When We Think We Understand

Hermeneutics, Prejudice, and the Art of Encountering Another Human Being

A person approaches you at a railway station in Oslo. There is noise all around. People move quickly past, their eyes fixed on screens, departure boards, and platforms. The stranger stops in front of you and asks for ten kroner to take the bus home.

What is actually happening in this moment?

You hear the words. You notice the clothes, the face, and the posture. You register the tone of voice and the manner in which the question is asked. Perhaps you think the person genuinely needs help. Perhaps you suspect that the story is untrue. Perhaps you have met the same person before, offering a different explanation. Perhaps you feel compassion. Perhaps you become irritated. Perhaps you give money simply to escape the discomfort. Perhaps you walk on.

All of this may happen within a few seconds.

Before you have had time to reflect carefully, you have already begun to understand. You have not merely registered a question. You have interpreted a human being.

This is where hermeneutics begins. Not first in old books or in philosophical debates about texts and method, but in the ordinary encounter in which another person stands before us and asks to be seen, heard, or understood. Hermeneutics is often translated as the art of interpretation or the theory of understanding. Yet behind these academic terms lies a simple and at the same time demanding insight: we never have direct access to the inner world of another person. We encounter words, actions, facial expressions, silence, and bodily movements, and on this basis we attempt to understand who the other person is, what they want, and what the situation means.

We do this constantly. We cannot avoid it.

The question is therefore not whether we interpret other people, but how we do so, and how willing we are to allow our first understanding to be corrected.

We Never See Only What Is There

We like to imagine that we see the world as it is. We see a person, hear what is being said, and form an opinion on the basis of what we observe. Yet what we see is never merely what is directly before our eyes. We also see through everything we have previously experienced.

A social worker does not meet a client without simultaneously bringing education, professional experience, values, previous encounters, legislation, institutional expectations, and personal life experience into the room. A teacher does not meet a pupil without assumptions about learning, behaviour, motivation, and normality. A physician does not meet a patient without medical knowledge and diagnostic categories. Parents do not meet a child without their own childhood experiences, hopes, fears, and expectations concerning who the child may become.

Even in our closest relationships, we encounter one another through interpretation. A glance from a spouse may be understood as criticism, tiredness, concern, or absence. A brief message from an adult child may be interpreted as rejection, busyness, or independence. A friend who does not respond may be angry, unwell, occupied, or may simply have forgotten.

What has actually happened is often far less than what we make of it. A person has looked at us, said a few words, or failed to reply. The rest takes shape in our interpretation.

This does not mean that all interpretations are equally valid. Nor does it mean that reality exists only within us. It means that we never encounter reality from the outside, as though we occupied a neutral position without history, language, or experience. We encounter the world from somewhere. We see something, but we always see as someone.

This is one of hermeneutics’ most important insights. Understanding does not come after observation, as an additional thought placed on top of what we have seen. Understanding is already present in the way we see. We notice something because it means something to us. We overlook something else because we have not yet learned to see it.

An experienced social worker may sense tension in a room before anyone puts it into words. A mother may hear from the sound of a child’s voice that something is wrong. A musician may hear nuances in a piece of music that others fail to notice. A craftsperson may see that a structure is uneven where others see only a wall.

Experience opens the world. But experience can also close it.

We may become so certain of what we see that we stop looking for anything else.

When Experience Becomes Prejudice

The word prejudice today almost always carries a negative meaning. We associate it with unreasonable, stereotypical, or discriminatory beliefs. In hermeneutics, however, the concept also has a more fundamental meaning. A prejudice is a judgement made before a complete examination. It is a provisional understanding that enables us to orient ourselves.

We cannot approach every person and every situation as though nothing similar had ever occurred before. Without previous experience, we would not know what to notice. We would not understand the words being spoken, the social codes being used, or what the situation required of us. In this sense, pre-understanding is not merely a problem. It is a condition of the possibility of understanding at all.

The problem arises when the provisional understanding becomes final.

A professional may have encountered many families in which substance misuse, violence, or neglect has been part of the situation. Such experience may make the professional attentive to signs that others overlook. Yet it may also lead the professional to discover signs because they expect to find them. A restless movement may be interpreted as lying. A parent’s anger may be understood as evidence of inadequate caregiving. A child’s silence may be taken as confirmation of something the adult already suspects.

It is possible to be right for the wrong reasons. It is also possible to be wrong with great professional confidence.

The danger of prejudice therefore lies not only in its content. Its greatest danger is that it may become invisible to the person who carries it. We no longer experience ourselves as interpreting. We experience ourselves as merely seeing what is there.

At that point, our understanding becomes confused with reality itself.

This does not happen only in professional contexts. It also happens in families, workplaces, and friendships. Once a person has been understood as difficult, selfish, weak, lazy, or unstable, new actions can easily be read as confirmation of what we already believe. Even attempts to change may be interpreted within the old narrative.

A person who has once been seen in a particular way may struggle to become visible as anything else.

The ethical significance of hermeneutics therefore lies in the question: what in my understanding comes from the other person, and what have I myself brought into the encounter?

There is no simple answer. We cannot cleanse ourselves of all pre-understanding and begin again as entirely neutral observers. But we can become more aware of what we carry with us. We can examine our reactions. We can ask why this particular action evokes irritation, fear, or compassion. We can listen for what does not fit our first explanation.

Every reflection on the other must therefore also be a reflection on ourselves.

The Child Who Does Not Speak

Imagine an eight-year-old girl. We may call her Maria. She has been placed in foster care. She does not want to speak about what has happened. Perhaps she says almost nothing in meetings with child welfare services. Perhaps she turns her face away. Perhaps she draws pictures that the adults attempt to understand.

What does the silence mean?

It may mean that Maria does not remember. It may mean that she remembers too much. She may be afraid of the consequences if she tells. She may remain loyal to her parents. She may have learned that adults cannot bear to hear what she has to say. She may be uncertain whether the adults will believe her. Perhaps she lacks the words. Perhaps silence is the only part of the situation she can still control.

Or perhaps the silence means something entirely different.

The professional cannot avoid interpreting. Even refusing to interpret would itself be an interpretation. The danger arises when the adult fills the child’s silence with a story of their own and then treats that story as though it belonged to the child.

Silence has a particular capacity to invite the voices of others. Where the child does not speak, the adults speak all the more. They write reports, formulate hypotheses, discuss symptoms, and draw up plans. Some of this is necessary. Children need adults who take responsibility even when the child cannot explain what they need. Yet it is precisely for this reason that adult interpretations must remain open.

A professional interpretation may be necessary without being final.

It requires a particular kind of humility to remain close to a child without demanding that the child confirm the adult’s understanding. We can ask. We can remain present. We can attempt to create safety. But we must also be able to endure the fact that an answer does not come when we want it to.

Encountering a silent child is therefore not merely a matter of finding the correct method to make the child speak. It is also a matter of respecting that the child has a world to which we do not yet have access.

The child’s silence is not an empty space. It is part of the child’s way of being in the world.

The Hermeneutic Circle

When we try to understand another person, we move between part and whole. A single action is understood in light of what we know about the person’s life, while the action may in turn alter our understanding of the whole person.

A man raises his voice during a meeting. If he has already been described as aggressive, the action may appear to be yet another expression of an aggressive personality. If we know his history of humiliation and powerlessness, the same action may appear as a desperate attempt to be heard. Yet this new interpretation may also become too simple. A difficult history does not make every action defensible. Understanding is not the same as excusing.

We therefore move back and forth. We see the action in light of the life, and the life in light of the action. We listen to words in light of their context, and the context itself is changed by the words we hear. This is the hermeneutic circle.

The circle is not an error from which we must escape. It describes the movement of understanding itself. We always begin somewhere, with a provisional conception. We then encounter something that confirms, modifies, or contradicts it. If we remain open, we return to the whole with a changed understanding.

In this way, the circle can become a spiral. We return to the same person and the same story, but we are no longer standing in precisely the same place as before.

We know this from our closest relationships as well. A person with whom we have lived for many years may suddenly tell us something that changes the meaning of an entire life story. An experience from childhood may cast new light on actions we once failed to understand. An old photograph may acquire a different meaning when we know what happened before and after it was taken.

Understanding is never merely the accumulation of more information. Sometimes one new insight changes the meaning of everything we previously knew.

Putting Our Prejudices at Risk

Hans-Georg Gadamer expressed the challenge of hermeneutics by saying that we must put our prejudices at risk. This does not mean that we should discard everything we know. That would be neither possible nor desirable. It means that we must dare to allow what we already believe to encounter resistance.

To put something at risk is to accept the possibility of losing it.

In a genuine conversation, we risk losing our initial certainty. We may discover that the person we had judged had reasons we did not know. We may discover that the help we offered was experienced as control. We may discover that our goodwill was not as selfless as we believed. We may also discover that the other person attempted to mislead us, and that our first suspicion was not entirely unfounded.

To remain open is not the same as being naive.

Hermeneutic openness is not unlimited tolerance or the absence of judgement. It involves a willingness to examine both the other person and oneself. We must be able to say: this is how I understand the situation at present, but I may have overlooked something. I may have misunderstood. The other person may know something about their own life that I do not know.

This is difficult in professional practice because the professional often has to act before complete understanding is possible. A child may be in danger. A patient may need immediate help. A social worker cannot wait until every interpretation has been examined. Decisions must be made under conditions of uncertainty.

Humility does not release us from the responsibility to act. It changes the manner in which we act.

We can act decisively while still acknowledging that our knowledge is limited. We can make a decision while keeping open the possibility that it may need to be revised. We can accept responsibility without imagining ourselves to be omniscient.

The most dangerous professional is not necessarily the one who knows little, but the one who has lost the capacity to doubt their own understanding.

Finding the Person Where They Are

Søren Kierkegaard wrote that if one is truly to succeed in leading a person to a particular place, one must first find the person where they are and begin there.

This thought expresses the fundamental hermeneutics of helping. We cannot help a person solely on the basis of where we believe they ought to be. We must attempt to understand where they actually are.

This sounds simple. In practice, it is among the most difficult tasks in all helping professions.

The professional often encounters people with knowledge of what ought to change. Alcohol consumption must be reduced. The child needs greater stability. The young person must return to school. The family must cooperate more effectively. The patient must follow the treatment plan. All of this may be correct. Yet the person who knows where the other ought to go does not necessarily know where the other is standing.

A person may understand their problem differently from the helper. They may have different priorities, different fears, and different hopes. They may feel ambivalent about change because the old life, despite its pain, also provides security, identity, or belonging.

To begin where the other person is does not mean that the other person is always right. Nor does it mean that the helper should abandon professional knowledge or ethical responsibility. It means that change must take its point of departure in the other person’s lifeworld, not only in the helper’s plan.

Before asking how a person should move forward, we must therefore ask: what does the world look like from the place where this person is standing?

This is more than a method. It is an attitude.

The person who wishes to help must be willing to enter some way into the world of the other without immediately transforming it into their own. One must be able to listen long enough for what is foreign to retain some of its foreignness.

Dialogue Is More Than Words

The natural form of hermeneutic work is dialogue. Yet not every conversation is a dialogue.

Much of what we call conversation consists of two people waiting to present what they already believe. We listen in order to find the weakness in the other person’s argument, to prepare our reply, or to return the conversation to our own perspective.

In other conversations, the outcome has been decided in advance. The professional asks questions, but only answers that fit the form are given significance. The other person is permitted to speak, yet the framework governing what their words can mean is already fixed.

A genuine dialogue begins when both parties recognise that something stands between them that neither possesses the whole truth about alone.

This does not mean that the parties are equal in power, knowledge, or responsibility. In an encounter between a child and an adult, a patient and a physician, or a client and a social worker, there are real asymmetries. Yet even in such encounters, the professional can acknowledge that the other person possesses knowledge about their own life that cannot be replaced by professional expertise.

The purpose of dialogue is therefore not merely to collect information. Its purpose is to allow a shared matter to emerge more clearly.

Sometimes this means that the professional understands the other person better. At other times it means that the professional understands their own role differently. The person who enters a genuine dialogue cannot know in advance who will be changed by it.

This is the risk and the possibility of dialogue.

The Other Is Not a Text We Can Finish Reading

Human beings are often compared to texts. We read faces, actions, and life stories. The metaphor can be useful, but it also has a limit. A text does not necessarily protest against our interpretation. A human being can.

The other person may say: that is not how it is. You have misunderstood me. What you call resistance, I experience as self-protection. What you call immaturity is my way of surviving. What you call help, I experience as humiliation.

At times, the other person may also be mistaken about themselves. We are not always transparent to ourselves. We may conceal our motives even from our own consciousness. But this does not give the professional the right to take ownership of the other person’s life story.

There is a form of violence that occurs when a human being is explained so completely that they are no longer allowed to remain a subject in their own life.

The diagnosis may be correct, but the person is more than the diagnosis. The report may be thorough, but the person is more than the report. The life story may contain patterns, but the person is not merely the sum of what has previously happened.

The other will always be more than I understand.

This recognition is not a defeat for understanding. It is its ethical limit. It reminds us that understanding is not conquest. We should not penetrate the life of another person and make everything visible. We should move closer without abolishing the distance that makes the other another.

Respect may begin precisely here: in the recognition that something about the other does not belong to me.

When We Think We Have Understood

There are moments when understanding falls into place. A connection becomes clear. We suddenly see why a person acted as they did. What previously appeared incomprehensible acquires meaning.

Such moments may be deeply valuable. They can open the way to reconciliation, better support, and more just assessments. A child who was previously regarded as difficult is seen as frightened. A parent who was understood as indifferent turns out to be overwhelmed by shame. A person who seemed rejecting was in fact trying to protect themselves from yet another violation.

Yet even good understanding may become dangerous if we hold on to it too firmly.

What we have understood can become a new narrative that confines the person. The child remains forever the traumatised child. The adult remains forever the victim. The person who has done something wrong remains forever the abuser, the person with an addiction, or the failed parent.

The past is real and cannot be rewritten. Actions have consequences. Responsibility must be assigned. Yet a human being is also possibility. A person can act differently, understand themselves in new ways, and step outside narratives that others have written about them.

Understanding must therefore also contain time.

To understand a person is to understand something of what has been, something of what is, and something of what may yet become. We do the other person an injustice if our interpretation binds them only to the past.

Interpretation as Responsibility

Hermeneutics can easily sound like an abstract philosophical discipline. In practice, however, it concerns responsibility.

Our interpretations have consequences.

A teacher who understands a pupil as unmotivated acts differently from one who sees a pupil who has lost hope. A social worker who understands a parent as manipulative encounters that person differently from one who also sees the fear behind the attempt to maintain control. A physician who perceives a patient’s many questions as difficult listens differently from one who sees a person trying to regain control over their own life.

Interpretation shapes our gaze, our tone of voice, our questions, and our decisions. It can open or close spaces. It can give a person language for their own experience, or deprive them of the right to define themselves.

We cannot therefore say that an interpretation is merely a thought. It becomes active in the world through the way we encounter others.

This makes understanding a moral concern.

We have a responsibility to examine the stories we construct about other people. We have a responsibility to distinguish between what we know, what we assume, and what we fear. We have a responsibility to listen to resistance, particularly when we ourselves possess power. And we have a responsibility to change our understanding when it no longer holds.

This does not mean that we should become paralysed. It means that we must act with an awareness that even our best judgements remain human judgements.

The Art of Encountering Another Human Being

The person at the railway station is still standing before us, asking for money for the bus.

Perhaps the story is true. Perhaps it is not. We must make a decision without knowing the whole context. We give or refuse. We ask a question or walk on.

Hermeneutics offers no infallible method for revealing the truth in the moment. It cannot promise that we will never be deceived, or that we will always understand correctly. But it can make us more aware of what happens within us as we encounter the other person.

What was it about this person that made me suspicious? What in my own experience shaped my reaction? What other interpretations were possible? What do I actually know, and what have I added?

In this way, a small encounter can open a large space for self-reflection.

The art of encountering another human being does not consist in suspending all judgement. It consists in keeping judgement open long enough for the other person to emerge as more than a first impression.

We need our experience. We need professional knowledge, judgement, and the capacity to act. But we also need a certain unease within understanding, a small opening in which the question remains alive:

Could there be something I have not yet seen?

Perhaps genuine understanding begins when we no longer regard the other person as a problem to be solved, a category to be filled, or a story we already know. Perhaps it begins when we recognise that the other person has a world that is not ours, but which we may nevertheless approach.

Not by making the stranger resemble ourselves, but by listening to what challenges our own horizon.

To understand, then, is not to seize the other and hold on. It is to come closer without abolishing the distance. It is to dare to use one’s experience while at the same time accepting the risk that this experience may need to change. It is to act without making one’s own knowledge absolute.

We never reach a point at which we can say that another human being has been fully understood.

But we can encounter that person with greater care.

We can ask better questions.

We can listen a little longer.

And we can allow the encounter to transform not only our understanding of the other, but also our understanding of ourselves.