Author(s)

Yan Gao

Corresponding Author

Yan Gao

Abstract

Since the middle of last century, "interpretation" has become the core topic of western philosophy, literature, history, law and many other disciplines. "Interpretation", as a public behavior is determined by the public nature of human reason. Public rationality aims at the truth of cognition and the certainty of interpretation, and its operation paradigm is based on people's basic cognitive norms. Professor Zhang Jiang's new "public interpretation theory" is to re-establish the basis of rationality in interpretation with public rationality as the core. "Public interpretation theory" goes beyond the previous "forced interpretation" theory and tries to reconstruct the public nature of interpretation in the diversity of cultures. The proposal of "public interpretation theory" reflects the originality of Chinese theory. Its expansion and extension make the reconstruction of Chinese literary theory come true. This theory makes a critical study on the contemporary western literary theory on the basis of the reflection on "forced interpretation". It looks from the criticism of the theory of "forced interpretation" to "public interpretation theory" to reconstruct the theory of literary criticism in China. China's present domestic literature theory and the philosophy of logic problems are considered again. The opposite of "public interpretation" is "individual interpretation", and literary interpretation also has corresponding "commonness" and "individuality", which leads to the differentiation of literary interpretation theory. The cultural field of the publicity of "interpretation" or the historic decision of the community determines that the "interpretation" must be conducted in the context of history, so the commonality of literary interpretation should also has the characteristics of diversification, which makes the important influence to the literary activities. Our interpretation of traditional Chinese literary theory should also be diversified; it is not a closed system. Our system of literary theory must be inclusive of both "world value and individual consciousness", and with global value, Chinese literary theory will have public characteristics and be recognized by the world. However, there is no future in using western theoretical discourse to study the interpretation theory of the Chinese nation. The public nature of interpretation reveals the common rationality and common destiny of human beings and is of great significance to the progress of human civilization and cultural development.

Keywords

Public Interpretation; Literature Theory; Reconstruction