Page 284

On Concepts, Self-Understanding, and Encountering One’s Own Thinking Again

I am sitting with a book in front of me.

Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, Volume 27, Einleitung in die Philosophie. I have reached page 284. In the middle of the page there is a diagram. Arrows and concepts. Vorstellung. Wahrnehmung. Empfindung. Erkenntnis. Anschauung. Begriff. Kategorie. Notio. Idee.

I stop.

Not because this is new to me.

Quite the opposite.

I wrote about this 25 years ago.

In 2001, I submitted my master’s thesis in social work at Oslo University College. It was entitled Veier til selvforståelse. Noen grunnlagsproblemer i sosialt arbeid (Paths to Self-Understanding: Some Foundational Problems in Social Work) and was published as HiO Master’s Thesis Report No. 4.

Now I am sitting here, 25 years later, encountering once again some of the questions that occupied me then.

But I am not the same reader.

And therefore the text is not quite the same either.

From the Particular to the Concept

The diagram on page 284 is, in the first instance, a presentation of Kant.

At the top stands Vorstellung überhaupt – representation in general. From there, the movement continues through different forms of representation and cognition.

For me, the decisive distinction lies between Anschauung and Begriff.

Intuition concerns the particular and the immediate.

The concept is mediate and universal.

This may sound like a remote epistemological distinction. But in social work, it is profoundly practical.

The professional always sits before a particular human being.

A child.

A mother.

A father.

A family.

A person who is frightened, angry, exhausted, or hopeful.

This person is never universal.

At the same time, the professional cannot work without concepts. She must understand, assess, and sometimes make decisions. She needs terms such as neglect, risk, violence, attachment, development, protection, and the best interests of the child.

And here a foundational problem arises.

Concepts make understanding possible.

But they can also stand in the way of understanding.

When the Concept Takes Over

There is a temptation in all professional work with human beings.

We may begin to believe that once we have found the right concept, we have understood the person.

But a human being is not identical with the concept we use to describe them.

A child is not a “neglect case.”

A family is not a “high-risk family.”

A person is not their diagnosis.

The concept gathers things together. It makes comparison possible. It makes professional communication possible. It can help us recognize patterns we would otherwise have missed.

But it also makes the particular universal.

The person before me, however, is always this person.

Here.

Now.

This is what I see again in Heidegger’s diagram.

Between Anschauung and Begriff lies not only a problem in Kant’s epistemology.

There also lies a problem in practical philosophy.

How can I use my concepts without allowing them to take the place of the person I am trying to understand?

From Understanding to Self-Understanding

When I wrote my master’s thesis, it was no coincidence that I chose the word self-understanding.

For the professional does not stand outside the process of understanding.

I always see from somewhere.

I bring with me experiences, education, language, theories, values, and expectations. I have ideas about what is normal and abnormal, responsible and irresponsible, good and bad.

I never encounter the other without presuppositions.

The question, therefore, is not only:

What do I see?

But also:

From where do I see?

It is here that self-understanding becomes part of professional competence.

Not as self-absorption.

Not as introspection for its own sake.

But as a recognition that the one who understands is also involved in the understanding.

The Man Who Wrote

The strange thing is that this also applies when the person I am trying to understand is myself.

I can read what I wrote in 2001.

But I cannot become the man who wrote it.

He had not yet lived the next 25 years.

He did not know what I would come to experience. He had not read what I would later read. He had not written what I would later write.

And yet I recognize him.

And when I now open Heidegger at page 284, I can, in a strange way, encounter him again.

Not merely as a memory.

As a conversation partner.

I can ask:

What was it you saw here?

Why was this important?

What were you trying to understand?

And perhaps, even more challengingly:

What did you see then that I have since forgotten?

A Pre-Understanding That Can Change

This is where Gadamer becomes important.

Not merely because he says that we always have a pre-understanding. That could easily become a banal observation: of course we come to a text carrying something with us.

What is more radical in Gadamer is that this pre-understanding is not to be protected.

It is to be tested.

In the encounter with the text, with the subject matter, and with the other, what I thought I knew can be put at stake.

Understanding, therefore, is not merely a matter of applying my existing concepts to something unfamiliar.

It is also a matter of risking that the encounter may change my concepts.

I read Heidegger through what I have experienced since 2001.

But Heidegger, in a sense, also reads me.

And the text from 2001 does the same.

It reminds me of what I once tried to bring into view, and forces me to ask whether I still see it.

A Human Being Is More

Something from my master’s thesis still remains.

Professional work with human beings requires knowledge.

It requires theory.

It requires concepts.

But it also requires a recognition of the limits of our concepts:

The other is always more than my understanding of the other.

This is not an argument against professional knowledge.

It is a demand placed upon it.

A form of professional practice that asks:

How have I arrived at what I believe I know?

What do my concepts make visible?

And what do they make invisible?

Self-understanding then becomes part of professional ethics.

For the power to define another human being is also the power to overlook what does not fit the definition.

Page 284

I am still sitting with the book in front of me.

Page 284.

A diagram of Vorstellung, Erkenntnis, Anschauung, and Begriff.

In 2001, these words were part of a master’s thesis in social work.

In 2026, I read them again.

The words have not changed.

I have.

But that is not the whole truth either.

For the man who wrote Paths to Self-Understanding is, in a way, sitting beside me.

We are looking at the same page.

He from one side of 25 years.

I from the other.

Between us lies everything that has happened since.

Perhaps self-understanding is precisely this.

Not arriving at a final understanding of who one is.

But being able to return.

And discovering that a page one thought one had finished reading can still open a path.

Even when that path leads back to oneself.

Perhaps self-understanding is precisely this.

Not arriving at a final understanding of who one is.

But being able to return.

This essay was written in a conversation with OpenAI/ChatGPT