Explaining and Understanding

There are various types of popular statements that express a binary opposition between the processes of Explaining and Understanding, and the Agony Aunt advice, 'Men always like to explain, but only women can understand', is just one of them. To caricature slightly, it is held that Explaining is what 'dissecting/analytical' people (read men) in the 'sciences' do, while Understanding is for 'holistic/synthetic' people (read women) in the 'humanities'. Having now spent an equal number of years first in the 'sciences' and then in the 'humanities', I wonder why some people see such a radical opposition between these two processes.

I say this not because I, as a man, have obtained a certified diploma in Understanding from a feminist university (and nor do I claim to possess highly developed powers of Understanding), but simply because I believe that when it comes to inter-personal encounters, Explaining and Understanding, far from being diametrically opposed, necessarily pre-suppose each other forming a reciprocal feedback loop. (Hence the colours are inverted in this sentence, just in case you have not noticed.)

Consider this example : John and Susanne have been friends for two years now; one evening, John comes to Susanne's house and tells her that he has stabbed a man. Now the more that Susanne is able to explain John's behaviour, the more that she will be able to understand him, and vice-versa. Suppose that in reply to Susanne's question, 'But why did you do it?', John simply shrugs his shoulders and says, 'Oh, you know, shit happens', the possibilities of understanding are immediately foreclosed. Suppose, however, that John goes on to explain how he got involved in a drunken brawl, the possibilities are slightly raised, though even in this case Susanne might want to know why he, a strict teetotaller, got into such a tussle in the first place. In this case, the explanation will go one step further backwards, and potentially it could keep on moving backwards without reaching a bed-rock stratum of explanation.

The point, however, is that whether or not Susanne is able to understand John's action will vitally depend on how much of explanation she is able to provide for it; the more of the latter, the greater will be the possibilities for the former. Therefore, Understanding is not something that is added onto Explanation as an extra layer like the white icing over a birthday cake; rather it emerges intrinsically through and from the process of Explanation.

The reverse holds too. If it so happens that Susanne does not have a certain minimalist Understanding of how a human being could get so incensed under the influence of alcohol as to stab another person, she will not even pause to ask John for any reasons; consequently, there will be no, as we say, Explaining to do. In contrast, if she does have the former, she would be more willing (more 'open') to listening to his Explanations, which might, through a feedback loop, help her to Understand him more.

In all of this, however, I have not quite brought out the ethical dimension. Suppose that Susanne is able to Understand John : does it also mean that she has to approve of his act? Here we may make a crucial distinction between understanding and moral appproval : the latter presupposes the former, but the former need not always lead to the latter. To take a more drastic example, I can spend the next ten years of my life studying the rise and the fall of the Hitler regime, offer various sorts of political and cultural Explanations for his ascent to the skies, and become able to Understand quite well what was 'going on' inside his mind without, however, giving my moral approval to his horrific deeds. And the same holds for the less apocalyptic example above : Susanne may, if she wishes to, listen to John for the next hour, absorb his Explanations and thereby Understand him to a reasonable degree, without giving up her moral belief that it is wrong to inflict violence on another human being.