E CO: IDENTITY AND SIMILARITY
In another key way Eco’s thought parallels Hirsch’s. As already noted,
Hirsch understood “signifi cance” to be the correlation of “meaning” with
something else, and a central tenet of semiotics is that in order to function
in life, every sentient person constantly identifi es relationships between
things of various sorts. Eco explains:
It is indisputable that human beings think ... in terms of identity and simi-
larity. In everyday life, however, it is a fact that we generally know how to
distinguish between relevant, signifi cant similarities on the one hand and
fortuitous, illusory similarities on the other. We may see someone in the
distance whose features remind us of person A, whom we know, mistake him
for A, and then realize that in fact it is B, a stranger: after which, usually,
we abandon our hypothesis as to the person’s identity and give no further
credence to the similarity, which we record as fortuitous. We do this because
each of us has introjected into him or her an indisputable fact, namely, that
from a certain point of view everything bears relationships of analogy, contigu-
ity and similarity to everything else. 32
Thus, the act of hermeneutical interpretation becomes a specialized applica-
tion of an interpretive skill everyone employs routinely in other spheres. As
Eco understands it, the search for appropriate correlations requires repeated
conjectures followed by testing to determine if each conjectured correlation
helps the reader make better sense of the text and its import for her world. It is
when the reader is unable or unwilling to distinguish between signifi cant cor-
relations and minimal or fortuitous correlations that serious problems arise. 33
P ART 3: ASSESSMENT OF HIRSCH AND ECO
The most important difference between Hirsh and Eco is that the former
believes each text contains a single correct meaning, even if that correct
meaning may only be identifi ed approximately or in some rare cases not
at all, while the latter believes there are often multiple good meanings,
none of which should be characterized as the correct one. Hirsch cogently
argues that there are two loci of consciousness, that of the author and that
of the reader, and rigidly distinguishes between “meaning” and “signifi -
cance.” Eco makes no such rigid distinction.
Despite these differences, there is a great deal of common ground. Both
consider it important to respect the cultural and linguistic location of the
author. Both accept the possibility of recovering the meaning expressed
ECHOING HIRSCH: DO READERS FIND OR CONSTRUCT MEANING? 93
