"Our language does not consist of a stock set of sentences, but sometimes we behave as though it did" (Xavier Rubert de Ventós). Against Heidegger's contention that we have not yet begun to think, Wittgenstein: we are already thinking. Phenomology takes us further, rather than closer, to phenomena, just as hermeneutics takes us further from understanding. Do we need someone to explain to us how we understand something that we already understand, how in some sense we understand it because we have already understood it before we even know what it’s about? As we get older our experience grows while our openness to new experience diminishes: few will try sushi for the first time after the age of 35, or change their taste in music, or get their tongues pierced, according to a recent scientific survey (consequences of this for educational theory). I no longer read the books I review; I look at the index, the table of contents, the footnotes. In the grocery store I am constantly seeing people that look vaguely familiar to me. This is because I saw them three minutes before in another aisle. To be continued...
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