Robert A Segal
FROM EXPLANATION TO INTERPRETATION
Just as Geertz shifts from a concern with the consequence of religion for society to a concern with its consequence for the individual, so he shifts from an explanatory approach to religion to an interpretive one. Inspired by the philosopher Paul Ricoeur (see Geertz 1973:19), he comes to view all of culture, not just religion, as akin to a literary text, which therefore requires the equivalent of exegesis: “The culture of a people is an ensem- ble of texts, themselves ensembles, which the anthropologist strains to read over the shoulders of those to whom they properly belong” (Geertz 1973:452).8 Geertz’s switch from explanation to interpretation does not,
however, coincide with his switch from impact on society to impact on the individual. For him, the distinction between explanation and interpreta- tion is not that between the impact of religion on society and the impact of religion on individuals. Rather, the distinction is that between one charac- terization of the impact of religion on individuals and another.
All interpreters equate explanation with cause and equate interpretation with meaning. They differ over how to distinguish causes from meanings. Geertz adopts not only the distinction but also the example drawn by the philosopher Gilbert Ryle,9who contrasts twitching and winking. Writes
Geertz:
Consider, he [Ryle] says, two boys rapidly contracting the eyelids of their right eyes. In one, this is an involuntary twitch; in the other, a conspiratorial signal to a friend. The two movements are, as movements, identical; from an I-am-a-camera,
“phenomenalistic” observation of them alone, one could not tell which was twitch and which was wink, or indeed whether both or either was twitch or wink. Yet the difference, however unphotographable, between a twitch and a wink is vast; as anyone unfortunate enough to have had the first taken for the second knows. The winker is communicating, and indeed communicating in a quite precise and spe- cial way: (1) deliberately, (2) to someone in particular, (3) to impart a particular message, (4) according to a socially established code, and (5) without cognizance of the rest of the company. (Geertz 1973:6)
In the familiar sense of the terms cause and meaning, a twitch is causal, or
meaningless, because it has no purpose. It is involuntary and therefore
unintentional. It is not inexplicable, for its cause explains it, but it is pur- poseless. A wink is meaningful because it has a purpose as well as a cause. More accurately, it has a purpose rather than a cause. It is voluntary and therefore intentional. Because a twitch even more than a wink is a case of individual rather than social behavior, an explanation can clearly deal with individuals as well as with society. Again, then, the shift from expla- nation to interpretation is not from impact on society to impact on the individual.
In the more technical sense of the terms, the usage which Geertz adopts from Ryle, a cause can be the intent but must be separate from the behav- ior it effects. A wink is meaningful rather than causal not because it is inten- tional but because the intent is inseparable from the behavior: in winking, one does not first contract one’s eyelids and then wink but rather inten- tionally contracts one’s eyelids. Therefore the intent cannot be the cause of the behavior and can only be the meaning. On the one hand the behavior cannot be described apart from the intent: one cannot describe the behav- ior as winking rather than twitching without including the intent in the characterization of the behavior. The meaning defines the behavior. On the other hand the intent cannot be described apart from the behavior: one cannot wink without contracting one’s eyelids. The behavior expresses the meaning. Either way, the intent and the behavior are two aspects of a sin- gle action rather than, as in causal explanation, the cause and the effect. Writes Geertz: “As Ryle points out, the winker has not done two things, contracted his eyelids and winked, while the twitcher has done only one, contracted his eyelids. Contracting your eyelids on purpose when there exists a public code in which so doing counts as a conspiratorial signal is winking” (Geertz 1973:6). If the contraction were the effect of winking, winking would be the cause. But because the contraction is the expression of winking, winking is the meaning. Still, the meaning no less than the cause accounts for the behavior: one contracts one’s eyelids in order to wink.
Geertz first makes this Rylean distinction between causes and meanings in the opening pages of “Thick Description” (1973), the only new essay in
The Interpretation of Cultures. While several other essays in the book cite Ryle,
no other discusses the issue of interpretation and explanation, in which case the shift in Geertz presumably begins only with “Thick Description.” By then, the shift from social to individual impact has already occurred.10The
difference for Geertz between explanation and interpretation is not, then, in the function religion serves but in the characterization of that function. In asserting that humans have an innate drive to make sense of life, earlier Geertz is asserting that that drive causes them to engage in religious and other sense-making activities. In continuing to assert that humans have an innate drive to make sense of life, later Geertz is asserting that religious and other sense-making activities express that drive.
Yet Geertz, despite appealing to Ryle, may really be assuming that the only difference between meanings and causes is intent—the ordinary way of dis- tinguishing them. At best, he is ambiguous. When, elsewhere in The Interpre-
tation of Cultures, he declares that, as quoted, “The drive to make sense out of
experience, to give it form and order, is evidently as real and as pressing as the more familiar biological needs” (Geertz 1973:140 [1957]), he can undeni- ably be taken as claiming that sense-making behavior like religion either
expresses or defines (so, strictly, Ryle) the sense-making need of humans. But
he can also be taken as saying that that behavior effects a sense-making need, which is its cause. The behavior would thereby be the fulfillment of a need for sense rather than either the expression of humanity’s sense-making nature or the whole of humanity’s sense-making nature, as for Ryle.
Indeed, what Geertz really likes about Ryle is less the logical nexus in an individual between thought and action than the empirical nexus in cul- ture between thought and action. If Ryle’s key point is that winking is not intent plus eye movement but instead intentional eye movement, Geertz’s key point is that culture is intent plus behavior. Culture for him is neither sheer intent, as for ethnoscientists and Lévi-Straussian structuralists, nor sheer behavior, as for Skinnerian (not, as Geertz wrongly calls them, “rad- ical”) behaviorists, but instead intentional behavior. Insisting that social scientists seek intent as well as behavior would place Geertz in the camp of mainstream interpreters like Max Weber, whom he himself invokes (see Geertz 1973:5).11
To use the terms that Geertz takes from Ryle, a description of sheer behavior would be “thin,” whereas a description of intent plus behavior, or of the meaning expressed by the behavior, is “thick.” By a thick descrip- tion Geertz means an “interpretation.” Yet a description of intent alone would also be thin. For Geertz, however much concerned he is with intent, is at least as much concerned with behavior. As he writes against ethno- scientists, who equate culture with the rules for behavior, “[T]o draw from such truths the conclusion that knowing how to wink is winking . . . is to betray as deep a confusion as, taking thin descriptions for thick, to iden- tify winking with eyelid contractions” (Geertz 1973:12). While Geertz opposes both those who sever intent from behavior and those who sever
behavior from intent, he especially takes to task those who ignore behav- ior. By no coincidence, his ethnography focuses far more on practice than on belief, far more on ethos than on world view.