system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
To what degree should casual readers of philosophy care about authorial intent?
gpt
This question opens onto a massive field (philology, hermeneutics etc.), but it can be interesting to juxtapose what authors intend to mean and what they do mean, what they intend to do, and what they do. Intention in philosophy can, and has, been quite broadly construed - attaining truth, providing laws that govern experience, comprehending Being - and since philosophers as philosophers can *share* intentions their exploits can be contrasted with each other. This procedure is not external to philosophy, all philosophy has used previous philosophies, if not as material, as its stage. 

But insofar as intention objectifies itself (minimally in language, sound etc.), it is beyond the controlling scope of the individual's interiority. Yet even there the subject is not in full possession of their intentions anymore than anyone can be wholly present to themselves. The primacy of the author has long since past for most. Those still holding to intention as the source of meaning are confronted with the problem that the meaning of any intention must itself be understood and so cannot be a ground, must be relative. (i.e. is hard to understand what Kant intends without a minimal understanding of the history of philosophy, enlightenment etc.)