Is there a single right interpretation for such cultural phenomena as works of literature, visual artworks, works of music, the self, and legal and sacred texts? In these essays, almost all written especially for this volume, twenty leading philosophers pursue different answers to this question by examining the nature of interpretation and its objects and ideals.

The fundamental conflict between positions that universally require the ideal of a single admissible interpretation (singularism) and those that allow a multiplicity of some admissible interpretations (multiplism) leads to...