We Never See Without a Prehistory

Gadamer, Pre-understanding, Prejudice, Tradition, and Horizon

Two people may stand in the same place, witness the same event, and yet experience themselves as having seen something entirely different.

One sees a child who refuses to cooperate. The other sees a child who is afraid. One sees a parent who refuses to take responsibility. The other sees a person overwhelmed by shame. One observes an unfamiliar custom and regards it as meaningless. The other knows the history that has given the custom significance.

Both may believe that they are merely describing what is there.

Yet neither sees without a prehistory.

We do not encounter the world with an empty gaze. We enter every situation with language, experiences, memories, values, expectations, and assumptions about what is normal, true, and important. Some of this is conscious. Much of it operates within us without our noticing.

We see from somewhere.

This place is not merely geographical. It is historical, cultural, and personal. We have grown up in particular families, societies, and traditions. We have learned some words rather than others, some ways of expressing emotion, and some ways of understanding responsibility, love, suffering, and community. We have experienced trust or betrayal, security or insecurity, recognition or humiliation. All of this accompanies us into our encounter with the world.

Hans-Georg Gadamer placed this insight at the centre of his philosophical hermeneutics. Understanding does not begin after we have set our experiences aside. Understanding is possible precisely because we already stand within a history.

Yet the same history that enables us to understand may also limit what we are capable of seeing.

Understanding Begins Before Us

We often like to think that understanding begins with the individual. I see, I think, I assess, and then I form an opinion.

Gadamer reverses this perspective. Before we begin to interpret the world, we have already been interpreted by it. We are born into a language we did not create. We inherit words, narratives, norms, and assumptions that existed before us. We learn what counts as polite or impolite, normal or abnormal, right or wrong, before we are capable of justifying these distinctions.

The child does not merely learn a language. The child learns a world.

Through language, some experiences become clear while others become more difficult to express. When we learn words such as duty, freedom, respect, shame, love, and responsibility, we simultaneously learn particular ways of understanding human life. Words are not neutral containers that we later fill with meaning. They already carry histories, conflicts, and values.

We think through a language given to us by others.

This does not mean that we are trapped in the past or condemned to repeat what we have learned. It does mean, however, that reflection never begins from nothing. Even when we rebel against a tradition, that same tradition has provided us with the questions, words, and contrasts we use in our rebellion.

The person who rejects authority already possesses an idea of authority. The person who resists the power of normality has learned what society defines as normal. The person who seeks liberation from family expectations still carries the family’s language and history.

We do not initiate understanding. We enter into it.

Pre-understanding Is Not an Error

In everyday language, pre-understanding is often treated as something we ought ideally to eliminate. We say that we must approach the matter openly, set our assumptions aside, and examine the facts.

This is an important ideal. We should strive to be intellectually honest, examine our assumptions, and remain willing to revise our views. Yet we can never encounter the world entirely without pre-understanding.

Without pre-understanding, we would not know what to look for.

When an experienced social worker enters a home, she may immediately notice the atmosphere between parents and children. She hears how an adult answers on the child’s behalf. She observes that the child studies the parent’s face carefully before responding. She registers a silence that others might not perceive as significant.

This does not happen because the social worker has set her experience aside, but because experience has taught her how to see.

Similarly, a physician may discern a pattern of illness in symptoms that appear unrelated to others. A teacher may hear the difference between a pupil who has not understood and one who has lost faith that understanding is possible. A musician may hear structures in music that the untrained listener experiences only as sound.

Pre-understanding opens the world.

But it may also close it.

The professional may become so familiar with particular patterns that she begins to see what she expects rather than what actually appears. The social worker may interpret every evasive glance as a sign of fear. The physician may overlook the unusual because the symptoms resemble something familiar. The teacher may understand a quiet pupil as unmotivated because silence does not fit the prevailing image of active learning.

It is therefore not sufficient merely to have experience. We must also be capable of questioning how experience directs our gaze.

Pre-understanding is necessary, but it is not innocent.

Prejudices We Know About—and Prejudices That Know for Us

The word prejudice evokes strong reactions. We associate it with discrimination, stereotypes, and injustice. There are good reasons for this. Prejudices can reduce people to gender, skin colour, religion, social background, diagnosis, or life situation.

For Gadamer, however, the concept of prejudice also has a broader meaning. A prejudice is a provisional judgement. It is something we hold to be true before the matter has been fully examined.

We need such provisional understandings in order to orient ourselves. When we encounter a situation, we cannot postpone all judgement until we know everything. We must begin somewhere. We interpret the unfamiliar in light of the familiar.

The difficulty arises when prejudice is no longer experienced as provisional.

We no longer say, “This is how I understand it at present.” We say, “This is how it is.”

The difference may appear small, but it is decisive.

The first formulation leaves room for correction. The second transforms understanding into a judgement on reality.

Some prejudices are easy to recognise because they are openly stated. Others operate more quietly. They lie in what we expect from a person, what we notice, and what we feel requires no explanation.

We may assume that a good client is cooperative, that a good patient follows treatment, that a good student participates verbally, or that a good parent expresses care in a particular way. Such assumptions may seem reasonable, but they are also culturally and historically shaped.

A person who does not meet the expectation may therefore be understood as difficult long before we have asked what the situation means from that person’s own perspective.

Prejudices often operate most powerfully when they appear as common sense.

It is not only that we possess prejudices. Prejudices also possess us. They organise experience before we have time to reflect upon it. They tell us what matters, who appears credible, and which explanations seem plausible.

Hermeneutic reflection is therefore always also self-reflection.

The question is not merely: What do I think about the other person?

We must also ask: What history makes it possible for me to think this?

Tradition Lives Within Us

Tradition is often associated with what is old. We think of rituals, religious customs, holidays, clothing, songs, or stories passed down through generations.

Yet tradition is more than preserved custom.

Tradition also exists within institutions, professions, and language. It lives in the ways we organise education, healthcare, and social services. It is present in assumptions about childhood, work, family, illness, and responsibility.

Many of these assumptions seem so self-evident that we no longer recognise them as tradition. We perceive them as reality itself.

A society may, for example, regard independence as a clear sign of maturity. Another may place greater emphasis on mutual dependence and family obligations. In the first society, an adult who lives with their parents may be understood as immature. In the second, the same arrangement may express responsibility, belonging, and respect.

Neither understanding arises in a vacuum. Each stands within a different tradition.

This becomes particularly visible in encounters between cultures, but it also occurs within the same society. Generations may hold different assumptions about work, gender, authority, child-rearing, and privacy. Urban and rural communities may have different norms. Professions may interpret the same situation in different ways.

A physician, a psychologist, a priest, and a social worker may meet the same person and perceive different problems, resources, and possibilities. They are not necessarily mistaken. They see through different professional traditions.

Tradition provides us with a language for what we encounter. It also determines which questions appear natural to ask.

This does not mean that all traditions should be respected uncritically. Traditions may carry oppression, power, and injustice. They may perpetuate assumptions that harm people. Yet criticism of tradition never takes place from an entirely traditionless position. Criticism, too, rests on values, concepts, and experiences that have a history.

Gadamer therefore reminds us that we cannot step outside history and observe it as a neutral judge.

We always stand somewhere within the history we evaluate.

The Horizon Around What We Can See

Gadamer uses the horizon as an image of the limits and possibilities of understanding.

A horizon is not a wall. It is the boundary of what can be seen from the place where we stand. If we move, the horizon changes. What was previously hidden may become visible. What appeared close may prove to be far away. New relationships emerge.

So it is with understanding.

Our horizon consists of the questions we are able to ask, the experiences we can recognise, and the meanings available to us. It is shaped by our time, culture, life history, and social position.

A child has a different horizon from an adult. A person who has experienced war may hear different meanings in words such as home and safety than someone who has never had to flee. A person living with disability may notice barriers in a building that others do not register. Someone who has experienced social shame may perceive a minor remark as far more threatening than someone who has always felt at home in the community.

We do not merely see different things. The same thing may mean something different within different horizons.

This does not make conversation impossible. On the contrary, it is precisely why conversation is necessary.

Understanding occurs when our horizon is expanded through an encounter with something that does not readily fit within it. We become aware that our own field of vision is not the whole world.

Yet this requires us to tolerate the fact that what is foreign does not immediately become recognisable.

We have a strong tendency to translate the unfamiliar into something we already know. We say, “This reminds me of …” or “I know exactly how you feel.” Such statements may express closeness, but they may also close the conversation. The other person’s experience is transformed into a variation of our own.

An expanded horizon does not arise when the other is absorbed into my world. It arises when my world changes because the other does not fit entirely within it.

When Horizons Meet

Gadamer describes understanding as a fusion of horizons. The expression may be misunderstood. It does not mean that differences disappear or that two people end by agreeing.

A fusion of horizons occurs when both perspectives enter into a new understanding of the matter itself.

We know this from good conversations. We begin with our respective interpretations. During the conversation, we discover that the question was more complex than either of us had assumed. Perhaps we must revise the language we use. Perhaps we see that the conflict concerns not only disagreement, but also different experiences and expectations.

Neither person must abandon their entire horizon. But both must be willing to move.

Consider a professional conversation with a family whose cultural background differs from that of the helper. The professional may emphasise the child’s independence and right to express personal wishes. The family may place greater emphasis on cohesion, obedience, and collective responsibility.

It would be too simple to say that all interpretations are equally valid and that no one can assess anyone else. The child’s rights must be protected. Power and harm must remain open to criticism.

Yet it would also be too simple to assume that the helper’s own norms are entirely free from history and culture.

The hermeneutic task is to examine the matter in such a way that both the differences and the shared responsibility become clearer. What does care mean to the family? What does obedience mean? What does the child experience? What consequences does the practice have? What ideals of normality does the helper bring into the encounter?

Dialogue may then become something more than either cultural relativism or moral superiority.

Understanding does not mean that judgement ceases. It means that judgement becomes more reflective.

Professional Horizons

Professional practice requires knowledge. Professionals must be able to recognise patterns, assess risk, and act when people need assistance or protection.

Professional knowledge, however, also creates a particular horizon.

When a person becomes a client, patient, pupil, or service user, certain aspects of life become more visible. Others may disappear. A diagnosis may illuminate suffering, but it may also overshadow the person’s resources. An assessment may reveal needs, but it may also reduce life to what can be recorded.

The institution’s questions shape the answers it receives.

If the form asks about problems, we acquire knowledge about problems. If the encounter is organised around risk, risk becomes most visible. If time is limited, the measurable may take priority over the meaningful.

This is not necessarily the result of ill will. It is part of the professional horizon.

Professions therefore need spaces for reflection. Not only reflection on the client, but reflection on the categories, routines, and traditions that shape the encounter itself.

What becomes visible through our professional language?

What becomes invisible?

Which forms of life fit easily within the system, and which are quickly interpreted as deviant?

Such questions are not an attack on professional expertise. They are a condition of responsible professionalism.

The professional who understands her own horizon is not weakened. She is better equipped to use knowledge without confusing it with the whole of reality.

Understanding the Past from the Present

Hermeneutics also concerns our relationship to the past.

When we read an old text, examine a historical photograph, or attempt to understand people who lived before us, we do so from within our own time. We cannot fully step outside the questions and values of the present.

This may lead us to judge the past too quickly. We may interpret the actions of earlier generations as though they possessed the same knowledge, the same options, and the same language as ourselves.

Yet the opposite is also dangerous. Historical understanding must not become an excuse for injustice. The fact that an action was common in its time does not make it harmless to those who suffered from it.

To understand historically is to attempt to hold several truths together.

People were shaped by their time. They acted within particular traditions and possibilities. At the same time, there were often people even then who protested, resisted, and recognised that something was wrong.

Tradition is never entirely unified. It contains conflicts, neglected voices, and unrealised possibilities.

When we read history, our horizon encounters the horizon of the past. If the encounter is fruitful, we learn not only about those who lived before us. We also discover something about our own time.

What we condemn in the past may still exist among us in new forms.

And what we regard as natural in the present may one day be recognised as blindness.

The Stranger Within Ourselves

We often speak of the other as the stranger. Another culture, religion, generation, or form of life challenges what we know.

Yet the encounter with what is foreign may also awaken something within ourselves that we have not wished to see.

Another person’s dependency may confront us with our own vulnerability. A child’s fear may retrieve memories we believed forgotten. Another person’s faith may challenge our certainty, whether we ourselves believe or not. The person who does not fit within normality may reveal how deeply we ourselves long to belong.

This is why encounters with difference may awaken both curiosity and defensiveness.

We do not merely protect our opinions. We protect our understanding of who we are.

Gadamer shows that understanding is not a detached intellectual exercise. When the horizon changes, the person who understands is also changed. We cannot move closer to the other without simultaneously risking something in ourselves.

This is why genuine dialogue can be demanding. It does not merely ask us to receive new information. It asks us to reconsider the place from which we see.

Can We Free Ourselves from Our History?

If we always see through a prehistory, can we ever see clearly?

At the very least, we cannot attain a complete view without perspective. There is no place outside language, tradition, and history from which the whole of reality becomes visible.

But this does not mean that we are trapped in relativism.

Some interpretations are better than others. They may be better justified, more open to experience, more faithful to the matter, and more willing to accept correction. An understanding that ignores everything that contradicts it is weaker than one that has encountered objections and become more nuanced.

The aim is not to become without history. The aim is to become more conscious of how history operates within us.

We can examine our prejudices. We can listen to other perspectives. We can read texts that challenge us. We can seek experiences beyond our familiar environment. We can allow people to protest against the ways in which we describe them.

We cannot step outside our horizon, but we can expand it.

Freedom does not consist in standing outside history. It consists in relating reflectively to the history within which one stands.

Seeing Again

There are moments when we discover that we have seen another person wrongly.

Perhaps we interpreted silence as indifference when it actually arose from fear. Perhaps we understood anger as hostility when it was also a response to humiliation. Perhaps we perceived dependency where the other experienced belonging, or independence where the other experienced loneliness.

Such discoveries may be painful. They reveal that our gaze was not as neutral as we believed.

Yet they also contain a possibility.

We can see again.

To see again does not mean forgetting what we previously knew. It means that the old enters into a larger whole. Experience is not discarded, but corrected and expanded.

This is the hermeneutic movement. We return to the person, the text, or the situation with a changed horizon.

At times, we will still disagree. We may understand an action better and still believe that it was wrong. We may recognise the significance of a tradition while still criticising it. We may acknowledge the other person’s perspective without adopting it.

Understanding is not agreement.

It is the capacity to allow the other person and the matter itself to appear in a way that was not possible within our first interpretation.

We See from Somewhere

We never see without a prehistory.

This is not merely a limitation. It is also a richness. Through history, language, and experience, the world acquires depth. We can recognise, remember, compare, and create meaning.

But we must not forget where we see from.

The person who believes themselves entirely free from prejudice is often governed by prejudice without knowing it. The person who imagines standing outside tradition may be all the more bound by the self-evident assumptions of the present. The person who believes their own horizon to be the whole world will experience other perspectives as wrong before they have been heard.

Hermeneutic humility therefore does not require us to abandon truth. It requires us to seek truth without making our own position absolute.

We can say:

This is what I see from here.

This is the history that has taught me to see it.

But there may be something beyond my present horizon.

Perhaps understanding begins to grow precisely there: when we recognise that our gaze has a history, and that the other person may show us something for which our own history has not yet given us eyes.