Full Idea
Schleiermacher proposed that an interpreter of a text may be in a better position to see the author's life and work and historical setting as a whole, and so understand the text better than its author.
Gist of Idea
An interpreter of a text, because of wider knowledge, can understand it better than its author
Source
report of Friedrich Schleiermacher (works [1825]) by Thomas Mautner - Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy p.248
Book Reference
Mautner,Thomas: 'Dictionary of Philosophy' [Penguin 1997], p.248
A Reaction
This sounds like a very quaintly old-fashioned enlightenment view which has been swept away by post-modernism, which is why I agree with it. We have a perspective on Descartes now which he could never have dreamt of.