intention, code, and understanding do not represent competing defi nitions
of “meaning,” but rather separate levels of a single substance called “mean-
ing.” Thus “meaning” is thought to be all of these things concurrently,
rather than each of these things in its own way. Hardly any thought is
given to the possibility that hermeneutics has simply misapprehended the
oversupply of defi nitions in play, and that keeping these defi nitions sepa-
rate really should be the hermeneut’s fi rst order of business.
In point of fact, those who think that the meaning of a text lies in
the reading event typically do not deny that an author actually intends
things, and that that intention is connected with the genesis of the text. 8
Non-intentionalists do not object to applying the word “meaning” to an
author’s intention, nor do they deny that the author’s intention really
exists. By the same token, intentionalists do not deny that there is some-
thing embedded within the literal aspect of texts that can be called “mean-
ing” (in a certain way), even if some intentionalists (e.g. Hirsch) prefer to
call that something by another name (like “linguistic sign”). 9 Likewise, it
would be futile to deny that the word “meaning” can be applied to the
reader’s understanding, regardless of whether it lines up with the author’s
intention. These are, in fact, legitimate uses of the word “meaning.” That
does not mean, however, that these competing uses of “meaning” have
equal standing as philosophical givens. For example, when we use “mean-
ing” to denote an author’s intention, we should accrue at least some merit
within a philosophical court, for we are using the word to describe some-
thing that really exists—no one denies that intentions are real cognitive
events. This use of “meaning” covers something that exists, and which
therefore calls for an analysis of the role it plays (or doesn’t play) in herme-
neutics. The type of “meaning” that materializes during the reading event
is likewise a cognitive event (more often called “understanding”), and so
there is a real thing (as such) lying behind that use of the word. But when
we turn to the new-textualist use of “meaning” to describe an encoded
message—a message whose encodement is somehow imagined in isola-
tion from both the author’s and the reader’s cognitive activity 10 —we are
faced with a type of “meaning” that is strictly ex hypothesi. There is nothing
real behind the concept of a purely textual meaning. In fact, non-autho-
rial textual meaning exists only as a concept , and it owes that existence to
a purely linguistic convenience of referring to the “meaning” of a text,
without prejudice toward the question of its reality. Notwithstanding the
reams of text devoted to the idea of textual meaning, anti-intentionalists
have not shown (and cannot show) that the thing they call “meaning”
THERE IS NOTHING OUTSIDE THE INTENTION: ADDRESSING “MEANING”... 69