The Other Is Always More

On Perspective, Otherness, and the Limits of Our Understanding

We often say that we understand another human being.

We say it in everyday life, in the family, in the therapy room, in social work, in education, and in friendship. We say: I understand you. I see how you feel. Now I understand what you mean. Now I am beginning to understand why you acted as you did.

Such words can be good.

They can bring relief. They can give a person the feeling of no longer being alone. They can open the space between us and make it possible for the conversation to continue.

But the words can also be dangerous.

For when I say that I understand you, I may at the same time have begun to enclose you within my understanding.

I may believe that I have seen enough. That your story is now clear. That your reactions fit into an explanation. That I know where your pain comes from, what you need, and which path you should take.

Then understanding is no longer a bridge.

It has become a room from which the other person cannot escape.

Hermeneutics teaches us that the human being is an interpreting being. We always understand from somewhere, through language, tradition, experience, and pre-understanding. We cannot refrain from interpreting. Without interpretation, we would not be able to orient ourselves in the world or encounter other people meaningfully.

But hermeneutics also teaches us something else:

Understanding has limits.

Another human being is never only what I have understood.

The other is always more.

The Perspective from Which I See

I never encounter the other from nowhere.

I see from my own life. I carry with me my age, body, history, education, language, culture, faith, doubt, vulnerability, and experience. I see through what I have lived, but also through what I have not lived.

This applies both in everyday life and in professional practice.

The person who has worked for many years with children in vulnerable life situations sees signs that an inexperienced person may not see. The person who has met many people in crisis may recognise patterns. The person who has researched shame, power, or abuse has concepts that make certain experiences visible.

This is valuable.

But the perspective that opens also limits.

When I see from one place, I do not at the same time see from every other place. What is close to my experience becomes easier to recognise. What lies far from my life may become foreign, unclear, or misinterpreted.

I may believe that I see the human being.

But often I see the human being from my side.

Hermeneutic humility begins here. Not by ceasing to trust everything I see, but by remembering that I see from a particular place.

My understanding may be true.

But it is not the whole truth.

The Other as Stranger

There is always something foreign in the other person.

Even in people we know well. Even in those we love. Even in children we have followed since they were small. Even in the spouse with whom we have shared a long life.

The other person can surprise us. Say something we did not expect. Carry a sorrow we did not know. Remember an event differently. React in a way that shows that we have not understood everything.

This is not necessarily a defeat.

It is a sign that the other person is still alive.

Otherness does not mean that the other is inaccessible. It does not mean that understanding is impossible. It means only that understanding is never total.

A human being is not a text we can finish reading.

Even a text can be read in new ways. How much more, then, does this apply to a human being who continues to live, act, remember, forget, hope, feel shame, remain silent, and change?

The other is not a problem to be solved.

The other is a life that can never be fully contained within my explanation.

When Understanding Becomes Possession

Understanding can become a form of possession.

This happens when I make my interpretation of the other stronger than the other person’s own possibility of speaking. I may say: What this is really about is fear. You are really angry with your mother. You do not really want to get well. This is really trauma, shame, resistance, or control.

Sometimes such interpretations may touch something true.

There are experiences for which people do not yet have language. There are defences, repressions, and patterns that others may see before the person sees them.

But the word “really” is dangerous.

It can give the helper the right to know more about the other than the other knows about themselves.

Then understanding risks becoming appropriation.

The other person is no longer allowed to be the primary witness to their own life. Everything they say can be interpreted through the helper’s explanation. If the person confirms the interpretation, it is insight. If the person rejects it, it is resistance.

In this way, the person becomes trapped.

There is no way out of the other’s understanding.

For this reason, all deep interpretation must be accompanied by caution. We may offer language, suggest connections, and share professional insight. But we must do so in a way that allows the other person to respond.

An understanding that cannot be corrected by the other is no longer dialogical.

It has become power.

The Professional Temptation

Professionals are particularly exposed to the temptation to understand too much.

Not because they are bad people. Often quite the opposite. They wish to help. They have knowledge, experience, and responsibility. They meet people who suffer, and they know that passivity may have serious consequences.

They must therefore interpret.

A social worker must assess whether a child is safe. A therapist must try to understand pain and patterns. A physician must make a diagnosis. A teacher must interpret a pupil’s difficulties. A judge must assess credibility and responsibility.

Professional practice requires judgement.

But precisely for that reason, it also requires humility.

The professional may begin to see the person through the case, the diagnosis, the risk assessment, or the intervention. The person becomes an example of something already known.

The violence case.

The depressed patient.

The unmotivated young person.

The difficult parent.

The silent child.

Such labels may be practical. They may provide overview. But they may also conceal the fact that the human being is always more than the category.

The category must never have the final word about the person.

Understanding Without Reducing

The goal cannot be to stop understanding.

That would be indifference.

If a child remains silent, we must try to understand the silence. If a person harms themselves, we must try to understand what the action expresses. If a parent fails, we must examine what the failure consists in and what consequences it has.

To refrain from understanding may also be a form of betrayal.

But we must understand without reducing.

This means continually distinguishing between the human being and our explanation of the human being.

An explanation may be necessary. It may be professionally justified. It may even be sufficiently correct that action must be taken.

But it is still an explanation.

It is not the person themselves.

A human being may be traumatised and at the same time courageous, humorous, demanding, loving, contradictory, and hopeful. A parent may have failed and at the same time love the child. A young person may be caught in serious substance use and at the same time carry a deep longing for dignity. An old person may need help and at the same time fight for the last remnant of self-determination.

To understand without reducing is to allow several truths to stand side by side without forcing the person into only one of them.

Otherness as Protection

The other person’s otherness may feel like an obstacle.

We often want to come closer. We want to know, help, explain, and perhaps also comfort. What we do not understand may make us uneasy.

But otherness also has ethical significance.

It protects the other from being completely taken over by our gaze.

As long as I know that I do not understand everything, I must continue listening. I must ask again. I must wait. I must make room for the other person to come forward in ways I had not anticipated.

Otherness prevents the human being from becoming an object.

Emmanuel Levinas formulates this radically: the other encounters me as someone who cannot be reduced to my knowledge. The face of the other makes a claim upon me before I have understood everything. I must respond to the other’s vulnerability without first making the other completely intelligible.

This is crucial in all helping work.

The child needs protection before we understand everything.

The person exposed to harm needs safety before the story is complete.

The stranger needs recognition before we have translated the whole life into our concepts.

Ethics does not begin after understanding has been completed.

It begins in the encounter with the other who already concerns us.

The Limit That Makes Dialogue Possible

It may sound paradoxical, but the limit of understanding makes dialogue possible.

If I believe that I already understand you completely, I no longer need to listen. I can explain you, treat you, teach you, or correct you. But the dialogue is over.

Dialogue presupposes that something may still come forward.

Something I do not know.

Something you have not yet said.

Something we may perhaps discover only together.

Humility is therefore not an addition to dialogue. It is a condition for it.

The good conversation lives from the fact that no one has full control over what it may open. We may begin with one question and end somewhere else. The other may say something that requires my understanding to change. I may discover that the matter was different from what I believed.

This does not mean that everything is uncertain.

It means that truth in human relationships often needs time, trust, and mutual correction.

It does not always arrive as a conclusion.

Sometimes it arrives as greater caution.

Perspective Is Not Relativism

When we say that all understanding takes place from a perspective, some may fear relativism.

If everyone sees from their own place, is there then no truth? Is everything merely interpretation? Can we never say that something is right, wrong, true, or false?

This is an important concern.

But perspective does not mean that all interpretations are equally good.

Some interpretations are better justified than others. Some take more aspects of the matter into account. Some withstand resistance. Some distinguish clearly between observation, assumption, and judgement. Others are too quick, too narrow, or governed by power.

The fact that I see from somewhere does not mean that I cannot see something true.

It means that truth must be sought responsibly.

It must be tested against the matter itself, against the other person’s voice, against experience, against other perspectives, and against the consequences of our interpretation.

Hermeneutic humility is therefore not the enemy of truth.

It is part of the search for truth.

It reminds us that truth does not become stronger when we make ourselves blind to our own limitations.

When the Other Becomes a Mirror

Sometimes we believe that we understand the other, but in reality we are seeing ourselves.

We recognise a pain, a fear, or an experience and assume that it means the same for the other as it did for us. We use our own history as the key to the other’s.

Recognition can be a gift.

It can create warmth and closeness. It can make us less judgemental.

But recognition can also become a trap.

The other becomes a mirror of my own life rather than a human being with their own story.

I may say: This is how it was for me, therefore it must be like this for you.

But the other’s experience may resemble mine and still be different.

Two people may lose a parent, but grief may take different forms. Two people may live with illness, but illness may affect self-image, family, and future in different ways. Two people may experience exclusion, but exclusion may mean something different in each life story.

Empathy therefore requires more than recognition.

It requires that I allow the familiar to become strange again.

The Unsaid in the Other

Much of a human life remains unsaid.

Some of it because there are no words. Some because the words have not yet been found. Some because it is too painful. Some because it is too private. Some because no one has previously asked in a way that made it possible to answer.

The unsaid does not always mean that something is being hidden.

It may also mean that the experience has not yet found form.

In the face of the unsaid, the helper often becomes uneasy. She wants to open, clarify, and put words to things. This may be necessary, but it may also come too quickly.

There is an ethical difference between creating room for words and forcing the words forth.

The other person has a right to language.

But also a right to space.

Not everything must be said now. Not everything must be said to me. Not everything that is true must necessarily be made public, recorded, or analysed.

The limits of understanding therefore also concern respect for the private.

The other is more than what can be shared.

The Story Is Never Completely Finished

Human beings tell stories about their lives.

We create connections between events, choices, losses, hopes, and turning points. We say: This was the reason. That was when everything changed. This made me who I am.

Such stories are necessary.

Without them, life would be fragmented.

But stories change.

An event that in youth was understood as defeat may later appear as the beginning of something new. A relationship that was idealised may later be seen with greater clarity. A pain that seemed meaningless may, in retrospect, find a place within a larger understanding without thereby becoming good.

The other is therefore not only more than my story about them.

They are also more than their present story about themselves.

This must be said with caution. It does not give the helper the right to take over the other person’s self-understanding. But it reminds us that the human being is underway.

No one should be judged entirely by one story, not even the story they themselves are currently able to tell.

Hope lies in the fact that life can still be interpreted anew.

Being Misunderstood

Being misunderstood can be painful.

Especially when the misunderstanding comes from someone who has power over us: a teacher, physician, therapist, social worker, manager, or judge.

Then it is not merely a private discomfort.

The misunderstanding may have consequences.

A child may be understood as difficult when they are afraid. A patient may be understood as uncooperative when she is actually trying to preserve dignity. A client may be understood as irresponsible when he is overwhelmed. A parent may be understood either too leniently or too harshly, with serious consequences for the child.

Humility is therefore not only a personal virtue.

It is a professional requirement.

The person who has the power to describe others must know that the description is never innocent. The words remain. They may follow a person through systems. They may open doors or close them.

To write about a human being is also to act towards that person.

The professional must therefore ask:

Would the other person be able to recognise themselves in some part of this?

Have I distinguished between facts, interpretation, and assessment?

Have I written in a way that still allows the person to be more than the problem?

Understanding Evil?

The question of the limits of understanding becomes especially difficult when we encounter actions that are evil, violent, or violating.

Should we understand the abuser? Should we understand the violence? Should we try to see the world from the perspective of the person who has harmed others?

These are difficult questions.

To understand is not to excuse.

To explain is not to acquit.

If we do not try to understand the patterns of violence, the mechanisms of power, and the strategies of the perpetrator, we cannot protect well enough. Knowledge is necessary.

But here too there is a limit.

Understanding must not make the victim invisible. It must not transform the violation into merely an expression of the perpetrator’s pain. It must not become so preoccupied with causes that responsibility disappears.

Some actions must be met with clear moral judgement.

Hermeneutic humility does not mean that everything should be understood gently.

It means that judgement, too, must be truthful, responsible, and conscious of its grounds.

We may try to understand how something became possible.

At the same time, we must be able to say: This should not have happened.

The Other as Subject

To encounter the other as a subject means to encounter someone who themselves sees, interprets, hopes, fears, and responds.

The other is not merely an object of my knowledge.

She is also someone who has a world.

This may seem obvious, but in practice it is easily forgotten. Especially when people need help, they may be made into objects of assessment. They become cases, symptoms, diagnoses, needs, or risks.

The subject disappears behind what we must manage.

To remember that the other is a subject means asking how the world appears from her place. But it also means knowing that I can never fully take over that place.

I can listen.

I can ask.

I can try to understand.

But I cannot become her.

This is a limit that protects both her and me.

It prevents me from turning her life into my project. It prevents her from being reduced to my empathy, my theory, or my help.

The Other and the Inviolable

Human dignity does not rest upon our fully understanding one another.

It rests upon the fact that the other has a claim to respect even before understanding is complete.

A child should not have to explain their pain perfectly in order to be protected. A person with dementia should not have to express their identity clearly in order to be treated with dignity. A refugee should not have to make their entire story comprehensible in order to be met as a human being. Someone who is silent, confused, or different does not lose their dignity because our understanding falls short.

This is important.

For if dignity depends on intelligibility, the most vulnerable also become the most exposed.

The human being we do not understand may easily be pushed aside, diagnosed too quickly, made ridiculous, controlled, or overlooked.

Ethics must therefore come before complete understanding.

We should try to understand.

But we should not wait to show respect until we have succeeded.

Living with Open Understanding

How does one live with the fact that the other is always more?

One lives with open understanding.

This does not mean that one never reaches conclusions. Life requires decisions. Professions require assessments. Children must be protected. Treatment must be given. Injustice must be stopped.

But the conclusion must carry within it the memory that it has been reached under conditions of limited insight.

Open understanding says:

This is the best I understand at present.

I must act upon it.

But I must still be able to learn.

Such an attitude is demanding, but it is also liberating.

It makes it possible to be clear without being closed. It makes it possible to be responsible without pretending to be omniscient. It makes it possible to meet people with knowledge without turning knowledge into a cage.

A Humble Ending to Hermeneutics

This series has been about understanding.

About pre-understanding, prejudices, tradition, horizon, dialogue, text, and interpretation. About how we never begin from zero, how we become ourselves in conversation, and how words acquire a life after they have been written.

But a hermeneutics that only celebrates understanding is too simple.

It must also teach us to stop.

Not to stop in the sense of giving up, but to stop in the sense of bowing before the limit.

Here is a human being.

I can understand something.

Perhaps I can understand much.

I can listen, read, interpret, ask, wait, and learn.

But I cannot possess this human being through my understanding.

The other is always more.

More than the diagnosis.

More than the story.

More than the shame.

More than the trauma.

More than the disability.

More than the role.

More than the case.

More than what I fear.

More than what I hope.

More than what she herself is able to say at this moment.

This more-ness is not a gap in our knowledge merely waiting to be filled.

It is part of human dignity.

The Open Hand

Perhaps understanding can be compared to a hand.

We can grasp tightly. Then we hold on, but we may also crush what we wished to protect.

Or we can open the hand.

The open hand does not let go of everything. It is still there. It can support, carry, protect, and receive. But it does not possess.

Such is the hermeneutic attitude at its best.

It seeks understanding, but without making understanding into possession.

It takes responsibility, but without turning responsibility into control.

It meets the other with knowledge, but allows knowledge to remain humble.

It knows that a human being needs to be seen.

But also to remain more than what is seen.

The final word in hermeneutics is perhaps therefore not understanding.

It is reverence.

Reverence for the fact that the other can never be made entirely mine.

Reverence for the fact that the world always contains more than my horizon.

Reverence for the fact that every interpretation of a human being must be carried with care.

We never understand everything.

But we may understand enough to act more responsibly, listen more humbly, and meet the other with greater attentiveness.

Perhaps that is enough.

Not because understanding is complete.

But because the human being before us is still alive.

And because the other, always, is more.

Praktisk Filosofi - Practical Philosophy

Friday, June 19, 2026