Which is why I have generally defaulted to: show me the difference it makes? Show me a life transformed. The people I have met who were all about the contemplative life, searching for mystical insights were often in pretty poor shape. Jealousy, anxiety, substance use, vanity - were prevalent. The elitism inherent in the lives of many spiritually attuned folk is interesting too. People trying to demonstrate how much closer they were to understanding Taoism or Zen, or better at mediation, or more in touch with 'genuine' Gnosis - looking down on ordinary people who were wallowing in ignorant materialism, etc, etc. — Tom Storm

That's my personal experience too of those talking about esoteric matters. I allow for the possibility of the relatively real thing, but I'm inclined to expect them to take it all metaphorically, to be beyond language not in some indecipherable sense but to see that it's more about a way of living than a way of talking or thinking (embodied virtue-as-skill rather than metaphysical knowledge.)

is there a more intricate, intimate and effective way to anticipate the others attitudes and moods than via this linguistic ping pong game? — Joshs

I think skill that can't be articulated plays a huge role. We learn to be with others as we learn to ride a bike. On the explicit level we have practical psychology, including folk psychology.

If you view meaning as socially languaged before it is that of any one experiencer — Joshs

There's no dance without dancers, without embodied individual participants.

The species has no existence apart form these individual organisms, and yet the perpetuation of the species involves the perpetual generation and destruction of the particular individuals of which it is composed.
...
...individual thinking subjects, while able to participate in the life of spirit, do not cease in doing so to exist as corporeally distinct entities who remain part of nature, and are thus not pure spirit.
...
Unlike sense experience, thought is essentially communicable. Thinking is not an activity performed by the individual person qua individual. It is the activity of spirit, to which Hegel famously referred in the Phenomenology as “‘I’ that is ‘We’ and ‘We’ that is ‘I’” (Hegel [1807] 1977: 110). — link

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ludwig-feuerbach/

How do we and, who has power, in determining these boundaries to which we feel bound to adhere to? — Jack Cummins

:up:

It seems to me that reason is a self-criticizing and self-inventing faculty, that the boundaries aren't fixed. As one poster said, logic is a gentleman's agreement. Some thinkers have tried to say once and for all what it is to be reasonable, but they tend to accidentally exclude their own definition.

Most would probably be able to reach a surface level understanding of his theories. To reach the level of understanding of Einstein though, would likely be beyond most people's intellective capabilities.

Some individuals are able to reach levels of understanding that others cannot, through hard work and dedication, and possibly also genetic disposition. — Tzeentch

:up:

I see your general point. We might agree that some kind of 'continuous' version of esotericism is involved in the genetic dispositions. Some unspecified amount of inborn knack could be one factor among the others.

Note that special relativity is presented in undergrad physics book while GR, on the other hand, seems to be reserved for grad students, given its greater mathematical complexity.

Don't forget about those teleological evolutionists... OK ok, they are pretty rare actually (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Bergson come to mind). — emancipate

Good point. I suppose the issue is whether it's intellectually 'cool' or not to talk about evolution going somewhere, building up to something. What gets one whispered about as a flake or a fake? Anecdotally, I don't know biology very well, and I find it plausible that more could be discovered or established that goes 'against the grain' of the puke of chance metaphor that seems dominant. But I'd be slow to emphasize it, since I don't at all want to be associated with ID types. I just don't know, and I know that I don't know. It's just reasonable to my current state of ignorance that we'll keep updating our theories and might be surprised at some point and experience a paradigm shift.

I suggest you read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratyekabuddha
Do tell me what you think of it. — baker

"The idea of a Paccekabuddha … is interesting, as much as it implies that even when the four truths are not preached they still exist and can be discovered by anyone who makes the necessary mental and moral effort". — link

To me this accessible to anyone aspect puts some distance between the idea and strict esotericism. For instance, someone else could have and probably would have discovered/invented special relativity if Einstein hadn't. If most of our current scientific knowledge was lost somehow, it might be recovered. If we think of religious insight as (valuable, effective) folk-psychology, the analogy works even better.

Rather, people have some vague interest in some type of religion/spirituality, they join a group, a community, there, they get instructions for practices, they do the practices, and then they have "direct experiences". Which they can then compare, if they feel so inclined, or not. — baker

I don't disagree. I'd just say that being accepted in such a community could never depend directly on direct experiences that by definition are understood to be invisible to all but the little ghost in his machine. 'Enlightenment' has a place in the language game or 'sign system' of the tribe.

The third is the principle of humility, that the philosopher has something to teach us; that it is not a simply a matter of what they thought but, by attempting to understand what they are thinking they will help us in our thinking. — Fooloso4

Well said. This is what I was aiming at by talking of a preliminary affection or suspension of disbelief. I think we often check out thinkers because we notice that they are respected by people we already respect. It's something like the son's respect for a (good) father. We 'project' some kind of valuable totality on the though that we can't quite yet grasp. That projected gist is continually revised as we bump up against fragments that don't gel with it. 'But why would he say this, if the gist is...?' Our own prejudices become visible. Slowly our projected gist becomes less surprised by fragments that seem more and more to cohere into a valuable system of insights.

He told me he thought it was a worthy project but one that should wait until I had been interpreting texts for about 25 years. I never did take up that project but continue the practice of interpretation. — Fooloso4

Nice. I've only seen videos. I like his vibe. The recommendation to wait makes a certain kind of sense. Practice, practice, practice. That's the kind of thing I meant by seeing lots of painting, reading lots of books, 'feeling' one's way 'in.'

.

I agree. Engaging them in discussion and reading what they have to say to others decreases that risk, but it is possible that their thinking is so far advanced that I simply can't comprehend. — Fooloso4

:up:

That this is the domain of the non-academic. — baker

I think we agree on guilds and communities of skill. We also agree that the 'ideal florist' (ideal sage) doesn't need to advertise or evangelize. The trouble for me is that it's as if your are putting car mechanics and sages in the same bin. Actually I like the idea myself, but I don't think a certain kind defender of esoteric knowledge (Wayf, for instance) has mere skill in mind but something more exalted.

We are pluralistic and we welcome variety: as long as it is superficial.
The process of enslavement is complete once the enslaved believe themselves to be free. We are now our own thought-police. We actually do believe that there is one right way to do things. — baker

I quite agree that we have a 'meta-religion' that keeps the therefore-personalized religions in their cages. The one right way that there is no one right way but this one. (This is something like Spengler's 'ethical socialism' or Kojeve's 'end of history.' I could join you in a gripe about the ways of the world, but I feel about as free as I can hope to feel given the history of the world. If people are given freedom, they'll use it create chains and bind themselves in tribes.

You think it's stopped rotting by now? — baker

I think it's one of the less stinky places.

Where does the perspective come from that identifies the dance which transcends the dancers? A view from nowhere, everywhere? — Joshs

For me the dance is a metaphor for language. As thinkers, we're aren't IMV primarily individuals (see Feuerbach quote.) In the same way, a good driver is not primarily an individual. We 'take up' the dance as we learn to speak. With practice, some dancers add flourishes that are imitated and become part of the basic dance. But who sees all this, says all this? It's talk about talk, a metaphor for the source of metaphor, the self-investigation (self-invention?) of dialectical, creative reason. Hegel comes to mind with the journey of self-recognition. That which knows itself is not some lonely ghost in the machine (indeed knowledge doesn't make sense in such a context.)

I think that you are maybe wishing to pursue more of a discussion about power and knowledge within philosophy, mainly in a secular context. However, even if my own comment is considered as irrelevant, I think that it does at least pose the question of what do we mean by esoteric? — Jack Cummins

I think that's a fair theme. To the degree that it's mine to decide, I like open discussions. So talking about what we mean by 'esoteric' is fair game. I like the original inner circle metaphor. 'Only for the in-crowd' seems to get it. So it's elitist, but so perhaps, in its own way, is the anti-elitist elitism of critical reason, which I identify as my club, my inner circle (and I think most here also do.)

I am interested in what you have to say here about your experience, of the Eureka moment. — Jack Cummins

Do you mean my realizing that the 'I' is primarily a 'we' ? As I see it, quite a few philosophers talk about this. I consider the realization the result of intense critical thinking. So it's not esoteric, since the dialectical ladder is out there for anyone to climb. It was no single book. I'm trying to sketch the spiderweb in the Blue Book thread, link the writers.

For me the dialectical path led through the most isolated thinkers. Because I was fascinated by Stirner, for example, I read Marx's critique of him in The German Ideology, which demystifies the ego-ghost.

One last post for the night, which I think addresses the 'relativism' of OC and 'form of life' in general.

Awareness of the historically effected character of understanding is, according to Gadamer, identical with an awareness of the hermeneutical situation and he also refers to that situation by means of the phenomenological concept of ‘horizon’ (Horizont)—understanding and interpretation thus always occurs from within a particular ‘horizon’ that is determined by our historically-determined situatedness. Understanding is not, however, imprisoned within the horizon of its situation—indeed, the horizon of understanding is neither static nor unchanging (it is, after all, always subject to the effects of history). Just as our prejudices are themselves brought into question in the process of understanding, so, in the encounter with another, is the horizon of our own understanding susceptible to change.

Gadamer views understanding as a matter of negotiation between oneself and one’s partner in the hermeneutical dialogue such that the process of understanding can be seen as a matter of coming to an ‘agreement’ about the matter at issue. Coming to such an agreement means establishing a common framework or ‘horizon’ and Gadamer thus takes understanding to be a process of the ‘fusion of horizons’ (Horizontverschmelzung). In phenomenology, the ‘horizon’ is, in general terms, that larger context of meaning in which any particular meaningful presentation is situated. Inasmuch as understanding is taken to involve a ‘fusion of horizons’, then so it always involves the formation of a new context of meaning that enables integration of what is otherwise unfamiliar, strange or anomalous. In this respect, all understanding involves a process of mediation and dialogue between what is familiar and what is alien in which neither remains unaffected. This process of horizonal engagement is an ongoing one that never achieves any final completion or complete elucidation—moreover, inasmuch as our own history and tradition is itself constitutive of our own hermeneutic situation as well as being itself constantly taken up in the process of understanding, so our historical and hermeneutic situation can never be made completely transparent to us. — link

You bet. And when I used to drink, My Favourite Things. But most often I used to listen to hours of Mahler and transport myself... — Tom Storm

I don't know Mahler well, but his name makes me think of Bukowksi, who loved to drink and smoke and write to Mahler on the radio.

(My Favorite Things is great. Love 'Equinox', 'Afro Blue,'...others. Something about a sax. And Alice Coltrane kills it too.)

And of course the funny thing is that almost everything that makes life worth living to me (and many others) is based on elusive glimmers of the numinous - through music, art, prose fiction, a sunset, nature... all the cliches. — Tom Storm

Ah yes, those elusive glimmers of the numinous...and I agree on the sources. Do you dig A Love Supreme?

I know that in helping people it is not always necessary to do something. Solidarity, presence and attending to others - whatever you want to call it often has far more remarkable transformative power than therapy or, God forbid, advice. — Tom Storm

Solidarity! Yes. Also: 'The worst vice is ad...vice.'

Can you explain that difference?

At the surface there seems to be one, but on further inspection I'm not so sure. Weren't the bits of reality that Einstein laid bare through his works "secret"? And wasn't his extraordinary mind an uncommon faculty? — Tzeentch

I think it's a deep question, because it's about what it means to be rational in a secular sense, but it's something like science being POV-invariant & having to offer evidence. In principle, any reasonable person should be able to retrace Einstein's steps, follow his logic, and of course test the predictions derived from his theory. He doesn't just get to say 'because I say so, because I have a third eye that you do not have.' His mind would be judged uncommon by its fruits, rather than the reverse.
(?)

Because I intuit the 2nd person (you – plural & singular simultaneously) as the aufheben of 1st person plural/singular (we/I (us)) and 3rd person (s/he, it (them)) – self & non-self / more-than-self (other) – at once a fundamentally ethical address and metaphysical stance. — 180 Proof

Intensities of sublimation! The other (you) is/are a frontier, horizon, Beyond? from/of monotonous subjectivity? Striving toward (and as?) the more-than-self other? Do unknown unknowns fit here somewhere? We might be 'thrusting against the limits of language' but I like it.

Yes, Witty transformed my thinking too, along with the help of Buber & Levinas among others. — 180 Proof

I can't remember exactly which thinker to credit most. It all slowly came into focus, that I was a 'we' first and an 'I' second. I imagine that this sounds wacky or mystical when I view it as the result of critical thinking, of smashing certain inherited errors. There's no dance without the dancers, but there are no dancers without the dance. Language is (part of) the dance. The dancers come & go, preserving the dance, which is also like a flame that leaps from melting candle to melting candle. As you say, it's also ethical, and even critical thinking is essentially ethical (a 'gentle(wom)an's agreement, a respect for the autonomy and intelligence of the other, of the other in one's self even.)

the radical contingency of the species, its fossils & histories, and our bloodied parade of civilizations – an echo of sighs & moans, laughter & screams fading even now and forever into oblivion. — 180 Proof

O what music! Somehow it's even more beautiful that way.

I think such "certain direct knowledge" consists merely. must consist merely, in a feeling of certainty. — Janus

:up:

It seems to me that many intellectual fields require extensive study of the subject and/or a certain intellectual faculty that not everbody possesses in order to be understood.

Development of understanding is a process, requiring dedication and a sharp mind. — Tzeentch

There may be an important difference in the 'exalted' sage. It's not just a matter of knowing our shared reality in more detail but seemingly knowing an otherwise secret reality through an uncommon faculty. If it was only an issue of hard work and having a knack, it wouldn't be against the grain.

Or through contemplative practice after years of training, say....

I'm willing to acknowledge that I am 'trapped' in a Western scientific tradition that privileges a particular worldview and method of gaining knowledge (which in itself is tentative and fallible, but let's leave that in brackets for now). This worldview does not readily accept the validity of recondite knowledge from a transcendental source.

Is it possible for someone like me to see outside of my worldview? Have I missed something?

I want to understand better what a sage is and what it is they hold. I suspect my privileging evidence and reason will make this virtually impossible. — Tom Storm

I'm glad you emphasized this theme. I think I am trapped in the same way, and we both belong to some humanist scientific 'inner circle.' (I mean that such a worldview seems to have its own measure of elitism.) I think the concept and membership is fuzzy, but not too fuzzy to be useful.

I can vaguely remember as a child playing with wee-gee boards, being afraid of ghosts at night in the woods. It was fun. I remember thinking/feeling that a God could hear my prayers. The world has been disenchanted for me in some ways, but I can't say that I'm bored.

I think history is coming up because it's maybe 'really' about politics. Or largely about politics. Personally I want to live in Denmark and not this red state. I think those who are nostalgic for 'objective values' are sincere in some sense, but what's the political direction? How does it cash out?

We seem to be crossing these two subject matters, as I outlined above. I think it's often very insightful to look at the history of ideas, but I'm not seeing the crossover into assessing their value. I could give a detailed account of how slavery came about, but would it impact on a judgement of whether it was right or wrong? — Isaac

I agree. It's off-topic (if also interesting.)

Maybe I'm just being gullible, but it seems unlikely to me that the Catholic priests involved in the child abuse scandals, for example, believed none of their own 'higher knowledge'. — Isaac

I agree. Humans are complex indeed.

I think its quite within reason to think it might be all three, even in any one given case. — Isaac

Yes, that makes the best sense now that you mention it (again, complex indeed.)

I think you are on to something, so I guess I was trying to build a bridge between you and @Isaac.
The Catholic church and Christianity in general lost much of its power, and religion became a private matter. Agreed. Pluralism reigns now. Everyone brews up their own religion or anti-religion. The thought-police aren't allowed to bother us in this private sphere. So the sense of one right way or 'objective' values has presumably decayed (hard to say how variously people actually felt and thought given censorship.)

I do think the theory of evolution has had a significant effect on the human self-image. As you say, the mind is understood to be an evolved/adapted tool. We're the puke of chance? That's different indeed from being made in a god's image or mirroring the essence of the universe. I think you are correct that (this-)worldly well-being is central now. Instead of getting the poor to Heaven, good people want to get them out of poverty. Notions of mental health also tend to be embodied and this-worldly.

But should the sage, if he exists, care? Is the sage political?

n reality, it is, of course, perfectly possible that despite X having written an entire bookshelf on the subject of Y, they have nonetheless (by virtue of their poor choice of methodology) acquired not a scrap of actual knowledge about Y. — Isaac

:up:

They'd only be sure to have knowledge of those books, which might have its own value but is not the same thing. One can even imagine that false approaches could even be misleading and that 'fresh eyes' would be more helpful.

Would you define knowledge in roughly pragmatic terms? Something like prediction, control, economy, consistent with other theories/tools....? That it's universal suggests a kind of accessibility or repeatability ('POV-invariant.')

What I think is of interest is the social role of such claims. Are we to take them at face value and ignore the clear social advantage of claiming higher knowledge which only you can access and such can't even be tested? — Isaac

Yes, the social role is especially fascinating. Even the quote mentions the charisma of its exponents. It's tempting to interpret claims of higher knowledge as the ideology of a ruling class (in times past) or as charlatanism (in pluralistic contexts where the educated are generally wary of taking religion too seriously.) Then there's the sincere florist.

:up:

I agree that we kept the equality (equal before God the law ...one of these days.) I suggest that science is only the arbiter for some,some admittedly in high places. But it's not as if we are doing what is ideally rational as human beings, as if scientists run the world. Would that we were more scientific on some issues! All kinds of ideologies pull on the levers of power in a democracy.

My own understanding of esoteric is of hidden knowledge. I don't know how Wittgenstein fits into this exactly....I am interested in the esoteric but with a certain amount of caution, because it can become about people assuming elite knowledge. — Jack Cummins

I don't think Wittgenstein is directly connected, though any charismatic thinker can inspire various 'inner circles' of those who (act is if, understand themselves to) 'really get it.'

I think this thread is largely about the problematic elitist aspect of esoteric knowledge claims. So your concerns would fit in well (as well as your positive impressions of the esoteric.)

If the 'higher truth' is not empirical (ie, it has no universalizable and predictable effects), and it's esoteric value can only be grasped by the sage, then what would be the point of even discussing the matter, philosophicaly? — Isaac

I lean that way myself. I suppose a secondary issue is whether 'our' rational/secular philosophy is its own kind of inner circle in a nonpejorative sense, an inner circle that excludes any other conception of the inner circle. 'Universal' seems key here. Democracy, science, and anti-esotericism seem to fit together. If so, why?

I think this articulates the spirit that objects to the esoteric.

What censure doubting thus of innate principles may deserve from men, who will be apt to call it pulling up the old foundations of knowledge and certainty, I cannot tell;—I persuade myself at least that the way I have pursued, being conformable to truth, lays those foundations surer. This I am certain, I have not made it my business either to quit or follow any authority in the ensuing Discourse. Truth has been my only aim; and wherever that has appeared to lead, my thoughts have impartially followed, without minding whether the footsteps of any other lay that way or not. Not that I want a due respect to other men’s opinions; but, after all, the greatest reverence is due to truth: and I hope it will not be thought arrogance to say, that perhaps we should make greater progress in the discovery of rational and contemplative knowledge, if we sought it in the fountain, IN THE CONSIDERATION OF THINGS THEMSELVES; and made use rather of our own thoughts than other men’s to find it. For I think we may as rationally hope to see with other men’s eyes, as to know by other men’s understandings. So much as we ourselves consider and comprehend of truth and reason, so much we possess of real and true knowledge. The floating of other men’s opinions in our brains, makes us not one jot the more knowing, though they happen to be true. What in them was science, is in us but opiniatrety; whilst we give up our assent only to reverend names, and do not, as they did, employ our own reason to understand those truths which gave them reputation. Aristotle was certainly a knowing man, but nobody ever thought him so because he blindly embraced, and confidently vented the opinions of another. And if the taking up of another’s principles, without examining them, made not him a philosopher, I suppose it will hardly make anybody else so. In the sciences, every one has so much as he really knows and comprehends. What he believes only, and takes upon trust, are but shreds; which, however well in the whole piece, make no considerable addition to his stock who gathers them. Such borrowed wealth, like fairy money, though it were gold in the hand from which he received it, will be but leaves and dust when it comes to use. — Locke

To be a philosopher (in the newer, critical sense) is (roughly) to share this spirit. Whatever is or should be respected as genuinely existing should be accessible to 'the' (implicitly shared) rational inquirer. It's one thing to claim to be in the inner circle and it's another thing to consider their claims. Those confident of belonging may remain silent, may dodge accusations of the performative contradiction. Others are not, and still others are undecided about such claims.

Consider the perspective of those hearing and not making the claim. If evidence is withheld, if excuses are made, if the cost of entry is too high, then suspicion is natural, if not conclusive. Many (myself include) have more or less written off such claims not as necessarily meaningless but as insufficiently promising to overcome their suspicion.

They're an awkward fit like sophists, dogmatists and charlatans. — 180 Proof

Somehow we're all drawn to the same forum, literally and metaphorically, despite serious differences.

But on what grounds should we believe him? Ye shall know them fuckers by their fruits – so it is written (or tattooed) somewhere. — 180 Proof

:up:

For, since the reasoning faculties of the soul, which are almost constantly, though not always warily nor wisely employed, would not know how to move, for want of a foundation and footing, in most men, who through laziness or avocation do not, or for want of time, or true helps, or for other causes, cannot penetrate into the principles of knowledge, and trace truth to its fountain and original, it is natural for them, and almost unavoidable, to take up with some borrowed principles; which being reputed and presumed to be the evident proofs of other things, are thought not to need any other proof themselves. Whoever shall receive any of these into his mind, and entertain them there with the reverence usually paid to principles, never venturing to examine them, but accustoming himself to believe them, because they are to be believed, may take up, from his education and the fashions of his country, any absurdity for innate principles; and by long poring on the same objects, so dim his sight as to take monsters lodged in his own brain for the images of the Deity, and the workmanship of his hands. — Locke

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10615/10615-h/10615-h.htm#link2HCH0001

This might be a bit too foundationalist, but the critical spirit is nice.

My own approach to this is 'Wittgensteinian.' I don't think 'direct experience' can mean more than a grand feeling here, since meaning is social. I can imagine the language of an inner circle, but it's not clear how to distinguish their claims of access to an exalted (level of ) reality from the ordinary self-flattery of any group ('based' or 'woke' or 'saved' or ....).

I don't want to be too critical, because I think philosophy can be understood as its own (larger, perhaps more welcoming) inner circle of the 'rational' where 'rational' is understood to (among other things) exclude unjustified claims that appeal to varieties of the 'Inner Light.' FWIW, I think rationality is a fuzzy concept, but I know it (more or less) when I see it (a matter of skill and attitude.)

I strive to write clearly and concisely, but even on philosophy forums I have been accused several times of being hard to read. So what 'simple' means is relative. — Fooloso4

:up:

I can understand a theory of the 'pure witness.' We can imagine that when humans (puppies) are born the a new perspective on the shared world is created. We can even imagine that 'consciousness' and 'the world' are two sides of the same coin. Consciousness of what? Right?

We might call this 'opening up' the world, but as we move onto 'made meaningful,' we get to the social-linguistic aspect of consciousness. IMV, this social-linguistic aspect is (primarily) 'between' us. I assume that learning a language involves changes of the brain, but that's secondary.

It's the synchronization of signs and actions that's essential, like the conventions that make it safe for us all to be on the road together. Apart from the 'pure witness' and perhaps some 'hard-wired' aspects, it looks like human consciousness (the mind) is largely distributed (in lots of skulls and/or ways of living at once) and historical. I think of a dance. The dancers come and go. There's no dance without the dancers, but the dance depends on no particular dancer.

On this forum Heidegger is often dismissed because people are unwilling to do the work to understand him. But this is different from what I was referring to above. — Fooloso4

I'd say yes and no. In my view there's always at least a slight risk in dismissing an ambiguous other. Deciding that a poster here or someone at the watercolor is a windbag is not obviously fundamentally different from deciding that Heidegger or Zizek is a windbag. (I've learned something from both myself.) But perhaps you'd argue otherwise?

Cut through the jargon and it becomes clear that they have not really understood the author, and cannot defend what they say by giving a detailed analysis of the text that ties together the parts into a coherent whole. — Fooloso4

I relate to thinking that so-and-so basically doesn't get it, that so-and-so is following the wrong breadcrumbs, relative to my interpretation anyway. I like to think that we usually start with some big that we must continually revise. What draws us to a thinker in the first place is perhaps a mere caricature in retrospect.

In this way Gadamer can be seen as attempting to retrieve a positive conception of prejudice (German Vorurteil) that goes back to the meaning of the term as literally a pre-judgment (from the Latin prae-judicium) that was lost during the Renaissance. In Truth and Method, Gadamer redeploys the notion of our prior hermeneutical situatedness as it is worked out in more particular fashion in Heidegger’s Being and Time (first published in 1927) in terms of the ‘fore-structures’ of understanding, that is, in terms of the anticipatory structures that allow what is to be interpreted or understood to be grasped in a preliminary fashion. The fact that understanding operates by means of such anticipatory structures means that understanding always involves what Gadamer terms the ‘anticipation of completeness’—it always involves the revisable presupposition that what is to be understood constitutes something that is understandable, that is, something that is constituted as a coherent, and therefore meaningful, whole.
...
Moreover, the indispensable role of prejudgment in understanding connects directly with Gadamer’s rethinking of the traditional concept of hermeneutics as necessarily involving, not merely explication, but also application. In this respect, all interpretation, even of the past, is necessarily ‘prejudgmental’ in the sense that it is always oriented to present concerns and interests, and it is those present concerns and interests that allow us to enter into the dialogue with the matter at issue. Here, of course, there is a further connection with the Aristotelian emphasis on the practical—not only is understanding a matter of the application of something like ‘practical wisdom’, but it is also always determined by the practical context out of which it arises.

The prejudicial character of understanding means that, whenever we understand, we are involved in a dialogue that encompasses both our own self-understanding and our understanding of the matter at issue. In the dialogue of understanding our prejudices come to the fore, both inasmuch as they play a crucial role in opening up what is to be understood, and inasmuch as they themselves become evident in that process. — SEP

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/gadamer/

I know it's a big quote, but I think it's good stuff. What's your take on it?

Something we haven't taken account of is the possibility of creatively misreading thinkers. While in general I think we do want to grasp what they really thought, this is not the only reason to read (we aren't just biographers of their interior.)

The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience. A conflict with experience at the periphery occasions readjustments in the interior of the field. Truth values have to be redistributed over some of our statements. Re-evaluation of some statements entails re-evaluation of others, because of their logical interconnections -- the logical laws being in turn simply certain further statements of the system, certain further elements of the field. Having re-evaluated one statement we must re-evaluate some others, whether they be statements logically connected with the first or whether they be the statements of logical connections themselves. But the total field is so undetermined by its boundary conditions, experience, that there is much latitude of choice as to what statements to re-evaluate in the light of any single contrary experience. No particular experiences are linked with any particular statements in the interior of the field, except indirectly through considerations of equilibrium affecting the field as a whole.

If this view is right, it is misleading to speak of the empirical content of an individual statement -- especially if it be a statement at all remote from the experiential periphery of the field. Furthermore it becomes folly to seek a boundary between synthetic statements, which hold contingently on experience, and analytic statements which hold come what may. Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system. Even a statement very close to the periphery can be held true in the face of recalcitrant experience by pleading hallucination or by amending certain statements of the kind called logical laws. Conversely, by the same token, no statement is immune to revision. Revision even of the logical law of the excluded middle has been proposed as a means of simplifying quantum mechanics; and what difference is there in principle between such a shift and the shift whereby Kepler superseded Ptolemy, or Einstein Newton, or Darwin Aristotle?

For vividness I have been speaking in terms of varying distances from a sensory periphery. Let me try now to clarify this notion without metaphor. Certain statements, though about physical objects and not sense experience, seem peculiarly germane to sense experience -- and in a selective way: some statements to some experiences, others to others. Such statements, especially germane to particular experiences, I picture as near the periphery. But in this relation of "germaneness" I envisage nothing more than a loose association reflecting the relative likelihood, in practice, of our choosing one statement rather than another for revision in the event of recalcitrant experience. For example, we can imagine recalcitrant experiences to which we would surely be inclined to accommodate our system by re-evaluating just the statement that there are brick houses on Elm Street, together with related statements on the same topic. We can imagine other recalcitrant experiences to which we would be inclined to accommodate our system by re-evaluating just the statement that there are no centaurs, along with kindred statements. A recalcitrant experience can, I have already urged, bc accommodated by any of various alternative re-evaluations in various alternative quarters of the total system; but, in the cases which we are now imagining, our natural tendency to disturb the total system as little as possible would lead us to focus our revisions upon these specific statements concerning brick houses or centaurs. These statements are felt, therefore, to have a sharper empirical reference than highly theoretical statements of physics or logic or ontology. The latter statements may be thought of as relatively centrally located within the total network, meaning merely that little preferential connection with any particular sense data obtrudes itself.

As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries -- not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer. Let me interject that for my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits. The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience. — Quine

http://fs2.american.edu/dfagel/www/Class%20Readings/Quine/TwoDogmasofEmpiricism.htm

This passage came to mind as I was thinking about controversial thinkers like Derrida and in general about accusations of meaninglessness. It might be that only a small group chatters in a certain lingo, yet this small group is part of the social system, and such ideas finally have an affect at the periphery.