Understanding means tracing the known back to what defies explanation
Evidence
We think we actually understand things only when we have traced them back to what we do not understand and cannot understand to causality, to axioms, to God, to character. — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 192
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- DEFINE: A crisp articulation of Simmel’s epistemology: explanation bottoms out in irreducible terms like causality, axioms, God, or character.
- XREF: Speaks to the dyad/triad analysis — Raskolnikov’s guilt traces back to ‘character’ as an unexplained terminus, connecting to the reader’s Simmel project.