Abstract
I begin in the first section of this essay by restating and defending an old objection against actual intentionalism, the view that the historical author or artist’s actual intentions, when embodied or realized successfully in the artwork, determine or fix the work’s meaning, which in turn is known through tracking those intentions. The objection I defend shows that authorial intentions are surplus or otiose. In the second section of the essay, I state one moderate version of an alternate view about interpretation known as hypothetical intentionalism, which has been advanced in different versions for almost forty years now by writers as varied as Michael Baxandall, Wayne Booth, Gregory Currie, Jerrold Levinson, Alexander Nehamas, and William Tolhurst, amongst others. I conclude by defending hypothetical intentionalism from some recent criticisms raised by Noël Carroll, Stephen Davies, and Robert Stecker.
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