Meaning V/S Significance...Why anarchism is not enteratined by Hirsch ?

The Aims of Interpretation (1976)
Hirsch tries to protect the author
He argues that meaning does not change only its significance.
He refutes the idea that meaning does not change only its significance.
But for Heidegger reading in the present we can not escape the preconception of our culture.
Another philosopher Gadamer focuses not upon the text, the author or literary influences but upon the reception of the text from the time of its composition to the present.
As Hirsch for another phenomenological critic Husserl, the meaning of literary text is bound up with the writer’s mental object; it consists of whatever he or she had in mind when the work was composed. Meaning is thus an intentional object.
Hirsch brings this idea of phenomenology and distinguishes between meaning and significance.
Meaning Significance
Fixed Dynamic
Identical with author’s intention Historically conditioned interpretation of given work
A work’s meaning is author’s Contextual and modern meaning
Should not be appropriated by the reader, if done amounts to theft Autobiographical impulses ignored and looks at present impulses
Self-identical/original Anachronistic and modern meaning
Against reader’s interpretation Assumed
Legitimate interpretation Illegitimate interpretation
Intended meaning Affective meaning


• There is no viable distinction between ‘literature’ and their classification of written speech
• The ethics of language hold good in all uses of language, oral and written in poetry as well as in philosophy
• All are ethically governed by author’s intention.
• To treat an author’s words merely as grist for one’s own mill is ethically analogous to using another man for one’s own purpose.
• According to Hirsch, this is ruthlessness of interpretation
• Professional practice of interpretation means avoiding our intention.
• Such anarchy of reader’s judgement is not good.
• The modern anarchy of every man for himself in matters of interpretation sounds like the ultimate victory of the Protestant Spirit.
• Such anarchy is direct consequence of transgressing the fundamental ethical norms of speech and its interpretation.