Transitions from Seeing to Thinking: On the Relation of Perception, Worldview and World-Disclosure

Eva Schürmann (Otto von Guericke Universität, Magdeburg)

The difficulties in determining exactly where seeing stops and where thinking begins are symptomatic of a problem. If someone notices something in someone else, they are not decoding sensory signs, but they are seeing and understanding at the same time. Nonetheless, this understanding is still a kind of seeing and not a kind of hearing or imagining. In order to explain this state of affairs one has to assume that vision and understanding form a unit that cannot possibly be taken to be merely metaphorical, but is rather to be taken quite literally.