Is there a single right interpretation for such cultural phenomena as works of literature, visual artworks, works of music, the self, and legal and sacred texts? In these essays, almost all written especially for this volume, twenty leading philosophers pursue different answers to this question by examining the nature of interpretation and its objects and ideals. The fundamental conflict between positions that universally require the ideal of a single admissible interpretation (singularism) and those that allow a multiplicity of some admissible interpretations (multiplism) leads to a host of engrossing questions explored in these essays: Does multiplism invite interpretive anarchy? Can opposing interpretations be jointly defended? Should competition between contending interpretations be understood in terms of (bivalent) truth or (multivalent) reasonableness, appropriateness, aptness, or the like? Is interpretation itself an essentially contested concept? Does interpretive activity seek truth or aim at something else as well? Should one focus on interpretive acts rather than interpretations? Should admissible interpretations be fixed by locating intentions of a historical or hypothetical creator, or neither? What bearing does the fact of the historical situatedness of cultural entities have on their identities? The contributors are Annette Barnes, Noël Carroll, Stephen Davies, Susan Feagin, Alan Goldman, Charles Guignon, Chhanda Gupta, Garry Hagberg, Michael Krausz, Peter Lamarque, Jerrold Levinson, Joseph Margolis, Rex Martin, Jitendra Mohanty, David Novitz, Philip Percival, Torsten Pettersson, Robert Stecker, Laurent Stern, and Paul Thom.

The volume has a two-fold purpose: (i) to acquaint the Indian readers and academic community with some prominent trends in hermeneutics and text interpretation coming from veteran and young scholars in the field and (ii) to create an interest in the current research undertaken by Indian scholars in the field of philosophy and allied disciplines. This is deemed important because hermeneutics, though established in the West, is still in its infancy in the academic circles and is accorded an auxiliary status as a less significant concern. The sincere readers of these essays are hoped to bring to them their own perspectives and understanding, which is to say that every reader will have his own hermeneutical exercise and engagements. This volume will be of use to the beginners as well as the discerning scholars in the domain of hermeneutics.

Interpretation and Construction examines the interpretation and products of intentional human behavior, focusing primarily on issues in art, law, and everyday speech. Focuses on artistic interpretation, but also includes extended discussion of interpretation of the law and everyday speech and communication. Written by one of the leading theorists of interpretation. Theoretical discussions are consistently centered around examples for ease of comprehension.

This volume collects twenty-one original essays that discuss Michael Krausz's distinctive and provocative contribution to the theory of interpretation. At the beginning of the book Krausz offers a synoptic review of his central claims, and he concludes with a substantive essay that replies to scholars from the United States, England, Germany, India, Japan, and Australia. Krausz's philosophical work centers around a distinction that divides interpreters of cultural achievements into two groups. Singularists assume that for any object of interpretation only one single admissible interpretation can exist. Multiplists assume that for some objects of interpretation more than one interpretation is admissible. A central question concerns the ontological entanglements involved in interpretive activity. Domains of application include works of art and music, as well as literary, historical, legal and religious texts. Further topics include truth commissions, ethnocentrism and interpretations across cultures.

In this book, Michael Krausz addresses the concept of interpretation in the visual arts, the emotions, and the self. He examines competing ideals of interpretation, their ontological entanglements, reference frames, and the relation between elucidation and self-transformation. The series Interpretation and Translation explores philosophical issues of interpretation and its cultural objects. It also addresses commensuration and understanding among languages, conceptual schemes, symbol systems, reference frames, and the like. The series publishes theoretical works drawn from philosophy, rhetoric, linguistics, anthropology, religious studies, art history, and musicology.

Regardless of its particular topic, each of Donald Davidson's essays is part of a comprehensive progrqamme to address questions about language, mind and action, and their interconnections. Themes from this larger programme permeate and bind his work on semantics: on the notions of meaning and truth, on theories of truth, reference, logical form and inference, compositionality, 'intentional' operators, indeterminacy, conceptual relativism, skepticism and metaphor. Twenty-eight critical essays, including a substantial introduction to Davidson's philosophy of language, and three essays by Davidson himself, make up this volume. The volume's six sections corespond to the major section of Davidson's inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. Each contains critical essays addressing, interpreting and further develoing his views. The first section, written by the editor, gives an overview of the whole volume, the second section focuses on truth and meaning; the third, applications of Davidson's semantic theory; the fourth, radical interpretation; the fifth, language and reality, and the sixth, limits of the literal.

Interpretation and Meaning in Philosophy and Religion synthesizes cutting-edge philosophical reflections on interpretation with their application to religion. For this, new theoretical insights on interpretation by Krausz, Lamarque, Leddy, Hagberg, and Gibson are examined. Topics cover multiplism (i.e. interpretative pluralism), the goal of interpretation and its starting point. These concepts are then studied in relation to the practice of interpreting religious texts. For example, Grube proposes that the action-relevance of religious interpretations limits the possibility of tolerating divergent interpretations, Karrer-Grube challenges Lamarque’s insistence on a firm starting point, and Gokhale challenges Krausz by arguing that Vedantic practices of interpretation are non-multiplist.