LEGAL THEORY WORKSHOP SERIES
presents
Martin Stone
Cardozo Law School-Yeshiva University
Interpretation:
Everyday and Philosophical
12:30 – 2:00
Friday, March 20, 2015
Solarium (room FA2) – Falconer Hall
84 Queen’s Park
I begin by comparing and contrasting some familiar settings in which interpretations are called for: law, literature, and artistic performance. The aim is to clarify the variability and unity of “interpretation” across these settings: How is interpretation of a literary text like and unlike the interpretations that are official applications of the law?
There is today also a distinctively philosophical use of the term interpretation. An author speaks, not of the meaning of this or that thing, but rather of interpretation as the condition of the possibility of meaning or understanding as such. In the broadest formulations, interpretation is said to be present in every experience of the world. Nietzsche: “There are no facts, only interpretations.” No such question—‘how is meaning possible?’—seems to be in play when interpretation appears in its more quotidian employments.
Wittgenstein encourages us to ask: Is this a significant use of the term interpretation? Or must the meaning of some things be available without interpretation if interpretation is to be possible at all? This question should be taken in connection with one of his larger themes: that of philosophical voice as speech dislocated from——yet still dependent on——its everyday contexts.
Professor Martin Stone joined the Cardozo faculty after 10 years at Duke University, where he held a joint appointment in the law school and the philosophy department and was an adjunct professor in the literature program. He has taught at Cornell University, Harvard University, Princeton University and the University of Michigan and is currently an adjunct professor of philosophy at the New School University Graduate Faculty. Among his many honors, he graduated from Brandeis summa cum laude with highest departmental honors, was a Marshall Scholar at Balliol College, was a fellow at the National Humanities Center, and won the George Plimpton Adams Prize for his doctoral dissertation. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. One of the nation's leading scholars of the philosophy of law, Professor Stone has written widely on torts, Wittgenstein, formalism, and interpretation. In addition to his scholarly pursuits, Professor Stone is an accomplished pianist, having studied at the California Institute of the Arts and the Tanglewood Music Festival.
A light lunch will be served.
For more information about this workshop, please contact Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca.
