ABSTRACT
The chapter deals with the question of how we truly encounter and understand something through its examples. More specifically, it asks how examples enable us to recognise a subject and prevent us from misrecognising it, or from misresponding to it. A point of departure is provided by Peter Winch’s observations on the nature of our understanding and the role of examples therein. The chapter follows Winch’s suggestions about the nature of understanding as consisting of a response informed by a background (yet developing) network of particular contents, including canonical examples. Against this background, the distinction between appropriate differentiated reactions and misplaced ones makes sense. It is argued that particular examples can help us to look at our concepts differently or to accommodate unfamiliar ideas or cases. Such examples can also prevent us from arbitrary mis- or re-interpretations. For this purpose, it is important that they are sufficiently fleshed out, sometimes by virtue of offering “fitting” words. The concluding section suggests that this effect has to do with the capacity (or incapacity) of examples to convey a sense of seriousness as regards (the lives of) the persons/characters concerned.
