When Explanations Can’t Replace True Understanding
If you can’t understand it without an explanation, you can’t understand it with an explanation. — José Saramago
A Provocation About Comprehension
José Saramago’s line begins as a blunt provocation: if a thing doesn’t click on its own terms, no amount of verbal scaffolding will make it real understanding. The quote challenges the comforting belief that every confusion can be cleared up by a better explanation, a longer tutorial, or a simpler metaphor. From there, it nudges us to distinguish between hearing words and grasping meaning. Saramago implies that understanding is not merely something delivered from speaker to listener; it is something the listener must be able to construct internally, using experience, attention, and prior concepts.
The Limits of Language
To see why explanations may fail, it helps to notice what language can’t do: it can point, but it can’t fully substitute for the thing itself. Philosophers of meaning have long treated this gap as central—Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) famously argues that some things can be “shown” rather than “said,” suggesting that explanation hits a boundary where direct encounter is required. Consequently, a person might repeat an explanation flawlessly while missing what it refers to, like reciting a recipe without knowing what “sauté until fragrant” smells like. The words are correct, yet the comprehension remains inert.
Knowing-That vs. Knowing-How
Saramago’s point becomes clearer when we separate propositional knowledge from skill. You can “know that” balance involves keeping your center of mass over the base of support, yet still be unable to ride a bicycle; the competence is “knowing how.” Gilbert Ryle’s The Concept of Mind (1949) argues that these two forms of knowing are not interchangeable, and explanations often overfeed the first while starving the second. In that light, the quote is less anti-intellectual than it sounds. It warns that some understanding is procedural or embodied, and if a learner lacks the underlying capacity or practice, further explanation only adds more sentences on top of the same missing foundation.
Prerequisites and Conceptual Ladders
Another reason explanations fail is that they assume hidden prerequisites. A proof in calculus cannot be understood by someone who doesn’t yet have algebraic fluency, no matter how patiently it’s rewritten. The issue isn’t stubbornness; it’s that the explanation uses conceptual tools the listener hasn’t acquired. So the quote can be read as advice to step backward rather than to talk louder. If someone can’t understand an idea “with an explanation,” it may be because the correct task is to build the ladder—definitions, examples, and simpler adjacent concepts—until the mind has something to stand on.
When Explanations Become Evasion
Saramago also hints at a social truth: explanations can become a way to avoid confronting the thing itself. A manager can “explain” a failing plan with impressive jargon; a pundit can “explain” an event with sweeping narratives; yet neither explanation produces real clarity. In such cases, the very presence of an explanation can mask the absence of understanding. This is why the quote can feel like an ethical challenge. It asks whether our explanations illuminate or merely perform expertise, and whether we’re accepting verbal coherence as a substitute for genuine grasp.
What the Quote Doesn’t Deny
Even so, Saramago’s line doesn’t have to be read as contempt for teaching. Explanations often work—especially when they include examples, guided practice, and checks for understanding. Modern learning science supports this: people benefit when new information is anchored to prior knowledge and applied through retrieval and problem-solving, not just heard once. The deeper takeaway, then, is about timing and readiness. Explanations are powerful when they meet a mind prepared to integrate them; otherwise, they may bounce off. The responsibility is shared: the explainer must build bridges, and the learner must cultivate the internal structures that let an explanation become understanding.