Understanding and powerlessness. An existential and phenomenological analysis

Abstract

The article is about the issue of understanding as possession and other possibilities of understanding / misunderstanding. Understanding as possession was analyzed by Sartre, and he also introduces the figurative term “digestive” understanding. It means that while understanding we ourselves constitute meanings and use them for our own purposes, both mental and practical. Understanding and knowledge are types of power. The creation of projects and drafts, which Heidegger speaks of, is the mastery of the world. Subject’s activity, which is spoken of in post-Kantian epistemology, implies his desire to create and understand the world in his own way. Digestive understanding reduces the external meaning to a limited subjective meaning and thereby provokes protest. The concept of powerlessness is introduced as an existential disposition: the renunciation of power over the world. At the same time, there is a refusal to spread understanding as a digestive attitude to the subject. Complete misunderstanding is impossible, but meaning can be accepted as a gift, as Marion says. Marion’s concept of a saturated phenomenon in the case extends to the whole world. Levinas’s doctrine of the Other is also used: the Other turns out to be a saturated phenomenon that has its own meaning. Parallels can be drawn with the Sufi concept of “inner silence” and monastic practices. Refusal of the power and struggle leads to finding harmony with the world.