Understanding as Transformative

Understanding is personal and transformative, requiring openness to the unknown and engagement with pain, sorrow, anxiety, guilt, and shame—not just pleasant experiences. Objective knowledge is superior for technology but not for finding orientation or achieving a good life, where understanding, judgment, and wisdom are essential. Developing good understanding demands participation in a happening and a willingness to fight evil both outside and inside oneself. A movement from mythos-understanding to logos-understanding, aided by philosophical practice, self-reflection, and dialogue, is necessary.

Study at a glance

Abstract

As human beings, we have to understand for ourselves, while we can distribute knowledge among us. Understanding is personal, while knowledge is impersonal. Understanding calls for a transformation of both preunderstanding and the understanding person, while knowledge can be applied without regard to individual feelings. We tend to believe that objective knowledge is superior to subjective understanding, but that only applies to the development of technology. It does not apply to our ability to find orientation and achieve a good life. Here we are helpless without understanding, judgment, and wisdom. At the same time, however, we underestimate how much it requires of us to develop good, transformative understanding. The process of understanding demands the ability to participate in a happening and a basic openness to the unknown, and such conscious and attentive participation in life presupposes that we can also relate to pain, sorrow, anxiety, guilt, and shame, not only to the pleasant and entertaining. It presupposes a willingness to fight evil not exclusively outside oneself. A movement from mythos-understanding to logos-understanding is required in which philosophical practice, self-reflection, and dialogue can be helpful.