Mutual understanding and the role of experience
We cannot form any thoughts without personal experience. We cannot create any ideas without personal experience. Thoughts and ideas can come about only by the experience of given knowledge or knowledge gained by involvement in life.
Critical understanding of our thoughts and ideas can lead us to a different level of experience of the world—a sense of understanding of another and a sense of mutuality with another.
We can have no sense of understanding of another or sense of mutuality with another without a sufficient level of personal experience, the knowledge we derive from it, and the critical understanding we apply to it.
We can, therefore, come to a greater understanding of another and derive a sense of mutuality with another because our rational processes are cultivated and enhanced by experience of and exposure to given knowledge.
However, the sense of true mutuality and understanding of another stems from a sense of union with another born of something other than experience of and exposure to given knowledge. The sense of true mutuality and understanding of another stems from a loving relationship—something of the ‘real’ generally beyond our normal experience of the world.
Although this sense of union is capable of being stimulated by our use of experience and gained knowledge it springs from an entirely different source—a source beyond the world of which we as living temporal beings form part and of which we as living temporal beings only have hints. This true experience is an experience of reality that although capable of being articulated because of our experience of given knowledge and knowledge gained by involvement in life, is an experience of reality from beyond the world of given or ordinarily gained knowledge and as such cannot be adequately described. We call it ‘falling in love’.
So, although by critical explanation experience of given knowledge supports understanding and mutuality, this is only part of the potential experience of understanding of, and mutuality with another. Experience of given knowledge is in itself insufficient to support understanding of the true nature of mutuality with another. True mutuality with another is produced from something beyond the conventional nature of experience and therefore not subject to its critical scrutiny nor its rationally based explanatory powers.
Statement delivered at the Third International Colloquium for Socratic Dialogue, Sophia, Bulgaria, 2015
