The history of the human spirit is richly characterised by the presence of constructive misunderstandings. This can surely be explained by the fact that certain ideas crave direct expression even before they are capable of finding an adequate formulation for themselves. Such ideas naturally attach themselves to some already existing intellectual constellation that initially appears to provide confirmation or deeper justification for them although they have in fact already opened up quite new paths of thinking.

This state of affairs should be distinguished from the processes of ‘affirmation’ and ‘critique’. In the former case, a given thought or developed theory is imitated or further varied by some successor. In the latter case, some explicit position of contrast and contestation is assumed instead. Productive misunderstanding, on the other hand, arises whenever we appeal to a certain theoretical position that appears to anticipate our own, and thereby fail precisely to recognise the difference that has in fact already been opened up between them.

One can of course claim that the hermeneutic appropriation of anything always involves a process of ‘understanding differently’ and that the boundary between correct reproduction and adoption of new horizons of interpretation can never therefore be drawn precisely or definitively. But this hermeneutical observation, justified as it is, does not necessarily commit us to that happy form of intellectual defeatism that apostrophises every reception of ideas already formulated by others as an inevitable transformation and effect of distance, as an oscillating play of reflections and counter-reflections.