best way to become more objective is to multiply perspectives rather than
(futilely) to fl ee perspective altogether.
The conversation on which Gadamer focuses attention is that between
the text and the reader. The assumption is that the text is a voice other
than the reader’s and that it comes from a different location. So at least
sometimes, to read is not only to ask what the text is telling me but also
to ask whether there is truth there, new to me, that I need to take account
of. But especially with literary, legal, and religious texts, there are tradi-
tions of interpretation, and the interpreter might want to enter into con-
versation not only with the text but with other interpreters. Of course, in
interpreting the Bible, we can limit ourselves to those commentaries we
know will simply reinforce what we already believe. But, again without
any rules about how this might proceed, it seems to me an implication of
philosophical hermeneutics that there should be an ecumenical dimension
to biblical interpretation in which we open ourselves to voices other than
our own. 16
Reproduction/Production. One of Gadamer’s crucial claims about
the interpretation of texts is the following: “Not only occasionally but
always, the meaning of a text goes beyond its author. That is why under-
standing is not merely a reproductive but always a productive activity
as well.” 17 To speak of interpretation as reproductive is to ask what the
author was trying to say and how the text would have been understood by
the original, intended audience. To speak of a productive dimension is to
deny absolute privilege to the author in determining the meaning of a text
and to claim that subsequent readers legitimately fi nd meaning in texts
that the author did not intend and that would surprise the original readers.
Paul Ricoeur puts it this way:
Not that we can conceive of a text without an author; the tie between the
speaker and the discourse is not abolished, but distended and complicated
... The text’s career escapes the fi nite horizon lived by its author. What the
text says now matters more than what the author meant to say, and every
exegesis unfolds its procedures within the circumference of a meaning that
has broken its moorings to the psychology of its author. 18
And Jacques Derrida makes the same point this way:
This moment of doubling commentary [the reproductive aspect] should
no doubt have its place in a critical reading. To recognize and respect all its
SPIRIT AND PREJUDICE: THE DIALECTIC OF INTERPRETATION 23
