Understanding Texts: The same kind of problem that an understanding of law faces could also be faced by the attempt to understand texts. The complexity does not diminish if the text is in a person’s language or in another language. So much confusion, for instance, has attended the precise understanding of, say, the Bible. This is so for texts because there is an on-going attempt to arrive at the intention or meaning intended by the author of the text. A particular story like Shakespeare’s Hamlet or Achebe’s Madman presents a problem of grasping the textual or narrative sense of the work. Again, this rides on the significance that one places on authorial intention embedded in the text.
There are so many other issues that are the subjects of understanding. People attempt to understand nature, mathematics, arts, moral values, language, economics, animal behaviour, and so on. These various subjects of understanding, it would seem, demand different means of understanding.
