Intention and Meaning — On Some Questions in Quentin Skinner’s Theory of Meaning
Author: Yu-Kang Liang
Abstract / Chinese PDF Download
Quentin Skinner, the leading figure of the so-called ‘Cambridge School’, hasdeveloped a unique methodology for studying the history of political thought. Onetenet in his theory is that the meaning of a text depends more heavily on theauthor’s intention in writing than on the semantic level. Some academics havecriticised Skinner’s theory for putting too much emphasis on the author’s intentionthan on the text itself. In addition to spelling out these criticisms, this article arguesthat by applying John Searle’s theory (contending that the source of meaning comesfrom language’s capacity to represent human Intentional states), the meaning of atext rests on both the agreement of the semantic level and also on the author’sIntentional states. Thus it can be concluded that Skinner’s argument is moreconvincing than those criticisms against him.