ratio of intention to result.
No other form of criticism can be called objective, because
there are no degrees of perfection,
and we cannot say that one work of art, as such, is
worth more than another,
if
both are perfect in their kind
We can, however, go behind the work of art itself,
as if it were not yet extant,
to inquire whether or not it ought ever to have been
[275]
undertaken at all,
If
we read this as:
whether or not
the intended work
ought ever to have been
intended,
then
this seems (unexpectedly) to end in criticism
(1) of a person rather than a work,
(2) according to public standards rather than private ones.
and so also decide whether or not it is worth preserving
That may be,
and I hold that it is,
a very proper inquiry9,
but
it is not literary criticism
nor the criticism of any work of art
qua
work of art,
it is a criticism of the author's intentions.
9
S. L. Bethell
in
the
New English Weekly,
for September 30, 1943
very justly points out that
as literary works express,
not literary values
but just values
technical criticism
must be supplemented by
value judgments
and
the latter cannot validly be made without reference to theological or philosophical categories;
and
I am glad that
you,
Sirs,
really make this point,
although
you deny your
intention
to do so.
[Addendum
When I say
intendo in hoc
this means
a direction towards something as to its last end,
in which it intends to rest
and with which it desres to be united,
St. Bonaventura,
II Sent,
d 38,
a 2,
2 2,
concl
11 892b]
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