The text reflects on the common habit of reading new philosophical works through the prism of already familiar authors and concepts. The author criticizes the tendency to reduce new ideas to previously mastered categories, which, while making texts more readable, distracts from the original thinker’s core intent and the "matter at hand." To illustrate this, the author recounts a memory of Jan Patočka, who interpreted Teilhard de Chardin first as an adapted Bergson and later, influenced by Karl Löwith’s review, as a Nietzschean. Although Patočka’s argumentation was brilliant, the author later identifies a methodological flaw in this approach: the attempt to fit a thinker into a predefined mold. A true philosophical encounter should not consist of merely categorizing an author within existing frameworks but should involve a direct and personal engagement with what the author deeply aimed for. A reviewer must not hide behind others' interpretations but must confront the subject matter directly and judge it authentically.