Intuition v. Interpretation

Westphal asks why Christians are hesitant to affirm the inevitability of interpretation, and answers that denying the necessity of interpretation seems to be the easiest way to affirm truth as correspondence and to preserve objectivity. If interpretation intervenes into every act of knowing, then it doesn’t seem that we can actually know what’s out there, we can’t actually know what’s in the text. Objectivity seems to diffuse into subjective interpretations.

One of Westphal’s responses is to show that “the whole idea that some construals are subjective interpretations while others are objective intuitions is itself a particular (contested) tradition within philosophy.” That is, the view that rejects the necessity of interpretation in the act of knowing is dependent on an interpretive (philosophical) framework to make the distinction between interpretive and non-interpretive acts of knowing. The distinction between “just seeing” what’s objectively there and “interpreting” is not itself “just seen.” The opposition of intuitions and interpretations collapses because it is self-refuting, dependent on epistemological assumption that the theory wants to deny.