of this development—many, many hermeneutical discussions begin with
the premise that meaning is a thing that indwells language independently
of human design. In point of fact, however, non-authorial textual mean-
ing has the same sort of unreality as “counterfactual history”—or as the
emperor’s new suit.
“M EANING” AND HERMENEUTIC SIGNIFICANCE
Now that I have defended the defi nitional integrity of the various under-
standings of “meaning,” I will continue to put them in their place. To this
point, I have argued that saying that a given understanding of “meaning”
represents a legitimate defi nition of the term is not the same as saying
that it represents a legitimate hermeneutic concern. It is quite possible for
a given understanding of “meaning” to be defi nitionally admissible but
hermeneutically insignifi cant. A review of the hermeneutical arguments
currently on offer would show that this point is greatly underappreciated.
Many scholars, in fact, argue as though proving the descriptive worth of a
given understanding of “meaning” somehow amounts to proving its her-
meneutic signifi cance. 14 That line of argument represents a terrifi c botch
of reasoning.
One way of putting this additional wrinkle on the issues discussed
above is to say that there is yet another meaning of “meaning,” in that her-
meneuts regularly award the word “meaning” exclusively to that locus or
mode of meaning that they believe is the proper object of interpretation.
Thus when someone says that “the author’s intended meaning is where
the meaning of the text lies,” he or she is doubling up on the uses of the
word “meaning”—using it once to refer to intention as “meaning,” and
once again to identify that “meaning” as the meaning that is hermeneuti-
cally signifi cant. As with the interchange between competing defi nitions
of “meaning,” I have the strong feeling that hermeneuts do not realize
they are doubling the defi nitions of “meaning” when they speak this way.
In order to keep terms straight, I will use “meaning” to refer to non-
hermeneutical uses of the idea of meaning, and “Meaning” (capitalized)
to refer to the hermeneutical privileging of a particular “meaning.” 15
When we cast the problem in these terms, an even bigger question
mark appears over those schemes that turn “meaning” into a morphing
blob that envelops and joins the activities of authors and readers. What is
there, in the way of an actual analysis of givens, to suggest that such a blob
even exists, or that it might exist? In the Steve McQueen movie The Blob ,
THERE IS NOTHING OUTSIDE THE INTENTION: ADDRESSING “MEANING”... 71