Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary & Legal Studies

by Stanley Fish

In literary theory, the philosophy of law, and the sociology of knowledge, no issue has been more central to current debate than the status of our interpretations. Do they rest on a ground of rationality or are they subjective impositions of a merely personal point of view? In Doing What Comes Naturally , Stanley Fish refuses the dilemma posed by this question and argues that while we can never separate our judgments from the contexts in which they are made, those judgments are nevertheless authoritative and even, in the only way that matters, objective. He thus rejects both the demand for an ahistorical foundation, and the conclusion that in the absence of such a foundation we reside in an indeterminate world. In a succession of provocative and wide-ranging chapters, Fish explores the implications of his position for our understanding of legal, literary, and psychoanalytic interpretation, the nature of professional and institutional culture, and the place of reason in a world that is rhetorical through and through.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Law, Theory, Academic

624 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Stanley Eugene Fish is an American literary theorist and legal scholar. He was born and raised in Providence, Rhode Island. He is often associated with postmodernism, at times to his irritation, as he describes himself as an anti-foundationalist.

He is the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and a Professor of Law at Florida International University, in Miami, as well as Dean Emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the author of 10 books. Professor Fish has also taught at the University of California, Berkeley, Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, and Duke University.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the book Doing What Comes Naturally Stanley Fish introduces a plethora of contemporary issues that have controversy in regards to the realm of interpretation. In laymen���s terms the question that is posed is: does the grounds and basis for interpretation rest upon reasonableness or are the foundational tenets of interpretation simply subjective results of an individualistic point of reference? In other words, Fish states that the issue at hand is the ���shift by which meaning is disengaged from language and relocated in the (interpreted) intentions of the speakers: there are no longer any constraints on interpretation that are not themselves interpretive. Since intentions themselves can be known only interpretively, the meanings that follow upon the specification of intention will always be vulnerable to the challenge of an alternative specification.��� Yet again he captures the shift in saying, ���Meanings that seem perspicuous and literal are rendered so by forceful interpretive acts and not by the properties of language.��� He goes on to state that words are, ���dislodged from one special setting, where their meaning was obvious, and placed in another where their meaning is also obvious but different. ��� This all results in a world as, ���aptly described by Bishop Hoadly���s observation that ���whoever hath authority to interpret any written or spoken laws it is he who is the lawgiver to all intents and purposes and not the person who first wrote or spake them.���

In the open introduction Fish then introduces the thought of an outside norm. This outside norm can be thought of as a constraint that is placed upon the rules of law, principles and even interpretation that hold the ���self��� in check. This outside norm really constitutes the difference between an interpretive caricature of a refined/orderly society versus a society that is driven by the disorderly anarchism of the subjective individualistic will.

The remainder of the book focuses on issues such as: interpretive hazards, the need of having words anchored in a source, the source of interpretive authority, the use of irony and the interpretive ramification of rhetoric.

[Matthew Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the book Doing What Comes Naturally Stanley Fish introduces a plethora of contemporary issues that have controversy in regards to the realm of interpretation. In laymen’s terms the question that is posed is: does the grounds and basis for interpretation rest upon reasonableness or are the foundational tenets of interpretation simply subjective results of an individualistic point of reference? In other words, Fish states that the issue at hand is the ‘shift by which meaning is disengaged from language and relocated in the (interpreted) intentions of the speakers: there are no longer any constraints on interpretation that are not themselves interpretive. Since intentions themselves can be known only interpretively, the meanings that follow upon the specification of intention will always be vulnerable to the challenge of an alternative specification.” Yet again he captures the shift in saying, “Meanings that seem perspicuous and literal are rendered so by forceful interpretive acts and not by the properties of language.” He goes on to state that words are, “dislodged from one special setting, where their meaning was obvious, and placed in another where their meaning is also obvious but different. ” This all results in a world as, “aptly described by Bishop Hoadly’s observation that ‘whoever hath authority to interpret any written or spoken laws it is he who is the lawgiver to all intents and purposes and not the person who first wrote or spake them.”

In the open introduction Fish then introduces the thought of an outside norm. This outside norm can be thought of as a constraint that is placed upon the rules of law, principles and even interpretation that hold the ‘self’ in check. This outside norm really constitutes the difference between an interpretive caricature of a refined/orderly society versus a society that is driven by the disorderly anarchism of the subjective individualistic will.

The remainder of the book focuses on issues such as: interpretive hazards, the need of having words anchored in a source, the source of interpretive authority, the use of irony and the interpretive ramification of rhetoric.