1

I

Translated by

Kathleen BlameY

and

John B. Thompson

FROM. TEXTTO ACTION

Essays inHerrneneutics, ll

Paul Ricoeur

:

Northwestern UniversitY PressEvanston, l l l inois

1 991

\Sts/qt t-gtot -ônv_l

5

Whatls a Text?Explanation andUnderstanding

.f blr essay will be devoted primarily to the debate between two fun---

l-.- du*.ntal attitudes that may be adopted in regard to a text. TheseI two attitudes were summed up, in the period of Wilhelm Dilthey at

the end of the last century, by the two words explanation and inter-pretation. For Dilthey, explanation referred to the model of intelligibilityborrowed from the natural sciences and applied to the historical disci-plines by positivist schools; interpretation, on the other hand, was a de-

,rivative form of understanding, which Dilthey regarded as the

fundamental attitudè of the human sciences and as that which could

alone preserve the fundamental difference between these sciences and

the sciences of nature. Here I propose to examine the fate of this opposi-tion in the light of conflicts between contemporary schools. For the no-

tign of explanation has since been displaced, so that it derives no longer

from the natirral sciences but fiom properly linguistic models. As re-

gards the concept of interpretation, it has undergone profound trans-format ions that d is tance i t ' f rom the psychological not ion of

understanding, in Dilthey's sense of the word. It is this new position of

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the problem, perhaps less contradictory and more fecund, which Ishould like to explore. But before unfolding the new concepts of expla-nation and understanding, I should like to pause at a preliminary ques-tion that in fact dominates the whole of our investigation. The questionis this: what is a text?

r. What ls a Text?

Let us say that a text is any discourse fixed by writing. According to thisdefinition, fixation by writing is constitutive of the text itself. But rvhat isfixed by writing? We have said: any discourse. Is this to say that discoursehad to be pronounced initially in a physical or mental form? that all writ-ing was initially, at least in a potential way, speaking? In short, what is therelation of the text to speech? /

To begin with, we are tempted to say that all writing is added tosome anterior speech. For if by speech lparole] rve understand, with Fer-dinand de Saussure, the realization of Language llanguel in an event'ofdiscourse, the production of an individual utterance by an individualspeaker, then each text is in the same position as speech with respect tolanguage. Moreover, writing as an institution is subsequent to speechand seems merely to fil in linear script all the articulations that havealready appeared orally. The attention given most exclusively to pho-netic writings seems to confirm that writing adds nothing to the phenom-enon of speech other than the fixation that enables it to be conserved.Whence the conviction that writing is fixed speech, that inscription,whether it be graphics or recording, is inscription of speech-an inscrip-tion that, thanks to the subsisting character of the engraving, guaranteesthe persistence of speech.

The psychological and sociological priority of speech over writingis not in question. It may be asked, however, whether the late appear-ance of writing has not prov<,rked a radical change in our relation to thevery statements of our discourse. For let us return to our definition: thetext is a discourse fixed by writing.lWhat is fixed by writing is thus adiscourse that could be said, of course, but that is written precisely be-cause it is not said. Fixation by writing takes the very place of speech,occurring at the site where speech could have emergedJThis suggeststhat a text is really a text only when it is not restricted to transcribing ananterior speech, when instead it inscribes directly in written letters whatthe discourse means.

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This idea of a direct relation between the meaning of the state-ment and u'riting can be supported by reflecting on the function of read-ing in relation to writing. Writing calls for reading in a way that willenable us shortly to introduce the concept of interpretation. For the mo-ment, let us say that the reader takes the place of the interlocutor, just aswriting takes the place of speaking and the speaker. The writing-readingrelation is thus not a particular case of the speaking-answering relation.It is not a relation of interlocution, not an instance of dialogue. It doesnot sufÊc-- to say that reading is a dialogue with the aurhor through hiswork, for the relation of the reader to the book is of a completely differ-ent nature. Dialogue is an exchange of questions and answers; there isno exchange of this sort between the rvriter and the reader. The writerdoes not respond to the reader. Rather, rhe book divides rhe act of writ-ing and the act of reading into two sides, between which there is no com-munication. The reader is absent from the act of writing; the writer isabsent from the act of reading. The text thus produces a double eclipseof the reader and the writer. It thereby replaces the relation of dialogue,which directly conrlects the voice of one to the hearing of the other.

The substitution of reading for a dialogue that has not occurrecl isso manifest that when we happen to encounter an author and speak tohim (about his book, for example), we experience a profound disruptionof the peculiar relation that we have with the author in and through hiswork. Sometimes I like to say that to read a book is to consider its authoras already dead and the book as posthumous. For it is when the author isdead- that the relation to the book becomes cornplete and, as it were,intact. The author can no longer respond; it only remains to read hiswork.

The difference between the act of reacling and the act of dialogueconfirms our hypothesis that writing is a realization comparable and par-allel to speech, a realization that takes the place of it and, as it were,intercepts it. Hence we could say that what comes to writing is discourseas intention-to-say and that rvriting is a direct inscription of this inten-tion, even if, historically and psychologically, writing began with thegraphic transcription of the signs of speech. This emanciparion of writ-ing, which places the latter at the site of speech, is the birth of the text.

Now, rvhat happens to the srarement itself when it is directly in-scribed instead of being pronounced? The most striking characteristichas always been emphasized: writin_g-pJele"rves discourse and makes it anarchive available for individual and collective memorv. It mav be addedthat the l inearization of symbols permits an analytic ana airt i, ' ,ctive trans-lation of all the successive and discrete features of language and thereby

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increases its efficacy. Is that all? Preservation and increased ef;frcacy stillcharacterize only the transcription of oral language in graphic signs. Theemancipation of the text from the oral situation entails a veritable up-heaval in the relations between language and the world, as well as in therelation between language and the various subjectivities concerned (thatof the author and that of the reader). We glimpsed something of thissecond upheaval in distinguishing reading from dialogue; we shall haveto go still further, but this time beginning from the upheaval that thereferential relation of language to the world undergoes when the texttakes the place of speech.

What do we understand by the referential relation or referentialfunction? In addressing himself to another speaker, the subject of dis-course says something about something; that about which he speaks isthe referent of his discourse. As is well known, this referential function issupported by the sentence, which is the first and the simplest unit ofdiscourse. It is the sentence that intends to say something true or some-thing real, at least in declarative discourse. The referential function is soimportant that it compensates, as it were, for another characteristic oflanguage, namely, the separation of signs from things. By means of thereferential function, language "pours back into rhe universe" (according

",0^.d , to an expression of Gustave Guillaume's) those signs which the symbolic

,{l '." ^ / function, at its birth, divorced from things. All discourse is, to some ex-:, ,

" I tent, thereby reconnected to the world. For if we did not speak of the' world, of what should we speak?

When the text takes the place of speech, somerhing importantoccurs. In speech, the interlocutors are present not only to one anotherbut also to the situation, the surrounclings, and the circumstantial milieuof discourse. It is in relation to this circumstantial milieu that discourse isfully meaningful; the return to reality is ultimately a return to this reality,which can be indicated "around" the speakers, "around," if rve may sayso, the instance of discourse itself. Language is, moreover, well equippedto secure this anchorage. Demonstratives, adverbs of time and place,personal pronouns, verbal tenses, and in general all the "deictic" and"ostensive" indicators serve to anchor discourse in the circumstantialreality that surrounds the instance of discourse. Thus, in living speech,tb.e id'eal sense of what is said turns toward t]ne real reference, toward that"about which" we speak. At the limit, this real reference rends to mergewith an ostensive designation where speech rejoins the gesture of point-ing. Sense fades into reference and the latter into the act of showing.

This is no longer the case when the text takes the place of speech.The movement of reference toward the act of showing is intercepted, at

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the same time as dialogue is interrupted by the text. I say interceptedand not suppressed; it is in this respect that I shall distance myself fromwhat may be called henceforth the ideology of the absolute text. On thebasis of the sound remarks we have just made, this ideology proceecls, byan unwarranted hypostasis, through a course that is ultimately surrepti-tious. As we shall see, the text is not lvithout reference; the task of read-ing, qua interpretation, will be precisely to fulfill the reference. Thesuspense that defers the reference merely leaves the text, as it were, "inthe air," outside or without a world. In virtue of this obliteration of therelation to the world, each text is free to enter into relation with all theother texts that come to take the place of the circumstantial realitv re-ferred to by living speech. This relation of text to text, rvithih the efface-ment of the world about which we speak, engenders the quzrsi worlcl oftexts or Literature.

Such is the upheaval that affects discourse itself, u'hen the move-ment of reference toward the act of showing is interceptecl by the text.Words cease to efface themselves in front of things; lvritten words be-come words for themselves.

The eclipse of the circumstantial world by the quasi world of textscan be so complete t[at, in a civil ization of rvrit ins, the world itself is nolonger lvhat can be shorvn in speaking but is redrjced to a kind of "aura"that written works unfold. Thus we speak of the Greek world or the Byz-autine world. This world can be called "imaginary," in the sense that it isrepresented by writing in lieu of the world pre.senled by speech; but thisimaginary rvorld is itself a creation of literature.

The upheaval in the relation betu,een the text and its world is thekey to the other upheaval of which we have already spoken, that whichaffects the relation of the text to the subjectivities of the author and thereader. \4re think that we knou' what the author of a text is becausc wcderive the notion of the author front that of the speaker. The subject ofspeech, according to Benveniste, is what designates itself in saying "I."When the text takes the place of speech, there is no longer a speaker, atIeast in the sense of an immediate and clirect self-designation of the onervho speaks in the instance of discourse. This proximity of the speakingsubject to his own speech is replaced by a complex relation of the authorto the text, a relation that enables us to say that tire author is institutedby the text, that he stands in the space of meaning traced and inscribedby writing. The text is the very place where the author appears. But doesthe author appear otherwise thân as first reader? The distancing of thetext from its author is already a phenomenon of the first reacling that, inone move, poses the whole series of problems that we are now going to

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confront concerning the relations between explanation and interpreta-

tion. These relations arise at the time of reading.

l t . Explanat ion or Understanding?

As we shall see, the two attitudes that we have initially placed under the

double title of explanation and interpretation will confront one another

in the act of reading. This duality is first encountered in the work of

Dilthey. For him, these distinctions constituted an alternative wherein

one term necessarily excluded the other: either you "explain" in the

manner of the natural scientist, or you "interpret" in the manner of the

historian. This exclusive alternative will provide the point of departure

for the discussion that follows. I propose to show that the concept of the

text, such as we have formulated it in the first part of this essay, demands

a renewal of the two notions of explanation and interpretation and, in

virtue of this renewal, a less contradictory conception of their interrela-

tion. Let us say straightaway that the discussion will be deliberately ori-

ented toward the search for a strict complementarity and reciprocity

between explanation and interpretation.The initial opposition in Dilthey's work is not exactly between ex-

planation and interpretation, but between explanation and understand-

ing, interpretation being a particular province of understanding. we

must therefore begin from the opposition between explanation and un-

derstanding. Now if this opposition is exclusive, it is because, in Dilthey's

work, the two terms designate two spheres of reality which they serve to

separate. These two spheres are those of the natural sciences and the

human sciences. Nature is the region of objects offered to scientific

observation, a region subsumed since Gali leo to the enterprise of

mathematization and since John Stuart Mill to the canons of inductive

logic. Mind is the region of psychological individualities, into which each

mental life is capable of transposing itself. Understanding is such a trans-

ference into another mental life. To ask whether the human sciences can

exist is thus to ask whether a scientific knowledge of individuals is possi-

ble, whether this understanding of the singular can be objective in its

own way, whether it is susceptible of universal validity. Dilthey answered

afÊrmatively, because inner life is given in external signs that can be per-

ceived and understood as signs of another mental life: "Understanding,"

he says in the famous article "The Development of Hermeneutics," "is

the process by which we come to know something of mental life through

the perceptible signs which manifest it."r 'IhiS is the unclerstanding of

wnicf, intËrpretari,on is a particular province.f Among the sigçns of an-

other mentàl life, lve have the "rnanifestations fixed in a durable way,"

the .,human testimonies preserved by lvrit ing," the "written monll-

ments." Interpretation is the art of understanding applied to such mani-

festations, to iuch testimonies, to such monunlents, of rvhich writ ing is

the distinctive characteristic.tJnderstanding, as the knolvledge through

signs of another lnental life, thus provides the basis in the pair under-

stànding-interprerarion; the latter elerlent supplies the clegree of objec-

tification, in virtue of the fixation ancl preservation that rvriting c()nfer-s

upon signs. "' Àlrh.,.rgh this clistinction between explanatior-r ancl unclerst:rucl-

ing see's cleai at f irst, it becomes increasi'gly.bscure as soon as rve ask

ouiselves about the couditions of scientif icity of interpretation. Explana-

tion has been expelled fron-r the fieltl of the hutnzrn sciences; but the

conflict reappears at the very heart of the concept of intcrpretation be-

rween, on tÈè one hand, the intuit ive ancl unverif iable chzrracter of't l-re

psychoiogizing coltcept of understanding to which interpretation is sub-

àrdinateà and, on rl-re orher hand, the dernand for objectivity that be-

longs to the very notion of human science. The splitt ing of hernlenerttics

betiveen its ps;'chologizing tendency and its search for a logic of inter-

pretation ultimately calls into question the relation between understand-

ing and interpretati<-rn. Is not interpretation a species of understanding

rvùch explodès the genre? Is not the specific difference, namely, fixation

by writing, more important here than the feature conrmon to all si5;ns,

iiut of piesenting inner life in an external form? What is more impor-

tant: thé inclusion of hermeneutics in the sphere of understatlding or its

difference therefrom? Schleiermacher, before Dilthey, had witnessed

this internal splitting of the hermeneutical project and had overcolne rt

through a happy marriage of romantic genius and philological virtuosity.

With bitthey, ihe epistemological demands arc more pressing' Several

generations separate him from the scholar of Romanticism, several

[enerations well versed in epistemological re{lection; the contradiction

now explodes in full daylight. Listen to Dilthey commenting upon

Schleiermacher: "The ultimate aim of hermeneutics is to understancl the

author better than he understands himself." So much for the psychology

of understanding. Now for the logic of interpretation: "The funçtion of

hermeneutics is to establish theoretically, against the constant intrusion

of romantic lvhirn and sceptical subjectivism into the domain of history'

the universal validity of interpretation, upon which all certitude in his-

tory restsi ' (p. 333 tpp. 259-60, modifiedl). Thus hermeneutics fulf i l ls

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the aim of understanding only by extricating itself from the immediaçyof understanding e1lç1s-f16m, let us say, dialogical values. Under-standing seeks to coincide with the inner life of the author, to liken itselfto him (sich gleichsetzen), to reproduce (nachbilden) the creative processesthat engendered the work. But the signs of this intention, of this cre-ation, are to be found nowhere else than in what Schleiermacher calledthe "exterior" and "interior form" of the work, or again, the "intercon-nection" (Zwammenhang) that makes it an organized whole. The lastwritings of Dilthey ("The Construction of the Historical World in theHuman Sciences") further aggravated the tension. On the other hand,the objective side of the work was accentuated under the influence ofHusserl's Logical Inuestigations (for Husserl, as we know, the "meaning"

of a statement constitutes an "ideality" that exists neither- in mundanereality nor in psychic reality: it is a pure unity of meaning without a reallocalization). Hermeneutics similarly proceeds from the objectificationof the creative energies of life in works that come in between the authorand us; it is mental life itself, its creative dynamism, that calls for themediation by "meanings," "values," or "goals." The scientific demandthus presses toward an ever greater depsychologization of interpreta-tion, of understanding itself and perhaps even of introspection, if it istrue that memory itself follows the thread of meanings that are not them-selves mental phenomena. The exteriorization of Iife implies a more in-direct and mediate characterization of the interpretation of self andothers. But it is a self and another, posed in psychological terms, thatinterpretation pursues; interpretation always aims at a reproduction, aNachbil dung, of l ived experiences.

This intolerable tension, which the later Dilthey bears witness to,leads us to raise two questions that guide the following discussion. Mustwe not abandon once and for all the reference of interpretation to un-derstanding and cease to make the interpretation of written monumentsa particular case of understanding the external signs of an inner mentallife? But if interpretation no longer seeks its norm of intelligibility inunderstanding others, does not its relation to explanation, which wehave hitherto set aside, now demand to be reconsidered?

n. The Text and Structural Explanat ion

Let us begin again from our analysis of the text and from the autono-mous status we have granted it with respect to speech. What we have

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called the eclipse of the surrounding world by the quasi world cif textsengenders two possibilities. We can, as readers, remain in the suspenseof the text, treating it as a worldless ancl authorless object; in this case,r r ' e exp ia in t he (ex t i n t e rms o I i r s i n te lna l r e l a t i ons , i t s y l r , , r u re . On r l r eother hand, we can lift the suspense and fulfill the text in speech, restor-ingç it to living communication; in this case, \4'e interpret the text. Thesetwo possibilities both belong to reading, and readins is tl-re dialectic ofthese two attitudes.

Let us consider them separately, before exploring their articula-tion. We can undertake a first type of reading that formally records, as itwere, the text's interception of all the relations to a rvorld that can bepointed out and to subjectivities that can converse. This transferenceinto the "place"-2 place that is a nonplaca-çe11s1i111tes a special proj-ect with respect to the text, that of prolonging-the suspense concerningthe referential relation to the world and to the speaking subject. Bymeans of this special project, the reader decides to situate himself in the"place of the text" and in the "closure" of this place. On the basis of thischoice, the text has no outside but only an inside; it has no transcendenraim, unlike a speech that is addressed to someone about something.

This project is not only possible but legitimate. For the constitu-tion of the text as text and of the body of texts as literature justilies theinterception of the double transcendence of discourse, toward the woridand toward someone. Thus arises the possibility of an explanatory atti-tude in regard to the text.

In contrast to rvhat Dilthey thought, this explanatory attitude isnot borrowed from a field of knowledge and an epistenological modelother than that of language itself. It is not a naturalistic model subse-quently extended to the human sciences. The nature-mind oppositionplays no role here at all. If there is some form of borrowing, it occurswithin the same field, that of signs. For it is possible to treat the textaccording to the explanatory. rules that linguistics successfully appiies tothe simple system of signs that constitute language llanguel as opposedto speech lparolel. As.is well known, the language-speech distinction isthe fundamental distinction that gives linguistics a homogeneous object;speech belongs to physiology, psychology, and sociology, whereas lan-guage, as rules of the game ôf which speech is the execution, belongsonly to linguistics. As is equally well known, Iinguistics considers onlysystems of units devoid of proper meaning, each of which is defined onlyin terms of its difference from all the otllers. These units, lvhether theybe purely distinctive like those of phonological articulation or significantlike those of lexical articulation, are oppositive units. The interplay of

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oppositions and their combinations within an inventory of discrete units

is what defines the notion of structure in linguistics. This structuralmodel furnishes the type of explanatory attitude that we are now goingto see applied to the text.

Even before we embark upon this enterprise, it may be objectedthat the laws that are valid only for languagg as distinct from speechcould not be applied to the text. Although the text is not speech, is it not,as it were, on the same side as speech in relation to language? Must not

discourse, as a series of statements and ultimately of sentences, be op-posed in an overall way to language? In comparison to the language-discourse distinction, is not the speaking-writing distinction secondary,such that speaking and writing occur together on the side of discourse?These remarks are perfectly legitimate and justifî us in thinking that thestructural model of explanation does not exhaust the field of possibleattitudes that may be adopted in regard to a text. But before specifingthe limits of this explanatory model, it is necessary to grasp its fruitful-ness. The working hypothesis of any structural analysis of texts is this: inspite of the lact that writ ing is on the same side as speech in relation tolanguage-namely, on the side of discoulss-1hs specificity of writing inrelation to speech is based on structural features that can be treated as

analogues of language in discourse. This working hypothesis is perfectlyIegitimate; it amounts to saying that under certain conditions the largerunits of language llangagel, that is, the units of a higher order than thesentence, display organizations comparable to those of the smaller unitsof language, that is, the units that are of a lower order than the sentenceand that belong to the domain of linguistics.

In Structural Anthropology, Claude Lévi-Strauss formulates thisworking hypothesis for one category of texts, the category of myths:

Like every linguistic entity, myth is made up of coristitutiveunits. These units imply the presence of those which normally

. enter into the structure of language, namely the phonemes, themorphemes and the semantemes. The constituent units ofmyth are in the same relation to semantemes as the latter areto morphemes, and as the latter in turn are to phonemes. Eachform differs from that which precedes it by a higher degree of

'complexity. For this reason, we shall call the elements rvhich

properly pertain to myth (and which are the most complex ofa l l ) : large const i tu t ive uni ts . :

By means of this working hypothesis, the large units that are minimallythe size of the sentence, and that placed together constitute the narra-

tive proper to the myth, can be treated according to the same rules thatare applied to the smaller units familiar to linguistics. To indicate thisanalogy, Lévi-Strauss speaks of "mythemes" in the same way that onespeaks of phonemes, morphemes, and semantemes. But in order to re-main within the limits of the analogy between mythemes and the linguis-tic units of a lower level, the analysis of texts lvill have to proceed to thesame sort of abstraction as that practiced by the phonologist. For thelatter, the phoneme is not a concrete sound, to be taken absolutely in itssonorous substance; it is a function defined by the commutative methodand its oppositive value is determined by the relation to all other pho-nemes. In this sense it is not, as Saussure would say, a "substance" but a"form," an interplay of relations. Similarly, a mytheme is not one of thesentences of the myth but an oppositive value that is shared by severaiparticular sentences, constituting, in the language of l,évi-Strauss, a"bundle of relations." "Only in the form of c-ombinations of such bun-dles do the constituent units acquire a signiSing function" (p 234 lp2l1l). What is called here the "signifying function" is not at all what themyth means, its philosophical or existential import, but rather the ar-rangement or disposition of mythemes, in short, the structure of them y t h .

I should like to recali briefly the analvsis that, according to thismethod, Lér,i-Strauss offers of the Oedipus myth. He divides the senten-ces of the rnyth into four columns. In the first column he places all thesentences that speak of overrated blood relations (fcir example, OedipusmarriesJocasta, his mother; Antigone buries Polynices, her brother, inspite of the order forbidding it). In the second column, we find the samerelation but modified by the'inverse sign: underrated or devalued bloodrelations (Oedipus kills his father, Laius; Eteocles kills his brother, Poly-nices). The third column concerns monsters and their destruction; thefourth groups together all those proper names whose meaning suggestsa difÊculty in walking straight (lame, clumsy, swollen foot). The compari-son of the four columns reveals a correlation. Between the first and sec-ond columns we have blood relations overrated or underrated in turn;between the third and fourth rve have an affirmation and then a negationof the autochthony of man. "It follou's that the fcrurth column is relatedto the third colurnn as the first is to the second . . . ; the overrating ofblood relations is to their underrating as the artempt to escape from au-tochthony is to the impossibility of succeeding in it." The myth thus ap-pears as a kind of logical instrument that brings together contradictionsin order to overcome them: "The impossibility of connecring the groupsof relations is overcome (or, more exactly, replaced) by the assertion that

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two contradictory relations are identical, insofar as each is, like theother, self-contradic.tory" (p.239 tp.216l)- We shall return shortly tothis conclusion; let us restrict ourselves here to stating it.

We can indeed say thât we have thereby explained the myth, butnot that we have interpreted it. We have brought out, by means of struc-tural analysis, the logii of the operations that interconnect the packets ofrelations; this logic constitutes "the structural law of the myth con-cerned" (p.2a1 tp. 2171). We shall not fail to notice that this law is, parexcellenpe, the object of reading and not at all of speech, in the sense ofa recitation whereby the power of the myth would be reactivated in aparticular situation. Here the text is only a text and the reading inhabitsit only as such, while its meaning for us remains in suspense. togetherwith any realization in present speech.

I have just taken an example from the domain of myths; I couldtake another from a nearby domain, that of folklore. This domain hasbeen explored by the Russian formalists of the school of Propp and bythe French specialists in the structural analysis of narratives, RolandBarthes and A. J. Greimas. In the work of these authors, t{e find thesame postulates as those employed by Lévi-Strauss: the units above thesentence have the same composition as the units below the sentence; thesense of the narrative consists in the very arrangement of the elements,in the power of the whole to integrate the subunits; and conversely, thesense of an element is its capacity to enter in relation with other elementsand with the whole of the work. These postulates together define theclosure of the narrative. The task of structural analysis will be to carryout the segmentation of the work (horizontal aspect), then to establishthe various levels of integration of the parts in the whole (hierarchical

aspect). Thus the units of action isolated by the analyst will not be psy-chological units capable of being experienced, nor will they be units ofbehavior that could be subsumed to a behaviorist psychology. The ex-tremities of these sequences are only the switching points of the narra-tive, such that if one element is changed, all the rest is different. Flere werecognize the transposition of the method of commutation from thephonological level to the level of narrative units. The logic of action thusconsists in an interconnected series of action kernels that together con-stitute-the structural continuity of the narrative. The application of thistechnique ends up by "dechronologizing" the narrative, in a way thatbrings out the logic underlying narrative time. Ultimately the narrativewould be reduced to a combinationfcombinatoirel of a few dramatic units(promising, betraying, hindering, aiding, etc.) which would be the para-

W H A T I S A T E X T ?

digms of action. A sequence is thus a succession of nodes of action, eachclosing off an alternative opened up by the preceding one. Just as theelementary units are linked together, so too they fit into larpçer units; forexample, an encounter comprises elementary actions like approaching,calling out, greeting, and so on. To explain a narrative is to grasp thisentanglement, this fleeting structure of interlaced actions.

Corresponding to the nexus of actions are rèlations of a similarnature between the "actants" of t lre narrative. Ry that lve understandthe characters not at ail as psychological subjects endowecl r.vith theirown existence but rather as the roles correlated n'ith formalizecl actions.Actants are defined entirely by the predicates of action, by the sernanticaxes of the sentence and the narrative: the actant is the one by whorn, torvhom, lvith whom, . . . the action is done; it is the one who promises,rvho receives the promise, the giver, the receiver', and so on. Structulalanalysis thus brings out a hierarchy of r.tctan,ts correlative to tl-re hierarchyof actions.

The narrative remains to be assembled as a n'hole and put backinto narrative commLrnication. It is then a discourse that ir narrator ad-dresses to an audience. For structnral analysis, hr.xvever, the trvo inter'-locutors must be sought only in the text. The n:rrrator is clesignated bythe signs of narrativity, lvhich belong to the very constituti()n cif the nar-rative. Beyond the three levels of actions, actants, and narration, there isnothing else that falls within the scope of the science of senriologry. Thereis only the world of narrative users, r,vhich can eventually be dealt with by

-ç)ther semiological disciplines (those analvzing social, eccinomic, anclideological systems); but these disciplines are no longer linguistic in na-ture. This transposition of a linpçuistic model to the theory of the narra-tive fully confirms our initial remark: today, explanation is no lonser aconcept borrowed from the natural sciences and transferred to the aliendomain of written artifacts; rather, it stems from the very sphere of lan-guage, by analogical transference from the small units of language (pho-nemes and lexemes) to the units larger than the sentence, such asnarratives, foiklore, and myth. Henceforth, interpretation-if it is stillpossible to give a sense to this notion-will no longer be confronted by amodel external to the human sciences. It r'vill, instead, be confronted by amodel of intelligibility that belongs, from birth so to speak, to the do-main of the human sciences, and indeed to a leading science in this do-main: linguistics. Thus it will be upon the same terrain, within the samesphere of language llangage], that explanation and interpretation wiilenter into debate.

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F R O M T H Ê H € R M E N E U T I C S O F T E X T S

rv Toward a New Conceptof Interpretation

Let us consider now the other attitude that can be adopted in regard tothe text, the attitude that we have called interpretation. We can intro-duce this attitude by initially opposing it to the preceding one, in a man-ner still close to that of Dilthey. But as we shall see, it will be necessary toproceed gradually to a more complementary and reciprocal relation be-tween explanation and interpretation.

Let us begin once again from reading. Two ways of reading, wesaid, are offered to us. By reading we can prolong and reinforce the sus-pense that affects the text's reference to a surrounding world and to theaudience of speaking subjects: that is the explanatory attitude. But wecan also lift the suspense and fulfill the text in present speech. It is thissecond attitude that is the real aim of reading. For this attitude revealsthe true nature of the suspense that intercepts the movement of the texttoward meaning. The other attitude would not even be possible if it werenot first apparent that the text, as writing, awaits and calls for a reading.If reading is possible, it is indeed because the text is not closed in onitself but opens out onto other things. To read is, on any hypothesis, toconjoin a new discourse to the discourse of the text. This conjunction ofdiscourses reveals, in the very constitution of the text, an original capac-ity for renewal that is its open character. Interpretation is the concreteoutcome of conjunction and renewal.

In the first instance, we shall be led to formulate the concept ofinterpretation in opposition to that of explanation. This will not distanceus appreciably from Dilthey's position, except that the opposing conceptof explanation has already gained strength by being derived from linguis-tics and semiology rather than being borrowed fiom the natural sciences.

According to this first sense, interpretation retains the feature ofappropriation that was recognized by Schleiermacher, Dilthey, andBultmann. In fact, this sense will not be abandoned; it will only be medi-ated by explanation, instead of being opposed to it in an immediate andeven naive way. By "appropriation," I understand this: that the interpre-tation of a text culminates in the self-interpretation of a subject whothenceforth understands himself better, understands himself differently,or simply begins to understand himself. This culmination of the under-standing of a text in self-understanding is characteristic of the kind ofreflective philosophy that, on various occasions, I have called "concretereflection." Here hermeneutics and reflective philosophy are correlativeand reciprocal. On the one hand, self-understanding passes through the

W H A T I S A T E X T ?

detour of understanding the cultural signs in lvhich the self documentsand forms itself. On the other hand, understanding the text is not an endin itself; i t mediates the relation to himself of a subject who, in the shortcircuit of immediate reflection, does not find the meaning of his own life.Thus it must be said, with equal force, that reflection is nothing without

the mediation r,rf signs and works, and that explanation is nothing if itis not incorporated as an intermediary stage in the process of self-understanding. In short, in hermeneutical reflection--or in reflectivehermeneutiç5-1hs constitution of the saf is contemporaneous rr'ith theconstitution of meaning.

The term appropriation underlines two additional features. One

of the aims of all herrneneutics is to stnrggle against cultural distance.This struggle can be understood in purely temporal ternts as a struggleagainst secular estran5îement, or in more genuinely hermeneutical terms

as a struggle against the estrangement from meaning itself, that is, from

the system of values upon which the text is based. In this sense, interpre-tation "brings together," "equalizes," renders "contemPorary and sim-ilar," thus genuinely making orre's oun what was rnitially alien.

Above a l l , the characler izat ion of in terpretat ion as aPProPr iat ionis meant to underline the "present" character of interpretation. Read-ing is like the execution of a musical score; it marks the realization, theenactment, of the semantic possibilities of the text. This final featur-e is

the most important because it is the condition of the other tlvo (that is, of

overcoming cultural distance and of fusing textual interpretation with

-gelfJntcrpretation). Indeed, the feature of realization discloses a deci-sive aspect of reading, namely, that it fulfills the discourse of the text in a

dimension similar to that of speech. What is retained here from the no-tion of speech is not the fact that it is uttered but that it is an event, aninstance of discourse, as Benveniste says. The sentences of a text signif,vhere and now.

-îhe "actualized" text finds a surrounding and an audience;it resumes the referential movemenl-in1s1çspted and suspended-to-ward a rvorld and toward subjects. This world is that of the readër, thissubject is the reader himself. In interpretation, rve shall say, reading be-comes like speech. I do not say "becomes speech," for reading is neverequivalent to a spoken exchange, a dialogue. But reading culminates in a

concrete act that is related to the text as speech is related to discourse,namely, as event and instance of discourse. Initially the text had only a

sense, that is, internal relations or a structure; now it has a meaning, that

is, a realization in the discourse of the reading subject. By virtue of itssense, the text had only a semiological dimension; now it has, by virtue of

its meaning, a semantic dimension.

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î,-i;tt'"'""t" "

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Let us pause here. Our discussion has reached a critical pointwhere interpretation, understood as appropriation, still remains exter-nal to explanation in the sense of structural analysis. We continue tooppose theÉ as if they were two attitudes between which it is necessaryto choose. I should like now to go beyond this antithetical oppositionand brin$ out the articulation that would render structural analysis andhermeneutics complementary. For this it is important to show how eachof the two attitudes we have juxtaposed refers back, by means of its ownpeculiar features, to the other.

Consider again the examples of structural analysis we have bor-rowed from the theory of myth and narrative. We tried to adhere to anotion of sense that would be strictly equivalent to the arrangement ofthe elements of a text, to the integration of the segments of action andthe actants within the narrative treated as a whole closed in upon itself.In fact, no one stops at so formal a conception of sense. For example,what Lévi-Strauss calls a "mytheme"-in his eyes, the constitutive unitof myth-is expressed in a sentence that has a specific meaning: Oedipuskills his father, Oedipus marries his mother, and so on. Can it be said that'structural explanation neutralizes the specific meaning of sentences, re-taining only their position in the myth? But the bundle of relations towhich Lévi-Strauss reduces the mytheme is still of the orcler of the sen-tence; and the interplay of oppositions that is instituted at this very ab-stract level is equally of the order of the sentence and of meaning. If onespeaks of"overrated" or "underrated blood relations," ofthe "autoch-

thony" or "nonautochthony" of man, these relations can still be writtenin the form of a sentence: the blood relation is the highest of all, or theblood relation is not as high as the social relation, for example in theprohibition of incest, and so on. Finally, the contradiction that the mythattempts to resolve, according to Lévi-Strauss, is itself stated in terms ofmeaningful relations. Lévi-Strauss admits this, in spite of himself, whenhe writes: "The reason for these choices becomes clear if lve recognizethat mythical thought proceeds from the consciousness of certain oppo-sitions and tends towards their progressive mediation"; and again, "the

myth is a kind of logical tool intended to effect a mediation between lifeand death" (pp. 2a8, 2a3 [pp. 224,220D.In the background of the myth

there is a question that is highly significant, a question about life anddeath: Are we born from one or from two? Even in its formalized ver-sion, Is the same born from the same or from the other? this questionexpresses the anguish of origins: whence comes man? Is he born fromthe earth or from his parents? There would be no contradiction, nor anyattempt to resolve contradiction, if there were not significant questions,

meaningful propositions about the origin and the end of man. It is thisfunction of myth as a narrative of origins that structural analysis seeks toplace in parentheses. But such analysis does not succeed in eluding thisfunction: it merely postpones it. Myth is not a logical operator betweenany propositions whatsoever but involves propositions that point towardlimit situations, toward the origin and the end, toward death, suffering,and sexuality.

Far from dissolving this radical questioning, structural analysisreinstates it at a more radical level. Would not the function of structuralanalysis then be to impugn the surface semantics of the recounted myth inorder to unveil a depth semantics that is, if I may say so, the living seman-tics of the myth? If that were not the function of structural analysis, then itr.r'ould, in my opinion, be reduced to a sterile game, to a derisory combina-tion lcombinatoirel of elements, and myth would be deprived of the func-tion that Lévi-Strauss himself recognizes when he asserts that mythicalthought arises from the awareness of certain oppositions and tends to-ward their progressive mediation. This awareness is a recognition of theaporias of human existence around which mythical thousht gravitates. Toeliminate this meaningful intention r,vc-ruld be to reduce the theory of mythto a necrologv of the meaningless discourses of mankind. lf, on the con-trary, we regard structural analysis as a siage-and a neôessary one-bs-tween a naive and a critical interpretation, between a surface ancl a depthinterpretation, then it seems possible to situate explanation and interpre-tation along a unique hermeneutical arc and to integrate the opposed attirudes ôf explanation and understanding within an overall conception ofreading as the recovery of meaning.

We shall take another step in the direction of this reconciliationbetween explanation and interpretation if we now turn toward the sec-ond term of the initial contradiction. So far we have lvorked with a con-cept of interpretation that remains very subjective. To interpret, rve said,is to appropriate here and now the intention of the text. In saying that, weremain enclosed within Dilthey's concept of understanding. Now whatwe have just saicl about the depth semantics unveiled by the structuralanalysis of the text invifes us to say that the intended meaning of the rextis not essentially the presumed intention of the author, the lived experi-ence of the rvriter, but rather what the text means for whoever complieswith its injunction. The text seeks to place us in its meaning, that is-according to another acceptation of the 1y6161 54725-in the same direc-tion. So if the intention is that of the text, and if this intention is thedirection that it opens up for thought, then depth semanrics must beunderstood in a fundamentally dynamic way. I shall therefore sav: ro ex-

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H E R M É N E U T I C S O F T Ê X 1 S

/ plai" is to bring out the structure, that is, the internal relations of depen-

i de.tc. that constitute the statics of the text; to interpret is to follow the

path of thought opened up by the text, to place oneself en route toward

i the orient of the text. We are'invited by this remark to correct our initial

I .oncept of interpretation and 1s 5ç316[-feyond a subjective process of

I interpretation as ̂ n act on th6 1s>(1-fer an objective process of interpre-

tation that would be the act o/ the text.I shall borrow an èxample from a recent study I made of the exe-

gesis of the sacerdotal story of creation in Genesis 7, I-2,4a.3 This exe-

gesis reveals, in the interior of the text, the interplay of tlvo narratives: a

Tatbericht in which creation is expressed as a narrative of action ("God

made . . . "), and a Wortbericht, that is, a narrative of speech ("God said'

and there was . "). The first narrative could be said to play the role of

tradition and the second of interpretation. What is interesting here is

that interpretation, before being the act of the exegete, is the act of the

text. The relation between tradition and interpretation is a relation in-

ternal to the text; for the exegete, to interpret is to place himself in the

meaning indicated by the relation of interpretation that the text itself

supports.This objective and, as it were, intratextual concept of interpreta-

tion is by no means unusual. Indeed, it has a long history rivaling that of

the concept of subjective interpretation, which is linked, it will be re-

called, to the problem of understanding others through the signs that

others give of their conscious life. I would willingly connect this ner'v

concept of interpretation to that referred to in the tit le of Aristotle's

treatise On Interpretation. Aristotle's hermëneia, in contrast to the herme-

neutical technique of seers and oracles, is the very action of language on

things. Interpretation, for Aristotle, is not what one does in a second

language with regard to a first; rather, it is what the first language al-

ready does, by mediating through signs our relation to things. Hence

interpretation is, according to the commentary of Boethius, the work of

tl;.e aox significatiua per se ipsam aliquid significans, siue complexa, siue in-

complexa. Thus it is the noun, the verb, discourse in general, that inter-

pret in the very process of signifying.It is true that interpretation in Aristotle's sense does not exactly

prepare the way for understanding the dynamic relation between several

Iayers of meaning in the same text. For it presupposes a theory of speech

and not a theory of the text: "The sounds articulated by the voice are

symbols of states of the soul, and written words are symbols of rvords

uttered in speech" (On Interpretation, $l). Hence interpretation is con-

fused with the semantic dimension of speech: interpretation is discourse

itself, it is any discourse. Nevertheless, I retain from Aristotle the ideathat interpretation is interpretation fur language before being interpreta-tion olf language.

I would look in the work of Charles Sanders Peirce for a conceptofinterpretation closer to that required by an exegesis that relates inter-pretation to tradition in the very interior of a text. According to Peirce,the relation of a "sign" to an "object" is such that another relation, thatbetween "interpretant" and "sign," can be grafted onto the first. Whatis important for us is that this relation betrveen interpretant and sign isan open relàtion, in the sense that there is always another interpretantcapable of mediating the first relation. G.-G. Granger explains this vervwell in his Essai d'une philosophie d,u sQIe:

The interpretant that the sign evokes in the mind coulcl not bethe result bf a pure anci simple deduction that woulcl extr-acrfrom the sign something already contained therein. . . . The in-terpretant is a commentary, a definition, a gloss on the sign inits relation to the object. The interpretant is itself symbolic ex-pression. The sign-interpretant associat ion, real ized by what-ever pst'chological processes, is rendered possible oniy by thecommunity, more or less imperfect, of an experience betweenspeaker and hearer. . . . It is always an experience that cannever be perfectly reduced to the idea or object of the sign ofwhich, as we said, i t is the structure. Whence the indefinitecharacter of Peirce's series of internletants.a

We must, of course, exercise a great deal of care in applyingPeirce's concept of interpretant to the interpretat ion of texts. His inter-pretant is an interpretant of signs, whereas our interpretant is an inter-pretant of statements. But our use of the interpretant, transposed fromsmall to large units, is neither more nor less analogical than the structur-alist transfer of the laws of organization from units of levels below thesentence to units ofan order above or equal to the sentence. In the caseof structuralism, it is the phclnological structure of language that servesas the coding model of structures of higher articulation. ln our case, it is

a feature of lexical units that is transposed onto the plane of statementsand texts. So if we are perfectly aware of the analogical character of thetransposition, then we can say that the open series of interpretants,which is grafted onto the relation of a sign to an object, brings to light atriangular relation of object-sign-interpretant; and that the latrer rela-

tion can serve as a model for another triangle that is constituted at the

F R O M T H E H E R M E N E U T I C S O F T E X T S

level of the text. In the new triangle the object is the text itself; the sign isthe depth semantics disclbsed bv structural analvsisl and the series of

linterpretants is the chain of interpretations produced by the interpret-

fing community and incorporâted into the dynamics of the text, as therwork of meaning upon itself. Within this chain, the first interpretants

. serve as tradition for the final interpretants, which are the interpretationin the true sense of the term.

Thus informed by the Aristotelian concept of interpretation andabove all by Peirce's concept, we are in a position to "depsychologize" as

' far as possible our notion of interpretation and to connect it with theprocess that is at work in the text. Henceforth, for the exegete, to inter-pret is to place himself within the sense indicated by the relation of inter-pretation supported by the text.

The idea of interpretation as appropriation is not, for all that,\ | .li-inuted; it is simply postponed until the termination of the process. It

i lies at the extremity of what we called above the hermeneutical arc: itis t}:'efinal brace of the bridge, the anchorage of the arch in the ground oflived experience. But the entire theory of hermeneutics consists in medi-ating this interpretation-appropriation by the series of interpretants thatbelong to the work of the text upon itself. Appropriation loses its arbi-trariness insofar as it is the recovery of that which is at work, in labor,within the text. What the interpreter says is a resaying that reactivateswrr'at is said by the text.

At the end of our investigation, it seems that reading is the con-/ crete act in which the destiny of the text is fulfiIled. It is at the very hearti of reading that explanation and interpretation are indefinitely opposed' and reconciled.

Translated by John B. Thompson