1. Against Theory: Literary Studies and the New Pragmatism, ed. W. J. T Mitchell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 139 (citing Stanley Fish). An earlier version of this essay was published in the Protocol of the 52d Colloquy: Against Theory 2 by Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels, copyright 1986 by the Center for Hermeneutical Studies, 2400 Ridge Road, Berkeley, CA 94709. The essay is a revised version of my response to a draft of "Against Theory 2: Hermeneutics and Deconstruction," Critical Inquiry 14 (1987): 49-68; the draft was originally delivered at a conference at the Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Berkeley, California, 8 Dec. 1985. Research for this paper was supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for College Teachers.

2. For a more detailed presentation of hermeneutics and its arguments against intentionalism, see D. C. Hoy, The Critical Circle: Literature, History, and Philosophical Hermeneutics (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978); "Must We Say What We Mean? The Grammatological Critique of Hermeneutics," in Hermeneutics and Modern Philosophy, ed. Brice R. Wachterhauser (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), 397-415; and "Hermeneutic Circularity, Indeterminacy, and Incommensurability," New Literary History 10 (1978): 161-73. In the present essay I am using the term nonintentionalism for hermeneutics to distinguish it from the anti-intentionalism of Wimsatt and Beardsley, who attack intentionalism on different premises from those used by hermeneutics.

3. In "Against Theory 2" Knapp and Michaels cite Donald Davidson in support of their anticonventionalism (footnote 19). I hasten to point out, though, that Davidson in the essay they cite is also at pains to show that a theory much like their own intentionalism is misconceived. Davidson writes in "Communication and Convention" (in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation [New York: Oxford University Press, 1984], 271-72): "Of course the mere intention does not give the sentence that meaning.... Literal meaning and intended literal meaning must coincide if there is to be a literal meaning. But this fact, while true and important, is of no direct help in understanding the concept of literal meaning, since the crucial intention must be characterized by reference to the literal meaning." In other words, if Davidson is right, Knapp and Michaels have reversed the proper order of analysis.

4. See Davidson, "Communication and Convention," 271.

5. Monroe Beardsley argues that "it is a paradoxical consequence of the intentionalist definition of literature ... that though characteristically discourses that are poems will also be literary works of art, this is not logically necessary: there is no self-contradiction in saying that a poem (but not literature) has been produced automatically or accidentally or inadvertently or by mistake or by chance." "Aesthetic Intentions and Fictive Illocutions," in What Is Literature? ed. Paul Hernadi (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 168.

6. For a more detailed account of hermeneutics and legal interpretation see D. C. Hoy, "Interpreting the Law: Hermeneutical and Poststructuralist Perspectives," Southern California Law Review 58 (1985): 136-76. See also "Dworkin's Constructive Optimism v. Deconstructive Legal Nihilism," Law and Philosophy 6 (1987): 321-56.

7. Southern California Law Review 58 (1985): 673-81.

8. See John Hart Ely on the Ninth Amendment in Democracy and Distrust: A Theory of Judicial Review (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), 34-41.

9. See Erie R. R. v. Tompkins (1938).

10. Against Theory, 24.

11. Ibid., 104.

12. Ibid., 96.

13. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Continuum, 1975), 271-74.

14. For a more detailed discussion of the legal position known as originalism, which can be distinguished from intentionalism (although it often is not), see D. C. Hoy, "A Hermeneutical Critique of the Originalism/Nonoriginalism Distinction," Northern Kentucky Law Review. 15 (1988): 479, 498.

15. Quoted in New York Times, Sunday, 13 Oct. 1985.

16. See the Supreme Court on Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections (1966).