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To be sure, it is, in a sense, "immanent criticism," insofar as one considers the claim the text makes or implies for what it says about its Sache, as distinct from what it says. Thus a text claims to speak appropriately to Jesus Christ, and insofar entitles me to criticize it on the basis of this claim. But while taking the text at its word with respect to its claim to appropriateness entitles me to validate its claim as and when that claim becomes problematic, and my validation of its claim is, in that sense, an immanent criticism, this is not the sense I have in mind in using the concept. What I mean by "immanent criticism" of a text is a criticism, the criterion or norm for which is what is said and meant in the text itself, as distinct from whatever it is that the text claims to speak about appropriately in saying and meaning what it does. That – -- what the text is about as distinct from what it says and means about what it is about – -- is not immanent in the text, but transcendent of it. Insofar as it is the criterion or norm for judging the text, then, the criticism is properly distinguished as a "transcendent criticism," which consists in critically (in-)validating the claim of the text to speak appropriately about what lies beyond it.

Perhaps another way of clarifying the same difference is to say that talk about "die Sache" of the text, or, in English, what the text is about, is ambiguous, insofar as it can refer either to a reality beyond the text or to the meaning of the text, as distinct from the text itself. By "die Sachkritik," then, * one can mean either critical validation of the claim of the text to be appropriate to the reality beyond it that it is about – and this is what I mean by a "transcendent criticism" – -- or critical interpretation of the text, of what the text says, by reference to what it means, i.e., by reference to the question it asks and its answer to this question – -- which is what I mean by an "immanent criticism."

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