Interpretation vs. Criticism: A Rejoinder to Professor Crowley

Extract

Professor Crowley's “Comment on Professor Macpherson's Interpretation of Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom” is beguilingly titled. But my article was not an “interpretation.” Interpretation is an exercise which, as Professor Crowley rightly implies, involves reading some assumptions into the text that is being interpreted. What I offered, on the contrary, was logical criticism of quite specific arguments of Friedman's, criticism which did not depend on speculation about his unstated assumptions. It is Professor Crowley who offers an interpretation, both of Friedman and of me, based on speculation about our assumptions. It is interesting, but it does not constitute the criticism of my arguments that Professor Crowley thinks it does. I have no quarrel in principle with speculation about assumptions: I am the last person to deny the usefulness of reading between the lines where that is necessary to clarify a text. But Friedman's text is quite clear. I thought mine was too: at least I addressed myself directly to Friedman's. Professor Crowley does not address himself as directly to mine. His criticism is sometimes not a criticism of what I wrote, but of what he, diverted by his own speculations, thought I must have meant (or of what he would have meant if, inconceivably, he had written what I wrote).