Intentionalism against Semantic Autonomy

One of the important issues in literacy criticism and hermeneutics is the intention of reading the text. The question is “Which one of these four elements, author, interpreter, text and context has the main role in the process of reading the text?” Hirsch, following romantic philosophers of hermeneutics, argues for Intentionalism, and believes that the aim of reading a text is to understand the intention of the author. Interpreter or reader is going to reproduce the determined meaning which the writer has had in mind. However many literacy critics and philosophers of hermeneutics such as Barthes, Gadamer and Derrida, in spite of their opposing views, disagree with this theory; then they may be categorized in a class known as the “doctrine of semantic autonomy of text”. According to this doctrine, the text does not contain a pre-determined meaning, which can be discovered by the reader or interpreter. Understanding is a productive process rather than a reproductive one, and the aim of reading a text is not listening to the writer’s voice but to the text’s assertion. This article attempts to put forward the arguments of advocators of the “doctrine of semantic autonomy of text”, as well as Hirsch’s criticism on these arguments.