Oct
30
2009
E.D. Hirsch
An interesting profile in City Journal on E.D. Hirsch, describing how he went from writing Validity in Interpretation (over 40 years) ago to become an educational reformer.
Piper has written that reading this book in seminary
was like suddenly finding a rock under my feet in the quicksand of contemporary concepts about meaning. Like most of the guides God sent along my path, Hirsch defended the obvious. Yes, he argued, there does exist an original meaning that a writer had in his mind when he wrote. And yes, valid interpretation seeks that intention in the text and gives good reasons for claiming to see it. This seemed as obvious to me as the broad-day sun. It was everybody’s assumption in daily life when they spoke or wrote.
Perhaps even more important, it seemed courteous. None of us wants our notes and letters and contracts interpreted differently than we intend them. Therefore, common courtesy, or the Golden Rule, requires that we read others the way we would be read. It seemed to me that much philosophical talk about meaning was just plain hypocritical: At the university I undermine objective meaning, but at home (and at the bank) I insist on it. I wanted no part of that game. It looked like an utterly wasted life. If there is no valid interpretation based on real objective, unchanging, original meaning, then my whole being said, “Let us eat, drink, and be merry. But by no means let us treat scholarship as if it really matters.”
And:
From this book I came to believe very strongly in the real possibility of rethinking another person’s thoughts after him. This meant that “meaning,” defined as what an author willed to communicate, was a discoverable reality outside my own consciousness. This confidence provided for me a thrilling incentive to read what great thinkers have written, because it meant that I might be able to actually understand and appropriate what they thought. The possibilities for growth still seem unlimited on the basis of what I learned from Hirsch.