Understanding: A Desideratum
Countering Psychotic Mis-Understanding

I register big disappointments with the trend of modern Hermeneutik: too much of the time this new work stresses a kind of homilitic in which the intent of the utterer-of-text does not rate being understood. Especially this seems to be the case with postmodernist Deconstuction-ism.

But! This say-what-you-will attitude does not aid in my project, which consists of avoiding the misunderstandings I suffer of the Mitwelt when I am psychotic. I desperately need to fathom what the 'real' state of social nature might be, and am willing to make an all-fronts attack on the problem.

In my not-too-limited studies, Friedrich Schleiermacher represents the one thinker who most-clearly and most-level-headedly deals with 'understanding the utterer at least as well as he does on first hearing, and then better.' He uses all indicators--linguistic and cultural-- for achieving this goal: including meditation and statistical quantification. He never says that he has 'absolute' understanding of the-Other, but in steps called 'recapitulations' he tries to approximate the understanding-gained-so-far.

For my part, this process of understanding seems to be a logical process involving a reductio-ad-absurdum-- 'eliminating all non-causes until I get to cause.' I begin with the assumption of total mis-understanding, then reach for progressive correction until I 'have it right.' This means in other words that I assume myself psychotic in noesis until the limit of misunderstanding gives over to approximate understanding of the Social-Other.

My approach seems consonant with Schleiermacherianism; it seems opposite of the postmodernist preachings of Karl Barth, Jacques Derrida, and the ' theorizing' of Michel Foucault. None of this effort at homily gives me 'enough' in my necessity to get-it-right, which now has civil/legal aspects as well as the personal/philosophic.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens