Is There a Meaning in This Text?: The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge by Kevin J. Vanhoozer

Author:Kevin J. Vanhoozer [Vanhoozer, Kevin J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Religion, Biblical Criticism & Interpretation, Biblical Studies, Exegesis & Hermeneutics, Christian Theology
ISBN: 9780310324690
Google: 2LES8XbNJkUC
Amazon: 0310324696
Barnesnoble: 0310324696
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2009-04-14T22:00:00+00:00

Legal Contexts. Determining an agent’s intention is often literally a matter of life and death. Establishing intention in the courtroom, for instance, means ascribing actions and assigning responsibility. Traditionally, a person is not thought to have acted criminally without some consideration of mens rea (“the mental element of the act”). An act is not guilty unless the mind is also guilty. Yet bare intentions (what I called “mapping intentions”) never put into action do not constitute legal guilt either. R. A. Duff, a philosopher of law, defines intention as “acting to bring about a result.”242 Intention is distinct from both “desire” and from “foresight.” Intention is rather “acting in order to.” Thus far, Duff’s analysis is consistent with my own; the author’s intention is not a matter of what the author wanted to do, nor of what the author believed might happen as a consequence, but rather of what the author was doing and actually did. The link between intentions and illocutions (what one does in saying) remains firm.

Intriguingly, Duff’s distinction between the “result” of an action and its “consequence” corresponds precisely to the distinction between illocutions and perlocutions.243 As Duff rightly observes, “I ‘intend’ what I have decided to bring about; but I cannot intend a result which is ‘wholly beyond’ my control.”244 A “result” is what occurs when the action is done (e.g., what one does in saying something). The result, one might say, is an aspect of the action: the food going down my throat is a result of my swallowing. If the food doesn’t go down, I have not swallowed. “To discern an agent’s intentions is to grasp the relation between her action and its context … what she will count as success or failure in what she does.”245 The “consequence” of an action, on the other hand, is an event that follows from or is caused by the action. As a consequence of my swallowing, I may appease my hunger. Then again I may not (I may want seconds). Consequences are not tied to actions as closely as are results. Consequences are not intrinsic, but extrinsic, to actions. Consequences have to do with ulterior, perlocutionary purposes. As such, they fall outside the purview of intended action.

Perlocutionary intentions, I suggest, are aimed at producing consequences. We discover what illocutionary act is being performed, on the other hand, by asking, “What are you doing?” and we answer that question by specifying what would count as a satisfactory result. Searle devotes an entire chapter in Speech Acts to analyzing the necessary and sufficient conditions for the successful performance of the illocutionary act of promising. The “propositional” condition of a promise is that the speaker must predicate a future act of himself or herself. The “essential” condition of a promise is that the utterance counts as a commitment to do the future act. These conditions must be satisfied in order for the action to have a “result,” or to be performed at all.246

In a legal context, it is vitally

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