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Hans-Georg Gadamer

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In fact history does not belong to us but rather we to it. [In Wahrheit gehört die Geschichte nicht uns, sondern wir gehören der Geschichte.] Long before we understand ourselves through the process of self-examination, we understand ourselves in a self-evident way in the family, society, and state in which we live. The focus of subjectivity is a distorting mirror. The self awareness of the Individual is only a flickering in the closed circuit of historical life. That is why the prejudices of an individual are — much more than that individual's judgments — the historical reality of his being.
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Variant translation: In truth history does not belong to us but rather we to history. … The focus of subjectivity is a distorted mirror. Individual self-reflection is merely a flickering in the closed circuit of historical life. That is why the prejudices of an individual are — much more than that individual's judgments — the historical reality of his being.
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As quoted in "Hermeneutical Truth and the Structure of Human Experience: Gadamer's Critique of Dilthey" by Tom Neton, in The Specter of Relativism : Truth, Dialogue, and Phronesis in Philosophical Hermeneutics (1995) edited by Lawrence Schmidt

 
Hans-Georg Gadamer

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