The Meaning of Intention and Meaning in Mark Bevir and Vivienne Brown

Bevir's weak intentionalism construes meanings consisting in the understanding of a specific individual and they are identifiable solely by reference to that individual, by contrast with strong intentionalism, whereby a text expresses prior purposes of the author and a text has meaning only by virtue of the determining will of its author, so that to understand what a text says, we must recover what its author meant. Bevir's approach is to focus on what is actually written, on the product of the act of expression, rather than on what an author might have antecedently said (or somehow otherwise stated) they would write. A third possibility is to reject intentions altogether, and the paper explores the debate between Bevir and Brown over whether any theory of intentionality can be coherent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Copyright of Intellectual History Review is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)