“Interpretation is not (as most people assume) an absolute value, a gesture of mind situated in some timeless realm of capabilities.”

—  Susan Sontag

Source: Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966), p. 6
Context: Interpretation is not (as most people assume) an absolute value, a gesture of mind situated in some timeless realm of capabilities. Interpretation must itself be evaluated, within a historical view of human consciousness. In some cultural contexts, interpretation is a liberating act. It is a means of revising, of transvaluing, of escaping the dead past. In other cultural contexts, it is reactionary, impertinent, cowardly, stifling.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Interpretation is not (as most people assume) an absolute value, a gesture of mind situated in some timeless realm of c…" by Susan Sontag?
Susan Sontag photo
Susan Sontag 168
American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist 1933–2004

Related quotes

Lee Smolin photo

“I… propose that time and its passage are fundamental and real and the hopes and beliefs about timeless truths and timeless realms are mythology.”

Lee Smolin (1955) American cosmologist

Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe (2013)

Kenneth Arrow photo

“We will also assume in the present study that individual values are taken as data and are not capable of being altered by the nature of the decision process itself”

Kenneth Arrow (1921–2017) American economist

Source: 1950s-1960s, Social Choice and Individual Values (1951), p. 7

Ronald Fisher photo

“The academic mind, as we know, is sometimes capable of assuming an aggressive attitude. The official mind, on the contrary, is and has to be, expert in the art of self-defence.”

Ronald Fisher (1890–1962) English statistician, evolutionary biologist, geneticist, and eugenicist

Presidential Address to the First Indian Statistical Congress, 1938. Sankhya 4, 14-17.
1930s

Fyodor Dostoyevsky photo
Gerd Gigerenzer photo

“One is forced to assume that ordinary people have the computational capabilities and statistical software of econometricians.”

Gerd Gigerenzer (1947) German psychologist

Gerd Gigerenzer and Reinhard Selten (2001), Bounded Rationality. The Adaptive Toolbox, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Anthony de Mello photo

“Eternal means timeless — no time. The human mind cannot understand that. The human mind can understand time and can deny time. What is timeless is beyond our comprehension.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

"The Illusion of Rewards", p. 43
Awareness (1992)
Context: Do you know what eternal life is? You think it's everlasting life. But your own theologians will tell you that that is crazy, because everlasting is still within time. It is time perduring forever. Eternal means timeless — no time. The human mind cannot understand that. The human mind can understand time and can deny time. What is timeless is beyond our comprehension. Yet the mystics tell us that eternity is right now. How's that for good news? It is right now. People are so distressed when I tell them to forget their past. They're crazy! Just drop it! When you hear "Repent for your past," realize it's a great religious distraction from waking up. Wake up! That's what repent means. Not "weep for your sins.": Wake up! understand, stop all the crying. Understand! Wake up!

David D. Levine photo

“Wordlessly she gestured downward, to the hidden lower limbs which seemed to hold some unearthly power over men’s minds.”

David D. Levine (1961) science fiction writer

Source: Arabella and the Battle of Venus (2017), Chapter 8, “Crossing the Line” (p. 110)

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues photo
Pope Leo X photo

“Some, putting aside her true interpretation of Sacred Scripture, are blinded in mind by the father of lies.”

Exsurge Domine (1520)
Context: Some, putting aside her true interpretation of Sacred Scripture, are blinded in mind by the father of lies. Wise in their own eyes, according to the ancient practice of heretics, they interpret these same Scriptures otherwise than the Holy Spirit demands, inspired only by their own sense of ambition, and for the sake of popular acclaim, as the Apostle declares. In fact, they twist and adulterate the Scriptures. As a result, according to Jerome, "It is no longer the Gospel of Christ, but a man's, or what is worse, the devil's."
Let all this holy Church of God, I say, arise, and with the blessed apostles intercede with almighty God to purge the errors of His sheep, to banish all heresies from the lands of the faithful, and be pleased to maintain the peace and unity of His holy Church.
For we can scarcely express, from distress and grief of mind, what has reached our ears for some time by the report of reliable men and general rumor; alas, we have even seen with our eyes and read the many diverse errors.

Related topics