Abstract

Does interpretationism leave any place for irrationality? At first sight, it seems it does not. Since interpretation requires the interpreter to assume that the subject being interpreted is rational (the principle of charity), it seems to follow that we can understand the subject only as a rational being, or otherwise the subject will have to be taken as non-rational and not really a subject at all (the paradox of irrationality). In this paper, however, I shall argue that interpretationism can understand irrationality as irrationality through the analysis of the structure of rationality.