Page History

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"... The way of asking questions as such does not grow out of individual preference but out of history itself, in which every phenomenon, in keeping with its complex nature, offers different aspects, that is, acquires – -- or, better, claims – -- significance in different directions. And it is in this same history that every interpreter, in keeping with the motives present in the variety of historical life, acquires the way of asking questions within which the phenomena begin to speak.

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"... historical phenomena are not what they are as such – -- precisely as historical phenomena – -- without the historical subjects who understand them" (136).

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"... historical knowledge is never closed or definitive any more than is the presunderstanding with which the historian approaches historical phenomena in asking about them. If historical phenomena are not facts that can be neutrally observed but rather disclose themselves in their meaning only to one who approaches them alive with questions, they are always understandable only now in that they speak anew to every present situation. Indeed, the questioning itself arises out of the historical situation, out of the claim of the now, out of the problem that is given in the now. For this reason historical research is never closed but must always be carried further.... Hence, one must say that a historical event can be known for what it is precisely as a historical event – -- only in the future. And one may also say that the future of a historical event belongs to it" (150 f.).

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