Any new learning opportunity hinges on what we have already experienced and learned. At any given moment we are construed and constrained by fore-structures of understanding which are anticipatory in nature and subject to constant revision. Current knowledge opens us to further knowledge.

Learning, like any human enterprise, occurs at a particular time and in a particular place. It is always inextricable from a specific linguistic, historical and socio-ethical context. Our life experience and associated fore-structures of understanding are bound to this finitude.

 

 

 

THE NOTION OF POSITIVE PREJUDICE

We do not encounter the new with an innocent eye. We bring to each new situation a background of hypotheses and anticipations. Our fore-structures of understanding are our points of entry. They encompass the range of our existing perceptions, perspectives and prejudgments. Our prejudices may be vague or ill-informed but they are not merely negative. They are all we have and they are precisely what allow us to be open and ready to experience anything at all. This is not a limitation or deficiency of reason but rather the only way that it can work.