TY - JOUR N2 - In this article, I am examining the role of categorization in understanding. The problem arises from well-known distinction between explanation and understanding, which has been for a century pursued in hermeneutic tradition. Categorization belongs to explanatory endeavor and its role in understanding is unclear. In order to delimit the scope of inquiry I am focusing on the weakest kind of categorization, so called categorization ad hoc. I am examining the hypothesis to the effect that categorization plays its role in hermeneutic circle as some sort of preunderstanding. Eventually, however, I reject this hypothesis. It is because it leads to hermeneutic paradox: The notion of pre-understanding has a meaning only in the context of full-fledged understanding, which is an unattainable ideal. Such ideal cannot be used as a personal criterion of the quality of one’s understanding. There is a tension between the feeling of understanding and the scarcity of personal means to justify this feeling. I am suggesting that similar, albeit weaker effect occurs also in more elaborate, scientific categorizations. What is really wrong in the passage from categorization to understanding is some form of self-understanding: We do not know whether we understand better, or at all when we put some categorical order onto our experience. We do not seem to have the required meta-understanding. L1 - http://www.journals.pan.pl/Content/110496/PDF/N_3_17-07-Pi%C5%82at.pdf L2 - http://www.journals.pan.pl/Content/110496 PY - 2017 IS - No 3 EP - 102 KW - categorization KW - understanding KW - explanation KW - hermeneutics A1 - Piłat, Robert PB - Biuro Upowszechniania i Promocji Nauki PAN DA - 2017.06.30 T1 - The role of categorization in understanding SP - 85 UR - http://www.journals.pan.pl/dlibra/publication/edition/110496 T2 - Nauka ER -